Year: 2004

Updates on Random.

This weekend was lovely. We didn’t do much after a very long night out with friends on Friday. It began with a festive Chopping Block Christmas party at the Telephone Bar. We had drinks and ate dinner. It was great talking to Matthew again and meeting his new wife, Lorie. Rachel looks wonderful and her husband (who I’d never met) is a sweetheart as well. And it was great to talk to Charles again. I may have undereaten and therefore over-drank, and for that I do apologize—too much holiday cheer, indeed. At around 10:30, we left to meet up with Gerry, Bob, Tanya, Michael and Michael’s girlfriend, Vanessa at Von. We stayed there for a while, caught up, sipped wine and then headed to CBGBs to meet up with Ben Scanlon who had invited us to a book release party for Let Fury Have the Hour.

I think we took at cab home at around 2. I promptly fell into bed and didn’t wake up again until about 10 a.m. the following day.

On Saturday, we watched Dodgeball and Collateral. Dodgeball was actually funny. I laughed quite a bit, I have to admit. (“Donde esta la biblioteca, Pedro?”) Good fun. Collateral was o.k. It was only a wee bit over-the-top, in my opinion. Unless, I don’t know something about the club scene in LA or what druglords will go through to kill witnesses. But it was entertaining for a cold Saturday and so we watched it in its entirety. Jamie Foxx is amazing.

That evening, Toby went into the city to meet some folks to play pool. I stayed in and watched Law and Order, MadTV and Saturday Night Live. (Note: Womba Sketch = brilliant. Blue Christmas? Also brilliant.)

On Sunday, we woke up early, sipped coffee and unpacked some more (still living beneath boxes and clutter). We picked up a Christmas tree and decorated it. I made a low calorie blueberry pie (where you can all discuss chemically enhanced food and look at pictures) and we watched Desperate Housewives by candlelight.

It’s a weekend such as the one I just had where I am sure of why I moved back east. And this morning we woke up to snow.

Blueberry pie

Lately, I have been exploring “healthy” baking. Last week I made an apple cobbler. I used whole wheat flour, apples, a few tablespoons of Sugar In the Raw, two tablespoons of lite butter, cinnamon and nutmeg. The entire pie was about 700 calories. (That’s good, right?)

Tonight, I wanted to try a blueberry pie. I made the crust using whole wheat flour (again), lite butter, EnerG egg replacer, vanilla extract and Splenda. I baked that for 15 minutes. While the crust was baking, I poured two containers of fresh blueberries into a saucepan and reduced them for about 20 minutes.

I mixed in a half cup of Splenda and a little touch of water. I let that cool. I poured the mixture into the pie crust and added some fresh, whole blueberries.

To give it some crunch, I sprinkled some granola on top. I baked it all for about 30 minutes and I had a low-cal blueberry pie. :] And it’s good!

Tomorrow, it’s peaches. I think.

For Hire

If anyone knows of any freelance and/or full time work in the tri-state area, I suddenly have some time on my hands.

Today is even more bizarre than last week’s bizarre day. And here I thought it wasn’t possible.

(Days like today, no, weeks like this, make me believe in God. Because this is entirely too comedic to be circumstantial.)

Tales from a Texas bathroom.

At a rest stop in Texas, Toby and I pulled over to use the bathroom and buy some bottled water. Driving through the chimney top of Texas is like driving on a heavily-policed piece of brown cardboard. We had driven through Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and no other state was as flat and desolate as northern Texas.

The gas station was directly off the highway. Judging by the number of cars and the worn look of its parking lot, I’d say hundreds of travelers driving along route 40 pulled over at this particular gas station. It was well-kept. Besides the daily build-up of used ketchup packets, candy wrappers, molted straw paper, and once puffed, now left for dead cigarette butts, this well-lit gas station was pretty well maintained.

Toby grabbed a bottle of water from the back and then proceeded to check out the number of animal skulls one could purchase from the gift shop. This came as no surprise to us in Texas, but had some of the items been available for sale at a rest stop in Washington D.C. or San Francisco, one might begin to heavily surveil its shop-keeper.

We should get one of these for our Brooklyn Apartment.

Toby said to me from another isle.

How much is it?

40 bucks. Too much to spend on an animal skull.

I ducked into the bathroom to pee. We had to be in Tulsa by nightfall. I needed my second wind.

I’ll be right back. I have to pee. Check for magnets.

I entered the white tiled hallway leading me to a well-lit women’s restroom. I walked into the stall straight ahead. There is a thought which goes through my head every time I enter a restroom. Basically, whatever stall seems most readily available is probably the stall the others turned down. Operating under this rationale, one would not pick the stall furthest away or darkest or the one less “visible”, they would pick the stall directly in front of them. So I chose door number 1.

What sat behind stall door number 1 ended up being a wonderful. And apparently it blew my theory all to shit. Stall number one featured three large sheets of paper which were pasted to the walls like wallpaper. On each sheet of paper were hundreds of individuals’ scribbles. Written above the one on the back of the door, were these words:

Tell us where you’re going and where you’ve been.

Oh my god, I’d entered a “Loo Journal”. And in this particular one there were already hundreds of comments.

Here is where I admit to something. Usually, I hover. The times I do not hover, I am usually A). Drunk B). Tired (so I wipe the seat off). C). Reading about everyone else’s life while sweeping along route 40 through the chimney of Texas.

