05.30.07

ah, the first stirrings of summer in new york, when a young woman's fancy turns to thoughts of o god i should wear the air conditioning unit as a backpack. it isn't actually that warm, yet; joe posits that we've developed an addiction to constant cold air and are deeply unnatural creatures. my only defenses are that my customary body temperature is low (around 96.8), and that i stored so much pretty sparkly sunshine by growing up in southern california that i don't have to feel the day star on my shoulders, or hear anyone speak without irony, ever again. who can say?

work is easing up, as my new associate has finally arrived and the current issue of the magazine is queuing up for the publisher in a calm and orderly fashion.* i've gotten over the fear that having to boss someone around would lead to my death (my issues with authority figures have nothing on my issues with being an authority figure) and have gotten to the stage where i just want her to like me. it's tough to tell how things are going so far: i'm trying to be friendly and supportive, but i keep forgetting that the first few days at a new job can be crazy intimidating, and that i should let her get her shit in order on her own. we needn't braid each other's hair.

the other upshot of the work-settling is that we should finally be able to vacation; i've let go of my dreams of a "woo new job!" trip to iceland (flights are cheap, but nothing else is), but i plan to get to california and chicago as soon as is humanly possible. in the interim, jake is doing us the favor of coming out for the weekend so i will have someone to cry with about the end of veronica mars (for the record, i think the last two episodes worked quite well as a series finale - long live LoVe!). this is a good thing, and there are more (hopefully very cold) good things a-comin'.

*by the end of the last closing period, by contrast, i was hovering at my phone at 10 pm waiting for do-or-die calls about porn. it was unpleasant.

05.29.07

work is eating my life. here is stuff.

brain dump 003 [05.07-06.07]

mesh cloche from mothology (the second picture down on the right). i have no business buying outfits for my herbs, given that most of them are long gone, but these are sexy as hell - what sweet basil plant wouldn't flourish beneath such finery? also, i could sneak one onto joe's head as he sleeps.

fafarazzi.com, a "fantasy celebrity league;" earn points when your celebs spawn, overdose, try to sneak a gun through the airport, and so on. believe it or not, i'm probably too squeamish to take pleasure in doing well at something like this; i'd go for fantasy soap league instead (earn points when your characters are possessed by satan, &c), but that's joe's specialty.

the harry-est town in america, amazon's list of the folks who pre-order the most copies of harry potter and the deathly hallows. i am shocked, in all seriousness, that palo alto is not on this list. [okay, shocked when i first started this post. it's getting up there now.]

sweet deliverance, a community-supported agriculture distributor ("You can also sign up for fresh flowers [zinnias, snapdragons, sunflowers], eggs, dairy, and cheese"). i lunged at this - a green market at our door! - before i realized that the food is prepared as well as selected for you. alas, we can't spend $250/wk (!) for fancy organic food; this sure makes the people who spend $40/day on zone chefs food look like suckers, though.

white lion babies, not to be confused with the other kind.

the new york times loves the future perfect. i admit that i feel terribly superior for having owned two jason miller pieces ("i was here" tables) since '03.

learning to love you more, the book! both jen and i got e-mails about being considered for publication, but mine (which arrived yesterday) had a note about dpi; sadly, my documentation might not be clear enough for reproduction. this is what i get for being too chicken to upload huge files (and for deleting old photos from my camera). ironically, i had the same problem a day earlier, when an nyc lesbian lifestyle magazine wanted to use my photo of water taxi beach (warning: no lesbians in picture, probably). boo.

personal news, other than the work-life-eating? at a dinner party last night, i sat across from a woman who had an affair with brando. she also performed with a heap of jazz greats, and had fantastic stories that involved things like staying up all night in a crappy west side hotel rehearsing with duke ellington as the cleaning people vacuumed the empty corridors. okay, that's not really personal news, but damn was she cool.

