haha!

p.s. is there no way to get photobooth pictures to appear as non mirror images?  And what is up with that anyways?  I thought I had it figured out but obviously not.

Anyways I was all bummed because I felt like after I jumped the gun earlier by saying that I had done 30 posts this month I couldn't do another one and have it just be another silly post.  If I was actually going to make it to 30 posts for november it had to be with something post worthy.

So here it is.

Ariel bought me chinese food tonight and this was my fortune.

Just suppose...

I do math like Giuliani

source

via Reddit.com

Ok, please disregard the last post, I am clearly too blond to be in charge of numbers.  I am only now up to post #29, I don't know how I decided that I had already reached 30.

Furthermore, inflated sense of self satisfaction has been destroyed.  Thanks life. 

the ant and the grasshopper

source

(or "what is the meaning of this corn")

Every time I do multiple posts in a day I think to myself that it will make up for those days when I lock myself in my room and don't participate in reality.  In the past months I've ended up doing well past my daily quota for each of the previous months so I'd gotten to a place of complacency, but this last week was scary. 

I just kept feeling like it was all over, all my diligence and hard work these past few months would go down the crapper because there was no way that I would be able to make up all the posts I missed. 

But I just noticed that the post I did just now about my last cell phone was post number 30 for this month, meaning I just squeaked by! 

It seems really incredible, I didn't think I had gotten that far ahead of myself that I could take an almost week and a half break and still be ok. 

And now with this one I'm over the limit! 

How reaffirming.

the story

it's times like this that i'm glad to have a blog because i've reached the end of my tolerance for telling this story so I'm glad to document it here and be able to refer others to it in the future. 

So here is the story of how I lost my cellphone:

One night my brother and I were playing this for like 8 straight hours when in the middle of it he asked if I wanted to go for a moonlit stroll. 

All was well at first, we went to one of our favorite spots by a relaxing fountain my dad's condo complex.  I drew an overhead view so you can get a better idea:

the arrow is pointing to the bench where we sat for a few moments so my brother could play me a song on his magical flute.  See it's the perfect spot for it because you can see down either path through the foliage before whoever is coming sees you first. 

And everything worked according to plan until after my brother played the magic flute that transported him to world 8, a world of paranoia. 

Some old lady, who was basically like if the bird lady from home alone 2 had decided to retire to florida instead of living above the metropolitan opera, was just taking her own moonlit stroll but struck terror in to my brothers heart.  Promptly after she shuffled around the corner he looked at me wild eyed and said, "we gotta get out of here!"

He was so frantic about leaving that I didn't even realize that I had left my phone on the bench (as seen above).  It wasn't until an hour or so later when he was leaving that I realized I didn't have it.  I looked all around the house for it, and even went all the way back out to the fountain to see if I had left it out there but didn't find it.  When I got back to my dad's I booted up his computer so I could sign in to aim and ask jonathan to call my phone.  I figured I had just put it somewhere stupid like in the refrigerator.  Like you haven't done the same thing.

So now Jonathan is calling my phone and I'm wandering around the house, straining to hear Mariah's sweet siren song.  I finally give up and go back to the computer to find a message from Jon saying, "they answered". 

Apparently somebody had picked up my phone in the few moments that it had been sitting out there.  He told Jon that he would drop it off at the office for my Dad's complex the next morning.  I assumed that this person must have known that there would be somebody there so I just went to bed and thought nothing of it. 

The next morning I go to the office and it's all closed up for the holidays.  'Hmmm' I thought to myself.  Well, if they answered last night, surely they'll answer again today.  Nope.

I, along with all of the rest of my family, ended up calling my phone every 10 minutes for the entire next day until finally it ran out of battery and just died.  The only thing I can figure is that this person must have dropped my phone through the mail slot of the office door and it was just sitting there on the floor and I wouldn't be able to get it until monday morning. 

So I postpone my return to NY, thinking, 'well i guess i'll just wait until monday morning, get my phone from the office, then head straight to the airport'.  Cut to Monday morning, and oh, no cell phone in the office. 

It wasn't until today that my phone was finally returned to my father, and he is mailing it up here to me.  The guy goes, "oh yeah, sorry, I went out of town and just brought it with me, I don't know why".

