boy do i need a vacation from my vacation ending.

yes, yes, my friends. please remind me not to come back from vacation.

i just had the most wonderful week and a half away from the real world, and it makes it hard to come back to the land of subways and work.

my first stop was LA, where my sister and I threw my parents a 30th anniversary party, then I had two migraines. Awesome. After a week of hiking, eating, hiking, cooking, eating, sleeping, eating, and watching ultraviolet with Jackie, I headed east to New Hampshire by way of a red-eye to boston. Arriving in Nashua, New Hampshire, at the home of Sheena's Memere, I was plied with coffee and english muffins, and collected by part of the idiot brigade.

The weekend that followed was amazing. I have no pictures, as my camera died in Santa Barbara, but rest assured, there will be pictures. most probably here, here, and here.

there was a fire pit with a fire, a tent, a half-man-half-pig-dog, a very small dog, other larger dogs, six people who make me very happy, sheena's family, chickens, donkeys, a hula hoop, cards, beer, eggs... you get the picture.

Anyway, after returning from said utopia, I find myself drowning in work (not to mention the fact that i have to go home now and pack up my apartment to move this weekend) so I don't really have the time to do this vacation justice. I will try to do bits and pieces.

I will leave you with this - I would like to live in the country.

that is all.

honey, pluto has gone to a better place.

i'm sorry to announce that pluto has been demoted. it is no longer a planet. of course, i will always think of it as a planet and there's nothing the world astronomical union of jerks can do about it.

the pluto is dead.
long live the pluto!!

i heart pluto

So I just read an hilarious op-ed in the Times about Pluto and its fight to remain a planet. I'll cut and paste because it made me really happy. I haven't been following the planet-hysteria lately - i just thought they were trying to figure out if Sedna and Xena were planets too. I didn't know they were trying to oust Pluto. Anyway, here goes.

I ♥ Pluto

By TIM KREIDER

Published: August 23, 2006

Charlestown, Md.

MY love for our picked-on ninth planet is deeply, perhaps embarrassingly, personal.

I took my first public stand on Pluto’s taxonomical fate when I addressed the Forum on Outer Planetary Exploration in 2001 (don’t ask why a cartoonist was addressing astronomers — it’s a long story).

I informed the assembled scientists that, first of all, no way was I or anyone else about to un-memorize anything we’d already been forced to learn in elementary school. More important, I felt sure that, as former children, we all instinctively respected the principle: no do-overs.

Planets, like Supreme Court justices, are appointed for life, and you can’t blithely oust them no matter how eccentric, skewed or unqualified they may prove to be. If they could kick out Pluto, I warned, they could do it to anything, or anyone.

I admit: it’s a highly emotional issue and maybe I got carried away in the heat of debate.

Even I was a little abashed last week when the International Astronomical Union tried to protect Pluto’s status by proposing an absurdly broad definition of planethood that encompasses moons, asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects — in other words, pretty much any half-formed hunk of frozen crud that can pull itself together into a ball long enough to get photographed by the Hubble.

For longtime Pluto partisans, there was something almost punitive about this proposal: happy now?

I guess I always knew, in my heart, that Pluto didn’t “belong.” Pluto is idiosyncratic — neither a dull, domestic terrestrial planet nor a surly, vainglorious gas giant. It’s mostly ice. It’s smaller than our own Moon, and has an orbit so eccentric that it spends 20 years of its 248-year revolutionary period inside Neptune’s orbit. It’s tilted at a crazy 17-degree angle to the ecliptic, and its satellite, Charon, is so disproportionately large that it’s been called a double planet.

Pluto is what my old astronomy textbook rather judgmentally called a “deviant,” and I’ve always felt a little defensive on its behalf.

I’ve long regarded Saturn’s misty tantalizing moon Titan as the Homecoming Queen of the solar system, courted and fawned over, stringing us along with teasing glimpses under her atmosphere, while Pluto was more like the chubby Goth chick who wrote weird poems about dead birds and never talked to anybody. Still, I just can’t stand by and watch as the solar system’s Fat Girl gets pushed down into ever-more ignominious substrata of social ostracism.

All I really wanted was a little velvet-rope treatment for Pluto. I didn’t expect them to throw open the doors to all this Kuiper Belt riffraff.

It’s like that point when your party’s grown out of control and you look around and ask: Who are these people? Sedna? Xena? Ceres? Ceres is an asteroid, for God’s sake. Why not just make 1997 XF11 or Greenland or Harriet Meiers a planet?

And I am second to no one in my respect for Charon, but come on: it’s obviously Pluto’s moon.

Now they’re proposing to designate it a “large companion,” which sounds like the sort of euphemistic legal status the court might grant to Oliver Hardy and can’t be doing Charon’s self-esteem one bit of good. “Longtime companion” would have been more dignified and validating.

The solar system is a mess.

The situation this seems most similar to is the inextricably tangled social nightmare that is inviting people to your wedding. You truly want to invite your distant and eccentric but dear old friend Pluto, but this necessarily means inviting his horrible girlfriend, too, plus then maybe you’re obliged to invite all the other people you were both friends with in college, friends he’s still in contact with who will be offended if he’s invited and they’re not but who, frankly, are now boring people with whom you no longer have anything in common.

Some would suggest we just have to be harsh about this and not invite any of them, Pluto included. But these people are forgetting that we already sent Pluto an invitation, 76 years ago. Pluto has rented a tuxedo.

The astronomical union is to vote on Pluto tomorrow. But even as astronomers squabble, I remain confident that this whole wonky state of affairs will not be permanent. Eventually we’ll get it all sorted out.

For the record, I would accept a separate (but equal!) class of dwarves or planetoids, including Sedna and Xena. After all, the childhood mnemonic is easily amended: My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas, Sans Xenophobia.

But what I really wish is that we’d just grandfather Pluto in and then close all the loopholes. Let’s do it, not for scientific reasons, but for sentimental ones.

As a friend of mine at NASA said, “It would prove our humanity to let Pluto stay in.” It would be like that moment when the doorman is about to escort you out of a private party where you don’t, arguably, belong, but then someone who knows you taps him on the shoulder and says, “Wait a minute, I know this guy. He’s O.K..”

top three things you do not want to find on your carpet first thing on a monday morning:

3. barf (of the cat variety)

2. a dead mouse (of the feivel variety)

1. a barfed up dead mouse


You will all be happy to know that I awoke to numero dos this morning. When I first saw it on the carpet, I thought it was a hairball. I squinted at it, and then moved on to the bathroom. Promptly forgot about it until about five minutes later, when I looked at it again and realized that it was a baby mouse.

Thankfully, there was no blood. Because I could NOT have handled that so early in the morning.

So one of our cats is a killer. I'm going to guess it's not Obie.

this has been a test of the emergency broadcast system. we now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Hello. I'm trying to get back on this "blog" thing, but there has been a lot going on. We've been interviewing people at work to replace the many co-workers we've lost (may they rest in peace. or in medschool and on tour (Brazztree.com)), so I've been swamped trying to cram in all of THEIR work in addition to interviews and reading of applications.

Anyway, I just wanted to share some pictures of my cousin Rory, because it's been a while. There was talk of me finally meeting said cousin when I'm home next weekend, but they're going on vacation so I'm going to a friend's birthday party instead.












I've decided it is my mission whilst home to get all of my LA friends together so that they can be friends with each other. Mostly because my sister is now home with not a lot to do and my friends are good people and my sister is good people. so, you know, it makes sense.


here's a picture of ali. she's going to kill me. isn't she cute?!

Soooooo cute. Ali just graduated from college (Middlebury because she's smart too) and is now back at home for the summer, getting her legs, figuring out her next move. If only she didn't hate New York so much. Oh the adventures we'd have.

a day in the life

I believe that, because I haven't posted anything all week, I've lost the few loyal readers I had. Mom, Dad, come back to the blog. I'm sorry.

There's been many happenings that have kept me from, you know, narcissistically sharing my life with the unknown denizens of the internet. Mostly it's been the fact that Sheena has decided to move home to New Hampshire, and I've spent the last few weeks coming to terms with that. Some of you may know that Sheena and I were freshman year roomates in college. I still remember talking to her for the first time - I was sitting on my parents bed, my sister was staring at me expectantly, as Sheena and I figured out who would bring the stereo and who would bring the fridge (my stereo, her fridge). Toward the end of the conversation she said something was "wicked awesome". Now, growing up in Los Angeles, I had never ever in my life heard someone use that phrase. I hung up the phone in a daze, looked at my sister, and said "she said it was wicked awesome. is that a good thing?" Apparently it was, because we've been best friends ever since. And I'm not sure how I'll manage in the real world without her. Thankfully she has taught me many things - like how to properly mop a kitchen floor, clean a bathroom, and be married to someone. Ah my wife, how I will miss living with you. Check this girl out. Can you blame me for being too sad to post? I can't.


Luckily, I scored a room in Josh's apartment, and will move in next month. At least I will have the benefit of living with some of my other friends (a benefit that Sheena sadly does not share, although she gets to live with Hayley and the dude (scroll down to the video), so you know, it's not all bad). I'm sure I will document the process of throwing out half of my belongings so that I can fit in my new room. I will live an ascetic life. Yes. Also I will be going to IKEA soon. Anyone who wants to join is welcome.

Now I just have to learn to motivate myself to cook. Deliveries of meals will be appreciated. It's not that I can't cook - I can cook pretty well - it's just that Sheena can cook so much better than I can. But I digress.

This caught my eye this morning: A Corpse Flower is Blooming in the Botanical Gardens.

I feel like I read about this flower in A Series of Unfortunate Events or something. The flower smells like putrefying meat to attract very specific beetles and sweat bees. Talk about your awesome evolutionary tricks.

If only my nose were not as sensitive as it is (last night we took out the trash and a soy sauce marinade had leaked into the trash can. Faster than you can make a gagging noise, I had that trashcan filled with bleach and in the tub, filling with water. It's a gift, really), I would visit said flower. But, knowing myself and the fact that no one wants to accompany a friend to see a flower that smells like death, not to mention holding back my hair as I vomit all over said flower, I think I'll miss it this time. It's been 67 years since this flower bloomed in New York. I think I can wait another 67 years - by that time my nose probably won't work anymore. Also, it looks like a penis.

where am i again?

this morning, on my way to work, i looked over and saw a nice young man (in a button up shirt and tie, no less) reading Locke's Two Treatises of Government. ok, a little weird, but maybe he's into political science? i look directly to his left and i see this young lady reading Hobbes' Leviathan. i'm sorry. am i at vassar? is everyone taking political theory all at once?

Just thought it was a little weird.

Also, i made it in to work without fainting or vomiting. very exciting. huzzah!!

in addition, I now have a place to move when sheena makes the pilgrimage home. no more vain apartment searches when i should be doing work! i will soon be living on prospect park west with the lovely josh, sarah, and deirdre. huzzah!! well, not really "huzzah" because it's still horrible that she's leaving, but a small "thank god" that i actually have a place to live that i can afford and keep my cats.

the world in which we live in.

Today, on my walk to the subway, I heard a mockingbird singing the song of a car alarm.

weekend of shock and awe, part II

More mis-adventures at the beer gardens. In this series, Andy was trying to capture the perfect mix of drunk and happy. I think, if you take the series as a whole, he succeeded. I leave you to judge for yourself.

This last one is my favorite. mostly because seth and i have similar expressions on our faces, and a little bit because of how uncomfortable sheena looks to be touching shoulders with me. excellent.

weekend of shock and awe. part I

This weekend was one of wonder and amazement. To the left you can see my cousins, Matthew and Daniel, a mere 14 rows behind home plate while we watched the Devil Rays kick the Yankees in the can. Man that was a great game. Below you will see my uncle Steve.
This is uncle steve. He looks just like my dad. Handsome devil, isn't he?

Saturday was also Sarah's birthday. Happy Birthday Sarah! Here she is, so happy at the Astoria Beer Gardens. After a lengthy subway ride and an even lengthier wait in the line (don't worry, i had a book to read), Andy and I got to join the gang of idiots (well, some of them, anyway) and drink my share of beer. Before our arrival, Seth had made his entrance with a box of Munchkins (as a birthday present, i presume) and was stopped by the security professional, Gold Tooth (I call him Gold Tooth because he had, you guessed it, a gold tooth. and was very much into his job). Gold Tooth told Seth he could NOT bring his munchkins in. So Seth, being a reasonable fellow, said, "ok, that's fine Gold Tooth, can I just leave the box here, behind this tree?" Gold Tooth was amenable, and Seth was allowed to enter. Now, Erin (of whom i have no pictures from this party, sorry) saw the aforementioned exchange and decided to go ninja and rescue said Munchkins. She pulled out all of her spy moves and successfully brought the munchkins to the table, after which they were eaten. The picture below was taken right after Gold Tooth walked by our table and saw the empty box of munchkins. I believe he asked Andy, "Who ate the fucking munchkins?" Andy demured. Seth looked on. Gold Tooth was hurt. Then I took a picture of him.

that might have been a mistake.

immediately he started yelling at me to erase the picture (which i did), and then proceeded to demand my camera so he could scroll through and make sure that i had, in fact erased the picture (way to go, Gold Tooth. you missed THIS one!).

Seth and Sheena (while intoxicated) thought this was hilarious.

well. thank god THAT's over.

As some of you may know, I'm gearing up to apply to grad school As such, I have been studying for the dreaded GRE test. Then, last week, I decided I just. couldn't. take. it. anymore. So I took the GRE test on Saturday. Huzzah!

So, after a few days freaking out, and I apologize to everyone for whatever pain I put you through, I bit the bullet and took the test. Thank you, ETS, for showing me my score immediately upon completing the test. Now I know that I never have to take an ETS test again. Praise the lord.

And now I can go back to doing important things on the subway. Like reading and sleeping. Without feeling guilty. The question remains: who wants to write my personal statement for me?

no, no. don't everyone jump up at once.

The picture is of my cousin, Rory, because he's also really excited that my GRE adventure is over. Thanks, Stacy, for the pic.

dad, you have to return the ferarri

so, surprisingly, we did not win the lotto. someone did, though. congratulations, someone.

if you email me, i'll give you my address and you can send me a check. i know you want to share your good fortune.

jesus my leg hurts * *

The Goldens came. The Goldens changed a tire. The Goldens left. Let's have a recap, shall we? (warning to those with heart conditions or who may be pregnant or who may become pregnant whilst reading this post. it is very long. take a deep breath, drink some water. power through it)

This weekend my parents came to visit, huzzah!!

Friday i left work early to meet them at their super cool modern(e) (with an e because it's so so super modern it's totally french). Hotel on Rivington (also home to super hot hotspot Thor. i mean, come on. thor?)

Sooooo, anyway. I met them at their hotel and then we treked up to Madison Square Park to partake of the Shake Shack (thanks to sheena and seth for waiting in line for 25 minutes so we could cut. it was awesome) and had a lovely lunch. Then we went back to the hotel and took a two (2) hour nap, obviously. Then we had a nice dinner at Mesa Grill - i had the chile relleno, which was nice, but a bit overpriced. Dad didn't like the level of noise (high), Andy and Dad didn't like the wait for the check at the end of the meal (long). All in all, a nice time was had by all. Then, Andy and i went down to the Angelica and watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which, by the way, was/is the scariest movie i have and will ever see). I am proud to say that I did NOT run out of the theater screaming during the last scene, and I kept my eyes open the whole time. Even when Christopher Lloyd is all springy and screamy with the red eyes.

