ch-ch-change

My trusty web guru and I have spent an enjoyably lazy sunday afternoon upgrading my shit to MT3 point something. I swear, I was paying attention. The consequences of this are:

1. My comment page looks for crap. Ignore it.
2. Spam is on its way to be defeated, even if on the most microcosmic of tiny scales.
3. There is a snazzy new redesign in the works.

What are YOU up to, you holiday-makers?

what customer service should be

This is just a quick post because I spend so much of my consumer life fighting companies to be fair and stand behind their product, I think it's my duty to let you know about one that does. Trendy Geek makes these cool podShields, this non-stick high-static completely clear cover for your beloved iPod, when you want to protect the screen and the shiny back without sacrificing any of the inherent style or slimness of your precious toy. Like I do.

So I ordered it, on May 11th, and when it hadn't arrived this week after the 7-10 business days' shipping I paid for, I sent a terse couple of emails to the company, asking for information on where my order was. Today they sent an email saying that they never recieved confirmation from their shipping company, so they are overnighting me a new package, completely refunded and free of charge.

I think, simply put, this goes above and beyond the call of duty (I usually have to fight companies to even refund the shipping costs when there's a mistake) and for that, I want to stamp a petithiboux seal of approval on TrendyGeek and their owners. Well done, guys.

true new york

It's late May and my cotton skirts and cream-colored ballet flats are languishing ignored in my closet because the weather is throwing a city-sized hissy fit. So in order to placate the raging beast and her growling posse of grey skies and surly winds, I present a loving laundry list of things that I love about New York, never to be found in guidebooks.

"It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible." E.B. White

The city has a short term memory for trauma and disappointment. What can start out as a terrible day - spilled coffee on the subway, rain when you're wearing silk, losing a metrocard - can be irresistibly redeemed by another random act, like the saxophonist playing a song you used to sing when you were young, or your fruit seller throwing in an extra orange, or turning a corner and seeing the sun illuminating an entire line of glass buildings.

"When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough." - Fran Lebowitz

Reach is a subway musical installation at the 34th street N/R/W platforms. By reaching up and interrupting the light beams, you set off an individual noise, and there are 10 of them. Created by Christopher Janney, it's this woodsy and ringing cacophony of surprisingly welcome noise in one of the smelliest stations in New York. It never fails to perk up my late night returns from Brooklyn.

"And we found other evacuees in the country who sat on their suburban lawns, planning to go back when the children had finished college; and when the rain fell into the leaves of the rock maples they asked: 'Oh, Charlie, do you think it's raining in New York?'" - John Cheever

New Yorkers are, possibly more than any other city in America, here by choice. There are always easier and cheaper places to live. But the biting, scratching will to keep making it in this city gives everyone around you - yes, even those assholes on the morning commute - a certain glow, born from the active and constant effort of living out your dreams.

"This is the town that never sleeps. That's why we don't live in Duluth. That plus I don't know where Duluth is. Lucky me." - Woody Allen

Taxis are one of my favourite things about the city. Perhaps to the very wealthy, it's deliciously mundane to hop into a total stranger's car and pay him money so that you just don't have to think or plan or navigate for five to twenty minutes, but for me, it's one of my top luxuries. Staring out the window from that uniquely lazy position where your head is resting on the pleather seatback, watching your poorer, daily self fighting the crowds or the rain, and knowing that all you have to do is pay and exit gracefully - it's worth every overpriced penny.

"The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The 7 train is arguably one of the most enjoyable subway rides in New York. Coming aboveground in Long Island City, you've got a view of the majestic midtown towers and the contrasting low-lying industrial grittiness of southern Queens. Ride the 7 all the way out to Flushing one day, on a sunny summer afternoon, and stand in the very last car, looking out at the receding skyline from the back door window. You'll want to turn around and go right back into the fray.

"New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment, a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat." - Brendan Behan

The delicious close voyeurness of the city is probably its sexiest aspect. When I lived in the West Village for a summer, I saw an entire relationship crumble over the course of three months, in the swank apartment across West 4th. In June, it was all rooftop barbeques and laughing over bottles of wine, dancing across the parqueted floors for Mathias and Jorge (as we so named them). In the middle of July, Jorge started coming home late, lights turning off as he proceeded towards the bedroom, dropping briefcases and romances along the way. In August, there was a fight, curiously starting in the bathroom through frosted glass, a slammed front door and darkened windows for a few days as Mathias obviously went to the shore to collect himself. The apartment went on the market two days before I moved out.

