another story with an old man

i was walking in a fairly deserted hallway on monday afternoon. it was wide and an absolute echo chamber. thus, my power heels were making a fair amount of clicking which was reverberating into infinity. there was a tiny old man in front of me, who was walking much more slowly than i. i kept walking and passed him (granted, i passed him on the right, but this ain't the highway). as i walked passed him, he said:

"lady, you walk like a soldier."

amélieamélieamélieamélie

last night, the lovely maryam and i met up at MoMA for dessert and to catch a showing of le fabuleux destin d'amélie poulain. as we were standing outside, about to go in to get tickets, a tiny old man ran up to us and said, "is it amélie?" and maryam said, yes. she and i turned to go through the (revolving door) to get our tickets. maryam entered her section of the door and the old man looked at me, decided i wasn't moving fast enough and cut in front of me.

and slipped into maryam's compartment of the revolving door, pushing faster, faster, all the while practically shouting, "amélieamélieamélieamélieamélieamélie!"

and i thought i had revolving door phobia before. the door was going so fast, i thought for sure i'd have to make an additional circuit or two before it slowed down enough that i wouldn't worry about the structural integrity of my anklebones. but i'm sure that's nothing compared to the trauma maryam suffered that fateful eve.

i've known her for 14 years and never felt the need to share a compartment in a revolving door with her.

random: i'm sure you're curious. we went to the modern next door and had buttermilk panna cotta. it was quite lovely. and yes, i love amélie as much now as i did the first time. and it IS better to help people than garden gnomes.

photoessay and wordessay making photowordessay

i have seen many things while in this big city.

i've seen graphic representation of a talking horse's ass. when horseasses talk, they use incomplete sentences.

i've met people from germany

juliane and simone (l-r):

birga:

i like signs with stick people/ball heads in motion. they always look so relaxed and comfy:

i've seen birdheaded fake people

i've seen the lovely antigona hard at work before she finished her internship and gave me her hard work to do on top of my own hard work:

i've had goregeous days in herald square and bryant park

hung out with old friends displaying their punk rock sensibility

and hung out with old friends just moved to town

i've seen big bronze statues that had helicopters flying around them making me feel like i was in a nicolas cage action film

i've gotten stripeys in my hair

and pretended to be thoughtful

and, of course, i've seen madison square garden. either that's my best picture or i'm tired of making this posting. you guess which.

something's been eating the houseplants. me.

won't it be lovely?

tonight, i will join the lovely mary katherina w. and her daddy-o bill for dinner on the lower east side at freeman's.

freeman's, again. finest macaroni and cheese i ever done et.

3 people in new york

1. this morning, i got on the elevator to go to the dining room in my apartment/dorm/convent. it was slightly full (nowhere near its capacity of 16, but i wouldn't get on it if it had over 10 anyway. i digress), but there was plenty of room for all. all being me, the only person who got on the elevator on that floor.

it went down one floor, and 2 more people got on.

down yet one more, and 2 more people got on. at this point, i moved slightly left so that they could get on the elevator. the sweater i had draped over my arm, brushed the elbow of the woman next to me. when i say, brushed, i really mean that. i'm not trying to make myself seem affronted.

the woman gasped in abject horror and recoiled, practically leaping through the fake wood paneling to the shaft outside.

this is NEW YORK. there are millions and millions of people here. sometimes they're gonna bump into you. GET OVER IT.

2. i went into the bathroom on the first floor of my building. it's a very low-traffic bathroom for this building. a woman was washing her hands. i went to the mirror to arrange my hair situation, and she started drying her hands under the automatic hand dryers. i pulled out some lip gloss, and she went back to wash her hands again. then she went back to the dryers. i was in there for under 3 minutes, and she washed and dried her hands FIVE TIMES. who knows how long she was there before i got there, or after i left, but it made me vow to never again complain about my own OCD tendencies.

3. back to the elevator in my building. i was waiting for an elevator to go down. the elevator opened, someone got out, and i made a move toward the open door. the woman inside said, "going up?" i said, no. i never crossed the threshold of the elevator, and mind you SOMEONE GOT OUT ON MY FLOOR. the woman (about 60 years old) said, "well, thanks for wasting my time, b****."

ah... why do i like it here again? that's right, the cupcakes...

late lunch

i took me a late lunch today.

good thing because i was on the ground floor in the cafeteria when they did a total building evacuation drill.

i'm so glad i wasn't 30+ stories above the ground, requiring me to take the stairs down.

even more glad that we were allowed to take the elevator 30+ stories back up.

but i wish i did wear my flats instead of my 3.5" (whistle) heels because we had to walk to our rally point some 5 blocks away and the 9 blocks back (my entrance is 4 full city blocks from my office).

all alone with 10 million other people

one of the things that never stops striking me about new york is how at least every other day, you see someone standing by a wall crying. yes, it's usually a woman, and they're virtually always on their cell phone at the time.

and it makes me sad that we just walk by and pretend not to notice how they think the world is crumbling around them.

the laws of the universe are suspended in international territory (or, if i wanted 16 oz. of milk i would have asked for it)

if had wanted an iced latte, i would have said, "i'd like an iced latte please."

if i had wanted an iced coffee, i would have indicated such.

i wanted an iced americano.

