i

the previous post was brought to you by the letter i. insomnia, intoxication, inanity-- oh my!

NYC sightings

i'm back in the city, and i actually witnessed a woman get her heel stuck in a grate. whenever i've seen this in movies (well, mostly in the trailer to a movie), i've always thought it to be foolish: why would any sane woman step down on her heel with all her weight (enough to wedge it in there) knowing she is wearing tiny heels? it's a recipe for a twisted ankle, grate or no. but there she was, mid-sentence, gesticulating wildly to her friends, and suddenly, stuck in one place, which made her already-flailing arms seem even more comical. i hid my guffaws so's not to be accused of laughing at her misfortune, as opposed to finally not bemoaning the real-life replay of the J-Lo, wedding singer-- no, flower arranger? something-- commercial as B.S... and then, today i saw a woman walk into a building. no, not as in, open the door, walk inside-- i mean, she was walking down broadway with a couple of friends, making a little noise, as if she might've been to happy hour, but otherwise exhibiting no signs of lunacy-- and next thing i know, BOOM! she walked into a wall and fell flat on her ass. she made so much noise that even the fruit vendor on the opposite corner turned to see what the commotion was. (and again, several folks stopped to see if she was ok. depending on which tv/movie reality you subscribe to, you may find this hard to believe. trust me.) why am i telling these boring stories? eh, i don't know. i guess i'm just excited that i'm in the city and actually had time today to notice such things. it's great fun-- people quite simply do not do these things at home. (tho, lest i seem like i'm all "this place is better:" no, dearies, at home, we have these places called fast food joints, which are located off of highway exits just outside the city, which are good places to redeem good karma earned in city traffic in trade for delicious strips of potatoes infused in grease. and are also great places to empty bladders of all the coffee that has to be consumed in the city to keep up. but not here. here, i must trade in my french fries for the pure entertainment of girls walking headlong into walls.) (and YES, there is a mcdonald's mere blocks from here! go away with your mapquest details! i don't want french fries while i'm walking around the city, i want them after i've succesfully navigated the west side highway withOUT removing, at a high rate of speed, the back end of a shiny new mustang convertible!!!) ahem. so, then tonight, at dinnertime, after i'd completed all that i could of the days' tasks, i asked the foxy doorman (who will most likely be mentioned here again) for a good burger joint reco, and as soon as he started to describe his favorite, i knew it was a place C had tried to take me before-- and his reco alone is golden-- so my tastebuds started jumping along with my pheromones, and i practically ran out the door... but wait. as soon as i got outside, i realized i needed to stay there. and i mean, i did not even want to go inside long enough to order takeout. so i took a right instead of a left and enjoyed the last several hours of daylight in central park. i managed to find the absolute worst NYC hot dog i've ever had, but no worries... i headed for the heckscher ballfields and watched several innings of high-energy softball. (is it normal to have four outfielders??) the balls were being hit so hard that two games were overlapping in their respective outfields, and i nearly got a ball in the face despite sitting on a bench well behind the bleachers & across a walkway. (it was coming right at me but bounced on a tiny rail separating the viewing grass from the walkway, so instead it went for the guy on the bench next to me, who garnered applause from the field for his bare, one-handed catch.) afterward, i wandered up CPW, gazed longingly at the dakota for the zillionth time (as if), and then crossed over to columbus, where i found much-needed coffee, and then a lovingly written article about the late larry brown... which makes me want to read instead of write. so there you go-- you're off the hook. :-)

a todo list? fascinating!

and here, with some personal modification, is my version of the 101/1001. it has no catchy name, alas... 100+/180? ooh, if only i could come up with another 80 tasks, THEN it would have a catchy name... but, ahem, then i'd have to do something off of the list every damn day. (i say that like it's a bad thing...?) i've already spent so much time trying to find a blogger equivalent to LJ-cut that there's no hope of getting anything else accomplished today, so without further ado: 100 by 12/31/05.

an idea worth stealing...

procrastinating from cleaning & painting the kitchen. found this on a nifty blog called "negro please," which deserves to be checked out simply by virtue of its name, no? 101 tasks in 1001 days. tis a nice framework (easy to tinker with) for those of us who find it hard to admit that schedules exist, much less to get things done on them.

