god watches my life on television

The Weirdest, Craziest Fad Diets Of All Time

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:56:24 -0400

The Weirdest, Craziest Fad Diets Of All Time:

Swimsuit season is right around the corner, which means the pressure to get the “perfect” bod is on

sad cheerleader: 10 Things Daria Taught Me About Life

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:53:19 -0400

sad cheerleader: 10 Things Daria Taught Me About Life:

The late 90’s animated MTV series, Daria, made cynicism and snarkiness cool. Let’s be honest - she’s the original sad cheerleader (OSC?), paving the way for all those who came after her. AND she taught many of us lifelong lessons, like:

1) Coffee = God

2) High School, People, Life -…

Top 5 Reasons Why Take Your Child to Work Day Should be Abolished

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:54:26 -0400

1.) Your team will have to babysit your spawn while you take phone calls, attend meetings, go to the bathroom, get coffee, eat your lunch, or step away from your desk for any reason whatsoever. You’ve put them in an uncomfortable situation because they feel beholden to you, but are NOT into your child at all. Therefore, they will hate you, and probably feel like this:

2.) Your still-single boss, obviously envious of the living proof that you are definitely not single, will be reminded of her lonely, man-less march towards death on an hourly basis, just like this chick:

And she will hate you.

3.) The people who sit around you, quietly minding their own business and trying to complete ~~assignments~~ g-chat conversations in a timely fashion DO NOT appreciate the yelling and screaming done by your uncontrollable child. Especially when aforementioned yelling and screaming is in two different languages. Even more so when said child throws things at their heads. Before 10 am. Those bitches will DEFINITELY hate you. (Hint, I’m talking about me)

4.) Did you push your dog out of your vagina? No? Then you should NOT be taking it to take your CHILD to work day. Feel free to bring him on Take Your Shitzu To Work Day, though. And do yourself a favor, rip that stupid bow out of your dog’s fur before he gets beat up in the dog park.

5.) You think you are seriously getting anything done today with your snotty, gap toothed, adorable gift from God running around, yelling, “MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY” every 5 minutes? Chalk this one up to “I should have stayed in bed watching Scandal” because that’s how much you are accomplishing today. Until, of course, your little tot tires his or herself out and looks like this

stay tuned for more #whitegirlrants.

now, back to digging through my bag of jelly belly’s for buttered popcorn.

"Miss Rhode Island, please describe your idea of a perfect date."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:37:59 -0400

“Miss Rhode Island, please describe your idea of a perfect date.”

- (via sadcheerleader)

enjoy, you fucking asshats.

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:41:26 -0400

enjoy, you fucking asshats.

oh, samesies.

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:25:00 -0400

oh, samesies.

Top 5 Ways to Pretend You're Busy at Work

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:04:04 -0400

We’ve all been there. I’ve had an office job for like two minutes and I already have figured out the best ways to surreptitiously do whatever you want when you think no one is looking. Although probably they are. I will most likely be fired sooner rather than later, but that’s neither here nor there, because I am being paid slave wages, and am always a little bit nervous that one of my higher-ups is going to ask me to change their bathwater.

1.) Keep your inbox full screen. When all else fails, you can quickly click on it and it will look like you are “doing emails”. Whatever that means.

2.) Engage in fake phone conversations in which you say “yes” a lot. Also throw in grown up jargon such as “I’ll CC you on the email” and “Let’s touch base next week to confirm”.

3.) Constantly put your hand to your head and sigh while making a disgruntled face.

4.) Drink lots of water so that you constantly have to pee. Walk quickly to and from the bathroom so you look stressed and therefore very important.

5.) Don’t make any friends. It does not help your cause if people around you know what a slacker you really are. Plus it ruins your street cred.

azizisbored: Damn, this is a very niche joke and I’m definitely...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:38:13 -0400

azizisbored:

Damn, this is a very niche joke and I’m definitely in the niche!

gq:

Happy National Grilled Cheese Day!

an apology to commuters

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:21:00 -0400

To those of whom work between the hours of 9 and whatever:

I apologize for judging you. I projected a sincere distaste for those of you who rise before 8 am, get on a bus or a train, and go to your place of employment with 8 zillion other human beings. I felt morally superior because I had the capability of sleeping till 10 and taking a two hour yoga class smack in the middle of the day. I got to see sunlight whenever she chose to beam her joyful rays on our silly heads. I reveled in that glory. And now, I am one of you.

