City By Storm

Has CCD failed us?

2010-09-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

The latest religious news this week is that, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, non-religious Americans know more about religion in general than self-identified Christians. Even when corrections were made for disparities in intelligence and education levels, the statistics still bear out. (You can test your own knowledge, or just check out the questions, here. I got all the answers correct, but only because I had read about some of the questions in various news reports. I would probably have gotten 2 wrong if I hadn't.)

Last Sunday, CNN aired a special segment called "What the Pope Knew," an investigative special on the extent to which Pope Benedict knew about sexually abusive priests when he was a cardinal. It reveals that then Cardinal Ratzinger had specific knowledge of at least one pedophile priest and wrote a letter explaining that the Church could not defrock him without his consent. In other words, it was largely ignored.

John W. Kennedy, who writes the "Catholics, Media & Culture" column for Beliefnet, addressed the CNN program, writing that it was a solid piece of journalism and unfortunately revealed grave errors on the part of the Church. He also writes of how we can move forward from such revelations:

Balance requires a willingness to admit and truly come to grips with what happened (so healing can begin and necessary reforms can be made) as well a realization that the Church stands for something that is good and solid and beyond the failings of even its leaders -- and that is the love and forgiveness offered to the world through Jesus Christ.

While I agree with Kennedy's above statement, I think that we're missing some crucial elements that can make this kind of healing happen, and those gaps are revealed by the Pew survey.

Catholics - myself included - don't know enough about our own religion. The problem with the Pope's actions in regard to predatory criminal men serving in the priesthood is firstly one of his own morality and conscience and secondly one of Church doctrine, which he was, at the time, following.

If the general Catholic population struggles to identify which Biblical figure was asked by God to sacrifice his son (and it's multiple choice) or even to name the holy book of Islam (because a basic understanding of other world religions is imperative to understanding our own), clearly we're not up on complicated Church doctrine. And if the flock doesn't know what's governing the decisions of its leaders, how can we ever have a dialogue about meaningful change?

It's easy for bloggers (ahem) and lay people to say, injustice should not happen in our Church. And it shouldn't. Moral courage should have trumped Church dogma in every single case of child abuse that the Church came across. But it would be easier to eradicate this problem if there weren't doctrinal obstacles in place, and while the average Catholic can't technically initiate these changes, we can write letters and mount campaigns and talk to our priests and bishops and cardinals about changes that might be made.

Next week I'll be writing about a piece of Catholic history or doctrine that I didn't know about before and that I think is important for every Catholic to know. I invite readers to leave suggestions in the comments. Let's get smarter together, shall we?

Let Go of Natalee Holloway - For Real

2010-09-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

The media loves anniversaries. It doesn't matter how many years (or even months) have passed - everything can be made to sound significant if you slap a number on it and look back at it solemnly. The October issue of Glamour magazine boasts on its cover of an "exclusive" interview with two of Natalee Holloway's best friends, speaking five years after her disappearance from a tragically ill-advised (100 teenagers, 4 adult chaperones) senior class trip to Aruba. The headline is "What We've Never Told Anyone About Natalee."

The article, in the words of the two friends, spends the first half on details about Natalee as a teenager - her nickname, her demeanor around boys, her college plans. All things that matter to young women who lost a friend in a very public and jarring way, for sure, but as I was reading it, I kept thinking, Why should I care about this? Natalee Holloway was a normal girl who disappeared and most likely died on the very same night. Her parents rightfully care about this, as do her friends, the adults who were supposed to be watching out for her, and the local communities in both Aruba and in Natalee's hometown. But national news? Five years later?

The news value of articles like these is shaky at best. The most charitable light one can possibly shine on the motivations of the Glamour editors who greenlighted this piece shows the desire to prevent other young girls from disappearing, but exactly how that is achieved, we are only left to guess. (Don't send a giant group of newly graduated high schoolers to a vacation spot where they can legally drink, maybe? Just a suggestion.) The more realistic motivations come from a tabloid sensibility and the continued exploitation of a pretty young blond girl who met a terrible fate.

I can think of several other articles one could write if an editor pressed for material touching on the anniversary of Holloway's disappearance: an examination of how school-sanctioned and -organized graduation trips and celebrations have changed (or not); an interview with her mother about how the Natalee Holloway Resource Center helps families of other missing girls; profiling another girl who has gone missing in the years since. Instead, Glamour chose to dredge up, yet again, the circumstances of Holloway's last night and the profound grief of those who loved her.

The girls who reveal "never before heard" details about Natalee don't even realize that they're being used to sell magazines. One could argue that every interview subject is used to sell magazines, but that is negated by news value in most cases. Here, it's not. The article could be summed up in a sentence: "Natalee was a super great friend, we don't know what happened the night she disappeared, and our survivor guilt and grief still affects us." At the risk of sounding unkind, my response to this is, "Well, duh." That's what happens when people die. It sucks. But it's not news.

Making it to Maplewood

2009-12-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

Last night, I had the inimitable joy of saying, "I'm reporting for The New York Times." That phrase was followed by "The Local blog," of course, but still. It felt good. Here is my second contribution to The Local:

http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/maplewood-residents-to-town-were-watching-you/

I also had quite an adventure getting home from Maplewood after attending a very long township council meeting. I missed the 10:27 p.m. train back to Penn Station by only a few minutes, and then was forced to wait in the 33 degree weather for the 11:38 p.m. train. I was so cold that I ventured into an ATM vestibule at a bank and hid out there for 20 minutes or so, worrying that I would get arrested for loitering or whatnot and make the local Maplewood news, instead of writing it. Thank God for iPhone apps, which passed the frigid time.

When I boarded the gloriously heated train at 11:38, the NJ Transit worker taking tickets told me to transfer at Hoboken and take the PATH, instead of transferring at Newark and waiting for the connection, so I did that, then took 2 PATH trains (all the while followed by a charming young poetry enthusiast / pre-med student who didn't know where he was going and tried his 18-year-old best to flirt with me by asking questions like, "Do you read books?") to the World Trade Center, then gave up and hailed a cab, getting home to Brooklyn at 1:46 a.m.

I must love journalism.

Story on The New York Times blog

2009-11-30T16:44:00.000-08:00

Check out my story on The New York Times blog "The Local." Click here or copy and paste:

http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/for-these-women-its-all-about-harmony/

Three years of barbershop singing in high school has definitely paid off.

JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound

2009-11-18T16:14:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, my boyfriend's brother's band, JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, was in Brooklyn at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. They hail from Chicago and brought the Electric Soul Revue to NYC (read the Times' review of the event here). Here is a small taste of the amazing set. The pictures aren't that great but the band sounds awesome.

To see it bigger, click on this link: http://digitalstoragespace.com/10/finnegan/slideshows/0911JCBrooks/publish_to_web/

Vegetarian Ethics on the Bathroom Wall

2009-11-04T09:09:00.000-08:00

Only in Park Slope. The brick wall in the bathroom at The Tea Lounge on Union Street features the following graffiti debate:

MEAT IS MURDER
(arrows pointing to above statement) a bit dramatic
So animals aren't slaughtered for food?
Yum
Murder tastes good
Dairy is still rape
Yo mama is merder
You can't murder an animal, you can kill it but not murder it, idiot.
Humans are animals
Your mom is an animal
rabbits = people
SPECIESISM

2009-11-01T16:50:00.001-08:00

Can I really blog from my cell phone via text? Oh, technology!

Honoring the Dead, 150 Years Later

2009-10-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, mourners gathered on Staten Island to bury the remains of immigrants who had died over a century and a half ago. Their bones were discovered in 2000 during the construction of a courthouse; they had been left in unmarked mass graves in the mid 19th century.

Read my article on IrishCentral.com here (written with Eleanor Miller, fellow journalist and J-school student) and watch a video on the event below.

Snuggie Breakdown

2009-10-10T13:39:00.001-07:00

Let's say that you've just gotten off the Q train at 7th Avenue in Park Slope and are about to trudge home after a long, grueling day. You remember, with dismay, that you are out of shampoo and must stop at the nearby Duane Reade.

While skulking through the aisles to locate the TRESemme, you come across an endcap display. It can't be, you say. These products are Not Sold in Stores. But lo and behold, before your very tired eyes, is a stack of Snuggies. Leopard print, zebra striped, and breast cancer awareness pink. And for $14.99, you even get the little booklight they show on the commercial.

You call your sister and ask her if you should shell out 15 bucks for a blanket with sleeves. You're well aware of the ridiculous nature of the Snuggie but feel that you must own one. You deserve it. How else will you stay warm while eating popcorn this winter???

At home, you rip open the package and don the absurd, static-ridden fleece. You settle into a chair. It's kind of nice.

Then you watch this YouTube video:

In the end, you conclude that feeling like a tool is worth the laugh you got, and you are still pretty warm and comfy. Plus, you can type without having to rearrange your blanket.

Brooklyn Farmacy Lobster Fest

2009-10-03T14:20:00.001-07:00

Check out my post on the Interactive Journalism Class of 2010 blog, link here.

Let's Hear it for Letterman

2009-10-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

Let's put our hands together for David Letterman.

The star of CBS's Late Show confessed to his live audience that he has had sexual relationships with female members of his staff in the past.

(I had a video posted here, until CBS took it off of YouTube - fair use, people! But you can watch it here from The Guardian.)

So why should we applaud him?

Not because he usurped the slimy producer who tried to blackmail him, although that's a good reason.

Not because his explanation was actually pretty funny.

Not even solely because he has taken control of his own scandal and will now be able to steer it where he wants.

We should commend Letterman for relegating the issue to where it belongs: out of the news. The media will cover this event for sure, and investigators will dig into the details, try to get the women to come forward, construct a timeline, get comments from Letterman's wife, harass his family a bit, the whole shebang. But Letterman deflated the issue before it even came out. With any luck, it will die a quick and painless death, and we will all be spared the months of tabloid coverage something like this would get if Letterman tried to sweep it under his big wooden desk.

Sex is only a big deal to the people engaged in it. Let's all get over it. Extortion, on the other hand, is unacceptable. So thanks, Letterman, for directing our attention to the more important issue at hand. Is it a self-serving move? You bet. Will it also, in its own minuscule way, improve our media landscape? Let's hope.

Brooklyn Bound 2 Train, 3:43am

2009-09-27T01:58:00.001-07:00

Check out my article on Irish Central!

2009-09-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

Here is my article on Irish Central about Julia Stiles and her Broadway debut in Oleanna.

http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/Julia-Stiles-to-make-Broadway-debut-in-Oleanna-59637402.html?page=1

Yay!

Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman talked to me

2009-09-16T14:18:00.001-07:00

Today I attended my first real press event, for the Broadway premiere of David Mamet's play Oleanna. Shockingly, I was less nervous than I thought I would be for my first celeb interviews. It's not hard hitting news, I'll admit, but good experience. Here are some pics I took.

Keep in mind that I took these on my clunky outdated dig cam while elbowing aside the photographers from news organizations with gigundo, 57-lens super hi-tech camera hybrid devices. The second pic is with the director, Doug Hughes, who is also working on another play (see link) and recently won the Tony award for directing Doubt.

I had done my homework - reading the play, reviews, bios, etc. - so I had something to discuss with both Stiles and Pullman, and I'd like to think that I held my own reasonably competent and somewhat intelligent interview/conversation. Irishcentral.com will be carrying a version of my story soon, so I'll post that link when it's up.

Julia Stiles was gracious and funny. (Did you see her green clothing line parody?? It's hilarious! ) And no, I did not ask Bill Pullman if he planned to go quietly into the night. But I wanted to.

Brave New World: what's happening to journalism now

2009-08-30T10:38:00.001-07:00

Looking back on my first week in J-school, I can sum up the state of journalism, the ultimate challenge that lays ahead for me and my fellow students, the crucial reason to be in J-school at all, the scariest and the most exciting ideas that will dominate the next 18 months of my life, all in one single sentence, three words in fact:

Newspapers are dying.

But there is a bright side, and no one knows exactly what it is yet, but it's there. New media writer and forward-thinker Clay Shirky sums it up well:

"Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work."

(This is excerpted from his essay, "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable." You can read and comment on the entire piece here.)

So my job, starting right now, is to learn the basics of journalism and then envision how these skills and theories and talents will come together in completely new ways. The format is not merely transitioning, because we don't know what it's moving toward, only what it's moving away from.

In my IrishCentral.com blog, I speculate about what it means to be a Catholic journalist - or more accurately, a journalist who happens to be Catholic. Read it here.

That's only one question that some of us need to be asking right now. We - fellow young journalists and myself - need to ask ourselves what it means to be a journalist without the old newspaper models, just as we are obligated to learn those models and try to work our ways into them, even when we know that they might be unsustainable in their current forms.

Check out the blog I just started for my Interactive Journalism class:

http://blogs.journalism.cuny.edu/interactive2010/author/margaret-finnegan/

Also stay tuned for meganfinnegan.com.

Much more to come, dear readers.

The Other Woman

2009-08-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

Or blog. However you want to look at it.

Click here: Finnegan's Awake

Or copy and paste: http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/blogs/finnegans_awake_blog/

Please recommend, leave comments, pass on to friends, etc. And no, I did not come up with the name of the blog, but I guess one has to capitalize on one's name when possible.

Read it!

Jitters 2.0

2009-08-16T19:29:00.001-07:00

Attention all: these words are being typed on a brand new MacBook Pro, the first expenditure of many to come on my journey through graduate school. I have 3 working days left at my job, and then it's "Adios, regular paycheck! Hola, more student loan debt!"

What's a journalism degree worth these days? Some will say, not much. When I quit aforementioned (fairly lucrative) job, several co-workers scoffed at my naivety, outwardly expressing their opinions that I am a fool to leave a decent job in a terrible economy. No one is hiring in journalism, they say. But that's not entirely true. Every industry is always hiring. People retire, people move on, and people get fired - there will always be job openings, just perhaps not as many. So one has to be better than one's peers.

Grad school, unlike undergrad, is about establishing a career before it's about making friends. My classmates will be my future colleagues, and also the people with whom I will compete for jobs. We will all view one another with a certain wariness and desire to be the best in the class. Or maybe it will be one great big supportive team. Maybe in grad school, without sororities and theater kid hierarchies (Those Who Are Cast, Those Who Are Not Cast, and The Techies), and with hormones (slightly) more in check, our work will speak louder than our clothing labels and the limit on our parents' credit cards. Maybe we will all wear vests and have smudged fingers (we're using Macs instead of typewriters, but I like the imagery) and go out for beers while swapping hot tips.

Maybe I have no idea what it will be like and am terrified. Or exhilarated. A verb that connotes an intense, guttural feeling. I like that though. A journalist needs a metaphorical gut. Hopefully mine is strong enough to withstand The First Day of School one more time in my life.

Smoke Signals

2009-08-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

Hello out there! Welcome to the official resurrection of City By Storm!

What's been going on in my oh-so-interesting life, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you.

In a few weeks, I give up my somewhat lucrative job in the garment district to join the class of 2010 at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Headlines will read:

"Foolish girl ditches steady paycheck to pursue career in failing industry."

"Savvy ladies head back to school during recession."

"Why journalism, why now?: Young journalists on the future of their profession."

"Journalism grad student takes much-needed course in headline writing."

If anyone's out there, I hope you'll follow my journey. You can also read my blog on IrishCentral.com, Finnegan's Awake (not my title, folks, but it's a good read - sex, drugs and Catholicism!).

Welcome back to City By Storm.

True Colors

2009-03-28T15:42:00.001-07:00

Terrorists are bad. We know this, but it is impossible to comprehend the level of fear and humiliation they have reduced us to until you are sitting in your bathroom at 11:30pm the night before your vacation, stuffing little 3-oz. bottles of moisterizer and hair gel into a quart-sized plastic bag and manuevering them until you have hand cramps and you are ready to sign up for the military right then and there to go fight the bastards yourself. Hey, the military could use me. I'm 5'6" with a little extra weight in the hip-and-thigh area, I can't lift more than 15 lbs (and that's pushing it) and all matter of combat terrifies the bejesus out of me.

But I'm straight.

Today Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and President Obama have let us know that while they do plan to play lip service to lifting the atrocious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy from the US military, they don't plan to actually do anything about it. See article here. They're far too busy right now. It can wait.

I voted for the President and said from the start that I would support him and hold him to the very high expectations that he himself laid out. And now is the time to hold him accountable.

When our first African American president says that a civil rights - a HUMAN RIGHTS issue - can wait, that he can afford to put it on the backburner, something is gravely amiss.

The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy" is not only unconstitutional, it is unconscionable. It says to the LGBT community, "We accept you as long as you deny who you are." It routinely allows the military to fire people based solely on their sexual orientation. Not on their job performance. Just their sexual orientation.

If it were possible to hide race or gender, and the military had the same policy towards black people and women, would this be allowed? No.

How is time management an excuse? How complicated is this? The policy is wrong, constitutionally and morally, not to mention just bad policy for the military, which hemmorages good soldiers of all ranks every year under this rule. So reverse it. Write an executive order. Do what needs to be done. It is very simple.

President Obama, if there were ever a time to prove to this country the value of having an African American president, beyond all the hype and the commemorative coins available for three installments of $9.95 plus shipping and handling, beyond the speeches and the assertions that we are all equal, this is the time.

Make ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" a priority.

For more information, you can visit http://www.civilrights.org/archives/2009/03/131-dont-ask-dont-tell.html. You can also sign a petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/DOtell/petition.html.

This is important. For all of us.

I Can't Afford Goat Cheese

2009-03-10T17:42:00.000-07:00

A financial confession: tonight I got home from work and perused the fridge for dinner ingredients. Several possible meals presented themselves: PB&J on toast, tuna sandwich, spinach salad, eggs over easy with cheese, a bowl of cereal. Nothing glamorous, to be sure, but all edible and acceptable choices for an evening meal. I became hell-bent, however, on having pasta with parm cheese, tomatoes and spinach. The only component in my kitchen being the spinach, I went to the grocery store, but because I was too lazy to walk the extra 3 blocks to the Key Foods, I ducked into a little organic market and paid $10.45 for one box of linguini, a very small container of freshly grated cheese, two on-the-vine tomatoes, and a grapefruit.

It doesn't sound so bad, I guess, to spend 10 bucks at a convenient shop in order to make dinner for myself, but it the decision was just one in a string of similar decisions that lead me into thousands of dollars of credit card debt. Decisions based on whims, based on "I want a Rice Krispies Treat now!" (flashback to earlier in the day), which has also consequently lead me into several unwanted pounds along with the debt. The other day I bought expensive goat cheese because I absolutely HAD to have it for a special salad I made. Turns out I don't like goat cheese. (Gorgonzola. That's the G cheese I like.)

