We've Been Made "Redundant"

I've blogged previously about the company that I wait tables for - Great Performances. My primary place of work is the cafe at the Asia Society Museum, which GP runs. I've been there almost a year. It's a really great place to work. Waiting tables can be a really horrible job. At many restaurants the management is awful, the push to upsell is ridiculous, the hours are long and tedious, the chefs can be tempermental to flat out crazy, sometimes the waitstaff create drama amongst themselves, tips can be pooled and whittled down to nothing, the work environment can be unsanitary... Waiters are often hired for their personalities and ability to sell, hustle and be competent and responsible and yet are subsequently treated like slaves. The best thing about Great Performances is, even though it is one of the largest food service companies in New York, it has a top down ethic of treating its people with respect. In my year with GP, I've been able to earn a decent living working with very nice people, in a clean environment, with excellent and unique food - in short, things that make the job easy. It's easy to sell food when you believe in it and the people who create it. It's easy to come to work, even to a somewhat menial job, when the hours are short, the money is good, the environment and clients are pleasant, the management is capable and willing to support you, and your fellow co-workers are considerate, reliable and fun to be around. Things are so nice at the cafe, in fact, that we just received a 3 star (highest possible) review in the vaunted Michelin Guide. And we just got fired from the Asia Society...

I showed up at work this morning for my usual Friday shift and was told there was a full staff meeting on the 8th floor of the building. The head of HR at GP was there as well as one of the top 3 in management of the company. I knew that couldn't be good. We were all informed that as of December 21, the GP contract with Asia Society was over and Asia Society had decided not to renew. GP would make every effort to absorb all of us into their other venues, it was no reflection on us, as all reviews in the trades in New York (even Boston), and all customer feedback were unanimously and fervently positive. "It was just a business decision." Apparently the Asia Society believes they can make more money if they run the cafe themselves. Later, the head of Events at the Asia Society met with us and told us all thanks for our hard work in helping build the cafe from nothing to the popular and well reviewed place it had become and that it was nothing personal but the Asia Society just made a business decision to go in a different direction. Whatevs. But then he went on to tell us that he himself had made the decision to not renew the contract, and that he was "really excited," that the transition was "going to be great!" and if any of us wanted to stay on at the cafe, he "couldn't promise" us anything, but he might be able to put a good word in for us... The man just canned 15 people and then stood in front of us and told us how excited he was about it. I've never experienced such a complete lack of people skills in my whole life.

Later, to add insult to injury, and in a perfect display of true (not Alanis Morrisette fake) irony, in the middle of the lunch rush, the Director of Communications at the Asia Society stands in the middle of the restaurant and announces to the whole place that the cafe just received the 3 star Michelin Guide review and encourages the patrons to "give a hand" to the management and servers at the cafe. There we all are, in mid-lunch rush, caught like deer in the headlights while our patrons clap for us, like it's a curtain call. It was awkward and embarrassing and a little infuriating, because - and here's the definition of real irony - the patrons were not in on the fact that those of us who had worked so hard to earn that 3 star review were fired that very morning. The Asia Society brought Great Performances in two years ago to build them a cafe from the floor up, and now that it has become successful, garnered great press, and gained an excellent reputation - despite the fact that the Asia Society did absolutely nothing to promote the cafe themselves - they now want to ride on that reputation, take all the glory and exploit the reviews we at GP earned and claim them for their own, and dupe the public by quietly changing management, service and food and still claiming to be the same place. The review of the Asia Society cafe that is in the 2008 NYC Michelin Guide will not represent or reflect the cafe that will be there in 2008. That cafe in the review will be no more as of December 21, 2007.

I'm taking this more personally than I thought I would. As the day progressed, the hypocrisy and shittiness of the whole thing just really started to build. First of all, I've never been fired before (especially en masse) and it sucks. Secondly, I'm worried about the kitchen staff who aren't from this country and have a lot more riding on a steady paycheck than someone like me. Thirdly, I wanted to be the one who made the decision where I'd work and not have it taken from me by someone who really doesn't even care how he's affected those of us he's fired, and is gleefully exploiting the reputation we all built so hard to build. I suppose it's part and parcel of the corporate world to let the people under you do the work and then take credit for it and profit from it. That's why I've never taken a corporate job, and hope to never have to. I know change can be a good thing. All it takes is a change in perspective. I know there are a lot of projects and opportunities that Ryan and I have waiting for us with our business. I know that I will not starve, even if I don't find another job right away. I know that there are a million wait jobs in NYC, and I know that I may not ever have to wait a table again. But those thoughts are for tomorrow. Today, it sucks to be fired.