Having crossed over to the dark side of corporate America, I can now with full confidence say karma is a bitch, and I’m getting back every bit of judgement I passed over the last three years. Tenfold.

Amidst this crowd of immigrants, yuppies, school children, working moms, iPad-toting businessmen, I struggle though the throngs of people like a lost sad salmon swimming upstream. And let me tell you, that shit is rough.

I live an hour + outside the city right now. I have to take four trains to get to work. This is having a very negative effect on my jaw, as my inner New York rage rears its ugly head, and I find myself gritting my teeth and clenching my jaw to stop myself from shouting expletives at little old ladies and bums before 8:30 in the morning. (Spoiler alert, it doesn’t always work.)

So I’m sorry, 9-5ers. Sorry I judged you, and thought I was way better than you for commuting in off hours. And homeless guys who throw people onto trains, I sort of get it now. Please don’t let me end up like this:

I probably have a beer hidden somewhere in my giant overnight bag that I thoroughly enjoy smacking into over-privileged commuters.

Love,

Moi.

freakin weekend.

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:42:00 -0500

Borrowing from the illustrious #sadcheerleader’s terminology, I spent my weekend in the FUPA of New York City - weird sort of midtown east. On Friday night, my college aged sister was with her friends at a bar called Copia, the pinnacle of Bridge and Tunnel madness. We actually managed to have a blast, despite the fact that our father picked us up like we were still in high school and called me out on the fact that I couldn’t complete a sentence without using the word ‘yo’. Alas, that is what three Makers’ and no food will do to a girl, yo.

Oddly enough, the following evening my man was going out to a bar in the same area for a friend’s birthday. He had Saturday night off, a rare occurrence in the restaurant industry, and I was stuck at work till 12:30. It was raining, there were no cabs to be found, and I was dead sober. To my crestfallen surprise, my man was at THE SAME BAR I had been to the previous evening. Which charged me a $10 cover and a $5 mandatory coat check. Needless to say, I was in a foul mood. Makers briefly quelled my post-work irritation, but the night did not end without a stupid fight that lasted till four am, resulting in these being sent to my job the following morning:

Post work and a long talk about relationship stuff (blah) the boy and I went out to dinner to rekindle our romance, and it was the BEST decision we have made in weeks.

Calliope is a quaint, lovely restaurant in the East Village with a menu that should literally drip butter. Everything we ate there was rich and delicious, from beginning to end, in a French style that made my imagination sprint from East Fourth street to Paris. Sadly, the tile and tin decor retracted any sense of warmth emanated from the menu, and in the December cold I wish there was a giant fireplace to combat the steely chill in the restaurant.

We started with Eggs Mayonnaise, a dish reminiscent of deviled eggs, but so much better. The eggs themselves were medium boiled, with a semi-gelatinous yolk, encased in a coat of whipped mayo dotted with chives and celery salt. So simple, yet so tasty.

Our next course was sea urchin toast, which is pretty self explanatory. Creamsicle colored sea urchin on a lightly toasted piece of melt in your mouth bread? Okay. I’ll take it. So did the boy, who is obsessed with sea urchin like a small child is obsessed with toy cars. Adorable.

For a third course, and unfortunately I was too excited to tear into some cottontail to take a photo, was rabbit pappardelle. My boyfriend and I are avid foodies, and on the way to dinner we googled the Pete Wells review in the Times for Calliope, and even though he A) highly recommended this dish and B) said that there was not a tomato in sight, we were still mildly shocked that this was not a bolognese style rabbit ragu. And yet, it didn’t effing matter. The former vegetarian in me was heartbroken at how much the carnivore in me loved this dish. Thick slicks of fat pasta coated in a white wine sauce with garlic and shards of parmesan cheese were interwoven with tender, sweet rabbit meat. It was unreal.