It makes me think, have I always been like this? It's not about instant gratification. I grudgingly put on my coat and trekked into the cold to buy pasta when I could have just as easily had something else. It's more of a one-track-mind kind of problem.

Maybe it is a consequence (or a benefit, depending on how you use it) of living in this city, where everywhere you go, people exist with such intensity and focus, such purpose of mind that is ostracizing to feel aimless. We have to have a goal, we have to be driving, working toward something at all times, even if that thing is acquiring pasta.

Or maybe I could let myself off the hook. At least I didn't go out for burittos.

Ireland By Storm

2009-03-07T13:23:00.000-08:00

Though it is a now-dated reference, allow me to invoke the 2009 Academy Awards, during which 5 previous winners of the Best Supporting Actor and Actress and Best Actor and Actress awards gathered onstage for their respective presentations to stroke the egos of the nominees in vomit-inducing displays of gratuitous self-congratultion, as only Hollywood can pull off. Let it just be said that the nominees for Best Director and Best Cinamotographer, among all the others, did not require a circle jerk to validate their work and talent. Is there nothing we will not do to further the idea that Angelina Jolie is, in fact, superhuman?

I conjure this image to justify my own foray into self-congratulation and promotion. (At least I'm not forcing anyone to look at Sophia Loren's neck.) Allow me to proclaim the birth of a new blog: my as-yet-untitled contribution to the new website IrishCentral.com. It will launch on March 15, 2009, just in time for the feast of St. Patrick. Last year, I landed an assignment to write 6 articles for the Irish Voice newspaper, largely due to my friendship with someone who worked for their editorial department and my name, which is exceedingly Irish. So when my same friend called me last month with an offer to write a blog for the new website arm of the publication, I jumped at the chance.

Don't be alarmed, avid fans of City By Storm; I shall not abandon you. This Irish blog will be focused on Irish American identity through culture and especially through religion, i.e. Catholicism. I'm no official expert, but the aforementioned topics are a) endlessly fascinating to me and b) inextricably entwined. The fact that my untraceable descendancy from the Emereld Isle suddenly qualifies me to write with some amount of authority about the Irish American experience is reason enough for discussion, in my opinion. It is my own personal perfect storm of religious questioning, cultural dissection, and justified drinking!

As soon as there is a link to this fabulous new source of witty observations, be assured I will display it here. I hope that you'll check it out, Mom. And all the rest of you.

Quit Your Bitchin'

2009-02-19T20:39:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, Tim accompanied me to Columbia to attend a talk with editor-in-chief of Marie Claire magazine, Joanna Coles. The scarily accomplished British reporter-turned-editor spoke of setting priorities and fostering a willingness to do whatever it is the other guy isn't willing to do to get the story. It was nice to see a woman at the top of her field, with children, state frankly and without reservation that you must be clear about the kind of life you want. It's true that women can now "have it all" if they work hard enough, but that doesn't mean that it's simple, and I've seen enough children raised by nannies to know that I want to be around my kids as they grow up. Which means that you have to plan that in, I guess. Daunting.

What impressed me most about Coles was her composure during the Q&A session. She gave the appearance of being completely open, but she was clearly a master at navigating and redirecting the questions fired at her by a room full of journalistic hopefuls. When the moderator, who Tim described as "the poor man's James Lipton," questioned her about the magazine's trashing of cover girl Ashlee Simpson post-nose job, she handled it like a PR pro. It got me thinking about the destination of my twisty career path - do I want to end up as a top editor, or as a top writer? It's an important distinction, and I think I would prefer the latter. The status and the Jimmy Choo stilettos make the EIC position appealing, but I'd rather be the upstart than the one in charge of keeping everything running smoothly.

That said, the session also made me think about the sense of entitlement that too often pervades the attitudes of young people - myself included - toward the job market in general. My friend Cara recently sent me a link to this article: Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes. It found that many students expect to receive a grade of at least a B just by attending class. At the Columbia lecture, a girl in a red beret marched up to the mic and demanded that Joanna Coles explain to her why reality TV stars seem to be snatching up all the glossy magazine internships, and it isn't really fair because she works really hard and has a great resume (just ask her) and she isn't getting any internships, so why do all the dumb undeserving celebutantes get all the glory? Ms. Coles, ever the poised professional, responded with the genius line, "Well I guess that depends if you want to be a television star or if you want to be a journalist."

I've wasted my fair share of oxygen griping about the unfairness of the (unpaid) internship system, but listening to that entitled Columbia girl snivel about why she wasn't getting her day in the reflected glare of an Anna Wintour-wannabe made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I almost poked her on the shoulder to ask her the perfectly deflating question first posed to me by my best friend's mom in high school: "Are you bragging or complaining?"

As I spend the next month obsessively checking the mail for grad school acceptances in between sessions of brow furrowing while wondering how I'll pay for it all, I vow to do neither. Well, I'll try.

Just Call Me Misty

2009-02-18T19:34:00.000-08:00

Pole dancing. Is. A. SKILL.

This is what I learned after my first pole dancing class at Crunch, an event made infamous by the obnoxious cast of The Real World: Brooklyn, who used it as yet another excuse to grind on each other. But I digress.

I rushed into the class late, but the girls shaking their bums in unison made room for me with encouraging smiles. Thankfully I was not the only uncoordinated white girl in the room, but I was the least experienced, and it showed. Painfully.

But oh Lord, what fun! Though I merely accomplished a few spins around and what could only be described as "hoisting" myself a few feet up the pole and sliding down ungraciously, I still felt, for a fleeting moment, unbelievably sexy and capable. Many a young lady in the class wore nothing more than hot pants, a sports bra and 6-inch stripper heels, and no one was ashamed of showing a little bit (or a lot) of thigh jiggle or belly fat, or of looking like a complete fool (my hand is raised here). And most of these ladies were good. I mean, impressive.

In between my attempts to be seductive without tripping and cheering for the other girls as they gyrated 6 feet up in the air, I thought about how "real" pole dancers would view this class. Women who strip and dance to pay their rent and feed their kids might not find such a class so empowering. After all, everyone there can afford the Crunch membership, which is minimum 80 bucks a month, and has enough free time to commit to the pole for an hour and fifteen minutes once a week. For me, it's fun, it's a way to get some much-needed exercise and a shot of self-confidence, to possibly make some friends, to develop a crazy ability that no one would expect me to have. But, God willing, I won't ever need it. Not to buy diapers.

Maybe those who toil through 10-hour shifts at the pole really like doing it, but I suspect that it loses its glamor as soon as the first customer calls you a dirty whore and spills stale beer on you. And a person much more qualified than I could go into all the ways in which women are robbed of any potential power in jobs like stripping because they have to pay out to the (usually) men who run the club, because they are constantly degraded, because others in society view them as lower, etc etc etc.

Are we doing the equivalent of donning cute miners' caps and a 3-pound pick axe to swing around at some rocks for an upper body workout and then declaring that coal-mining is fun? Perhaps. I will go to this class again, but knowing the difference between bouncing to Beyonce in a room full of supportive women and swiveling for cash. It's not that the latter is any worse, really. It's a damn shame that our culture supports so many strip clubs, but you can't blame the strippers. They deserve respect. Their job is hard. Just ask my inner thighs.

Dude!

2009-02-01T20:17:00.000-08:00

"Yikes," I said, looking up from the fine print of the FAFSA online. "It says that if you are given any federal student aid and you get a drug conviction during the time you're a student, you not only stop receiving aid but you have to pay back everything they've given you."

Imaging the predicament of a hapless college kid caught smoking a jay and suddenly forced to give the government thousands of dollars which he clearly does not have, I looked to Tim and my mom, sitting a few feet away in my apartment, with raised eyebrows.

"Rightfully so," my mom declared, and turned her attention back to playing Wii Mario Kart - badly. But she was a good sport about it.

Case apparently closed, I kept my mouth shut and didn't disagree. But today, the one sports highlight sticking out amid all the Super Bowl coverage was the story of Michael Phelps' kowtowing apology for smoking pot at a college party in November. (John V. Santore's informed analysis of the story as related to the hypocrisy of our drug laws can be found here on the Huffington Post.)

Everyone from the Olympic Committee (bad boy!) to his alleged fellow party-goers (*cough* smoking pot is, um, totally...wait, what's the question?) have tentatively condemned Phelps, scolding him while being careful not to be too harsh lest they drudge up the dreaded question: why?

First of all, why does the general public care if the 23-year-old athlete took a few bong rips during his training hiatus months ago? There are those who must at least make a show of caring - chiefly the companies that sponsor him, the Olympic committee, and perhaps some sports commentators - but I fail to see the relevance for the rest of us.

Secondly, why the does Olympic committee get to dictate how a former participant in the games conducts himself? Would they issue the same sort of statement to Jennifer Stuczynski, silver medalist in women's pole vault, if someone wrote on a blog that she was doing body shots at the local tavern? (No disrespect. I'm sure Jennifer spends her time sleeping, eating and pole vaulting. We expect nothing less from our Olympians.)

What I present here - the idea that alcohol instigates much more harm than does marijuana but just happens to be legal because an entire industry thrives on it - is neither new nor easily proven (due to the relatively low number of studies conducted on actual marijuana users), but it warrants a mention. More important, however, is the notion that Phelps' consumption of a non-performance enhancing "drug" in 2008 has the potential to exclude him from the 2012 Olympics. It probably won't, primarily because the Olympic committee wants all 1,933,692 of Phelps' Facebook fans to tune in three years down the road. (Wait, make that 1,933,691 - Andre Van de Hurt from Tacoma, WA is removing himself because Phelps is "no longer a role model." Take that, Mike!) Downing a few beers makes him much more likely to say, trip and break his swimming bone, but run-of-the-mill drinking won't make headlines.

Here's the question I ask - did anyone actually believe that this hot young record-breaking Olympian would not spend some much deserved time off partying? Really??? Did we actually think that all he did was swim and eat pancakes? Come on, people. If you make your idols breakable, you know what's going to happen to them. And if we expect our children to model themselves after professional athletes alone, we are a nation of retarded parents. (That's probably true, actually.)

Despite what many stoner Facebook fans would like to believe, Michael Phelps is not like the rest of us because he occasionally hooks up with Mary Jane. The rest of us don't have 14 gold medals, nor do we have millions of dollars in endorsement deals. We all get off a lot easier than Michael Phelps.

My closing thought: I wish that my blog were widely read enough to start a heated comment debate about my un-PC use of the word retarded.

Missing Things

2009-01-26T17:50:00.000-08:00

O sorely neglected blog! How I've missed thee! Let us not waste our precious moments of reconciliation rehashing who mistreated who, who was promoted to sales at her soul-deadening job, who's finally finished applying to grad school, or who ate the last of the blueberry jam. No, let us instead recall the good times and look forward to the better times ahead.

I never told you about the bag lady applying mascara in the convex reflection of a subway pole! Did she find the mascara? Did she buy it at Sephora? Does she have a date? Will she bring her shopping cart on the date?

Nor did I fill you in on the details of the writing class, populated by middle-aged women with little interest in heeding the advice of the widely published journalist teaching the course, and concerned chiefly with stating their quaint, unoriginal and immutable ideas and providing unsolicited quips throughout the 3-hour duration. Oh, what fun that was!

But lest we forget the most spectacular of all stories, let us recount the Tale of the Missing Ford Escort! One day, as I went to move the vehicle from its present location to another correctly allocated space, in accordance with the gods of parking, I encountered the most surprising situation. Alas, our white hatchback chariot was gone! Vanished! In desperate haste, we contacted the all-knowing oracle of 311, but her answer remained cloudy. The mighty force of the Brooklyn Police Department could do nothing to ease our distress.

Though it seemed that the car had been towed, no one in the whole kingdom of Brooklyn could locate it. "It seems, my good sir," said a wise traffic officer to Tim, "that some enterprising young hooligans have taken possession of your vehicle for the purposes of what they call a 'joy ride.'" With heavy hearts, we resigned ourselves to this fate and proceeded to file a stolen vehicle report. But wait - two officers claim to know the whereabouts of the noble steed! "It's in the Brooklyn Navy Yard," they say. Joyfully we phoned the Navy Yard, ready to claim our prize, only to once again taste bitter disappointment. "The NYPD," sneered the wicked Navy Yard, "has no record of your vehicle being towed. Ever."

We had met our ultimate foe. Determined to defeat the nefarious Navy Yard, we hounded them day in and day out, demanding the whereabouts of the beloved Escort and every time, thwarted! By week three, we had come to an impassable state of affairs. With still no car and no clues, we attempted one more time to outsmart the Navy Yard. While Tim bravely battled Traffic Agent Tetrafin, whose matronly voice and soothing tone were surely meant to disguise her hideous oozing tentacles that devour tractor trailers in one slimy gulp, I listened to a voicemail message from his dad.

"Megan," said Tim's noble father. "We have received a missive from the NYPD. The scoundrels have the car and have threatened to auction it to the highest bidder, lest you go and claim it forthwith!"

"Zounds!" I exclaimed. "They've had it this whole time!"

One last irate phone call to the Navy Yard ("Oh, there is it. I guess we do have your car after all!"), a $14.85 taxi ride into the night, 45 minutes in the most excruciatingly slow line ever, and a $185.00 check to the NYPD, and we were finally back in possession of our beloved milky-hued station wagon.

At the end of the debacle, as the parking gods smiled on us in compensation for our pain and sacrifice and opened a spot directly in front of our abode, we had but one mystery left to solve.

"My dear Tim," I said, "why has your father started talking like an Elizabethan?"

Get the Hell Out

2008-11-26T16:26:00.002-08:00

This week, my office life got a little bit quieter and a lot less Puerto Rican. Leslie, our loud-mouthed co-worker in data entry whose wickedly sharp intellect was sometimes wrongfully obscured by her pink feathery princess pen and the plethora of footwear kept under her desk, hightailed it back to her hometown in P.R. after living in New York for a year or so. She had planned to go home for Thanksgiving, but then decided to just... go home.

When I asked her over sushi on our lunch hour why she decided to move back, she shrugged, popped a salmon avocado roll in her mouth, and said, "I'm not happy here."

I was astonished. Someone with Leslie's amount of verve and attitude and gut laughter, the girl who freaked me out my second week of work by rifling through my desk at 8:00 AM to find a delivery menu because she was still drunk and needed a cheeseburger...and fries, who bragged about her spacious 1-bedroom in the Bronx for $750 a month including CABLE, who called everyone by their first and last names as a matter of course, who was known by all at her neighborhood bar... this girl couldn't be happy here???

Her explanations to everyone were brief and matter of fact, and so simple. Her entire family, all of her closest friends, her culture and her past remained in Puerto Rico. Not to mention the stark contrast in overall lifestyle and temperatures between PR and NY. This isn't a stereotype talking; this is Leslie saying to me, "Oh my God in Puerto Rico we know how to party, everything is like one big party, for Christmas we light up palm trees and dance drunk on the beach."

Point taken. What surprised me was not that she preferred Puerto Rico to New York, but that she did not view the outcome as a defeat. Since I've moved to New York, I've taken pride in the danger and the precariousness, practically bragging about how expensive and tough it is to those on the outside. I've been thinking in terms of me vs. New York, and if New York knocked me out, I would hang my head in shame and skulk away.

But it's just a place, really, and New York stands as tall and cold and bustling as ever, no matter how many people claim that they've taken the city by storm (ahem) or left it in lonely defeat. New York doesn't win. It just is.

When I went to the CUNY J-school info session, the director of career placement services told the prospective students that they will find work after graduation if they don't limit themselves geographically. "Students come in and say, 'I will only work in New York' and they've really shot themselves in the foot." Go somewhere else? I thought. Preposterous.

It's not though, especially considering that I have Tim to consider, my teammate and travel companion on this wild ride. And seeing Leslie leave with her head held high made me realize that the person who lets a city dictate their happiness is the fool, not the person who cuts their losses and makes a bold move. I hope that the same boldness that drove us to New York in the first place will tell us when - if ever - it's time to go.

The Big C

2008-11-19T18:15:00.000-08:00

Not Christmas.

Consumerism! Macy's is fully decked out, convincing people that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas has collapsed and they must buy all their gifts NOW right away quick quick quick before everything is gone! It's a ONE-DAY SALE (with a preview day the day before).

Admittedly, I did stop in after work to make my own once-in-a-lifetime gift purchase. But I haven't been to church in a few weeks, and it makes me crave some simplicity and grounding that that Sunday ritual usually provides. Missing Mass makes me all the more conscious of what Christmas is supposed to be about. I won't deny that Christmas has become an American holiday as much as it is a Christian holiday, meaning that the only requirement to own and celebrate the holiday is being a part of Western culture. Christian institutions can scowl at this notion all they want, but the fact of the matter is that it's a national holiday, recognized by our (supposedly) secular and separate national government, and that the incarnation of Christmas that we experience in public life is driven by marketing and retail.

Prime example: I just watched a Crest Whitestrips commercial during which a woman is traveling by train, ostensibly going home for the holidays, and her family is bounding through the snow alongside the train as it pulls into the station. In her bag is her trusty box of Whitestrips, and she is just so darn glad that her teeth turned 3 shades whiter in time to grin at her ecstatic siblings in greeting. Now we have a reason to glam up before going to Aunt Sylvia's for turkey! Thank the Lord!

I worry that I will be all holiday-ed out before Christmas; every day I walk by Macy's, the biggest department store in the world, hustling through midtown shoppers and past that annoying charity bell-ringer. I try to remember that I LOVE Christmas (and also my birthday) and all the reunions and parties and cookies, and also that I do find religious meaning in it, a fact that can be obscured by all the tinsel and twinkly lights. The easiest time to be religious is during a season when God = presents, but there is nothing bad about being reminded of the basis of this holiday, even if it's roundabout: why do I need to buy this automatic pancake maker? Oh right - Jesus!

Try as I might to stick to the "no Christmas before Thanksgiving" mantra, it would be pointless in this, the city of bigness and commerce. So I'll deck the halls a little early this year and fa-la-la my way through the next 2 months. But I do think I should go to church this Sunday.

One Down

2008-11-17T20:27:00.000-08:00

OMG, this blog is one year old! I'm too tired from the first few days of my new diet, the "Don't Be a Pussy Diet," to do a whole year recap montage type thing. But let's see what I had to say a year ago. I hoped to get a job as an editorial assistant and assumed that Tim would be waiting tables while slogging through auditions. I did NOT think that I would be working at a noodle company, or that Tim would be on his fifth job. I did not consider how stressful it would be to manage money in this expensive city. I did not think I would be 10 pounds, give or take, heavier. I did not think about the days riding the subway next to some dude who smells like urine, sweating through my coat and being forced to touch everyone and wanting to shriek and jump out the window into the backseat of a town car.

