(Working Title) Risk-Free Music

Yesterday afternoon, a co-worker posted this blog entry from Nick Carr to his Facebook page. The moral of the story, as Carr tells is, is that the accessibility of music and the abundance of it have flattened the experience of it: Music isn't as magical as it used to be; discovery isn't as powerful.

Toward the end of the blog post, Carr references a comment from John Taylor (the drummer of Duran Duran, and the author of an article that inspired Carr's blog post) that tracking down an album used to be a quest of sorts, and, "as with all quests, there were risks involved." I guess he's talking about the risk of wasting your time and energy biking 10 miles to the nearest record shop and blowing 10 bucks on something that sucks? But that's hardly the stuff of great adventure, you know? Those aren't the kinds of risks that are going to heighten dramatically the intensity of an experience; they are the kinds of risks, though, that will keep you from discovering something that might be great.

Because, do you remember how difficult it used to be to discover something new and awesome? Unless a band made it big, it was usually a matter of luck. Contrary to popular belief, my favorite band is not Bon Jovi; it's The Tragically Hip, and the only reason I know about them is because in 1999, I dated a Canadian guy named Scott who loved them, and I loved him, so I attempted to love everything he loved in a youthful misinterpretation of what it means to love someone. (Fortunately for me, Scott had good taste.) My favorite band to see live, meanwhile, is Great Big Sea, and the only reason I know about them is because they opened for The Tragically Hip at a free show they played in Central Park on Canada Day in 2000. Those two bands have brought me so much happiness over the last decade, but I'd probably never had learned about either of them if I hadn't met Scott.

But then you have these days: I had the most intense music experience of my entire life at a concert I attended this past summer: Dave Rawlings' guitar solo during his cover of Bob Dylan's song Queen Jane Approximately during The Big Surprise Tour's stop at Beacon Theatre. I went to this concert because I wanted to see Gillian Welch, who was going to accompany Dave Rawlings at the show. And I'd started listening to Gillian Welch because I'd heard a band called The Great Atomic Power cover some of her songs. The Great Atomic Power was nothing more than a temporary gathering of some musicians in Toronto to play a charity gig (and then a few gigs stemmed from that), but someone recorded one of their shows and posted it to archive.org. I heard the show because two of the musicians in The Great Atomic Power used to play together in Moxy Fruvous (In case you've been living under a rock and haven't heard, I'm a little obsessed.), so the show turned up when I searched for Fruvous shows on archive.org.

Now, there are two things about this story which speak to why the way we experience music today is kind of awesome:

- First, I never would have had that experience if I couldn't listen to music risk-free. I might have heard that Great Atomic Power show because fans have been taping and sharing shows for ages, but I never would have gone out and purchased one of Gillian Welch's CDs to see if her versions of her own songs were as great as the ones The Great Atomic Power played. I was curious enough to fire up my Napster-to-Go membership and listen to her music, but I wasn't curious enough to blow 10 bucks on the endeavor. "Those are the kinds of risks that keep you from discovering something that might be great." (And in an old-school-style discovery, Justin Townes Earle was the opening act at that Dave Rawlings performance. Even if you just sort of know me, you've probably heard me talk about that guy. Just an incredibly gifted songwriter and one damn charismatic showman.)

- Second, it wasn't walking to Samsondale Music or begging my Mom to take me to the Mall (my version of John Taylor's 10-mile bike ride), but the road to that concert was still a journey, and it was fun! A couple weeks ago, I spent an entire Saturday afternoon reading Bob Hallett's blog about music, searching the internet for the songs he described, and listening to them. I listened to probably 50 songs that day; some I liked, some not so much, but all were interesting to listen to, especially through the lens Bob laid over them, and the whole process was just plain fun. It was geeky and researcher-y and more or less right up my alley in those respects; and one of the bands I heard that day -- The Decemberists -- is the most exciting and interesting band I've heard in years. I've devoured their music over the last several weeks, and I cannot wait until the next time they are in New York City.

And how fucking awesome is it that I can link right to all these amazing discoveries I've made so anyone whose interest is piqued can watch and listen for themselves to see if the things that speak to me speak to them, too? Unless you are young and hopelessly in love with me, you probably won't pedal your way to the record shop to see if you feel the same way about Justin Townes Earle that I do, but you might click on the link in my post to see what you think. And it's fun to share! At least, if you're me, it's really fucking fun to share! I don't sort-of like things. I don't bother. I like things a lot, and I dislike things a lot, and everything in between doesn't really exist. So when I find something I like, I'm compelled to tell other people about it. I want to share it with them, and I love that I can. I don't know if you'll listen, but I hope you will. I don't think you'll like everything, but there might be one thing in here that you think is awesome, and you'll see (if your faith has at all been shaken) that music is just as magical as it always was; the power of discovery is just as great.

Recommending The Tragically Hip

[Originally a Facebook post to Kerry]:

You're getting a second chance to see these guys: Thursday night @ Club Nokia. I know my taste in music is suspect, but an entire nation loves this band: If you can't trust me, then at least trust Canada. Gord Downie is an epically talented showman. He is what Bono wishes he could be. There. I said it. Even though I know it's not true. I'm sure Bono is perfectly satisfied being Bono; I doubt he wishes he were anybody other than who he is. But he could have been greater, and he never got there, and that irritates me.

Anyhow. The only downside to this band is that, if Los Angeles Canadians are anything like New York Canadians, there will be five of the biggest guys you've ever seen in your life at this show, built like bears and drunk in that aggressive way that only Canadian men can manage (American men, mercifully, pass out long before they get anywhere near this state.), alternating between tearfully declaring their love for Gord Downie and Canada and picking a fight with someone in your immediate vicinity. It's annoying, but it's part of the scene, apparently. They do have strong stomachs, at least: I've never seen one of them vomit. (This, unfortunately, needs to be said after a very disgusting concert experience I had earlier this year.) So there is that.

(Lack of) Updates from the Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza

Update to Notes on the Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza:

... For those of you (and I know there are many) who were eagerly awaiting some updates on the next stages of the Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza, I'll have you know that I haven't been holding out on you. What I've been holding out on is cleaning my damn apartment. There was a fury of bathroom cleaning ... um, Sunday night, I think? But aside from that, my old roomie arrives in under 24 hours, and my apartment still looks like a bomb went off.

I actually went out last night and purchased giant pink Rubbermaid containers (They didn't have the usual clear ones, and I was desperate.), into which I plan to dump all the shit that currently resides on the floor of my roommate's old bedroom. (And if history is any indication, that is likely where it will stay. Until my apartment collapses in a heap of disrepair. Or I die. Whichever happens first.) The only upside of the mad cleaning dash that will commence around 6p.m. this evening is that it will encourage me to be ruthless. Because let's face it. I'm over 30 now. I'm probably not ever again going to fit into those pants that made my ass look so fantastic when I was 25. And on the off-chance I ever do lose the post-30 poundage, those pants probably aren't the sorts of things that have any business being on the body of someone over the age of 30. No point holding onto them any longer. Into the trash they shall go!

[Note to people who worry about this sort of thing: I would give my under-30 pants to charity, but the city removed all the Salvation Army boxes a couple years ago, I imagine, in a flourish of terrorism prevention. Which, while potentially keeping us all alive, has created complications not unlike the complications resulting from the terrorist prevention-induced removal of all the trash cans from Rockefeller Center at Christmas-time. (No empty coffee cup has ever gone on such a journey as the one my empty Dunkin Donuts cup embarked upon with me during the Last-Minute Christmas Shopping Adventure of 2008. Nary a trash can in sight.) There is simply not, at this point, any time to schedule a Salvation Army pick-up. And I do not, at any point, have the patience nor organizational skills required to schedule a Salvation Army pick-up, so that wasn't ever going to happen anyway.]

Alright. Wish me luck! If there's anything worth posting during my Night-Long Stashing-My-Ridiculous-Shit-Out-Of-Sight Extravaganza, I'll be sure to let you know!

Next Day Update: Discoveries from a Frantic Evening of Cleaning:

1. It turns out that, around 2:30a.m., the bathroom at the Wash World more or less turns into a public bathroom for drunk people who just aren't going to make it from the nearby subway stop back to their apartments. About five minutes after each train rumbled by overhead, a stream of people in various states of alertness stumbled into the Wash World and asked somewhat desperately to use the bathroom. It got a bit comical after awhile!

2. I'm a little irritated with myself for not cleaning my apartment sooner. It took only about three hours to clean "The Forbidden Mess" (so deemed by Joe, whose curiosity about the situation was piqued when I invoked the value of 10 years of friendship to ensure that he wouldn't look behind the guest room door the last time he was here, so embarrassed was I by what was going on in there). Mostly I really just needed to throw shit out.

