Lots of Rain.. Star Sighting.. More Rain... Gymboree

So I just dropped an entire can of garbanzo beans on the kitchen floor. I just watched as they ran away, under the oven, under the fridge, over hither and yon. What can you do?

Saw Wylie Dufresne or his twin walking north on Laguardia past the B. Fuller thingy (see below).

Went to the gym, no trainer today. Had to kick my own ass... and did. Later, on the treadmill, I watched the Hudson River and some sailboats, as the sunbathers in front of me through the window were 74% old men with potbellies. Ew. What's up with that?

Like I'm one to talk. I don't have one but could at any moment. Hence the 45 sit-ups (hey, I'm working up to 100). I look forward to training with F. a lot. He put me through my paces with a non-cardio, practically static yoga-like session that had me sweating like a pig and nearly dying of exertion. He seemed impressed that I'd once done 20 push-ups (a few years ago) so I'm going to do some stealth training and work back up to at least 15 so he won't think I'm a liar.

Becoming One with the Tabbouleh

This time I harken back to Tucson, Arizona. I lived there for about eight months, sometime in the very early 90s. I was on my way to live in LA (Venice Beach) but didn't know it yet. Tucson was a blessing of ordinariness and suburbanity -- so far removed from my hometown in Maine. I needed a job and wound up at a Lebanese (!) restaurant, the name of which I forget. The memory that sticks with me is the time the two fat-bellied owners, knives in hand cutting mountains of parsley, told me I'd better be a good waitress or they'd cut me up into the tabbouleh and I'd never be heard from again. Good times. I think I lasted three weeks and made about $11.

The Odd Moment

Funny how the mind retains some memories, no matter how mundane, forever. I'm going to try to capture some of them, here, before they are finally whisk-broomed away. As I drank my orange juice this morning, I remembered (or... re-remembered) a moment in the deli when a beautiful young French woman bought a small carton of OJ and, at the counter, couldn't open it.

She seemed very thirsty and frustrated, in a quiet, French way. She kept pulling at the carton and the deli man finally reached out to help her. He had what looked like very dirty hands with bitten and discolored nails. I watched silently, in horror, as he grasped the little mouth of the carton and pulled, totally mangling it but getting it open. The girl smiled, uttered a charming and heavily accented "thank you," took the carton and walked away. I never saw her actually drink from it and would like to think that she dumped it in the nearest trash container. But I'll never know.

UPDATE: I love JetBlue again. I half-heartedly filled in an email form on their site explaining how a service rep in Salt Lake City had told me my flight back from Maine to NYC was delayed by two hours, only to find out it had left on time without me (see below). I expected nothing. But they wrote to me after a few days, sounding horrified that I'd been inconvenienced and told me they'd refund that portion of my trip. YAY! I should have asked to be reimbursed for the second ticket I'd had to buy but I didn't want to seem greedy.

Have the aliens finally landed?

No. This is Buckminster Fuller week in the city. Panel discussions at the Center for Architecture, the opening of the Dymaxion Study Center, an installation of an authentic Fly’s Eye Dome in LaGuardia Park, and exhibitions at the Max Protetch Gallery and the Whitney Museum are just some of the happenings celebrating what would have been the architectural master’s 113th birthday. Go to the AIANY Calendar for more information and event listings. (from the AIANY website). How cool!

Oh. One more thing. Some of you know my ... unhealthy attitude toward walking and cars. If I have the right of way (walk sign) I walk. Regardless. Well, that changed today. I was on Sixth Avenue and crossing the street at Charlton when I truck made a left and came at me. It didn't slow down whatsoever and I literally had to leap (a grand jetée, if you know ballet) and the truck (a nasty old big one) missed me by millimeters. I yelled a suitable profanity mid-flight at what turned out to be a woman in the truck's cab. I was shaking as I continued my walk to the shoe repair place. So... you'll be relieved to know I've changed my tune and developed a healthy fear of motor vehicles and will never assume they don't want to kill me.

Superhero

I am THE FLASH. "Fast, athletic and flirtatious."

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Whitewater!

I went whitewater rafting yesterday. I'd been looking forward to it with trepidation for a while and when the day came, I was up and out and ready to meet the strangers with whom (through Meetup.com) I'd be rafting with. We met at the corner of 86th Street and Central Park West at 8:30 am. Ouch. It was so early on a Saturday that I didn't even care that nearly all my compatriots were women who'd also never rafted before. We met up with our affable, smart, witty and loquacious host, R. and his lovely wife J. Then we, along with E., a wonderful young geneticist from Ft. Lauderdale, drove three hours (ugh!) to the Lehigh River in the Pennsylvania Poconos.

