should i stay or should i go now

was reflecting that if i were to turn this blog into a book i think the title would be something along the lines of 'should i stay or should i go now: a twenty-something's love/hate affair with manhattan'. apartment hunt/general indecisiveness continues but i've been here before and come out okay. in the words of shakespeare in love, 'strangely enough it all turns out okay. how? i don't know, it's a mystery.'

• finally dry cleaned my trench coat - something i'd been meaning to do for weeks but the weather wasn't cooperating (ie i kept needing to wear it). it's a great feeling when you finally accomplish that stuff. pick one thing each day or in a weekend that you've been putting off and tackle it. it will do wonders for your spirit.

• went to watch my cousin's lacrosse game on saturday at columbia. confession: despite having a grandfather, a father and two cousins who played lacrosse, i have no idea what the rules are. it was wicked cold out there - seems nyc has forgotten march is in like a lion, out like a LAMB - but i managed to get sunburned. people are asking me why i'm so tan. it's b/c we were huddled in the sun desperately seeking warmth for 4 hours. the last time i was that cold i was in a crew shell. the columbia men's baseball team was warming up at the next field over to shania twain's 'man i feel like a woman'.

• i have an interview on wednesday that kind of came out of the blue. got contacted by a recruiter about a role so i took the meeting, thinking that it'd be good to see how my background fit for future bd roles but not expecting anything. turns out the role is actually a pretty good fit, so off i go. some days i feel like life stretches before me with no possibility of change in site, and i forget how quickly things can change so that you're looking at a radically different scenario with little to no notice. but in the words of 30 rock, 'you can't fight synergy - it's bigger than all of us'.

• my grandparents gave me a little sign when i graduated from high school that says 'see the possibilities'. it's been hanging in my room on the cape ever since - i haven't ever given its meaning too much thought, but it really is true. 'life is short but it is wide'. there are a lot of possibilities. and i think i'm going to bring that sign back to nyc.

went on a country music binge:

• 'are you gonna kiss me or not' - thompson square. 'are you gonna kiss me or not/i think you know i like you a lot/but you're about to miss your shot/are you gonna kiss me or not'
• 'incredible machine' and 'every girl' - sugarland. their new album is great!
• 'knee deep', 'colder weather', 'whiskey's gone' - zac brown band. 'knee deep' is with jimmy buffett and 'colder weather' is a great sad ballad.
  
• 'country girl', 'it probably always will' - ozark mountain daredevils. they sing one of my favorite songs 'if you wanna get to heaven' and i'm enjoying their deep cuts too.
  

10 blessings

been stressing a lot over the last couple days about what to do next. my sublease is up at the end of may and i need to decide how to move forward. signing another year lease makes me nervous, but most people seem to want that (or at least the apts i've looked at so far) so i've been doing a lot of hard thinking.

i've also been reading my new favorite blog 'altucher confidential' by james altucher. not entirely sure what his story is, but it seems he's had fantastic success and devastating failures and a couple of interesting stories along the way. i like his approach to life and one of his main points is count your blessings (another is to write write write). it sounds kind of cheesy (but that's what i do!) and i'm sure none of these will be revolutionary to anyone but here goes:

• that i was born in the united states of america - been thinking a lot about the quote 'there but for the grace of god go i'. something i can't take any credit for, was just lucky enough to end up that way. life would be very different if i was born in some of the other countries in this world

• that i have an incredibly loving and supportive family - have to say that family is one of the most, if not the most important thing in my life. without the lessons and experiences my parents and siblings have given me i would not be who i am

• that i have an incredible group of friends - have friends (guys and girls) that i still know from my first few hours on earth (okay our moms were friends but we were in playgroup together early on), as well as preschool, middle school, high school, college and post college. genuine people who i can lean on and share a laugh with, as well as have adventures as we figure out life.
  

• that i live in one of the greatest cities in the world - i may not always love it, but getting to live here and make it my own has been amazing

• that i have a place to live in this city - especially on a night like this where it's hailing snow i'm grateful to have a safe, warm place to sleep

• that i have a job i don't hate and actually kind of enjoy - so many people are unhappy with their job situations that the fact that i don't dread waking up for work seems like a blessing to me

• that i am physically capable of going to the gym even if i don't make it every day - watching my grandmother struggle to walk a few months ago really made me realize i'm not always going to be able to run, play kickball, swim, etc. better enjoy it while i can.

