Weekend Update

BIKING
I am really getting into this biking thing! On Sunday Eric & I took a ride around the lower perimeter of Manhattan, up to Chelsea Market (my previous haunting place). There, we stuffed our backpack full of Manhattan Fruit Exchange goodies. I was very excited to get my fix of unpasteurized juice—I bought grape and, to try something new, Spinach Orange. I have always been intrigued/afraid of veggie juices, but this juice was wonderful—sweet from the oranges with a mild, pleasant spinach flavor.

They opened an Anthropologie in Chelsea Market. Of course. Two months after I move away, they open my favorite store ONE BLOCK AWAY. We briefly went in there, and I went to the hardware section and ended up buying a cute discounted hook to hang on the back of a door. I have been buying a lot of those lately. Gotta love hooks.

We went back through Manhattan (I think the total was about 10 miles round trip). My friend Rita had biked over from Brooklyn, but instead of riding more we went up to the apartment and had some dinner. The heirloom tomato we bought from Chelsea Market sadly turned out to be bust, but we grilled it and had a warm caprese salad, which was still enjoyable, especially with warm mozzarella. Fresh mozzarella pretty much makes everything better. We also finished the ravioli I bought in Little Italy. I had also made Molasses cookies the other day, which were wonderful, and still had 2/3 of the batter left in the fridge. I put them in the oven, but because our usual kitchen timer was outside, we just thought we would remember…but we didn’t. I remembered over FORTY minutes later. Miraculously, the cookies were fine. They’re crisp, and I prefer chewy, but they didn’t burn or anything. I suspect it’s because they were made with (trans fat-free) shortening, which probably has a higher burn point than butter. Crazy.

THE WIRE
Later that night, Eric & I watched the last episode of “The Wire.” I am very sad to finish this series. It’s just so, so, so incredibly good and thoughtful and deep and intense. Eric and I had great conversations about this show and I actually feel like I’ve learned things about how police, gangs, politics, public schools, and how unions work. The show has a pretty depressing theme overall, with the idea that institutions hold you back and nothing will ever change and the same cycles repeat themselves over and over again. The last episode brought that all back, setting it up for the cycles to continue and repeating some of the scenes from the first episodes. I can’t wait to go through the blogosphere and read more about the show now that I don’t have to worry about spoilers. I miss you, Omar and McNulty!!

Now that we’re done with “The Wire,” I think we’re going to move on to Damages and Treme. We saw the first episode of Damages, and it was pretty good, with lots of information about high-powered lawyers, and Treme is the next work from The Wire creators. But now that it’s warmer out not sure if we’ll be watching as much of the tube.

...AND THE WORRYWART STRIKES AGAIN
My Mom and Aunt are visiting this weekend. I am very excited but also nervous because I want them to have a perfect visit with all good weather and events and nothing bad happening. But I am trying to be less anxious/people pleaser/perfectionist so instead I have been telling myself to throw all those expectations away and just have an adventure. An adventure!!! I am sick of worrying myself sick…literally.

Today I have some discomfort in the back of my throat and sneezed once and started freaking out. It’s like, calm down Sarah, it will be fine. My worrying is something I want to address. I know I’m being irrational about a lot of my worries, especially when I freak out about my health or think I have some sickness or random disease, but it’s really hard to find a way to stop and get out of that thought cycle. I wish I were a cool, tortured neurotic. Maybe I should work on shifting my anxieties over to brooding, existential things instead of thinking I need a root canal.

So that’s a good example: My dentist did a filling, which turned out to be much deeper than he thought because it was partly a replacement filling and there was more decay than he anticipated. As I left the office, he told me to beware of shooting pains, because there was a small chance the tooth wouldn’t calm down and I would need a root canal. Enter me: beleaguered with tooth pain for two weeks until I went in and he told me everything was fine.

