I'm in Queens. A black cat just crossed my path. It's a good thing I'm not superstitious. (Weird Freudian typing slip! Originally I wrote 'suspicious'! And the funny thing is that I AM totally suspicious! Mostly about opening umbrellas indoors though. And strangers.)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
A dog, shoes, and the promenade
I was moving photos off my camera and onto my computer and found a few I thought I’d post. The first is Brooklyn Heights taken from the promenade yesterday when I was wandering around apartment hunting:
The second is a view of some trash in a trash can with the promenade in the back:
And then here’s Tobey from when my parents were here:
And here, too, is Tobey. Also? Some shoes.
I should get back to vlogging. I will do that soon, promise!
Dear Broker
Oh goody! Time for another “Dear Broker”!
Dear Broker,
I’m sorry that when I asked the square footage and you said, “I like to approach it a different way, what are you trying to accomplish?” I sort of ignored your question and just asked my question again using different words (“Do you know the dimensions?”) It’s just that I didn’t quite understand what you were getting at—what cruel irony that I didn’t know what YOU were trying to accomplish—but now that I do, I can say with confidence that I’m trying to “accomplish” finding out the square footage or dimensions of the apartment.
Nothing “cozy” please.
Alison
It's very stressful for my houseplants
Is anyone having trouble viewing my blog today? Do tell.
Also, is anyone else watching Date My Ex or Swingtown?
I spent all day wandering around Brooklyn looking at apartments. I just want Fred and Rita to have a nice home. Is that too much to ask?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Caterpillar caviar
Not to be melodramatic, but there was very nearly a tragedy in my mouth tonight. I wasn’t even going to share this story (although I kind of mentioned it on Wendy and my blog), because in the retelling I’ll likely feel my whole body spasm in a kind of pre-upchuck reflex, however I feel you deserve to know. Warning: it’s gross.
So there I was cutting into a head of cauliflower in the way I often do which is to cut the thing in half and then flip the halves over and cut off the green leaves from the bottom. I’m sure this isn’t the fancy chef way but then I’m not a fancy chef, I’m just a gal trying not to eat caterpillars and their eggs. So I flip the thing over and I notice some weird amber-hued clusters of what looks like caviar. That’s the thing that gets me about this whole story is just how much I’m an architect in my own near misfortune. I mean, I actually thought to myself that it looks like caviar which is to say it looks like eggs AND THEN I scooped up a blob on my finger and smeared it and it smeared in a way which made me think it wasn’t eggs but was instead some kind of resin—like a plant’s ear wax—or a mold or something and so I kept cutting and looking at it and thinking that the tiny little orbs were certainly rounder than anything that isn’t living matter, so I was beginning to worry that really I was fooling myself because clearly I’m dealing with some kind of larvae so I was going to try to cut off the gross parts and I was cutting and throwing out lots of the cauliflower and then I saw this bright green thing in the heart of the cauliflower. At first I actually wondered if it wasn’t part of the stalk but then I kept looking at it and it was clearly an insect—I was thinking a worm or centipede because apparently under stress I forget the word caterpillar—and so while I was freaking out and bagging up the cauliflower trash and taking it to the basement far far away from my apartment so no caterpillars can lay eggs in my eye sockets while I sleep I began thinking about jokes like “what’s worse than finding half a worm in your apple”? Except I couldn’t really think of a good punch line because I was too busy disassociating from my caterpillar egg compromised hand which I washed so many times I’m surprised it still has skin on it. But this hand is dead to me now—may I never touch my eyes, nose or mouth with it.
Except I think I already did.
Anyway, yeah. So that was my night.
New one up on Alison and Wendy
You should probably check it out.
the way apartment hunting takes over your life and invades your thoughts
I was in the other room and the TV was on and I heard “A new study says New Yorkers are number one in the country when it comes to being evicted by email.” I thought: “Evicted by email?? Is that even legal?”
But then I realized they said “addicted to” email.
Incidentally, even though I saw two shoeboxes yesterday I was feeling pretty excited about the prospect of creating a new home for me and my imaginary dog but today I’m feeling pretty pessimistic about it. You know, in case you were wondering.
open mouth, insert words
Greetings lovelies. This is where I eat my words because I’ve long held that people who live in the outer boroughs and who are smug about it, carrying on with their room to breathe and look at all the trees and it’s great because you can go into the city and then leave the city behind and I know all the shop owners and look, I have a bike and a garden and a real eat-in kitchen and I pay a fraction of what you pay and it’s not for everyone, I DARE you to do it, you couldn’t HANDLE the gorgeous sidewalks, are annoying, and yet I think I’m going to become one.
So tell me: how do I feel about Woodside? Rego Park? Prospect Heights?
I’ll probably actually end up Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens or Astoria, but I’m seeing these listings in other places and just wondering how I feel about them.
Dear Broker
I sent you an email that said “Hi, I’m writing about an apartment I saw listed with the ID#…. Is the apartment a walk-up and if so, what floor is it on?”
You wrote back and said “Yes, it’s still available and it’s a top floor walk up. When are you able to see it?”
I wrote back and said “How many flights up is it?”
You said “It’s on the top floor of a walk-up.”
I wrote back and said “How many floors are in the building?”
You wrote back and told me, finally, which was disappointing because I was hoping we could exchange about sixteen million more emails where I ask the same question in slightly different ways.
Anyone remember Jennifer Aniston in Camp Cucamonga?
Does anyone remember TV movie Camp Cucamonga? It was one of those TV movies that starred all the young actors on network shows at the time it was slapped together. I remember another one about a prom and another one about a driving school. Anyway, I was looking up License to Drive for legitimate work reasons and then I started thinking about Camp Cucamonga and then I stumbled on this clip which shows behind the scenes footage from the movie. It’s sort of interesting because it shows Aniston way before she was famous (I think she was on Molloy around this time) and also because someone is brushing out Brian Robbins fearsome mullet near the end. I think that’s my favorite part.