I also did not think that I would be applying to graduate school, or that Tim would be in the process of creating a theatre company. I didn't understand how much I could love a neighborhood and a particular coffee shop and a certain street. It was incomprehensible to me how much I would like living with Tim - I thought I would, but I had no idea how much and how happy it would make me to fight over space in our tiny apartment. All the events I've attended and places I've partied and things I've seen since living here were only fantasy a year ago.

And what about my writing self? That is, after all, the purported purpose of this blog: to chronicle myself as a writer in New York. I've gained and lost and regained focus. There is certainly a greater wealth of material available to me. And I think I've adjusted, shifted in a way that makes me a bit more savvy but not jaded, not naive but still curious.

What is most striking to me is that I'm glad I'm not where I thought I would be a year ago. For one thing, predictability is overrated. But I've realized that I can be more than an editorial assistant at a small-time business to business magazine. So I'm glad that the noodle factory has forced me to realign my priorities. I'm glad this year has been a sandstorm. And I do think I've kept things pretty hot, cheesy, and delicious.

Vaccination Needed

2008-11-15T20:01:00.000-08:00

When I was applying to colleges, I got my heart set on Brown University. Truthfully, there was no particular, specific appeal to Brown beyond its Ivy League status and beautiful campus. Oh, and the all-male a cappella group, the Brown Derbies. Though it does have a great English program, so do many other colleges, and I thankfully ended up at a school that was a much better fit for me. Plus I didn't get into Brown (small detail). But I actually am grateful that I was able to cure my Ivy League-itis and go to the right school.

Apparently, however, Ivy League-itis is more like the common cold than the chicken pox. It doesn't matter if you've vanquished it in the past, it can come back at any unsuspecting moment. And it hit me like a sinus infection, only this time it feels incurable, and this strain is even stronger. Its the Columbia University variety, a killer of prospective grad students.

Before I took the 1 train up to 116th Street last week to attend the Columbia J-School info session, my application there was more of an obligation than the result of a strong desire to attend. You can't apply to J-schools in New York without applying to Columbia. But after sitting through 2 hours of faculty, staff and students explaining why Columbia's 10-month Master of Science program is like, totally the best program ever, I was hooked. Granted there was a certain amount of propaganda involved, but it's hard to argue with the sheer weight of the name alone. You know that a degree from that school will open doors. I also know that the 2-semester program appeals to my sense of getting on with it (Monty Python style) and going into slightly less additional student loan debt (NYU is three semesters, so it will cost more).

I also loved what I heard when I went to NYU, and I suspect that the less formal and concentrated format of the NYU open house made less of an impact than the Columbia session that opened with a 10-minute video of alums waxing grateful to the J-school. I mustn't let format and well-manicured lawns entice me to an Ivy League school! Who knows if I can even get in, after all? And am I now salivating over it for the wrong reasons? Am I trying to compensate for not getting into Brown 6 years ago? Do I need to know if I am Ivy League material?

Perhaps, but I can also say that it runs slightly deeper than that. The Columbia session scared me. What their J-school teaches are the things that make me nervous - developing and mining sources, making people talk to you, checking facts. I am much more comfortable doing extensive reading and then forming opinions, ones which can be discredited or disagreed with but not disproved. The NYU program offers streamlined training in the kind of writing I suspect I'm already good at, which is not to say that I have nothing to learn, only that I would be focusing on developing my strengths. At Columbia, I fear that I would be forced to confront my weaknesses primarily, but that also makes me think that that's why I should go there. Why pay disgusting amounts of money to go back to school if it won't have a giant impact on my writing abilities and professional life?

If I get admitted to the three schools to which I am applying, I will experience 10 minutes of self-congratulatory elation, and then sink directly into existential despair when I have to actually decide between them. I can either save a lot of money while getting a good education and real-world experience (CUNY), delve further into the world of cultural criticism and personal essay writing at a fantastic and unique program (NYU) or kick it Ivy League style, busting my ass for 10 months and doing things that terrify me (Columbia). Maybe I should just go to law school. That seems easy.

On an unrelated note, I will leave you with this gorgeous picture of a church on 7th Avenue near our apartment. This picture is one of the 11,472 reasons why I hope we can afford to stay in Park Slope once our current lease is up in April.

President Elect...

2008-11-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama. Am amazing ring to it, no? Tim and I waited over an hour in line to vote, but there was nary a Republican in site in Park Slope, so it was a jovial "we all can't wait to vote for Obama" line. Here's a picture of us, post voting.

We hosted an Election Night party and watched states turn blue until he surpassed the 270 electoral count threshold. On Wednesday, I was so exhausted, hung over from champagne, strung out from a year of following the race, supporting Obama in words and dollars, that I told everyone who asked why I wasn't more excited that I was having a party in my head, which was entirely true.

I watch MSNBC, I read the New York Times and the Washington Post and many online publications, and I love me some Anderson Cooper, but I’m no political expert. Every pundit began speculating about an Obama presidency even before his election was a sure thing – New York magazine ran a cover story with his picture and the words “January 20th 2009” the week before that fateful Tuesday. What has struck me in the post-election night glow (and let me take this chance to say hats off to John McCain for a commendable concession speech, though I reserve the right to criticize in the next paragraph) is that everyone I go in this (overwhelmingly Democratic) city, people are still excited. They’re still wearing their pins and displaying their signs, and they are eagerly looking forward to what the President Elect is going to do next. Maybe this is how the “winning” side of a national election always behaves, but I wouldn’t know, since I registered to vote in 2002. Not to sound sentimental, but maybe for the first time in years, young and disenfranchised people who donated $5 at a time to Obama’s campaign have a sense of ownership and participation in government that they have not felt in previous administrations. It’s difficult to feel that a government has your best interests at its core when it subscribes to the theory that if they give more money to those socially and economically above you, you will somehow prosper from it.

I believe that every person who voted for Obama now has the duty to watch him like a hawk, to hold him to the standards to which he vowed to raise the entire system, and Democrats especially have little time to bask in the glory. In other words, I don’t like to see gloating, and I suspect that the President Elect has little patience for it himself. There are liberals taking Obama’s election as a rallying cry to destroy those on the other side of the much-discussed aisle, and that’s not the point, but my criticism of reactions to Obama’s election lands mostly, not surprisingly, on Republicans. It started in McCain’s well-intentioned speech, congratulating Obama on his victory and waxing poetic about the historic moment we have reached, that an African-American has been elected president of the United States. This is an important and landmark achievement, and it’s the tune that most Republicans are now singing, chirping away about the wonderful accomplishment his election is, the vitriol spewed against him as a radical terrorist blanketed by the easy platitudes of breaking racial barriers. No conservative politician or commentator spoke about him this way when he was the first black American to run on a major party ticket.

I don’t expect anyone to ignore this significant factor, but it does provide an easy way for many a naysayer to make themselves look good. Praising Obama’s status as the first African American president does not actually speak to his merit as a former candidate and present commander-in-chief in the wings. You don’t have to agree with him or admit that his read on the American public was far more accurate than John McCain’s. You don’t have to admit that the message of hope was not, after all, one to be belittled and laughed at, but a serious motivating force in getting people to the polls. You don’t even have to respect him, really respect him, as an excellent politician when you can easily paint him in the single color of race.

Race is still a complicated issue in this country, and by no means am I accusing the majority of conservatives of racism – at least not conscious and malicious racism. One important distinction I grew to understand in college was the difference between prejudice and racism. Everyone is prejudiced. We are all conditioned by our families, social and economic status, friends, geography and most especially the media to make certain judgments about thousands of things. Being prejudiced means that we make assumptions about people or situations based not on reason, facts, or individual and unique circumstances, but on ideas that already been ingrained in us. Most of the time we do not even notice this. Racism, then, is the result of an action. It is what happens when a person acts on their prejudice. Only when we can acknowledge and try to understand our prejudices can we ensure that they will not turn into racism. What we’ve seen in this election is that even those of us with racial prejudice, in any degree, can make decisions based not on these notions but on the candidate placed before them, as a person.

This is not to say that Barack Obama was elected president in spite of his race, but it would be equally incorrect to say that he was elected president because of it.

Letters Make Words, Sentences Make Paragraphs

2008-11-02T19:03:00.000-08:00

So the GRE vocab section was not as simple as Jurassic 5 would have us believe, but then again, I did pull down a 710. And with a respectable 620 in math and a solid confidence in the strength of the two essays (those scores are sent in a few weeks), I think I've bolstered my chances of getting into J-school. Is it braggy to disclose my scores on the world wide web? Is it uncouth? I don't care, actually. I studied my ass off, and this sorely neglected blog took the brunt of my studious efforts. A close second on the victim list is my social life, followed by my ability to have a conversation without using words like "obfuscate" and "pusillanimous." Those words don't win a lot of friends.

With that nerve-rattling experience behind me, I was able to enjoy this weekend, despite some equally nerve-rattling news on Friday afternoon. In a strikingly direct instance of the effects of our spiraling economy, the giant real estate corporation employing Tim to keep their executives fed and the sugar stocked in the break room was forced to cut costs and employees, and Tim was an expected casualty. Yep, our first lay-off. Truth be told, he had been gearing up for this for a week, after the company nixed the free pizza and donuts for its staff, leaving Tim with little to do but troll the internet from 9 to 5. And another truth be told, after the initial "Oh crap I hope we can pay the rent" (don't worry people, we can), we celebrated. To the end of a boring job that made no use of his intelligence, creativity, humor and considerable people skills - cheers. Yeah, it's a little scary, but thank God. As has been proclaimed on this blog in the past, there's nothing worth doing that isn't a little scary, and when life gets complacent, that's nothing to celebrate.

This weekend also marked our 5-year anniversary! Instead of buying stuff for each other, we spent our limited cash as if it were endless on chicken enchiladas and margaritas, a promising show at BAM by a Taiwanese dance/drumming/chanting/martial arts/mask theatre company that almost put us to sleep, and karaoke with friends at the Lush Lounge on University Place. Much drinking and making out and singing Journey songs together ensued. It was fabulous.

Today I contemplated what normal people do when not studying for the GRE. The dull realistic answer is, get cracking with grad school applications, but today I decided the answer should be reading the Sunday Times and strolling through Park Slope with my boyfriend of five years. Also eating pumpkin ravioli and drinking sangria, and watching Desperate Housewives. (We finally got cable.) And letting the world know what I'm up to, of course. Hello, world. (And Mom.)

The final word for the night: VOTE. Preferably for Barack Obama, but the important thing is to vote. Also, an interesting thing that I learned today, which might seem obvious but was news to me: You will be turned away from your polling place if you are wearing/carrying any buttons, t-shirts, signs, stickers, banners, flyers, posters, etc. with the names of any candidates or parties - at least in New York, I know this is the case. So no Obama/Biden pins, no "Down with Republicans" buttons, no "John McCain is really old!" signs. It is presumably to make sure that the government is not influencing your vote by allowing campaigning of any kind at the polls, which makes sense, but I was planning to go vote in my Obama shirt and I'm certainly glad to know this caveat. Spread the word. And VOTE!

NOT the Terrible Movie with Richard Gere!

2008-10-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

The other autumn in New York, the actual season in the actual place. Today it's delectably cold and snappy outside, and we can finally keep our windows closed to stray rodents. There are mini gourds on our mantle, and I can wear my beloved sweater bomber jacket. Fall in Brooklyn.

It's not just the pumpkin spice lattes; it feels like I'm going back to school. I've been studying for the GRE all day, and I have a feeling that my subsequent postings will be jam packed with vocab words and sorely lacking in any fun news, since my social life has to take a back seat right now. But even if it's not exciting to the blog world, it's fantastic for me.

Tim and I did have a great and relatively cheap Manhattan date last night. We went to the MoMA for the Free Friday Night admission and cut through the crowds to get to the painting and sculpture floors. Neither one of us knows too much about art, but we have a history with the museum. Our first Valentine's Day, we took a bus from the college into New York and spent the afternoon gazing at Impressionist renderings and each other. Going back now as New Yorkers, after a day of working, we were less awed but no less appreciative, and it crystallized the attitude of New Yorkers that many mistake for hurried rudeness, an inability to stop and smell the roses.

The difference between those who visit and those who reside here is that the visitors will stop to look at everything. The New Yorkers are no less aware of their grand surroundings, but they know what's worth their time and what's not. This is not a philosophy borne of disregard, but one that stems from intense love for this city, from the knowledge that there is so much to absorb and experience that you can't waste time on everything. It's not indifference, it's focus.

That's why Tim and I zipped past Picasso and Rothko and the giant Pollock canvases and parked ourselves in front of The Japanese Footbridge, one of Monet's many interpretations of that single scene that he saw fit to paint over and over and over again. That view must have never diminished for him, must have been enhanced and complicated and complemented by each endeavor, so much so that after every finishing touch, he had to paint it one more time.

The painting itself is mesmerizing. (Check it out: my first photo!)

It's worth spending twenty minutes staring at from different angles and distances. Tim and I were quite aware of all the other impressive works of modern art surrounding us, but we chose to spend our time on one of the best - at least in our collective opinion. We also visited our respective favorites, Edward Hopper's Gas and Pierre Bonnard's The Bathroom, but we went back to the Monet before we left. We shuffled past art students and tourists with cameras, snapping every single object but never pausing to look unhindered by a lens. We know enough to know what we like.

We also know enough to eat at a restaurant with no name and a hidden location. The Burger Joint, as it's known, is tucked into the lobby of a swanky hotel on W 57th Street. Behind a curtain and down a narrow corridor, a neon image of burger beckons those in-the-know to a raucous fast food shack of a place, complete with rock and roll music, sticky booths, a walk-up order window, cardboard signs demanding cash only, and movie posters on the walls. Not too cheap or pricey - $32 got us two cheeseburgers, two sacks of fries and two vanilla shakes - but delicious and exactly the kind of food you expect, served in greasy paper wrappings with a shout of your name from the grill.

We're also savvy enough to get out of Manhattan at the end of the day and go home to Park Slope. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it is certainly is mine.

Hit It (This Ain't No Disco)

2008-09-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

The application process is in full swing. Sort of. But I have signed up for the GRE and purchased several practice books, spent a good part of my vacation weekend writing vocab words on note cards, made the announcement to family members and gotten three former professors on board to write recommendations. So there's no backing down now.

I am coming off of 5 days away from the noodle factory, which was a welcome hiatus during this Big Life Change Decision, but now I must face the music of my crummy day job. Somehow it seems less bleak, knowing that I will put in my 8 hours and then toil away on journalism school applications. There is a goal now, so my work there has taken on the sheen of worthiness, a value heretofore hidden. It is now the means to a very desirable end, a commendable stint of getting through the grind to achieve my dreams. And other such lofty notions.

The next three months will be grueling for many reasons. The secondary one is that I intend to lose the weight I've gained as a result of horrendous and unhealthy eating habits (me at 3:30PM every weekday afternoon: Oh gee, I ate lunch 2 hours ago and I won't get home for dinner until at least 6:00. Time for a pastry!). If thunder thighs alone haven't been enough to motivate me, sitting on a stool in a grammatically incorrect doctor's office ("Schedule you're next appointment at the front desk") and being told that I have high cholesterol certainly provides a renewed zest for exercise.

Though my bad cholesterol is only a teensy bit high, and my good cholesterol is apparently through the roof, and I'm at the ripe old age of 23, I know that I also contend with a double family history of the nasty stuff, so it can't hurt to make some adjustments. I suspect, however, that the excision of Mexican food and mid-day rice krispies treats will work wonders.

Thirdly, we've hit the home stretch of election season, coupled with the complete meltdown of the economy. It's sure to be a laugh riot. I don't know much about how the economy works, but I do know that I paid $3.99 for a loaf of bread today. Not fancy, organic, stone milled by genuine pilgrims and baked in the fires of Mordor bread. Just bread in a plastic bag, pre-sliced. 7 grain. Maybe the 5 grain would have been cheaper.

Jump

2008-09-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

Treading water. Biding time. Circling the wagon.

These are not things I am content doing. Though it seems at odds with my well-known tendency to procrastinate, I am impatient when it comes to life goals. I want to publish my book, to get an MFA, to get into the New York Times - tomorrow. It's not that I'm not willing to do the work, because I love the work. But I always back off when it comes to that second stage of revision, the roll up your sleeves, you're not done yet, horizon pushing moment when you know that there is a lot more work to be done. I don't think it's laziness so much as fear, which I am ashamed to admit, but it's nonetheless true. It's not a new story: if I really try and fail, then what have I done?

Recently and suddenly, I have decided to go back to graduate school. I will get a Masters in journalism. I will apply to NYU, Columbia and CUNY, and one of these schools will accept me and somehow I will scrape together enough financial aid and amass more student loan debt and work some crappy part time job and I will be able to afford it. (I will mention at this point that Tim has offered to work 2 jobs if that's what it takes to put me through graduate school. And that's amazing of him, but I expect nothing less, and he expects nothing less of me, for when he needs to venture west to get a PhD in Mythological Studies, I will go.)

When the topic comes up with my college friends, we all say we'd love to go back to school, in that wistful way that we might say we'd love to be supermodels. Like it's obvious but impossible, a silly fantasy that brings a temporary smile and then fades behind looming rent checks. It might require some life changes, but a few lean grad school years will be well worth it in the long run.

I must believe this, that it will be worth it in the end. Because right now I am passing the days at a noodle company. What am I doing? Trying to write, earnestly and sincerely, but not doing too much of it. Talking about applying to new jobs, but hesitating, knowing that I don't really just want to transfer from one underpaid office job to another, even if that other is in publishing. My end goal is not to be assistant editor. It's to be a writer.

Some might say that I should just write, that I shouldn't waste my time and money on grad school just to get a degree that won't necessarily get me writing work anyway. That going back to school is just another way to procrastinate. These people may be correct, but I need to do something different, and I don't think that another job will do the trick. It still won't make me write.

So I sign up for the GREs tomorrow, and I have 1 month to study for them, and then 2 months to get recommendation letters, transcripts, writing clips, statement of purpose essays, writing samples, and a project proposal together, to throw it at an admissions officer and say,

Please let me come here and be bold. I will arrive and listen and produce smart work. I will absorb and challenge and excel. I will schmooze and I will rise above and I will work the system and I will step outside it and I will smash it. I actually believe that words can change the world, and that is a rare and precious sentiment to be guarded against mockery and nurtured and reshaped and affirmed.

