all hallow's eve

'i'm not afraid, there is no need, he's just a grown-up pumpkin seed!'

signing off until i get internet back next week or decide a blog post from work is called for. happy halloween and homecoming to everyone! i'll catch you in november.

*hat tip to olivia at 'night falls and towns become circuit boards' for the image

i was gonna finish packing but then i got drunk

being totally worthless at work today, mainly bc i was going to go home after work yesterday and buy another box (i still need one more for the move) and finish packing and then go to bed at a respectable hour but then my coworker wanted to go out for a drink so of course i got drunk and went to kickball to play flip cup and yeah. to paraphrase a song from 2001 - 'i was going to finish packing but then i got drunk'

have a new favorite blog, which alert readers know is like my favorite thing in life - 'rocket shoes'. am reading his posts at work and laughing out loud far too often to fool my coworkers into thinking i'm doing legitimate work. my new blog friend just completed a move of his own. some excerpts:

Moving is the most terrible thing on earth. The end result is magnificent, but the whole process is like someone running up and kicking you in the shin and then hitting your coffee out of your hand. And then when you are upset about the coffee being spilled, them telling you that, "Santa Claus DID EXIST BUT NOW HE DOESN'T BECAUSE YOU NEVER  BELIEVED SO HE DIED." And after they yell that, you are crying and your back hurts because you didn't lift the fucking dresser with your knees. (LACES OUT, DAN.)

That's what moving is like.

The funny thing is, however, that there is a lot of hilarity that comes out of it. I mean, what IS all this crap that you own? You start finding things that not only do not make sense, you're not sure you even how you acquired them. More importantly, you wonder how, in about four other moves, you had decided that this…yes, I need this. This must come with me wherever I go. Seeing as I've never used this item, nor do I ever plan to, I should definitely take this with me on my life quest.

i encourage you to read the rest of the post, esp for the part where he talks about his t rex dinosaur head lamp. 

my move is tomorrow - it's really cramping my halloween plans. finishing up the stuff i didn't finish last night and making a few trips back and forth in cabs, and then the movers come between 10 and 12 tomorrow. at this time tomorrow i will be in full swing! these guys aren't cheap and it's a 2 hr minimum, so i'm hoping my advance prep means it's 2 hours and that's it.

if i survive the move i will be back at apt 7 to host one last party in the empty space as a stop on the liquor treat apt halloween crawl. the shot of choice is jager - it's simple, effective and doesn't require mixers. with an empty apt this is the kind of drink i need.

of course this weekend is homecoming at d so having pangs of missing hanover as well. wouldn't you really rather be in hanover right now?

fine line between skeleton cookies and fertility

there is this coworker that i have a huge crush on, but he is simultaneously really arrogant and not solution-oriented at all (who knew this made such a difference?) while also being really attractive in a 'mountain man' kind of way (note: not normally my type). if i can hardly talk to him in meetings without getting irritated i can't imagine how we'd do out to dinner in a restaurant, but everyone i tell this story to seems to think it sounds like a disney love story waiting to happen. it's possible that i only get so annoyed with him b/c i like him and he makes me all defensive and want to shift into flirt mode, but it's also possible he's just a jerk. he's also smart but that generally just adds to the annoyingness.

was just over talking to this love/hate coworker at his desk when i noticed he had a box of skeleton cookies on his desk, so i ask where he got them. he starts talking about how someone gave them to him as a gag gift and i can have them if i want. and then i realize he's not talking about the skeleton cookies, he's talking about the fertility balls right next to them on his desk. you may be wondering what fertility balls are; see here.

so i start laughing my head off and say no no - one thing i definitely don't need is more fertility (in fact at times i'm afraid i have too much. i'm sure this will come back to bite me when i'm trying to get pregnant later in life and i'll be cursing the day i didn't accept the fertility balls from my love/hate coworker) and he says i can have the skeleton cookies instead and back to my desk i go.

