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I made it to boston!

celebrated my arrival a la one midnight feast with my two new roommates -- cold glasses of white yellowtail and doughy Levain monster cookies at the kitchen counter. last night, kate and maggie and I drank reisling on the roof at fiores in the north end. beautiful cool night, replete with skeezy 50 year old Italian men, and a between-bar bit stop for huge slices of north end pizza, which we devoured sitting on the curb of the street just after midnight.

this town is going to suit me just fine.

monkey in the middle

you buy new furniture. sign a new lease. fill cardboard boxes with linens, measuring cups, memories.

you're with boys. you hold something iced and dry in your left hand, your right free, unfamiliarly, to swoop out. it's been so long since you've held yourself up to strangers. you hold it iced and dry. it's late and footloose is blaring; you're breezy and happy and singing.

it's 4am, a wild hour to return to the scene of domestication. the refrigerator buzzes in the quiet. next to stacks of cardboard boxes: soft familiar hair, loved flannel pajamas (a Christmas gift, you recall, two years ago) and cut to the chase and comfort. no explaining, because you both know. it's dark, and it's close.

taped boxes tangled into feet and fuzzy pajamas. you can't pack it all up, but you know you can't take it with you. but for now it's monkey in the middle.

it's too easy

I have been having ridiculous quantities of fun in my last 10 days here in the city...I guess when the objective is to see all sorts of people and drink large quantities of alcohol in fun places it's pretty hard to avoid living it up.

I think I may have packed more fun into the last week than I have into the past three years. no kidding.

felt like a relaxed Parisian over glasses of wine at the wooden candlelit bar at V-bar (http://nymag.com/listings/bar/v_bar); a sophisticated new yorker at the posh bar at Bin 71; shared sloppy po-boys at a cajun joint with a bunch of friends; fled the humidity drinking cold coronas outside watching the yachts at the boat basin cafe on the husdon.

lots of escaping the apartment, crashing with friends and dogs and cats on sofas and futons and air mattresses - who ever knew beers and an air mattress could be so great? feeling loved by my friends, laughing all the time, feeling young, loving living here again. it feels like a crime to leave it all.

let the good times roll

it's been a busy weekend. spent a delicious, rainy friday night tucked away with a group of friends in an garlicky west village italian cafe... after dinner, katie and I wandered downtown, to this place: http://cocoabarnyc.com/index2.html. Could there be a better concept than comfortable chairs, chocolate, and alcohol? four glasses of Riesling, three bon bons, and one peanut butter moo later, katie and I were in pretty fabulous moods.

I went to an african music festival and saw the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars (http://www.sierraleonesrefugeeallstars.com/) play in Prospect Park yesterday. It's touching to hear these guys and think about how they managed to survive the very worst that the world has to offer. People constantly amaze me with with their capacity to pull through things that seem absolutely impossible. Brooklyn is such a funky place for a concert like this - everybody's moving and grooving and swaying, and people look ridiculous and nobody cares one bit. I was grooving with the boys from Sierra Leone, and it felt good.

back in the big city

I'm back in Manhattan. Showing my face in the office, selling my furniture, organizing the last of my things before the big move to Boston.

It's funny how after living here for five years I managed to become completely un-acclimatized to the city after two weeks in Boston. I came to a dead stop when I saw a guy wandering around with a cardboard box on his head in Penn Station. Ah, now I remember... New York City.

But I will say that the first order of business upon my return was to order a big sushi delivery dinner. A boy on a bike on your doorstep with crunchy spicy tuna rolls. That I will miss every single day.

don't give me park avenue

For the past two weeks I've been working from home, from my very new home in boston in fact. Woke up this morning to the sound of rain pummeling the roof like hail, and wasn't surprised to find in my inbox a string of impatient emails from my colleagues in new york announcing that they would be quite late, because they were stuck with hoards of wet, angry, rainy new yorkers waiting for the 1 train, the 6 train, the B train... the L, F, 2, 3 and A, C, E trains.

then we got this email:

Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007
8:59 AM
To: [entire firm]
Subject: MTA Alerts

