Won’t you be my neighbor?

Today is my last day at my current job. I try not to post anything too specific to my employer so let me simply wax nostalgic about all the things I will miss about the neighborhood I work in now. I’ll miss you, West Village! I’ll try to come back and visit!

· Tourists blocking the sidewalk to take photos of the “Friends” building.


· The supremely fluffy dog often lounging outside of Grey Dog’s Coffee.

· The older gentleman who reads his newspaper at a table in the window of Café Angelique on Grove Street every morning.

· Sunbathing with the LGBT crowd during lunch at Hudson River Park.


· Murray’s Cheese, Amy’s Bread, Blue Ribbon Bakery….mmm, delicious fancy food.

· The warm fuzzies generated by passing the “Cosby Show” house.

· The two women whose faces I recognize each morning going the opposite direction toward the train to work every day.

· The fetish shops around Christopher Street– it’s so easy to run out and buy a sex toy!



· Waiting for Chumley’s to reopen.

· The health-food store with which I stock my desk drawer with herbal teas for various ills because I am an old lady.

· Two puppy stores on one street! Always good for a quick smile.


· Middle-school kids from P.S. 3 clogging up Rite-Aid to get five-finger discounts on makeup when I’m trying to buy important things—like makeup.

· The humungous Gap ad overlooking the site of the Stonewall Riots and what used to be the center of a bohemian neighborhood.

· The smoking cow.


· Walking past film sets in the Village—I’ve seen so many celebs!

· Stoop envy.


· Watching the seasons change at the “Secret Garden.” If you must know, it’s the Gardens at the Church of St. Luke’s in the Fields, on Hudson Street between Grove and Barrow.


· Totally disgusting, overpriced Mexican food at Caliente Cab. Oh wait, there’s one near my new work, too! Great.

· Three Lives bookstore.

· The hellish devil-wind at the corner of Houston and Hudson. Drops the temp by about 30 degrees in the winter and claims countless umbrellas as victims. Okay, I won’t miss that.

· Empty streets, flowering windowboxes, rainbow flags, literary history, light in the sky—pretty much everything about the Village.

Does anyone have tips for things I should look forward to, working in Midtown?

Goodbye, job! It’s not you, it’s me!

All photos by me.

Observations from the Pearl Jam concert last night

· Madison Square Garden can fit a lot of people who all know the words to “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town.”

· So much bromance. Tickets were only sold in pairs, and apparently girls don’t like Pearl Jam—WTF?—because the seats filled up with pairs of guy friends all in T-shirts or polos and cargo shorts.

· Why do people feel they have to wear T-shirts from previous concert tours they’ve seen? We know you like seeing bands. That’s why you’re here.

· When they set up big screens before the show to which people can send text messages and have them displayed, at MSG the messages will mostly be “Jets kick ass!” “Go Mets!” “NE Patriots 18-1” or guys trying to embarrass their friends with “Ryan, marry me!—Kevin.” Hilarity ensues.

· New York metro area Pearl Jam devotees are also rabid professional sports fans. (Why am I hearing competing “Let’s go Yankees” “Let’s go Mets!” chants? I’m here for a concert, not a smackdown.)

· Very unlike the fans at PJ shows I saw in California, who were much more surfer-crunchy.

· I don’t think Pearl Jam fans in California and New York would get along.

· No matter how many times I see them play, I will always think the fans are booing when they are actually cheering for guest keyboardist Kenneth "Boom" Gaspar.

· Always bring binoculars to an arena show. If I hadn’t, I’d have missed seeing the intricacies of Mike McCready’s spectacular behind-the-head guitar solo and stalking Eddie Vedder on his back-of-stage smoke breaks.

· Pearl Jam has so very many absolutely amazing songs that I only ever hear about a tenth of my favorites played at any one show.

· I apparently only see PJ in election years—2000, 2004, now 2008. Where o where was I in 1996?

· The band members have definitely left behind the skinny, long-haired guys they once were and have filled out into men. Stone Gossard looks like he could be a software engineer for Google and McCready is developing quite the paunch for a bleached-blond guitar hero.

· Eddie Vedder is still adorable. And has the most distinctive, versatile, incredible voice in rock. And is relentless in his political fervor, for which I applaud him. I love you, Eddie! :)

NY Daily News review of show

First photo is from last night's concert. Second photo from 1992.

No time to write posts!

I just finished reading Lush Life by Richard Price.

He writes good.

Best of both worlds

This weekend was highbrow! We watched the Metropolitan Opera performing a free show in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.




