Leaving New York is always so instantly liberating.
It's like, as soon as the train resurfaces from the tunnel, minutes from New York, the possibilities are so endless. Well, at least the scenery is exotic.
At a local supermarket
Every time I read magazines like Self and Health, I see all these ads for health foods, and I'm like "These foods don't really exist." I mean, I never see them at the supermarket. Well. Those foods DO exist and they're all here! In Pennsylvania!!!
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I just did four loads of laundry
For some reason it seems like I always have much more laundry than anyone else in the laundry room. Maybe it's symptomatic of not doing my laundry very regularly. I think I have enough underwear, socks, and clothes to last me at least four months without a tumble. Sometimes I do laundry only because I run out of space in my various hampers.
Am tidying up my space and getting ready to ring in 2009 out of town -- in Pennsylvania! It's my first grown-up (as in, not in a bar, not in a club, involving proper food, conversational-level music) New Years Eve ever. Most years I either go out and have a bad time or stay home and fall asleep before midnight. I'm really excited about not having to flag down a taxi (impossible feat!) at 2:00 a.m. or try to find something to eat at 4:00 a.m. -- one year, I went out with my friend Alex and they let us into Pastis at 4:00 a.m. for a very late dinner. That year the weather was brutal, snow up to our knees, we went to at least three parties that night and I wrecked my new Marc Jacobs shoes walking through the slush. Ah well. Tomorrow? All civilized all the time. I hear that deer sleep in my friend's front lawn. That would be a lovely first thing to see in 2009.
Am tidying up my space and getting ready to ring in 2009 out of town -- in Pennsylvania! It's my first grown-up (as in, not in a bar, not in a club, involving proper food, conversational-level music) New Years Eve ever. Most years I either go out and have a bad time or stay home and fall asleep before midnight. I'm really excited about not having to flag down a taxi (impossible feat!) at 2:00 a.m. or try to find something to eat at 4:00 a.m. -- one year, I went out with my friend Alex and they let us into Pastis at 4:00 a.m. for a very late dinner. That year the weather was brutal, snow up to our knees, we went to at least three parties that night and I wrecked my new Marc Jacobs shoes walking through the slush. Ah well. Tomorrow? All civilized all the time. I hear that deer sleep in my friend's front lawn. That would be a lovely first thing to see in 2009.
Best day ever, 2009 looks promising
1. We just got Diet Dr. Pepper in the work vending machine.
2. The City starts tonight on MTV.
3. After three years of ongoing frustration with my rubbish expensive cable/internet/tv people (RCN), I FINALLY talked to the smartest person ever over there, a woman named Melissa in Client Retention services. She was amazing, and I'm not even being facetious. She fixed all my billing problems (which were not really my problems, but problems with their computers, which created problems for me) and knocked my monthly bill in HALF. Seriously, she is amazing. By far the best cable experience I've ever had in my entire life.
2. The City starts tonight on MTV.
3. After three years of ongoing frustration with my rubbish expensive cable/internet/tv people (RCN), I FINALLY talked to the smartest person ever over there, a woman named Melissa in Client Retention services. She was amazing, and I'm not even being facetious. She fixed all my billing problems (which were not really my problems, but problems with their computers, which created problems for me) and knocked my monthly bill in HALF. Seriously, she is amazing. By far the best cable experience I've ever had in my entire life.
"Cold and oblivion were all I was looking for at the time, but this didn't worry me. Sooner or later, I knew, I'd rejoin the world of the living.
Just not yet, I felt I had seen enough. Beings, things, landscapes... I had enough to last me for the next two hundred years and saw no reason to go hunting for new material. I didn't want any more touble." - Grégoire Bouillier in "The Mystery Guest"
OMG I'm cooking
I've actually turned on the stove and am cooking things (not just reheating!) for the first time in ages. Next step is going to be turning on my oven. I haven't ever turned on my oven here. In my last apartment, I baked a lot -- cakes, meatloafs, meatballs, bread from scratch. I haven't made a loaf of bread in over three years! Time to start again and get myself off of eating every single meal out.
At Barneys. 75% off is wonderful, but sad for luxury, and what it means is terrifying.
I have the same feeling as when a celebrity dies young, before his time. It's like a graveyard of beautiful clothes here.
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Merry Christmas!
"Do they know it's Christmas?" the original. Seriously, young Boy George makes my heart skip a beat. I'm a hopelessly devoted fan.
And Christmas cats.
Fun with old photos: Jordan
In early 2000, Elizabeth and I thought it would be fun to rent a Hyundai stick-shift hatchback and road-trip through Jordan for five days visiting the medieval ruins in the desert. Yeah, we talked about this recently when we met up in Hanover for reunion and in retrospect, we're not sure what we were thinking. We just kind of landed in Amman, picked up the car, and went. Since I can't drive, it was up to Elizabeth to do the steering and, well, no offense E, but she wasn't really that good with the stick. I remember pulling up in front of (I think I remember it) the Castle Hotel in Karak, a very hilly town, in the middle of the night and we had to keep accelerating up the hill as we rolled down the window and shouted at the man in front of the hotel to please jump in and help us park the car because it kept rolling backwards downhill. At one point in the trip we got lost in the middle of the desert -- the sand in south Jordan is fine and red, like a Burnt Siena crayon red -- and kept driving, didn't turn around until we saw a sign saying we were 40km from Saudi. The car didn't have a CD player, and the only tapes we had with us were a Don Henley's Greatest Hits mix and some other music that I think included Dave Matthews, which makes my ears bleed, so we drove through the red desert listening to and rewinding "Boys of Summer" over and over and over again for days. I remember gas was 9 cents a gallon. We didn't talk that much after the first day, but one morning we were on a long stretch of road and there were no cars in front of us and no one behind us, just mountains and desert and Don Henley and Elizabeth said to me, "Wouldn't you rather be doing this than sitting in an office anyday?" Yes, I would, absolutely.
Settling in for a long winter
I walked home today from work even though it's only 25 degrees outside. I can't really feel my right ear anymore, but I needed the exercise. It was kind of nice, I felt like a little kid, trundling around in 500 layers and scarf wrapped up to my eyeballs.
For Christmas, I got myself a Product Red Shuffle and had it engraved
"shallow with bourgeois problems" -- to remind me of myself -- it's a line that appears in two recent films i love.
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