sinkholes & popsicles in NYC

sunday night, i headed into the city for the first time in several months. C thought i should arrive with a bang, which is part of why i had such a stressful time thereafter (see previous post)... at any rate, i was walking "home" around 4:30 am and saw this sinkhole in the middle of 56th st... i'm not talking about a pothole gone awry, this thing was easily the size of a VW bus. what struck me (once i convinced myself that i was not hallucinating) was the lack of cops, news cameras, or gawkers. if this had happened in richmond, it would've been headline news, and the news trucks would have been jockeying for space. someone at the station would've designed a logo for their coverage, and each would've claimed some sort of "exclusive" piece of the action. but in new york, there were only some work trucks and a few cones. the cops quite simply have better things to do than supervise a sinkhole, even if it is in the middle of one of the busiest neighborhoods on the east coast. but sadly, i missed this drama: a giant popsicle melted and flooded union square with oozing pink goo! seems snapple was trying to break the guinness book record for largest, um, erected popsicle? in the middle of a new york summer? someone surely got fired over this stunt. if i'd been in the city, i would've dropped whatever i was doing and hoofed it down there... i wonder if it was oozing into any of the 34656 subway entrances at union square? i never have been able to figure out why there are so many entrances there... it's not like at 42nd, for example, where entering/exiting on one side of the street or the other can actually save you from being mowed over by a taxi. and for yet another NYT link for the day, here's what i want for christmas: a cellphone for my laptop. random blog note: am i the only one who thinks "rob the bouncer" over at clublife sounds lately like he's about to snap?

slow down, i wanna get off!

head... spinning... deep breaths. it's not that i forget how fast the pace is here in the city, i just... phew. no way would i want to live here. money be damned-- it's just too much. i stayed last night in a friend's apartment, which is not as swanky as where i usually stay (in-laws commandeered my couch at C's), but in the same midtown area. there's a band playing somewhere nearby that is so loud i've had to go into the bathroom and close the door in order to make business calls without sounding like i'm sitting in a bar having martinis for lunch. (the windows are closed tight!) i'm scheduled to go back upstate this afternoon, after attending a closing meeting for our most recent sale, and C asked me this morning if i'd rather stay in the city than be by myself at the house up there. ha! no thank you. even with the mid-renovation mess and the leaky basement, i'll take it over this craziness. i love the city, but the whole character of it changes when you have 25403048 things to get done, as opposed to the same number of fun things to see. i'm not complaining, really-- i'm getting paid well and have managed to have some great meals & beverages here and there, but wow. i sure do miss the peace and quiet of my balcony. okay, time to do some mapquesting. in the next couple of hours, i'm headed to a lawyer's office somewhere on madison ave, then to the other side of the city to try and talk a garage manager into giving me C's truck, then somehow i'm to navigate out of the city and to his inlaws, upstate in a sleepy burg that is nowhere near the house. there, i'll pick up another of his vehicles and drive to rhinebeck, to a town meeting, where i'll be taking notes on the future development (or lack thereof, if they have their way) of the town. if all those treks go smoothly, after that i might have time to eat. if i'm lucky.