And lowbrow! We went to the Bohemian Hall in Astoria, Queens, a bonanza of undergrad beer-swilling.



I’m just saying.

Great, one more reason for people to be scared of the Fung Wah

A morning collision with a dump truck at Bowery and Canal killed one person and injured three.

But it's not their fault! I still love you, Fung Wah.

Cry me a river

Aw, it’s so rough being an Ivy League grad! You go to a school that pretty much ensures you a ridiculously high-paying job, and then people criticize you for not considering taking some lame-o job to “heal the world” or something.

Big Paycheck or Service? Students Are Put to Test

Personally, I’m all for the Harvardites and Yalies taking the public service route and leaving the super-swank gigs to us less-fortunate public university kids.

Something tells me that’s not the way it works, though.

Like sands....

So I’m home on one of my last summer Fridays and I just realized one of the best things about them is that I get the opportunity to watch “Days of Our Lives”! I have watched this soap opera off and on for nearly 20 years. When I was in junior high and high school it was on after I got home. College was a free-to-watch-soaps bonanza, and since then I catch it on sick days and on vacation. The weird thing? Every actor on this show has not aged since 1990. What the hell do they feed these people? What pact with the devil did Deidre Hall (Dr. Marlena Evans) make that she not only looks fantastic, and frozen at age 45, but not Botoxed? How very strange.

The new generation has grown up and many favorite characters are gone, and I’m a learned person who shouldn’t admit to watching a soap...but come on, we all need a mindless break sometime. And one that soothes for its very continued existence. Maybe this is why we like soaps: our lives change but the people in this other world (Salem, in this case) are always there when we need them.

Neopagans (or just naturalists) rejoice!

Celtic peoples called the Midsummer moon the "honey moon" for the mead made from fermented honey that was part of wedding ceremonies performed at the Summer Solstice. Delicious! The full moon was a couple nights ago, but we can celebrate Midsummer because tonight the sun reaches its northernmost extreme at 7:59 p.m. Eastern time.

Everyone jump over a bonfire, drink some mead, or just watch the sun set at its most northern point of the year, before it begins the long swing southward. Then go back inside and watch a movie, because modern societies like ours can’t take too much being in touch with the seasons.

Photo of sunrise on Summer Solstice at Stonehenge in 2005 by Andrew Dunn.

Last night

Another L Magazine short story competition and lit reading, another bad decision by the judges. Matt, your drowning kittens will haunt my dreams for years to come while I forgot the other stories the moment they were over. Is that good? I think it’s good. Plus, we have Robert to act out your kitties’ plight, over and over, until we all stop laughing.

I say we start a magazine: Too Good for Literary Upstart.

Why I'm not posting anything interesting right now

Note to self: Do not—do not!—let nine months worth of filing pile up because your drawer is broken and you don't feel like calling to get it fixed.

For the girls

Does anyone else have a problem with their skirts sliding around to sideways or backwards when they are walking with a shoulder purse or tote bag? Can someone explain the mechanics of this? Maybe I just walk funny.

(Note: This is not actually what I look like when I’m walking.)

Look, I made you this totally obnoxious thingamajig that will annoy visitors to my page all day! Happy Birthday! :)


I’m totally stealing this photo off my brother’s site. Isn’t it cute? He is a fantastic photographer, and his shop is decorated with some of his best stuff. If you haven’t checked out his website, do so now! (And leave some interesting comments.) Passing Perception

Best picture of the week

Working, working, working ... no time to write blog posts....


But, I saw this on the MySpace page of a friend of mine and I love it so much I had to post it here. This is my friend Owen from high school, who lives in San Francisco and works for Democratic causes.


The caption he wrote was: Day 1 of Gay Marriage.

Way to go, Owen! I particularly like the sign with the dog. Very eloquent.

Wonderful things I learned and saw this weekend

* Watch out for ants. They bite. Especially when you’re standing on grass in strappy heels.

* I saw Lucy! Not that Lucy, the other one—the 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis. Way to go, Houston Museum of Natural Science! That almost makes up for your obnoxious energy exhibit sponsored by big oil companies.

* Try to avoid sitting by a water feature when at a wedding reception. Not only does it play tricks on your bladder, it makes it galldarn difficult to hear the toasts and speeches.

* Do, however, lick the ice sculpture to prove your tongue doesn’t stick.

* I totally suck at swimming. I mean, I know the strokes, but I discovered at the hotel pool that—man!—I haven’t used those muscles in a while. Ouch.