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy." - E.B. White

I like meeting people in the wrong places at the wrong time. On a Friday night when you're supposed to be out drinking or dining with friends, like the rest of New York City, I think the people that ended up someplace random are more vulnerable, more open for conversation. The supermarket deli counter is a good one, or a commuter train, or a bookstore, or the dog run at your local park. At the dog run, I finally started talking to the woman with the two-legged dog that I'd seen around the park for ages. She was a psychiatrist that had lived in Westchester her whole life until her husband died, and then she'd moved to the West Village, "to live near all the young people," she said. I didn't have the courage to ask what had happened to the sad and devoted dog strapped into a set of hind-leg wheels. I met a woman on the train that told me all about raising her family in New York City, and her son that had wanted to be an actor and was now going to law school, and how she worried that he wasn't following his dreams. At the deli-counter at Trade Fair, I talked to a cabbie about cheese.

"New York is a city of conversations overheard, of people at the next restaurant table checking your watch, of people reading the stories in your newspaper on the subway train." - William E. Geist

Stuart and I played fashion police once, for an hour. We sat in a relatively hidden corner of the Trump Plaza at Columbus Circle, just high enough off the sidewalk that people didn't automatically notice us. And we critiqued, praised, slammed, offered suggestions for about two hundred people that walked by. "What is she thinking with those SOCKS?" and "I like that look for him, it sort of says 'I hang OUT with gay men but I'm straight', especially those shoes" and "what is it with STRIPES this season, everyone's wearing them," and "their styles don't match at all, that couple isn't long for this world". It was amazing, and the funny thing was, I couldn't stop doing it to people walking by OR myself, for about a week.

"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there. Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the ether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will." - Ezra Pound

The best thing about going away for a holiday from New York City, I think, is the feeling of coming back. When you fly in to LaGuardia, and it almost seems like the pilot is doing a sight tour of the East River just for you, or you coast through the airspace above Manhattan at night and the city lights look like gold filligree laid on black velvet and the bridges look like diamond tennis bracelets and you just want to cry because no matter how perfect Brasil or the Caribbean or Paris or even Cinncinati may have been to you, you realize it's nothing, nothing's ever, quite like home.

"The city makes up for its hazards and its deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin: the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled." - E.B. White

Posted by krissa at 06:46 PM | unique new york | Comments (19)

i may be on a diet, but..

.. I'm just going to have to start eating more pizza now that my iPod tells me where the best slices are in any given neighborhood. Thanks, SliceNY!

Geek/Love

1. Mondays are difficult. It's all I can do to just stare at the computer screen, wondering what I'm supposed to be doing. Then I'll stare out the window and think about flying. Then I'll stare back at the computer screen. It's hell.

2. I think I just overdosed on Halls. My throat was feeling poorly last week so I have this bag of Halls sitting on my desk, the kind with the mentholated center. Well, I just ate about ten of them. I feel a little ill.

3. I'll tell you what it is about Mondays - I just shut down. I've most likely been chatty and social and decadent for two solid days (four, if you just took two personal days like I did) and Monday finds me drawn and quiet.

4. At Star Wars on Friday night (and if anyone accuses me of spoiling anything for them with this next item, so help me god, I will just laugh at you until the end of time), when the newly minted Darth Vader and Senator Palpatine are standing at the bay of a ship, looking at a sphere being built, I turned to Stuart and said, louder than I'd hoped, "what's that?" and he had to say, "that's the Death Star, honey."

5. But in my geeky defense, the minute Darth Vader started walking, all I could hear was "I do not need a tray to kill you, I can kill you with a single thought, I can, I could kill you with this tray if.. I .. so.. WISHED." and "this one's wet. this one's wet. this one's wet." and "no I am not JEFF Vader, I am LORD Vader, I am, this is, I am Darth, this is MY DEATH STAR."

6. Undoing any props given for the last item, Stuart likes to tell people the story of when I was trying in vain to reference a famous Star Wars quote and said instead, "there are no druids here".

7. Star Wars, Schmar Wars - I nearly jumped out of my seat and hit the ceiling with glee and squeals when they showed the trailer for Narnia. If you do not understand why this is the most exciting thing in the world, you can go suck an egg.

8. The book I have been reading is all about death and near-death experiences and the Titanic and the brain shutting down and it's marvelous but it has been making me think about death too much, to the point that last night when Stuart came into the living room where I was reading to say hello, I threw my arms around him and unexpectedly started crying.

9. I think my tears were prompted by a segment of the book where Daniel Marvin, returning from his European honeymoon with his young wife Mary, puts her on the lifeboat and says, "It's alright, little girl. You go. I will stay." No assurances that he'd see her in the morning, or in New York. Only, you go, I will stay. You live, I don't. Such peace in such horror. The part of me that is more afraid of losing Stuart than losing myself could not wrap itself around the pain and love in that single line.

10. I actually don't feel like writing anything else after that. It's a strange note to end on, but there you have it. Such was my weekend.

does the pope fly?

The funniest thing that has happened to me so far today is that Jason and I were IMing and I said, "oh, wow, a cardinal just flew by my window," and then I said, "I thought they were winter birds," and then Jason goes, "oh, for a second I thought you meant, like, the pope-electors."

Saturday

Sandwiched between our Debaucherous party and our heartwarming AIDS Walk, there was a day of laziness, barbeque, and bubbles. We sat in parks, had eggs for breakfast, played our way to Paris in Midnight Club, dropped off laundry, assembled a grill, and had a wonderful night. It was perfectly lazy for a perfectly lazy day. See the whole day here.

laundry list

Every time I open my ancient, creaky Internet Explorer (five point OH), I see the "ph MENU" link glaring at me. I click everything else around it - Gothamist, all my friends' sites, bank accounts, netflix, flickr - but I don't open this page. I finally opened it to delete the mountains of spam that are spilling onto my front page. (An administrative aside: all comments except the most current post will be closed. Email it if you need to say it.)

But since I'm loathe to post something explaining why I can't post, I'll just say I'm around, I'm busy - I'm having dinner with friends tonight, catching some live music, getting out of work early, getting doctor's appointments out of the way, using my SPF15 face cream, taking my multivitamin, playing tennis again, seeing Star Wars, meeting new friends, learning to barbeque, eating at Grimaldi's, sleeping longer, catching a cold, telling Stuart how much I love his faaaaaace, drinking water, missing cigarettes, taking pictures, writing down friends' hilarious makeout stories, trying new restaurants and enjoying life. That's only this week.

Now that I mention it, it's not surprising that I'm not blogging. But enough about me, what's new with you?

Walking the walk

photo taken by the kate dot net.

There were eight of us in total, which made for handy little pairings as we walked with a crowd of fifty thousand. Stuart, Conrad, Mike, Shiv, Biscuit, Jason, Kate, and myself. I kept tabs on everyone by sweeping my eyes through the surrounding crush and mentally going, "camo and red tee, okay, Conrad and Mike. Grey and burgundy, Jason and Biscuit. Red and Green, Shiv and Kate."

We carried about six bananas, eight water bottles, a couple oranges, a bag of Ritz peanut butter cracker sandwiches, three digital cameras, about twelve umbrellas, SPF 60 and eight red wristbands saying "Imagine a World Without AIDS."

We want to thank you, all of you, who threw a little cash our way or even plugged our walking with a button on your site. We had a wonderful walk, we saw a lot of wonderfully motivated people, and we raised about 750 dollars. We were sweaty and exhausted when we hugged goodbye at Union Square after pizza and burgers, we all went home to showers and naps and video games and movies and sore feet, but we went home happy.

Footsore, I said at the beginning, and hearthappy.

Thanks! And remember, if you forgot to donate, you still can - through June 1. It's a good thing.

the debauched debutante rides again

Oh, I made it there alright. Stuart was my knight in shining everything, already hanging out at the office with me when my boss decided to finally let me go after seeing the perfect white dress hanging on my coat rack.

I made it. Changing in the women's bathroom with Stuart helping me out and staring at the same time.

I made it. In a cab headed to Brooklyn, speeding down FDR, swigging Madeira from the bottle and straightening the seams on my fishnets while Stuart's eyes fixed on the city lights as he pulled from his flask of cheap scotch, saying how perhaps he'd never loved the city as much as in that moment.

I made it, walking into the apartment and seeing exactly the three people I wanted to see first, standing there waiting for us.

We made it.

And it was GLORIOUS*.