What a fantastic possibility of failure. This is why I'm here.

The "I" Word

2008-09-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

This past Wednesday, I headed downtown to the Cooper Union to attend the Future of Publishing Panel. Stacked with editors from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate magazine, Wired, a new Harper Collins imprint, the British lit mag Granta, Time.com, and a literary agent, the panel waxed philosophical about the prospects of a struggling industry. Publishing itself is an expensive business, which is both good news and bad news to people like me.

First and foremost, I'm a writer looking for someone to pay me for my words. The bad news is that fewer and fewer publications are hiring staff writers. The good news is that they are increasingly looking to hire freelancers to fill in these gaps.

The worst news is that when asked (by moderator Susan Shapiro, professor of the mediabistro class I took and champion of new writers getting published) what the best thing young, talented, motivated writers could do to get jobs from the venerable publications represented there, they all said the same thing: the dreaded "I" word.

Internships.

As eager NYU students scribbled this advice into their notebooks to my right and left, I cringed. Don't get me wrong. I understand the value of internships, for the intern and especially for the employer. Well, I don't know if you can call them "employers" when they're not actually paying anything. What could be better for these financially floundering institutions? They get students and recent grads, prepared to do anything, to work harder than everyone else, to prove themselves and their worth, and they don't have to extend a cent.

Of course, there are benefits for the interns as well. They get to learn about an industry without being fully committed to it, and can often get course credit for their work, which has direct monetary value for those who pay tuition based on credit load.

The summer after my junior year, I took a paid internship for a small (as in the president/owner and two interns, including me) web design company, writing content and editing the president's abysmal grammar. I didn't yet know that I wanted to work for a magazine or be a freelance writer. That was the first summer without my dad, and I spent it focused on working and putting my family back together.

So here I am now, paying my half of the rent, and I can't afford to work for nothing. This is not some indulgent sentiment, or me choosing new shoes over my career. It's just reality. I wonder about the ways that the internship system narrows the playing field. How can the media defend itself against claims of being part of the "liberal elite" when it mainly accepts new members based on who can afford to work for free?

Maybe there is some boat that I missed. But I am proud that Tim and I have teamed up and are no longer financially dependent on our parents. Let me be clear that they still help us out, paying for train tickets, furniture, and fantastic dinners at restaurants we could never afford. But these are pleasant and gratefully accepted bonuses that we hope to repay one day. Our paychecks keep the electricity going.

I refuse to believe that the only way in is through the internship system, which I why I can stay sane in my current situation. Yesterday I had a flash of gratitude for my job, and I thought, This could be worse. This job is okay. It gives me material and motivation to continue my writing so that one day soon I can do something else. It's not so terrible.

God bless all the interns out there, scuttling around for $81.00 a month (the cost of a Metrocard), who can somehow make that work while living in this city. But I don't envy them. I will have my own story about how I made it in the publishing world. And one unique story is sometimes all it takes to set oneself apart from all the others.

The Mac is Back!

2008-09-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

After a brief comatose period, our Mac Book has been restored to its former glory. Meaning that it charges and does not die in the middle of typing a blog post. Rejoice!

Other reasons to rejoice: Hurricane Gustav did not destroy New Orleans. Text message dispatches from my valiant friend Katie Hunter, who stayed behind with the homeless and the helpless and a couple of kittens, have assured me of that much during my recent news blackout. (No TV + no computer = Stone Age)

But I've rejoined the technological world, happy to know that I can live without it for a few days, but also determined to get cable before The Office premieres.

More to follow this weekend, of a political nature. I'm off to Book Club. Yes, I'm that sophisticated.

Under Duress

2008-08-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

Tim is forcing me to write this blog post. He has tied me to our kitchen chair with chains, lashed my hands to the keyboard and is hovering over me, menacingly, with a gun to my head.

Well, actually, he's reading a Hellboy comic over in the comfy chair. But he's still forcing me!

I am freaking out. This has become a chronic problem. After a relaxing and enjoyable weekend, I suddenly realize that I have to go to my job tomorrow, and that over the weekend I did relatively little in the way of finding a new job or getting more freelance work, and I panic. All of the sudden our 2-hour walk through Brooklyn Heights on Saturday and my Sunday afternoon spent reading the paper (please see Best Story Ever from today's NY Times) at Ozzie's and drinking coffee seem like wastes of time. I spent hours on the phone with my sister this weekend, but how much writing did I get done?

This qualifies as Loss of Perspective. My world is not unraveling. As Pants and I discussed today during our delightful chat (back at Ozzie's) and grocery shopping trip together, we gripe about our stupid Non-Problems until we realize how boring that is, and shut up. When our biggest worries are over whether or not to accept the financial help offered by our parents or if we will be able to find a higher paying job, we're doing okay.

Nothing is perfect, but no one is homeless.

I do worry. We want to pay off debts, save money, get married, move to Bali for a year so that Tim can study mask performance and I can write my run-away bestselling memoir. Also, I want brown leather calf-length slouchy heeled boots for the fall. And more seriously, I want to be able to take my mom on a vacation sometime in the near future, to start taking care of her for a change. I want a dog. I want kids. I want to write from home in sweatpants and get paid oodles of money for doing so.

I want, I want, I want - what I am, a two-year-old??? (Tim, no comment please.)

Allowing myself to have a stress-free and "unproductive" weekend, watching Lipstick Jungle on NBC.com, scarfing Domino's with champagne and sleeping until 1:00 in the afternoon - this is necessary. My life right now is packed. It is overflowing with my need to have everything, which results in worry fests at midnight because I didn't finish that article or send in that job application. It is in danger of becoming alarmingly self-centered and annoying.

All I can do is appreciate a weekend spent having fun, which is quite normal and should not induce guilt in a 23-year-old.

Tomorrow, I will tell the tale of Camp Summer Camp, Tim's show at PS 122, which went from bad to worse to good again over the course of the weekend. The run continues next weekend, and for now I will pull my weight as one half of this team, set aside my irrational worries, and focus on his show. After all, in the midst of a crazy time in his life, Tim still forced me out of bed and made me write this.

Against my will, though. I protest.

Rodents Ahoy!

2008-08-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

It is a particular brand of low point to call your mom and say, "There are rats in my apartment."

Well, let's not exaggerate. One rat. That we know of.

I should have known when the day began with the discovery of a dead cockroach under my pillow. "At least it's not alive," Tim said. "It could be worse."

Famous last words.

Later that night, we're settling down to listen to the new Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis album and read the early edition of the Times before going to sleep. Something scurries from underneath the TV shelf to the ottoman by the window.

"Cockroach!" I shriek, and then dash for the can of Raid. We cautiously move the ottoman to find one of those silver million-legged little bastards that are quick as lightening. A squish of the shoe, and its finished. No big deal.

Not five minutes later, Tim leaps from the bed. "That's a rat."

I lost it. Somewhere between crying and vomiting, I ran out of the apartment in a string of "ohmygodohmygodohmygod" and bent over on the stairs to the first floor. I can only be thankful that I did not actually see the poor creature. Tim tried to catch it with Tupperware, which was, needless to say, unsuccessful.

"What do we do?" I pleaded, hoping that Tim would come up with a miraculous solution to an obviously hopeless situation.

"Um..."

"We leave. I'm calling Tina."

We showed up at Tina's apartment in the Financial District around 2:00AM, and I'm here again, on Sunday night, banished by a rodent until the exterminator comes tomorrow. We ventured back to the apartment to get work clothes before Tim went to stay with his friend in midtown, and there was no sign of the nasty bugger. I had prepared myself for the sight of 6 or 7 rats, sitting in a circle on our handmade Persian rug, playing poker and smoking tiny rat cigars. Our home is not our own.

As much as I try to make light of this predicament, it's been a pretty bleak weekend. But I will choose to see this horrible unsanitary mammalian invasion as a sign. This must mark the low point. I've been in an increasingly unpleasant mood about my job, about saving money, about my ultimate career path. Tim has been in an increasingly disastrous rehearsal process for a show that is shaping up to be hot garbage - exactly the thing that attracts vermin, consequently.

When you see rats running openly in packs on a ship, you know it's going to sink, so you'd better get off. You don't have time to dally around, to make excuses or to wait it out. It's just time to go, take action. The rats are just going by instinct, and it's wise to follow suit.

Will I really turn a disturbing but common experience - finding a rat in an NYC apartment - into the catalyst for changing my life? Desperately attach significance just so that I can get something out of it? Take a random occurrence and fill it with meaning and subtext and poetry?

Isn't that what a writer does?

Time to Cycle On

2008-08-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

Emerging from the Q stop on Flatbush Avenue today, I spotted the weirdest thing I've seen in Brooklyn. It was pouring rain, and there was a man walking his dog. While riding a unicycle. Not only is it weird that a person would break out a unicycle during a thunderstorm and wheel on down one of the busiest streets in the neighborhood, it is even weirder because it clearly was a routine dog walk, just a humdrum part of this guy's day, plastic Key Food bag in pocket and gray speckled mutt on the end of the leash. What I want to know is, does he get off the unicycle to bag the poo, or has he somehow perfected a bend-and-scoop method that allows him to stay atop the cycle?

It delighted me, though, to see something like that. Lately I've been having more-strong-than-usual job despair pangs, and I am struck with awe and envy when I see people engaged in things they are obviously passionate about. In the mass of people making their way to various midtown offices each morning, I know that many of them are headed to jobs they actually like. The fact that this surprises me is not good. And if I need any reassurance that it's time to move on, I simply check my outstanding student loan balance. After someone revives me with smelling salts (Do people still do that? I hope so.), my vision is clearer and I know that I must be in debt for a purpose, a higher one than learning the intricate, sophisticated systems of noodle stock record keeping, which involve the complex and widely used model of writing things down on paper and crossing them off in pencil. Surely, practicing such an error-proof and efficient system will benefit me in my career, unless of course the rest of the business world starts using "hard drives" and "Excel." Then that's a different story.

So if anyone out there has any connections, or happens to know a wealthy person who would like to bestow an obscenely large grant on a struggling writer, please let me know.

Curving

2008-08-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

I'm horrified.

First, by the most vulgar and disgusting New York Moment I've witnessed yet, which is a fascinated sort of horror. Tim, Tina and I were walking on Broadway down by NYU after a meal at the Soup n' Burger diner (AKA the only affordable eatery in that area). We passed a homeless man. This is not at all uncommon. The unusual part is that this particular homeless man was lying on his side against a shuttered newsstand, facing the sidewalk, pants flapping open, penis in hand, aiming his urine in a perfect arc away from his body at into the paths (and possibly, the legs) of passersby. It really was a feat of physics, and hey, you can't blame the guy for not wanting to pee all over himself. I mean, that would just be gross.

Secondly, I'm horrified to find myself, at the conclusion of my writing class, as a solid B+ student. This is not to say that in the real academic world a B+ is a "bad grade." I went to college with a girl who would lament at social gatherings how she really should have a 4.0, but Professor Snively just doesn't like her for some unfair reason (we wonder why) and gave her a B, a B, can you imagine? And it couldn't possibly be that she earned such a lowly grade. This in the presence of fellow students struggling to keep their GPAs above a 3.0 to maintain scholarships, etc. So heaven forbid I become that girl.

It's not like any of us have a permanent record anymore. If you get an "A" in the class but don't sell any pieces, you've failed, and the opposite is, of course, true. I wonder why our professor gave us grades at all, until remembering the circle of eager faces trying to mask their enthusiasm with an air of suaveness, the kind of people who take classes after they've finished the requisite schooling.

We're ambitious people, those who choose to take action, to better themselves and the world, one NY Post op-ed at a time. We're also the people who strive for recognition, who want instant success, to prove themselves better than their peers. Writers taking classes. A bunch of intellectual snobs who are simultaneously insecure enough to feel like they don't know anything and confident enough to think they can find out.

What horrifies me about the B+ assessment I received on each assignment - before any revisions, and after spending no more than a week writing each one - is that a B+ is worse than a C, because it's almost an A. There are the students who are only okay and the students who are great, and the ones who are in the middle but so desperately want to be in the top tier - those students get B pluses.

I'm no novice when it comes to grade theory, either. In college, my friend Cara and I constructed a project and presentation for the International Writing Center Conference about how grade anxiety affects peer tutoring and student writing. My liberal artsy professors were often infuriatingly fluid or infuriatingly rigid about grading, but would never hesitate to engage in class-long debates on the subject. And I was blown away by the B+ I received from the professor of my Contemporary Theatre class at the University of London, who told me I certainly didn't need to write the final paper, since, you know, my father had died, and he would grade me on my class participation; I didn't worry since I was consistently and conspicuously the one who talked the most in a class of reticent American students. Also I didn't much care at the time, since, you know, my father had died. But I was baffled by that one, and to this day think he just didn't remember my name and gave everyone a B+. There are Bs (and Cs) I have admittedly earned, but that was not one of them.

In the real world, what does a B+ mean? In my case, it means that getting my work published is a lot more difficult and different than getting an A on a performance studies paper. The New York Times is not likely to accept a piece that I finish at 4AM on a caffeine high. It means that I have a lot to learn. It means that I did pretty damn well, and that I can do better.

iPhone is My New Best Friend

2008-07-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Hi Mom. It's been awhile.

I've been busy being finished with the Irish Voice assignment, also known as having a life, and purchasing an iPhone. Yes indeed, Tim and I waited in line outside the Apple store in Soho for a solid 2.5 hours to score a pair of 3G iPhones, and yes indeed, it was worth it. I've never been the kid with the coolest newest latest gadget, and now, for 5 minutes until Apple introduces the newer iPhone, I am.

The other reason for this sorely neglected blog's sorry state is one I am rather proud of. Over the weekend of July 4th, I spotted a class on mediabistro.com on How to Write for NYC Magazines and Newspapers. Perfect. I applied, got in, and started that Tuesday. I'm still riding high from class number two, which was today. This class cost me $350, but I know it will pay much more than that in the long run. And hopefully the short run.

Stay tuned, friends and relatives and the occasional stranger. More to come...

South Beach, Shmouth Beach

2008-06-19T18:06:00.000-07:00

In the midst of suburban luxury and parental doting, the South Beach Diet didn't seem so bad. Tim and I were visiting his parents, who live in a well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia, in a home quite a bit larger than our apartment. Let's just say that if our apartment is Puerto Rico, their house is the continental US. It also trumps our living quarters in the Well-Stocked Kitchen and Custom-Made Fully Outfitted Bar category, as well as in the Resident Chef competition, me being no match for Tim's mom when it comes to Italian cooking and convincing herself and others that a Rice Krispies Treat or two or four never hurt anyone. So it came as a surprise to see both Mr. and Mrs. B sticking rigorously to the South Beach Diet, and with amazing result.

They were such champions that Tim and I said, Hey, let's try this! We had a "last hurrah" night of gorging ourselves on the all-too-readily available snacks kept in every corner of the house, and then launched head first into Phase 1, clutching the book in one hand and the prospect of losing 10 pounds in 2 weeks in the other.

"So no fruit? Or bread?"

Tim adopted Stern Face. "No. Not even in the realm of possibility. Just put it out of your mind."

"But I really want a strawberry."

"No! Megan! You can do this. It's only for two weeks."

"Right...two weeks. Then I can eat fruit?"

"Yes, after two weeks."

"Okay...maybe one smallish strawberry?"

"Megan!"

This went on for quite some time, but still we both stuck to it that first day. Lunch at the country club, hold the croutons please, easy enough. Snack on a wide selection of pricey cheeses. Dinner of marinated grilled London broil, asparagus, sauteed mushrooms, fresh tomato and mozzarella. Piece of cake. Er, I mean, piece of crustless quiche!

When we drove home, Tim's mom sent us off with a "starter kit" of her homemade chicken salad, dozens of low-fat cheddar snack sticks, a baggie of leftover beef, Canadian bacon, and a hunk of top-quality mozzarella. It was enough to make up for Splenda in my coffee and the light-headed yet queasy full feeling permeating my body.

The next day, Tim and I sent encouraging text messages back and forth. "Stay strong!" "Day 2!" "We can do this!" "It will get better!" "I know it's hard but stick with it!" "This is getting really tough." "Push through the pain." "This kind of sucks." "This is horrible." "This is shit balls."

By the end of mere Day 2, I not only felt sluggish and had a dull, pounding headache; I was arguing with Tim over the tiniest thing because I JUST WANTED A FREAKIN GRAPEFRUIT! I went to the grocery store and stuck diligently to the Book, avoiding even carrots (discarded with white potatoes and corn as too starchy) and buying yet another type of low-fat cheese. I felt too awful to take advantage of the gym membership I had just signed up for, but no matter! I could fill the time by becoming one of those unimaginable bores who only talk about what they can and cannot eat!

That was me at the end of Day 2 on the South Beach Diet. Cranky, boring, and way too full of cheese. Aside from all that, I knew, I knew, that this was not good for my body. Oh, you have to wean your body off of sugar! We're all addicted to wheat and we don't even know it! A diet that relies that much on dairy products and shuns the whole food for its naturally occurring sugar molecules is not what I'm about. The only reason I stayed on the diet for as long as I did was my anger at how hard it was for me. I could not believe that I couldn't handle it, so I was more determined with each fructose craving to slave through the two weeks. And what was so enticing? Losing 5, perhaps 7 or 8 pounds? I've done that before, except it took me 3 months, and I didn't kill myself.

At the end of Day 2, Tim and I freaked out, said, Fuck the South Beach Diet, laughed for the first time in 2 days, and ate carbs. I poured myself a bowl of cereal (gasp!) with cranberries (double gasp!) and skim milk (well okay). I won't mention the Domino's feast of last night, but we're doing pretty well, healthy eating wise.

It works for some people, definitely. And I won't discount those who have literally saved themselves from a heart attack by following the plan. I guess that when you consider yourself an artist, and you're forced to sit at a cubicle under florescent lights for 8 hours a day, talking about noodle cutting technique and slurp-factor levels, you can't reign everything else in too tightly, or you'll feel cut off from your creativity completely. That, and you'll order extra cheese AND bacon AND pepperoni AND olives and a bottle of Coke, and your boyfriend will have to fight you for one slice of CinnaStix, that miraculous creation of fried dough, cinnamon, and sweet sweet sugar.

D Day

2008-06-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks I have been avoiding Macy's, for different reasons than I should. If I want to take the 2 train home after work, the route to the subway takes me right past every single display window of the biggest department store in the world, reminding me daily of what I cannot afford. This alone is reason enough to wait for the Q.