"i'd like a small iced americano, please." (barista goes to work, no problem. cashier has problem.)

"there is no such thing as an iced americano. you wanted iced coffee."

"no, i want the espresso over ice."

"you can't put espresso over ice, you want an iced latte."

"can i please get a double espresso and a cup of ice?"

"you can't pour espresso over ice. you want a latte. don't make her what she asked for, she wants a latte."

if i'm waiting for CAFFEINE, do yourself a favor and DON'T tell me it can't be done. unless we're in a parallel universe where there are some freakish laws of physics, YOU CAN POUR ESPRESSO OVER ICE.

hey kids

i've added word verification to the comments.

you can thank the world of spam for this!

can i write about washington, dc on my new york blog?

yes, because i can do whatever i want. i have free will.

to remind myself what i want to write about later (when i've uploaded to flickr - story of nyc: regaling you with tales must wait for flickr...), this is a sneak peek (includes sunday in nyc):

jaleo's
spy museum
beer
rain
mall
sprinklers
rocket
posessed lincoln
feet
chinatown
crazies
metro
subway
ferry
ramones
postmodern patchouli
dee dee ramone
53rd and 3rd

aren't you excited?!

posessed lincoln and washington monument rocket

cherz has done fun things to our nation's capital on his site. i'll send you there this way: http://www.cherz.com

i'll let you find them yourself (hint: they're totally random things...).

anyhow tomorrow, i get on a bus for 4 hours and meet someone who is out of the office today and was yesterday as well, and in theory meet them somewhere for lunch and go back to her office and meet more people. it's hard to get more specific because this is the internets. and as i said, she's not in the office and i don't have any other details.

that's not stressful to me AT ALL. this meeting tomorrow won't introduce me to some of the highest ranking officials i could hope to meet as a grad student or anything. no potential for me to get a job further down the road, nope.

why i love my friends

the scene: fez under time cafe
the time: tuesday night around 10 pm
the players: hf, maryam (m), birga (b), friendly bartender (fb)

m: i hate my job, i just want a new one

fb: why do you hate your job so much? what do you do?

m: i work at a place where they sell $400 face cream.

fb: $400 for face cream? is it a lot of face cream?

m: it's a little tube about this big [makes hand gesture]

fb: what sort of endangered species do they put in it to make it cost $400?

m: babies.

lovely lovely...

i had such a lovely evening last night because it was nice and cool and i didn't sweat in my sleep at all! and i met a new person in my building (they're almost ALL GERMAN - who knew i'd go to ny and meet the population of the entire country of germany?) named birga. birga and i sat on the roof talking, and later i went up to the roof with juliane and frauke and we talked too.

then i went to bed and slept until my alarm went off. what's that like? i had forgotten...

anyhow enough about the weather.

work is busy busy busy because i'm taking the workload of 2 interns... but i'm going to washington this weekend to meet with some people and then to poke around the ol' DC for a bit since i've been there never. i already bought my ticket for the international spy museum. :) all i need is the $ for the chinatown bus!

woohoo!

i think it's lunchtime. unrelated to you people reading this, just a reminder for me, because yesterday i forgot to eat lunch until 4 and they had taken down lunch but hadn't put dinner out yet...

j'écrirai en français pour yaymee.

il faisait si chaud ce week-end que j'ai dormit sur le toit samedi soir et hier soir, je me suis réveillée quelques fois dans la nuit pour mouiller le visage et le cou et les bras avec l'eau. et aujourd'hui il fait tellement moins chaud et c'est tolerable.

et yaymee, tu as des autres visages ridicules aussi

update: chris, try it again, i misspelled a word. the translation ain't perfect online, but it gets the point across! :)

i am afraid of revolving doors.

update: while the theories and delving into people's fears were interesting, my fear of revolving doors is this:

i am afraid that my last foot out the door (usually my right because although i'm right-handed i've got touches of ambidextrousness, and i lead with my left foot) will get caught in the door and that there will be enough pressure to shatter my 2 ankle bones. because of the physics involved, these bones are unlikely to shatter, but it's an irrational fear.

sort of like my fear of falling down stairs. that's not so irrational though, i usually take a header down the stairs somewhat spectacularly and in public once a year or so.