As most of you know by now there are some serious problems with transportation today. The following is the list of alerts from the MTA website
http://www.mta.info/alert/alertnyct.htm
Due to severe flooding throughout the subway system, there are extensive delays on all subway lines. Customers are advised when at all possible to use bus service. The detours are as follows:
The R train is running on the N line in both directions between the Canal Street Station and the DeKalb Avenue Station.
There is no 1 train service in both directions between the Van Cortlandt Park-242nd Street Station and the South Ferry Station.
There is no 2 train service in both directions between the Wakefield-241st Street Station and the Brooklyn College-Flatbush Avenue Station.
There is no 3 train service in both directions between the Harlem-148th Street Station and the New Lots Avenue Station.
There is no A or C train service in both directions.
There is no E train service in both directions between the World Trade Center Station and the Jamaica Center-Parsons-Archer Station.
There is no F train service in both directions between the Jamaica-179th Street Station and the Forest Hills-71st Avenue Station.
There is no F train service in both directions between the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station and the Jay Street-Boro Hall Station.
There is no 4, 5 or 6 train service in both directions between the 149th Street-Grand Concourse Station and the Borough Hall Station.
There is no L train service in both directions between the Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway Station and the 8th Avenue Station.
There is no 42nd Street Shuttle L train service in both directions between the Times Square-42nd Street Station and the Grand Central-42nd Street Station.
There is no J train service in both directions between the Jamaica Center-Parsons-Archer Station and the Broadway Junction Station.
Astoria-bound N trains are running on the D or M lines from the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station to the 36th Street Station.
In addition, due to debris on the track at the Church Avenue Station, the B and Q trains are running on the D or N line in both directions between the DeKalb Avenue Station and the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station.
Please expect delays in service system wide at this time.


I'm positive that even if you've never set foot in new york, you can conclude, correctly, that the above describes basically every. freaking. line. in the city. the email might as well say: you, new yorkers, are trapped like rats in an impossible subway maze; give up and go home. Nothing like missing (and not missing, in the least) a bunch of drenched new yorkers commuting through a city wide subway blackout to make one appreciate the joys of working from home and the delights of good old beantown.

around and around and around

I usually turn into a Big Lazy Runner during the summer. I'll find a breathable tank top, lace on my shoes, and get all ready to go with all the best intentions - and then I step outside. Stymied by a wall of humidity, I get cranky, hot, completely exhausted and lose interest in putting one foot in front of the other after about ten minutes of torture.

but today was one of those rare August days in the city when you open the door and you're greeted, unexpectedly, by post rain coolness -- damp and soggy and imminently runnable. I had dragged myself outside for a very quick two mile jaunt... but - incredibly - at the end of two miles, I wasn't hot, cranky, or exhausted. I was exhilarated. I decided to take advantage and do another two. Then another two. Then - my ipod gave out. but it was a good morning, about 7 miles when all was said and done, which for August for me is a lot.

it's nice to be reminded that the old scrooge who's miserable within 10 minutes one day can fall back in love with her sport the very next morning.

absolut(ion)

martinis & distraction.

the frostier, the more saturated, the quicker the cue to forget. to proceed on: nothing is gone, nothing is lost. it's promise in frosty green, sweetly pink, unyeilding purple.

elixors that erase - well: subdue. couches and rugs and curtains and feet entangled long before midnight. gentle dogs and warm hands. nuzzling into a blue checkered collar.

Cold pink, cold purple, cold green. Disolving, falling, into a new sweet.

Sophie

there is the most sweet and gentle golden retriever next door. Sophie. she is the first love of the three boys in the family who are now my age who grew up with her. they discovered a tumor on her paw last month and amputated it to save her. last week they found out that the tumor spread anyways and is in her lungs and her heart and pancreas. so they brought her home to die.

she follows the dad around the yard with her white bandaged paw. the family cancelled plans to go away for the summer so they could stay with her while she dies. out the window you see a flash of white bandage, red collar, and yellow fur and then the dad and sophie puttering together. she won't let him out of her sight. it's the saddest and sweetest thing I've seen in a long time.

Let the games begin

I spent the summer of 2001 as an intern for the Olympic Planning Committee for the Salt Lake Winter Games. If only I knew then what I know now. The job was 9a (...or, erh, 10) to 5p. My boss bought us lunch all of the time. People were excited to come to work because we were working for the Olympics, and what's cooler than that? Every night after work I drove back up, up, up the winding I-80 into the mountains of Park City where I was renting a little cottage built into the side of Park City mountain. It had a sunny porch for drinking Riesling and an attached sunroom with a big old jacuzzi. I went trail running in the mountains, and I rode my mountain bike on the rail trail, and I hung out at crunchy ski bum coffee shops.

funny how I had no idea that summer when I was carting my little toyota up and down those hills how good I had it. trite, but bad bosses, difficult times, expesive lunches, and cramped apartments serve a purpose. thanks to all that - when you get to your little house on a hill you know it.