• that i am in relatively good health - mental and otherwise - i am basically a happy, easy going person and my health issues are minor. never something to take for granted.

• that i have experienced romantic love, both giving and receiving - i have been blessed to know what it means to love someone and to be loved. it's much easier to have faith and find again when you know what you're looking for

• that i have an appreciation for music - music is one of the most important things in my life. 'without music life would be a mistake'

1o blessings and i could go on but worth thinking about.

saturn's return

from wikipedia:

In astrology, the Saturn return is a phenomenon which is described as influencing a person's life development at 27 to 29 or 30-year intervals. These intervals or "returns" coincide with the approximate time it takes the planet Saturn to make one orbit around the sun, i.e. 28½ years. It is believed by astrologers that, as Saturn "returns" to the degree in its orbit occupied at the time of birth, a person crosses over a major threshold and enters the next stage of life.

The first Saturn return is most significant because it represents the first test of character and the structures a person has built his life upon. According to traditions, should these structures be unsound, or if a person is living out of touch with his true values, the Saturn return will be a time of upheaval and limitations as Saturn forces him to jettison old concepts and worn out patterns of living. It is not uncommon for relationships and jobs to end during this time of life restructuring and revaluation.

But the Saturn return is not all about painful endings. During this time astrologers note that goals are consolidated and people tend to gain a better vision of where they are going in life. There are added responsibilities and a person may reap the rewards from his hard work. Many major life milestones seem to happen around the ages of 29 and 30. This is why astrologers believe that the 30th birthday is such a major rite of passage because it marks the true beginning of adulthood, self-evaluation, independence, ambition, and self-actualization.

just saying . . .

Morsels

(As opposed to tidbits)

• There are lots of delicious food options in Chelsea Market but some are off the beaten path and kind of hard to find out info about. To that end, I discovered today that Lucy's Whey in the market has grilled cheese - fig and cheese, cheddar, ham and mustard and cherve w shallot confit - for $6 - $8 a piece. Today I tried the fig and cheese - delicious! Perfect for a rainy day and they take credit cards. I'm in love.

• Went to the Mermaid Inn last night w Celeste for their Lobsterpalooza. They also do 'Happy Hour and a Half' - oysters for $1 a piece until 7. Great deal and I can't wait to check out their oyster bar in the West Village. They have an oyster iphone app as well! Search 'Oysterpedia' in the App Store.
  

• Friday after work I went to the Standard Beer Garden to take advantage of the temporary summer-like weather. I've wanted to go for awhile, and it's only a few blocks south of my office. You buy tickets at the door ($8 a piece) and exchange them for beer, pretzels, even oysters inside. They also have ping pong tables and a photo booth downstairs. Definitely one of my new favorite places to hang out.
  

• And on a non-food related note, I love colorful, fun lingerie but it really isn't practical. Hot pink lace doesn't stay hidden under most shirts.

--
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march madness

hello friends! happy friday. i'm so looking forward to a weekend with only a few things on the agenda. the feeling of freedom when you walk out of the office on friday night and the whole weekend stretches ahead of you is awesome.

participated in st. paddy's day festivities last night with some folks and acquired a green plastic corona hat while walking to the bar in murray hill that will come in handy for saturday's st. paddy's party. during st. paddy's in nyc, as with other big events, it really feels like the entire city is out celebrating. the empire state building was lit up with green. i went for a run along the hudson before heading out the bar and there was a group of girls with green wigs and striped socks walking along the promenade. everywhere you turned yesterday people were celebrating. incidentally, had not run along the hudson since we lived in chelsea four years ago and was super psyched to discover pier 25 is opening this spring with miniature golf, beach volleyball courts and plenty of area for sunbathing!

dartmouth men's hockey is playing cornell in the sem-finals of the ecac tournament tonight and it's being broadcast on tv, so i'm meeting up with some dartmouth folk to watch the game. it was a chafe to try to find a bar that would show the game during march madness - i literally called every brother jimmy's in the city - but finally duke's near union square agreed to put it on. i have a dartmouth shirt in my bag, ready to put on so we can be the obnoxious alums in a bar for a reason that is not beruit/pong related for once.