Do you like butter, kids? If you don’t like your cow covered in two inches of beef butter, this is not the place for you. If you don’t like gaining a few pounds for the momentary bliss of dairy-infused beef that would make kosher Jews go WILD, ABORT MISSION CALLIOPE. Just kidding, the veggie friendly chard and sorel gratin we paired it will knock your socks off. All of it fatty, all of it perfectly cooked.

Even though we were beyond stuffed, we could not pass up the opportunity to order the Baba Ah rhum. This light and fluffy cake is split open table side like a surgeon with a scalpel. Hot Venezuelan rum is poured on top, and served with a cold cream whipped all the way through. This was another item that I was too eager to cut into to photograph, but you can take the second avenue subway line to 4th street and find out for yourself.

Hotel lobbies are like human zoos. So much hilarious behavior by people completely unaware they are...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:10:01 -0500

Hotel lobbies are like human zoos. So much hilarious behavior by people completely unaware they are being observed.

fedualist inspired servitude still lives in modern day Italians.

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:58:00 -0500

“RAFAELLO!!!!” “Vieni qui adesso, per favore!” “RAFAAAAEEELLLOOOO!”

My alarm sounded on a brisk mid-October morning, ceaselessly reminding me of the fourteen hour work day that lay ahead, and all that was ringing in my head was her voice. It was a thickly accented Italian one, overwhelmingly musical despite the fact that it was blatantly laced with irritation. The lack of sleep was starting to get to me, and I was constantly remembering things I had failed to do earlier as I lay in bed at night, attempting to fall asleep. Maddeningly enough, I had picked up a habit of hearing Alba bellow even when I was no longer in her presence. I was pretty sure I was losing it.

Two weeks earlier, I had picked up an odd job, as one is wont to do in this fragile economy, through a good friend from high school. The situation was this: my friend Kaylin had a full time job at an advertising agency here in New York. Her boss was a zany, lovable, and erratic cartoon character with good intentions, wild curly hair, and a strangely friendly relationship with her husband’s ex-wife. It was all very progressive. Kaylin’s boss Barbara wanted to award her a few vacation days so that she could assist her friend, who was also her husband’s ex-wife, to organize her belongings in preparation for a huge move back to Italy. Kaylin was already swamped with her job at the agency, and delegated the position to yours truly, being that the only thing I do during the day is go to the gym and wait for four o’clock to roll around so I can go to my job at the restaurant. It was supposed to be a three day gig, a week at the most, and I would receive a handsome hourly wage in compensation.

Weeks later, I was still waking up at 7 am and trekking all the way up to the Cloisters, which from my Gramercy apartment is basically Mars. It took me over an hour each way to get there, where I spent my mornings assisting Alba with organizing everything from scarves to purses to olive oil, and spent my evenings selling overpriced dead cow to affluent New York elitists. It was an odd job in every sense of the word.

The first week was obviously rough as we were just getting to know each other, and she was exceptionally particular about EVERYTHING. I made sure to dress really well that first week because she had worked in fashion her whole life and I ultimately wanted her to like me. She hugged me the first time we met, and thanked me profusely for coming to her rescue. Then we delved into sorting shoes.

Knowing how particular Alba is, Barbara insisted on meeting me to make sure that I would be up to the task of being Alba’s slave for the next week. Flailing her arms about and changing topics every ten seconds, I managed to keep up with Barbara long enough for her to decide that I would do. Barbara had told me that ultimately Alba needed the most help in parting with the superfluous items in her wardrobe that she had accumulated over the years. For example, she would have four white tee shirts of different varieties, so I would help her choose one and toss the rest so that moving would not be quite so heavy. She said that “managing” Alba would be the most challenging part of my job.

That was the understatement of the year. Prying accessories from Alba’s thin, nimble fingers was my most challenging task, but once she came to the realization that I was right and she didn’t need TWO pairs of crushed velvet pull on boots, she was extremely generous and gave me everything she was planning on throwing away, if I wanted them. I received so many staples of my current wardrobe from working for Alba that I continually get compliments on to this day, ranging from a beautiful pair of leather knee high boots straight from Florence to a faux chinchilla bucket hat and a gorgeous lightweight neon red summer sweater. All by Italian designers, of course.