Lately, though, my motivation has been to stay away from the Father's Day displays. Sort of pointless, I guess, when every form of media inundates us with the Ideal Dad image, hounding us to buy him stuff (and only manly stuff, please). I'm all for celebrating fathers, but since I've lost mine, it all seems especially garish and insensitive. After all, many people grow up without fathers at all, or perhaps even worse, endure horrible fathers they would rather not have at all. I'm pretty lucky, as far as the luck of the dad goes. Even Senator Obama lashed into absent fathers today at a mostly African American church, daring to call them out while also sharply calling attention to the seriousness of the problem in our society.

It's not that I'm jealous of those with dads (well, not usually) or that I resent Father's Day as an idea (though it is an idea concocted by the media and the retail industry), but it stings when that perfect version of Dad is clearly as manufactured as the power tools from Sears we are expected to purchase. My own father often deferred Father's Day, since it has always fallen near my sister's birthday. He would say, You guys are great kids every day. He was pleased as punch with a new pack of golf balls and the go-ahead to use them, accompanied in early years by fabulous crayon renditions of his countenance on construction paper, which he kept in his office until the day he died.

I've spent today with Tim's parents, having a very nice low-key celebration of his dad by just being with him. Father's Day will always be a little bittersweet for me, at least until I have my own kids to instruct on the makings of glitter cardboard picture frames, but today made me happy that I have "surrogate" fathers, men who look out for me, and they're not even all "real" fathers. We could spend ages discussing the implications of a young woman feeling that she needs older men to look out for her in the first place, but we could also just agree that it's simple. It's a good feeling. I miss it all the time from my own father. But the point that all the commercials miss is that you can get that feeling elsewhere, and that those of us without fathers are not emotionally destitute. He can't be replaced, but my life is not less because of that.

Here's to all the men who care about somebody else's kids. You're all more valuable than you probably know. Here's to Tim Russert's kids, who have lost a spectacular dad; I hope that their family members step up to the plate for them. And here's to my dad, who is finally above all the forced traditions and materialistic pressure and can still accept the one Father's Day present he actually always wanted: my love and unshakable adoration. And a macaroni-embellished wallet.

Your Only Hope

2008-06-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

You're broke. You're in one city. You need to get to another. You have but one real option.

The Chinatown Bus.

If you can find the bus stop down on East Broadway, you're already ahead of the game. Do not, however, make the foolish mistake of thinking that because you have arrived 45 minutes before the scheduled departure and have waited patiently in what appears to be the front of a line, that that entitles you to get on the bus first.

Don't be alarmed by the small Chinese woman who appears magically, as if out of thin air, to proffer tickets in exchange for $20 bills - roundtrip! (If you have purchased your ticket online in a silly attempt to guarantee a seat, you should not be surprised when a kind stranger, not at all affiliated with the bus company, informs you that the bus you paid for has been cancelled.)

Do not either be frightened by the other small Chinese woman with the fanny pack screaming "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!" nor of the small Chinese man screaming same while also blowing snot rockets onto the pavement. Nor should you worry when your bags are flung into the undercarriage of one bus that you might be herded onto another, and the fact that the woman taking tickets says "Yes" to every variation of "Is this bus going to Different City Each Time the Question is Asked?" should be no cause for nervousness.

Try to relax against your broken seat back while the man behind you considerately blasts his preferred genre of music, hardcore rap, not through headphones, no, but through speakers, so that everyone on the bus can enjoy the tunes throughout the entire ride. If you are lucky enough to score a seat next to a person who does not seem inclined to kill you, you might attempt small talk, such as, "What exactly is that smell?" or, a great opener, "We must have run over a compact SUV, or else just a small bump in the road. It feels the same to me!"

Under no circumstances are you to speak to the driver, even if you think he might be moving a tad slow for your liking. Some buses take 6 hours to get from New York to Baltimore, and you must accept this. If you do have the audacity to ask how long the journey will take, you will receive an honest and thoughtful answer every time: "1 hour."

You will remind yourself that it costs about $80 to take a train to Philadelphia, and that the price of gas makes this a real bargain, and that a bus is a bus, so why pay more for Greyhound? You will then vow to never, ever take a Chinatown bus anywhere, ever again.

And the next time your friend says, "Hey, come down to DC for the weekend!" you will look at Amtrak.com, you will sigh, you will pray to whatever god might be able to help you, and you will once again place your fate and mental well-being into the hands of those grinning, screaming geniuses of business down in Chinatown.

Take a Bow

2008-06-10T19:15:00.000-07:00

Silly, overly ambitious me. As it turns out, it is quite difficult to do something new every day. Well, not true. It is quite difficult to do something new AND worth recording, every day. It occurred to me that if this blog becomes filled with anecdotes about wearing new earrings or walking down 34th Street instead of 36th to get to work, it will be tedious, to say the least. Nonetheless, I am still trying to be bold whenever possible, and I will report back whenever the boldness factor exceeds the "I'll try the extra hot salsa on my burrito today" realm.

In other news, a story worth telling that I forgot to. The little purple dress, which some of you may remember from such classic hits as Little Purple Dress, Your City Awaits, finally had its debut.

As I've had the distinct privilege of corralling 4-year-olds with names like Esme and Xanther and Declan and Hildegard through several Manhattan Children's Theatre birthday parties, their ultra cool Tribeca parents and/or nannies watching from the sidelines while I struggle to keep blood-letting to a minimum, I was able to attend the annual benefit at the "artist's rate" of 20 bucks, thus making the open bar a very economical option. And I did not let it go to waste.

If I had a gigantic walk-in closet, as every girl really should, the purple dress would have been shivering and alone in the back, weeping violet tears at its dismal unused condition. As I live in the real world and a studio apartment, it hung much less dramatically in plain sight, right next to my work clothes, but it was still satisfying to whip it out on a Wednesday morning. I carted it to my office, let it hang in the coat closet all day, and I took surreptitious peeks when I could, to remind myself that striking jewel tone colors await me, even when I am surrounded by grays and muted browns. It is not in the least office appropriate, that dress, which is of course the best part.

When I walked into The Bubble Lounge that night (after a stop at Victoria's Secret - me to salesgirl: "Do you have any underwear that might make me look less, um... lumpy?" and the Soho drugstore for foot odor spray - yes my feet sweat!) I was feeling gritty and tired and not at all worthy of the dress I was wearing, until I caught myself in the mirror. Damn. Lumps and all, I looked good. You have nice shoulders, I tell myself. Take off that cowardly pashmina at once!

So I indulged in the free champagne and hounded the waitress carrying the tiny brie and mushroom sandwiches and had to be shushed during the speeches and stood in front of Harvey Keitel so someone could less shamelessly take his picture. (Yes, Harvey Keitel and I attend the same parties.) I bonded with Tina's newish boyfriend while she worked the room (she's the manager of the theatre, FYI, and the only person who could rope me into doing those birthday parties) and then followed them both, drunk and ecstatic, to a Dunkin' Donuts for a pepperoni pizza ("Megan, we're not at a pizza place, you can't order pizza here!" "Oh, but I can!"), a cinnamon powdered donut and a not giant enough bottle of water. One of the best New York meals I've had so far.

I pulled myself together enough to get on the subway, but not before looking around in that intoxicated and fascinated way, at the lights, at the city, at my friends, at where I was in that exact moment. In a gorgeous little dress, down in Tribeca on a weeknight, laughing in the dark and at the cabdrivers who would not take me to Brooklyn, spinning around and waving goodbye. When I got home, I peeled off the dress and crawled into bed with Tim. The next day I was hung over indeed, and so was the dress. But it was happy.

I've Said it Before, and I'll Say it Again

2008-06-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

Carrie Bradshaw can suck it.

Oh, but how I adore and envy that lovable little fictional bundle of designer shoes and time on her hands. I won't be a movie spoiler, but SATC: The Movie is worth seeing if you're a fan of the show.

In a way that really has nothing to do with the show but with my jealousy of the (actually unattainable) so-called "writer's life" Carrie Bradshaw lives, it has inspired me. Here is my proposal, to myself and to my massive and far-reaching audience: Every day, I will do something that I have never done before.

One new thing, every day. And I will report back with due diligence and see where it takes me. It can be small, but it can't be cheating (i.e. "I ate a new sandwich from Pax" does NOT count).

Hold me to it, people.

It's Friday I'm in Love

2008-06-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

This weekend I forced myself to be young. While my looming Sunday (as in today) night deadline for my latest Irish Voice article cast a bit of a shadow, I was determined to be carefree, sleep deprived and alcohol overloaded. On Friday night, Tim's friend Jack and his girlfriend Katie came up from DC to visit us, and we all trekked over to the Lower East at 11:30PM. What I really wanted to do was sleep, but instead I tied hot pink lace in my hair and around my wrists and went to 80's night at The Pyramid Club. Unfortunately, no one actually dressed in 80's garb, but my lace looked cute anyway and I didn't much care. The $8 cover charge is a bit of a drag, but dancing to 80's music is the best because you can look like a fool and it works. (This is my usual MO anyway, it just happens to fit well with Duran Duran.) For a few unspoiled minutes, I was dancing up a storm with my college friends, shouting that I love rock and roll and raising my beer in the air, ecstasy in escape and un-selfconsciousness, and then the world shrinks back to the annoying tall gay dude who keeps poking you in the ribs and the fact that you have been awake since 6:30AM and you have no more money. But it was fun. After the bar we went to a swanky 24-hour cafe called Yaffa Cafe, where I tried first to order pierogies and the NJ-born waitress and I lamented their unavailability in Manhattan diners, and I then tried to order grilled cheese, which to me at 3AM when you're drunk equals white bread, yellow American cheese, grease, and heap of pickles on the side, but to Yaffa Cafe is Swiss on an open faced baguette with a vinaigrette side salad. So be it.

Yesterday was a haze of laziness and more alcohol, listening to Toots and the Maytals and me pretending to write this article, and finally falling asleep on the floor bed we had made for Jack and Katie while they were out and I was supposed to be working. And here I am, back at the Tea Lounge where there is enough noise for me to concentrate, aiming for 350 words an hour in order to finish.

I didn't join the gym yet, I didn't clean the apartment, I didn't do laundry, I didn't get any new freelance jobs, I didn't go grocery shopping or finish my book or do anything to further my goals in life and in June.

Great weekend.

Poor Little Things

2008-05-25T14:56:00.001-07:00

My friend Seth, currently stationed in Alaska as part of his education to become an environmental lawyer, alerted me to this article in the NY times, "Starting Salaries but New York Tastes." It seems, to say the least, incongruous to compare the struggling musician who lives in Brooklyn with 5 roommates and eats store brand franks and beans for dinner with the communications strategist making 60 grand and living alone on the East Side. Maybe it's just me? My sister just got a job working for Lockheed Martin, and her starting salary is in that ballpark, but I personally know dozens of people who would be ecstatic to make half that, and barely do. And these people live in New York, one of the most expensive places to be. If you're a New Yorker and you feel like having a good cry, take a look at Craigslist's apartments for rent in, say, Austin. You might throw up.

Many people have questioned my decision to live in such an expensive place, and the article addresses that issue somewhat. There is the idea, propagated by Ol' Blue Eyes, that New York is the ultimate testing ground, that you might have to struggle into the deepest depths of (relative) poverty and sacrifice, but that you will eventually reach the highest of heights in return for your suffering. This, of course, is not always the case, but we must have faith, no?

Last week over burritos, my friend Pants and I lamented that too common 'tude we've seen in struggling twenty-somethings: that there is no world outside New York, and if you think there is, you are a hopeless backcountry hick who doesn't belong in the city. This outlook, I think, will get you nowhere fast. The point of starting in New York is that you can stay, yes, but that you can go elsewhere and feel satisfied having lived that life, at least for some time, at least while you were young and liked cheap beer and crowded parties and didn't mind the smoke in your hair.

Why are we here? Why did we all come, to stand around and look at one another, hoping for connection and reassurance, ready to forge alliances or scramble over people's backs at a moment's notice? Are we really just looking for cheap haircuts and ins at the clubs, or is there something else we have brought, that we can contribute? What are we young for?

I dream about my job at the noodle factory and I do not like that. I have to question everything, as a matter of routine.

But lest we forget the victories, I will share with you the following. Today, Tim had a triumph. While juggling outside on the front lawn of my mom's house in NJ, just to escape the confines of inside and practice, a car slowed, then stopped, then watched. They gave him a dollar and asked him if he is in the circus. Not yet, he said.

Harrison Ford Be Ballin'

2008-05-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

It's true. In fact, the verbatim quotation from Harrison Ford, as I stood a mere twenty feet from him, was "Well I be ballin' right now," followed by Harrison Ford actually doing the line it up and shoot motion. In reality, the only thing ballin' about Harrison Ford is the purple stud in his left ear, which on second thought is just...not cool. But it was cool to be at the US premiere of the new Indiana Jones movie, hosted by - wait for it - BET. So Mr. Ford, along with the lovely but breakable-looking Calista Flockhart, joined by Shia LaBeouf and Karen Allen to promote Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Harrison shifted between intense awkwardness and sly references to his personal wealth ("I didn't like the color so I bought a new plane") and confirmed the press-shy rumors quite thoroughly.

My co-worker scored tickets to the event, and Tim and I were delighted to attend, but the movie itself was disappointing, unfortunately. I will sum it up thusly: Shia LaBeouf swings from vines, Tarzan style, with a troop of CGI monkeys sharing his haircut who pounce on Cate Blanchett-as-villian and thwart her temperarily.

I am called away to be cupcake sous-chef for my sister's graduation party. TTFN.

I Miss Sleep

2008-05-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

Why do I do it to myself?

I'll just let that question hang there for a moment, and you can fill in whatever lurid or ridiculous ideas you might have. But seriously. The procrastinating. And the clutter! Tim and I just duked it out once again, him citing my overabundance of stuff and clear inability to keep it contained (e.g. Exhibit A, the clothing-strewn floor), and me citing effective and applicable argument strategies, such as avoidance of the issue, accusations of not loving me, and the ever popular method of loudly cutting off his even-toned suggestions with a solid and childlike "NO!"

Now Tim will be the first to point out that he is no saint (a heyoka clown, perhaps, but no saint), and he has many times helped my writing my telling me to stop painting him in such rosy hues, and that I'm not really that much of a bitch. And I'm not, usually, but sometimes when we argue I can see myself diving further down the rabbit hole, choosing the inflammatory remark when I can easily form the words in my head that will appease, compromise, end. Is it a horrible character flaw that I like to argue with my boyfriend?

Probably. I rationalize that my public recognition of this alleviates some of my guilt. Also, most of our arguments like this are thinly veiled attempts to not laugh. I will respond to a question like, "Meg, do you really need seven spare canvas bags?" with wildly inaccurate statements, such as, "You just think that I'm full of crap and all my stuff is crap and you hate living with me!" But then I want to laugh, because it's...well, laughable.

I guess I could spend all night waxing philosophical about my weird tendencies, but I have to write a press release. This coming off a night of 3 hours of sleep following the completion of an article for the Irish Voice. I just love being a writer. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Isn't an apparition of James Joyce or somebody supposed to come out of a mirror now? Now that would make a good story.

Every Penny

2008-05-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

Life in a city always carries the danger of desensitizing us. Today I heard about the earthquake in China, and I thought, Wow, that's sad. What an inadequate thought. What can I, a single girl in the US, do to help the people in Myanmar and China who are suffering from unimaginable disasters? I can think about it for one second, really just think about it, and simply ask others to do the same, and donate a little money to the Red Cross, offer a few prayers. (It's still early for organizations to have set up funds specifically for aid to China, but there are ones for aid to Myanmar, and the Red Cross is already on the ground in China. They're also in the American Midwest in the wake of several tornadoes. You can donate to their "Where the Need is Greatest" fund and it will most likely go to one of those three places.) That's what I've done. It's nowhere near enough, of course - but I do ask everyone else to do the same.

Food Critic Extraordinaire

2008-05-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

Check out my review of Aperitivo, the restaurant Tim, my mom and I ate at on Saturday night on Eats.com. I met Mona Lipson, who works for the Brooklyn segment of Eats.com, at the Blogfest, Look at me networking! It's a very cool site.

Brooklyn Galore

2008-05-11T18:13:00.000-07:00

The long anticipated Blogfest was a trip. Tim accompanied his nervous girlfriend to the event, and I tried to be bold. I chatted. I networked. I gave out my biz card. I even stood up to the microphone at the shout out and announced my blog to the world (or to the 300 or so people there). I'm not normally a timid person, but these types of things bring out my insecurities, so I was happy with my output. Overall it was quite a nice evening, and kudos on the nachos grande, although the presentation portion was a bit long winded. There was a lot of repetition of the same (good) messages: everyone should blog, we need more diversity in the Brooklyn blogging world, blogging is the new way to communicate and inform. This is all true, to be sure, but my favorite speaker was the guy who ruffled some feathers, Gersh Kuntzman. He was from The Brooklyn Paper, a self-proclaimed "old media" proponent, and he asked us bloggers to ask ourselves: Where is this going? What will it mean? What, exactly, are trying to create? I, for one, appreciate the questions. Even if we in the blogiverse may disagree on our goals, or stand on opposite sides of the Moderate/Do Not Moderate Comments line, there is nothing worth doing that can't be subject to a barrage of questions. In my extremely humble opinion, I venture to hope that next year's Blogfest features more controversy and fosters debate over applause. And more time for the crucial networking. And beer drinking.

The Blogfest did inspire me to focus more on my neighborhood, to get to know it and offer my insights as a newcomer to this online community. So consider this my announcement, dear readers, to go local and still think global. I am newly committed to posting every day, to adding some much-needed photos, and being in general more interactive. I have a lot to say, and I think the Blogfest bolstered my confidence and convinced me that my words are worth reading - because there are so many other blogs that I now want to read. Check me out, Brooklyn. (And Mom. Happy M Day!)

Light Up Enthusiasm Impress Dream!

2008-05-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

That's what happens when translation goes awry, to head-tilting but poetic effect. That witty title is stolen from an email sent to one of the noodlers at my office from a client in China. Dear little Peggy wanted to know if he would come to China for the 2-month long Olympic games, enticing him with the headline of "Happy, Peach and Inspiration everyone!" The Chinese are VERY enthusiastic about the Olympics and their national pride (not so much on the English grammar). Oooh, watch the physically fit athletes while we violate human rights and sabotage the environment! And FIREWORKS!!!

I'll probably still watch the Games, even though I've signed several different petitions from all the lefty organizations asking China to please use its influence on the Sudanese government to stop the atrocities in Darfur, and to please refrain from beating and shooting monks engaged in peaceful demonstrations for the freedom of their people, and to please stop depleting any and all natural resources in sight while turning your landscape to sludge and pumping billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere. Pretty please?