Ummmm ok, helpful.  Like why even get involved?!  Why not leave the cell phone on the bench, at least it would have ended up in more capable hands.  And if you knew how to answer it that first time why didn't you answer it any of the other times I called?  Why go through the trouble of starting the process of being a good Samaritan, but then kind of just get bored and forget all about it. 

See this is the problem with old people.  I think NASA is on to something, lets just send them all to the moon to start colonizing it there.  It will be like the new Boca. 

omg

source

(after google image search for "no phone")

To my regular readers I am sorry for not posting at all the past week and a half but trust me, it's for good reason.

Long story short (don't worry, I intend to do a follow up post with the details) I lost my cell phone pretty much right after I did that last post.  This terribleness in tandem with my inability to get online at my father's house is why I have been absent from the internet world for so long.

Furthermore if you have been trying to reach me via text or email, this is also why i've been mia.  Of course I'm sure whenever I do get my phone back there will be like, one missed message from meghan and then al of the rest of the messages will be from my father at various points of him forgetting that I didn't have my phone.

In some ways it's actually been really nice not having a phone these past few days.  It's kind of like fasting, you don't realize how consumed with something you are until you try to live without it.  There's a part of me that just wants to cancel my verizon plan and go phone free for a while.  If it weren't for the fact that I used my phone so much for this silly blog I wouldn't be so devastated.

ESPECIALLY since there were a bunch of really great pictures on there that I hadn't gotten the chance to upload yet.  I hope they're not lost forever.  Grrrr.

If I don't get my phone back shortly I figure I'll have to wait until christmas or my birthday before I'll be able to get a new one.  But I hate that.  I hate getting something that you already had as a gift, or even just in general.  Like when you played your Britney Spears cd too many times and had to go purchase a new copy of it.  You begrudgingly go up to the checkout counter, knowing that you will enjoy your item because you already owned one until you did whatever stupid thing caused you to have to buy a new one.

As for now I have to get on my flight back to ny.  You can imagine my displeasure at having to do this without a phone.  I'll be cranking up the mariah the whole way.

forgive me internet for I have sinned

source

It has been 4 days since my last confession.  I just completely lost track of time, been on vacation mentally and physically.

It doesn't help that I can't get online at my dad's with my laptop either.  If anybody is good at the internets and can help me it would be much appreciated.

I'm in Florida now, I should be planning Thanksgiving but instead I have been spending every waking moment playing this.  My brother convinced my father to get a playstation a couple years ago and has pretty much sat unused since.  The first night I was here my brother suggested I go online and buy a game that he has so we could play against each other online.

Thus began a task far more arduous than I was prepared to undertake.  First I had to set up an account for my father on his playstation, which wasn't terribly hard but did involve that annoying "choose your screen name" part where you have to keep trying different variations on every possible name you can think of.  Of course this wasn't a name for me that I could just do whatever either, this was a name for my father so I had to try to come up with something acceptable.

Once I got that all sat up I was finally ready to find a game and purchase it.  At this point I have to enter his credit card information to add to the cart.  Apparently their system is hyper sensitive and kept telling me that my information didn't match their records.  After numerous unsuccessful attempts to figure out how the billing address appears on my father's credit card statement they finally locked me out entirely.

Now my father is freaking out because he thinks that I got his credit card cancelled, so I have to call sony customer service to figure out what the next step is.  Cut to me now driving to Walmart in the dead of night to buy a gift card.

The moral of the story is that the only denomination of gift card that they had was $50 so by the time I actually got home and got everything set up I figured I deserved to get two games.

And that's my excuse for why I haven't done a blog post in the past four days.  Because I've been playing my brother online at streetfighter in between murdering bengal tigers while wearing my favorite pair of booty shorts.

Well that's not entirely true.  There have been trips to the beach and things like that, and I even have pictures I swear!  

Just have a little faith.

p.s. wtf is this shit

I also encountered this on my walk home from work but couldn't figure out a way to tie it in to the last post so it's getting its own.

but seriously, wtf is this shit?

This was on park avenue, completely covering an entire section of sidewalk so there was no option besides walking through the makeshift entry way to princess peach's castle.

It actually creeped me out to go through it.  I half expected the flaps to close as soon as I was inside and I would be gassed or something.  Or like a group of clowns would come and drag me off somewhere.