* Do wear waterproof mascara at all times during a wedding weekend.

* There are places it can be even hotter and more humid than New York City. I know, I didn’t believe it either.

* You never know when you’ll need your line-dancing skills.

* Staying at hotels is always fun.

* I managed to spy the Mississippi River out the plane window both coming and going. Man, is it wide! And very brown. We were far to the south of where the flooding is happening, but I’m sure it’s on its way downstream. Thank god for the LiveMap on the TV screens on JetBlue—you can always corroborate whatever land feature you spot.

* Speaking of which, while grounded in Providence I got to watch cable and came across an HGTV show about house hunting that featured a girl I knew in high school. What are the odds? I am working very hard at swallowing my resentment of people my age who are able to buy houses while I’m stuck in a tiny (but cute) apartment. The girl on TV wouldn’t settle for anything less than 1,700 square feet, while I’m pretty sure we are crammed into about 500. Brian assures me we would have no interest in living in a bland, cookie-cutter house in northwest Las Vegas. And he’s right, I’d kill myself. But look at all those kitchen cabinets! A pool! Three bedrooms! Okay, I’m finished.

_______________________________

In order to shut Eric up, I posted most of the photos on Facebook and in a Picasa album. But up top is one of me with Brian’s family, and here’s the bride and the groom (center) with his brothers and mom (Brian's aunt).

I never even got a "Howdy, pardner."

I was highly disappointed in Houston. I did not see one horse, or ten-gallon hat, or even a mug sporting Jenna Bush’s wedding photo. No thick accents, no barbecue, no Alamo. I guess Texas is a big state or something. Who knew?

Houston, the fourth-largest city in the country, seems to be composed of low-lying office and industrial buildings and tract housing developments. We spent much time driving down the longest stretch of chain strip malls I’ve ever seen in my life. I will forever think of Houston as one big conglomeration of Applebee’s, Borders, Subway, and Restoration Hardware.

And everything is huge! The strip malls were dotted with gigantic restaurants, mostly Mexican food. Do people there really go out for enchiladas with 16 of their closest friends all the time?

I’m willing to believe we didn’t see the most thrilling parts of the city, and I’m sure I’ll be back in Texas someday—perhaps somewhere that does a better job of living up to the stereotypes. Cross your fingers!

Not my photo. Image of downtown Houston from Westheimer Road, the strip mall bonanza.

Providence, we have a problem

I'm back in town after a thirteen-hour journey yesterday that involved several hours sitting on the plane in Providence, R.I., to which we'd been diverted because we couldn't land in a storm at JFK. Note to self: stockpile the snacks that JetBlue offers because you never know when you’ll need them. Also, find out why planes can’t serve alcohol while on the ground. What better way to mollify the passengers than to get them lubricated?

The rest of the weekend = fabulous.

There will be pictures, Eric. Oh yes, there will be pictures.

Off again

Aaaah! The summer is so crazy with travels! I get on a plane for Houston in about four hours and thought I might look up where in the heck it is. Huh, it's over there by the water. When did that happen? Never been to Texas. I'll tip my hat to the Lone Star for y'all.

Scenes from a weekend

The best photos of this weekend’s festivities, including some of me where I actually don’t look like a sweaty gob of human flesh, are on Facebook. (If you’re not on Facebook, you're missing out on the time-wasting joys of available there.)

But! Here are a few pics from the rest of the weekend. They cannot convey the extreme sopping heat we were experiencing at the time. Trying to take pictures of the heat is like trying to photograph the wind. (You try it!)

Lovely Lena from Amsterdam was visiting—she’s Brian’s first cousin.


We made her walk around Central Park in a billion-degree weather and she somehow didn’t hate us for it!


She retaliated by dragging us up all three(!) floors of the M&Ms store in Times Square. (Just kidding, Lena, at least it was air-conditioned!)

That's a lot of M&Ms! They come in premixed combinations like "Mets" and "Mardi Gras."

Rockefeller Center is always a must-bring-visitors-to.


Look, hot people drinking overpriced cocktails!


Sunday we lounged about atop a hill in Prospect Park in Brooklyn with some friends.



‘Lounged’ because the oppressive heat made us incapable of moving.


Well, okay, Brian started a game of Frisbee which went well until the disc got stuck in a tree. I, from the hilltop, watched this scene play out below.


How many master’s degrees does it take to get a Frisbee out of a tree? Many.


And there’s falling.


But the crew returns victorious. And glowing. With sweat.

Ah, summer days.