Monthly Archives: May 2007

I got my photos back from my new lomo fisheye camera (thanks paula!) and they are so fun. I had forgotten how great film cameras are for color and weird surprises when you see the prints. I had also forgotten how hard it can be to wait for the prints to come back from the shop. even if it’s an online shop, it’s still a huge pain.

I took a bunch more this weekend under better light conditions, and I can’t wait to get them back!

I met a good friend for dinner in the city tonight and got back to my car at journal square at 9PM. it’s a beautiful night – somehow, summer has snuck up on me in NJ again. it seems like just yesterday that all the trees started tree-ing and flowers bloomed. but now it’s in the high 60s or low 70s at night and the sky as I walked through the village to the PATH train was deep brilliant blue, in that urban light pollution back-light kind of way.

I was driving west on rt 3 towards home listening to a neko case album and track 5 came on – track 5 is always the best and most singable, I think – and I turned up the stereo and started singing at the top of my lungs and threw my arm over the passenger side seat and cruised over the hackensack river and turned my head and made eye contact with someone passing me and I realized suddenly that I was entirely in that moment. the windows were open and my hair was whipping in the soft warm wind and I was loud and singing and happy and I was Right There. how super, you know?

I think a lot about where I AM, especially with all the driving I do. it’s so easy when you drive to and from work to get tied up in where you’re going, to live for the destination. Sometimes you will end up at work and not know how you’ve gotten there. I try to make the process part of the goal, but it’s really hard. So tonight was just wonderful.

mister corduroyorange, thank you for your post on how to cook hard boiled eggs. I should have known it was auspicious when it was posted on my birthday. now, almost a month later, I want to share with you that I have cooked at least 2 pots of hard boiled eggs and they are coming out so beautifully. most important was the tip to pack’em in there so they don’t smash against their eggy friends as they’re boiling merrily along. that was always my biggest problem. but mostly, by explaining how to cook eggs you’ve given me the confidence to do it without stress , concern, or the constant checking of “the joy of cooking.” (which really, I did do. I was really nervous about boiling eggs and could never remember how long to do it for.)

thanks jesse!

I had a really fun weekend, filled with fancy cocktails and japanese tapas and friends and ribs for breakfast and tasty food stands in red hook and wine bars and birthday parties for strangers. it was also full of public transportation: I parked my car Friday after work and didn’t get back into it until this morning when I headed to the office. I love that. that’s one of the reasons I love where I live: I was really busy this weekend, and I didn’t have to drive at all.

I also went to Brooklyn twice this weekend on the public transit. Sat. night was a birthday party for someone I just met (friends of friends) and I ended up heading back to NJ at 1:30 in the morning. it took me just over 1 1/2 hours to get home, which is pretty darn awesome if you ask me. I took the 2/3 to Port Authority to my lovely 24-hour bus to NJ. excellent. Sunday I went to Brooklyn again, and it took me 1 1/4 hours to get there: train to Hoboken, from there the PATH to 14th street to the F train. very very easy as well. especially considering that according to hopstop.com it would take exactly 1 hour to make the same trip from my old apartment in Spanish Harlem. I mean, it’s way more glamorous to live in Spanish Harlem than NJ, and I could take a cab home late at night if I wanted to pony up the cash, but NJ is not terribly far away from Brooklyn and my friends. It’s helpful for me to remember that!
Although, I must admit that the cab-home option would have been so great last night on my way back to NJ: I took the train to the path to Hoboken and missed my train by 6 minutes. So I waited for an hour and took the next train, but was so engrossed in my book that I missed the [ONE] announcement that only the back doors would open. and then I couldn’t get off of the train. Ack! So I ended up getting off at the next station stop, which was so dark and scary and chilly, and waited for Kathleen to pick me up and bring me home. she is so sweet. I could have waited for 20 minutes and taken a train in the other direction, but it was nice to be rescued by My Hero!

a couple of asides to my last post: I was thinking of suggesting you read it first so you had some context for these asides, but then realized that I cracked up writing my last post because I remembered this aside-al context. so you can go either way.

1. I mentioned that Michelle’s dad ribs me about my cars. He appreciates a smart alec, firstly, so it’s fun to rib him back. he thinks they’re all broke down falling apart (though not the current one) and filthy dirty (this is true of the current one) and he often tries to trick me into letting him get a nice car wash for me. I’ve been driving to long island for: can you believe it? ELEVEN YEARS that’s not even as long as I’ve known michelle. I started, I think, during winter break of 1995/1996 freshman year. Then I was driving a ford tempo, though I would also occasionally drive the dynasty. and then I would only drive the dynasty, and then I would drive my sweet 2-door accord, and then Flo, my 4-door civic who, at the beginning, did not have four working doors and back-seaters had to climb in through the front. All of these cars have had varying levels of matte finish, rust, and/or obvious mechanical problems.

my favorite interaction with him was in the civic – I started it up and a fan belt started to squeal. he said something to me about the noise, and I said “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you – the fan belt is too loud!” it’s even funnier if you know about that ernie and bert interchange on sesame street where bert is trying to tell ernie he has a banana in his ear and finally ernie says “bert, I can’t hear you – there’s a banana in my ear!” ha! comic gold! oh, did I just aside my aside?

2. my brother calls me on the phone on his way into work. it’s always before 7AM, sometimes just before and sometimes on the wrong side of 6:30. we usually have nice chats and it’s one of the few times we can really catch up, because after HIS work I’m still working, and he goes to bed early. I told him he’s lucky that I’m a morning person and not like him because otherwise we’d never speak ever, and it’s true. I wake up right away – sometimes I have to just lie there while he talks, but sometimes, horrifyingly enough, I wake up so bright-eyed that I start the chattering right away. an aside for this aside: my brother used to sleepwalk. a lot. and he would never ever wake up in the morning. I didn’t realize what it was like to not be a morning person until just after I moved to NJ when I was so totally exhausted all I could do was sleep and sleep and sleep, and waking up felt like I lived in jello. That is, apparently, what it’s like to not be a morning person. *shudder.*