3. So yeah. Those of you who know me, know that I lost a ton of weight (since gained back, annoyingly!) when I started running marathons in 2003. Like, I actually got pretty skinny. I knew this much. What I didn't know, however, is that I apparently also started dressing like a slut when this occurred. I found a teeniest tiniest little denim skirt last night. Holy crap. I recall emerging from an unfamiliar subway stop in Brooklyn several years ago wearing this skirt and being appalled when the cop whom I'd asked for directions to the bar where I was meeting my friends asked me if I was a stripper. I still don't think that comment was quite appropriate coming from an on-duty cop, but at least I now understand where he was coming from. Good lord.

But yeah, otherwise fairly uneventful! Just talked to my roomie, and she'll be here is about two hours, so hooray!!!

Status Update: Thursday, October 8, 2009

Mary Siobhan O'Brien: worked till 9p.m. tonight, then went to the Target in the Queens Mall and bought a toilet seat. How many things about that sentence make me want to kill myself?

Being Pregnant Does Not Give You Carte Blanche To Act Like An Asshole

Midtown is always a pretty hideous place to find oneself on anything approaching a regular basis. It brings together the worst of what New York City has to offer -- white collar workers with thingstodopeopletoseeplacestobe and clueless tourists with all the time in the world to do stuff like stand around in the middle of the sidewalk and take pictures of stores. However, a couple of times per year, things happen in Midtown which catapult the misery to shocking new levels.

- There's the St. Patrick's Day Parade on 5th Avenue, of course. The masochist in me drags my ass into the office every St. Patrick's Day. And every year, after climbing over drunk people on the sidewalk, wading through pools of vomit and pee, and listening to the same three bagpipe songs all frigging day, I swear to myself that next St. Patrick's Day, I'm going to work from home. But I never do. So I suppose this one is actually my fault.

- But there's also Rockefeller Center at Christmas-time. I can't very well work from home the entire month of December. But God help you if you need to get through that place for any reason during the last month of the year. Mayor Bloomberg can take his "quality of life" initiatives and shove 'em until he implements express lanes for locals who are just trying to frigging get wherever we need to go in that neck of the woods during the entire Christmas season. We don't need to take pictures of the Christmas Tree from every angle, nor stop suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk when the choreographed snowflake crap starts up on the facade of Saks Fifth Avenue. We just need to get wherever we're trying to go. Ugh!!!

- And then there's the U.N. Which is what brings us together today. Because it's in session right now. And in fact, earlier today, President Obama met with Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas. Which is all well and good. Except that, for reasons which never became apparent, the police blocked the entirety of 53rd Street from 1st Avenue to 8th Avenue a couple of hours ago. A period which happened to coincide with what was supposed to be a quick trip to grab a late lunch, but turned into me trapped on the sidewalk a block south of my office. There I stood, while multitudes of people accumulated at each corner. Tourists snapped pictures. Business people cursed under their breath and typed furiously on their BlackBerries. Then, after about 20 minutes of absolutely nothing happening, the police pulled back one barricade at each corner to let pedestrians cross.

Which, as you can imagine, created chaos. Chaos which became even worse for me when it devolved into a total Disney World experience. Those of you who know me know my feelings on Disney World: It's pretty much the most God-forsaken place on the planet. But have you ever had the displeasure of being at the fucking Magic Kingdom after the fireworks end? There's families with little kids everywhere, but there's six psychotic women dispersed throughout the crowd who have somehow arrived at the conclusion that their family is more important than everyone elses, and they're out there screaming at everyone to get out of their way because they "have children with them." You know what I'm talking about here?

Well yeah, I had the Crazy Pregnant Woman version of the Disney World experience this afternoon. Because the crowds start moving, and to be sure, there's a bit of pushing and shoving going on. But I'm getting pushed from behind with a force that's approaching distressing. You know, there's your standard "sea of humanity" pushing, but then there's your "someone might get injured" pushing. This was the latter.

So I look over my shoulder. I don't know what I was expecting to see, but there's this tiny blond chick digging her knuckles into my back. I tell her that she needs to cut it out, which elicits the somewhat ridiculous response (see: digging her knuckles into my back), "I'm not pushing." Followed by delayed indignance: "I'm pregnant." And then the comically self-righteous finale: "I'm just protecting my baby." Riiiiiggghhht. Because pushing and shoving your way through thousands of New Yorkers -- to get to The Gap, by the way, that was her ultimate destination -- is in the best interests of your baby. So yeah. Perhaps the first part of my response wasn't the ideal way to diffuse the situation: "I'm sorry you're pregnant." But the second part of it was legitimate: "That doesn't mean you can push people." She begged to differ, though, because she informed me that I was a "crazy bitch," and then we both went on with our lives.

But seriously. I'm all for making pregnant women's lives easier when I can. I'll step out of the way to let them pass, give them my seat on the subway, hold open doors, whatever. Totally not a problem. But being pregnant does not give you carte blanche to act like an asshole. If you're so worried, as you claim, about protecting your baby, how about waiting a few minutes till the bulk of the crowd disperses? I know you're in a rush to get to The Gap, but seriously, plunging into that mess and then uping the ante by pushing and shoving your way through it is not a good idea, and acting all self-righteous when someone calls you on your bullshit is ridiculous.

Uuugggghhhh, this city, man. I love it. But some days it wins. Today was one of those days.

September 11th Now

(Inspired, in part, by Colson Whitehead's excellent essay, published in the New York Times Magazine on November 11, 2001.)

I built my New York in much the same way Colson Whitehead built his: On the elevated train in Queens; each morning, the decision about whether to sit facing East, so I could look at the Midtown skyline as we rumbled along above 31st Street; or to sit facing West, so I could see the Twin Towers when we turned the corner at Queens Plaza.

- The former, an extended, and at the time -- before the construction boom in Astoria -- unobstructed view of the classic New York skyline: The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Citigroup Center. A view that reminded me every morning that I lived somewhere people dreamed about living, a place that people believed had the power to make dreams come true. A view that reminded me that I am fortunate and made me proud of my city.

- The latter, a view that took my breath away every time I saw it: A part of the city so different from the parts where I spent most of my time, full of jobs so different from the ones I'd done. Rich with history and abounding with importance. Masculine and fast-paced; energy palpable on each narrow, shadowy, and cool -- always cool, no matter the temperature -- street. A view that filled me with awe and a bit of adrenaline and made me proud of my country.

Downtown is where people get things done. Things that people across the world open their newspapers to read about each morning. Things that impact the global economy. My roommate also worked in one of those towers. She went to the office a lot earlier than I did, so I liked to picture her up there on the 60something floor, taking care of business. I don't actually even know which tower she worked in, but I always imagined her in the second one, set a little back from the first, from my vantage point, at least.

I haven't been down there much since the towers got taken away from us. I dated a guy who lived in Battery Park City for a couple months in 2005. He had a window the size of a movie screen in his living room, and it overlooked Ground Zero. I stayed at his place the night after that year's New York City Marathon, and he'd already left for work when I work up from a long night's post-marathon sleep. I remember standing at that window for probably a half hour, looking down and wondering how my boyfriend could stand it.

I don't know what it's like for the people who live there and work there. Do they, as I did that morning, see the ghosts of the towers and the people who lost their lives? Do they feel the sadness that hangs heavily over that part of the city? Or have they -- necessarily -- grown thick skins? I don't think it's right to say they've grown "numb." We say we've become numb to violence because we see it so much in video games and movies. But this is more akin to a survival skill: We have to be there, so we find a way to cope.

I don't know how most people feel, actually. I'm afraid to ask. I'm weirdly possessive of my experience of that day. My old roommate used to wonder about the Oklahoma City bombing -- do the people in Oklahoma City still think about that day every day of their lives? I wonder the same thing now about the people who lived through Hurricane Katrina. Do they look at that day and say that it, more than any other day of their lives, is the day that changed things forever?

I imagine they do, and the thought makes me feel a strange mix of loneliness and kinship. Because I still think about September 11 every day. Everything reminds me of it: Beautifully bright and unusually clear days like that Tuesday morning and the days that immediately followed it. Weirdly windy and unexpectedly dark evenings in early September, like the first anniversary of the attacks. Planes flying atypical flight paths or irregularly low. Subways stopping strangely suddenly. Police cars' sirens wailing and moving unusually quickly into the distance. If you live in this city long enough, you get a sense of its pace, and now I notice the aberrations.

