"Honest. Gritty." (New York Times) "All too real. I laughed... I cried." (Wall Street Journal) "Rather dull, really." (New York Review of Blogs) "Someone needs a new hobby." (My friend Jeff)
I don't believe in signs. Or horoscopes or hope or prayer or karma. But waking up today to find scaffolding shrouding the lovely landmarked building on a quiet tree-lined street that I call home seemed, at least, portentious.
I've always hated scaffolding. Some may see it as a sign of progress and renewal but to me it's urban blight, an old dame getting one more facelift before the end. I almost died, once, on a claustrophobically scaffolded block (Parade of Heroes or whatever, 19-- or 20-- whatever when the Yankees won the World Series for the second or third time in a row and I felt compelled to join the crowds on lower Broadway. I -- and dozens of others -- nearly suffocated when the police way up ahead stopped the crowd and the thousands behind us just... kept going.)
Today, after heading to work from beneath said scaffolding, I felt bowed by the heat and humidity -- and like I was walking under a ladder I couldn't avoid. Work was work... good distraction and I got a lot done but felt like I was surrounded by sensitive, angry porcupines.
So humid I can barely move my fingers over the keys... Just got back from the gym, a late session. Ooooch. Many weird new exercises involving strength and balance. I pretend I'm on a balance beam over the Grand Canyon as I stand and swing one leg straight up 15 times and touch my outstretched hand. Luckily, I didn't fall in. Then I did pull-ups over a piranha-infested pool. You get the idea. Mind over matter. Mind over misery.
Over the weekend, I went with CC (the NYC one) to NYU's gym for a swim as it was really the only thing to do in 90+ degree weather. Very nice. I might join up again, though it would be a luxury I can probably ill afford.
Lost my non-license ID. Oh nooooooo. Hello DMV. Signed up for a kayak trip up the Hudson. Yay. Still feeling discombobulated. Had a horrible nightmare last night where my family had a barbecue and no one liked me and my mother was grilling a gigantic rodent. Nice!
Anthony Bourdain, man. What is his deal? I love the guy, want to BE him, with his good looks and travel bug and curiousity and good nature and everything. Plus, if I've ever EATEN a book (devoured, happily) it was his Kitchen Confidential. Really, he (like Paul Theroux) is kind of a hero of mine.
But. Every single time I watch his "No Reservations" I get sick to my stomach. And this from a girl who almost never has an issue with queasy-making things. I watch dispassionately as I get blood drawn at the doctor every year (yawn). I care not if I realize that the sushi from last night wasn't exactly refrigerated properly as I pop raw fish into my mouth for breakfast. I truly hope to one day eat the deadly blowfish. And I never get sick. Unless it's from a sneeze in the elevator (I'm not special, not impervious to the science of sickness).
I need to really analyze what about his TV show invariably makes me nauseated. I hereby pledge to watch this season's adventures and figure it all out. This week: Columbia. Cool! Different! No longer dangerous! LOVE the idea. And yet, and yet. AB eats a nearly raw turtle egg, and the turtle turns out to be endangered. Oops! Oh well. And I was doing pretty well until.... "Crispy fried poop shoot." You heard me right. And I can't explain what it was because I had to just... walk away. More to follow. (And yes, I know, I should get a life).
Well, this is just great. Just when Maine is starting to get a reputation as a cool place, where smart people go to get away or to live a life of simplicity, honesty and beauty, along comes mashed potato wrestling to ruin it. From Boston.com:
Mashed potato wrestling is making its return to this year's Maine Potato Blossom Festival in Fort Fairfield. The festival in northern Maine's potato country is now in its 61st year paying tribute to the state's most valuable crop.
It's almost official. On Wednesday I can book my flight to Athens for the week of sailing the Greek Isles in mid-September. Yikes! It's gonna break the bank and I have no idea how long I'll actually be gone (I think it's stretching beyond my requested vacation week -- oops). But oh well. The nice captain sent the funniest e-mail, apologizing that there's only 2 heads on the boat, instead of the advertised 3. Not knowing him well (or even having met him yet) I refrained from the obvious joke(s).
Another summer weekend over Fourth of July in Maine. This one was different, though. Definitely more special. CC. picked me up at the Portland International Jetport. It was so good to see her, one of my oldest friends, and one whom unfortunately is battling a very scary health problem. She's strong, though, and full of life and hope.
Highlights of the visit included sailing with Dad out from Boothbay Harbor. CC. and I both jumped into the ocean (I was in my underwear!). It wasn't as freezing as I'd anticipated but we wanted to get out almost immediately. Oops, no ladder. We had to fling our cold, wet selves into the dinghy and then climb back up onto the boat. Yowch. I have a great bruise on my leg as a lingering memento.
We also stumbled upon the Glidden Point Oyster Farm on River Road. I'd been blown away by their oysters at Blue Ribbon Sushi (!) and was thrilled to be at the source. CC. bought two dozen oysters and we enjoyed them with the most amazing (what do you call it? Not "sauce," but the slight spoonful you dribble over the creatures. Anyway, it was made with white balsamic vinegar, finely chopped shallots and miniature sprigs of green onion. Delectable. More pics here.
I'm incapable of making Blogger do what I want. Even in html. It's making me nuts. Oh well. Just understand that I KNOW my layout is retarded.
Speaking of things online, I'm pleased that my little experiment (befriending another Kit Thompson on Facebook) is turning out so well. My young friend in the U.K. is rad. Check her out:
Favorite Music: Ryan Adams, Alias, Apparat, Between the Buried and Me, Bloc Party, Callisto, Converge, Cult of Luna, Daft Punk, The Dillinger, Escape Plan, Dredg, Hot Chip, Interpol, Intronaut, Isis, Jakob, Junior Boys, Khoma, The Knife, Mastodon, The Ocean, Opeth, The Postal Service, Rosetta, Shinichi Osawa, The Smashing Pumpkins, Tegan and Sara, Thrice, Vitalic.
Wow.
Oh, this is kinda cool. Too bad I don't have an iPhone! In my Flickr mail:
Back in 2007, you kindly gave us permission to include your credited photo in our Schmap New York Guide.This is just a quick note to let you know that Schmap Guides have now been released for the iPhone and iPod touch.Your photo in the iPhone version of our Schmap New York Guide is at.....
Yes, I said "carless" not "careless." I might be needing a hyphen there but I'm not sure. Anyway, I was thrilled to read a great article in the New Yorker on Keith Olbermann, "One Angry Man," this week. Not least because it was a really informative and kind of inspiring article on a man I knew little about, as I don't watch MSNBC much. Beyond his obvious passion for spot-on political commentary (not to mention sports, etc.) and great vocabulary and style ("acid caricature," "demonic mimicry" and a "lacerating indictment of Bush" included, according to the piece by Peter J. Boyer), he also DOESN'T DRIVE. Yay. I'm not alone.
I thought I'd found the only other kindred spirit in friend G., who, over drinks the other night, also confessed (wrong word: reported) that he doesn't drive. And now Keith (who doesn't because a head injury caused some vertigo or something that affects his balance at car speed). As for me, well, I CAN drive (stick but not automatic, comfortably) and kinda of really love to (as long as I'm in the only other car on the road). I took the bus living in LA and San Francisco, walk and, if forced, ride the subway in NYC, and depend on others in most other instances. My carbon footprint, by the way, is way smaller than my increasingly back-to-the-earth parents in (very) rural Maine. I'm not really patting myself on the back here, just trying to feel like less of a freak in this car-centric world.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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. .
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.
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.
