A Mighty Fine Life

What the sky looked like over Citi Field last night:


(From the NY Times.)

(ETA: More pictures of the sky from yesterday.)

I almost never actually use this place to write about things I do in my life, which is weird, now that I think about it. But let's see. Thursday night I went out with a bunch of my coworkers to see "7.Eleven," which is a series of seven eleven-minute long plays, all set in convenience stores/bodegas, about the Indian-American immigrant experience. I missed a lot of cultural references (and I don't speak Hindi), but they were all phenomenally well done and I'm really glad I went.

After, we all went out for dinner. Amazing: fried goat cheese with honey. I basically ate my weight in it.

Last night was the game. My boss (a die-hard Mets fan) had an extra ticket and offered it to me; I went as my birthday present to myself. (Two and a half weeks, just FYI...) It started pouring while we were on the 7 train out to the stadium, and didn't let up for quite awhile; there was an hour rain delay. But after the storm passed over, it was gorgeous out. The sunset looked a bit apocalyptic, but it was pretty warm and summery, and good game-seeing weather.

And the game... :D I had a slightly better night than my boss, but he took it in stride. The Yankees won, 9-1, and it was one of the more entertaining games I've seen. Sabathia was completely on, which was just awesome to watch. I also really liked Citi Field, btw, probably more than Yankee Stadium II.

Anything else? Hm, at work yesterday we listened to Michael Jackson all day. But I think that's about it.

You know, I probably don't need two Newsies icons for essentially the same purpose, but whatevs.

So the snowpocalypse was a teeny bit of a let down, in that...it didn't happen? It started to snow pretty hard while I was on the subway, and kept up for awhile. We have a few inches of accumulation that immediately turned into ankle-soaking grey slush, as it will. But that was it. No crises or even trains running behind schedule; heck, this isn't even the coldest its been recently.

So it was a pretty normal Friday, except we played four hours of Beatles music in the office because my boss wasn't there. My insane project of dooooooooooooooom is going well. Now, weekend. Then three more days of work. Then vacaaaaaaaaatioooooooooon. Woo!

(Other than watching 18 episodes of Darkwing Duck. Dead!Bushroot in "Twin Beaks" is still creepy, by the way.)

Two New York living anecdotes that make me smile, from the last few days. First, I just got back from a run to the bodega down by the subway stop, as I was walking poisonivory there. (Not that she doesn't know the way, by this point, but my sister requested a Diet Coke, so it was a nice dual-purposed walk.) For the first, oh, year and a half I lived in the city, I was there at least once a day to buy a Coke; I'd stop in on my way to work. But over the summer I stopped drinking caffeine in the morning, and would get juice instead. (They noticed.) But with the new job, since it's been cold, I've stopped getting juice; instead I get tea at Starbucks when I get off the train downtown. Between that and the presence of a slightly closer, 24-hour bodega in the opposite direction, I'm not there as often.

So I stopped and got a diet coke. First, the guy working there knew it was for my sister, because she drinks diet and I don't. Second, he asked me if I've been okay or on vacation, since I hadn't been in in awhile. (I said my schedule had changed, but I'd drop in to say hi--and I drink less coke now, which they already knew.) And it's silly, but it's nice to know that someone in this neighborhood would notice if I disappeared. (Um, other than my sister, obviously.)

Second, there was the the off-duty clown on the subway.

I was zoning out on my way home from work, and he got on a few stops before where I get off. He was wearing full makeup and a wig, plus a rag-tag type outfit with giant shoes. He was wheeling a giant box of props (it was open on top, so I could see balloons and whatnot inside.) Of course, he was also wearing a winter coat over his outfit, and listening to his ipod. He sat down across from me and zoned out as well. Because, you know, even clowns ride the subway in New York. It was a little awesome.

It may be removed from the rest of the city and all, but I really do adore my neighborhood.

So tonight I went to see my friend Eric perform all the fucking way downtown. In fact, in a spot which is almost as inconvenient from my apartment as it's possible to be while staying in Manhattan (which I note because visiting my boyfriend now takes me on a lovely romp through three boroughs). But for once I actually managed to find my way without getting lost, which was great!

The downside is that I don't love wandering around New York in the middle of the night. Eric was scheduled to play at midnight and went on a little late; after he finished I hung out with friends for awhile, and regretted that I'd had half a drink, because apparently my tolerance has gotten worse since college somehow.* So somewhere around quarter of two, I asked Josh to walk me back to the train station. That went fine.