MoMA and midtown and stuff

saturday, kelley and i arrange to meet at MoMA. i got there early, ran to the ATM and wandered a teeny bit around 5th avenue. i passed st. patrick's cathedral. there's not a lot of opportunity to get enough distance to photograph it, so you get arty pictures.

how can you tell if it's catholic? look for the papal flag:

back at MoMA, i found kelley, we walked through the door and decided to have lunch. so we turned around, walked back out, hopped on the E train and made it down to SoHo (so, ho, how YOU doin'?) and ate at tennessee mountain. why tennessee mountain? it was a ribs place with pigs in the window. on the tables, on the menu. i like to think of it as "before and after" pictures which is funny. so places with before and after food are a-ok in my book.

after lunch i bought more yarn, and we finally made it into MoMA. they were having an exhibit on cezanne and pisarro, neither of whom i particularly care about, and we wandered around. there were a ton of friedlander photos, which i loved... my pictures were few and far between, but i got a few:

this is the dude that was wearing the royal purple newsboy hat on the move.

this hat on the man who was at least 19 feet tall made me really happy. i tried to take it surreptitiously, but security told me there were no pictures on the special exhibit floor.

did i mention yet that these pictures won't be in order? because they won't.

we saw the sleeping gypsy of which i took a picture because it's mentioned in skinny legs and all, which i'm currently reading:

i'm pretty sure that the painting was wobbling, not me.

we also saw a piece of art that had funny materials listed. the piece itself didn't do much for me, but i liked the materials:

i also saw a picasso that made me SO HAPPY:

and a klimt that just filled me with enough joy that some of it dribbled out of my ears:

and hippopotamus poison:

i don't really have a good ending to this photo essay, but i went home after we left MoMA and had a fashion meltdown. i freaked out about my clothes, making me REALLY LATE for meeting maryam and jessica. i texted them and told them i'd be late. we met up, all three of us looked supercute - ironic considering that 2 of us had fashion meltdowns that day. we went to freeman's in freeman's alley to have apertif at the bar where someone (not me!) could flirt with the bartender. we then went to sweetwater in williamsburg for dinner - SO good... mmmm...

update 8/10: so, i appeared to just stop typing and think that was a good way to end a posting. but that's the way it evidently goes with me. gotta take the good with the bad, people.

quick, dad, you gotta kiss mom at the enchantment under the sea dance...

2 things...

...that made me smile on the way to work

1. a public service announcement (not supposed to be funny, but really just is) with a picture of a 4 year old boy holding a telephone. the caption reads: "something's been eating the houseplants. me." then they list the number for poison control
2. a coconut in the middle of the sidewalk

MoMA, freeman's alley, knitting

that's a summary of what i did this weekend.

i have downloaded pics to my computer but not yet uploaded them to flickr.

will write more when i have illustration.

but it was a REALLY GOOD weekend.

hotter'n hades part two

i woke up at 1:30 AM and it was so hot in my room i was convinced i was on fire.

but in better news:

it's friday!
i didn't spill any scalding hot liquid (or liquor) on myself today!
i'm going shopping this afternoon!
i think i'm going out with some other interns tonight in queens!
they had saag paneer in the cafeteria!

murphy's day

it was about 9 thousand degrees in my bedroom last night. i didn't sleep a lick. i got up this morning and realized i had ironed nothing to wear to work. but there was a shirt i had ironed but not yet worn for whatever reason. but i tried to steam the shirt i wanted to wear. after steaming it for 20 minutes i decided to wear the ironed shirt i hadn't worn yet. and was late to breakfast. and had to wair forever for the train. by the time i was off the train, i was late enough to work, i figured stopping for coffee wouldn't really matter anymore, and at least give tangibility to my lateness (that made sense in my head at the time).

i got an americano - the drink that is HOTTER THAN THE SUN. and in the elevator ride up to the 31st floor, the lid popped off and scalding hot coffe went running all over my clean, pressed shirt, my pants and into my bag with all sorts of things that didn't need to get wet.

this is also the day i learned my bag isn't waterproof.

i think i'll have a glass of wine with lunch.

oh, yes...

i forgot. on sunday, i went to the profession of perpetual vows for some franciscan friars - two of them are friends of my sister, and she couldn't make it. so i spent the weekend with sisters and friars and fathers and family members of the above. point in case:

those are the friars who took their vows (l-r): br. simon marie, br. albert karol maria, br. damiano maria, br. gerard matthias, and br. isaac mary (of eden prairie)

pictures!

so, i got a digital camera finally and have been taking pictures:

of the things i've photographed, i've gone to the roof of my building at night (i'm still working with the camera and getting the settings i like, so some of these are BLURRY):

and of maryam after singing cherubino with the new york opera forum, standing with her friend jessica:

this is my favorite photo at the UN in the exhibition of indigenous people:

and a picture of something i don't wish to do to my own face:

here's a beautiful stained glass installation near the meditation room. it looks like chagall. i have no clue who it would be if it's NOT chagall. but there was no artist credit, and i'll just call it a chagall.

that's a small bit of what i've been doing here.