Can anyone offer an explanation for this?  Was it related to Mariah?

a post for lilly

I sat at work all day and played this and thought about how I had nothing at all to write about today.

But I had completely forgotten about this morning when I got to the 96th St. 6 station.  There was a river flowing between the tracks that immediately made me think of my friend, who was a writer for the NY Times.

As soon as I saw the flowing water I broke out in the biggest grin.  I was excitedly scanning the river for signs of life but quickly became ill from the amount of gross garbage I saw instead.  I feel like I haven't been eating particularly well lately and the culmination of all my bad food choices along with floating garbage was too much for me.

But before I was overcome with the urge to vomit I was having really fond thoughts of you Lilly!

And to think that I almost forgot all about this.  I was actually downloading my pictures because I wanted to post these nice ghosties I saw on my walk home:

At first they just made me smile because they're funny and nice but then as I was walking past I realized the true genius that is the big one's crazy mouth:

It was like a section of the wall that had missing bricks and they turned it in to his crazy smile.  I love it.  It also raises many questions in my mind.  Like it seems like the addition of the ghost features was an afterthought, perhaps by a different artist altogether.  It doesn't look like the same paint as the swirly pattern, as if somebody saw the white shapes and thought that the really looked like ghosts and needed to be painted thusly.  In which case the mouth is really a brilliant touch.

The only alternative that I can see would be that the original artist had planned the ghosts from the beginning in which case it seems like all of that patter around it was based entirely on the sight gag of the crazy snaggle tooth mouth.

Either way, I love it.

And I got this post in before midnight!

::wipes sweat off brow::

the bodega that time forgot

This is my coffee that I just got from the corner store.  At first I was like, 'hmm that's interesting, I wonder why a bodega all the way up in spanish harlem would advertise for a store in SoHo' but figured that they must just be doing mass advertising all over the city or they were having a promotion or something.  Then I noticed that it said something about a store opening in the small print and I was like, 'omg they are going to open up a Uniqlo up here by the target, now I have no reason to leave this neighborhood'.

Then I read what it actually said:

So here's what I don't understand.  This corner store just opened really recently, like within the last year, so it's not like they had a box of these cup sleeves stuck in some dusty corner and just pulled them out to use.  They must have purchased a box of cup sleeves from 4+ years ago.  In which case, if the cardboard cup sleeve people are so overstocked on sleeves that they're still trying to get rid of their stock from half a decade ago then maybe they need to be cutting back on the amount of sleeves their producing.

Just a suggestion.

Furthermore, when I was moving these pictures from my phone to my computer I got the message that I was almost out of free space on my computer.  I guess I didn't even realize this was possible.  Somehow I just thought that the more stuff you had on a computer the slower it would run, I didn't realize you could actually reach the limit of data it could store.  But I do have a lot of crap on here.  Perhaps it is time for a purge.

If anybody wants to buy me the new macbook that'd be cool.  Thanks.

they're very health conscious in l.a.

source (courtesy of Laura)

bonus points if you know what movie the title of my post is from.

Apparently L.A. has banned plastic bags.  I'm unclear if it is related to this woman or not but I love her. 

That's totally cool that they did this.  Plastic bags are so gross.  The last time I was in Florida I was at the grocery store buying fruit and shit and I go up to the checkout and get behind the grossest guy ever.  He literally had a towering stack of steaks piled on the conveyor belt along with various other meat related cook out things.  I watched as the check out girl scanned each package of steaks and the numbers on the screen climbed up to the multi-hundreds.  When everything had finally been rung up he nodded approvingly to the offer of plastic bags and I watched as they wrapped each steak container in a plastic bag, then put them in additional plastic bags. 

I felt like I could feel the earth growing warmer as this man went through the checkout.  I also felt like I was in a prius in traffic next to hummer sitting behind him with my mango, papaya, strawberries, and reusable bags. 

I miss paper bags, why did those go by the wayside anyways?  They have such a satisfying smell, and they're so much easier to fold and store than plastic bags.  And I feel like walking out of a grocery store with plastic bags makes you look like a pack mule, but sashaying down the street with your brown sack with the fennel and baguette poking out the top says, "hey look at me, I'm just like Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters"

So I guess what i'm saying is way to go L.A.  I wish I could live in your beautiful bag free county.

the real t-rex

source (courtesy of reddit)

So this is the newest version of what the Tyrannosaurus Rex looked like.