the other office-related thing that happened today was someone sent my coworker a box filled with 'candy you ate as a kid'. think razzles, necco wafers (the sibs and the cousins used to buy these by the box at christmas tree shop during summers growing up), wax lips, lemon heads, etc. no one seems to know where the candy came from, but we've all indulged freely throughout the day despite the warnings of our mothers about not taking candy from strangers. in fact, the box of candy has been nicknamed 'stranger candy.'

rather lively day in the office all things considered. off to dinner with my sis and her boy.

do the walls come down

the title of this post is a carly simon song. our wall came down today - am back to roller disco scenarios ala march of 2008. it's crazy to think how much has happened since we moved into this apartment. we lived here for almost three years. and it's all chronicled on the blog!

as nostalgic as i am, i am glad to have the wall piece over and done with. as christine said, a wall hasn't caused this much trouble since the berlin wall. now that it's out of the apartment, and the apartment actually still looks okay, it's one big piece behind me and one big step towards getting our security deposit back. major props go to hopper for stepping in at the eleventh hour by holding down the fort and letting the wall people in so i could go to work early today for an important meeting. i heart you hopper!

onwards and upwards, my sister is in town from houston, texas for a few days - hoping to get dinner with her and her boy tomorrow. my brother is also in town at the end of the week, making the recent grad pilgrimage back to hanover for wed night meetings and then back to nyc for halloween and heps on friday. if i'm not super exhausted on saturday then i'm hosting a stop on the 2010 'liquor treat' apartment crawl. disco skates optional.

ever forward, but slowly.

silver lining

as much as i hate moving i have to admit that it's good to have a reason to completely overhaul your worldly possessions on a semi-regular basis. have been absolutely ruthless in what i'm keeping and what i'm tossing for this move, and it's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate (and store!) in a small apartment in nyc.

one thing i threw out was my 'changes in latitudes' poster. if you know me at all, you know 'changes' is my favorite jimmy buffett song, and the poster was from 'carribean soul' - a company that used to do images for jimmy buffett. i got this poster ages ago - sometime in high school i think, and it was in every dorm room and apartment i've lived in since then. it was pretty beat up though, and while i've never been able to find another one since, it was time for it to go.

with this move, and five years in nyc under my belt, i feel like i'm making a transition to the next part of my life and evaluating the parts that don't fit any longer or it's just time to leave them behind and move on and making those decisions. it's a little uncomfortable at times, but it also feels right.

"there’s a trick to the 'graceful exit.' it begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. it means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. it involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out."

dartmouth's in town again

today is the day of the dartmouth/columbia football game up at the columbia stadium. i'm heading up there shortly to pre-game at a bar with a bunch of dartmouth football parents in the d club of nyc social chair capacity, and then going over to the game. i've managed to peer pressure a number of folks into trekking up to the columbia stadium (aka 218th street) to join so i'm pulling out my dartmouth sweatshirt and looking forward to it.

have not been much of a football fan in the past, but kind of got more into it last winter when i started playing pick-up with stoebe. of course i suck at it, but i figured if i watch more games and pay attention i'll start to get the hang of it. (it's kind of difficult with lots of basketball playing years under my belt - the two games are kind of opposite - but it's been fun). also dartmouth's kind of good this year, and a football game is a pretty good way to spend a late october fall day.

'dartmouth's in town again' is a dartmouth fight song of old (like wicked old) but i always liked the men's crew team cheer: 'dartmouth! dartmouth! we don't have a cheer kick some ass so we can drink some beer!'

amen. go green!

the basement mix i'd be making if i were going to homcoming

as promised on twitter, i present 'the basement mix i'd be making if i were going to homecoming':

1. 'pyromania' - cascada
2. 'only girl in the world' - rhianna
3. '2012' - jay sean
4. 'take if off' - ke$sha
5. 'in my head' - jason derulo
6. 'dynamite' - taio cruz
7. 'call on me' - basement mix staple
8. 'illusion' - kylie
9. 'good girls burn miami' - mash up of she wolf, good girls go bad and lady gaga
10. 'move that body' - new nelly
11. 'evacuate the dancefloor' - cascada
12. 'alejandro' - lady gaga
13. 'can't be tamed' - miley
14. 'like a g6' - far east movement
15. 'she wolf' - shakira
16. 'just a dream' - nelly
17. 'escape' - enrique '05 basement mix staple

text book definition of 'erring on the side of raging'

got up at 5:30 this morning for an 8 am breakfast meeting. with the hour to travel, and the half-hour cushion so i wasn't late, it was a very early morning.

fortunately yesterday was a very leisurely day. saturday night went out with taylor and lidia for drinks at the rose bar at the grammercy park hotel to celebrate taylor's big news. got all the details, and had a quick catch-up over a dirty martini, before going to meet up with rowena and a few of the old coworkers for a former coworker's bday party in the east village.

on the way over we decided we'd better stop and do some more pregaming, so we went to cherry tavern for $5 PBRs and shots of whiskey. we thought it was a straight bar, but we found ourselves surrounded by boys in plaid shirts who taught me the meaning of 'docking' when i went in for a fist pound on our way out the door. gonna let you look that one up for yourself.

the bday party was at 'alphabet lounge' - on avenue c - super far east and pretty crowded, but great music, so we got to dance a bit. i left at a respectable hour, but ran into a dartmouth '08 on the street corner while looking for a cab and decided to go drink with them. after another several rounds of PBR and whiskey shots, i found myself in a union square apartment dancing salsa and drinking out of a giant beer mug with a friend of a friend.

and sunday morning around 9 am on the subway doing a walk of shame in hot pink heels - always a character building experience, though this time was nothing compared to the time i did it in a 'call on me' leotard circa halloween 2006. took the subway up to 86th street so i could stop for mcdonald's breakfast, canceled brunch plans with cody and went back to bed for a couple hours. hadn't been out like that in the city in awhile and it was long overdue.

chelsea market where i work is decked out for halloween. i mean above and beyond. there are creepy zombie scenes and things hanging from the ceiling everywhere, and the manhattan fruit exchange has pumpkins lining the walk ways in an almost farm stand kind of way. not really sure why chelsea market feels the need to do this, but my favorite decorations are these hologram type pictures of old fashioned people in frames that turn in to skeletons and zombies when you look at them a different way. they make me smile while also creeping me out.

and lastly, you can tell who the new yorkers are and who the tourists are very easily in midtown manhattan; the tourists stand on the corners and wait for the traffic to stop and the light to change, while the new yorkers stand out in the street and cross against the light. megh told me about this distinction ages ago, but nowhere is it more obvious than midtown manhattan around the holidays.

autumn

'Listen the wind is rising and the air is wild with leaves.
We've had our summer mornings, now for october eves!'

--
Sent from my mobile device

foursquare and panhellenic relations

the level of interest in foursquare varies by where you live. people in nyc seem to be much more interested in checking in than most other areas of the country. if you're not familiar with foursquare, you 'check in' to venues - could be anything from a restaurant, a bar, a cab (hate this) to your apartment or even a beach (checked in to sampson's island several times this summer).

as you check in you get badges for various things. one of these badges is called the 'gym rat' badge - for checking in to gyms 10 times in 30 days. rowena and i both go to equinox, and like to work out together in general, but we decided we would have a goal to get the gym rat badge on foursquare. i sort of find this hilarious while simultaneously recognizing that any sort of motivation to go to the gym is good.

i am pleased to report that my little sis got a bid to sigma delt! girls rush just concluded on campus, and she not only got a bid, she accepted it. i stayed out of the entire thing as much as possible, but of course was very interested to see what transpired, though i suppose i shouldn't have been concerned, as she's been playing pong and hanging out at sd since 2007. diede and i were discussing how this will likely make the lineage of big/little sisters the longest sd has ever seen. distinctly possible.