It makes me lonely because it's a horrible way to feel, and it's not something I can share with people: If they weren't here or they aren't having this kind of response, they simply wouldn't understand. And if they were here, and they have had this kind of response, they wouldn't want to hear it. If we mentioned it every time we thought of it, it would be all we talked about. In the instances of sharing that I've had with friends whom I trust, it has been a relief to hear that I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one who can't do something as simple as cross 6th Avenue without thinking that the middle of 6th Avenue used to offer one hell of a view of the Twin Towers.

And that's where the kinship comes in. I feel a kinship so strong with everyone who was here that day, and it's a powerful thing, feeling kinship with eight million people. I remember going back to work on September 13, and it was like the day I realized how much I care about everybody. I knew all my family and friends and coworkers were okay, but I didn't know about the guy who gets me my coffee each morning at Dunkin Donuts, for example, and I was a little caught off guard by how happy I was to see him.

And I guess that speaks to what I've always believed about this city. The best things in the world are here, but so are the worst, and it takes a lot of strength to survive it all. Living is not a passive activity in New York City. September 11 was the worst day of my life. It made the world a less happy place to live, and it brought tremendous sadness to my city. But, you know, it's when it's darkest that you see the most stars. The New York City Marathon in November 2001 was one of my favorite days ever. It was the first big party that the city threw after September 11, and for me, at least, it was the day that I started feeling like we were all going to be okay. And the New Year's Eve leading into 2002 was the greatest New Year's Eve I'll ever have, running through Times Square in the bitter cold at 1a.m., throwing piles of confetti at one another and laughing till it hurt.

I've never been one to take things for granted, but I can only think of one day in my entire life leading up to September 11 when I actively stepped back from what was going on and thought to myself that I was happy to be alive. I've had lots of days like that since September 11, and I'm a better person for it.

Notes from The Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza

1. I imagine it's never a good sign when you find yourself needing to clean off your cleaning supplies before you use them.

2. Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza Soundtrack (Part 1): The Raconteurs: Potentially not awesome for my neighbors who live above or below me, but good entertainment for the ones who live across from me and can see into my windows. Much grooving going on, amidst the cleaning.

3. Multi-Surface Cleaning Wipes: For when you're not sure what the surface is that you're cleaning. It looks like wood, but I don't think it actually is wood. Synthetic wood paneling, perhaps?

4. First horrifying discovery of the Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza is made: It's altogether possible that the top of my refrigerator hasn't been cleaned since the day I moved in here. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with my living situation, "the day I moved in here" is something that happened 9.5 years ago.

5. First "The Fumes From the Cleaning Materials Might Be Getting to Me" deep realization of the Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza: The number one most awesome thing about my old roommate is that she was always totally up for anything. Didn't matter what it was. You needed somebody to accompany you somewhere utterly ridiculous? Chris was absolutely on board and ready to make it more fun than it would have been with anybody else. That's a pretty awesome trait. (Come home!!! And not just because I'm apparently a disgusting human being without you here! I miss my partner in crime!!!)

6. MAJOR SETBACK!!! A big pile of God knows what just spewed out of the ceiling and all over the air conditioner I just finished cleaning. I went upstairs and banged on the neighbor's door to see if they'd just done ... something ... to make this happen, but they didn't answer. I hear them moving around up there ... Grr!!! And seriously, WTF?! What kind of irony is it that a mere three hours into the Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza, my apartment revolts on me?! All proof, apparently, the I'm simply not meant to live in a clean apartment. A demoralizing blow has been dealt to the initial enthusiasm of the Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza. Resorting to Moxy Fruvous to try to restore good mood.

7. Day One Synopsis: The kitchen has been cleaned from top to bottom. In some cases, twice.

... To be continued.











October 9 Update:

... For those of you (and I know there are many) who were eagerly awaiting some updates on the next stages of the Month-Long Cleaning Extravaganza, I'll have you know that I haven't been holding out on you. What I've been holding out on is cleaning my damn apartment. There was a fury of bathroom cleaning ... um, Sunday night, I think? But aside from that, my old roomie arrives in under 24 hours, and my apartment still looks like a bomb went off.

I actually went out last night and purchased giant pink Rubbermaid containers (They didn't have the usual clear ones, and I was desperate.), into which I plan to dump all the shit that currently resides on the floor of my roommate's old bedroom. (And if history is any indication, that is likely where it will stay. Until my apartment collapses in a heap of disrepair. Or I die. Whichever happens first.) The only upside of the mad cleaning dash that will commence around 6p.m. this evening is that it will encourage me to be ruthless. Because let's face it. I'm over 30 now. I'm probably not ever again going to fit into those pants that made my ass look so fantastic when I was 25. And on the off-chance I ever do lose the post-30 poundage, those pants probably aren't the sorts of things that have any business being on the body of someone over the age of 30. No point holding onto them any longer. Into the trash they shall go!

[Note to people who worry about this sort of thing: I would give my under-30 pants to charity, but the city removed all the Salvation Army boxes a couple years ago, I imagine, in a flourish of terrorism prevention. Which, while potentially keeping us all alive, has created complications not unlike the complications resulting from the terrorist prevention-induced removal of all the trash cans from Rockefeller Center at Christmas-time. (No empty coffee cup has ever gone on such a journey as the one my empty Dunkin Donuts cup embarked upon with me during the last-minute Christmas Shopping Adventure of 2008. Nary a trash can in sight.) There is simply not, at this point, any time to schedule a Salvation Army pick-up. And I do not, at any point, have the patience nor organizational skills required to schedule a Salvation Army pick-up, so that wasn't ever going to happen anyway.]

Alright. Wish me luck! If there's anything worth posting during my Night-Long Stashing-My-Ridiculous-Shit-Out-Of-Sight Extravaganza, I'll be sure to let you know!

Next Day Update: Discoveries from a Frantic Evening of Cleaning:

1. It turns out that, around 2:30a.m., the bathroom at the Wash World more or less turns into a public bathroom for drunk people who just aren't going to make it from the nearby subway stop back to their apartments. About five minutes after each train rumbled by overhead, a stream of people in various states of alertness stumbled into the Wash World and asked somewhat desperately to use the bathroom. It got a bit comical after awhile!

2. I'm a little irritated with myself for not cleaning my apartment sooner. It took only about three hours to clean "The Forbidden Mess" (so deemed by Joe, who's curiosity about the situation was piqued when I invoked the value of 10 years of friendship to ensure that he wouldn't look behind the guest room door the last time he was here, so embarrassed was I by what was going on in there). Mostly I really just needed to throw shit out.

3. So yeah. Those of you who know me, know that I lost a ton of weight (since gained back, annoyingly!) when I started running marathons in 2003. Like, I actually got pretty skinny. I knew this much. What I didn't know, however, is that I apparently also started dressing like a slut when this occurred. I found a teeniest tiniest little denim skirt last night. Holy crap. I recall emerging from an unfamiliar subway stop in Brooklyn several years ago wearing this skirt and being appalled when the cop whom I'd asked for directions to the bar where I was meeting my friends asked me if I was a stripper. I still don't think that comment was quite appropriate coming from an on-duty cop, but at least I now understand where he was coming from. Good lord.

But yeah, otherwise fairly uneventful! Just talked to my roomie, and she'll be here is about two hours, so hooray!!!

Office Life Really Sucks

We had a water cooler at my last job. As in, a machine that took tap water and cooled it so that it was nicer to drink than water from the sink. We're not talking about a water bubbler here, which is a machine that cools and dispenses spring water from a big overturned bottle. We're talking about tap water. Not even filtered. Straight from the pipes.

Which, by the way, is fine with me. That's not where I'm going here. Tap water is what I drink at home. I used to have one of those Britta filters. But it was too much of a pain in the ass to monitor the health of my filter. And anyway, the filter took up so much room in the container that I found myself refilling the fucking thing every night. And my sink is usually full of dishes, so finessing the container under the faucet was a pain in the ass. And the filters weren't cheap, and at the time, I had no money. So yeah. I gave up on filtered water. NYC has some of the cleanest, best tasting tap water in the nation, so I decided to take advantage of it.

Which was exactly the theory upon which my former employer was operating. It was an environmental organization, so feeding the billion dollar bottled water machine in the face of perfectly potable tap water would have contradicted our calls for reduced consumption, protection of exotic places, and awareness that petroleum-based plastics are more-or-less the spawn of the Devil.

So we're all good here. Office life, in this story at least, has not yet begun to suck.