But there are as many people in China as there are tons of pollutants, and a cheery choppy email invitation to come join in the fun from a well-intentioned citizen is nothing so harmful. It makes me think about national image, however, and to what extent each individual is responsible for a portion of their country's reputation, whether based on fact or not. In 2005, I spent three days in Paris, and my friends and I jokingly prepared to declare ourselves Canadian if questioned. Despite preconceptions about rude Parisians (ahem), we had no beef - nor beouf - with anyone, but after we ordered beers in a bar one night, the bartender smiled and raised an eyebrow.

"Americans?" he said.

"Oui!"

He laughed a big hearty French laugh, "Oh, Americans, George Bush!"

This was most likely just a stringing together of all the English and American references he knew. Still, we protested.

"No! Non! Je n'aime pas George Bush! Je DETESTE George Bush!"

And we all had a chuckle. Clearly that bartender thought we were harmless. But that was back in 2005, and I do wonder if the "act Canadian" plan would be more necessary in 2008. After all, we live in a so-called democracy. We elect our leaders. We choose them. So many Americans are quick to point out that they didn't vote for Georgey Boy, certainly not the second time around (and of course many of them are lying), but that doesn't shed us of responsibility, does it?

One of the reasons I made the difficult choice to support Barack Obama as a candidate over the first woman to have a real shot at the Presidency has to do with national image. Back in December, I read Andrew Sullivan's article in the Atlantic Monthly, "Why Obama Matters," and what struck me was Sullivan's point about how a black face will resonate with the people who are supposed to hate us. How our national image might change for the better if young Iraqis look to the American president and see a young man with an African father and an ethnic name.

I don't want that to matter. But it does.

For now, though, while we wait to slug it out with Mr. McCain, I take an odd comfort in Peggy's words: "Light Up Enthusiasm Impress Dream!" I'll pitch it to Obama's campaign slogan guy.

From Sex to Salvation

2008-05-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

The hole in our bathroom ceiling looks like a vagina. I’m sorry if this is offensive to anyone, but the description is not meant to be vulgar, only objective, and that’s what it looks like. There’s no getting around it. If both of my grandmothers, a bishop, and every gay man I know crowded into my bathroom and took a gander upward, they would unanimously agree: vagina. (Though that particular gathering might be awkward for various other reasons.) Take a paintbrush to the thing, slap on some labels, and ob/gyn med students could study it for their diagramming exam. You get the point.

That the hole leaks and that cockroaches have been known to emerge from it are also off-putting factors. Presumably, the landlord/owner of the building might want to repair the obvious structural damage ASAP. Not so. There has been a good bit of languishing on the landlord’s part, countered by an even better bit of barely polite demanding on my part. But I guess this is all part of the charm of city living. At least I don’t have to pay for it to be fixed.

In worldlier and less graphic news, I joined my friends Pants (not her real name, of course – short for Pantsalina) and Libby at the Public Theater the other night, where we scored $20 rush tickets to Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Little Flower of East Orange. A new play directed by the amorphously talented Philip Seymour Hoffman, it was a welcome return to theater for a girl who just hasn’t gotten enough of it. I won’t go all theatre critic on you, but I’ll say that Ellen Burstyn put in a fabulous performance that rang quite close to home for me in the Catholic guilt sphere of influence, and that it was refreshing to see a play written in reality but that ended on an upswing. It might be cheesy to believe in, but at least in this theatrical world, there is hope and redemption for the ghost and secrets batted around families.

All the dialogue about grace led me to contemplate my “book,” so subjected to quotations because I have been neglecting it. The noodle factory gave me a raise and Tim just landed a great day job, and the danger of contentment lurks around every cushy corner. For now, I have an excuse. I spend much of my time researching and writing pieces for a real newspaper, which is no small thing. But I can’t take my eyes off the horizon, and the project closest to me is always the one I’ll push away first if given the chance.

I will close this blog post with the line that closes Guirgis’ play (so parallel, I know):

“Grace is like your next breath; until you die, it’s always there.”

Thanks to Caffeine!

2008-04-30T16:32:00.001-07:00

Hello universe! After a few grueling weeks, I am reinvigorated and recommitted, largely due to my excitement over the Brooklyn Blogfest coming up next week, and also due to coffee! I passed a poster for the Blogfest on 7th Avenue and checked it out. It seems to be a bunch of people very excited about blogging, getting together to drink beer and cheer one another on. Too good to be true, perhaps? Will there be a bit of “more people read my blog than your blog” going on? Perhaps. But numbers don’t count so much as quality. And for the record, I think my mom should count twice.

Yesterday the devil – I mean temp agency – called me out of the blue with a job prospect. Recently disheartened by the noodle factory’s severe lollygagging in dishing out the raise that supposedly comes with my promotion, I listened and considered this new job. Much glitz and glamour and graphic design (and maybe grapes and gorillas too) in a breath-taking office in Soho. The kind of office, I imagine, in which characters played by Kate Hudson and Reese Witherspoon find themselves in movies about the charming professional New York City gal who’s just looking for love and stilettos on sale! A far cry, in other words, from my fluorescently lit cubicle, within earshot of co-workers three times my age who like to discuss the very specific attributes of the broccoli from a particular Chinese restaurant, for let’s say twenty minutes minimum. Today I toiled away doing inventory until my eyes melted, since inventory at the noodle factory is still completely manual, and I thought, Gee, I’d sure like to work at a company that uses technology younger than I am. But I had already made my decision to stay.

Why, oh why, you may ask? Because I like it enough to keep going back, and I dislike it enough that I won’t get stuck there. The fancy schmancy job offer really amounted to this question: do I want to resume the position of lowest on the totem pole at another company that I may or may not like, for a bit more money? Not really, no. When I leave my job it will be for a job in writing/editing/publishing, or to just go freelance. (It sounds so risqué and intriguing, doesn’t it? Like “going AWOL” or “going commando.”)

In other news and in an effort to create a more community-based and integrated blog (hopefully one that people read), I’d like to give a shout out to the Tea Lounge, host of my Irish Voice research sessions and provider of excellent pastries. Here’s to free wi-fi; there’s not enough of it. So check out the Tea Lounge in Park Slope (a giant one on Union Street between 6th and 7th Ave, with a full bar and pretty decent live music acts some nights, and another on 7th Ave and 10th Street). Just don’t hog all the spots near the outlets, okay?

Liberated

2008-04-07T18:49:00.000-07:00

I've been keeping journals since I was about nine years old (back then they were diaries), and even then I was a procrastinator and an apologizer. Every other entry in my floral cloth covered pink lined diary from 3rd grade starts with, "Dear Diary, Sorry I haven't written in so long!" Who on earth was I talking to? Those bad habits have piggybacked on the inclination to write through my entire childhood, adolescence, and now (gulp) adulthood - wait, young adulthood! That's a separate category, right?? My instinct is to apologize to the blogosphere and then list very boring reasons for my procrastination. First of all, that would be a self-centered act, perpetrated on the premise that there are people drooling with anticipation for my next word (besides my mom, and she doesn't even drool), which is, sad to say, not exactly the case. For those who read this blog, whoever you are, I do not say, Sorry I haven't written in so long! I say, welcome back.

In other news, I live in Brooklyn now, I'm writing for the Irish Voice newspaper freelance, and I'm about to get a promotion at the noodle factory where I work my obligatory 9-5. No, I do not actually work at a noodle factory, but if you're going to disguise your real job, why not do so in as absurd and delightful a way as possible? So the head noodlers have noticed that, shock and alarm, I can do more than answer the phone and count noodles, and would like to promote me to assistant noodle-whipping tester. Okay, now we're losing the metaphor, but the point is that I am moving up in the company. And that's scary, because I don't want to get stuck. I want to write, I say! But look what I'm doing...

So for now, I spend my spare time in a Park Slope cafe, drinking copious amounts of coffee and eating way too many heart-shaped buttery jam sandwich cookies, not worrying about how to pay the rent thanks to the noodle factory, and, lo and behold, writing.

Stay tuned. More writing and less apologizing to follow.

Third Person Limited

2008-03-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

Dora the Explorer is a wreck. As I squat down to reshuffle battered stacks of Go Diego Go! and Dora Goes to School for the zillionth time, I listen for strains of conversation floating around the children's department, my brain desperate for an occupation other than alphabetizing. Usually this casting about for airwave tidbits is fruitless, at best ironically laughable. There is a divorced couple, for example, that uses the kids' section of the bookstore as a rendezvous point to hand their 5-year-old back and forth; I know this because I once listened to them discuss, FOR AN HOUR, whether or not to spend $50 on the little tyke's karate uniform, and isn't that a lot, shouldn't we try to find it elsewhere, I thought we had to get it through the studio, will we get in trouble if we don't, oh but she must have the right uniform, the instructor didn't say we couldn't get it elsewhere, yes but he didn't say we could, hem and haw, Very Important Decision, wait where's our child, oh don't worry she's chewing on Dora's Big Book of Manners she's fine. And it's nice, it really is, at least for their daughter, that they make a big show of how they get along and how they can make Mutual Decisions about Important Things. But it doesn't do much for me, the conversation stalker lurking behind Charlotte's Web Special Edition.

After restoring order to Dora's world, I move on to Angelina the Ballerina, who is also a mouse. Kids do not like these books but parents want them to. Upon discovery of a giant pile of books invading the space of the delicate Angelina, I swoop them up with a sigh I hope is loud enough for the nearby nannies chatting on cell phones and flipping through Us Weekly (Tom dons wizard hat and tries to cure Britney! Exclusive!) and then I catch a juicy snippet coming from just outside the bathroom.

"I was really losing it, I had to call my therapist and I was on the phone for five hours."

A woman's voice, deep and velvety smooth. She speaks in an even, weighted tone. She does not whisper.

"And I had to get out of the house, because I don't want to go right back on the Lexapro, but I'm a little bit manic."

I had to look. Thomas the Tank Engine is right next to the bathroom. I had to look. An olive skinned woman with angular face and pointy elbows, short curly hair. She is maybe Albanian. Turquoise cut-off T-shirt and baggy pants. Balancing cell phone in one hand. Infant in the other. A sideways stare and I can see that this baby is not more than twelve days old.

"I just had the baby twelve days ago," she says. "And I need the medication but it makes me a little off, you know."

A toddler with the same curly hair does her toddler thing a few feet away. I had to stay and listen. Thomas was messy.

"No, she's not being helpful at all, actually, she's reverting. She won't touch the baby, she won't hug me. I mean this is what she did to me as a child, she's withholding affection and then calling me selfish because I haven't asked her about her friend who's having a biopsy."

Let me take a meta-narrative/ Jane Austen moment here to tell you, dear reader, that she really did talk like this, quite calmly, stating all of these logical statements.

"Well yes, I mean I'm doing what I can, I just had a baby twelve days ago and my husband is a ferry worker. What can I do? I packed them up and brought them to Barnes & Noble because I had to get out of the house."

The baby is still sort of gelatinous and floppy, looking around googley-eyed as if to say, "Be aware that my insides are wobbly and I cannot yet hold my own head up." Or maybe just, "Wow." Either way, he is helpless, small, at the mercy of this mother of his, and the situation seems precarious. As I listen to her conversation (who is she talking to?) and make sure that the train wheels are aligned just so - I mean I have to, it's my job - judgments flood my thoughts. She shouldn't be here with that baby. She's not watching her other kid. If you have lifelong mental illness issues maybe you shouldn't have kids in the first place. If she's on meds can she take care of an infant? Does she know how many germs infect these books? Irresponsible. Untrustworthy. Crazy.

Brave.

Yes her kid flopped around a bit, and her toddler ran amuck, and she had to enlist a stranger to hold the baby while she changed the other's diaper, and she stayed for hours and came back for the next three nights, continuing to rope middle-aged women into helping her only because she seems so helpless and they clearly take pity (with a side of disdain) on her, or at least on her children. And maybe she will screw up her offspring in novel but just as damaging ways as her own mother had, and maybe the baby will catch a cold, but maybe his immune system will be bolstered by early exposure to germs, and the little girl will develop a deep-seated love of books and words and be very smart, all practically by accident but because her mother loves her enough to get out of the house when she feels a little bit manic. The children's section is brimming with books, step-by-step instructional manifestos, on how to raise perfect children perfectly. The children's section is also filled with parents who clearly and smugly believe that they are doing exactly that. This mother was not afraid of imperfection, knew it would not ruin her children by association.

I inserted myself into this family, offering the girl a train book as the mother sat down cross-legged in front of The Spiderwick Chronicles and started breastfeeding. I do not usually hand books to children as I am frantically trying to undo the damage they've done. I practically snatch books directly out of grubby young hands in order to get all the straightening done. But I said, "Here you go, you might like this." And she did. The mother looked at me, smiled and said "Thank you so much." It was not an embarrassed thank you, even though she knew I heard her entire conversation. Not a "thank you" that really means "I'm sorry." She was not sorry. She was brave.

Snowfall

2008-02-29T19:16:00.001-08:00

From twenty-five stories above the West Side of Manhattan, snow does not fall. From all the way up here, it hovers, dances in the air beside you, winking at the ground below and swirling away, maybe to a rooftop and maybe back into the atmosphere. From above, snow covers New York, makes it white and pretty. Down on the streets, it doesn't cover; it is absorbed. It is muddled through and cursed at, instantly dissolved into pavement and becoming part of the city's grit and slush. But first, it hovers. It toys with the possibility of never ever landing, anywhere, and stays for as long as it can in delicious limbo, lazily swinging through the sky.

In less than two weeks, we'll be leaving our perch, overlooking New York, and moving to a basement apartment in Brooklyn. It would seem like a step (or two) down, but I don't think of it that way. Maybe someday we'll live on the island again, but for now, we're looking for something different. For one thing, we're looking for more than 200 square feet, which is pretty much what our budget could get us in Manhattan. But we're also looking for a community, for some trees and some connectedness and some distance from the city where we will still work and play. If everything works out, if all our ducks are in a row, we're moving to Park Slope, and getting our first real apartment.

Oh, it's tiny. Oh, the kitchen was built into a closet and the counter is slanted and you have to wedge yourself between the stove and wall to cook things. And oh, it is only one room with two windows and did I mention the smallness of it? But it will be ours. And there's the charm! Intricately molded wooden window frames, exposed brick wall, a fireplace (a fireplace!) that doesn't work but nonetheless adds much to the charm factor. It's in a real brownstone on a real tree-lined street, the kind where people sit on steps and talk in the summer, eat popsicles that drip onto the sidewalk and watch kids play hopscotch and listen to the guy with the guitar three doors down. Yes there is crime and reality and sadness in Brooklyn. But there are also trees! And a food co-op! And the Prospect Park Zoo, and Prospect Park, and the Library...and us.

So even though I know that most snowflakes will eventually reach the ground, I also know two other things: One, that they will take their sweet time and enjoy the ride down, and two, that not necessarily all of them will land.

Likes/Dislikes

2008-02-25T18:59:00.000-08:00

Okay okay okay. I've been lackadaisical. I've been downright lazy, but I've heard your cries for my words. The blogosphere has spoken! Well, if not "the blogosphere" per say, then at least my friend Tina. And my mom. They've spoken.

I could recap the past few weeks of my Very Thrilling Life, but recaps are so blase, so my-diary-in-seventh-grade. I'll stick to highlights. Or perhaps... a list. Of likes and dislikes! If I had the HTML wherewithal, I'd probably use a ven diagram, with the two overlapping circles that is inexplicably employed in every middle school class, subject notwithstanding. On one side of my diagram is "I ♥ NY" and the other side is labeled "I Sometimes Definitely Do NOT ♥ NY." Now this may suprise you, but "heart" is a strong term, and it doesn't always apply in full when describing my feelings toward this city. At times, a partial term is more appropriate. "I Left Ventricle NY," perhaps, but not a full "Heart." So here goes:

I ♥ NY

1) When you can choose from a lengthy list of empenades, each containing either a) beef b) cheese c) hot sauce or d) some delightful combination of the three, each less than THREE DOLLARS at Empanade Mama on 9th Ave. (Also when eating said empanades with college BFF Pants, who used to live in California and now lives within lunch proximity.)

2) Upon realizing that even while working 2 jobs, I can finish a book a week just on lunch breaks and subway rides, thus making me happy and also more pretentious.

3) After deciding to explore the world of vegetarianism - I'm just getting a visa, not citizenship, mind you - Tim and I stumble on the coolest and most delicious vegan organic restaurant on Amsterdam Ave, called Cafe Blossum, where our goateed waiter is not at all pretentious. He must not read a lot of books on the subway.

4) Because even though I am, in the least glorified sense, a receptionist, I get to work in the Garment District, I get to stroll through Bryant Park and shop in midtown every day if I choose, and I get a salary. Boo-yah.

The list could go on, but allow me to pause and insert:

I Do NOT ♥ NY

1) When spending anywhere from $10-15 on disgusting greasy food that makes one, shall we say in the most polite way possible, prone to gasiness, because even in the restaurant capital of the East Coast, it appears that there is nothing else available.

2) Upon realizing that the man standing next to you on the overcrowded 2 express train is not only looking but breathing directly and intently at you, and spending the next 4 minutes clasping purse to body and rereading the same sentence of the book over and over, thinking Go away go away go away while every jolt sends you precisely in his urine-scented direction.

3) After scouring several drugstores, I must go to NEW JERSEY to purchase Dryell sheets. Do people not use those??! They're awesome! They save a fortune in dry-cleaning! Get with it, New York!

4) On National Blame the Receptionist Day, which is celebrated by a) freaking out at receptionist when messenger cannot be located because he is, WHAT?? in his office readily answering his telephone, b) freaking out at receptionist for ordering coffee incorrectly before noticing that, oh, there are 2 coffees in the bag and this one must be mine, chuckle chuckle, never mind! and c) while speaking very slowly, instructing receptionist on what to do when calls come in, giving a look that says, "Now Receptionist, I don't think you know what you're doing so I'm going to have to explain it to you."

Now, to be fair (and who says bloggers have to be fair, really?), I've recounted just about the only incidents of receptionist abuse to which I've been subject, so I can count myself lucky, as far as receptionists go. Most everyone is quite pleasant.

I suppose that just when life starts to even out, a schedule arises, a sense of stability, I will go crazy anyway. Right now we're apartment hunting and we've fallen in love with Park Slope, Brooklyn. The adventure continues.

Tell Me About Yourself

2008-02-08T22:17:00.000-08:00

Person conducting interview: "What are your weaknesses?"