I love it.  It's totally 2011.  Animal print is totally in, but it's still city chic in basic black with a little white flair.

It actually reminds me a lot of the time that I saw one of the olsen twins.  It was right around the time when we opened the west village store at Organic Avenue and Craig had come to help me figure out how to make the internet happen.  After my shift he took me out to eat at Corner Bistro, which is really good and I highly recommend btw.

It was really crowded, as it usually seems to be, and we waited for a while to get a table.  So we finally get seated and it's generally crowded and noisy etc.  At some point it just seems like everyone around us has stopped shouting to be heard above the din and has begun murmering quietly and looking towards the front of the bar.

So of course I look towards the front of the bar and see a group of people that has just come in, including a small woman in an oversized blazer and a white fedora with a giant peacock feather extending several feet behind her.  Just as I'm looking at her she turns directly towards me and I see that face that I watched so many times on Full House.  I have no idea which one it was but the bar had caught the scent of an Olsen, and they wanted blood.

 With a look of panic in her eyes she turned and exited the bar as if she couldn't deal with all eyes on her in the center of the ring just like a circus.  But my problem with this is that it wasn't like she was trying to go incognito and then got discovered by a dedicated fan.  She was wearing a fedora with a peacock feather in the brim.  There was nothing a little bit more discrete she could have gone with?

I aint hatin' though.  Girl looked good, just like a little T-Rex.

snoozin'

They have a really rough life so any chance they get to rest their weary little bones they take it. 

I'm really excited for my job interview tomorrow.  I'm trying not to get ahead of myself but if all goes well it will hopefully be the much needed catalyst for the next chapter in my life.  These past few years have been so strange for me.  As I have been trying to begin sorting and organizing for this move that is somewhere on the horizon I keep being taken down memory lane. 

It's wild to think that I moved in to this apt as a temporary solution, and that was like 3+ years ago now.  I feel like I was always resistant to commit to being there.  The only reason I ever painted my room was because I couldn't deal with what it was when I moved in.  The previous tenant had painted the room a lovely shade of flesh pink that literally made me feel like I was living in a womb.  What's worse is that she had painted the walls after moving her furniture in so there were sections where her furniture had been that she just painted around leaving these large amorphous white ghost figures amidst the pink. 

And it gets better.  Apparently when she had first moved in, before painting it pink, she had had a brainstorm for an edgy look for her bedroom.  She wanted to write the seven deadly sins on the walls.  I'm not sure what the rest of the direction was that she was going in because after writing the first 4 she realized that it made her look like a psychopath and changed her design direction.  But because she had done the script in black paint, the single coat of pink on top of it wasn't really enough to cover the text.  So when the light would hit the wall in just the right way you would faintly see "LUST" scrawled across the wall in what now looked like blood, thanks in part to the fact that the black paint had dripped down after she liberally applied it to the walls. 

If it hadn't been for living in buffalo bill's wet dream I probably wouldn't have ever gotten around to painting the walls.  It was months and months before I even got my bed up off the floor.  Mostly it was just because I always entertained these ideas of moving out, and to a better apt.  In all the 7 years that I've lived in nyc I have always lived on the upper east side.  It has always been my goal to move to a neighborhood that doesn't suck balls, but every time I have come close to having the opportunity it has been snatched away from me.  I guess that's why I'm hesitant to get too excited about this job interview I have tomorrow, but if all goes well I am thinking that I will actually be able to move to somewhere fantastic in the next month or so.

Getting back to those nice guys, it does make me kind of sad to think about separating them.  I feel bad enough as it is about taking the detective away from an apt of three different humans who all give him nice pets alone, but now that he also has a feline best friend it's going to be extra hard.  I don't know if I will have the time to give him the kind of non stop attention that he requires.  Of course not actually touching him or looking at him, but just being in the same room appreciating his beauty. 

Maybe we'll just have to plan play dates so that they can see each other.  They are best friends!

magical dream date

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I was supposed to be taking Amy out for a magical dreamdate on saturday night, but it was she who swept me off my feet.