Where the train goes off the tracks is this chick. Who, if I'm going to be transparent about things, I disliked on many levels. And I don't know whether the water thing that I'm about to tell you about was the chicken or the egg in this situation. But here's the deal: She insisted upon filling the industrial-sized coffeemaker with water from the water cooler. In other words, draining our entire supply of what was nothing more than cooled tap water in order to fill the coffeemaker, which really just heated the water back up again. Leaving those of us with an interest in drinking cooled tap water to stand around the kitchen waiting, waiting, waiting for the water cooler to replenish its cool water supply. Which took forever.

I was talking in another post about things that might land me in jail some day -- or at the very least get me fired -- and this was another one of them. I lived in fear that I might just completely snap on this chick some day. Walk into the kitchen to find her emptying our water cooler for the umpteenth time and just go apeshit all over the place. You know. Snatch the container of water she'd just filled and smash into to the ground. Grab the coffeemaker and wave it about in the air menacingly. Hurl obscenities in her direction generally and pointed insults in her direction specifically. More or less cause a scene is what I'm trying to get at here.

And this is what I mean when I say that office life sucks. Because here's what happened tonight: I went upstairs in my current office to get some water from the water bubbler, and I got wondering how the hot water tap makes water hot. You press it down, and boiling water pours out instantly. Considering that it's unlikely our office water bubbler comes equipped with super heating technology that boils water on contact, I imagine the bubbler fills a little internal container with water and then spends all day and night keeping it piping hot. Which, in addition to being one hell of a waste of energy, opens the possibility that a person could completely drain the bubbler of its entire supply of hot water. Leaving those of us with an interest in hot water to stand in the kitchen waiting, waiting, waiting for the water bubbler to replenish its hot water supply.

This thought -- and the anxiety it created within me -- is familiar. And all of the sudden I'm furious.

So let's review: I left my office to get a glass of water, and I came back three minutes later furious. About something that hasn't happened to me in several years, and likely won't ever happen again, and really wasn't that big a deal in the first place. But when you spend this much time with people, in such small confines, in often unhappy circumstances (because let's face it, we'd all rather be almost anywhere than at work) stupid shit can matastasize into something that's quite excrutiatingly irritating. My biggest fear in life isn't the almost likely possibility that I'll get run over by a car, it's that someone who wears too much cologne or hums unconsciously will move into the empty desk in my office. It just doesn't seem right.

Now. The flipside to this, of course, is that office life is also hilarious. I was listening to an interview with Gord Downie from The Tragically Hip the other evening, and he was talking about how being in a band is really funny. How, if you quit your band, your life will automatically be a lot less humorous. But that may not be true, Gord. You could come and work in an office. It's hilarious here. It's why Then We Came To The End is the funniest book I've ever read, and why Dilbert has been around for 20 years, and why people can quote the movie Office Space from start to finish. We're a tortured people, cube jockeys and office dwellers, and it's either hilarious or its excrutiating. It's rare that it's anything in between.

Stuff I Like

1. The view of the city from the window of the N train in Astoria. (Although with all the construction in this neighborhood, it's not near what it used to be. And that makes me a little sad.)

2. Live music. There was, of course, The Felice Brothers incident which made me ask some hard questions about whether, in fact, live music is intrinsically good, but generally speaking, I think it is.

3. Take-away coffee in the morning. It must come in a disposable cup (which, I realize isn't the greatest thing for the environment, but I figure my extreme reliance on mass transportation has offset my coffee cup consumption), and it must be imbibed somewhere other than where it was procured, which preferably is Dunkin Donuts, though I am not one of these vehemently anti-Starbucks people. Which is good, because God knows there's enough of them.

4. Math. And logic problems. I used to do the logic section of practice GREs for fun. Seriously.

5. Napster-to-Go. All guilty pleasures, all the time, all for $14.95 per month.

6. Archive.org and bands who let their fans upload shows to the site.

7. The New York Suite:

a. New York City. I talk about leaving all the time, and even if I ever do, this city will always be the greatest place in the world. It's possible to feel really alone and really overwhelmed and really scared in this town, but as, it seems, with all things in life, you don't get to the best parts if you aren't willing to coexist with the worst parts. There are opportunities here that don't exist anywhere else, and they make this city cool as hell.

b. And specifically, Astoria. I tell everyone that I moved here because I couldn't afford Manhattan, and now that I can, you couldn't pay me to leave. It's safe and quiet and family-oriented. We're gentrifying, but it still feels like a community here, and people take care of the neighborhood. There are great bars and amazing food. And it's cool -- and very healthy -- to live in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the most diverse county in the entire world. It's good on a daily basis to hear people speaking other languages, and dressing according to their culture, and watching soccer or drinking frappes or practicing capoeira or doing whatever it is that's normal for them. It's good to be reminded daily that the world is a hell of a lot bigger than the little sphere in which we operate. It's good to see regularly that the average person on the planet is exactly like you: They want to fall in love and earn a sustainable living and be healthy and do things that make them happy. It's too easy to focus on what makes us different if we're never exposed to what makes us the same.

c. New Yorkers. People who aren't from here think we're callous and unfeeling. And that may be true in regards to our approach to a lot of things. But it's patently false in regards to our approach to one another. If anything, New Yorkers are more aware of our ourselves in relation to others than all but a few other populations on the planet. We live -- literally -- on top of one another; we get that just about everything we do affects the people around us. And it's our ultra-awareness of the impacts of our actions on others that results in what can be interpreted as unseemly brusqueness toward those who do not return the favor. We are a civility militia. If we push past you when you stop suddenly and for no apparent reason in the middle of the sidewalk ... if we drop an elbow into you when you fail to let us off the subway before you get on ... if we stare you down impatiently when you step up to the register without knowing what you want to order ... if a cab driver tells you in no uncertain terms that you're an idiot when you blunder obliviously into the middle of the street -- yes, we know you have the walk signal, but there's a ambulance with its sirens blaring trying to get through ... it's not that we're rude. It's that we're trying to have a society here, and when you live this close to this many people, the boundaries of acting appropriately are more rigidly defined and aggressively enforced. And I like that. I like that we're aware of one another, and I like that we don't fuck around.

d. Really pretty much everything about the NYC subway system. 5.2 million riders per day. 1.6 billion riders per year. 468 stations -- only 35 fewer than the combined total number of subway stops of all the other systems in the U.S. 24 x 7 service. Thirty days of unlimited trips for just 89 bucks. I've been on trains with everybody from Michael Bloomberg to the homeless. I've counted as many as nine different languages on the newspapers people are reading in my car. It's the most convenient way to get around, and it's the most interesting way to get around. Totally love it.

8. Looking forward to things. "The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting." (Andy Warhol)

9. Running in Central Park. It's best when I'm in shape, and it's summertime, and an 8-mile run after work feels comfortable; but even when I haven't run in forever, and everything kind of hurts a little, and it's dark and cold and wintery and awful outside, I still really like running in Central Park.

10. Sundays. Football Sundays. NASCAR Sundays. Sunday seisiuns at the Irish spots. Long runs on Sundays. Sunday morning brunch. Sunday evening dinner. Sundays.

To be continued ...

Update: 26+ Random Things About Me

26+ Random Things About Me: Items 31-35:

31. One of my missions in life is to understand why it's only Chinese food that you ever seen strewn across the streets of New York City. You never see a slice of pizza smashed angrily into the ground, nor a dirty water dog, or the remainder of a make-your-own-salad. But Chinese food is everywhere: The over-turned styrofoam container, a plastic fork, a trail of rice with unidentifiable pieces of the least appealing parts of what was once a pig or a chicken protruding from it. I don't know what this is about, and I want to find out.

32. I'm pretty sure that I know how I'm going to die: Mindbogglingly, one of the very small handful of places in New York City where one is permitted to make a right turn on red is the southeast corner of Astoria Park. There are kids everywhere. Running. Riding bikes. Generally not paying attention. Yet this is where we've chosen to let people do something that we've decided isn't safe at most any other intersection in the entire city. And perhaps it's our lack of familiarity with turning on red that results in people not doing it correctly. The whole bit about stopping first and looking appears to be lost on the majority of motorists at that corner. Rather, they just do a vague approximation of slowing down and then roll right on through the turn. The problem is that, you know, sometimes I'm in the middle of crossing the street when this occurs. I've had enough terrifyingly close calls to know that I stand a very good chance of someday getting hit by a car at that intersection. I'd prefer that this wasn't the one thing that I happen to know about my future.