The cognac-colored river was beautiful, surrounded by high lush green hills. The weather was nearly perfect, if a tad warm. What I didn't like was the preponderance of people. I guess when they open the dam for one weekend (which allows for the whitewater) everyone turns up. Frat boys, kids, young couples, grizzled adventurers. Our group was likeable, heavily weighted to Asian women and definitely made for the best rafting team. The official leaders, who raft for a living in the summer and area ski instructors in the winter, were annoying: yelling like drill sargeants and attempting to be comedians at the same time.

There wasn't enough actual whitewater, but we did have moments of exhileration -- and dismay when our boat got stuck on rocks. We "saved" two men who had fallen into the rapids, which was cool. And we got drenched from passing boats and their water guns (not as cool). The paddling was fine but I overdid it (naturally) and now feel like I was run over by a Mack truck. Oh well. The problem with whitewater rafting is simply that it takes too long. Not the part on the river (that was 5 hours) but getting there and back. It makes sense -- the best (hardest) rivers are far, far away from NYC.

Maine. Again. But with new video and wild things

Spent a long weekend in Maine. So full and tiring that all I could do, for now, is one video. About a turtle, and its heroic rescue by P. That was one very, very lucky reptile. The sad thing is that after THIS video was taken, we kept driving, onto Spring Hill Farm Road and there were ANOTHER two ginormo turtles! P. AGAIN picked up the one in jeopardy and this one REALLY freaked, stretching his neck out and back and hissing and then he PEED fiercely on P.'s leg! And I thought I had it all on tape, but. But in my excitement I guess I'd pushed "record" twice. Devastating. Oh well.
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And this is the long one... My attempt at filming with both my little Sony digital and my new Flip, which is kinda spastic and results in a sort of (kind of) cool-in-a-nostalgic-way 8mm shaky effect. Neat! Long and kinda boring but hey. There IS singing involved. Um, and a lighthouse. And my ever-profane sister, the movie star.

The trip was great -- perfect weather and all. Plus my Dad's amazing presentation to the kids (yeah, us) on the land we can build our future homes on (three lots chockfull of nature and 100' trees and hills and rocks and sun and shadow and even the odd, endangered ladyslipper. He even made a topographic 3D map out of sand and yarn in a huge shallow box. Very impressive, while also homespun and quaint (for an engineer). Then again, he's never seen Google Maps.

Adventures included a lot of falling down (first fall happened when the doorknob came off in my hand on the stairs leading up and into the kitchen from the "shed" (a huge room full of "antiques" and lots of scary tools and broken chairs and stuff. )I fell backward and landed on a staple gun. No kidding. Luckily it didn't go off, or I wouldn't be sitting here typing. Then I fell again, ass over elbow, on the steep boat-launch ramp covered in seaweed on Ram Island. Oh well. I survived.

I almost didn't survive flight home. Bad, bad, bad. I called my [formely 2nd favorite airline] JetBlue early in the morning to confirm flight as it was raining cats and dogs and was told by a nice customer service lady in Salt Lake City (hmm) that it was 2 hours delayed and "scheduled" for 1:20 pm. Cool. Great! More time to spend with family (actually spent shopping at Reny's). When I got to the airport an hour+ early, I was told the flight had left on time -- at 11:20 am. And the next flight out was at 6:30 pm.

Great! As my sister-chauffer looked on in bewilderment, I zipped to other airline ticketing desks and settled for buying a new ticket (ouch) on Continental into Neward (instead of my usual JFK). I LOATHE Continental for many reasons. And now, I loathe them more now, if that's possible. Even if it isn't quite exactly their fault that I finally was in the air at 7:50 pm. Then we had the pleasure of sitting on the ground (landed) in Newark for another half an hour waiting for the super-specialist who could actually get us off the plane and into the airport. Is that even a job?!?And Newark Airport is THE WORST. Had to walk about seventeen miles to find the exit to the grossest airport ground transport area ever and then into the mile-long taxi line and then into a Newark cab that didn't take credit cards with a driver who railed about everything under the sun the ENTIRE way (but did, to his credit, take that shortcut to the Holland Tunnel, saving us at least another hour).

It didn't help that I had a mandatory department-wide ALL-DAY meeting the next day (with no bio breaks, for real). I just love my life.

98 in the Shade

It's hot. I trekked to Modell's to buy water shoes. And a baseball cap (Yankees). And a non-cotton T-shirt and shorts. All for the upcoming white water rafting trip in a few weeks. Now I guess I'm really committed. $80 worth of committed (plus the $76 to get there, get in a raft, and get back). I guess it could be worse. I could have taken up golf. (No. I couldn't.) And at least I didn't get all snobby and go to Paragon Sports. The selection at Modell's wasn't that great but the retail workers had lots of patience and were very nice. Unlike Sports Authority nearby, where there's lots of attitude (IF you can find a salesperson) and god forbid you don't bring your license with you when you return something. Ugh.