I got there--at an F/V stop--and was informed that there were no uptown F or V trains running, but they had routed an uptown E through the station on the downtown track, which would be leaving shortly. Now, that's honestly potentially more convenient for me--I'd planned to take the F to the D to the A, but the E goes straight to the A, cutting out a whole transfer! Awesome! Except that "leaving shortly" meant "leaving in about 20 minutes, give or take."

So I took the E two stops to West 4, where I could transfer to the A. But, in the immortal words of Alien Loves Predator, "The A Train is never coming." So I waited and waited--and while this was going on, for the record, Rachel was staying half awake at home waiting for a phone call from me. Because while our neighborhood is actually quite nice and safer than most (-ahem- we're not the ones living in Bed-Stuy...) it's still not exactly a great idea to wander around alone in the middle of the night, particularly if one is petite and doesn't run too quickly. So I told her if there was no one out I'd call her as I walked home.

But after another half an hour, the A train hadn't arrived. The next thing to come was another E, and having given up, essentially (I was hoping to get pretty far uptown before giving in and taking a cab--I'm very, very broke at the moment, and from that far down would probably have ben $40, which I can't really justify spending when there's public transit, even if it is slow as hell) I hopped that up to 34th, where I waited for an A.

Which came! In only a few minutes! And ran local. For those who are curious, I live above 200th street. That's, let's see...19 stops when running local. Which blows. But as it turned out, I didn't have to take all those stops. Because the A train has decided, once again, that it doesn't feel like running past 168 on weekends anymore. In the past, when this has happened, there's been a special A shuttle running on the opposite track, for some reason. Or I was able to take the 1--but the 1 is another six blocks from my apartment, and it was creeping up on 3:30 AM at this point, and again, my preference is to do as little traipsing about in the middle of the night as possible. So I didn't want to take the 1, and there was no shuttle train.

They were running a shuttle bus.

Um...yeah. It's not as bad as it could have been, but as a general rule, there's a reason I take subways up- and downtown instead of buses, and it's because buses suck. And despite being 3:30 AM, it was entirely full. Mostly of drunk folks. So.

I am home safe. It's five of four in the morning.

* Sort of. Half a drink makes me want to puke, but doesn't get me remotely tipsy. This is highly irritating.

Having my dinner interrupted by an explosion three blocks over; discovering a gaping hole in the street spewing up smoke and dirt like a volcano high enough to block out the Chrystler building; not knowing if it's terrorists or ConEd fucking up or if anyone is hurt because no one has any idea what's happened; walking 35 blocks just to get to a point where traffic is moving again and there's finally an empty cab.

So that was my evening. How are all of you?

My default icon is mildly appropriate for once.

Thanks for all the happy wishes today, y'all. I got a bunch of nice comments and a few phone calls from awesome people, which made me feel very popular and loved. :)

As for the day itself, I spent the whole of it with Josh--I'd crashed at his place last night and he, ahem, opted out of work today, so we hung out for awhile then went on a harbor cruise in the evening. It wasn't quiet evening enough to really be "harbor lights", but it was lovely regardless--I picked up some neat history geek type things from the cruise commentary, so that was also nice.

So overall, a lovely day. And now, alas, to bed.

I think the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks is my favorite city-wide celebration. I spent the day with Josh at a friend-of-a-friend's cookout, which was excellent. Except for the lobster and crab and shrip, all of which gross me out extremely, but they did kindly make me veggie burgers. Then we headed up to a rooftop to watch the fireworks.

Fucking amazing.

I kind of wish I'd know about this so I could have snagged one on the way to work. Because that is one cool condom.

I love fireworks; the Fourth of July is my second favorite holiday (after Halloween--maybe now my favorite, actually, since I no longer dress up or trick-or-treat. Anyway) because of that. So naturally, Josh and I went out tonight; he took me out to a lovely dinner (to my surprise; usually we go Dutch, but he wanted to pick this one up) and then wandered onto the FDR. We got there early enough (and far up enough) that it wasn't super crowded yet; we managed to snag a spot by the wall, directly in front of the river. Of course, that also meant we were an hour and a half early, but it was worth it; the place really did fill up.