33. Except that I suppose there's at least one other thing I know about my future: There are a handful of things that may someday land me in jail. For example, and since we're on the topic of traffic signals, some day I'm going to go completely apeshit on one of these assholes who can't seem to grasp that the red turn signal at the intersection of 54th & 6th means you're not allowed to turn -- one of these assholes who goes tearing through the red arrow into the intersection as I'm crossing the street and then drives right up till their bumper is inches from my knee and stares intently and angrily at me through their windshield like I'm the one doing something wrong. You're running a red light, buddy. You're also running the significant risk of me finally snapping and taking two and half years of this crap out on the hood of your stupid car. Rar.

34. I have a fairly long and vaguely comical history of being hit on by bike rickshaw drivers. It started in Toronto in October of 1996, when a gentleman whom we christened Spandex Man pedaled up to the window of the bar we were in, gave me the eye, chained his rickshaw to a pole, and then came inside and bought me a drink. In the years since these guys started appearing on the streets of New York, I've been hit on by more of them than I can count. It's the only profession that across-the-board apparently finds me attractive. I suppose I ought not shrug it off so carelessly. They're probably a little low on the cash end of the dating equation, but I have have about a bazillion questions that I'd just love to ask a bike rickshaw driver over a drink. [e.g., Have you ever turned down a passenger because he was just too fat? What the hell happens if you get in a car accident? How come none of your kind ever looks behind you before you cut across the running lanes in Central Park? (An aside: Another thing that I know about my future is that it likely some day involves me tangled up in a bike rickshaw that's cut me off in Central Park. Grr.)] And yeah, I imagine they're nice and fit. Hmm.

35. It's occurred to me that if I continue to update this list for the entire rest of my life, it could get pretty interesting. And long.

Notes on Last Night

Holy shit. I am so fucking hungover right now that I actually might die. Cocktails on the roof turned into an eight hour ordeal. Apparently this has made me want to curse a lot. And vomit.

I actually left my bag in the bar last night. Right. Because only the first six hours were on the roof. Then we went to Connolley's. I don't know that I've ever done that. Left my bag in a bar, I mean. I woke up naked this morning with all my jewelry still on. At least I made it to my bed, which is an improvement over the couch, which is where I typically find myself after an evening of revelry, even though my bed is only about six feet further into my apartment.

Me, earlier this afternoon: I think I left my bag in the bar last night.

Irish bartender, comically: Fer fuck's sake.

At least it was there. It had my two favorite pairs of shoes and my favorite dress in it. Apparently, I also left my favorite sweater on a bar stool:

Irish bartender: Is this your's too?

Me, happily surprised: Huh. I think it is!

Irish bartender: Fer fuck's sake.

Singing: "Hangover hanging on by the fangs. Walk to work on wild feet."

Flashy Lightning

While it appears Murray Foster's eco-blog has gone in a direction much similar to this thing you're reading right now (that would be nowhere, in case you were wondering), I admire the modest aspirations with which he set out upon his blogging experiment:

"Do I think these humble postings will eventually be bound in large, hardcover books with gilt-edged pages that are stored in vacuum-sealed rooms in major libraries and then taken out once a year on the anniversary of my birth (or my death – I'm not sure which) by castrated priests in vermilion robes who recite the sacred texts while the townspeople dance a frenzied mazurka until they collapse from exhaustion? Yes. Otherwise, what’s the point?"

Now. Some social networking commentator recently said of blogs that "Never have so many said so much about so little to so few." But screw that. I'm going to espouse Murray's approach as I try to organize what feels like a bit of renewed creative energy and motivation into something focused and good. I'm flashy lightning right now. Which is better than a calm, clear night, but not as productive as a bright, clean bolt cutting through the sky.

While those of you who have had the displeasure of experiencing my apartment (and it is an experience) lately might approach the rest of this sentence with skepticism, I prefer things to be organized and complete before I open them up to other people. But going forward, I'm going to try to use this blog a a sandbox, to play in, and to see what works. If I push enough sand around, I might just create a castle someday.

(An aside to Murray: Would you please publish more of what you're thinking?? The stuff you've put in print makes me laugh, and it makes me want to write more.)

Life Is Cool Sometimes

My brother told me this story over Father’s Day weekend, and I’ve been meaning -- but consistently forgetting -- to tell someone about it. I've probably got some of the details a bit wrong, but they don't matter so much. It's more about the spirit of the story, which is pretty awesome, I think.


My brother and his wife are former NYC residents who moved to Bethlehem, PA in search of affordable housing when their daughter was born. She’s two years old now, and her favorite place on the entire planet is a car museum in Hershey, PA. She loves going there so much that my brother and SIL decided to purchase annual memberships to the museum, rather than pay each time they go. Because they are members, they were invited to a cocktail reception and preview of the current exhibit at the museum. And because they’ve been a bit desperate to go pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything since they left the non-stop action of NYC, they decided to attend.

Perhaps it’s the snobby New Yorker in all of us who live in New York long enough to become snobs, but my brother and SIL were not expecting much from this reception. And shortly upon arriving, they find themselves watching in horror as a casually-dressed man jumps over the ropes cordoning off the public from the cars, pulls open one of the car's driver-side doors, and begins rolling down the window. They notice, however, that the man has an obvious familiarity and casual comfort with the car, and combined with the fact that none of this generated so much as a flinch from whatever security might be in place at a car museum in Pennsylvania, they make the (correct, it turned out) assumption that the man was there “with the cars.”

A bit later, they introduce themselves to the man and inquire about his relationship with the cars. It turns out he’s a local car restorer. When he was younger, everyone told him that the better money was in car repair, but he loved to restore cars, so that’s what he learned. He nurtured a modest car restoration business in Allentown, PA. Got himself a wife, some kids, probably a dog. Nothing fancy. Until the day when a customer arrived to his shop with a car. You’ll have to forgive my lack of knowledge about cars, but whatever it was, there are only three of them left in then entire world. The customer requested some work; the man said he’d be honored to restore the car. He does the work, and after some time, receives a call from the office of a Mr. Bulgari. Mr. Bulgari owned the car he’d restored and wanted him to come to NYC for a meeting. A car would be sent to transport him to and from the meeting; he needn’t worry about a thing. Understandably, our man the car restorer was a bit concerned. I’m not sure what concern precisely crossed his mind, but if I were in his shoes at least, I’d have been thinking Mob.

Still, he heads to NYC, and meets Mr. Bulgari, who it turns out is Nicola Bulgari, of watch, jewelry, and perfume notoriety. He is also one of the premier car collectors in the world. And perhaps I’m jumping a bit ahead of the story, but he’s a cool car collector. He’s not terribly enamored with the extravagant cars owned only by the most wealthy; he prefers the cars that regular people drove. He has no interest in souping up the cars in his collection; he restores them according to their original specifications. His only requirement is that he needs to fit in the car. He’s a big guy, apparently, and his joy comes from driving the cars, not collecting them. He will not purchase a car he cannot drive; he’d rather another collector enjoy the car.

So back to our car restorer. It turns out Nicola Bulgari has two car collections: one in Rome, Italy and the other in Allentown, PA. He’s got some work he needs done on some of the cars, and he’s got some auctions he’d like the car restorer to attend on his behalf. He dispatches the restorer almost immediately to an auction, with instructions to secure two cars. The restorer checks in to the auction and, based on his appearance – jeans and a ballcap – is instructed to stand near the back of the room. The restorer realizes that he may have trouble participating in the auction so far from the action, so he asks one of the people leading the auction if he might move a little closer. The person requests to see his bidding paddle. Apparently paddles are handed out according to one’s bid limit – the lowest numbered paddles go to the people with the highest limits. Our man the car restorer is holding paddle #6. He is escorted to the middle of the front row. Past Jack Nicholson. Past Jay Leno.

The story fell mostly to vignettes at this point. Nicola Bulgari is apparently a shy man who keeps a close group around him whom he treats like family. Our humble car restorer became the personal overseer of Nicola Bulgari’s Allentown-based car collection. (There is a similarly cool story about Bulgari's personal driver.) My favorite of the vignettes involved a trip he took with Mr. Bulgari to Los Angeles. Bulgari suggested they visit Jay Leno and view his car collection. Upon entering the room, Jay Leno takes one look at the car restorer and exclaims, “You’re the guy from the car auctions!!!” Apparently all the regular high-end bidders were desperate to know who was the country bumpkin sweeping in and buying up all the cars.