Written before me were so many stories. One women was driving through Texas with her brother. He was moving to California. Their U-haul broke down and they were waiting for a replacement. One gal hated Bush and wanted Texas to know about it. She was from Arizona. Another family was from North Carolina to Texas to welcome home a soldier. A couple named Mike and Dee (HEY! I know Mike and Dee!, I thought as I read more.) were driving from Florida to Arizona. They were from Florida. (Not the same Mike and Dee.) Still more wanted to leave messages about how much they loved the state where GW Bush was born and raised. Others talked about Thanksgiving. And still others about war. One person even mentioned a death in the family and how they were driving to a funeral.

There were maybe a hundred stories written on these sheets. And I wanted to own each and every one of them. I didn’t just want to read them, I wanted to have them as proof. I sat comfortably on the toilet reading more and more. I was probably in there for a bit too long. I pictured Toby out there among the animal bones wondering if I was partaking in “that one thing in which we do not speak about” in our house. I decided that should probably wrap this up.

I contemplated taking the sheet with Mike and Dee’s name written on it. I know a Mike and Dee from San Francisco who do a lot of driving. This couple could be their East coast twin. I could just take that one, the biggest one. I could fold it up and put it in my pock and none would be the wiser. Then, I could show it to Toby, these stories other people shared. I would have their voices in my pocket.

In two short seconds I had acted out the crime in my head and had talked myself out of it. I couldn’t steal their stories, literally shutting off their voices from everyone else but me and Toby. So I didn’t take the sheet. And I exited the bathroom.

Toby was standing beneath the animal heads, right behind the cheap plastic Texas snowglobes and ceramic cacti.

Hey. You ready?

Yeah. I have to do something first. Do you have a pen?

No. Why?

I’ll tell you in a minute.

I walked back up to the woman behind the registered and asked her for a pen.

I’d like to write on your bathroom wall if you don’t mind.

We don’t mind one bit!

She handed me a black pen and I walked back into the first stall. I sat back down onto the toilet. With pen in hand, I picked a small spot towards the bottom. It was in the middle. It was big enough to write a paragraph or maybe two. It was there at a rest stop in Texas, I began to write our story.

PROOF!

Toby Joe and I saw an apparition on the L train last night. We were pretty sure that this person was no longer around. But lo and behold, we managed to capture him on camera.

(Click on the picture to zoom.)

P.S. Admittedly, this will only make sense to maybe three of us.

Geo I'm an asshole

To the sphincter(s) who choose to drive like speed demons, out to revenge upon anyone going the normal speed limit at 7:45 in the morning, in order to maybe hit the BQE 1 tenth of a second faster than had they not been a total asshole, all the while driving A GEO TRACKER?!! ARE YOU DELUSIONAL? Contrary to whatever that salesman told you at the GEO dealer, contrary to whatever relative (or friend) told you about its color, it’s pastel.

Men drive Trackers or Sidekicks or whatever they’re called. Is it because they can’t get a lady sidekick? And a certain kind of man drives a GEO Tracker. And they are often seen acting like total shit-releasing body parts on a mission to scare and annoy all. Maybe they act like this to cover up the fact that their penis [which we can’t see while you’re in your mobile unit, by the way] is actually the size of an Oscar Meyer Miniature Wiener.

I picture these men yelling “SUZUKI!” and thinking they know kung-fu or something. Bastard.

Tomorrow’s topic: PT Cruisers are the new Tracker.

My commute

Currently, I work in Chelsea on 7th Avenue and 19th street. I hop on the L at Graham Avenue (the closest L stop to our house. It’s about a 7 block walk). I take the L to the 6th Avenue and walk up to 19th from there.

This takes anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. I’m constantly amazed at how quickly arrive to work in the morning. Last time I lived in Brooklyn I worked in SoHo. That commute took anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. (That has a lot to do with why I began taking so many pictures. Which I plan on starting again soon.) I had to transfer three times.

(The view from my desk taken at 9:00 a.m. this morning.)

Should I choose to work here, I’ll be living rather large in the commute department.

A Moving Story.

We’re almost done opening every box from our recent move. I think we have about 5 left. Last time we moved across the country, we ended up with some broken pottery. Which is such a bummer considering we hand threw it all. These things happen, though.

This time, it seems we’re coming out breakage-free. And I’m quite pleased by this. None of my records were broken. Nor was our pottery. We didn’t lose the TV or the stereo equipment. And Toby’s scooter miraculously survived unscratched and dented. But it hasn’t been entirely breakage-free.

On Sunday, I was emptying a box. I was down to the very last item. As it became time to cut the tape and fold the box, I found something peculiar where the flaps come together.

It seems that a small person, no bigger than a mouse, perhaps even a Who, climbed into our box and had somewhere along the bumpy road had broken their eyeglasses. And I knew just the bobble head fool who did so.

It seems that Raphie actually DID shoot his eye out on the way across the country. Because he used to look like this:

We’re bringing a lawsuit against Door to Door and Citi to Citi moving for this tragic event. It’s a good thing they didn’t break our leglamp, because that would have been a little too creepy. Next thing you know the Grinch will actually steal Christmas by not blessing me with a tree this year, dammit.

Let there be cable…

We will finally have cable come next week. (Assuming one of us can actually be there.) You know, there is a reason that drugstores, video stores, malls, and dry cleaners are open late. WE WORK FOR A LIVING. Why can’t cable, electric, gas, phone, and bank people work a later shift? This “window” thing they use sucks.

Anyway, we got the monster package. We got it all. I will never leave the house (‘cept for work) ever again. I can’t hardly wait. I care for cable TV that much.