It’s really the power of suggestion. If you focus on an area of your body, you can make yourself experience pain or sensation and your brain can twist that however you want. I guess on the bright side, my mind has the ability to control how I experience my body in a more active way than most people (I suspect). I just need to figure out how to use this power for good (i.e. calming) rather than bad. Or maybe I need to not try to control my body at all, and just acknowledge how my body feels and move on. This makes me feel New Age-y….although speaking of it, I need to do more yoga. Yoga is a lot about experiencing your body and not trying to control it. There are points where you try to do things like breathe away stress and relax your whole body, which can unconsciously be tense. But it’s also about not forcing your body and allowing it to do as it wishes. I need to get back into that. I think it makes me feel better (which in my case, means virtually nothing, because I can make my body feel anything), but at least I get that sense of well-being. So that's it for me worrying about how much I worry, the main worry in my life right now...

A week of highs and lows

This week has been kind of average--I get addicted to constant business lunches and dinners and events and never having enough time for anything, so when they drop off I get all fidgety and don't know what to do with myself. This week I've had to deal with a lot of people not following through, a lot of cancellations (I was supposed to make Nike ID's this week and we had to cancel. I'm still SO pissed about that), and a lot of delays. This morning bagels were two hours late! I LIVE for free bagel Fridays. One of life's little pleasures :)

I went Marquee on Wednesday for a business event, and that was probably the worst of these situations. Word on the street is that Marquee is "sooo over" and "eurotrashy" but I wanted to check it out anyway, since I remember it from my compulsive USWeekly Days where Marquee was always the site of epic celebrity binges. (Sidenote: The bathroom has a little framed plaque that reads, "We do not support drug use, blah blah blah, we will throw you out, etc.)

For some reason whoever organized the event reservations screwed up, and we had to wait outside, then wait around while they found OUR tables (god forbid you sit at the wrong effing table since they're all reserved) Some Eurotrashy guy informed us we were sitting at the wrong table. The security guards were being assholes because some people weren't using coat check and piled their coats on the banquettes.

Finally everything was sorted out, and we got our set of tables and bottle service. The bottle of grey goose at my table was literally emptied out in less than ten drinks and two minutes. People were THIRSTY. I had a couple grey goose cocktails and a couple glasses of Moet, but didn't want to drink too much because I was still so pissed at how Marquee was so unaccomodating. I talked to some guy who worked in branded content, which got me really excited. He was like one above a PA, an Entertainment Associate, and got to produce pieces with $10 million budgets. That would be so cool to do, and a great way to merge advertising and film. My friend Max said this guy was hitting on me. I thought he was gay but Max didn't and he has a better read on that. I later saw him texting "Miss you honey text you later" to a girl so I think that explained the friendly but line-drawing vibe I was getting.

Went to a couple lunches this week--Orso and Serafina, which are both Italian places. I also went to Churrascaria Plataforma, which is this all-you-can-eat Brazilian meat place. They come around with these big skewers of meat and slice you off pieces. And everything is wrapped in bacon. They give you these coasters that you turn over to green or red depending on if you want more meat. It's pretty intense. I actually ended up not overeating, because I was eating really slowly and pacing myself, and everyone else ate fast and stopped eating, so I felt like such a pig still eating, so I ended up picking at half a plate of uneaten meat and staring at it in lust. NEVER again! I do hate being the last one eating though...and I always thought I was such a fast eater. What gives?

This weekend I have to run lots of errand and return random crap I've bought and buy more bedroom accessories. My duvet cover came this week and it's awesome and soft and perfect and SO Anthropologie-y.

Au revoir.

Update: So this afternoon we ran to a lunch at 1:15 at Toloache (GREAT Mexican). We thought it was cancelled but turned out they had been waiting for 45 minutes. We had fried grasshopper tacos, and this really great guacamole that had pomegranate seeds in it and made it light and fresh. I had an amazing jumbo shrimp platter and some mexican cafe de ollo (olla?). I adore Mexican coffee because I am a huge cinnamon fan. Then a vendor came and brought us bottles of wine as a gift. So this afternoon kind of made up for all those cancellations I put up with.