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June 29, 2004
Moving on up
Metaphorically, we're moving way up. Geographically, we're moving a couple miles south.
We're moving to Cobble Hill. I lived in Williamsburg for over a year. C somehow managed to live here for 6 years or so, god bless her.
Goodbye, hipsters! Goodbye, L train! Goodbye, old polish men! Goodbye, Brooklyn industries! Goodbye Japanese tour groups touring hipsterville! Goodbye banks of unknown and shady origin! Goodbye median age of 20 and 1/2! Goodbye (sadly) plentiful parking by empty warehouses by the river!
Hello, yuppies! Hello, F train! Hello, old italian men! Hello, expensive restaurants on Smith Street! Hello, Japanese tour groups touring brownstownville! Hello, Citibank branch near my home! Hello children and old people! Hello parking tickets!
Goodbye Williamsburg, Hello downtown Brooklyn.
Posted by me at 11:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 25, 2004
i was right
yeah, that thing below about not being miss piggy--i was right. that really was the only good thing about this week. (except, of course, my girlfriend, my health, and my jumpshot.)
so today i went to a canadian city for work for a meeting that lasted 20 minutes. then i flew home. this particular canadian city is like new york (but not at all like chicago) only smaller and cleaner. it may be a bit whiter, but the cabdriver population is just as diverse. even the people are smaller and cleaner (and less attractive generally, but they tend to make up for this by being polite. it goes along way). on the way back to the airport the cabdriver gave me a tour (he really wasn't trying to run up the fare [this isn't new york] he was just being overly friendly. and i'd already told him i didn't give a shit because the client was paying) and told me about all the new condos they're building there. he owned a 900 sq. foot condo with a pool and a roofdeck and a great view on the 20th floor for 150K CAN. Yes, that's not dollars, it's CAN. maybe he wasn't so nice; maybe he was just being evil. hmm. we also discussed how this canadian city's Gay-Day and NYC's Gay-Day were on the same day. he told me "even straight people go!" i told him there were no straight people left in NYC--except for T2, and the gays appreciate his support. the gays like it when you come to their parades and spend money on their crappy fashions and well-developed sense of irony.
so then i went to work for 4 hours, which sucked because it means i was there really late, considering i'd just spent 10 hours en route and back to friendly canadian city. then i walked outside and it's raining and sixth ave traffic was all backed up by hundreds of scuzzy hipster bikers yelling "stop driving! bike!" which means i couldn't cross the street to get to the subway station for 5 minutes, and when i did break out and weave through the bikers one of them yelled at me "we're protesting!" and i yelled back "i'm wet!" which may not have been the best thing to say but hey it was true. i promptly forgot about the whole incident 30 seconds later. this is because i'm now a hardened new york transplant. growl. no sleep til brooklyn.
Posted by me at 09:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 21, 2004
in what promises to be the only good thing that happens to me this week, i am found NOT to be miss piggy
You are Rizzo the Rat. You have few friends, but are loyal to those you do
have. Maybe if you didn't smell like sewage
you would have more.
SPECIES:
Rodentia Digesta Lotta Grub
HOMETOWN:
Brooklyn, USA
FAVORITE MOVIE:
"Rat On A Hot Tin Roof"
FAVORITE SONG:
"The Pest Is Yet To Come"
FAVORITE FOOD:
You got it, I'll eat it.
HOBBIES:
See "Favorite Food".
QUOTE:
"When do we eat?"
What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Posted by me at 11:40 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 15, 2004
gee
I finally got an invite for a gmail account. I'm incredibly excited, even though I'm having a really crappy day. Thanks, gmail! Oh, and I'm a big dork, but we already all knew that, didn't we?
Posted by me at 01:17 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 06, 2004
That's Nightly News for this Sunday Night
Today, I have a cold. At this moment I'm enjoying a Zycam Chewable (strawberry flavor), which for the first few seconds tastes remarkably like a Starburst Candy (strawberry flavor), but after the first few seconds of chewing tastes remarkably like ass.
The Gipper was my president. When I was 8, 9 and 10, and watched the national news right after dinner (or right before, as was often the case, since my mom liked to make dinner at silly times, like 4:45. Looking back, this may have been done just to piss off my father who didn't get home until 6. It worked.) Tom Brokaw and Ronald Reagan were always there. I liked the NBC Nightly News when I was 8, 9 and 10--I STILL like the NBC Nightly News. When we got cable when I was 11 I would also watch Headline News--the same half hour segment, repeated over and over. Maybe a tiny bit of this was because I liked to impress adults, and since being smart was really the only thing I had going for me, I tried to accentuate it as much as possible by doing things like watching the news and reading Time magazine. Most of it, though, was because I just liked the news. I like to know. And so I still like the news, and now that the world has been cursed with the internet, I can get the news ALL THE TIME. So now, instead of playing solitaire at work, I read the online editions of 5 different papers along with, say, one of the newswires (AP, Reuters) and some speciality technology and internet (dork) news sites. And there you have it.
