queensboro

Sometimes, when I am sad, or stressed, or just need to get away from the office, I walk over to the East River and stare at it.

crowd control

One of the things that gets on my nerves after too much time in NYC is the crowds.  Specifically, however, the crowds of tourists.  Sorry, friends from out of state, but it's true.  New Yorkers have considered passing minimum walking speeds on the NYC sidewalks (3 mph, to be specific), and creating, in Midtown, a New Yorker-only designated passing lane.  I have a friend who puts her shoulders in what she calls "football position" to walk home through Rockefeller Center.  And for god's sake, if you want to stare at the top of a building with your mouth hanging open, do it from the edge of the sidewalk, not dead-center.

Yesterday, my mom wanted to go to that icon of consumerist NYC Christmas:  MACY'S.

Diary of an Expat: An Affair with London

I decided to give it up. I've spent the past few weeks whining to everyone I could about how much I miss New York. At one point, I even said to Joe [my husband] that I loved New York like a person (which, technically, is still true). But I decided when feeling especially bad for myself that it would be a pretty miserable couple of years if I just kept thinking about what I didn't have. I decided this while I was jogging, which is when I make a lot of crucial decisions (and have conversations with people in my head that will never take place, and dream about lives I'll never live, etc.). I continued my jog with a renewed sense of purpose - trying to absorb everything around me. I smelled the fall air, which is something I've somehow gone almost the entire fall without noticing. I organised my new apartment (which I just moved into this past week) and remembered how good it felt to have familiar things around, even if I was putting them away in brand new places. I went out shopping and there were Christmas carollers in the store - seriously, in eveningwear just singing out loud for everyone on the escalators to hear. Where else do you find something like that other than London? (I realize it can probably be found in many places, but that's not the point.)

Logo designed by Milton Glaser, who designed one of my other favorite logos for the Brooklyn Brewery

Date Night: South Africa

Okay, so we did not actually go to South Africa, I'll put that out there right away.  But as we are beginning to have one childless night a week, last week we decided to take advantage of our much-needed alone time, and went out to dinner in New York City.  As a fan of South African wine, Kathy located Braai, a gem of a South African restaurant in midtown.

Maybe because it was 90 degrees out and they had the doors and windows propped open. Maybe because of the thatched ceiling.  Maybe it was the music.  I don't know.  But I actually felt like I was in South Africa as I was sitting there with Kathy -- or at least, what I imagine South Africa would feel like, having never been there.  It inspired me to try all manner of food I would have ordinarily have shied away from, and I was not disappointed.  It appears they change the menu weekly, and this post is a bit overdue, so I can't tell you exactly what we ate.  A portobello with goat cheese and chakalaka, squid, truffle oil-laced mac and cheese (perhaps not so traditional), and an African road runner steak all made an appearance.  And of course, the wine.  It was heaven.  Although it's a bit pricey (though not much more than many NYC dinner spots), I'd highly recommend this restaurant to anyone who is looking for something out of the ordinary.

Perhaps the best part of the evening, however, is the re-emergence of a sorely needed regular date night.

pride, part I

Tonight, right now, I am curled up with Kathy, watching Rachel Maddow's coverage of the New York state senate's vote on whether to extend the right to marry to same sex couples.  This would be the first time that a Republican-controlled branch of the legislature passed a gay-marriage measure.  It seems entirely appropriate to me that this vote is happening on the cusp of the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion in New York City.

If gay marriage passes in the next few minutes, New York will truly have a reason to be proud.

Springtime in New York

Yesterday, Kathy and I got a chance to experience what Spring is about in the city (for us, anyway).

Sitting outside for happy hour!  Kathy actually hates sitting on the street (she thinks it's weird how everyone keeps walking by you all the time, and looking at you -- she would prefer a roof deck or something) but I love it.

things to miss about working: halal cart

One of the best things about working in Midtown is the number of Halal carts.  Since this is my last week in the office, I have permitted myself to eat at a Halal cart two times this week.  And it's only Wednesday.


Anyway, I realized that anyone not from NYC has no idea what I am talking about when I say "Halal cart."  Halal is a certain kind of meat, that people eat for religious reasons.  I am indifferent to that aspect. 

What I'm refering to is the street meat you can buy all over midtown.  Not too far from my office is the famous 53rd and 6th cart (although it is NOT THE SAME CART during the day, so I don't go to that particular cart for lunch).  It's basically a gross-looking but delicious slop, consisting of rice (I go for spicy) with chicken (or lamb, but I generally don't eat baby animals), carrots, broccoli, and onion all chopped up on top.  Buried under there somewhere is usually some iceberg lettuce and a tomato slice or two.  And.  White sauce on top.  No one actually knows what white sauce is, but answers seem to range from mayo and vinegar to tzatziki sauce.  I think it probably varies from cart to cart, but that stuff is delicious.  There is also red sauce, which I like, but it is nothing compared to how I feel about that white sauce.

Anyway, by one estimate, a plate of that stuff is 1410 calories.  Which I don't believe, but if it's true, is pretty much an entire day's worth of calories for someone my size, so I have to either split it with someone or force myself to throw it away half way through, or I end up with a horrendous stomach ache because I cannot stop myself if that food is sitting in front of me.

Also, it's $5 - $6, depending on the cart.  It doesn't get much better than that.

Photo of halal food from the 53rd & 6th cart via yelp.

um, actually...

...NOT necessary.

Spotted on my way to court this afternoon.  Note, in particular, the red dress with holes all up the side.

square

(istockphoto)

I love living in our small town.  I think it's apparent to anyone who reads this blog that I do.  I also love having kids in my life (especially A, B, and C, Kathy's kids).  I love living with Kathy.  I love doing things around the house, I love cooking, I love books.  I do not love crowded bars, nightclubs, or general admission concerts.  I don't like the city, and I don't like hipsters (sorry, but I don't, being around them makes me all nervous and self-conscious.  It's why I won't go to Williamsburg).  I like turtlenecks.  I don't like loud music, other than in the car.  I know myself pretty well.  Why, then, do I have a hard time surrendering to who I really am? 

When I was younger, I used to chirp to my parents all the time about how I wanted to live in a city.  I said it so much that I started to believe it.  Specifically, I wanted to live in San Francisco.  My sister said the same thing (only failed to name her city.  Sister, you lose points for specificity).  I talked about how wasteful it was to commute by car, when mass transit would be available if only you lived in the city.  I talked about how selfish it was for people to want their own little plot of land (to do what in, I asked my parents).  I mean really, you can walk one block and throw the ball in the park, right?  And community gardens, people! 

I also used to say that it's really important to be single, so you can find yourself and really know yourself before committing to a long-term relationship.  I glorified the idea of single-dom.  All those friends I would have, all the late nights at bars talking about interesting things (and, no doubt, complaining about the losers in the dating world).  All the lovers, with no strings attached.  The freedom of it all. 

Yes, Michigan!

(Aren't these mittens adorable?  You can get them here, in case anyone wanted to get me some.)

Over the long weekend, I was in Michigan attending a close friend's wedding.  I grew up outside of Detroit (which is very different than growing up inside Detroit) and I went to Michigan State for college.  After college, I lived in Lansing for a couple of years, until I moved to California for law school, when I was about 24.  I also spent part of my bar-studying summer in Michigan living at my parents' house (so cool, I know).  So I have lots of friends there, still, and my brother and my sister-in-law, as well as their tiny twins, live in the metro-Detroit area. 

The trip to Michigan was too short.  They always are.  New York has not, ever, been "home" for me.  But this is what always happens, when anyone from someplace else finds out I live here, or someone I meet here finds out I am from Michigan:

Other person:  Oh my god, don't you just love living in New York?

Me (if I'm being honest):  Not really.

Other person:  WHAT?! (shock, incredulity) What do you mean?  WHY NOT?

Me (this is where it gets tricky):  Um, it's really loud.  And the work ethic is sort of crazy.  And... I don't know.  There's a lot of smog?

For some reason, it's impossible for me to articulate what it actually is I don't like about New York.  I can find plenty to complain about.  And there are actually some things to like.  But what it really is, is that for this Midwestern girl, it just doesn't feel like home.  I routinely get lost.  People shout at me when I'm indecisive about ordering my sandwich.  People make fun of my accent A LOT (which I did not even realize I had). 

But more than my love-hate relationship with New York as a city, there's also law firm life, which is completely foreign to most of the old-Erin friends. It's hard to understand it, really, unless you live it. Not that my friends don't accommodate my crazy work schedule, they totally do. But they don't really understand how it grates on you to do it day after day, with not even a close friend's wedding weekend as sacred non-work time. And complaining and explaining gets boring.  For others, yes, but I have also started to bore my own self with complaining about work. It's not only the work schedule, either. It's things like the Diamond Olympics, vacations on tropical islands instead of Niagara Falls, judgement over the '99 Jetta we drive to work, and not knowing how to pronounce pretty much anything on the menus at half the restaurants I find myself in (I'm always asking, "Is that some kind of cheese? Why don't they just say it's cheese?").  And for crying out loud, I do not want to spend $100 on dinner and only get three raviolis.  I want enough to take home for lunch. (I still do not understand why that is not done.  Why is being wasteful more polite?)

This is the surprising part, though.  Michigan doesn't feel like home anymore either.

the great blizzard

So, Christmas is over.  I managed to get all the gifts I needed, although it involved shopping on the morning of Christmas Eve.  My parents and Kathy's mother got along great (we knew they would).  We didn't have the kids yesterday, so we planned to take all the parents into New York City to do Christmasy things like see the tree in Rockefeller Center and have a drink in the Waldorf's bar. 

When we woke up yesterday, Kathy checked the weather, and was over at the computer cracking up.  "It says 'BLIZZARD'!"  "Blizzard?" I replied, "That's ridiculous."  We got our new running pants and shirts on, and went for a run.  There were flurries coming down.  We got home, showered, ate lunch, and got ready to go into the city.  "If it's going to snow, maybe we should take the train," Kathy suggested.  So we did.  "It's really coming down," my mom observed.  Undeterred, we put on our coats.  "Do you want a hat?" I asked my dad.  "Nah," he answered.  "It's not snowing that hard."

When we arrived in Grand Central, the people coming in from outside were covered in snow.  "They must have walked a long way to have that much snow on them," I thought.   We shopped, had a coffee in Grand Central, and plotted our course through the city.  When we emerged from the subway at 51st and Lex to walk to the Waldorf for our happy hour drink in the lobby bar, Kathy said, "This snow is great!  It's so Christmasy and romantic!"  Within a half a block, my mom said, "I'm freezing."  It was still snowing, and the wind was blowing.  We had our drink at the Waldorf and headed to Rockefeller Center to see the tree.  We were all covered in snow by the time we got there.  My dad's hair was covered in ice.  Our faces were wet and red.  Our pants were soaked through.  "Take a picture of the tree!" my mom exclaimed.  My dad, grumbling, pulled out his iPhone, removed his gloves, and snapped a picture of the tree.  We barely made it to the subway.  We were soaked and frozen.  My dad's hair was melting into his eyes.  "What a great adventure!" Kathy's mom said.

We went to the Soho Grand, and had another drink in their lobby.  It was kind of a hotel-lobby-bar-crawl.  When we were ready to go to dinner, Kathy said, "Maybe we should take cabs; walking to the subway seems kind of miserable."  My mom was in the bathroom, so I headed down to get in the first cab with Kathy's mom, and Kathy said she would follow with my parents.  After one block, our cab got stuck in the snow.  Our cab driver, who seemed unfamiliar with the frozen white stuff falling from the sky, tried to just push the accelerator.  The wheels spun, and the meter ticked up.  He tried, unsuccessfully, to reverse.  The wheels spun, and the meter ticked up.  When it hit $7.10 after going less than 2 blocks, I said, "Uh, sir, I think you might need a tow truck."  He replied, "You should get out."  That's the thing about New Yorkers, they are direct.  We got out, and saw Kathy and my parents drive by us.  Fortunately, we got an SUV cab, and made it to the restaurant.  But my parents and Kathy weren't there yet.  When they finally arrived 15 minutes later, they were, again, soaked and frozen.  "What happened?" I asked.  My mom could not answer because her face was frozen.  So Kathy said, "Our cab driver had another fare, so he made us get out 3 blocks away and walk here!" 

After dinner, we walked to the subway, made it to Grand Central, and took the train back to the suburbs.  That's when the real fun started.  The car was buried under about 20 inches of snow, and the parking lot to the train station had not been plowed.  After a half hour of Kathy, my dad, and me digging the car out and pushing it, a random guy stopped and helped.  The snow was blowing horizontally, and my shoes were untied. My pants were crusted with snow up the middle of my thighs.  I had been digging in my new leather gloves that Kathy's mom gave me for Christmas.  The car slipped and slid home, and we took our shoes and snowy clothes off.  I hadn't noticed, but my dad had been taking pictures with that iPhone the whole night.  We stood in the kitchen in our slippers and looked at them, cracking up.  He had pictures of our frozen mothers, pictures of that damn Rockefeller tree, pictures of Kathy and me laughing with almost our entire faces covered by scarves and hoods and hats. 