rhinebeck

man, i really can't believe i thought about not coming up here. it's gorgeous! quaint little town, lots of trees, friendly people... granted, i do have work to do, and the house is a mid-renovation wreck, but it's good to be away. perhaps i'll figure out how to post pics from my camera so i can take a picture of my view from right here, out on the "patio," which was once the driveway. what i'm looking at will eventually be a big deck and pool, but that may not be til next summer. right now i see garden and trees and little else. to my right is a big old vacant house with a giant southern-style porch. behind me is a privacy fence; beyond that the street, and across it, more swollen-porched homes. people here are apparently dreading the influx of city folk (like me, us) and i can't really blame them. sunday i had many adventures with amtrak, starting when i overslept and missed my scheduled train, continuing with my later train getting to NYC an hour behind schedule, meaning i missed my connection. all told, i arrived at 2:30 am instead of the planned 7:30 pm. oops! just as well, really, as C had gone to montreal for the weekend and didn't get back til midnight anyway. we were both exhausted, but after giving me the house tour (and pointing out which light switches were actually functional-- information which i did not retain very well), he decided no matter the time, he had to show me the fire pit. it really is a crazy beaut. the house has a detached two car garage, and in the middle of the pavement in front of it, the previous owner built himself a circular fire pit, and put up a fence on the street side for privacy. the main purpose of this was apparently so he could sit around all day with his friends and smoke as he pleased. C has added a monster of a grill, one of those uber masculine shiny jobs that look like they should be parked on a manhattan street corner and not in a country backyard. the kitchen stove hasn't yet been installed, because there was an electric stove, and yuck, no one wants that. so the fire pit and the grill are the chief means of preparing sustenance, and the fridge & freezer are fully stocked with all manner of grillable yummies. delish. whoa, got sidetracked thinking about food. so 3 am, both exhausted, we lit the thing up, cooked some dogs, and just stared at the fire for what seemed like days (in part because of beverage and smoke choices) until 4 am rolled around and i found out that C has a new ritual that involves taking his new riding lawnmower out for a drive at that exact hour. no wonder the neighbors dread the city folk. the good news is, he kept it in the sizeable yard, unlike this guy... the bad news is, he didn't put down the cutting blades, so now that he's back in the city, i guess it's left to me to mow the damn thing. i can think of worse ways to spend the afternoon. more good news: i actually have transport. i was a tad worried about being up here isolated, thinking i'd get a little stir crazy, even though he told me that the village proper is a doable walk, albeit a long one... but it turns out his montreal-trekking friends had a few days remaining on their rental car, which they left here for me, which tides me over exactly until C's new yukon gets out of the shop. it's not an ideal situation-- i'm a little paranoid driving a car that's rented to someone else, especially when i have only a passing acquaintance with them and they couldn't pick me out of a lineup, and i'm even more paranoid about driving his week-old LEASED $60,000 tank. i'm just sure i'm going to scrape the side of it on a pole while trying to navigate a little bitty lane or a parking place. but i'll get over it. as a side note: if i was spending that much money on a vehicle (or anything, for that matter) and the thing had to go back to the dealer for repairs that quickly, i'll tell them to take the damn thing back and give me a new one. but that's just me. meanwhile, i must stay focused on the work so i will get it done and have plenty of time left over to relax on the... driveway? gotta come up with a good name for it... and also to write. note to self: no more breaks until the rest of the chair is assembled, the fax machine is unpacked and hooked up, and the trash collection and gas line installation is set up. go!

brilliant invention

holy crap! it's clocky! finally, an alarm clock that understands me! somebody give this guy some seed money so i can buy one at sharper image!

bronx? what's that?

okay, deep breath. lots of them. my brain hurts. why? because nobody gives a shit about the bronx. (except maybe for that little stadium thing there, but this month so far, even its importance is in question...) all i had to do tonight is find a few commercial properties for rent/lease in the bronx, make a little list, and maybe find some market reports to let us know what's going on in the area. average square foot prices, that sort of thing. info that is all over the damn place for manhattan proper. THREE HOURS on google, and i've got NOTHING. no lease prices, no market data, and no sleep. and, um, no air conditioning. it 75 degrees and the sun's not even up yet. great day to put a fuel filter in my car! and, shite, the high temps for the next week in rhinebeck are the same as they are here. part of the upshot of going there at the beginning of the height of the heat was to escape that by a few degrees. ah well. blah. i need a pick me up. this is one of those times when i wish i did drugs.

huh?

random brain wave: why on earth (or whatever planet he lives on) does michael jackson go to the emergency room every time he gets an owee? this is a man whose personal life seems to revolve around his "individuality," right? a man who builds his own compound to hide in? why not sell a llama or two and use the money to furnish one of his rooms with some basic medical equipment? fire one of his decorators in exchange for a physician? i mean, really. we've all been to the emergency room, whether as a patient or a visitor. is that a place you would EVER go if you could afford not to? drama queen. one more thing: if living near power lines turns out to cause cancer, does that mean we're going to have to give up this crazy modern idea of electricity at home? and, ya know, streetlights and stuff? time to invest heavily in candle companies. you heard it here first! (you can thank me later.)

kevin bacon

wow, those internets still can render me speechless... twas reading this article in the nyt about the power of google to harness the past, whether you like it or not, and was inspired to google myself, for the first time in ages. lo and behold, i found a genealogy site put together by... well, i'll still trying to figure out what he is to me... a guy whose grandfather was also my great-grandfather. he has a pdf tracing his family (and, by extension, mine-- sorta) back to something like the 1200s. (maybe farther-- i've only scanned through 100+ pages of the document. wowsa.