transitional phase.

i’m not done here, but in the meantime, you should check out a work in progress.

ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-

-changes.

that’s right, folks. i’ll be making some changes around here. that sort of just occurred to me. normally when i get this type of thought in my head, i cut my hair really short or move to arizona, but my hair’s already short and i’m not seventeen, so this time is a little different. i was sitting in front of the blog command center, pondering whether or not to upload various cute-baby pictures (one of my african friend nene, others of the brooklyn wonder-twins), and decided that i don’t really feel like talking about my life anymore. at least not in a “dear diary” sense.

and no, it’s not just to entice people to read the blog, but also to push myself a little to absorb the city some more. i pass things every day that are so amazing (for example, a guy standing outside pommes frites with 20 ten-pound bags of raw potatoes), but i just smile and walk past them because i don’t want to look touristy or something awwwwful like that. i want to document things as i see them, because new york city is – if nothing else – an extremely interesting place to live. and i’d like to share that.

stay tuned.

ELECTION LIVE

wow, guys. like, for realz. first of all, if you don’t feel like reading about my adventures, you can click here to go straight through to the LIVE BLOG. but if you WOULD like to hear my awesome story, then get ready.

so as some of you may know, this was my first voting experience. yeah yeah, i totally pussed out in 2004, but come on, a democrat in massachusetts? there wasn’t a ton i could do. not that being a democrat in new york is that big of a change, but this election feels just a liiiiittle bit more relevant/important/life-changing to me. okay, so needless to say, i was pretty excited to vote. so excited, in fact, that i ended up waking up twenty minutes before my alarm went off this morning. it was 545 am.

luckily, the polls in ny open at 6 am, so i decided to deal with missing the last few minutes of slumber, and just head over to the polls (one block away). there was already a line out the door, but i had come prepared with my crossword, and it was surprisingly not totally crappy weather, so i was okay. anyway, i’ll skip to the important stuff.

i didn’t have my handy little registration direct-mail thing with me, so i went over to the district book guys, who told me that i’m in district 50, and to head to the line all to the way to the right, which i do. 7 minutes later, the guy comes up to me and says he accidentally put me in the wrong line, and that i should be all the way over to the left. luckily there wasn’t too much of a line inside (just out, i guess), so that was just fine. i get to the table, and they can’t find my name in the booklet thing. this bums me out because it means i have to fill out a provisional ballot, but hey, i’m still doing my part, right? i just assumed this happened because i sent in my registration form about 8 minutes before it was due on the 10th.

so i’m outta there in 45 minutes, which is sort of bittersweet because it gives me just enough time to NOT go back to sleep before work. oh well. so i tell este what district we’re in so he doesn’t have to wait, too, and i’m on my way out. two hours later (and four hours after i vote), i get a phone call from este. turns out, we’re not in district 50. we’re in district 49. apparently este had gone through the same shenanigans with the no-name-in-the-book deal, and was really disappointed at casting a prov ballot, so when he got home, he double-checked his registration guy, and right there, printed on the card, was the 49. SO LAME.

because he had some extra time before going to work and the fact that he was still around the corner, he went back to the polling place and settled everything, ripping up the paper ballot and doing that shit right. unfortunately, i was at work, and planned to be until later in the day. FORtunately, however, i decided to stroll by on my way home from work, just to see what was up with the wait, and there was none! the place was practically empty. so i popped in, explained my story to about 4 different people (who understood in varying degrees), got an (unprompted) apology from the guy who f’ed up my s in the morning, ripped up my paper ballot, and pulled the crap out of that lever!

so all in all, it worked out. :) here’s the link again if you want it: ELECTION LIVE. come check it out! last time, there were TWO WHOLE PEOPLE i’m not related to! it was awesome.

star sightings.

last friday at penn station: renée zellweger

she was putting her mom on the train i was boarding to go to boston. it took me about 20 minutes and three clusters of people alluding a celebrity being in the vicinity, and then finally her blatantly standing in front of me, to notice.

yesterday at joe’s pub: john hodgman

i was invited to a show – which was awesome, and john h here agreed because he gave the only standing ovation at the end – by gloria deluxe. amazing. the website’s a disaster, but if you click on “sounds” you can hear some of her stuff.