We met up in the west village and started our evening at Taim.  I was not prepared for how warm it was going to be yesterday so I was way overdressed.  The ginger lemonade was exactly what I needed.

After filling ourselves with middle eastern deliciousness we went to the theatre to pick up our tickets but then still had an hour to kill before the performance.  While wandering through the west village we came upon One if by Land, Two if by Sea, pictured above.  It was so beautiful, it made me want to come back in some alternate reality where i'd actually be able to afford to eat there.  But I did have one of the best cocktails i've ever had.  They call it a "darker and stormier", it's on their seasonal fall drink menu list and contains muddled blackberries.

Being at the restaurant we had to discuss what the name meant.  "something from a poem maybe?" "Something about warning people".  Well we were close (not really).  It's from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about the midnight ride of Paul Revere and how they would signal with a lantern to spread the word.  I had to look it up.  But what struck me was that just the other day when we were in the Met walking around waiting for Meghan we walked right past this painting:

source

Is it a sign?  Or does there need to be a third Paul Revere reference in my life?  That's how it works right, threes?  Alright well I'll keep a vigilant watch, not unlike those townfolk.  I've got my eye on you Paul Revere.

Anyways, back to the dreamdate.

My drink was the perfect thing to have before settling in to my theatre seat.  The play was interesting.  It's been really weird going to see so much theatre lately after not having gone in so long.  It takes me back.

At this point I would really like to get Amy, Dan, and Meghan together to discuss the plays I've taken them to.  I feel like they've been so incredibly different, and yet at the same time so alike.  I only wish I could take them, and everyone, to see "Three Eco Friendly Self Propelled Clowns" but until somebody wants to do a revival it will just have to live on in the memories of those of us blessed enough to have been in the audience.

I like this idea of the theatre dream date.  Maybe it will be my thing.  Like Barbara Walters most fascinating people.

champions once again

As you can see, Jon and I have fought a bloody bloody battle to earn our place as #1 but we finally did it.

We used to be #1 after beating out H SNEPTSTS probably like a year or two ago and reigned supreme for a long time.  Then one day we went to the bar, just to make sure we were still the top dogs, and were horrified to find that not only had we been beaten, but whoever beat us had 1) apparently done it in one try, and 2) was making fun of our name with their high score name.

After that point I can't even tell you how much money we must have wasted trying to beat their high score.  As you can see, we got our name on the high score list quite a few times but were never able to beat them.  The tricky thing is that you have to do really well in the beginning because as you progress through the game the timer starts going down faster and faster. 

Anyways, the other day Jon and I decided to try our luck after not having played it in probably 6 months or more.  We beat them on our first try!!! 

I'm pretty satisfied, I think it will be a while before anybody beats us again.  Although now that I've said that I'm sure I've just opened the door to a good old fashioned jinxing.

goal for my new bedroom

Yesterday Jonathan and I decided to go meet Meghan at work and sit with her while she had her lunch break (which was magical).  I wanted to go and drop off a resume before hand which ended up taking less time than I had thought so while we waited for meg we wandered around the Met. 

Which is where I found my new dream room.  It was in the modern section and it was this bizarre tiny room with these windows all around it, except when you looked through you realized that the windows were actually one way mirrors.  It was so cool, these pictures were from all sides of it. 

As you may or may not know I am going to be moving soon so I'm glad to have inspiriation for my new room.  And I'm sure kitty would just love an all white room.  He would look so handsome, and he definitely doesn't have a TERRIBLE shedding problem or anything. 

I would also like the rest of my apt to have features like this:

I should have made Jon stand in there so you could see the perspective.  It kept winding around the room until it eventually got to be a full sized door frame that you could walk though.  It makes me think of that Simpsons where they rebuild Ned's house and Homer is in charge of the master bedroom.   

Lies

source

I google searched for "sexy male secretary" and believe it or not this was the only picture that even came close.  wtf?

Anyways, I was under the impression that if I wore a low cut blouse and did a lot of smiling I could have a cushy job sitting behind a desk at any company U.S.A.

Lies! 

I have spent every day this week at work sending out resumes to anybody I can possibly send a resume to.  Like seriously.  I've actually just started going to websites for businesses that I would like to work at and then sending them my resume begging them to hire me. 