Saturday, we took a walk around the lower east side to see where my grandpa (Sambo) grew up (apparently he was a bowery boy and smoked and chewed tobacco at the age of 5 and worked for the mob etc.). We went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and walked around the rose garden. Some time during this walk I strained a muscle in my shin (didn't really know we had muscles in our shins). Then we had an AWESOME game of pick-up soccer in the park. There were heroics, there were falls, I scored two (2) goals, Robbie scored like eleven. Mom and Dad and Deirdre and Joy watched from the sidelines and cheered us on. I, meanwhile, injure my leg more and realize that I can't hike the Mohonk Reserve (as we have been planning for the past month) because I can't comfortably (or uncomfortably for that matter) walk down the street.

Sunday was the longest day ever. I might need an entirely new post to talk about it, because there are pictures to go with it and they are not available to me right now. I will do a quick recap. In bullet-point format.

• met parents for breakfast at 9
• picked up rental car at east 12th street at 10
• turned onto the westside highway at 10:30
• realized the westside highway was closed at 11 (at 44th street)
• got over to central park west at 11:15
• realized there was a triathalon so central park west was a parking lot and we couldn't cross the park at 11:30
• finally got out of the city at 12
• drove over some road debree on the Deegan at 12:20
• changed the flat tire in Historical Yorktown Heights at 12:30
• made our way to Mt. Eden cemetary to visit Grandma at 1:15 (then tried to yell at someone about the state of the plot, but there was no one in the office)
• drove through Poughkeepsie trying to find a dollar store from which to buy towels
• turned the wrong way down a three lane highway trying to cross the bridge, promptly pulled a u-turn.
• got across the bridge heading to New Paltz (trying to find the lake at the Mohonk Preserve)
• see a sign for the mega-millions jackpot ($849 million), and decide that, with our luck, we must buy a ticket, or twenty.
• stop at Shoprite, RiteAid, Super Stop-n-Shop to find towels. unsuccessful.
• arrive at the Mohonk Preserve at 2:30, eat a picnic lunch on the bench, discover that the lake is not at the Mohonk Preserve, but is a 10 minute drive away.
• make the 10 minute drive. find the lake (12 feet x 14 feet) and the 400 people who have found said lake before us.
  
• leave lake to see the Mohonk Mountain House (another fifteen minute drive off the highway).
• get to carriage house, get turned away from Mohonk Mountain House at 5:15 (I'm convinced the guy saw we were driving on a donut tire and decided we were undesirables).
• drive back through New Paltz, stop at the starbucks (for shame)
• I leave my purse at said starbucks. I remember it. I answer three riddles in order to get it back.
• We stop at a gas station and buy 10 quickpick lotto tickets at 6:46
• We realize that the jackpot is actually only $49 million, and that the $849 was a typo.
• Make it to White Plains, were we pick up a couple of boxes of plates and have to talk to the family that has been keeping them for me for the last two years. They have just come back from Aruba and apparently traded their skin in for tanned leather.
• Finally head back to Brooklyn at 8:30
• Pull up in front of the apartment at 9:30
  
• Drive back to Manhattan at 9:35
• Get to the rental car place at 10
• Argue with the attendant about where to put the car, who needs to inventory the car, and the fact that we're still driving on a donut tire.
• Finally get to Chat'n'chew for dinner at 10:35
• Are told that the kitchen closed at 10:30.
• Walk down the street the the Coffee Shop, eat, digest.
• Get on the subway home.

The end.
* i stole this title from Josh * and from Sheena.

sweet sassy molassy

ok. so scientists have designed a computer (and a brain implant) that allows people to control computers/tv/radio/robot/whatever you want with your mind. YOUR MIND.

full story here.

i'm simultaneously really excited and scared a lot.

**update** ok, andy, i think i fixed it. links are hard.

h-e-l-p-!-!

help me!
my parents are coming on Friday night and I can't think of a place to eat for dinner.

Their hotel is on Rivington in the Lower East Side.
they refuse to give me a preference of cuisine. i am at a loss.

help!

who wears short shorts?

this is a Public Service Announcement:

Nair is burn-y, smells like rotten eggs, and tarnishes silver.

Sheena wasn't home yesterday to tell me "no" so i bought some nair (because the girl on the commercial wears short shorts and looks so happy and her legs are smooth) and tried it. and today i'm wearing pants because i have some pretty awesome chemical burns on my legs.