another rough week at work - but i had nothing to do last night - a glorious feeling - which i celebrated by going to bed at 9 pm. puttering around today and then meeting taylor and lidia for celebratory drinks before an 80s birthday party tonight.

starting to put things in boxes for the move and take stuff off the walls. i'm really going to miss this bedroom - i love the light, the way it's decorated and the breeze that comes through my window. 'i like change, she said, as long as i remember i like change.'

and a happy birthday to vin on monday and to allette on tuesday! miss you girls. :)

music to drink by

remember a few weeks ago when i couldn't make a cocktail playlist? i have some more thoughts on the subject, namely start with the 'kissing jessica stein' soundtrack and add lots of the following jazzy, bluesy singers:
- ella fitzgerald - try 'manhattan'
- blossom dearie -try 'put on a happy face', and 'i wish you love'
- diana krall - barely scratched the surface with her, need to explore more
- madeline peyroux (loving her esp her cover of 'walking after midnight')
- eva cassidy - she sings the great cover of fleetwood mac's 'songbird' in 'love actually'

i also added van morrison, norah jones, toots and the maytals, some selections from the amelie soundtrack, and 'the thomas crown affair', some 'she & him', some upbeat bluegrass and some alternative stuff like 'postal service', 'mgmt' and 'modest mouse'. feel extremely pleased looking at the genius playlists based off some of the above songs in the list in that they're exactly the mix of low-key, alternative and classic cocktail that i put together. more proof i know what i'm talking about (as if there was any question).

i published the songs that i could in an imix on itunes if you're so inclined to take the easy way out as well. :)

The joys of living in manhattan

My ipod died. It died once before and hearn revived it, but I think this is it. It was an 80 gig classic - I like having all my music on hand at any given time, but I don't think I'll be getting another classic. What's the over/under on how long I can wait to get a new one? a word to those considering placing bets - i don't leave home without my music and the faulty shuffle I'm schlepping around with isn't getting the job done.

Duane Reade is this horrible drugstore chain in the nyc metro area. I hate going into it, which is saying something bc I love drugstores. Can while away the hours in a suburban CVS with no trouble, but DR is another story. They smell, are disorganized and expensive and their
customer service sucks. I am not alone in hating them - the now defunct blog 'duanereadesucks' channeled the frustrations of other nyc residents. Lately DR (hereafter to be known as 'the evil empire') has been advertising flu shots for $29.99 all over manhattan. Believe you me, that is one place I would NOT go to be stuck with a needle, even with the accessible price and locations and the threat of flu. Hell no.

Friday night walking home from the play I was very thirsty so I bought a bottled soda from a street vendor in midtown. Cost me $3. And you can bet it wouldn't have been any cheaper at the evil empire.

--
Sent from my mobile device

occupational hazard

been having a bit of a hard time at work lately. i'm in charge of project managing a pretty big onboarding of a partner with a very complex deal that's requiring me to work with product, edit, sales, marketing, etc. and between the terms of the deal and everyone's own priorities, it's been pretty hard to get people to agree. and this is just internal - we haven't even told the partner what we want to do, which likely will result in more angry discussion, and meanwhile we're getting short on time.

last week was a really rough week - got beat up several times at work and a few disastarous meetings and by the time 6:30 on friday came around i was feeling pretty down. like go-sit-in-the-bathroom-and-breathe-for-a-couple-minutes down. had to cut myself off from work email and come home and give myself a pep talk since boxa's not around to do it for me. i also dug out the 'new mental toughness training for sports' for a bit of self coaching. not back to 100% yet, but working on putting things in perspective and regrouping for next week. 'stress is the stimulus for growth, recovery is when you grow'. i hope.

