October 26, 2004
Yay MT-Blacklist!
Some of you noted the recent deluge of comment spam in my blog. I was receiving 75-200 comment spams every day. Spammers, aren't you ashamed of yourselves yet?
Anyway, I was spazzing on getting the beta version of MT-Blacklist correctly installed, but finally got it straightened out today with some help from helpful geeks (actually it turned out that Movable Type itself wasn't installed exactly correctly). Spam problem solved! What a relief. What would we do without Jay Allen to help us shield our blogs from the tsunami of commercial gibberish? No, thank you, my penis does not need enlargement, nor do I want any cheap Levitra. Be gone!
October 23, 2004
Last Day in New York
Well, that was pretty stinking fun.
After a cloudy week, the sun finally came out on Friday. It was perfect for a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, a walk through Koreatown, then lunch with Andrea. I spent the afternoon walking around the garment district, browsing the discount clothing shops. Then I tried to visit the observation deck of the Empire State Building, but the wait was more than an hour and I just wasn't in the mood to stand around like that. Back to Brooklyn!
Pete and I met up with Shelley and Peter at Half for wine, then accumulated three more pals over at Great Lakes. You'll notice in the gallery that the pictures taper off along with our ability to hold the camera steady! Great Lakes provided an excellent selection of single malt scotches, and I almost forgot to stop tasting them.
Fortunately, the stumble back to home base was only two or three blocks long, and at 1am, I was the first to leave the bar. Those other peeps were nonfunctional the next morning, while I was merely lethargic. I took my time packing for my return, and watching Pete's digital cable TV over toast and tea.
Bruce was nice enough to meet me at SFO and ride BART with me. It sure is nice to be back in my nice home! I ♥ed NY very much, but I think I prefer San Francisco. It's prettier, the pace is mellower, the weather is milder, and it's closer to wild green spaces—but it also has much of the same cosmopolitan excitement. Plus, my cat and my bike are here!
October 21, 2004
Autumn Leaves
I wanted to know what the countryside looks like around here, so I took an all-day train trip up the Hudson River Valley, from New York to Ticonderoga and back again. Apparently the autumn leaves are mostly past their peak, but I still got to see a wide spectrum of vivid colors and idyllic scenery. I failed to capture many decent photos, though; it's hard to take good pictures through the window of a moving train on a dark, cloudy day!
I got off at Ticonderoga and found minimal station facilities: just a one-room building, bare except for a bench. So I walked around in the vicinity of the station, smelling the vegetation, stomping in the mud, watching geese on the river, watching deer in a pasture. I didn't see a town to speak of. I sat down and ate the sandwich I'd brought. The return train was half an hour late and it was cold, so I was happy to get on board again!
I picked someone to sit next to who looked like a nice man, and he turned out to be the highlight of my day. Donald was coming from Montreal to visit his niece and her family in Harlem. As it turns out, he rides a bicycle everywhere and once ran the first organic grocery store in San Francisco, so we had plenty to chat about, punctuated with short bouts of reading or napping. By the time we arrived back at Penn Station, we were good pals. We parted with Euro-kisses and I returned to Brooklyn feeling my day was well spent.
October 20, 2004
Walkabout
I hate it when I forget to wear my watch. I keep glancing at my wrist, expecting it to inform me of my position on the time continuum, and instead I'm shocked to find it bare. I can always pull out my cellphone to get the time, but it's not the same. But I was halfway to Manhattan when I discovered I didn't have my watch.
I walked a lot today! Walked through Central Park from 57th Street to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Walked all around the enormous museum, seeing a little of everything. Walked down Fifth Avenue, then Madison Avenue, then Park Avenue, peeking at the fancy clothes and jewels in the shop windows. By the time I got to Grand Central Station five hours later, I was a little too tired to enjoy being jostled in the vortex of travelers under the celestial vaulted ceiling.
Fortunately, it was time for some refreshment! Andrea, Sarah, and their pal Matt led me to Los Dos Molinos, an authentic New Mexican restaurant that kicks ass. It's popular, so we enjoyed relaxing drinks at the bar while waiting for our table. Our food came quickly, and they don't hedge on the chilis! I had to eat my tamale slowly to give my flaming mouth chances to cool. Yum! We had all worked hard that day and felt well-rewarded with good food and good company.