Maybe we CAN

Wow, I just wrote (and erased) eleven sentences that tried valiantly to sum up my sense of, yes, hope. That Barack Obama is our potential next president (oh yeah, and he happens to be black) and that Hillary is getting a good share of well wishes for trying (I send my own). Bygones, Hill, bygones. I can't wish for the dream ticket, of the two together yet, but might accidently actually dream about it while asleep.

Our lame national networks are showing prime time repeats (huh?) and CNN has a miserable audio lapse (what's the word for that?) during Obama's nomination victory speech (I guess we can't quite call it that yet -- what's the phrase for this? Pre-nomination?) and I myself am of course distracted momentarily by the amAzing PBS presentation of Cuban singer Willy Chirino celebrating his 35th year in show business in Miami ("Never Go Back to Georgia" caught my ear and held it... LOVE that song.) I digress.

Nope, that's all I had. What plays out in the next four months will be very, very interesting. I'm in no way qualified to speculate so I'll shut up now. And go and just be happy for a little while.

No Recount

Well. Okay. Paris it is. (See below, you slacker non-voters.) And Brooklyn too. So there. Last night I watched Recount, with well-founded trepidition. I knew that to relive the horror of the Bush/Gore vote count would be depressing (though the movie was kind of riveting, in a train-wreck kind of way and what's not to love about any Kevin Spacey role?) but I didn't expect having to go to sleep listening to NPR and the whole Hilary/Obama Michigan/Florida (Florida!) craziness being dissected all night. It was disconcerting to say the least.

Rabbit rabbit. June means summer in NYC, and it's already started. I busted out of my cocoon to go to the gym and actually worked out (last week, I went there and signed up, phew, what a workout!). Jello-legged but feeling righteous, I spent a nice couple of hours with S. for a late lunch at a new find, Oscar Cafe, right there on MacDougal Street south of Houston. Delightful menu. A nice, light (kind of) avocado crab salad pleasantly filled my gym-flattened stomach, while a cool fat bulldog drooled onto my sandaled feet as we sat in the sun/shade outside. S., as usual, knew everyone on the street, and those whom he didn't, he befriended right then and there. Amazing. I took many mental notes.

Weekend ends with watching Crooklyn, which I assumed I'd seen way back when, but it turns out I had only listened (and owned, and relistened to) the soundtrack, which is great. I found myself really giving a nod to Spike Lee (one of my heroes in film school) whom I had kind of written off, don't know why.

Au revoir, YSL.

Where in the world...

more at twiigs.com...

Here's a story...

No, no story today. Just the fact that to relax I like to (gulp) watch The Brady Bunch. There's something very soothing about that suburban ranch house, the 70s muted Technicolor, the antics of those earnest Brady's, the dog even. Alice.

Other recent television delicacies include the perfectly good and awful "Killer Wave" (manmade tidal wave hits coast of Maine!) -- Hallmark Channel (!). So well done in an awful way or awful in a really well-done way... There's nothing like a good disaster movie to make you feel better about your own disastrous self. Not that I'm disastrous. Distressed, depressed, disturbed, dismayed, maybe. Yes.

The best so-bad-they're-almost-good disaster movies have a few things in common: a beginning so banal that its portension of disaster is in equal measure chilling (think moving shot down tree-lined suburban street, extra points for mother in car humming to the radio with kid in the backseat); lots of cut-aways to newscasters; and scientists (but not jawing on for too long -- just for a touch of exposition and a stab at credibility). Throw in the actual disaster (manmade or otherwise) and Anne Archer and you've got yourself a hit. Whoa. That's one disaster of a website there (best viewed 800 x 600!). Note to self: spruce up blog with my own face tiled as background.

Tidbits

According to my hair stylist, using Pantene conditioner is like putting floor wax on your hair.

So we can put something on Mars (!) but my parents still don't have the Internet in Maine. Hm. (Congratulations, NASA!).

Best first movie I've ever seen: Reprise, from Norwegian Joachim Trier. Cool, engaging, sad, hilarious. Films about writers (would-be or otherwise) usually make me nervous but this was just a joy. Catch it now at the Sunshine Landmark (best theater in town).

Had a nice dinner with C. and her friend H. at Mogador (hummus, goat cheese salad, halloumi). C.'s struggling with her novel; H. is in a band and is a freelance publicist, though he turned out not to be the one who posted flyers all up Sixth Avenue (how strange).

Discovered a treasure trove of clothes that didn't fit me last year -- the motherlode. Next stop, about eight hours of ironing.