*A great photoset with not enough variation on the people I photographed because I wasn't so much PHOTOGRAPHING them as just holding my camera up drunkenly and pressing the trigger. Sorry, everyone who didn't make it into these photographs. Other people will have taken other pictures but no one's captions will be as still-slightly-drunk-when-she-wrote-them funny. SO THERE.

belly of the beast

That title is meant to imply three separate things:

1. The fact that I've never been this mental at work and hope I actually leave here before midnight because

2. tonight is the Second Annual Debauched Debutante's Ball and I'm nothing if not a debauched debutante, so

3. Stuart actually just went into Victoria's Secret to buy nude back-seamed fishnets for me because I haven't gotten out of work in enough time to go to a store in oh, a week, see #1.

More stories and pictures from the other side of debauchery.

*ding*

This is me, telling you that I'll see you on the other side of this horrific deadline, by which I mean, next week. To prove that my absence from you is merited, let me share a small tidbit of my day:

I'm so busy at work that I am sending myself timed emails reminding myself of stuff I need to finish by the end of the day. I just got one, about five minutes ago, in which I'd told myself, "you're probably slacking. Stop it. You need to finish that layout by five. GO."

I am, apparently, quite the bitchy task-master.

waterloo

We are being mercilessly hurtled on a train bound for London and another airport parting, arms and legs entertwined and heavy with sadness, when a reckless epiphany hits me. We don’t have to do the right thing. Not when the Right Thing involves the painful cut of separation.

"Let’s run away," I whisper and as soon as the words are out, it’s like a personal game of chicken to see how long I can keep my head under water with this unlikely feat of derring-do.

"Where?" He says, lazily tracing his finger along my upper arm. We’ve played this game before and he knows the routine. We talk about the fantasy of never having to be separated again. We imagine the moments when we’ll wake up next to each other every day, stubbly cheek to rumpled hair, molasses-slow voices mumbling about who gets the coffee machine going this time. But those conversations are usually late at night, curled under our duvets, three thousand miles apart. This time, it’s different. This time, there’s a glimmer of light shining, the shimmer of a silver train waiting.

"France."

Suddenly he seems more alert and I know he understands me. Because we’re pulling into Waterloo Station in ten minutes. Waterloo station, with its soaring open-air departure tunnels that shoot trains into blinding sunlight. Waterloo, where everyone is rushing somewhere else, distractedly smoking a cigarette or pulling along a gaggle of unruly children. Waterloo, where no one will peer at our tickets and say, "Don’t you two have lives and families and jobs to be getting back to?" Waterloo, where trains leave every hour for France.

"We could be there by tonight," he says and his arms pull me closer to his warm chest so that I can smell the chocolate cookies on his breath. I think about hugging him goodbye at Heathrow, not having these arms around me for another two months, and suddenly something in me breaks.

Something fair, and judicious, and responsible cracks, and releases a delightfully dangerous toxin into my normally rule-abiding brain. I am drunk on an exhilarating sense of simply not caring.

"We could. We should." I don’t think he expects this answer. I say his name, low, in his ear, and pull back to stare into his moss-green eyes. They start to shine, the way mine must be shining. "I have almost a thousand dollars in the bank," I say. I know it’s my rent money, to be paid in less than three days. But the tendrils of this wicked recklessness curl around that notch of honest guilt and clamp over its mouth.

"I have almost a thousand pounds," he says.

"My parents will be waiting at the airport in New York tonight," I whisper, and cold shards stab my heart at the thought of their rising panic. Of their anxious faces as they watch passengers streaming out of the gate, none of them with their daughter’s eyes or walk or smile.

"I know," he sinks back into the train seat, and his willing concession brings me back to the brink of heady danger.

"But… the south of France. We could go to some village."

"Any place with a name we like?" he says, as his fingers absentmindedly curl a loose tendril around my ears.

"And we could wander up to the nearest farm and ask if they need any help."

"If they have a little room we can sleep in. We could work for our food."

My hands have found their way to the smooth curves of his cheek, and I am falling into the rising excitement of his eyes. For this moment, we are serious. We can see ourselves living far removed from our respective worlds, worlds we are trying so hard to mesh, worlds that are jarring and nationalistic and separated by a cruel ocean. The south of France changes that.

"What about our families?" he says, even though the strong way his arm is curling around my waist tells me that in this moment, he doesn’t care.

"We could send them postcards."

"From the south of France."

"Dear mom and dad, sorry, we couldn’t take the separation, we’ll call you when we have a permanent address." We both laugh. It shatters a certain intensity, but then my heart drops another inch in my chest because I know it’ll be months until I am again within kissing distance of that mouth, of that laugh.

"What we’re talking about here," he says slowly, "is the here and now. Being together and sod the rest."

"Like Anna and Vronsky," I suddenly recall. We fall quiet for a minute.

"Only," he smiles, "without you plummeting to your ironic death at the end." We laugh again, and kiss with that passionate optimism that marks the beginnings of every great love affair, certain that only good things are crowding at the wings of our future.

"So what we’re really talking about here is running away," I say. And without meaning to shatter the dream, I have dragged the moment of truth to the harsh light.

"Yes. And I think I want to run away with you now," he says, three inches from my face. "Could you?" he asks.

"Yes," I exhale, "because I can’t say goodbye again, because I just don’t care what the consequences are, I..." and then I stop. The consequences. The life we’re planning.

Something flashes before me - the life we’re planning. My mind has wrapped around those words now. I can’t take them back. My cozy apartment that waits for his arrival in New York. The sweet, simple wedding we will share with our families. The lazy weekend mornings we’ll have, the late nights rolling under the covers, the winters spent in each other’s warmth. The afternoons returning from work to curl onto the couch and plan dinner, plan saving accounts, plan a family of our own, plan a life together.

These beautiful angelic visions have sustained us for three months of separation, of longing, of the bureaucracy of immigration. They perch on one shoulder, staring reproachfully at these wicked intruders. These reckless little demons of instant gratification, of shucking off a young life well led, of selfishness and defiance. A tiny cottage in the south of France. Working at a vineyard. Knowing, and owing, no one but ourselves. But most pressing on my shoulder, the most tempting prick of devilishness - not having to wrench ourselves from each other’s arms and say goodbye in order to eventually be together forever.

"No," I say suddenly, and I deflate. I cannot believe myself, pulling away from the only crazy cliff I have ever considered. How can I say no to daring and adventure, to being wholly selfish and thoughtless? How can I choose to say goodbye, choose to submit myself to three more months of pain, instead of doing something as simple as emptying a bank account and boarding a train?

"I love you –" I start, but I can’t finish, because my throat seals itself with an angry fist of tears. I push through it. "I love you and I don’t want to run away, I want to live together in the sunlight, not..." The tears spill onto my cheeks. His hands catch them.

"It’s okay," he says as he envelopes me, and I don’t have to explain anymore, because I know if I hadn’t turned our little raft away from this temptation, he would have been the strong one and led us back to the life we so desperately crave. The right thing. But I still cry, and a small hiccup of grief escapes my lips.

He pulls my face in close, cradling my cheeks with those warm strong hands, his blood pounding through his wrists so strongly that I can feel it on my neck, near my own pulse. He whispers in my ear, telling me we’ll be together soon, that the months will fly by, that the little apartment in New York will be ours forever. He whispers things about morning coffees and late night snacks, about weekly movie dates and weekends at the coast. All the beautiful someday-platitudes we tell each other to cut swathes through the gnawing loneliness.

And then we kiss. We kiss as though we invented the art, and I feel something else slowly filling the vacuum of that soaring reckless disregard. I feel my breath rise and fill my lungs as his mouth toys with mine. I feel the way his hands make my body arch towards him. This time, the noise that escapes my lips is a tiny gasp of pleasure.

And suddenly, I know the one thing we can do to somehow console ourselves from turning away from dizzying heights of sinful freedom. With ten minutes to arrival in the station of our fleeting lost dream, we make out like teenagers until we’ve forgotten all about angels, demons, and the south of France.

unsnob

I was trying to explain how eating an entire tin of cheezballs means I couldn't possibly be a complete snob, so I said "Hoi polloi eat cheezballs!" and I even used it correctly (without the redundant "the") and in that moment, I realized, "shit, I used the words hoi polloi when trying to defend my unsnobbery, I AM SUCH A SNOB."

It was a sobering moment.

the diet thing

I have a very mixed reaction when people have asked how "the diet" is going. Mainly because I've tried really hard to keep it out of my day-to-day interactions with people, I feel like I've somehow failed to do so when they ask how it's going. I have a coworker who is thinner than I am, and when she found out that I was on a diet, she's discussed it with me several times. It makes me feel strange for her to tell me how much she weighs (less than I do) and then complain about how much weight she has to lose.