October 19, 2004
Lower East Side and Chinatown
Yesterday was perfect, but today was dark and wet. A perfect day to learn depressing facts about tenement life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries! I took the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's "Piecing It Together" tour, about the living conditions of garment workers.
The tour takes place at 97 Orchard Street, a 20-unit building built in 1863 and unoccupied since 1935. All of the rooms are tiny, even by city standards, and each apartment often housed multiple, extended families. I learned many things:
You can take a virtual tour of 97 Orchard St. I saw something surprising in the Rogarshevsky apartment. Hanging above the stove was a mass-produced picture from the 1910s of a moonlit castle on the Danube, identical to one that I inherited except that this one included a boat on the river. You can see it here by rotating the view until you can see the stove and the oval-shaped picture above it.
The rest of my day consisted of an aimless walk around the Lower East Side and Chinatown, randomly shopping and sampling tasty foods. During the hour and a half I spent in Chinatown, I only saw one other white person; it's not at all overrun by tourists like San Francisco's Chinatown. It's the most ethnically uniform neighborhood I've seen here so far.
October 18, 2004
Sewing Geek
There are two things I'm terrified of forgetting to pack: my tweezers and my hairdryer. Sure enough, I left my hairdryer behind. D'oh! I'll just have to be frumpy-headed. Fortunately, today I've shed that "all the locals think I'm a dork!" feeling. Nobody is paying any attention to me anyway, which suits me very well.
I hooked up with Andrea today at Hunter College, where she's toiling away in the MFA program. Well, "toiling" might be an exaggeration; she gets to spend her days making cool-looking stuff in a hive full of other grad students who are making their own cool-looking stuff. I got to see her studio, where little plastic army men are her latest motif, and some of the studios of her fellow art students.
We set off for the garment district so that I could buy some fabrics to send home. Why does San Francisco have no such thing? We have one high-end fabric store, several Discount Fabrics stores that aren't really very discount, a bunch of random little fabric stores with limited selections and dubious prices, and Darlene's for inexpensive samples and marked-down designer fabrics from last season. There's too little competition and no real wholesale outlet. New York's fabric stores rival the Los Angeles fashion district, though I saw surprisingly few faux furs here compared to LA.
I scored two huge shopping bags full of fabrics and trims. Trims are more expensive than fabric; I spent about a third of my budget on some gorgeous trims. After scoring a few useful fabrics here and there, we hit the jackpot at Mood, two enormous levels of reasonably-priced fabrics—including a large selection of the sweater knits I'd been hoping to find for my winter wardrobe. Those are all but impossible to find in SF, so I was very pleased.
Before we knew it, we'd been shopping for over three hours and it was almost time for Andrea's evening class. We enjoyed a quick dinner at Burritoville; I ordered the Holy Molé Burrito, which is enhanced with bitter chocolate. It competed pretty well with our San Francisco Mission District burritos! I might have to have that burrito again....
October 17, 2004
No Sleep Til Brooklyn
Waking up at 5am is ass. My eyelids were still glued together when Kragen kindly dropped me off at SFO. But hey, 5am Pacific Time is a reasonable 8am Eastern Time. I figured I'd do myself a favor and resist napping on the plane. Instead I watched two movies and crocheted most of a scarf.
I am a self-conscious tourist; I don't like to attract attention in public. At home, I see tourists every day; their maps give them away. On Muni, in the passenger seats of rental cars, and standing on the curb, they stare at their maps, wondering how to get to Chinatown or Fisherman's Wharf. Clueless and oblivious to anything but the map, they look so conspicuously vulnerable. They wouldn't even see me coming if I decided to stroll up and konk them on their hairsprayed heads with my bike lock.
So after some brief refreshment on arrival in Brooklyn, I sprang into action while trying not to advertise my ignorance. I strode up to a Metro ticket machine and firmly mashed the touchscreen until it spat out a seven-day unlimited pass. On the platform, I anxiously read every sign in my vicinity—with my peripheral vision only. And though I couldn't stop thinking, "Am I really on the right train? I don't know where I am. Maybe I'm heading away from my destination!" I maintained a languidly jaded demeanor designed to convey that I absolutely knew what I was doing. Phew, I managed to get where I was trying to go with no problem!
Upright Citizens Brigade is my favorite comedy troupe, and they have their own theater in Manhattan. Most of the performances are by their comedic protégés, but ASSSSCAT 3000 features protégés plus the original group every Sunday. Tonight they were also joined by Horatio Sanz and monologist Todd Hanson of The Onion. ASSSSCAT 3000 is almost two hours of random improv, hits and misses but mostly hilarious. Only those with advance tickets get seats; almost half the audience stood in the back or sat on the floor.
What I really would have liked was to see one of Matt Besser's solo shows, but alas, his schedule and mine did not coincide this time. And apparently he lives in LA now (why?), soon to be joined there by Matt Walsh. What does it all mean?
October 13, 2004
NYC Next Week!
For no particular reason, I've never been to New York. "You've never been to New York??" my friends gasp. I guess everyone in San Francisco has been there! Heck, I know a good half-dozen peeps who live there, mostly in Brooklyn. Finally I decided that this situation needed fixing, and I bought myself a plane ticket. I'll be in NYC this Sunday through the following Saturday. Yay!
Already I have many plans that will keep me busy all week long. More about those next week, when my plans are actualized. Meanwhile, here's a list of popular sights I intend not to visit in NYC:
I feel like I've already seen it a thousand times. Also, I was the Statue of Liberty, for Halloween in the seventh grade. Been there, done that.
Yawn.
I do not care about baseball, not even a little bit.
The department store experience has become tiresome to me.
Super mad props to Pete, who is generously lending me his apartment while he's jetting around on business! His place even has a pre-installed cat that I can hang out with whenever I miss Sasha. Like any good houseguest, I'll also be trying on Pete's wardrobe, re-arranging his furniture, shouting obscenities at the neighbors, and attracting attention from Homeland Security. Cause that's how you get invited back again!
October 8, 2004
Baby Shower
Now my blog can catch up on recent events!
Last Sunday, Renee and I threw a baby shower at my place for Colby and Hilda. It went remarkably well considering the mad, last-minute rush to convert my disease-ridden apartment into a sanitary, festive venue. On Saturday the housecleaners were working hard while Renee and I went shopping for decorations, a piñata from the Mission District, an array of beverages, and ingredients for cupcakes.
The cupcakes turned out especially well: strawberry cake with butter cream frosting and little plastic babies on top. Yum! The piñata was fun too--except when Renee got hit in the mouth with the stick! Colby and Hilda got stocked up with a big pile of gifts. I was working on mine, a crocheted, hooded baby blanket with a tassle on top, up until two hours before the party--whew! I happen to know that a few more gifts will be trickling toward Colby and Hilda in these last weeks before the birth. And, as godmother, I'll constantly be on the lookout for more baby gear.
I did not succeed in capturing good photos of this event, but Rick did!
October 7, 2004
Flu Is A Bitch
The reason it took me so long to get around to fixing my broken blog was that I got sick. Overall, I was sick for about a week. Like, really sick, with a nasty flu.
I'm talking about a 103°F fever, copious puking, violent coughing, the loss of my voice, and general incapacitation. Extremely unpleasant! But what many people don't realize is that flu symptoms are not caused directly by the virus; they're your immune response to the virus. Coughing, barfing, and fever? Good! Your body is expelling the virus from your lungs and stomach, and burning it out of every other corner of your body, all part of its mission to make you well again. In a sense, these symptoms are signs of vigorous good health.
An episode like that sure reminds me to appreciate my health. It feels great to be back on my bicycle again, feeling my strength returning. It's very convenient to have my voice again. I'm looking forward to returning to the gym. It even feels good to be back at the office, performing all the functions of a productive member of society. And our housecleaners have removed all trace of disease and madness and returned our apartment to a state of cheerful order.
Alas, my roommate did not fare so well. His flu persisted for weeks, eventually developing into full-blown pneumonia with major complications. We all hope he recovers quickly and completely!
October 7, 2004
Return of The Smartablog!
My blog is now fixed. Well, 90 percent fixed; the comments were not recoverable, but I did salvage all my entries. All is well again!
October 5, 2004
Reconstruction
I'm rebuilding my blog from scratch. Thank you for your patience!