i've been on a super type a kick lately - taking care of business like nobody's business - so may continue on that this weekend - cleaning, photo managing and bill paying. sunday celeste and i are going to try out the mermaid inn's lobster dinner special. cody and i tried this place on tuesday - it is a super cute new englandesque bar. i had a fantastic cod dish and they give you complimentary chocolate mousse and fortune telling fish! the lobster special sounds fantastic and i don't just mean the name - lobsterpalooza. very much looking forward to that.

been an influx of new music lately - liking:

allstar weekend - 'it's not your birthday' - disney channel band that's poppy and upbeat
jlo - 'on the floor' - 'grab someone and drink a little more'. so catchy
space cowboys - 'boyfriends hate me'
nelly furtado - 'night is young'
akon - 'stay down'

also got a kick out of this 'romance: the resume' (inspired me to think about my own romance resume) and 'what your favorite classic rock band says about you' from mcsweenys. i have not actually done cocaine off a copy of the hobbit but it was good for a laugh.

coming to america

was waiting to do this post until i could manage to add the pictures from the event, but i'm going to type it up and (maybe) add them in later.

'coming to america' by neil diamond has been my current favorite song for much of the last 4 days (it was recently booted out of the top spot by the new jlo song 'on the floor' but if had posted this like i meant to on monday it would still be my fave) because of our trip to the statue of liberty last saturday (henceforth to be referred to as the SOL)! you may recall that i purchased said tickets back in september after reading an article that the SOL would be close starting in november 2011 for renovations and i figured i'd better get on it.

when i looked up the tickets to go up to the crown (go big or go home) i discovered that january 2011 would be the next time you could go up on a saturday. this is because they only allow 240 people up there a day. christine and i decided that no one wanted to be traipsing around in january so we'd go in march. ergo - our trip.

turned out to be a beautiful early spring day, so we scored on that front. the tickets themselves are not expensive - $15 including the ticket to the crown - they're just limited and there are lots of security points to go through and waiting in line. but trust me - it's so worth it. we were so frickin excited and displaying so much enthusiasm that not one, but two different park rangers commented that we must be from the midwest. or iowa. i don't think they get a lot of single late-20 year old women touring the statue b/c everyone was thrilled to talk to us.

the ticket you can get allows you on the island, which in itself is pretty cool, but if you want to go inside, up to the pedestal/in the museum, or to the crown, you have to get these reserve tickets. make a note of that would-be tourists. it's 354 stairs to the top of the crown and the majority of these stairs are spiral in a double-helix (designed by eiffel a good 10 years or so before DNA was discovered. pretty impressive). i was deathly hungover from our night out at the dead poet and wasn't sure i was going to make it as the spiraling factor was giving me vertigo and it was freaking hot, but finally we did. the crown is this small platform that can fit about 5 people on it at one time. you literally go up the stairs, across the platform, take some pics, and down again. but i will never look at the statue the same way again.

it was incredibly patriotic, particularly when coupled with ellis island (you get both for your ticket price) - ergo the 'coming to america' bit. ellis island was super cool - they had surprisingly good cafeteria food and the dining room was festively decorated for st. patrick's day. the tables and chairs that you eat at are replicas of the ones they had back in the day. it's a beautiful building - it won 3 awards at the 1900 world's fair - and was recently restored in the 1980s - but it is just so fricking cool to stand there in the room and think about all the people who passed through to start their lives in america.

it's definitely an all day affair but i would highly highly recommend that everyone do it. great experience.

we also scored tickets to the boston jimmy buffett show for $30 earlier in the day, thanks to the live nation iphone app. it was a winning day all around.

stream of consciousness

• it's supposed to rain like whoa in nyc tonight. this is sort of problematic b/c it rained like whoa on sun in dc and blew out my umbrella. i do like it when it rains though because my apartment has a roof right next to the window and i can lie in bed and listen to the sound of the rain on the roof.

• how much do you love the new britney song 'til the world ends'?
  