But what I liked, perhaps best about the story is that it doesn’t appear, at least from my brother’s telling of it, that the guy has changed at all. Nor the Bulgari has asked or needed him to change. They both love cars, and that’s all that matters. They take rides together in Bulgari’s car collection on the back roads of Pennsylvania. Sure he has a nicer shop than he used to have, and I’m certain his family’s standard of living has improved somewhat dramatically, and he’s seen a whole lot more of the world than he’d ever have seen if Nicola Bulgari hadn’t driven into his life. But he’s still the guy who turns up to the semi-formal museum exhibit opening in jeans and ball cap and lives with his family in Allentown, PA, and there's something very awesome about that.

So that's The End, I guess. You could lay a moral over this story -- "if you follow your dreams, good things will happen" or some shit -- but I think it's cooler (and more accurate) to just leave it as a story about something awesome and unexpected that happened to someone out there in the world. Yeah. Just thought it was cool.

People Named Siobhan Are Apparently Scary

[Originally a Facebook Note]

I completely supported the 25 Random Things phenomenon on Facebook. A lot of my friends write really well, and they have a good sense of dark and light and serious and silly, and some of the posts were really funny and others were just plain interesting, and I thought that taken together, the things people decided to share about themselves created a unique picture of each person and how they view themselves.

That said, 25 Random Things has spawned a goodly number of bastard children, and it's starting to feel like the first couple years we all had email around this place. I'm a proponent of the whole "nobody's forcing you to read anything you don't want to read" approach to the social side of the internet, but I had no intention of actually participating in any of this crap.

Okay, that's a lie. I've been participating in a lot of this crap. I did the What Your iPod Says About You thing, for example. But I had no intention of actually posting any of this crap to Facebook. It was something I did because I clearly have enough time on my hands (see: Television Shows That Are Annoying Me This Week if you have any reason to doubt the expansively, almost disturbingly open nature of my calendar these days), and I did it because I thought it might be good for a smile or two. But I did not do it to share with Facebook. The plan was to look at the results, laugh, and move on with my life.

Until I did this Google Game thing this morning. The instructions are to type "[your name] likes to" into Google and report the first 10 results. Now. Those of you who know me well (and most of you with whom I'm friends on Facebook know me halfway decently. I hear people talking about the distress they experience discerning how to react properly to friend requests from people with whom they would prefer not to be friends. Let me tell you, I experience no such distress. If didn't talk to you during the four years we went to school together, we don't need to talk now. I reject friend requests. I delete friends who were added during happy, boozy moments at bars courtesy of the dual scourge of iPhone and Facebook Mobile. I'm not sure what this says about me, and it's unlikely that it's something positive, but whatever. I am who I am.)

And who I am right now is someone who has completely lost track of what I was saying. Where the hell was I? Oh. Right. The Google Game. Okay. Those of you who know me well, know that a lot of the reason I started going by Siobhan in college is that the abundantly common first name "Mary," especially when attached to the similarly common surname "O'Brien," was just all a little Plain Jane for me. I never felt like I fully self-actualized in high school. (You like that shit, right?) I'm sure it was actually low self-esteem that was holding me back, but for the sake of argument, let's say it was the name. Siobhan sounded more interesting. Siobhan sounded more fun. Siobhan was the person I wanted to be.

Except that it turns out that Siobhan is also, apparently, a little freaky. Because I pop open Google this morning. I type in "Siobhan likes to" and I'm greeted with the following:

1. Siobhan likes to dancingly drunk around, and sit on the toilet. (I swear to all that is good and holy that this is the first result. Google it yourself folks.)

2. Something boring.

3. Something boring.

4. Siobhan likes to do it in the garden.

5. Siobhan likes to push me into Julia, and Julia into the bushes.

6. Siobhan likes to play with toys during off hours and is trying to study her toes in order to get ahead professionally.

7. Something boring.

8. Something boring.

9. Siobhan likes to partake of the fluids!

10. Siobhan likes to get drunk at SCA gatherings and flaunt her wenchy corset-puppies! (Again, Google it yourself people. I'm not making this up.)

I mean, seriously, what the hell is that all about?? I like to think that I know how to have fun, and I'm generally a good person to have around if you're looking to go out and kick back and just have a good time. But sweet lord! Some of that stuff up there is a little out of control. I'm not sure I'm living up to the Siobhan name, and to be honest, I'm not sure that's something to which I aspire either! Ya'll can call me Mary from now on. I'm reverting!

26+ Random Things

Like most women, a good number of gay men, and three straight guys, I got sucked into doing that 25 Random Things thing on Facebook. Nobody was more surprised than I was that I actually had a bit of a tough time coming up with 25 things to say about myself. But it must have been the self-inflicted pressure, because ever since I posted the damn thing, every other thought that crosses my mind is something I could have added to that list. So I'm just going to add them here. Who knows, it might come in handy some day!

Here's the original 25 things from Facebook:

1. I finally started a blog (that would be this thing you're reading, right here!), but it has quickly deteriorated into a graveyard of half-written posts. There’s this “Draft” function that let’s you start a post and finish it later. I’ve got the starting thing down pat, but the finishing it later business isn’t going so well.

2. If I run out of “Random Things” to say about myself before I reach number 25, I intend to borrow shamelessly from blog ideas that are residing in the Graveyard of Half-Written Posts. I imagine the unfinished posts titled “Stuff I Like” and “Stuff I Wish I Liked” will contain some things that would fit well on this list.

3. I like to count stuff. The harder something is the count, the more fun it is to count.

4. I frequently change the wording of sentences I write because I don’t like the way they look on paper. Writing should be about how it sounds, but sometimes it’s about how it looks. At least in my world it is.

5. My fantasy life is richer than your’s. I can pretty much guarantee that much.

6. I wish I knew somebody who liked exactly the same music that I do, exactly as much as I do. If I did, I’d plan a trip to Toronto with that person to see a whole bunch of singer/songwriters whom I’ve Six-Degrees-Of-Moxy-Fruvou

s-ed my way into knowing and loving.

7. Of all the odd things I inherited from my father, I think the weak shoulders are the most annoying. They’re impossible to train, and easy to injure.

8. The obscenely long toes I got from my father are no picnic either – if I had normal sized toes, I’d have normal sized feet – but I generally like my feet, so we’ll let it go for now.

9. I should do laundry a lot more frequently than I do. In other words, I have an approaching obscene number of pairs of underwear.

10. I started losing interest in other people’s lists around item #9 or 10. I implore you to keep reading. I promise to make it worth your while.

11. I’d still like to move to California someday, but I doubt I ever will. At least not any time soon. All the absolute most important things in my life are around where I am now.

12. If this song doesn’t make you happy, there’s something wrong with you. Mistra Know-It-All originally by Stevie Wonder, covered by Moxy Fruvous

13. Either we go through an obscene amount of paper towels and toilet paper at my office, or I’m the only one who ever changes the rolls, because seriously, I feel like I change that shit daily.

14. Ironically, I believe that it was my diligence in changing paper towels and toilet paper that led to my first-ever job promotion: from Bowline Attendant to Bowline Cashier.

15. I still wear my Bowline Lifeguard (note: job promotion #2) shirts when I work out. I don’t know what kind of material those things were made of, but they’ve sure held up.

16. A lot of the best things in life happen on Sunday. Football Sundays. NASCAR Sundays. Sunday seisiuns at the Irish spots. Long runs on Sundays. Sunday night dinner. Sundays.

17. The other best things in life are as follows: Take-away coffee. Unlimited Metrocards. Learning that your favorite band is coming to town. Drinks outside in the afternoon in the summertime the day before a holiday when work lets you out early. The U.S. Open on Labor Day. New York City.

18. I believe that people who say they have no regrets are either lying or not thinking hard enough about their lives or not holding themselves to high enough standards or have no imagination.

19. I’m comfortable being all judge-y like that.

20. My favorite day of my life was wine tasting in the Finger Lakes with Mary and Julie and Chris and a few other people on Chris’s 21st birthday. My favorite night of my life was my first Bon Jovi concert at Giants Stadium. My favorite trip was San Diego in 2004 for the Rock n’ Roll Marathon. Which is an odd choice. But man, that was a fun trip.

21. I wish my old roommate would move back to New York.

22. If it’s possible that part of a poem could change a person’s life, for me, it would be this part of this poem:

I was reading a book about pleasure,
how you have to glide through it
without clinging,
like an arrow,
passing through a target,
coming out the other side and going on.

~ From The Impossible Dream by Tony Hoagland

23. There’s an awful lot of Britney Spears on my mp3 player.

24. My favorite people in the world are the ones who are totally extraordinary in totally ordinary ways, and I’m fortunate to have a pretty decent number of them in my life. Sometimes I’d like to tell them how amazing I think they are, but then I worry that they’ll think I’m weird (or drunk), so I keep it to myself.