Me: "I guess I'd have to say, I'm bad at answering stupid interview questions."

Just kidding. Actually I said, "I'm perpetually five minutes late for everything, when I'm tired I get manic, and I pick at my toenails."

Kidding. Real answer: "I have no weaknesses."

Kidding! Seriously, what's with that question? Apparently my lame answer was sufficient, however, because five minutes after leaving said interview, they called to offer me the job. I'm officially the receptionist extraordinaire at a textile company in midtown. Not fashion per say, but clients include H&M and Victoria's Secret, so it feels like a second cousin of the fashion industry. Of course to get this job, I had to fudge a bit.

I'm not sure what I want to do.

In five years? I guess I see myself at a company like this!

Well I majored in English, but I'm not really going in that direction.

Says the girl who has worked two 18-hour/2 job days in a row, whose every molecule is begging for sleep and being denied because she just has to write something and get it out into the universe.

Speaking of the universe, it seems to be playing lovely cosmic jokes on me. Take the following, for example. My first day at aforementioned new job, I take a hot second between directing phone calls and mailing packages to check my email. Lo and behold, a response from a woman I had contacted who works for a travel magazine.

Let's get together, she says. We seem to have similar backgrounds, I'd love to help you in any way I can, she says. I'll forward your resume to my boss, she says. We DEFINITELY have openings, she says. Her emphasis, not mine. That helpful bitch.

It's fantastic, of course. The worst thing that can happen at this point is that I talk to a cool person in the magazine world and keep a decent receptionist job at a very nice company. Let's not mention the best thing. Quitting this new job would be uncomfortable, painful even; I heard all about what an investment it is to find someone new. My initial reaction to the email was dismay, thinking that I couldn't leave the job I just started, it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be right...

Who the hell am I kidding?

Carrie Bradshaw Can Suck It

2008-02-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

a) I'm quite aware that she is not a real person. She can still suck it. (Much love to SJP, though.)

b) Not only is it impossible that a column-a-week writer could afford Manolo Blahniks, it is impossible for a human being to actually wear them and walk farther than 10 inches.

c) I do not own a pair of Manolo Blahniks.

d) My feet hurt.

e) I refuse to be one of those women who wears Keds with suit pants and totes her heels around with her lunch sack.

f) Maybe just some nice flats, though.

But shin splints aside, the pain is worth it. I got a job today. A real honest-to-goodness job. Stay tuned...

Bring on the Beer

2008-02-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

The problem with living in a city with everything available to you is the ever-present possibility of making terrible choices. Case in point: My right hand soaks in a soup bowl of warm salt water. I wipe away tears of exhaustion and jolting pain with my left, examing the gigantic wooden splinter lodged between skin and fingernail. Tim follows my instructions to prepare the chicken breast from the freezer, while I look up recipes for the fresh asparagus we picked up from Whole Foods and eye the mashed sweet potatoes Tim whipped up the night before. A little lemon juice, everything in the spice rack, copious amounts of garlic, and at the last minute, "Oohh, pour your beer on it!" Tim takes a final swig and dutifully dumps the rest of his Blue Moon onto the plump little chicken.

"I hope this tastes good," I say. "I just improvised."

"What if it doesn't?" he asks.

"Then we'll just order Chinese food," I say, half kidding.

The chicken goes into the oven, and not five minutes later, Tim says casually, "I'm really hungry."

"Me too. The chicken smells good. Let's order Chinese food."

Yes, that's right. Not only are we broke and about half an hour away from a delicious, nutritious, economical meal born of real food and personal labor. Twenty bucks down the drain for the worst Chinese food ever. Greasy and bland at the same time. After we swept the remains into the trash, disgusted with the contents of our stomachs and ourselves, we checked the chicken. It sizzled in its savory juices and laughed at us. It was perfect.

Later the toilet overflowed, seeping water all over the bathroom and onto the carpeted hallway.

It's okay though. I poured some more beer, down my throat this time, and we went to bed happy. We ate the chicken the next day.

Birthday

2008-01-24T10:18:00.000-08:00

So apparently this whole temp job turning permanent is a no-go. C'est la vie. (I'm practicing my French to cosmically increase my chances of landing another but better paying temp job at a French bank. I'm hoping that the only things French bankers need to say to their admin assistants are "Where is the beach?" and "I would like wine please." And "shit." That's about all I've got covered.)

Today is my dad's birthday. He died on December 10, 2005 and he would have been 47 today. There's much to be said about my father; too much to confine to a blog post right now - look for my forthcoming book (hint hint to those in the forthcoming book industry). He was a top notch dad, and he loved bringing my sister Beth, my mom and me to New York to visit. I remember my first visit to Times Square, grasping his giant hand on the way to the newly opened Disney store, double time past the pay-as-you-go peep shows. He introduced me to the grid system and showed me that if you walk 2 blocks away from any tourist area, you can get the best and the cheapest roast beef sandwich you've ever sunk your teeth into. He brought me to St. Patrick's Cathedral and to the top floor of Macy's, bought me my first hot dog from a cart and my first slice of real New York pizza.

On our last trip to New York, the summer before he died, he scouted out tickets to a comedy show one night, and the next morning walked all over midtown in search of the best croissants, frosted donuts and coffee, which he delivered to me and Beth before we even got out of bed. That day our destination was the Museum of Natural History. He always let the girls of the family (the poor man was outnumbered his entire life) choose the activities, hence tickets to Sweet Charity the day before. But the Museum was his choice; he insisted that when he was a kid, he had seen an enormous replica of a blue whale there and was gleeful at the prospect of seeing it again.

The four of us meandered around the museum, vaguely searching for "the big frickin' blue whale" as it is officially called. Around the time we were beginning to doubt its existence and razz my dad about his (impeccable) memory, we stepped into the marine life section, and there it was. Suspended from the ceiling was the biggest frickin' blue whale I've ever seen. My dad's face lit up with an expression that can only be described as "delighted." We took a picture of him in the "ta-da" pose, arms spread out toward the whale, sporting a massive grin and a triumphant gleam behind his glasses. It is my favorite photograph of a publicly reserved and quiet man. He only shared his true moments of happiness with people that he loved. That was one of them.

Being in New York reminds me of my dad, in different ways but just as much as being at home. He loved the city and always thought it had a lot to offer those who were brave and savvy enough to venture there. He would have called me all the time, pretending not to check up on me and asking round about questions regarding the frequency, times and safety of my subway journeys. He would have researched the best places to eat and the newest exhibits and the latest job opportunities, learning things inside out so he could tell me about them. He would have ridden the train in on a Friday to take me out to dinner and listen to lengthy detailed stories about my life.

He would have been proud of me. He is, actually. I try to remember that on days when I feel like I'm faltering.

Happy Birthday, Dad. You're still helping me out.

That's Me in the Corner

2008-01-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

When I met Tim, he wasn't much for religion. The end result of a story much too interesting to confine to a blog post is that now, he is. That's a simplification and an overstatement, but it's to the point. Not a strict adherent to any particular dogmatic religion, Tim studied the Hebrew Scriptures alongside the Gospels while delving into Native American folklore and donning Korean ritual masks to invoke Greek gods and Lakota tricksters. There have been times when I, good Catholic girl that I am, have balked at his explorations, accusing him of "believing in nothing" because he believes in everything. But he always meets my insecure mudslinging with openness and tolerance, and though we've had many arguments and discussions and debates about religion in all its various forms, we've reached a peaceful consensus. He comes to church with me and I don't flinch when he spends $100 on a crystal ball. Seriously, we're a lot less polarized than it may seem, and I credit Tim for bringing me to a deeper appreciation of my faith in Christianity while simultaneously opening my mind to a literal alternate world of other possibilities.

But it's a lonely place indeed for the white Lakota tarot reader, and Tim can get down on himself in a world where his views are easily dismissed. For all my eyebrow raising at comments such as "My goal for the project is to become possessed by a demon" and "Jimi [as in Hendrix] has been trying to get in touch with me," I find myself cheerleading for the occult team when Tim gets in a self-doubting mood.

The other day, Tim went to Upper Crust Fitness (still not its real name) and attended a class calling itself "Healing Light Meditation." Through an hour of magical stick waving and sing-songy narration by a woman named Raven through a journey of light and love and peace, he lay silently on the hardwood floor and tried to connect. He's into light and love and peace. He's down with Jesus and Buddha and meditation. But nothing doing. He left frustrated, mostly with himself for believing that Healing Light Meditation was worth his time.

"Am I crazy to pursue the mask work?" he asked me on our lunchtime phone call.

"What? No, what are you talking about?" I mentally debated: regular coffee or non-fat 3 pump half-decaf cinnamon dulce latte with whipped. "Hold on while I order my complicated drink."

"I don't know what I'm doing, I should just focus on mainstream theatre."

"No, that's non-fat, with whipped. Yeah. Tim, you there?"

"Yes." Exaggerated sigh. "Should I abandon the masks?"

"Look, of course you should do mainstream theatre, but why would you abandon the masks?"

"I don't know, I just went to this meditation thing, and this lady named Raven was talking about light and journeys, and I'm all for that, really, but it was just... a bunch of crap. And I realized, I have a gift, and this is not it. I should just forget all this supernatural stuff and do what I'm good at."

"Have you tried this chicken and pesto thing from Starbucks?"

"Yeah, it's okay. It's pretty good."

"Okay, look, I have to go eat my lunch, but we'll talk about this. Don't worry. I love you."

When I got home that night, Tim was scouring craigslist for jobs and was clearly, as we say, in a funk. So I took my place on the sidelines, playing devil's advocate (really) for every self-disparaging remark he could muster. Because I know his ideas aren't crap, but I also know that there are a lot of ways to interpret them as such, to see them for the stereotypes of ideas instead of well-thought out and researched concepts espoused by a very smart young man. I know this because I've done it myself. But I also know that what I love most about Tim is his vision. He sees the world in ways that no one else I've ever met does. So although I may shake my head and appear skeptical, in truth I am delighted.

After a few rounds of "what am I doing with my life" vs. "you know what you're doing is important," Tim paused for a moment and said,

"Here's what it is. It's not that I don't believe in light and goodness and all that; I do. But it just seemed so... "

"Well, the thing is that the universe isn't always nice, I guess. There's darkness there, too."

"Exactly! And God, or gods, or whatever - they're not always nice. Gods punish, you know?"

"They trick people."

Tim sat up and looked at me. "They trick people."

"Yeah."

We both looked at The Mask sitting on his dresser. It's the blue and white smiling one, the one that he's assumed to be the benevolent one. The other mask, its twisted twin painted black and red, he keeps shut up in a box, because it's the Trickster, the bad one - supposedly. But when you keep dark forces locked in a box, the smiling face can begin to haunt you just as well. Going toward light is useless unless you know you're moving away from darkness, and the only way to know that is to glance behind you from time to time.

Tim jumped up and grabbed the mask, matching its ear to ear grin and pointing at it. "You! You've been tricking me!" He let out a raucous laugh.

"That's it," he said to me. "That was the thing that bugged me about the meditation. It didn't mean anything. There was no pain first."

Corporate Accounts Payable, Nina Speaking, Just a Moment

2008-01-18T09:48:00.000-08:00

The thing about temp work is that although it can be monotonous and soul-killing, it can also seem freeing, because when you're a temp (in some cases), nobody's really your boss. The company you work for pays the agency, and the agency pays you, and everything is at your discretion. Do you want to come back tomorrow? Sure! I'll grace you with my presence another day, but no guarentees. I say that it seems freeing, however, because it fosters the illusion of control over one's life, of choice. But is there really a choice between making (crappy) money for a day or making no money for a day? If you're independently wealthy or a contented slacker, then I suppose there is. But for those of us with rents to pay, it's not a choice. And then it's a mandatory aquiesence to a company that hasn't invested anything in you, such as benefits and paid vacation and a reasonably secure income. Today, they need you; tomorrow they may not, and then you're back to square one.

The company I'm temping for has tentatively offered me the permanent position. So now here's the question: Do I accept an admin job at an office where the people are nice, the seltzer water flows freely, and the work is simple? Ideally, this would pay the bills (though just barely) and free up my nights and weekends to write my own stuff, get it out into the world. Then the day comes in the not-too-distant future when I can get a better job, an editorial job. That is, of course, the best case scenario.

The worst case scenario is, as mentioned above, the slow and excrutiating death of my soul. But I exaggerate. I've been given more mentally engaging work in the past two days; nothing too hard, but better than hole punching stacks and stacks of pages, let's say. You know what else is better than hole punching? Splinters. Finding a dead rat in your bed. The smell of burnt plastic. Basically anything.

So we'll see. Any advice? Anyone? Bueller?

Livin' the Dream Ain't Easy

2008-01-16T10:10:00.000-08:00

Last night Tim and I lay awake and whispered our shared confession: New York is a little bit scary. After our first few rosy days, we're both scrambling to find work while glancing nervously at our dwindling savings cushion. Tim is from Chicago, so he's somewhat accustomed to big city life, but he still admits that it's a lot different here. New York is so...vast. It can seem like a playground or a wasteland, depending on your mood and circumstance. Walking home at midnight in the freezing rain sans umbrella after a 6 hour shift at the bookstore which followed a 6 hour shift at the temp job facing work again in a mere 8 hours? Wasteland.

In order to pursue our chosen creative paths, Tim and I decided to move here to be closer, in spirit and distance, to others who share our goals and can guide us on those paths. What's frustrating is that to afford to live here, one must work. A lot. Leaving little time for creative endeavors. So we're here, ring out the announcements, but the main focus is making money instead of making art. The system allows for those with trust funds (and thus largely upper class white people) to gobble up the internships and low-paying assistant jobs which others cannot afford to take. Of course it's counter intuitive to covet unpaid work, but that's what gets you noticed, connected.

On the other hand....

Quit your bitchin, you privileged snot. You and your fancy college degree (on scholarship and financial aid, but still) and your 4-bedroom Upper West Side apartment (not really ours, but still) and your sexy attentive boyfriend (no qualifiers there) can shove it. Get to work.

Touché.

For most people, writing doesn't happen at a large oak desk between the comfortable hours of 10 and 6, gazing peacefully out the windows of your private office while your assistant opens checks pouring in from publishers. (Unless you're Nora Roberts, and who wants to be her?) Writing happens in the stolen minutes of the temp job, in the hours after 2AM when you MUST go to sleep but won't because you have to get it out, on the subway in pencil in your pretentious little Hemingway notebook, scribbled on post-its and imprinted in memory until once in a glorious while you have a few uninterrupted hours to piece it together. Writing happens while babies scream bloody murder, while people talk in foreign languages over your head, while you're crying, while the dishes pile up and mold grows in the flowers and you miss your mom. It even happens in New York.

Playground.

Fortune

2008-01-11T18:24:00.001-08:00

It all started with a tarot card reading.

Tim has been dabbling in the mystical arts of late. At first I was skeptical, but he's given some amazingly prescient readings, and I'm willing to put aside preconceptions and let the cards tell me a story. So after Katie left the other day, I asked Tim to give me a simple daily reading, consisting of three cards and what he calls a bonus card. I choose the cards, and Tim does his best (with the aid of a book) to interpret them one by one.

That morning, my card of the day was the Two of Swords, which represents (among many other things) denial of emotions. The Seven of Swords, which depicts a mischievous knave creeping off with, you guessed it, seven swords, turned up as what to attend to. The card of emotions was the Fool card, and my extra card was the Ace of Wands, which represents taking hold of creativity, acting on impulses. At first the spread confused both of us. What's important about tarot cards is that, as Tim reminds me, they are just a deck of cards; their relevance lies in how they make you think and choose to filter your actions through their message.

We started talking about the possibility of hidden emotions, and we both said, "Well, I'm not hiding anything," half laughing. And then we got real. Real real. For the first time we talked about our fears and anxieties surrounding this huge life change. Because we're madly in love, but it's a big step to live together, something completely new to which we must adapt, individually and as partners. What we figured out together is that our relationship is pretty damn secure, and we've each been leaning on it too much for self-worth. I need to develop as a person and so does Tim, and if we do that, our relationship can only get stronger.

It was refreshing and necessary, being that honest with each other. We'd been so wrapped up in moving and excitement and disbelief in our good fortune that it took tarot cards to make us see each other.

We also talked logistics of living together, namely that we didn't have to do everything together, which I think lifted a shared weight from both of us. We happily parted ways while Tim went for a legitimate run in the park and I danced around to Carly Simon in a bath towel.

Already it was a successful day. When we went out later, it just to stroll down to Barnes & Noble and maybe spend our gift cards from Christmas. On the way we passed the New York Sports Club, a gym chain all around Manhattan that we knew we couldn't afford.

"Wanna go in?" I asked.

"Sure!"

We took the tour, and I halfheartedly alluded to a discounted rate for signing up together, but it was a no go. C'est la vie, we continued down Broadway, arm in arm, enjoying the unseasonable weather and our renewed silent bond. When we passed The Swanky Gym (not it's real name), I said, "Oooo, Tina's roommate used to work there, it's sooo nice. Want to just see how much it is?"

Tim scanned the polished steel interior and said, "Well we definitely can't afford this one."

"Yeah, but you know I heard that they have a discounted rate for college kids who hand our flyers for them or something. We could ask."

"I don't know, Bunnies [his nickname for me]. That sounds too good to be true."

"I'll just ask; it can't hurt."

"Well, yeah, are we doing this? A tour of fancy gyms? Okay, I'm on board."

We ventured inside, instantly surrounded by the atmosphere of affluence and the scent of perfection. We didn't have to fake being impressed by the state-of-the-art equipment, rows of flatscreen TVs, brand new cardio systems, loads of space, mood-lit yoga studios and locker rooms nicer than our own bathrooms. We did, however, have to fake being unfazed by the $525 (EACH!) initiation and $140 monthly fee. As we nodded along and tried to suppress grimaces, I glanced at Tim and figured, it's probably just a myth but it doesn't hurt to ask. The conversation went something like this:

Rep of the Dripping in Wealth Fitness Center (that's not the real name either): "So it's $525 per person to sign up, and then just $140 a month after that."

Me: "Really, 525, okay... But we were actually thinking we'd pay more along the lines of... nothing."

RDWFC: "Oh, you want to pay nothing? Sure, here are your free membership cards!"

Okay, so it wasn't like that verbatim, but we scored FREE memberships to the most upscale gym in Manhattan! All we have to do is make some phone calls, hand out flyers for 8 hours a month. I'd stand on my head for 8 hours a month to get that membership. We walked out and executed a jumping high five in full view of everyone inside, and Tim said, "What a steal!"