was really not in the mood to go see ashley's new musical as part of the ny music theatre festival after work last night, but i'm so glad i did! the show is called 'trails' and it's about two long-time friends hiking the appalacian trail together after living through lots of drama. of course we have an affinity for the AT, and really enjoyed it. the trail as a setting provided lots of opportunities to learn and grow and wrestle with demons while trudging through the woods. the actors and actresses were great, the music was fantastic and i def cried at the end. also found myself thinking a lot about a 'walk in the woods' by bill bryson - a writer from hanover who also starts out to hike the AT. the book includes lots of interesting tidbits about the trail and is a great description of what it's like to be a thru hiker. highly recommend both the book and the show - though last night's opening night was sold out and so is much of the run, but if you're in nyc might be worth a shot trying to get tickets. at any rate - congrats ash! so proud of you.

october and halloween decorations have to be the cutest things in the world. i keep seeing adorable things i want to buy even though i have no place to display them. halloween makes me wish i had a house in the suburbs with a porch to decorate and trick or treaters to buy candy for. must be careful here.

i lied when i said last week was the last weekend to lay out on the terrace, as this weekend has dawned sunny and warm, so i'm headed out to read magazines and tan. glad i haven't thrown out the chaise lounges yet. i guess this counts as indian summer after the cold snap of a few weeks ago, so i'm reposting some lines i like from the beginning of 'peyton place'

Indian summer is like a woman. ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay. In northern New England, Indian summer puts up a scarlet-tipped hand to hold winter back for a little while. she brings with her the time of the last warm spell, an unchartered season which lives until Winter moves in with its backbone of ice and accouterments of leafless trees and hard frozen ground.

One year, early in October, Indian summer came to a town called Peyton Place. Like a laughing, lovely woman Indian summer came and spread herself over the countryside and made everything hurt beautifully to the eye.
- peyton place

l (a leaf falls) oneliness

(a


le
af

fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness
- ee cummings

october

october:

“There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood --
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name. ”

if september feels out of place, october feels like it was made to fit exactly where it does in the calendar. day dreaming about carmel apples, corn field mazes, pumpkins on fences, swirling leaves and witches against the night sky. effectively word porn. and why is it that paper stores like 'papyrus' and 'kate's paperie' have such adorable festive holiday windows? i want to go in and craft everything. or buy decorations at exorbitant prices. well done paper store marketers!

spending a lot of time cleaning the apartment and tossing things out with the upcoming move at the end of the month. after five years of living in apts and almost three years of living in this one, with the same pictures and things on the wall, i figure it's time to make some real choices and hard decisions about what moves with me and what doesn't. like the next phase of my life kind of i guess.

i grabbed dinner on friday after work with celestia, and then headed to an apt party where ece and i shot gunned beers in the bathtub before we went to dylan murphys - our typical friday night routine. went to see 'the town' earlier today. a lot like 'the departed' but it was nice to have a dose of boston in nyc. i have a bunch of coupons that get me into movies for $7.50 at any time of day that have to be used up by the end of the year, so trying to take advantage of them and i rather like going to movies by myself. fortunately there are a bunch more that need to be used up.

old end of the world pop song '1999'. new end of the world pop song (and my current fave b/c it's stuck in my head, not b/c it's good): '2012' by jay sean. check it out.

had a glorious weekend weather-wise in nyc: clear and sunny. sat out on the terrace for what is probably the last nice day before i move and actually got a tan. the morning glories are loving the weather - more in bloom now (and until late in the afternoon!) than they ever were this summer. check them out.

spent a lot of the last few days debating whether i wanted to go down to dc this coming weekend to see the boy i met at kjbb's wedding. after lots of thought, and several drunken polls, i decided against it. i do want to see him but with the move and schedules things just weren't falling into place. we're going to have to be email buddies for a little bit longer.

lastly, did something new and different for me on wednesday when i had a date with a boy in nyc. we went to 'la biblioteca de tequila' - this fantastic tequila library in midtown that rowena had told me about. highly recommend - it's in the basement of a restaurant on 40th and 3rd. this turned out to be a problem when i was sitting downstairs wondering where the fuck this kid was for 30 minutes and he was sitting upstairs no doubt wondering the same thing. we managed to meet up eventually and had fun but it remains to be seen if the movie-like initial awkward first date will turn into a hollywood ending.