The most interesting things about working for Alba were the stereotypes of Italians the she embodied. One of which was her not-so-subtle obsession with wealth and status. She constantly spoke as if she were poor, even though she eventually told me that her move across the pond was costing upwards of $30,000. She was also obsessed with getting a good deal, especially through friends of hers who were well off. She often spoke of one of her friends who owned a restaurant on the Upper East Side who never gave her a bill. Similarly, she had another pair of friends who owned a gigantic mansion on the Upper East Side that had an elevator and three floors.

She spoke of her own house in the Hamptons which they eventually had to rent and then sell because they could no longer afford its upkeep. “My usbannd, ‘ e is an academic, an inteelectyual, you know, a joooournaleest, always with hees head in thee news.” Her voice still rings in my head as I write this, a year later. You could tell she was partly bragging that her husband (her third) was intelligent, but mostly she was complaining that he could never give her the kind of New York elite status that she not so secretly yearned for.

It was no longer economically feasible for them to remain in New York, so they were going back to the Motherland. Despite the fact that they were both technically retired, they still worked. Once they moved their belongings into their new house in Livorno, Rafaello would live in Rome for six months, working for whatever company or news organization he was freelancing for at the time. She would return to her on again, off again position of Dame di Compagnieri, a gorgeous word for elderly companion. Leave it to Italians to come up with a title for being an old lady’s shuffleboard partner. She essentially spent weeks on end with the mother of one of her rich (duh) gay New York/Italian friends, who not only paid her but put her up in beautiful apartments in Milan and Portofino, along the Italian Riviera.

Rough Life.

Our relationship was tenuous at first, and it was difficult to tell if she liked me or was just being polite. Like my great grandmother, you could never tell from a Northern Italian woman if a compliment was truly a compliment. I got better at reading her, of understanding her sense of style and her OCD packing neuroses, and she lightened up and began to find my American anecdotes and my youthful naivete amusing. I studied abroad in Rome, my entire family was Italian, my tattoo is Italian, and my mother had worked in the fashion industry her whole life. We both liked eating healthy, and every day she would make me tea and we would have a mid-morning snack of kiwis and almonds. At around 10:30 she would announce, “Chellllsea, eet ees time for our kiwi moment, NO?” Together we lamented the travesties of New York, but this was all a ruse to hide our deep rooted love affair with the city we called home.

Alba had also traveled all over the world, something I was saving up to do, and she often regaled me with anecdotes from “this time in Thailand” and “this trip to Uruguay”. She knew I was planning on traveling to Southeast Asia in the spring and had all sorts of connections and suggestions to share with me. She had already given me so much that I felt uncomfortable asking her to connect me with her friend in Bangkok, but the gesture was sweet and altruistic. She constantly invited me to her new house in Livorno where there would be “SO much LIIIIGHHTT!!!” We were becoming friends.

Her son lived in Milan and she didn’t see him that often, and I think that with her husband constantly absorbed in his work she was rather lonely. She would say, “Chelllllsea, you are expenseeeve but you are SUCH a positeev person that I vedddy much enjoy your company. It is worth it for me too ‘ave you ‘ere.” Every vowel took two seconds to escape her mouth, and she often broke off mid-sentence to yell something quickly to her husband. My menial Italian was coming back to me, and I could usually make out the gist of what she was trying to say. Still, she had this way of being nice and mean at the same time. In between ridiculing what a terrible packer I was (Packeeng is truuuuullyyyy an ART, Chelllseaa) she would compliment the tank top I was wearing that day.

At the end of our first ten days together, she insisted on my coming to her basement apartment five days a week up until the day of the move. The move was the first week in November. I began this project at the beginning of October. I could not imagine how Kaylin would have been able to do it. I was starting to wonder how I would do it. The fourteen hour days were starting to wear on me, and there wasn’t enough coffee in all of Starbucks in New York to get used to that kind of schedule.

The thing was, she was starting to grow on me. The peaks and valleys of her dramatized vocal inflections which I had initially found so irritating were starting to become natural to me, like the blaring of sirens and the honking of horns. I was even adjusting to the neighborhood in which she lived. When I stepped off the A Train at the Cloisters, fresh air sharply invaded my nostrils and trees abundantly dotted Fort Tyron Park.