It also makes me a little crazy when anyone takes any assumptive steps about offering me food. "Oh, I have these chocolates," a coworker will say, "but you can't have them, right?" I'm telling you guys, I will TAKE those chocolates and SABOTAGE my own progress just so that no one else is telling me what to do. My parents have lovingly - when we're home - asked several times if what I'm eating is within my points value and, as irrational as it is, it makes me want to eat the entire table of food just to prove that I'm the one in control of this crazed little ship.

I've fallen, though, off a certain wagon of vigilance. The first very serious month, I was losing weight steadily but falling apart every few days because I was so sick of getting to six PM and realizing I could only have a leaf of lettuce and a powerbar for dinner if I wanted to stay strictly within my very small points allowance (which is very small due to my comparative smallness). I exaggerate about the lettuce, those of you reading this to monitor if I'm developing an eating disorder, but it was very frustrating to realize that while Stuart needed to eat another fifteen points to round out his day, I only had six.

In the past two weeks, I've been less than vigilant, and I've not really been losing weight. I haven't been gaining, because it's amazing how steady you stay when you just don't eat sugar or fried foods, but I haven't been losing. And as the end of our ten week period neared, and I looked with sinking regret at the fact that I haven't reached my ten percent goal, I couldn't figure out which path was better. Could I stop going to the meetings at a point where I feel disheartened with making this a daily effort? If I stopped going to the meetings, would I feel like I'd accomplished enough?

Basically, if I didn't ever get that ten-percent keychain, would I feel like I'd gotten anything out of the meetings for the ten weeks that I went? If going for ten more weeks meant my committment felt more significant - and if I got that goddamned little keychain - would it be easier to stick to this, for life?

I've had mixed feelings about the meeting scenario this whole time. When I'm having a good week, and I get on the scales, and it shows that I've had a good week, I don't need the pep talks. I don't need the clapping or the little gold stars or the support. But my last meeting was a bad week. I'd gained a little and I knew why. I spent half the meeting telling myself to not even care about it, to just keep moving, but when I stopped talking to myself and started listening to everyone else, I finally realized that the meetings are good for the bad weeks. It's good to be in a room with people that won't ask you disparaging questions about your process or stare at you blankly when you complain about office lunches and the point value of a margarita. The meetings, I realized, are there for the bad weeks.

So, as much as I said I didn't want to obsess about my diet for another three months, it looks like that's the best option. Because I can't give up on a road I put myself on, and I'm not sure I'll make it far enough down that road without the weekly pit stops.

But so help me God, I don't want any more gold stars. I JUST WANT THE KEYCHAIN.

out-geeked

For the record, sitting in my parent's living room with a diet coke, tinkering with photoshop and cruising blogs at the same time strikes a deep happy chord at the geeky depths of my heart.

I have GOT to get me this new-fangled wireless thing all the kids are doing these days. Well, by kids I mean, my parents. (Because sheesh. Who gets out-geeked by their PARENTS?)

the shutterbug project

So, thanks to the previously-mentioned loan of the Nikon 5700, I'm happy as a clam, taking photos of this and that, generally enjoying every single minute that I've got my finger on the trigger. I'm an incorrigible shutterbug, but it's been limited to point-and-shoot snapshotting since graduating from the place with twenty-four-hour darkroom access (O, darkroom!) and still not being in posession of a really solidly good digital SLR until this loan from my totally awesome dad.

To celebrate this month of photographic bliss, I've come up with a new way to procrastinate at work entertain my readers and make the most of the camera. It all started with the Creepy Drunken Statue you saw in the previous post. He made the words Opa! Opa! get irrevocably stuck in my head, which means I had no alternative but to create a banner with them. (Hopefully, they will put Opa! Opa! in your head too, and I think that your life will be the better for it).

Making that new banner made me remember how much I love changing site design around here, and specifically how much I love making banners with my own photographs. So I took my favourite picture from Greester and made it into a banner. I'll be doing this every few days, as suits my whimsy, as pictures suggest good banner titles and good banner titles lead to new banners.

Eventually, after this orgy of pictures and pithy sayings, Jason and I will sit down with a twelve pack of beer and completely redesign the layout of pH, but this is my hold-steady until then, and hopefully will be just as amusing and interesting to you as it is to me.