And the fireworks were awesome. I mean, wow. There were cubes and stars and smiley faces! (And, you know, everything else, in just about every color). It was a long show, and really very, very cool. Though the woman next to us was annoying; we started referring to her as Michael Kay when she was making comments like, "Well, the current is very strong. So if a boat is out on the river with no anchor, it'll probably be swept downriver. That's what happens when you have a strong current, unless you're anchored." Otherwise, though, it was spectacular.

Incidentally, a fun note about living as far uptown as we do is that it sometimes looks like you've accidentally wandered back a few decades. In the last week or so, I've not only walked through a genuine game of stickball being played in the street, I also saw an open hydrant, and a bunch of kids using it as their own personal sprinklers. It was very 1950s, idyllic imagery. Lovely.

I love this city.

I'm often fascinated by subway graffiti inside the tunnels. How did it get there? Did someone actually climb across the tracks? And why bother going to that much effor halfway down a tunnel where at most it'll be seen for two seconds? It's odd.

On the way home tonight, I glanced out the window in a graffiti strewn area. And there, in clear white paint amidst it all, someone had spray paintd "SPAM".

That totally made my night.

So, according to Rachel, I'm a New Yorker because when I left work last week and the N/R/W wasn't running, all I did was shrug and take the 6 to the S to the A to get home. Then last weekend, the A (the line on which we live) went a little crazy, and was running as a shuttle to 168, and then local from 168 all the way downtown. Which... sucked. But okay, it was fine, just slower.

This weekend, however, they decided to do the same thing, minus the shuttle part. Which means I got uptown as far as 168 (which took quite awhile, stupid latenight local, feh) and they announced that was the final stop. And there was no shuttle. And anyone who needed to continue uptown was to take the 1 and hope for the best.

As it turns out, there's a 1 stop about four blocks further from my apartment than the A, but still. I don't like to discover these things at one-thirty in the morning when I should have been in bed an hour ago!~!

And on that note, goodnight.

No, I didn't meet Conan; however, I did meet the creator of Salute Your Shorts. And yes, I asked him to please get the show out on DVD. (He said that had never occurred to him, and he'd look into it. If it's released, I demand all sorts of credit for it.)

And I met the creator of The Adventures of Pete & Pete yesterday.

Yeah, I'm freaking awesome.

Otherwise, people are very nice, kind, and helpful; I'm really enjoying my half-hour to hour-long chats, digging the city, and am generally having a great time.

(I do have one interview scheduled for 10 tomorrow morning, but should be done by 11. harmonyangel, poisonivory, when are y'all going to be free?)

Things are still going well. I'd talk more about it, but I'm a firm believer in jinxing oneself by being too optimistic, so.

New York is lovely, though.

Day one is complete. I was a total lame-o in one interview, but the other three went quite nicely; and I got some rockin' advice. Bill Persky in particular is, perhaps, the nicest man who ever lived.

I'm exhausted. I'm having Twix and Coke for dinner. My life rules.

Well, I'm off.

Eeeek!

So, having been in a general, not caring about work, jobs, etc type malaise lately, the apparent cure for it is a trip to visit my sister.

Actually, what happened is that there's a large family gather on Long Island this weekend, which I didn't realize; I had to take off from work last minute, which really blows because of my lack of work, but since I'm going to be in the NY area anyway, it just seemed like a good idea to spend a few days with Rachel, do some shopping, and hopefully remember why I want to leave Ithaca again.

Not that I'm having a crisis of self-confidence or anything.

Yeah.

I am here safely in NY. There were no wacky cab-related hijinx. This is probably for the best.

However, my historical boyfriend is P.T. Barnum. We're going to go swindling together! (Seriously, that's the most fun thing I have done in ages; it lets you pick interests like poisoning and world domination.)

Anyway, I'm away from home and internet access will be sporadic. I'm done with my classes and my internship (but they're throwing me a party! With cake! They love me!) and despite having threee papers left, am quite stoke d about being done.

And I have God's Best Sandwich. Mmmmm. Sandwich.

I really feel like I should update with something long and in depth about everything that's going on, because my break is pretty freaking rocking. But I'm pretty tired and don't think anyone else is all that interesting, so suffice to say:

Jess rocks, and I'm sorry I've been keeping you up all night, darling
The Gates are pretty. The Met is cool.
The Natural History Museum is also cool.
All little dogs wear sweaters.
Project Runway is addictive.
I have eaten all the food in the entire world.
Amaretto sours are yummy.

Umm... Yeah. I've skimmed my flist, but y'all write too much, so if I've missed important life events, I apologize (and to those of you feeling down, I love you, feel better).