The cliffs the park was built on overlooked the bustling West Side Highway and the sun glinting off the sparkling Hudson River, and evoked memories of a relationship with nature that had been long forgotten, being that the only fresh smell that pervaded the air near my apartment were bagels and urine.

I was even starting to take her fashion advice. Little bits of the wisdom she had begun to impart on me worked their way into my brain over the weeks, implanting themselves without my consent. “Chelllsea, a good accessories collacshun will carry you SO far. Your clothesss can be modest and basic if you ‘ave thee right accessorieees.”

She may have been picky and have more than slight OCD, but she was also right. She also encouraged me to be bolder, to own my fashion choices. She gave me this floppy orange bucket hat that she loved but no longer wanted. “Weeth a seemple, classeec black dress you will look FABULOUS!” Whenever she spoke like this she reminded me of one of Carrie’s friends from Sex and the City who was only on for one episode and had a crazy Italian accent and a lot of foreign boyfriends.

The moment I knew she was truly affecting me was when she let me in enough to show true emotion. We were folding summer sweaters in her kitchen when she held out a thin white pullover with brown leather accents. “Thees is SO Ralph Lauren, eet is one of those peeeeces I find to be SO American, I bought eet een a leetle boutique in the Ham-ptons. I weell meess the Hamptons so much, and New York, and….” And. And. And then. She started to cry. The Northern Italian Ice Queen was crying in her kitchen. Do I make a joke? Cry with her? Run? Instead, I rubbed her back and told her it would all be okay, something I had no right to promise. “It will be alright, Alba. You will come back and visit. You have friends here, so many people who love you and care about you. Not to mention you are going back to Italy! You have a wonderful, kind old lady who is depending on you for help and company, someone who needs you. And think about how nice it will be to have a whole bright house instead of this dark basement apartment! She cracked a smile at that; her apartment was one of the things she would not miss about New York. “You are right, of course, such a positeev person, there will be SO much LIIIIGHT in the house in Livorno”, instead of these daaark and dim apartment. I am so glad to ‘ave you here.” Oddly enough, so was I.

Dear Holiday Tourists, If you are going to insist upon clogging my city’s streets, could you...

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:48:58 -0500

Dear Holiday Tourists,

If you are going to insist upon clogging my city’s streets, could you PLEASE not do it while walking four deep at 3 miles an hour while actual residents are trying to commute home.

Many thanks,
A stereotypical disgruntled New Yorker.

a twenty-something guide to the presidential debate

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:30:00 -0400

Like most of America, (well, except for Yankee fans, Red Sox fans, and South Park fans) I tuned in to watch the first presidential debate last night, something I have been looking forward to for weeks. I was ultimately ~~delighted~~ ~~confounded~~ disappointed.

Let’s talk openings. Obama’s attempt at humanizing his responses went over like a lead balloon. It’s great that you and Michelle have been married for a while, but this is the future of our nation we’re talking about. Your daughters’ existence would have been a more palpable choice for personal anecdotes, not your marriage or your grandma pulling herself up by her bootstraps. And let’s face it homeboy, you look exhausted. Maybe skipping an early morning workout or two so that you can sleep in is not the worst idea in the world.

On the contrary, Debate Romney (not to be confused with Debate Barbie) appeared strong, youthful, and vigorous, with an air of confidence we have not yet seen thus far in the campaign. His attitude was swarthy and filled with a swagger that seems to have come from left field, although this is obviously an advantage considering no one knows who Romney actually is. Maybe money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure can buy you great debate prep. Also, I really wanted to muss his hair.

Let’s talk moderator.

Jim Lehrer, what the hell happened to you? While you were never quite the life of the party (News Hour is a GREAT solution to insomnia), you have really embraced mummification in your later years. Expect numerous phone calls from the Real Housewives imploring who did your botox. More importantly, you let yourself be railroaded by the candidates. There is talk of this chick moderating the next one:

One of the elements of this debate that I was most struck by was that the candidates were perfectly polite to each other, but shit all over Jim Lehrer. Leave the half dead alone, guys. If you want to make great television, why don’t you argue with each other?