05.14.07

101 in 1001: 090 walk the length of manhattan [completed 05.13.07]

the manhattan challenge: frequently asked questions

Q. why 'the manhattan challenge'?

joe wanted to call it the tenderfoot challenge, for lordy did we hurt by the end, but i reject the newbie association: i'll have you know that i hiked 11 miles from glacier point at yosemite, um, a decade and change ago. i liked 'the manhattan project,' but then sarah told us a terrible story at dinner last night about nuclear wind blowing the skin off of horses in japan.

Q. what was your route?

we started at the henry hudson bridge (220th) and followed broadway down to columbus circle, where we switched over to eighth avenue until we got below times square; then we took seventh ave until it turned into varick, followed varick south for a while, and cut east until we hit broadway again - then broadway, more or less, all the way to battery park.

Q. why north to south?

because no one wants to end up exhausted in inwood at dusk. trust me, i lived there for three months. a guy who blogged his south to north trip (on the east side, moreover) sounds like he had a much sexier time than we did - resting on the steps of the met! - but celebrating the end in battery park sounded much better. also, we hit the most interesting (and unfamiliar) stuff in the first hundred blocks or so; if we'd done the trip in reverse, i'd have been too tired to check out washington heights. washington heights smells fantastic, by the way.

Q: any advice for other folks who want to do the walk?

1: bring your own toilet paper.
2: don't wear rings; your hands will swell.
3: take advil before you leave.

Q: how long did it take?

subtracting time for brunch at columbia, about four and a half hours. before and after we hit the aimless mass of humanity that is the upper west side, we averaged about a block a minute. this made me feel like a badass, at least until i remembered that jen will be running twice as far (we walked about 15 miles) in a few months.

Q. would you do it again?

totally, but not for a while - and i'd probably do the east side instead, even though i wouldn't be able to pee at my own apartment.

Q. hey, can you feel your legs today?

no.


click on the photo up top to go to ye olde photo set (i snapped something every ten blocks or so, at least for the first few hours). more questions? hit me.

05.10.07

i made a big hippie salad for dinner on monday. it was good - i've been eating it for lunch all week - but the best thing about it is the exotic frisson associated with saying quinoa aloud. "keen-wahh," i said in a worldly voice as i presented the bowl to joe. we both contemplated it. "hey, they're all wearing hula hoops!"

i miss tony blair already. is that wrong?

05.03.07

brain dump 002 [04.07-05.07]

anthony lane's spider-man 3 review. not sure when anthony lane took over for pauline kael as my new yorker critic of choice, but he kills me. on tobey maguire: "Dumbest of all is the change of hair style, as Peter stops combing his bangs sideways and lets them flop down over his brow. He looks like the bronze medalist in a teen-age Hitler-impersonation contest."

two zesty clips via cute overload, a site that usually focuses on tiny toes and hamster tongues:* an '06 championship dressage routine (beautiful if you're into equestrian events, worth it - if you aren't - for the way the rider hugs his horse at the end**) and (the) private life of a cat. a 22-minute, maya deren-produced film of a mum bearing and raising her kittens. the latter, i think, is what i'd project on the wall if i ran an arty bar - leavened with an occasional meshes of the afternoon showing.

'artie' the artichoke, scottsdale community college's mascot. i discovered him in a random craft search, but joe and artie go way back, since they're both from arizona. scc shirt acquisition is underway.

why i want to own an apartment, part 332: so that i can hang sinister old skool wallpaper, which would be way too expensive and self-indulgent in a rental. i'm particularly fond of "bat and poppy," "rook and holly," and "whoot," but $7/foot - yeow!

new york city pervasive smell of the day: cheddy brats, these hickory farm sausages my mum would pick up at the mall and bring home to make for dinner. when you sliced into one, it would bleed cheese; disturbing, but delicious. side note: does anyone else remember the weird meat lollipops sold in front of hickory farms? they were all over the place in the '80s. i miss our weird old mall.

*note that i'm not sneering at the regular content; on the contrary, baby animals heal my soul when i overdose on gawker.

**full disclosure: the hug made me cry.