25. This was harder to write than I thought it would be.

26. Sometime in my late-teens, I became aware that most people imagine the toothfairy looking a bit like Tinkerbell. I always imagined the toothfairy looking like the Abominable Snowman, except covered in fluffy white pillow feathers. I haven't a clue how this happened, but I prefer my toothfairy to your's!

27. I think people who don't like sports are totally missing out. And guys who don't like sports creep me out a little. Sports bring people together. They make you feel like you're a part of something. They give you a reason to be proud of where you're from. They're exciting and fun, and they can be uplifting and breathtaking and heartbreaking and motivating. Sports, man.

28. Common stuff for other people that isn't even remotely common for me:

a. Going to the Movies: The last time I went to a movie was June 2008. Which actually wasn't all that long ago. But the time before that was whenever Spiderman II came out, and the time before that was whenever Spiderman I came out.

b. Getting a Haircut: My last haircut was in April 2007. I am seriously overdue. (Update: I have found hair religion! Or at least a hair stylist who cuts my hair in a way that makes me want to go back to see her on something approaching a reasonable schedule!)

c. Driving A Car: The last time I drove a car was September 2007. And before that was June 2004. I've actually become a bit phobic about it, which isn't good.

29. So far this year, I have been stone-cold sober for both New Year's Eve and the Super Bowl. If I can make it through St. Patrick's Day without a drink, I will have accomplished some kind of unnatural trifecta. (Update: Unnatural trifecta averted. St. Patrick's Day and all subsequent holidays have been celebrated in manners appropriate to each day -- cheesy beads and cheap beer on St. Patrick's day; get-out-of-work-early, afternoon, outside beers with friends on Memorial Day; beer gardens and barbecues on the Fourth of July; and Labor Day is fixing to see a return of the annual Official Drink of the U.S. Open.)

30. I sneeze, twice, every morning on the subway. I assume this has something to do with environmental allergens. You would think I'd remember to stick some tissues in my pocket, but if you did, you'd think wrong.

31. One of my missions in life is to understand why it's only Chinese food that you ever seen strewn across the streets of New York City. You never see a slice of pizza smashed angrily into the ground, nor a dirty water dog, or the remainder of a make-your-own-salad. But Chinese food is everywhere: The over-turned styrofoam container, a plastic fork, a trail of rice with unidentifiable pieces of the least appealing parts of what was once a pig or a chicken protruding from it. I don't know what this is about, and I want to find out.

32. I'm pretty sure that I know how I'm going to die: Mindbogglingly, one of the child-sized handful of places in New York City where one is permitted to make a right turn on red is the southeast corner of Astoria Park. There are kids everywhere. Running. Riding bikes. Generally not paying attention. Yet this is where we've chosen to let people do something that we've decided isn't safe at most any other intersection in the entire city. And perhaps it's our lack of familiarity with turning on red that results in people not doing it correctly. The whole bit about stopping first and looking appears to be lost on the majority of motorists at that corner. Rather, they just do a vague approximation of slowing down and then roll right on through the turn. The problem is that, you know, sometimes I'm in the middle of crossing the street when this occurs. I've had enough terrifyingly close calls to know that I stand a very good chance of someday getting hit by a car at that intersection. I'd prefer that this wasn't the one thing that I happen to know about my future.


33. Except that I suppose there's at least one other thing I know about my future: There are a handful of things that may someday land me in jail. For example, and since we're on the topic of traffic signals, some day I'm going to go completely apeshit on one of these assholes who can't seem to grasp that the red turn signal at the intersection of 54th & 6th means you're not allowed to turn -- one of these assholes who goes tearing through the red arrow into the intersection as I'm crossing the street and then drives right up till their bumper is inches from my knee and stares intently and angrily at me through their windshield like I'm the one doing something wrong. You're running a red light, buddy. You're also running the significant risk of me finally snapping and taking two and half years of this crap out on the hood of your stupid car. Rar.

34. I have a fairly long and vaguely comical history of being hit on by bike rickshaw drivers. It started in Toronto in October of 1996, when a gentleman whom we christened Spandex Man pedaled up to the window of the bar we were in, gave me the eye, chained his rickshaw to a pole, and then came inside and bought me a drink. In the years since these guys started appearing on the streets of New York, I've been hit on by more of them than I can count. It's the only profession that across-the-board apparently finds me attractive. I suppose I ought not shrug it off so carelessly. They're probably a little low on the cash end of the dating equation, but I imagine they're quite fit. And I have have about a million questions that I'd just love to ask a bike rickshaw driver over a drink, e.g., have you ever turned down a passenger because he was just too fat? What the hell happens if you get in a car accident? How come none of your kind ever looks behind you before you cut across the running lanes in Central Park? (An aside: Another thing that I know about my future is that it likely some day involves me tangled up in a bike rickshaw that's cut me off in Central Park. Grr.)

35. It's occurred to me that if I continue to update this list for the entire rest of my life, it could get pretty interesting. And long.

To be continued ...

Disturbing Things That I Used a Screwdriver To Accomplish Today

There's a problem with having a roommate for as long as I did. Or at least, there's a problem with having my particular roommate for that amount of time, and in combination with my particular personality. You see, she was seriously laid back. And I am seriously lazy. And neither of us ever wanted to step on the other's toes.

So you'd have situations where something -- a weird favor from some bridal shower one of us attended or a questionable bottle of wine received as a corporate gift at Christmas time -- would find its way into our apartment. And whoever would bring it in, would put it down ... somewhere. I can't speak for my roommate, but I, at least, would have every intention eventually to put it ... somewhere better. More appropriate. You know, away.

But on too many occasions, that never happened. And after awhile, whatever it was -- the strange angel ashtray, er, soapdish or the giant yellow vase with the artificial flower sticking out of it -- would become part of the decor. And eventually, some of the stuff hung around long enough that we didn't even remember who owned it anymore. So when Chris moved out, I inherited a lot of garbage that may or may not even have been mine in the first place.

Case in point: the arsenal of bottles of wine on my kitchen table. Which admittedly, have remained in my apartment even though Chris has been gone for more than a year. I don't know why I hadn't thrown them out. On the extraordinarily rare occasion that I drink wine, I'm certainly not going to grab something that's got a centimeter of dust on it off my kitchen table. So when I wandered into the kitchen earlier tonight and somehow got sidetracked into a 2-hour kitchen cleaning extravaganza, the ancient bottles of wine had tiny little targets on them, etched in the dust.

There were three of them. I extracted (what I thought was) the cork from the first bottle, upended it in the sink, and nothing came out. I actually thought for a moment that the wine must be so old and of such crap quality that it had solidified, just sitting there for so many years. But a closer inspection revealed that the cork had broken in half when I tried to take it out. I popped the bottom half into the bottle with the corkscrew, and dumped the wine into the sink. Second bottle, same thing happens. And again on the third bottle. Except this time, the bottom half of the cork won't come out. It's wedged deep in the bottleneck, beyond the reach of the corkscrew.

Enter screwdriver.

In hindsight, I don't know why I didn't grab a knife. Or the handle of a fork. I was, after all, in the kitchen. But whatever. I grab a screwdriver. And I'm poking at the cork with it, but the cork's not budging. I give it a little more elbow, and it's still not going anywhere. So I really start pushing the screwdriver into the cork with pretty much everything I've got ... and it's not moving ... until it *totally* gives way, forcing a geyser of disgusting ancient red wine high into the kitchen sky and all over me.

Which is when you learn about your priorities: Literally, there's red wine in my hair, and it's dripping from the tip of my nose. But is this my main concern? Absolutely not. First order of business was the white felt letters on the Notre Dame sweatshirt I had on. There were drops of wine all over them, and it would be terrible to have such a great sweatshirt come to such a tragic end. (I'm happy to report that I successfully dabbed the wine away.)

At any rate, all's well that ends well. The kitchen's clean. The wine's gone. My recycling bag looks like I had a raging wine party. But this was fun. I'm on a bit of cleaning kick right now (New Year's resolutions, you know?) so I look forward to further adventures. I've been thinking about cleaning out the cabinets beneath my sink, and my biggest fear is that I'll find something dead in the process. Cockroaches, most likely, but who knows in this wacky apartment? And at some point, some serious work needs to be done on the toilet. It will require a trip to The Home Depot, which in my world, has always been good for a few laughs. I'll be sure to report back!