Had a terrible dream in which this guy got mad at a bunch of birds making noise in a tree so he threw a rock really hard and all the birds flew away but also stones fell, hard, from the tree and some landed on O. Henry (my cat) and he was bleeding and stumbling and cross-eyed. I started beating up the guy but then asked my mom to take O. to the vet. Then I woke up, felt around the bed for O. Henry and accidently punched him in the eye. WTF? Spent from 2:45 am to 3:30 am comforting him (he wasn't hurt, just perplexed).

Ah, the joys of spring. Went out early this Memorial Day for coffee and counted at least four females doing the walk-of-shame, hobbling home on nightclub heels and blinking in the sunlight. Ha! Can't tell if I'm repulsed or jealous.

Now, later, there's a young girl actually selling lemonade from a stoop on my block. What is this -- frickin' Park Slope? I crossed mid-block to my side of the street to avoid her. I had thought about telling her I was diabetic or something and couldn't have sugar. Surely her lemonade was too sweet. It would undoubtedly disturb the delicate balance of nutrients I'd ingested in preparation for the gym (dried apricots, yogurt, a few cashews, a "corn thin" (yum) with scallion tofutti, orange juice and brewers' yeast). In any event, I didn't have any change.

Peace.

Okay, So...

This will undoubtedly be one of those "yeah, so what?" posts, leaving my legions of fans to mutter, "faaascinating....," and click back to Gmail or the now-not-ever-just-Sunday Times online or wherever people go to escape reality. This is reality, man.

I awoke today with great hopes for accomplishing a lot. By noon, I'd figured out, philosophically, that there's a lot of value in doing nothing, for nothing's sake -- especially when forced into productivity by our capitalistic society and my company's insane mandate for its workers to actually work for a full 35+ hours a week. Monday looms, so accomplishing nothing in a sort of Zen way seemed to be the right thing to [not] do.

I ate a couple of Turkish apricot pieces, a slice of sharp cheddar, a half-handfull of cashews (which I read somewhere are good for your teeth) a slice of apple and a slice of Asian pear with a sprig of fresh basil, and called breakfast over and done with.

I then ruined yesterday's haircut (so perfect, so soignée!) by washing it (things started downhill then, I think). Thought I deserved a break so I cracked open Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, which is pretty good ("Case Histories is so exuberant, so empathetic, that it makes most murder mystery page-turners feel as lifeless as the corpses they're strewn with." - New York Times Book Review). It's good... but why do sentences like this bug me so much: "Victor had long since given up maths." Why do the British sometimes make my teeth curl?

By the time (page 68, 1:20 pm) I looked up, the sky had darkened and my grand plans had evaporated along with the sunshine that had so bouyed me on my 9:30 am trip for skim milk and apples. (Ew, I'm starting to sound British myself!)

For the record, I have plans tonight to see friends play acoustic guitar(s) at the Greenwich Village Bistro and have signed up for whitewater rafting* in June. So there. What are you doing?

* I'm serious.

Mostly About Food

Okay, so my friend B., who's generally a terrific source for random nuggets of news from the blogosphere (especially if it will debunk anything I've said) suggested that the doomsday scenario referenced in my last post got the chances of an impending astroid hit wrong by a factor of around 30. He also mentioned that it was some high school kid who said NASA got it wrong. Something like that. Well, I couldn't find anything about that kid so I put it all aside.

Then I was reading in this week's New Yorker a well-written article by Bee Wilson (what a great name!) who poses the question "Is the world's food system collapsing?" -- and culls from the recent (and not so recent) publications some illuminating answers from books, from Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and back to the grim predictions of Thomas Malthus.

"Our current food predicament resembles a Malthusian scenario --- misery and famine -- but one largely created by overproduction rather than underproduction. Our ability to produce vastly too many calories for our basic needs has skewed the concept of demand, and generated a wildly disfunctional market."

Depressed yet again by my leisure reading, I headed up to Citarella where I spent way too much for an Asian pear. No locavore, I. I did, however, refrain from buying a big box of California strawberries, alas. They smelled so good, just like fake strawberry jam. Yum.

Speaking of food, I finally made it to Nobu with B. last week, apparently a good ten years too late. While inventive, it was slightly disappointing. I wanted the omakase, since I get so indecisive when ordering Japanese food, but it takes an hour to prepare (I guess the chef has to spend some time thinking about me and what would please me the most). The sushi I ordered was the size of my little toe (which is very, very small) and the salmon was pale, tasteless and (shudder) farmed, to boot.

We were both very annoyed at a couple next to us from Long Island (hadda be) who felt it was fine to set a video player of some sort right on the table in front of their squirmy seven-year old son who made faces and let food fall from his mouth on at least one occasion. Anyway, the tempura (pumpkin) and desserts were really, really good. That said, I won't be going back, even if I could actually afford to.

This just in (to me, anyway). And now I really really hate global warming.

Photo (salmon tartar) courtesy B.'s cell phone