• been running around doing dartmouth club stuff this week. at this rate i'm doing a dartmouth thing every other week at least. good thing i love doing it. tuesday was the monthly board meeting and last night i was the moderator for an author on book tour at the borders at columbus circle in nyc. the book is called 'suits: a woman on wall street' and the author wrote it as her thesis while getting her masters of liberal arts at dartmouth. i volunteered to moderate b/c it's good to get practice doing these sort of public speaking events in low pressure environments. i was super nervous beforehand because it was open to the public, but it went well and people seemed happy and i was glad i'd done it. 

• aside from taking care of business this week i have been going to bed at a reasonable hour every night and waking up incredibly glad to not be hungover. 28 so far is a strange mix of 'wow i'm so old' and 'really you're not that old. you're in your late 20s, you have zero responsibilities and can stay out all night and sleep in until 8 so live it up.' so far the old side is winning. i woke up this morning so excited to have nothing in particular to do tonight and no traveling to do until may. (will likely get restless and go somewhere in april but for now am glad to be staying put for a bit).
  

• the hulu plus iphone app is my new favorite thing. it's $7.95 a month and you can access it on your phone, computer and tv. not having cable, or a computer that works so i can stream hulu for free, this is the most amazing thing ever and totally worth every penny.  it also has almost all of a show's catalog on it so i started watching 'family guy' from the beginning and watched 4 episodes of 'law & order svu' on my phone during my trip down to dc last weekend. as vin's brother said - i will never be bored again. one complaint - it doesn't have 'greek' on the iphone (computer only)! i guess i have to rent them on itunes to find out what happened during monday's season finale (sniff).
  

growing older but not up

greetings friends from the other side of 28. the big 2-8 was yesterday - thanks to everyone who called, facebooked and emailed to send bday wishes. spent the weekend down in dc with lingley and got to dance and eat ice cream cake - so i was pretty happy overall. they're a little closer to spring down there - actually saw some daffodils and crocuses - which was a nice change from the blustery and cold weather in nyc.

am a little reflective as i always am when a milestone occurs - so far 28 sounds older than 27 - and when i think about where i was last year and all that's occurred it's a little crazy. i frequently feel that, in the words of mary engelbreit, life is just so daily and that things will never change from what they currently are, but whenever i look back on the year or even the last three months i can see that's both not true and that sometimes things can happen very very quickly. 'everything can change and it usually does'.

my big birthday event was high tea at the plaza a week or so ago. tea at the plaza was on my new york bucket list (as is the statue of liberty - taking care of that with christine this wknd) so i rounded up rowena, mulley and ece and off we went. we went on a sunday afternoon so all of us were pretty hungover but it was held in the palm court and we ordered the new york tea with black and white cookies and cannolis (complete menu here) and just enjoyed being a little dressed up and treating ourselves to an enjoyable afternoon and delicious food and drinks.

had a nyc bday event at rudy's on thursday night as well. rudy's is one of my favorite bars - super divey, cheap and free hot dogs. lots of folks came out to help me celebrate, did beacoup birthday cake shots and blew out candles stuck in a hot dog. friday morning my mouth tasted like the shots and hot dogs. oh my. sunday we went to brunch in dc which turned into a very boozy brunch when the bartender gave us captain morgan and apple juice (money quote: it's like drinking christmas) and the nice couple next to us at the bar sent me a double patron shot at 1 pm. yes i threw it back like a champ. tonight we're doing the lobster dinner special at 'ulysses' that vin and i like to do with rowena as a final celebration. while the sunday bday is a little weird in terms of day of the week it does provide a really good reason to spread the celebration out over a couple of days!

in other news - was exceedingly hungover for tea due to the fact that the ivy league track championship was in nyc a couple weekends ago (aka 'heps') so we'd been out with the track alums at the hairy monk that saturday night. when i walked into the room someone goes 'this bar is full of speed and athleticism'. and it was. it was also like shooting fish in a barrel. was running game with at least 3 different guys at any one time. amazing. ended up hosting ahallification and an undergrad on the track team in my apt on sat night due to the fact they claimed they had nowhere to stay when the bar closed. for the record, it is possible to share my lofted bed with another person, i just wouldn't recommend it if you don't want to break the number one rule.

so! am back in nyc for a couple of weeks at least. need a break from traveling for a bit before the summer travel season heats up in may. am moderating a book discussion on wednesday night for the d club and then christine and boxa are in town this weekend. never a dull moment.

mwah!