So I remember that Ronald Reagan was on the news one summer early evening in 1989. I had graduated fifth grade. I was laying on my stomach on the brown (and stained with hawaiian punch. that was my brother's fault.) carpet in our family room. My mom was sitting on our even browner (but less stained with anything) and painfully ugly couch, with one of her feet on the coffee table (the coffee table that had long, parallel seams in it that were just wide enough for big, gross things to get caught in those seams, like raisins and toast crums, that i noticed every time i was forced to Pledge it), painting her toe nails red. And there were lawn mowers running around the neighborhood and I could hear them through the open windows, and it was hot, and our windows were opened because we were the only people on the block without air conditioning. And I was sweating and my Mom was drinking Crystal Light and my brother was outside, and my Dad should have been there mowing the lawn, but instead our lawn was green and too long and unmowed, because my parents had just "separated."
So there I am, watching the NBC Nightly News without my Dad, with Reagan on the screen, and it's hot and it's lonely and I want my Dad there to tell me how great Reagan is, and since I'd yet to grow a nice, liberal mind of my own, I would have whole-heartedly agreed, but I wasn't going to agree for much longer, and he was missing one of these fleeting chances by not being there.
So then my Mom said "shoot" and the room started to smell like nail polish remover and before you knew it something else came on, like "Growing Pains" or "Family Ties" and Ronald Reagan was gone.
Goodbye, Ronald Reagan, and summer, and being 11.
Posted by me at 06:59 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 05, 2004
Revenge of the Renter's Remorse!
No fabulous apartment. Back to square 1: we will pay a moderate sum for a nice (but not fabulous) apartment.
C and I have also confirmed that we are both clinically insane. Before this ordeal it was just me. It's comforting to know that C is also a complete pyscho.
Special thanks to J & D, the older siblings I never had, the kind of siblings who went to all those crazy parties in high school and threw up in Mom's station wagon so when I turned 15 Mom wouldn't let me out of the house and I was forced to languish in teen not-quite-a-big-dork but not-cool-enough-to-party-on-thursday-night obscurity, the kind of siblings who then grew up to rent fabulous (but way too expensive!) apartments and who subsequently moved to cheaper, suburban but still very nice apartments, and can warn me about the dangers of living in an expensive apartment and having to put the hundred or so odd bottles of wine you buy a month on a credit card instead of paying in cash because you don't have any cash because it's all going to the expensive fabulous apartment! One thing about J & D, though, is that they still drink on Thursday nights and they're still cooler than me.
Seriously--thanks for listening.
Posted by me at 01:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 03, 2004
Renter's Remorse
As you may or may not know (or as you may or may not give a damn about), C and I have been looking for a new apartment. The reasons are myriad:
(actually, the reasons are only 3, but that's ok)
1. Williamsburg. Must. Leave. Williamsburg.
2. Waaaaaaaay too much linoleum.
3. My income has turned C into a huge snob, and I already was a snob before my income.
So, we've been looking further south in brooklyn, for apartments with hardwood floors and dishwashers and actual closets that have actual doors and are deep enough to support actually hangers--you know, all the crap normal people have who don't rent in NYC. We have seen many, many apartments. Many, many crappy apartments. So we bumped what we'd pay up by about $500 and saw a very nice apartment. Very, very nice. And we got it and can move in August 1st. This very nice apartment has wood floors, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two skylights, four big closets, a dishwasher, an actual WASHER AND DRYER, new appliances, and is on the third floor of a townhouse on a quiet tree lined block.
Fuck you I know I sound like I'm channeling a broker. I can't help it after all this.
I can't wait.
But god, how I feel ill whenever I think about how much it costs.
But dammit all, I've lived like crap for 8 years now, from dorms to student tenements to small studios and back to a hipster tenement. Don't I deserve stainless steel appliances for a monthly rent that could rent me a 2,500 square foot house in metro Detroit with a pool and my own Columbian maid to pick up the used sweat towels from the squash court installed in the finished basement?
I sure hope so.
Posted by me at 06:09 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack