The titles of two of my brother's mix cds:

1. Cd to hate to
2. If you're depressed this shit will multiply it by ten, maybe twenty

No I don't know what's on them.

--
Sent from my mobile device

light reading

i've also been meaning to post on two very interesting articles that i've read recently. they are both pretty lengthy, but worth reading.

1. "depression in 2009: what would it look like?" from boston.com. this article tackles what a depression in 2009 would look like (duh) and it ain't your grandmother's depression.

interesting points:

Unlike the 1930s, when food and clothing were far more expensive, today we spend much of our money on healthcare, child care, and education, and we'd see uncomfortable changes in those parts of our lives.

A depression circa 2009 might be a less visible and more isolating experience. With the diminishing price of televisions and the proliferation of channels, it's getting easier and easier to kill time alone, and free time is one thing a 21st-century depression would create in abundance. Instead of dusty farm families, the icon of a modern-day depression might be something as subtle as the flickering glow of millions of televisions glimpsed through living room windows, as the nation's unemployed sit at home filling their days with the cheapest form of distraction available.

In many ways, though, today's depression would not look like the last one because it would not look like much at all. "The New Depression would be largely invisible because people would experience loss privately, not publicly."

definitely worth a (depressing but interesting) read.

2. "is urban loneliness a myth?" from ny magazine. this article looks at the urban family and what it means to be lonely in nyc. interesting fact: 1 out of 2 households in manhattan have only one person living in them. the article does a great job of capturing an amorphous concept. and the good news is, you can be single and living in a giant anonymous city like nyc and still be as happy as someone who is married living somewhere else.

interesting points:

Given how many New Yorkers live alone—in Manhattan, 25.6 percent of households are married, whereas the national average is 49.7—one would think we’d be at an increased risk for practically all these conditions. But Cacioppo points out that loneliness isn’t about objective matters, like whether we live alone. It’s about subjective matters, like whether we feel alone.

But the fact remains that a city, New York especially, might be the best place to ride out that period of lonely toil. Because New York, like the Internet, also offers a rich network of acquaintances, or what sociologists like to call “weak ties.”

Hampton says he views the Internet as the ultimate city, the last stop on the continuum of human connectedness. I’d argue that New York and the Internet are about the same, in the way that a large bookstore feels like it offers just as many possibilities as Amazon.com—maybe slightly less inventory, but more opportunities to stumble on things you might not have otherwise. Whichever the case, what the Internet and New York have in common is that each environment facilitates interaction between individuals like no other, and both would be positively useless—would literally lose their raison d’être—if solitary individuals didn’t furiously interact in each. They show us, in trillions of invisible ways every day, that people are essentially nothing without one another.

that last point in particular. nyc is a city of possibilities. you may not run into the love of your live, but there's a chance you could. just some food for thought to go along with your food for thanksgiving day dinner. =)

this post brought to you by fail blog

hello friends!

thought i would post while i wait for itunes to download my monty python 'best of' tv shows for my trip home to the cape later today.

roadtrip FAIL

backtrack to this past weekend and the trip to the cabin in rilleyville, virginia with lingley and assorted other d and non-d folks. i got picked up from the bus in dc around 11:15 on friday night and we started the hour and a half drive out to the cabin lings had rented to celebrate her birthday.

about an hour into the drive, and at the point where we are in the middle of nowhere (aka shenandoah national park), complete with no cell phone reception and no 24-hour gas stations, we discover the gas tank is on empty. at this point we have 10 miles of gas and 40 miles to go and no way to call lingley to tell them the situation. we pull into the next town we encounter, sperryville, virginia, in the hopes that we can find someone or something to help us. the only 24-hour thing in this town is the post office lobby (wtf?). it's about 20 degrees out, 1:15 in the morning. we wouldn't die if we had to sleep in the car, but it would not have been pretty. fortunately, we find a bed and breakfast and figure someone must be there if anywhere. the door is open so we go inside and find a landline, which we use to call lingley. they had been at the cabin since 2 that day, and prob were not in the best shape to handle driving 40 minutes down a winding, dark, twisty road, but they were champs and came to pick us up. we finally get to this cabin around 3 in the morning. better late than never right?

this cabin was extremely rural. like cows, and a 7-mile drive to the nearest supermarket, where we found a bottle of wine for $1.99 (not bad!). it also was extremely southern. hello confederate flag. but the land was beautiful, and we were up on a hill so steep you had to floor the gas to get up it, and even then you could feel the car hesitate before continuing upwards. amazing view of beautiful, rolling land. we had a lot of food, sleeping bags and booze. we also had a bonfire and a hot tub. so lots of drinking, smores, too-much-information sessions and laughter occurred.

lamb cook FAIL

second failure of the trip happened when we tried to cook a lamb shank in the ground, ala a pig roast. we got the fire burning, and the lamb in there, but then we got drunk and forgot to check on it and it was not cooked at all five hours later. so we brought it in and put it in the oven.

headed back to dc early on sunday and i caught a 1:30 PM bus back to new york. lots of fun all around, and so great to get away from EVERYTHING, esp given how stuff went down last week.

going through the motions of work today, though i do have stuff to do, and then heading home around 1. really looking forward to getting to the cape - it's just always an epic journey!

advanced planning

list of things i am super excited to do when i get home for thanksgiving:

1. lie on the couch (not that different from what i do in nyc)
2. pet my dog
3. eat craigville pizza and mexican (mexican sampler please)
4. run the craigville beach road loop
5. walk on the beach

you'll notice that i pretty much always want to do the same things when i go back to the places i love - run my favorite routes and eat food. and if in hanover, play pong. am peacing out of here tomorrow afternoon and it cannot come soon enough.

cabin weekend blog post to come when i have a second to type it out. epic.

boom, like that

so yesterday was a kind of shitty day as our group announced some layoffs. two of the people who got laid off sit in the same office with me, and one of them was my boss. everyone's been affected by what's going on in the markets and the economy, and they're in good company, but it was just a really sad, scary and awkward day all around.

really enjoyed working with both of them, and i just didn't even know what to do or how to respond to the news about my boss. never had this happen before. my job will be okay, but it means i am now the only person working on mobile in my group, i'm getting reorged - this is my 4th boss and 3rd role in under 2 years of being at my job - and am really overwhelmed by what just happened. it was a lot like a break-up convo - one second you're relating to someone under the bounds of guidelines and accepted statuses and the next, everything has changed and will never be the same again. life will move on without even a pause for a moment to say, 'hey, this happened. can we recognize that?' and isn't it crazy how much things can change from one day to the next? hell - from one hour to the next.

prob spent more time with these two guys over the last 6 months than anyone else and we had a great time - lots of laughter and joking and having a good time while getting our work done. feel really alone right now, although everyone in the office has been really great and supportive. i guess this too shall pass and in a weird way, this is actually probably a good thing for me. it's a chance to step up, do something new, and really make a mark. but i'm scared shitless right now at that prospect. going to have to be really tough to make it through.

my old boss who has kind of become my mentor keeps telling me 'i have angels on my shoulders' looking out for me, which i have to say certainly seems to be true given all the support i've received and interest people have taken in me and my career. i hope i can live up to it, and i'm reminded of the storypeople, "most people don't know that there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't fall asleep & miss your life.' onwards and upwards i guess.

did a spin class last night to work off some stress, really enjoying it. i understand now why everyone is so obsessed with biking - it's a blast. and then had dinner with taylor at nolita house, complete with some martinis and lobster mac and cheese - perfect comfort food for a cold, bleak day all around.

going to watch some duke bball tonight with vin at madison square garden - i think this is her way of getting back at me for cramming dartmouth down her throat (jk!) and then down to dc tomorrow to celebrate lingley's birthday with those kids at a cabin in virginia. will be good to get away and clear my head.

watch at your own risk

this will both crack you up and be stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

current favorite songs

top 5 what i'm listening to right now:

1. mgmt - 'kids' and 'electric feel' (same artist - counts as 1. my brother claims he falls asleep to ad blasting mgmt every night. i believe it.)
2. lady gaga - 'just dance'
3. kevin rudolph - 'let it rock'
4. hilary duff - 'happy', 'burned', 'outside in'
5. taylor swift - 'you're not sorry'

the saddest thing in the world was that i made a basement mix with all these amazing songs on it, titled it 'never can say goodbye', etc. we get up to school and are at sig ep and their sound system is hooked up to a computer so we can't play the cd.

i carry said cd around with me everywhere until we get somewhere (sd) where we can play it and elise and i are down in the basement running table for 13 GAMES OF PONG and the cd is so scratched from being shoved down my pants that it won't play more than 6 songs. MEUR.

luckily the first song was 'just dance' so it was all good. more on htown later.

additionally, the car we rented already had a mix cd someone had left in it that turned out to be an AMAZING mix with all sorts of great stuff randomly on it. we were calling it the 'miracle cd'.
love stuff like that.

in other news, we got the option to renew our lease! YES. no moving, lovely terrace, sunny room, pong table and plants for another year. it was a good weekend. :)

bond. gold bond

have yet to see the latest 007 which comes out today, but was not totally thrilled with 'casino royal', mainly b/c it deviated from the 007 recipe that contains all the things i like about james bond. i don't want to see emotion, or depth, or reality. i want hot locales, sweet rides, good looking girls and for bond to kick someone's ass in a tuxedo and throw out a quip as he stashes his gun.

in short, i want everything that the ny times review says the bond franchise used to be:

And here, I suppose, the deeper questions bubble up. Is revenge the only possible motive for large-scale movie heroism these days? Does every hero, whether Batman or Jason Bourne, need to be so sad?

I know grief has always been part of the Dark Knight's baggage, but the same can hardly be said of James Bond, Her Majesty's suave, cynical cold war paladin. His wit was part of his — of our — arsenal, and he countered the totalitarian humorlessness of his foes with a wink and a bon mot.

Are these weapons now off limits for the good guys? Or can moviegoers justify their vicarious enjoyment of on-screen mayhem — and luxury hotels, high-end cocktails and fast cars — only if there are some pseudoserious bad feelings attached? The Sean Connery James Bond movies of the 1960s were smooth, cosmopolitan comedies, which in the Roger Moore era sometimes ascended to the level of farce. With Mr. Craig, James Bond reveals himself to be — sigh — a tragic figure.

in 'casino royale' it was KIND of okay that this was lacking. it was portraying bond before he was bond - it was realistic that he would not have become the figure he has been for the last 46 years. suave and sophisticated didn't really come to mind and that was fine. but more of the same a second time?

guess i'll have to wait for the spike tv bondathon over christmas break. sigh.

unofficial alumni weekend

so am surprisingly apprehensive about the fact i am driving 4 boys to htown tomorrow post-work. not sure why this is. maybe b/c coordinating things with them is like herding cats? b/c last time i drove a bunch of people to htown i got a speeding ticket? (vt state trooper: is a funeral any excuse for speeding? me: apparently not). i think mainly b/c i am responsible for the overall experience and the vehicle and there's a lot that could go wrong. harumph.

my fellow roadtrippers are an interesting bunch. two are my coworkers - one is an '08 and the other is an '06 from ohio state and the one i hooked up with. we have another '08, friends with the kid from homecoming last year, and an '07, who i know b/c i hooked up with his roommate senior winter, and roommates of the '06. incestuous really.

this will either be really fun or a total disaster.

tis the season

heard christmas carols in the sephora on sunday and i saw the camels from the radio city rockette's show hanging out on 51st street while walking to work yesterday morning. the holiday season is upon us!

am running off to a spinning class at the gym. i hope i can walk tomorrow. and then ladies night at the stumble inn. don't really like the word ladies - add that to the list (hi vin) - but i do like $2 dollar drafts!

fab fall weekend

well friends - it was an interesting weekend. i'd think it's safe to say it took me til now to kind of digest it, but i'm still not entirely sure i have.

the boston boy couldn't come down at the last minute - he ended up having to work - which, needless to say, was a huge huge bummer. was really looking forward to that. there's gtalk, and texting, but that's no substitute for the real thing. such is the downside of long-distance anything.

happily, however, christine had made yet another wise, spontaneous decision to come down on friday afternoon as well, so fun times were on the horizon regardless. when she arrived, we were at huyett's apt on the lower east side with some beer and red wine and sat around listening to music and telling jokes while christine made us all up and ready to go out.

headed out to fiddlesticks (frat bar in the west village) where, true to form, we encountered some sae '02s at a bachelor party (have to say - pretty lame bachelor party if you're at fiddlesticks, but whatever). some of us 'encountered' them more than others if you get my drift, resulting in a pretty amusing series of text messages circa 4 am - but those will have to wait. meanwhile, i ran back something i hadn't done in awhile, which was a lot more fun than i anticipated, though the ramifications have yet to be sorted out.

sat it poured rain, and christine and i went with huyett to the guggenheim. none of us had been before, and we really enjoyed the quirky exhibits and the use of the entire museum as a medium. there were all these 'unsettling phrases' (according to the ny times) stenciled on the walls in strange places. phrases like 'i know more than you think i know'. the exhibit was part of their current theme: theanyspacewhatever. this is concept is apparently supposed to evoke the idea of 'pure potentiality' - which i really kind of like. am a big fan of potential. anyway, read more about it here.

after some drinks at the apt on sat night, we all headed down to chinatown for soup dumplings and pan friend noodles. delicious. had been craving soup dumplings for a couple weeks now. and it's always nice to go to chinatown when one is not late and rushing to catch the bus with all one's worldy possessions. i'm just saying.

post-dinner we walked over to a club in tribeca for an '08s bday party. ran into (literally - it was dark in there) a bunch of kids i know at least, danced for a little bit and headed home on the early side. did figure out that i liked the lady gaga song 'just dance', and as a result, have listened to it 32 times since sat night. to be fair, many were on monday when i didn't have to work.

sunday turned out to be a sunny, gorgeous, 'fab fall day', as the weather in the taxi cab kept calling it, and we continued on our museum tour and went to the museum of natural history with vin. christine and i would both like to thank vin and huyett for working at gs and getting us in for free. nat history museum was a new one for me too, but i had been dying to see the dinosaurs. we also saw the whale (it's a whale thing), a strange gem room that was less a hall than an annex we decided, and some stuffed lions (roar!). then a trip to sephora before christine headed back. all and all, a very delightful busy weekend!

so you can't really blame me for spending my day off from work (yay vetran's day) sleeping in til 11, lounging about until 2, and then eating oysters, drinking beer, and playing pong with will. can't remember the last time i had a three-day weekend that i actually was in the city for, so wasn't quite sure what to do with myself, and as you can see, made productive use of it. or maybe that's the point, to not be productive with free days. either way, it was enjoyable.

now it's wed - feels like tuesday - up in the air on so many fronts. going to try to let everything be. they will work themselves out and could prob benefit without some over-thinking to be perfectly honest. then there's that.

weekend to-do list

1. go to home depot (we can do it and they can help)
2. drop off laundry/dry cleaning
3. find my soon to be 21-year old brother a massive taylor swift poster to hang on his wall.

jason: i enjoy all taylor swift

jason: except for the fact that i still don't have a large wall poster

pre-weekend update

i'm all squirmy!

not only do i love both songs in this clip from 'love actually' (norah jones 'turn me on' and a cover of fleetwood mac's 'songbird') but if you skip to 2:08, you'll see how i'm feeling about this weekend. =)

incidentally, the dialog is in spanish. not that it matters.



love actually is such a great movie. and it's just about time for a pre-holiday rush viewing!

alliterative tuesdays

in keeping with our theme of doing things on tuesday that start with 't' (i'm a big sesame street fan), vin and i explored the neighborhood for election night, by trekking up to 87th and first ave for two dollar tacos, which were decent considering they cost two dollars.

we then wandered over to second ave en route to the big easy and found another bar that was offering 2-1 draft specials on tuesdays. we were pretty psyched that we managed to have dinner and 3 beers for a grand total of 18 dollars, and have vowed to continue to check out drink specials on the upper east side in the coming weeks.

after we got home around 11 i dragged vin down to 30 rock plaza to join the crowds of people watching the election results. we leapt over a fence and got a glimpse of the giant map of the united states that was painted on the ice skating rink and being painted blue or red as the results came in. was pretty cool to be there watching history. if it was not 55 degrees at 11 pm, instead of the typical early-nov 39 degrees, can guarantee there would not have been so many people, but nyc is good at using its spaces to bring people together. it was a little like being in times square on new year's eve, which is a new york tradition i have no desire to participate in. cold, no alcohol and needing to pee, not to mention the threat of being crushed to death? no thanks.

just seemed like we should be down where the action was. what's the point of living in new york city if you can't do shit like that every once in awhile?

civic duties - take 2

now that i think about it, really should have voted for jimmy buffett. thanks to linsalata for the pic (click to enlarge).

on the subject of jimmy buffett and 'if we weren't all crazy we would all go insane' was reading the grey's anatomy writers blog (stick with me here) and found this quote from the episode 'losing my mind' interesting:

"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't. In the face of all we can lose in a day, in an instant, wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."

Why aren't you crazy?

i think that's a pretty good point. life takes SO much energy, faith, luck, support, friends, laughter to hold it together it's a wonder more of us aren't crazy. life can kick your ass. but when things are a little messy, a little rough around the edges, that's when you know you're really living life to the fullest. not when it's neat and clean and dull.

per usual, i can't say this as well as some other people, so i defer to them to put this into words, but whole-heartedly agree with this 'since you asked':

Life is messy and uncertain as it unfolds. There is only a very small area around our feet that we can keep orderly and sure. The rest is going to be messy. It is going to be messy and uncertain. But in that messiness and uncertainty there is also magic and grace.

That is the deal we make with life. We give up our fantasies of perfection in return for a chance at actual magic and grace. You cannot find that magic and grace by observing, holding yourself at a distance, waiting. You cannot find it by waiting because it is not something that happens to you; it is something you create. You create it by wrestling with life.

get in there and make a mess.

civic duties

just got back from voting with vin. fortunately for us, the school where the voting is held in our district is quite literally up the block. that being said, the line was still around the block and took us half-hour to get inside.

as you know, i don't really get into all of this political nonsense, but was reflecting on all the struggle and efforts of women who had gone before us to secure the right to vote for women (pop quiz - what amendment gave women that right?) and the least i can do is exercise it.

so thank you susan b anthony. or, as vin said, thank you susan b anthony. i'm sorry your coins weren't more popular.

go vote. happy election day.

i heart gtalk

banner day in gtalk:

skips: are you saying it in the doodad voice and I just can't tell
because it's gchat?

linsalata: even i would go to an obama rally if jimmy buffett were
performing there for free

how did it get so late so soon?

november kind of snuck in without a lot of warning, most likely because the month began during the festivities of halloween. after lots of stress and annoyingness (it seems i was in good company on this front) ended up at a couple apartment parties to celebrate. had not been to an apt party in quite some time and find them vastly preferable to bars.

had a busy weekend of low-keyness: caught up on greek and the new season of the office. trekked to the west side twice (impressive), napped a lot. the weekends are very long when you're not spending half of it on a bus.

wandered around the upper east side a bit - went to the metropolitan museum of art for the first time, went for a run in central park on friday night, walked over and attempted to watch the new york marathon with cody, but she lives on the east side of first ave, and it was going to be at least 2 hours before they let anyone cross over. enjoyed the festivities that had taken over the city, and went back to the apt. during my out-and-about i have to say i was extremely impressed with the halloween decorations at some of the apts on the upper east side. the closer you get to the park the more there are of the impressive townhouse-style buildings that generally look closed off and impenetrable. was very surprised to see that many of them had gone all out for the holiday - pumpkins, that fake spiderweb stuff stretched all over the stairs, skeletons. really pretty cool actually. the ues gets points for that one.

one of my west side treks was to go watch the u florida football game at the gator bar on the upper west side. my cousin who got married a few weeks ago went to u florida, and i've become friendly with her maid of honor who is my age and lives in nyc. the scene in the bar was incredible - you could hear the roars and cheers of the crowd half a block away and the entire bar was decked out in blue and orange. made me wonder - if dartmouth had legit good sports like football and basketball that got broadcast on national television, maybe alums wouldn't feel the need to go back to hanover so often. there's really nothing in the real world (not even pong - sniff sniff) to bring everyone together in a like-minded spirit to celebrate dartmouth. i wonder. between u florida and visiting boxa at michigan i have a sense of what it would have been like to have a good football team. you know, where you actually go to watch the games instead of playing harbor and passing out.

speaking of hanover, will be heading up next weekend with two of my coworkers for no reason other than we all want to go play pong on a full-sized table. am a little apprehensive about road-tripping and raging with people i'm supposed to have a corporate persona in front of, but they are my equivalent of an analyst class, so i guess it's too late to be concerned about that. am bracing for epicness however.

the boston boy will supposedly be in town this coming weekend. he's coming down with some friends to see some friends, so i'm not sure what will go down or how it will be to spend more than 12 hours with him in a city that he doesn't know, but should be a good indication of things to come at the very least and of course i am excited to see him. meanwhile, i am irrationally annoyed at a boy in nyc who i am 90% sure is not an option (by my choice) for macking on a girl in front of me at a party last night. but isn't that a woman's prerogative?

In November's gusty gale I will flop my flippy tail
And spout hot soup-I'll be a whale!
Spouting once, spouting twice
Spouting chicken soup with rice

happy november