And there it was - the Seven of Swords, sneaking away with his loot. A steal. Brought about by acting on an impulse (the Ace of Wands), in spite of Tim's doubts (the Fool). And we never would have been in such great team spirit moods if we hadn't confronted what the Two of Swords told us we were concealing.

As an added bonus from the universe, when we got to the bookstore and asked about Michael Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food, the girl said, "You know Michael Pollan is here tonight giving a reading and signing his books." No indeed, but of course we stayed for it. Later we met Tina in Union Square at the Crocodile Lounge for a pint and free pizza (every night folks, with every pint of beer) and then a late dinner at the Chat 'n' Chew diner, adorned with old metal signs that say things like "7Up makes good food taste better."

It was a perfect New York day. The next day brought temp work and a temp foul mood, but it also brought a free workout at FancyPants Gym and blackberries from an organic market.

The tarot cards, I know, didn't do any of that. They're not magic. They are facilitators. They make you think about what's ahead and maybe take chances you wouldn't otherwise take.

And also they get you cool stuff for free.

The Tale of Gustave

2008-01-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

Even though I have a gem of a post waiting in the wings, I can't resist letting this incident take center stage for a moment. I'm at the second day of super challenging temp job, what with all the sitting and the data entry and the sitting and the occasional pressing of a door buzzer, and I'm sent (in a cab!) to get something signed uptown. Escaping the toxic hum of florescent lights, I bound over to Park Ave and hail a cab, and the friendly French Arab man with long hair in the driver's seat smiles back at me.

"You look like happy girl. You must have good job or good lover."

"Well it's not a good job, that's for sure," I say, remembering that cultural nuances make the word "lover" much more innocuous than when it appears in the title of a Lifetime movie (i.e. the classic film My Stepson, My Lover).

"Oh, so it's good lover then! You have lover?"

"Um...yeah, my boyfriend, he's, uh, great." This is the point at which I should have extracted myself from the conversation. I'm always roped in by friendliness.

"How old is he, your lover?"

"Um, 23, like me."

"He the oldest lover you have? You ever have older lover?" Apparently he is using it in the Lifetime context.

"What? Uh, no..." Again, WHY AM I STILL ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS? I'm not sure. I'm too surprised to muster any of the zinger comebacks I can think of now.

"You ever have younger lover?"

"What?"

The cab driver, whom I've at this point named Gustave the Inappropriate Cab Driver (GICD for short), laughs and says, "Your lover must do good job, I see it on your face," to which I respond,

"Uhhhhmermleschmerlermmmm...." or something like that, which at least gets him to shut up, until he asks me whether I'm drinking coffee or tea and chats with me about caffeinated beverages. Who is this guy?

A few blocks later he's asking about my sex life again - oh yes - but thankfully it was near my stop and I mumbled my way out of it.

So, funny story. Why, however, didn't I say any of the things I should have said, which are:

Why do you think that the only two things which can make a woman happy are a good job or a good "lover?"
Why the hell is this any of your business?
Why out of all the cabs on Park Ave did I end up in yours?

Next time I'll be prepared. But here's the thing: I don't want to become one of those cliche New Yorkers who won't smile at people and won't say hello to people and treats anyone in the service industry like they're invisible. I'll have to strike a balance. And develop an Inappropriate Cab Driver radar.

Game Over

2008-01-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

The waiting game, that is. I'm officially living in Manhattan. "Our" apartment is gigantic, with a balcony view of the Hudson from twenty-five stories high. It is indeed a grandmother's house, bearing no signs of any updates in furnishings or electrical wiring since... well, possibly ever. But a swipe of Windex here, the stowing away of a few knick knacks (and when I say "a few," I mean 47) there, and the hasty shoving of Ann Coulter to the unseen back of the bookshelf - voila! Every few minutes I walk around a corner, and there's Tim, because now we live together. It's strange in a delightful way. Plus, he vacuums. I've fallen in love all over again.

I've also already fallen in love with the Upper West Side. This morning Tim and I went for a jog (and when I say "jog," I mean intermittent bursts of running sprinkled throughout our walk) in Central Park and stopped at a farmer's market store to get some veggies for salad on the way back. Everything is jolly until I remember that along with officially being a Manhattan resident, I'm also officially unemployed. But that sounds so drab, so suburban. Between jobs, perhaps, or just job searching. I'd like to make it seem like I'm the one being selective about employment.

Tomorrow is the true beginning of the Job Hunt. My dear friend Katie is visiting tonight, and after I make her breakfast and send her off to the Chinatown - Boston bus, I'm going to attempt that jogging thing again. I must admit that I almost enjoy the walk to the park as much as being in it. The sight of elm trees emerging over the sidewalk horizon makes me disproportionately happy.

Countdown: 5 Days

2008-01-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

I don't always respond well to stress. Anyone close to me has witnessed my descent into delirium, which then morphs into a fit of tears when I get overwhelmed or exhausted. Leaving my childhood home for real - not just for college - and starting a brand new life in a new city has caused me a few moments of anxiety, to say the least. I'm elated to finally live with Tim and be near so many of my friends; I can't wait to explore the city as a resident, not just the occasional visitor (and no, I've never been a tourist, thank you very much). But as of this moment I'm officially unemployed, and that's terrifying. So when Tim, the level-headed one who can calm me with a look and a smile, had his New York freak out moment, I was actually a bit relieved. I'm not the only one.

The panic came as he tried to decide whether or not to take an audition for a children's theatre show that a friend of mine had arranged. The audition falls on the very day we move to the city, and is for a less-than-desirable role, in the grand scheme of Tim's artistic endeavors. Still, my reaction was DO IT! It's an audition, an opportunity, a foot in the door, an experience! His understandable reservations about the timing and the content weighed against the glaringly obvious answer - do it.

He hasn't decided what to do yet, and that decision lies with him entirely. (Taking into account my influence, of course.) The conversation we had raised a more important question than one audition, a question we'll both face in different forms for the rest of our lives.

Are you willing to do anything it takes to achieve your goals?

Yes, is the instinctual answer. Otherwise, they're not worth achieving, right? So what constitutes anything? If I take a job with a weekly tabloid magazine that I can't even stand to read, but make a connection that lands me a job working for Conde Nast or gets me a book deal, would it be worth it? Is it okay to compromise your ideals in order to get to a place where you can dictate how you work? Not everyone has the luxury of making a living while sticking strictly to values of morality, art and taste. Hell, I'm not even positive what those values are, when you get down to the nitty gritty. I believe that art should seek truth above imitating life. I believe it harms our national consciousness to publish and promote the details of Nicole Richie's latest bikini wax. I also believe that Friends is one of the greatest TV shows ever made. I subscribe to Vanity Fair and read every issue cover to cover, but I flip to the celebrity profile piece first, and I can't say that the goings on in the house of Cruise and family don't intrigue me.

So, do I only accept assignments and employment from those with whom my values tightly align? If I do that, it's possible that I will be working temp jobs and doing drudge work for far too long. My work will not be seen, and my high and mighty artistic values are moot (or moo, as Joey might say). If I were to take the hypothetically well-paying job at a publication that doesn't entirely suit my fancy, I could at least save money for my ten-year plan to be in business for myself, writing what I want for whom I want. Maybe I could even get that down to nine years.

If you sell your soul so that you can eventually have it back, does that count? And what is integrity worth if you can't share ideas with the rest of the world? These questions, along with others like, Where can I find the best mojito on the Upper West Side? and Can someone please explain to me how the NWR line works? will rattle around in my brain as I try to shove my life into boxes and cart them to our apartment. And I thank God for them. As long as I have questions, I know I'll be okay. When they stop it's time to worry.

Little Purple Dress, Your City Awaits

2007-12-30T23:11:00.001-08:00

I'm playing Taboo with a bunch of my high school friends - that's the game where you get your team to say the buzz word without saying the words on the cards; if the word is "mullet," for example, you can't say haircut, trailer park, 80's, business in the front party in the back, or Bon Jovi. So I'm trying to get my team to guess the word "beach," and I shout (because Taboo facilitates and in fact requires shouting even to those sitting next to you on the couch)

"The New Jersey thing!" to which everyone on my team simulanteously shouts back

"Diners!"

"No, the other thing!"

"The beach!"

Score one. Of course snooty outsiders would have shouted "Garbage!" and people from the South and Midwest would have shouted "Tony Soprano!" (No lie: when my friend Tina was in Louisiana she was asked by more than one person if she knew Tony Soprano. And they. Were. Serious. But I digress.) Despite what many think, New Jersey has alot going for it, although I admit that after 1. Diners and 2. the Beach, the number three thing is actually proximity to New York. Distance, however, is not always measured in miles (nor is it always measured in kilometers, as it should be - who can't handle a system in which you convert measurements by moving a decimal place?! It's multiples of ten, people. Let's catch up to the rest of the world.) and the beckoning, mournfully altered skyline has seemed galaxies away.

But here I go. Scarcely a week left until Tim and I make the big move. While I should be packing I'm flipping through the latest issue of New York magazine, which features "Reasons to Love New York Right Now," though I don't need any convincing, and cross referencing the Not For Tourists guide with the little scribbled notes handed to me by various people, featuring directions to the greatest little Italian place, the best Jewish deli, the juiciest and cheapest burger you'll ever eat, etc. Already I've planned our first Friday night outing to the Museum of Modern Art, which is FREE on Friday nights from 4-8PM. My purple satin strapless cocktail dress waits patiently in my closet for its debut. When I bought it, I had nothing in my calendar calling for a purple satin strapless cocktail dress, and it almost fell into the Utterly Senseless Purchase category, until it occurred to me that all I need in my calendar is New York City. It calls for everything.

The Fabulous Life

2007-12-16T21:15:00.000-08:00

Tim and I had only been dating a few weeks when we took our first trip to New York together. We sat in the back of the bus, gazing adoringly at each other and laughing like hyenas at jokes that no one else would find funny. It was the winter semester theatre department trip, right before Thanksgiving break, and I was delirious from lack of sleep and an overload of papers to write. Though I admit I took a snooze on Tim's shoulder somewhere around the fourth act of Henry IV Part 1 (group tickets always seem to constitute the back row of the top mezzanine), we were still both delighted to be shuttled to Lincoln Center on that November night; it was our first foray outside our college-town bubble. Even then, before either one of us would dare to say it out loud, we both knew that we would come back to the city, together.

Four years later, we initially ruled out New York, had a brief flirtation with Toronto, mentioned LA, practically settled on Chicago (Tim's hometown) and then decided: New York. The city holds a lot for each of us in the way of career, artistic, social and cultural opportunity, true. But the biggest draw, as far as I'm concerned, is the person I'm bringing with me. Tonight, in the wee small hours of my 23rd birthday, I see Tim a few feet away from me and am reminded of the real adventure that lies ahead of us. We have big plans to stay in, cook organic meals, scout out cheap yoga and aikido classes, and generally just hang out at a place we both call home. I couldn't dream of a more fabulous existence than that.

I'll Tell You Why

2007-12-07T23:27:00.000-08:00

I'd like to give a shout out to my BFF Tina, who once again put me up for the night in her apartment, letting me share her bed in the loft she sleeps in. It's actually more like a raised hobbit hole, since 5'3" Tina can just fit and any normal-sized person becomes a hunchback if attempting to stand. She and her two roommates modified an awkward open studio in the Financial District by building walls (that only go halfway to the ceiling) and by the graciousness of Tina taking the loft (with no walls) for her bedroom. The only windows are now enclosed in one of the bedrooms, and the kitchen is smallish, but the place has high ceilings and plenty of living space. The point being that yes, rents in any of the 5 boroughs are high, but with a little creativity and willingness to adapt, it's doable.

I'll also take this opportunity to mention that while I was in the city for just over 24 hours, I sat in Bryant park eating clementines and watching ice skaters and then shopped for hand-knitted wool hats at little vendor booths, walked the halls of the massive and impressive Public Library, made huge strides in the job search, ate cheap and delicious Thai food in Astoria while catching up with my college roommate and also BFF Amanda and good friend Libby, drank white mocha hot chocolate during Cole Porter open mic night at the hip cafe where Amanda works, dropped in on another friend Sara, watched a children's theater production of Good Night Moon for free, and improved my subway and street knowledge significantly. That's why I want to move there.

Big Pimpin' NYC

2007-12-07T23:05:00.000-08:00

Apparently I'm on a "hot list." At least that's where the temp agency has professed to placing me. After an extremely successful journey to midtown Manhattan, navigation and time management wise, I arrived in the office feeling confident. (Let me note that navigating and managing time are two of my biggest foes in life). Then I was handed a perfunctory sheet to fill out, asking me to cram my job experience into boxes no bigger than fingernails. No, I haven't been convicted of a crime, other than parking violations (thank God for that caveat). Yes, I am legally authorized to work in the US. Hours spent agonizing over my resume and I still have to regurgitate all this information; I'm getting a headache, but that could be from the fluorescent lighting and lack of lunch. After I hand the clipboard back, I'm sent to take computer proficiency tests. Apparently an intimate knowledge of the Mail Merge feature in Microsoft Word is a prerequisite for most temp jobs. To my surprise, the woman I finally meet with tells me that my computer skills are pretty good, as is my resume (okay, so it was time well spent) and overall professional appeal. Polished, is the word she uses. I'm happy that my personal presentation is ranked above the woman in the Mickey Mouse t-shirt and the guys slouched in chairs with sweatshirt hoods up.

I know the perils of temp work - no benefits, no security, little value as far as career investment. The temp agency functions as a kind of pimp for the professional world. They talk me up, send me out, and collect a fee when I perform the job. But no matter; the pay can be more than decent, and I'm willing to be shifted around the corporate world while I get my bearings in the city. Besides, I'm on a hot list. It's not as dirty as it sounds.

These Vagabond Shoes

2007-12-07T21:50:00.000-08:00

"New York?" my mechanic asks with furrowed brow as he wipes his hands on a rag. "Why do you want to move there?" I smile and reply, "Oh, I'll be working there." He says "I hear the rent is really high," in the same way you might say, "I hear there's a lot of sectarian violence" to someone considering a relocation to Baghdad. It's not the first time I've encountered this reaction to my grinning announcement "I'm moving to New York!" The responses have included a skeptical "What will you do there?" as if I couldn't possibly find a way to make a living and/or spend my free time in the career and entertainment capitol of (at least) the East Coast. I've heard the blunt conversation stoppers (You're crazy!) and the odd contempt glazed thinly with politeness (Well, it's a tough city but I'm sure you'll be just fine.). The most fun interchange was with a 38-year-old man who still lives at home with his mom, working the job his father had before him in the town in which he grew up and never left. He could not wrap his head around the idea that I planned to move to the city whether or not a job waited for me. While he asked the same question in five different forms (why do you want to move there?), and I attempted each time to convey the reasons, I wondered if it would be acceptable to ask him, Why did you never leave home? I decided, probably not. But what I really should have asked him was, Why should I stay here?

So why do I want to move there? One of the reasons, I must confess, is the reaction I get from some people when I tell them about it. I delight in their cynicism and imagine myself as a trapeze artist, brazenly defying death while the audience looks on, hoping I'll catch each rung but waiting in morbid fascination for the moment I miss. Because it is a little bit risky. It's expensive, it's unpredictable. People fail in New York, in big and irreversible ways. In my hometown, people fail by degrees. There is no shock and splash surrounding the shortcomings and misplaced dreams of people in a small town. Success, to many here, is measured in high school football touchdowns. My child- and young adulthood in this town were well spent and thoroughly enjoyed, and these streets will always bear the scent of home. I just don't see the point in staying in a place where I'm never in danger of falling too far. All that means is that I haven't climbed high enough.

Le Job Hunt

2007-11-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

Oh, the job search. Le sigh, as our childhood friend Pepe LePeu would say. My resume seems sufficient, even promising, until I consider that every college graduate who dreams of a career as a magazine writer/editor/publisher is clamoring for the same jobs. All the Ivy League alums, all the kids with family connections to media empires, all the people who may simply be... better than me. We're all applying for the dozen or so entry level editorial jobs available in New York. I'm trying to cover my bases by signing up with a temp agency. The temp work life almost entices me. Maybe I can put in my 9-5 and then hole up in my home office (AKA kitchen table) in the evenings, doing freelance work and completing my award winning nonfiction books.

Tomorrow I'm taking a bus into Manhattan to interview at the temp agency and hang out with some friends for a day. I'm hoping I can line up a job that starts right away in January so that I'll have some guarenteed income, and I could use more office experience on my resume. I could use more everything on my resume. Like most people applying for jobs, I am convinced that if granted an interview, I will dazzle and impress and be offered the position on the spot, for a salary thousands of dollars above my requirements. Just a chance to climb out of the restrictive black type of an attached Word file, shake off phrases like "information architect" and "administrative duties" and say, Hi, I'm Megan, I love the written word, I'll prove that I'm smart and I'll work my ass off for you, okay? When do we start? And do you have a Tide pen; I seem to have gotten oppressive language stains on my dress.

I am psyched for this overnight jaunt in the city. Every time I visit I feel more like it's home. My self-imposed mission: get to Midtown without ending up accidentally in Queens. Not that this has ever happened to me before.

The Right Kind of Scary

2007-11-19T19:44:00.000-08:00

Everyone has a story to tell. This story is about a girl from New Jersey moving to New York City. The story is not unique, but it will be new. My name is Megan. In January, my boyfriend of four years, Tim, and I will move to Manhattan. We've been fortunate enough to stumble on an opportunity to sublet an apartment on the Upper West Side for an obscenely low rent (low for the area, not for our budget). After a few months we'll find our own place. Six months out of college, we're following in the footsteps of many friends, fellow artists and actors and writers. While Tim delves into the world of theatre, balancing auditions with balancing trays at some swanky restaurant, I hope to land a job at a magazine as an editorial assistant. Tim's and my shared secret dream is to become wealthy by creating elaborate performances featuring mask spirits and penning best-seller nonfiction books, respectively. I recognize that I must first pay my dues.

I've lived in New Jersey all my life. Aside from one semester in London, I've always been a suburban girl. I like my car. I like my backyard. I like feeling relatively safe wherever I go, knowing that I'm never more than a few blocks away from the house of someone who would invite me inside. There are a lot of things about small town life that I'm fully prepared to ditch, but it will be scary. But Buffy the Vampire Slayer scary, not Law and Order SVU scary.

This story is for those who have walked this sidewalk before me, those who are walking beside me, and those who are a few steps behind on the journey. Welcome to a slice of my life. I hope it's as hot, cheesy and satisfying as the slices served at the little pizzeria a block away from my soon-to-be home.