Altitude: Sea Level Speed: Sitting down. Temperature: 74 degrees Fahrenheit (Originally Posted 2.26.08)

On the ground update …

So the last few hours of my flight. Yeah, never really got back to work. I found games – games! – on the little in-flight entertainment thingy, so I played some little game where I was a tiny penguin who had to find diamonds without having rocks fall on me or getting blown up by dynamite.

Also, I saw the California Speedway out the window of the plane. You know you watched too much NASCAR rain delay programming over the weekend when you find yourself looking out the window of your plane and actually recognizing the mountain you're seeing down below! Sure enough, there was the speedway right near the foot of the mountain, except it looked like a quarter mile track from up in the sky. Totally cleared out, too. Not a sign that NASCAR's two premier series had been racing there less than 24 hours ago.

Then we landed 45 minutes early (in what appeared to be a Howard Johnson circa 1979 – holy cow. You want to talk about a brown paisley carpet and an old hotel smell. Good lord. Even the hip, beautiful, young, wealthy people deplaning from my Virgin America flying nightclub couldn't help that place!) Then my luggage arrived to the baggage claim before I did. Then I walked out the door, and there was a line of cabs all waiting just for me. Seriously, not a single other person there. I got to the hotel at exactly the time my flight was supposed to touch down.

So now I'm at the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey, sitting on my bed (which is a good one -- we'll figure out this back thing yet!) with the sliding door wide open, and the marina to my immediate right, and snowy mountain tops off in the distance to my left. I'll tell you though, I've gained an immediate understanding of why so many rich people get so far out of touch with reality. I don't think I've ever been treated in my entire life as well as I've been treated in the last two hours. Fifteen people had welcomed me and offered to do things for me before I was ten feet in the door. Within two minutes, a member of the welcome committee had armed me with a really tasty orange-pomegranite drink of some kind. Some guy took my bag shortly after I entered the building and then magically reappeared with it pretty much as soon as I set foot in my room, and then he gave me a *tour* of the room and offered to go down the hall and get me ice. The room service guy brought me the remote control and spun the TV toward me in case I wanted to watch while I ate ...

So what I need to do is kick back and get over my guilt complex about being treated so nicely! Ugghhhhh!!! I got out of the non-profit world because I was tired of being poor, but this is like so-o-o far at the other end of the spectrum that I don't even know what to do with myself! It's nice though! And I'm enjoying it.

If only it weren't for these pesky meetings I've got to go to!

Altitude: 37,974 ft. Speed: 536 mph. Temperature: -49 degrees Fahrenheit (Originally Posted 2.28.08)

Greetings from somewhere over Missouri!

Things I've learned today:

1. It's apparently only 16 minutes from my apartment to JFK. There was no traffic, but still, I seriously thought it was like three times that.

2. The televisions in cabs? Yeah, no thanks. It's just a big advertisement for NBC with old news scrolling along the bottom. (It told me that Sprint Cup race was postponed, even though my boy Carl won it yesterday afternoon. It claimed the PATH was free today, even though that happened yesterday.) It also seemed a bit obsessed with violence, often of the nonsensical variety. By which I do not mean little old ladies getting mugged. I mean nonsensical quite literally. Like, "Robber attacks man with plan." Did the robber use a plan to attack a man? Or did the man who was attacked by the robber have a plan? Or was it just a typo? These are the things I thought about on the Van Wyck at 7a.m. this morning.

My Virgin America review:

1. We've all been to JFK before, and we all know it generally ain't pretty. It's like the Ellis Island of the generation that only boards boats for luxury purposes (unless they're going to Staten Island). There should be a sign over the entrance off the highway … "Give me your tired, your poor. Your fat, your sloppy, your questionably clean. Your loud and frequently ignorant." It could be one of those signs that's actually a bunch of signs along the highway, like that depressing poem in the hallway between the ACE and 123 trains at the Times Square Station, because you couldn't read all that tooling along at 70 mph.

Yeah well. If you want to escape all that, head to the Virgin America gate in the International Terminal. I don't know that I've ever seen a collection of so many generally young, generally very hip looking, and clearly very wealthy people gathered together anywhere, let alone at an airport. Given what I know of Sir Richard Branson, I'm assuming this was his goal here, and uh yeah, smashing success.

2. Well, except that there ain't a whole lot of people on this plane. Which is just fine by me. I've got the whole row to myself, and I've somehow managed to spread my crap out pretty well across the whole damn thing. I'm seriously going to have to start cleaning up after myself somewhere around Las Vegas just so that I'm sure I have my act together by the time we get to L.A. But yeah, not exactly the greatest thing from a business standpoint, all these empty seats. Unless this is just how it goes. Do people not fly to California in the morning? I don't think I've ever had to share my row any time I've flown to California before noon. Odd.

3. So here's what happened with this flight: Virgin America has it's own gate in the international terminal at JFK, and it appears that it only had two flights going anywhere this morning. The plane was already at the gate when I arrived excessively early (thanks to my 16 minute cab ride to JFK), so they took a "get on whenever the hell you want" approach to boarding us. Which meant that we were all very much ensconced when it was time to go – no flight attendants rushing about slamming overhead bins closed and generally stressing out the whole damn plane. Which was nice. We push back from the gate, we drive, like, rightoverthere, hang a left onto the runway, and take off without even stopping. Let me say that again in case you were breezing a little too quickly through this post. We push back, drive for a minute, hang a left, and take off without even stopping. At JFK. I'm used to being 25^th in line for take-off. Flight attendants handing out water because we've been sitting on the runway so darn long. I read that something like 70% of all the delayed flights in America can be tracked back to NYC's airports. But we took off without even stopping. I realize this isn't something that's necessarily tied to Virgin America, but I do think there's a benefit to being in the international terminal, and because of that, I will give Virgin America the credit.

3. This plane has mood lighting – purple lights along the ceiling and pink lights closer to the windows. It looks a bit like a club on Steinway Street (specifically, that club near the R train that's shaped like a camera), but it's okay I guess. And the little pointy thing at the end of the wing is painted like an American flag. I like that.

4. We could do better on the food offerings. I'm a little hungry, but neither the "Strawberry Fruit Leather" nor the $12 "Fruit and Cheese Plate" sound particularly appetizing. People complain about "airplane food" but I'd kind of give my left arm right now for a turkey sandwich on white bread with a squeezy pack of mayo. I *love* however that you can order drinks (even the free stuff – water and coffee and soda and juice) from your seat! This has got to be a nightmare for the flight attendants on a crowded flight, but when there's just the 20 of us hurtling through the sky, it's fantastic!

5. Entertainment offerings are okay. Not as many TV channels as Jet Blue, but the movie offerings are a nice option, and they even have Nikki Sixx's new video as an on-demand music video choice. Surprisingly, the song didn't sound that bad. The lyrics were *very* silly, and I'm sure the album is excruciatingly annoying. (According to the information provided with the video, it's a concept album called something like The Heroin Diaries. Puh-leeese.) But the song sounded good if you weren't really paying attention too much and/or if you didn't know that Nikki Sixx is a bombastic idiot. I also watched the video for Wyclef Jean's "The Sweetest Girl," which I still think is about strippers even though the video was about illegal immigrants.

6. And if the TV and movies and music isn't enough to keep you entertained, our pilot is hilarious. We had the worst turbulence I've ever experienced in my life at the beginning of this flight. It was starting to feel a little Almost Famous on this plane for awhile there. I was literally holding the window jamb at one point to help brace myself and prevent my head from slamming into the side of the plane. So we're tossing all over the place, and the pilot comes over the airwaves all calm like, "If ya'll can just hang on a little longer, we're going to descend back down to the smoother air where we were before. We got some news that it would be better up here, but clearly *that's* not the case." He said it all emphasized like that. Made me feel a little less like death might be imminent.

Synopsis: I didn't pay more to fly this airline, but I would. Even if I wasn't on the company's dime!

What's Ahead for Me Today:

Well, first another 2 hours in the air. We're somewhere between Denver and Albuquerque right now. I guess I'll eat the Power Bar I threw in my purse because the $9 steak sandwich sounds a little questionable. Maybe I'll sleep some? I only got 2.5 hours in the sack last night, but I'm completely wired right now. I really should do some more work, but that sounds less appealing than the $7 make-your-own-yogurt-parfait. Hmmm …

But yeah, then to the hotel. I'm hoping they have a good bed there so I can figure out whether the bed in my apartment is crap or whether my back is just crap. I'd believe either at this point in my life, and I tend to think that the truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle. Then a meeting from 4-5:30p.m. Then a cocktail reception at 7p.m. and then dinner with clients at 8p.m.. This day is just a little too long, I think!

Oh, and the Rockies are really beautiful from the air.