Let’s talk content. I, like most people in my age group, were trying to chug alcohol to buzz words like “deficit”, “debt”, “jobs”, “economy”, and “trillion”, but even when paying attention to the TV screen and not my twitter feed I found it challenging to comprehend. Here are some things I pulled out of Romney’s answers (because he hammered the same sentences over and over again):

-Size of federal government should be reduced so that each state basically governs itself. By allotting each state a piece of the federal budget in proportion to its size, we reduce the deficit. How and by how much is unclear. Just like where his tan went.

-Slicing the military budget, decreasing Medicare and Medicaid, repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and potentially privatizing Social Security are all included in the Romney plan. Don’t worry though, they won’t affect anyone approaching retirement or those who are already retired, it’ll just be your children who suffer further down the line from the abdication of a program we have been paying into our whole lives.

-He said he would aim to create jobs, to slash the unemployment rate, and yet he compared the U.S. economy to SPAIN. SPAIN, people. If you’ve read the newspaper lately, you’ll know that the Catalan population is looking to secede and oh yeah, they’re approaching a Great Depression and may have to leave the euro. Also, HOW he is going to create jobs is still unclear.

-He also said he would fire this guy:

Which is sort of like how Obama got Bin Laden. Give or take a few feathers.

Obama, on the other hand, mucked and muddled his answers, looking shaky and lacking his normal level of confidence and oratorical mastery. Granted, homeboy has a country to run, and hasn’t been holed up for as long as Romney has practicing the same questions over and over. He’s been dealing with international crises, the age old chestnut of foreign policy, which unfortunately did not make an appearance in this domestically driven debate.

The way Obama has run the country these past few years has not been perfect, and he is the first to admit that, but he has done the best he can with the hand he has been dealt. He has not had to abolish the social programs that the great presidents of our past have worked to create to help Americans struggling to make ends meet. His vow to continue trying to make the country better, to work with the Hatfield/McCoy behavior of a partisan Republican congress, to slash unemployment and create jobs, to give this country the hope he promised us four years ago, was not as strong as it used to be. At least we know what his goals are. You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.

Let’s talk about the severe lack of any social issues in the first debate. While dancing around each other and tossing out overarching themes about the trillion dollar deficit, no one mentioned women’s issues once. Or gay marriage. Or abortion. Anyone noticing a theme? We all knew this was going to be a race based on the economy, because the Republican candidate has been a business man his whole life. This is a man who allegedly knows money and how to manage it. My question is, does he (and the Republican party) know that the economy is but one facet of the presidency?

Romney may have appeared stronger and more concise in this debate, but let’s see how he fares when it’s time to talk foreign policy. Ultimately, the man in the oval is the man with the launch codes.

Do you ever walk down the street, not rushing, and feel completely content to exist exactly where...

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 15:31:17 -0400

Do you ever walk down the street, not rushing, and feel completely content to exist exactly where you are?

It’s this time of year, right before fall. Change is in the air and you can feel something magical is about to happen. It just has to.

The Door Bitch: You know you've become a foodie when...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:22:33 -0400

The Door Bitch: You know you've become a foodie when...:

thedoorbitch:

You can smell truffle oil from miles away.

You bring obscure spices to your friends houses to cook dinner.

Your DVR is full of food network shows.

Your DVR is also full of Man Vs. Food episodes.

You stay in on Tuesdays to watch CHOPPED.

You discuss recipes with strangers instead of talking…

city woes

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:18:00 -0400

city grime, city heat

city victories, city defeat

city stifling, city sweat

city demands have not been met

city wanting, city needing

city just keeps on repeating

city can’t, city won’t

city shouldn’t, city don’t

city yearns, city grows

city sorrows, city woes

city lunges, city tries

city never says goodbye

city fosters, city cares,

city pushes, promises, swears

city oppresses, city strives

city makes you feel alive

two if by sea

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:41:00 -0400

It’s amazing how little it takes to make you feel humble. While walking home amid the torrential downpours that engulfed New York City today, reminiscent of that age old biblical flood that prompted Noah to build that silly ark of his, I had a strange thought:

I couldn’t hear anything.

Somewhere off in the distance, yes, my irritatingly sensitive hearing could pick up on the too-familiar sounds of sirens. But that was only if I was truly, truly trying to hear something. What struck me more was that it took howling winds, crashing thunder, hail, and the nearly painful beat down of water against pavement to feel peacefully alone with my thoughts. In a city where noise is abundant, where do we turn to hear ourselves think?