celebrity sighting-by-proxy at whole foods: whoopi goldberg

technically este saw her, but it counts.

btw, renee z and john h both wear really dorky glasses in real life.
no, i did not talk to either of them.

read me a bedtime story?

oh, okay…

Chapter 1: P-E-P-E

It was early on a Thursday morning when Pepe arrived at our door. He came accompanied by, of course, Megan, as she was the one who made it possible for him to ride the Path and then a taxi to our building. She came bearing bags of goodies: one with Pepe’s leash and a comfortable spot for him to be carried on the subway, and the other with food and his favorite blanket. He was with us for four short days; just enough time to remember why we love him so dearly, but not enough to satisfy our desire to have him around always. We’ll miss you, dear Pepe, and having to sprint in and out of the building with you because dogs are not allowed here.

Chapter 2: Ciao, Little Italy!

so there was a festival going on in little italy last week so i dragged a bunch of people down there to check it out. it ended up being really fun! we decided to go to one of the restaurants on mulberry st (where all the action was), which, in retrospect, might have been kind of silly since there were about 4,453,692,485 street vendors that were carrying delicious (and far cheaper) food and snacks. oh well. regardless, we had a good time.

Chapter 3: Pot Luck

sorry i don’t have a clever title for this part. or pictures. but it was fun! we all hauled out to bed-stuy to see ross’ new apartment and eat delicious food. mission accomplished.

Chapter 4: ‘23, bitches…’

it was alex “let’s do a shot!” w’s birthday last weekend, so she had a rockin’ birthday party at the three jolly pigeons in bay ridge (for those of you who live in or are familiar with brooklyn: yes, we went from bed-stuy to bay ridge. yes, we took a cab because, as you know, that’s practically impossible to do in under 1.5 hours).

it was SUPER fun. i asked mariel to take some pictures while ross and i were playing pool, which ended up with her nearly crashing my camera because of all the pictures (not really), but i did manage to find this gem of ross cupping the pool table.

okay, now cough?

i would get more specific than that but i don’t have many details. sorry, mom. and more sorry for the next part:

Chapter 5: hangover, bitches…

there’s actually not much to tell here. este had to go to work at like 930 that morning, and thank god he took pepe out before he left, because i could not summon the strength to take him out until 7 that night. coincidentally, joe blog happened to post something about hangovers that very day, so i got to read about and experience one all at the same time. so that was nice. i also watched ‘michael clayton’, which was really good, but the end credits are george clooney riding around in a cab, which made me mega-nauseous, so i wasn’t too psyched about the end there. oh, well. i got to bum around and do nothing, so i guess that’s cool. next time maybe i’ll remember to drink some water, though, so i don’t end up on the brink of death from dehydration.

Chapter 5: Let’s Go, METS!

honestly, i couldn’t have cared less about the score of that game, but it was still wicked fun to go hang out at shea stadium before it’s demolished (or flattened, or whatever) next week. and for the record, they better be VERY careful when they do happen to smush it, because the new stadium is mere INCHES from the existing one:

we had that awesome view right across from the giant sign because we were about seven rows from the very end of the stadium. i wish i had gotten a better perspective shot of the whole thing, but you’re just going to have to take it from me… it’s really scary up there. the stairs are sosteep. but we did have a really nice view of like, the entire stadium.

the original plan involved 12 people going to this thing, but yadda yadda yadda… we ended up with 6 people and 6 empty seats. it actually provided a nice buffer. would’ve been nicer if it padded us from kid-who-can’t-keep-his-legs-from-pounding-the-back-of-my-seat or group-of-tweens-who-yell-a-lot, but what’re you gonna do?

Chapter 6: On an Unrelated Note, I Have About 15 Mosquito Bites

the end.

a post about walking.

i’ve been trying to walk more recently. it’s been easier to walk to a less convenient subway stop on my way to work, mainly because by the end of the day i’m lazy and decide that “oh, i’ll just do it tomorrow”. so i decided to apply some self-control the past few days and move my walk to the end of the day so i can actually take my time and check out new things.

so naturally i ended up lost. not lost in the sense that i needed to “pull over” and ask for directions, but more in the sense that i ended up near streets that i wasn’t anticipating. like, streets with names instead of numbers. i also happened to have a headache that was about to knock me right the f out, so i wasn’t super happy about the situation. BUT, i pulled through. it turns out i was just in the west village.

i passed gay street (which doesn’t seem that cool, but any street vendor worth their salt has a picture of the street sign among their wares), and also this amazing-looking storefront that i can’t go into detail about because i’m going to get my mom a present from it because their stuff is right up her alley. i didn’t go in because of my life-ending headache, though, which i have now come to regret. i tried to recreate that trip again this afternoon, but to no avail. i could follow my path i think about halfway, but i took the wrong right somewhere along the line, and lost the trail. lame. when i was walking down 5th street, though, i did hear someone playing some awesome saxophone in their apartment. so that was nice.

more to come later! we’ve been doing fun city things and have more on the docket, so stay tuned.

“is it like… because you drink until you can’t walk?”

that’s a quote from my mom there… she was asking the meaning of “pub crawl”. it was cute.

anyway, este and i did a super fun pub crawl last night! it ended up being just the two of us (with one brief exception when mariel and erin met us for a drink at our fourth destination), but remained totally un-lame. i think technically we were supposed to get some sort of “passport” or something, but our tickets didn’t come in the mail in time, so we ended up walking around with este’s confirmation email all night:

it confused most of the bartenders, but ultimately they didn’t really care. one of them even gave us an extra round!

this was my first pub crawl, so i was a little nervous because we were meant to travel to six different bars. well, six beers is kind of a lot to put in this stomach over here, but it turned out they were using smaller glasses for the people doing the crawl, so i made it through like a champ. well, a champ that complains a lot about being soooo very full of beer.

i did take pictures of most of the bars we went to, but they’re all dorky and not interesting, so i’ll post this one instead:

it’s real astro turf! it was up on the wall of some building in alphabet city. amusing.

but overall, the bars were really nice. only one was kind of packed; the rest seemed to be pretty slow, so we got to sit down for a lot of it, which helps when you’re otherwise on the move. i highly recommend the route to other people in the east village. it’s all a part of craft beer week, which actually includes several different routes, including a couple in brooklyn. get into it!

smorgasbord, pt. 2

just a few small tidbits today, guys… and why do i feel the need to share with you a handful of insignificant details about my past few days? i’m glad you asked!

tidbit #1. este is assisting all day.
but not just assisting. assisting at a TOP SECRET wedding in the city! so top secret, even i don’t know anything about it. crazy, right? we’ll see if he sneaks some pictures and lets me post them here. probs not, though, so don’t get your hopes up.

2. i found this site:
best of craigslist. i’m not saying it IS the funniest thing ever… but it’s pretty damn close. my personal fave so far is “to the perv who groped me on my way home”.

3. i saw two weird and unrelated things on thursday, and then one more yesterday.
thursday:

now this may not seem unusual to everyone, but to me it kind of was! for whatever reason, i decided to go off my normal beaten path to work that morning, and ended up walking west on 74th st (usually i take 76th… crazy, right?). well i’m walking between central park west and columbus ave, when i notice these columns on several buildings! seriously, there were at least five. the picture above is actually of a small school, though, which kind of cracked me up more. it’s like… yeah guys, we get it, you live on the upper west side. you’re very fancy, and clearly deserve some g-damn COLUMNS on your buildings. it’s like they needed to remind me that all i have are lowly iron fence things. whatevs.

so anyway, when i was leaving work, i decided to go for a little stroll because it was nice out and it’s good to exercise and blah blah blah. so i decide to walk to rockefeller center because then i could take the F home from there and it’s a pretty easy walk. OR SO I THOUGHT.

i had been hearing about some crazy usher/keith urban/nfl kickoff thing in columbus circle (which was on my route to the rock, as i like to call it) like all day on npr, but for some reason, it didn’t occur to me that this wouldn’t be a public event! so i start my walk, and when i get to within ten blocks of cc i start hearing usher. five blocks later, everything is blocked off! everything. so long story short, i had to go through the damn park to get home. now the park is lovely, but the paths are windy and i basically have no knowledge whatsoever of where any of them lead to, so i was kind of annoyed. and there were cops EV-ERY-WHERE. so i was kind of pleased when i finally found their stomping ground for this event:

for those of you who have read the trog before (like, way before), you may remember some images and mention of groups of cops near my old place in brooklyn, and how they all hung out under the bridge. so i was surprisingly comfortable with seeing like 75 of them milling around in one area. and that awesome little segue way brings me to…

friday:
more cops! i don’t have a picture of this one because i didn’t want people to get mad, but it was weird all over again. i decided to do a different stroll home yesterday because the first one was such a disaster, so i’m walking down our street, and i pass the police station that’s on the corner on the opposite side of our block. there are usually a couple of cops milling around talking to neighbors and homeless people and stuff, but there were so many of them out yesterday, that i took notice. as i started getting closer to our place, i saw a kind of big group of people on our corner, absolutely surrounded by cops, and fenced in to the sidewalk by those weird corral things they use for events and stuff.

i happened to have just passed a cop, so i turned around to ask him what was up, and he told me it was “police protest slash concert”. excuse me? “i dunno, the east village is so weird.” i later found out that a group of faux punk kids were protesting, on the large scale, a new police precinct, but more specifically, some kid getting shot by an off-duty cop. awesome.

4. prison break is back.
thank god.

a triumphant return.

well, i made it back in one (albeit slightly sunburnt) piece! my family and i were spending some quality time on newfound lake for the past week. it was good times. we did some of this:

we also did some grilling, some tubing, some sitting around, some dnc watching, some more sitting around, and some playing my nintendo ds. we haven’t all taken a vacation like this together in something like nine years, if not more. and coincidentally, the cabin that we rented was one that we had actually rented some 12 years ago. and when i tell you this place hasn’t changed since then, i’m not exaggerating. at all. the rust in the shower was exactly the same, as was the microwave from 1987, as was the abnormally large table in the middle of the place, as were the broken handle things that close the windows. but all in all, it was really fun.

we also got to swing by my old camp alma mater, camp wicosuta. it happens to be on the same lake, so we boated down to check it out. camp apparently has already ended for the season so all the fun docks and stuff had already been taken down, but there were some friendly maintenance guys hanging out there:

i spent seven summers there (my sister spent five, i believe – correct me if i’m wrong, jaime – and my mom spent two! she had gone to camp for more than a decade when she was our age, so she started getting a little jealous that we were having such a good time and decided to come hang out as an administrator-type without the office duties.) and always had a blast. i’ve gone back a handful of times since then and there have been sort of major changes each time… the installation of the crazy big swimming pool is the only one i can remember right now, though. but anyway, as time has gone on, it’s gotten creepier and creepier to go there, just because no one i know is left there (save for prissy, who will live there until the day she dies, and then probably come back to haunt it forever after that… only about six people will understand what that just meant, sorry.), and from what i’ve seen of the campers… well, the place has changed a lot. i’ll try to find an awesome picture of 11 year old me in my hot camp uniform for your viewing pleasure. and by “i”, i mean my mom, because i don’t keep incriminating pictures of myself like that lying around here.

the moral of the story is, for those of you who googled “camp wicosuta” and ended up here by accident, it’s a great place to spend your summers. just ask my wico fanclub facebook groups.

wow, this is way more interesting.

so i’m sitting here at the blog command station, minding my own business, and reading abby’s new blog, when i hear absolute screaming coming from the street. screaming. this one guy is ripping the other guy a new one about not having his back, and how’s he supposed to know he has his head on straight and whatnot?

there are two reasons this freaked me out: 1. there’s a police station on our block, which makes it super quiet over here, and the content of the the yelling made it seem like these guys just had a failed rite-aid robbery; and 2. when i went to the window to spy on them, they looked like they were actually on their way to a rite-aid robbery.

but guess what! they’re actors!

not real actors, but the kind that nyu kids hire to star in their college films. apparently they do that a lot over here.