Lets see, what kind of work did my education prepare me for.  Well we did lots of group projects, eye to eye knee to knee, pqp, etc.  Oh and there was that time we had to do the 100 source annotated bibliography, that was hard.  Hmm.  Let's see, an hour and a half of theatre class, 5 days a week for 7 years.  That's got to count for something right?  right?

::cricket cricket::

I got an A on a book report I wrote based entirely on the back jacket of the book.  I think that pretty much sums up my experience with "work". 

  Dear Oprah,

         May I please live on your island while you are not using it?  I can make myself scarce whenever you want to come by, I promise.  Thanks.

   xoxo

challenge

I challenge you to find a better fist pumping song than this:




Although the lyrics to this are actually kind of sad, so I will also accept this:




which does not offer as much opportunity for fist pumping, but is more uplifting, and awesome.  Plus the video makes me think of this:



which is always worth a viewing.

what are the colors for?

I love those moments when you're shuffling along with the rest of the herd, headed home from a long day of work, and you look up and remember where you are.  I took this last night on my way to Grand Central, I'm right by Bryant Park with a great view of the empire state building.

But I couldn't figure out what the colors were for.  They look like a flag to me, is it some country's independence day or something?  Is there a place where you can check the schedule of colors for the empire state building?  It's one of my favorite features of the nyc skyline.

happy birthday g

source

Today is my grandfather's 90th birthday!!!  I didn't have a picture of him to post so I put up his closest celebrity look-a-like. When I was little we called our grandparents G&G for grandma and grandpa. 

In honor of my grandfathers birthday I will tell one of my favorite stories about him:

So my grandfather has always been extremely thrifty, famous for pulling "we honor competitors coupons" scams where he ends up getting boxes of cereal for free by going around to several different grocery stores.  He also tends to buy in bulk if there is a sale on a certain item so for a while he will be overloaded with whatever it is. 

Several years ago there was apparently a sale on bananas so for several weeks all available space in my grandfathers home was taken up with boxes of bananas.  About a week after he went ape-shit for bananas he was doing some work at my Dad's restaurant.  Apparently he fell off the roof (yes this was while he was in his 80's) and ended up breaking his arm.  At the hospital the nurses had to come in and talk to him because they couldn't figure out what was going on.  They said they couldn't do the necessary procedures on him because his potassium levels were through the roof and would he happen to know why that would be.   At this point he had to confess that he had been eating case after case of bananas for like two weeks straight.  I think they ended up having to give him something to flush the potassium out of his system before they could tend to his arm. 

So happy birthday gramps, and stay off the roof. 

more museums, more learning

Meghan's apparent insatiable appetite for knowledge led us on another adventure yesterday to the Frick on 5th Ave.  I've been before when I was in college and Meg had never been so it was really fun for both of us.  I love the Frick for the same reasons that I love the Ringling Museum in Sarasota.  The Frick is basically just some guys mansion on 5th avenue that became a museum after he died.  I love walking around it and looking at the art, but then also imagining what it would be like to live in a building like that.  I mean it really is breathtaking. 

I love the views of the city from the versaille-eque drawing rooms, and the giant courtyard in the center would be where I would spend all my time if it were my home.  We were in the library and somebody asked about the books, the woman in the room informed us that all of the books were rare 1st editions and most were priceless antiques.  Sick!

Because of daylight savings time our sunshine hours were dwindling by the time we finished at the Frick so we headed across the street to enjoy the park for a bit before it became dusk.  Here's where we found ourselves:

Complete with adorable children playing with a sailboat:

When the sun finally descended below the buildings it became too cold to continue our adventures in the park.  We made our way up to 90th and 3rd for delicious ramen at Naruto Ramen.  They have a special on Mondays for $6.50 Ramen, and it's delicious.  The restaurant is quite small so I'm assuming it probably gets slammed on Mondays, but it's well worth it. 

My only complaint about yesterday is that it was followed by today.  Today that featured an unexpected hail storm while I was walkig to work.  Fun!

i want

check out her kooky umbrella!  It makes me think of surry with the fringe on top for some reason.  She's classy!

a day of museums and learning

Should I know what this is?  I feel like I should, or that I've at least seen it before and pondered what it means.  It's at the corner of 6th Ave and Spring St, where I met Meghan.  We both commented on it.

"I just got out of the subway, i'm standing under god's love we deliver"

"i see you"

Meghan hypothesized that it was a post office, which doesn't make much sense to me.   I feel like as much as the boundaries of separation of church and state are stretched this would just be pushing it a little too far.  Though there is a subway entrance within the building, so maybe she's right.

We met to go to an art show that Meghan had read about being held off Spring St. far on the west side.  The artist was Jan Yoors who I had never heard of but thought sounded interesting.

It was definitely interesting.  We weren't quite sure where we were or what we were seeing.  The space was two floors that were basically set up like somebody's apartment.  Like we had to be buzzed in by this man and then wandered around what seemed to be his personal apartment with some pieces by the artist hanging on the walls.  The furniture was actually really beautiful anyways so it wasn't a total loss, but not quite the art gallery afternoon I had in mind.

After we left we were just wandering through the West Village and meghan stopped because she wanted to find the article about the exhibit that she had seen earlier.  She said the pictures did not make it look like it was going to be held in an apt.  While she searched through her phone I looked around at where we were and noticed that we were right in front of the New York City Fire Museum.  To be honest I wasn't really interested in going inside, more just interested in the fact that it existed, but once the seed was planted in Meghan's head there was no turning back.

I will say that I definitely learned a few things while I was there.  They had a whole section devoted to 9/11 that was really interesting, and then lots of paraphernalia of firefighting from the past like 200 years or so.

But the real treasure trove was found upstairs.

Including this ribbon, that I wanted to steal so badly:

But I think the cherry on top was when we stumbled upon these old depictions of Nathanael from when he was a vaudeville performer.  I mean the physical resemblance is uncanny but then we read the captions and we realized there was no other options.  I beg anyone out there on the internet to disagree:

At this point I was on an emotional roller coaster and realized I needed to calm my nerves with some delicious brunch.  What I didn't realize was that the answer to all my problems lay in a plate of fried bread.  Thankfully we had wound our way through the west village and ended up at Jane's where I got the vanilla bean french toast and all was well.

There were a lot of things on the menu that looked amazing.  They made claim to having "the best bloody mary" which neither meghan nor I tried, but gives us reason to go back.

Once we were filled to capacity on deliciousness we headed up to the Met.  Meghan was going to the patti smith khubilai khan thing but had time to kill before so we wandered around the museum.  As much as everyone always says it, it really is true that you can spend all the time in the world in the Met and never see everything.  I have lived on the upper east side for 7+ years now and in all the times I've gone to the Met there were still a ton of things Meghan showed me that I hadn't noticed.

Including this urn from some ridiculous time like 1B.C.:

Those are actually remains in that urn.  And it's not even really showcased.  They mention it on the information card but other than that its just another funerary urn in this one display case.  I wonder who it is.

We also walked through the Khubilai Khan exhibit and the John Baldessari exhibit, though I was beginning to get a bit cultured out.  After meghan got her ticket for the thing with patti smith we went to one of our favorite spots to sit and chat until it started:

It's days like this new york, it's days like this that make me not know how to quit you.

my day

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Today has not been the most productive in my history.  And I didn't even sleep in.  Usually if I sleep in I kind of feel like I accomplished that at least.

But today started for me like any other, at the crack of dawn.  Weezie would run full steam in to my room, leap from the floor directly up on to my bed, landing with all of his momentum directly on me.  Using my meaty body like a spring board he would bounce right back off, fly to the floor, and go tearing out of the room again.  The detective, upon seeing that I was roused, would begin his more subtle psychological torture.  The tip of his tail right in my face, his butt in my face no matter which way I turn, general lumbering around my head while I'm trying to enjoy sleeping in.

Even waking up early didn't mean that I got anything accomplished today.  I cleaned, yoga'd, ate food, watched seven, and got my laundry.  And here we find ourselves at dusk already.

Maybe I'm jumping the gun though.  The night is still young, perhaps there is excitement on my horizons.

I'm going to go put away my laundry and will my phone to ring.

why i hate rain

This is me walking to work on a rainy day in NYC.  Please note how I tower above the rest of the people on the sidewalk.  While normally this works to my advantage, allowing me to survey the crowds for opportunities to dart ahead of slow walkers, on rainy days my height becomes my Achilles heel. 

For one, on rainy days, people with umbrellas become limited to only being able to see the area directly in front of them and downward.  Thus they tend to just walk directly towards you without realizing until the very last moment.  This is the point when they decide that they need to lift the umbrella up over their head to allow the person they are approaching to slip underneath unscathed. 

A nice idea, if the person they are approaching is as stumpy legged as they are, but for those of us given the gift of height, it becomes a harrowing experience.  You see, raising your umbrella up above your head only puts the pointy metal tips at the ends of your umbrella right at eye level for me:

And because most people don't do this until the last possible moment, it means I never have any idea when it's coming.  I'm just walking along, trying to get where i'm going, and every few seconds I'm suddenly thrown in to fight or flight mode as this big black shadow with glinting silver barbs comes rushing up towards my face. 

I end up making my entire commute in one of two defensive stances.  The goalie:

or the duck and cover:

Maybe what I should do is get a pair of fake glasses to wear on rainy days so I at least feel like I'm protecting my vulnerable eye area.  Although I guess if I had an eye patch it would be fun to tell people how I lost my eye. 

"Yeah it got stabbed out by some 5'2'' chick on 42nd St."

creep

This is some watcher in the woods shit if you ask me.  You don't know what its like to be sitting in your room, vulnerable, thinking you're alone, until you turn your head and realize that someone is watching you.  Someone or something.

And you never know where you're going to see the eyes either.  You're rooting around under your bed for your suitcase, move a shoe, and come face to face with two glowing orbs of terror.

In this case I was sitting at my desk working on my computer and I looked out the window and realized somebody was peepin' at me through the leaves of my plant.

I took a bunch of pictures because he wasn't really even looking at me.  He was just laying there staring vacantly straight ahead of him, as if in a coma.

How is this the most comfortable place in the entire apt?

some girls get all the luck

jealous

i want to fall in to the arms of a handsome doctor

finally

I really really like that the title for this on youtube includes the description "extra festive".  I also like how the picture of her on the album cover looks like it was from one of those photo set ups they would have at school parties.

reward yourself for voting today and download this album.

an email from meghan

I meant to tell you that my ride home was like an extension of our experience at the Heidelberg, except x1000.  Like, add 7 of that crazy old man, and then gather them tightly around you and then lock the doors and go deep underground and then just sit there.  One crazy started talking to another about how yoga “made him go all cold inside, even though it was 100 degrees in the park!  And maybe he has yogic powers.”  He might have had yogic powers, but he didn’t have any teeth, I can tell you that much.  A man was lurching through the train screaming how it was “Ugly People Day,” and to just look around you, and “see all the Ugly People on your left and right” and right as I looked to my left, a little girl threw up into her bag of candy.

end of the glory days

Yesterday seemed terribly appropriate to be the last day of October, even more so looking back today after walking in the bitter November cold this morning.  Even though it was chilly yesterday there was still an element of summer in the air. 

I spent most of the day laying on the couch watching the SVU fan favorite marathon.  I agreed with most of their choices, and was glad that they did classic episodes with random actors instead of the stupid ones with celebrity guest stars.  Sorry Marty Short, you just don't cut it on my fan favorite list.  At the same time though it wasn't really my ideal favorite episodes either.  If it were my favorite episode marathon it would have just been every time Mariska goes undercover.  "I know mom but men don't grow on trees!"

I did get out of the house for a couple hours when Meghan met me for food and a scotchtoberfest beer.  That was when I took the picture above of the pretty clouds when I was walking by the river.  I also spent some quality time watching the little dogs at the dog park.  I tried to take a picture of this guy but he was moving too fast!!  He was the size of my foot and he was wearing a nice knit sweater.

I wish I could take the detective out on walks.  He's angry though : (

rabbit rabbit rabbit

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Meghan and my sister both got me today!  My sister had already sent me a text message before I woke up and then i thought surely i could make it to work and post before anybody else got me.  But no such luck.  Hit the ground running at work and when I finally got the chance to take a breath I looked at my phone to find meghans text.

What should I do?  Throw salt over my shoulder or some shit?