It’s moments like this where I truly appreciate the summertime, when my air conditioner drowns out the yelling of bums, the wailing of sirens, the angst-ridden honking of horns. The what-ups and how-you-doins of all the people on my block who (apparently) are gainfully unemployed. The scent of baking bread (more specifically, the glorious goodness that is Ess-a bagel), the smell of coffee brewing below my apartment at Dunkin’ Donuts, the smell of cleaning fluids and God knows what else that emanates from the dry cleaner below. More importantly, it forces me to wonder what life would be like in a different city…or at least a quieter neighborhood.

The almost ceremonial change in the weather also turned my thoughts to how much more there is out there in the world. It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day tribulations of our own petty existence and forget that something as simple as rain is enough to wipe us out. I had my own existential battle with mother nature in Thailand (see below posts), and today called up some memories I would rather shove aside.

Like I said before, it is humbling to stand before sky and rain, thunder and lightning, and know that there are forces in this world much larger than you. And people out there who do not have umbrellas, or homes, or the sweet serene hum of an air conditioning unit to lull them to sleep. It is something to be grateful for, despite nearly falling on my ass three times on my way home from work, rainwater sloshing between my freshly pedicured toes. Despite the fact that I had to stop three times to empty water from my now-ruined flats.

I AM UNDETERRED.

I have air conditioning and running water. Life is good.

(Thanks, Nas.)

Happy accidents

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 15:51:00 -0400

As the season of fun steams up the island of Manhattan, all the goals I had made post-Asia are slipping a bit further from my ineffectual fists. My dreams of renting a house in the Hamptons are nothing more than a pipe dream, a New York City fairy-tale we little girls hear about but never quite reach. My dreams of procuring a “real job” become slightly less exact as I roam about the city by day and earn my rent by night.

Waiting tables. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Weekday trips to the beach, expensive happy hours that are never discounted, and morning classes at the gym are not the worst thing in the world. Why do I want a 9-5 again? Oh right.

Purpose. Salary. Benefits. Brain Stimulation. Weekends. Normalcy.

All these things meld together, like the toppings on my overpriced Pinkberry frozen yogurt, which I am enjoying on this blissful sunny Thursday afternoon as I procrastinate what I should be doing in my free time.

Emails. Job applicationss. Rewriting cover letters. Riiiigghtt.

I slurp up the last of my strawberry fro-yo, scrape the residual honey off of my eight year old fingers, and hurry home to shower before starting the next seven hours of servitude. My calling. My purpose.

Those Avenue Q douches were right. Every word of that damn musical plays through my mind on a semi-regular basis. ”Iiiiiii gotta find my purposeeeee.” Purpose. HA.

In more exciting and less wallowy news, while walking to obtain aforementioned Pinkberry, my boyfriend and I witnessed an epic NYC car accident in the middle of third avenue. A truck had cut off a minivan, or vice versa, you never really know who is at fault in these things. A 300 pound, sweaty man with matted hair and a chubby, dirt streaked face walks out of the driver’s side of the truck, screaming, as a malnourished yet paradoxically buff black woman jumps out of the drivers seat of the minivan. She was also screaming.

“LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO MY CAR YOU FUCKING FUCK. FUCK YOU, MAN. FUCK YOU.” As she proceeds to get in his face, I start to speed up, not wanting to get mixed up in the madness. My manfriend feels differently. He grabs my hand and holds me in place as if we were in Bryant Park watching the Monday night movie of the week. When the woman’s large African significant other jumped out of the car, I knew shit was getting serious, so I pulled Josh across the street with me. Another bystander yelled out, “I wouldn’t stand in the middle there, that guy has a gun.” We literally could have been smack in the middle of a Third avenue cross fire.

Thanks, stranger. And thank you restaurant industry, for providing me with daytime with which to enjoy my life. Here’s to the positives.

Happy Thursday.

"Nilla wafers remind me of CCD, and they just don’t do it for me, kind of like Catholicism..."

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:52:56 -0400

““Nilla wafers remind me of CCD, and they just don’t do it for me, kind of like Catholicism never did.””

- Kaylin Tavolacci