You'll also notice that there are now category links in the body of my sign-off line (along with the bright red donate! button that you should still consider very important, as the walk is next weekend). I've gone ahead and indulged my inner (inner?) organizational freak, creating categories that broadly suit everything we talk about here at pH. I've managed to categorize as far back as November 2004, and will continue moving laboriously back through time. Eventually, my new sidebar will contain links to all of these, for ease of movement through the site.

Changes are around every bend. Opa, Opa!

Opa! Opa!

Opa! Opa! is a restaurant on 31st street in Astoria, the kind of dive that my father refers to as "greasy spoons" in some sort of ethnic slur reclamation attempt.

Click Opa! to see the rest of my Flickr sets and streams.

I spent a few minutes dodging and burning the picture so that the drunk-looking statue that's supposed to lure you into the restaurant is in full effect. If this doesn't make you want to live in Astoria so that you can pass this guy every single day, I don't know what will.

Relatedly, the happy coinciding of my father's month-long loan of his Nikon 5700 (thanks, buddy!) and my self-gifted flickrPro account (thanks, myself!) means that you'll be seeing a lot more photographs up here, making it one of those pseudo-artsy photoblogs you know you hate.

Starting.... NOW.

of note

The expression "chip on the shoulder" is something my parents always used to say, as in, "he's got a chip on his shoulder the size of a redwood tree", and while I grew to understand that it means someone who is bearing a grudge, or is resentful, or has an inferiority complex, I never knew exactly what a chip was, or why it was on their shoulders.

It turns out that it dates back to the nineteenth century when boxers and fighters would go around, with wood chips on their shoulders, challenging someone to knock the chip off, thus starting a fight.

Sounds about right, really.

source: idiomsite.com and phrases.org.uk.

On Why I'm Not Really Blogging

or An Email That I Sent to Kate After She Asked Me Why This Week Feels Like Such a Whorebitch or Stress Reverts Blogger to Her Pre-Capitalization Ways or more commonly, The Most Pathetic Post Ever

"Well,

1. work is bitchy and past deadline and everyone is freaked and stressed out,

and 2. while I adore both Greek Easter (Greester!) and Mother's Day and love going home to Rhode Island even two weekends in a row because hello my parents rule (hi guys!), it takes away my weekend time in New York and i'm sort of still sad that I can't be here to celebrate your birthday with you, also because people keep asking me when i'm free to hang out and i have to be like, ooh, i have to pencil you in for may 20th,

and 3. and our new enormous television that we took from my parent's house is AWESOME but the cable hole is different than my antenna's hole so i can't watch any TV and i don't watch much to begin with but i really missed House last night and I'm going to miss Alias tonight unless we set it to tape on our small TV which we could do but houseguests, etc, rude to be watching TV in their room while they're THERE,

and 4. and i have a couple nagging errands to run that i seriously cannot fathom when to fit in before friday (go to radioshack and figure out antenna problem without killing or screaming at anyone, go to old dentist and get copies of my dental xrays for new dentist appointment on friday morning which means paying old fucker dentist fifteen bucks and also new fucker dentist another howevermany bucks, get birth control at drug store which is really easy task and yet I always find a way to put it off because I hate me some Duane Reade, find the one kind of bandaid that stays on my heel and for some reason is hard to find at drug stores here in nyc O blister season, how i love thee! and get keys made for karen and pete and return the @*&^@*&$^ tee shirt i bought at express with you which has THREE COUNT THEM THREE tiny holes after being worn ONCE and going in the washing machine ONCE ARGH that is so annoying and also, picking up my goddamned skirt from the goddamned laundromat because i keep forgetting to get it and its been there for two weeks and i have this nagging fear that they SOLD IT TO THE FASHION POLICE and i'm going to get ticketed for wrongful abandonment of good fashion)...

*breathe*...

but 5. the BIGGEST THING I AM REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO IS SEEING YOU TOMORROW AND GOING TO THE BOHEMIAN AND EATING KEILBASA AND DRINKING A PITCHER OF BEER AND THEN TRYING DRESSES ON WITH YOU, so, really, i can't complain about anything, because that's a pretty great thing to look forward to, and i love you a lot and so that's cool, so thanks for letting me complain. you rule. *pumps fist in air*

so that's that."

Shave and a Haircut

Let it be known that roughly 10% of the hairs on Stuart's newly-trimmed head were trimmed by me.