Lesson learned. burn-y = bad.

and how many hot dogs can YOU eat?

Oh how I love the four-day weekend! Friday, my boss surprised us by giving us Monday the third off in addition to Tuesday the fourth. Huzzah!! How did I spend my un-earned but very exciting day off, you may ask? Well, I spent three hours at the DMV getting a New York State drivers license, actually. It was pretty awesome.

Technically (according to Josh), you are supposed to get your license switched no more than 30 days after you move to a new state. I have been living in New York for three years now (if you don't count the four years of college, which I don't, as poughkeepsie is in a whole different country). So, I was pretty overdue. Now I just have to wait for my shiny new license to arrive in the mail.

Monday night saw a blow-out BBQ at chez Josh/Evonne/Deirdre/Katrin. This BBQ featured a Guac-Off (which yours truly won in a very tight race), a shotgunning contest (in which yours truly did not participate, but was splashed by from a distance), and very nice tofu hot dogs. Thanks, guys!

Tuesday, Seth and I rode our bikes (huzzah!!) to Coney Island to see the hot dog eating contest. Now i've done that once in my life, i never have to go back, right? Here's a picture of the winner.
Yeah, he ate pretty much 54 hot dogs (and buns) in 12 minutes, beating his own record of 53.5. The surprise was the guy who came in second place, Joey Chestnut, who went dog for dog with Kobayashi, even getting into the lead at about minute 6, but fell behind at the very end - finishing with a whopping 52 hot dogs. I could be wrong, but I think that's the closest anyone has come to Kobayashi in the last seven years he's won.

oh sweet face analyzer, why do you hate me?

Thanks to Josh, I have been spending the last half hour (i should be on my way home now) playing with the Face Analyzer, which is tons of fun. The first photo I uploaded was my spider bite photo. here it is, in case the image has not been burned into your retina and does not haunt your dreams. or in case you're bridget and in need of a giggle.
Scary, right? So, according to this photo and FaceAnalyzer.com, I am 92% Southern European (wrong)
8% Middle Eastern (wrong)
and my celebrity look-alike is Kelly Hu, who was Deathstrike in X-2 and is, yes, Asian. Also, apparently I have a "very low gay factor". thanks for that, guys.
my character type is a "beta academic" and apparently i am uninterested in, and bad at, relationships and social interactions. instead, i want to make lots of money.


so the next photo i used was this one:
Slightly better, but still not ideal. this time, however, they got more of it right. Now they claim that i'm 70% middle eastern (wrong) and 30% eastern european (now you're on the right track!). BUT my celeb look-alike is now Ashley Simpson. ummmm. yeah. i still have a "very low gay factor" and am still bad at social interaction. and, yes, i still want to make lots of money. at least some things stay the same, right?

Thank you josh.

**update** links are now fixed. who's the noob now??

bye bye, bruno.

This is very sad. Bruno has passed on. Boys, I'm very sorry for your loss.

Apparently, Bruno's chicken-killing rampage made everyone a little nervous, and the Bavarian government gave hunters the green light to get rid of him.

I like that the headline refers to him as "Bruno the celebrity bear".



picture respectfully borrowed from www.brunnvalla.ch

mellow velo

So, I went to the auto repair place under our apartment and asked the nice man at the air pump to, you guessed it, pump up the volume AND pump up the jams. (although i didn't actually use those words. i wanted him to actually pump up the tires, not call me crazy and kick me out of the garage).

Anyway, he was very nice and proceeded to pump up both the volume and the jams. but BUT when he got to the jams he said, "this looks bad. i don't think it'll hold. it looks like dry rot". i told him to go right ahead and try, because what did i have to lose? it turns out, he was right. i totally popped my tyre. (see? because the bike is british???)

he was exceedingly apologetic, which i found amusing because i'm the one who told him to blow up the tyre. at least i didn't have to go far to find a bike pump. if anyone is looking, the auto repair place on 14th and 4th ave is very accommodating.