Our hotel bar crawl would have been fun in nice weather.  But it was really excellent doing it in the great blizzard.  And the best part is that the blizzard continued through the night, and there is no way I am making it into the office today.  It's nice having a job that has snow days.  Working from home might still be working, but at least you're at home!

the cold

I have both kinds of cold.  It is FREEZING outside today.  And also I have a completely stuffy head.  Both of these things make me really homesick for my time in the Bay area. 

It's so cold I wore Kathy's coat today, since I couldn't wear my ski jacket to a meeting of an industry group I had to go to for work, and after three winters in New York, I still do not have an appropriate coat.  When it's like this, I always find myself thinking, "Come on!  50 degrees and foggy in the middle of August isn't so bad, is it?!"  There are things I like about winter.  Like skiing, and getting to stay home from work for snow days.  But when it's not snowy, and the city is crowded with tourists sauntering down the street without a care in the world (and blocking my way!), and I have to walk to work because there are no cabs, I just want to scream I get so cold.  And.

(look at these cold germs.  via here.)

I have a head cold.  That means no getting up and going running, boxes and boxes of Kleenex, and embarrassingly blowing my nose in the aforementioned industry group meeting.  And that horrible red chapped nose thing.  I never got colds when I lived in California.  I do not think it is because they are any less common, I just think my immune system was a lot stronger.  Stress and lack of sleep tend to wear it down a bit.  I have gotten sick so many times in the last 3 years since leaving California that I can't believe it.  When I lived in California, my yoga teacher had a policy that if you had so much as a sniffle, you should stay home, and avoid spreading your germs all over the props.  I missed one class because of sickness the whole 3 years I lived there.  For real, one class!  I have had about 7 colds per year since moving to New York and joining this rat race.  Yikes. 

And so, what is the solution to this?  I haven't the faintest idea.  It's not like I can move back to Berkeley and go back to law school.  Although that does sound fun. Perhaps some Emergen-C is in order.  And a nap?  Not likely, but sounding so very appealing.

the uptown salon

Today I got my haircut.  I go here:

(I have no idea where I got this picture from, and now I can't find it again.  Whoops.)

And here's the inside:

(Photo from New York Magazine, and courtesy of Bumble and bumble.)

Bumble and bumble (the uptown salon).  I know, right?  Fancy.  According to New York Magazine, it has been "trend setting since the late seventies" and is an "arbiter of hipness."  And that's just in the first sentence of the review.  The woman who cuts my hair (Laura Jean, for those who are curious) is amazing.  One thing I like about her is that she does not make me feel like I am not quite cool enough to get my hair cut there, which is how I have felt pretty much everywhere else I have ever gotten my hair cut in my life, other than the Bo Rics I used to go to as a child. 

More New York

Okay.  Just for fun, here are two pictures of me acting crazy this spring in the city I love to hate.

(No doubt you recognize this one from my profile.  Not just the top siders that made me so smiley -- also the new jeans and the diet coke I was about to buy from that hot dog man.)

And now, I really have to get some work done.

I love/hate NY

Alright.  Well, anyone who knows me -- not even just those who know me well, this pretty much includes everyone who has ever made 5 minutes of casual conversation with me -- knows that I have a love/hate relationship with New York City.  And by love/hate, I mean I love to talk about how much I hate it.  Today, I came across this list of 50 reasons why I should like living here.  It stands in stark contrast to this article in the Onion about all the reasons to hate it.  The truth is that the number one feeling that comes up when I think about the big apple is "ambivalent."

So, here is my own personal list.  Five things I love to hate about living in New York City.  Appropriately timed, because of how, in two weeks, I will officially no longer have a New York, NY address (unless you count work, where I spend most of my time anyway).

5.  Being totally, completely New York-centric.  You know.  Like this:

(Does this really need a credit?  Come on, it's obviously the famous cover of the New Yorker from 1976.  Read about it here.) 

A law school professor once pointed out to me that this was a completely unrealistic picture, because would you look at all those open parking spaces?!  Right.  After a certain, unspecified amount of time living here, you tend to start a lot of sentences this way whenever you travel:  "WHAT?  In New York, you can...."  I swore to myself that this would never be me.  But I have to confess, when I travel now, and restaurants stop serving food at 10 pm, I cringe.  When the person in front of me takes 25 minutes to decide what they want on their salad, even though they had the whole time they were standing in line to decide (or on line, if you're from NY!), I tap my foot impatiently and mutter under my breath.  And more than once, Kathy has said to me, "You're not in New York.  Stop honking at people." (See Number 2).