Daisy is Looking Good!!

Let me take this opportunity to thank all of you who have been following the saga of Daisy and her belly. I am happy to report that, as of now, she has a clean bill of health from the vet and the surgeon. Last week was the first time Daisy had her e-collar off in two months, and needless to say, she's a very happy, energetic dog these days. She is also enjoying the unseasonably warm Fall weather we're having. She is sitting outside sunning herself in our side yard as I write this. The picture above was taken on our morning walk today. Ryan and I feel so grateful to have our dog back!!

When last we left you, the surgeon had sent Daisy's necrotic tissue out for biopsy. She had found no evidence of a hernia repair and had gone ahead and reconstructed Daisy's left abdominal wall after removing Daisy's mammory, fatty pad, and some necrotic muscle and skin on her lower left side. A couple of days later, the biopsy came back and showed minute amounts of extremely quick dissolving suture material. Therefore, it does look like the vet in Illinois did indeed perform a hernia surgery - and apparently did a nice job on the internal repair, because no scar tissue formed. What caused all of Daisy's troubles was the quick-dissolve sutures used in the initial hernia surgery, which are highly reactive. The quick-dissolve sutures are rather new and not widely used, and they can cause extreme allergic reactions in dogs - which is exactly what happened with Daisy. By the time we saw outward manifestations of her infection, it had spread from the site of her hernia repair all the way to the incision in the middle of the belly, and eventually ruined everything in its path. Thank God we had the repair surgery when we did, because the infection would have continued to spread and ruin all tissue in its path.

Obviously Daisy's surgery was quite extensive, and she was in a mountain of pain, which was incredibly difficult to deal with. Just touching her sent her into screams of pain. She had to be lifted in and out of the car, up and down stairs, etc. and for a couple of days it took Ryan and I about 30 minutes just to gear ourselves and Daisy up to handle any moving of her. Then we'd endure her screaming before, during and after handling her and she'd endure what I can only imagine was unbelievable pain, because she has a very high pain tolerance. Amazingly, within two days she was feeling much better and we took her off her pain meds - the vet thought she'd be a wreck for at least 3 or more days, but as I said, Daisy's tough. Ryan and I spent the week taking shifts with Daisy as she was not supposed to be left alone. Each of us called in sick to work at least once, but we were able to work it all out. We took Daisy to the vet this past week for a post-op follow-up. The only area of any concern at all is a strange lump Daisy has on her left side at the site of the second surgery. The surgeon is fairly certain that it is just a large lump of scar tissue since Daisy had such a radical surgery, but you can never be totally sure, so we are to watch it and make sure it doesn't swell or change. We've been watching it for about a week now, and if anything it's gotten smaller and it doesn't bother Daisy a bit when you squeeze it, so we think it probably is just some really ugly scar tissue. Plus, Daisy doesn't have the fat pad on that side to kind of disguise it - it just sticks right up under her skin. The surgeon said it will probably be about a year before the scar tissue settles. So Daisy has a wicked long scar down the middle of her belly and a big lump on her left side, but otherwise, she is perfect. Her activity level has returned to almost puppy proportions, she's eating well, playing with other dogs, interested in socializing with people again and just back to her old self. Hallelujah!

Again, I want to thank everyone for their thoughts, prayers and words of encouragement. I know that all that positive energy had a positive effect on Daisy. I'm sure she would give you a big old tail waggle of agreement. Thanks again, all!!

She's Not A Human, But...

She's still our baby. Daisy is our beautiful Beagle/Dachshund mix. She was a rescue dog that I found on the side of the road in Louisiana. She came to me with worms and fleas, and more seriously she was heartworm positive and anemic. She was also carrying a litter of puppies, but I didn't know that for a week or two. That first few months were crazy. De-worming, de-fleaing. Birth! Lots of vet visits, a surgery to get her fixed, a really intense treatment to kill the heartworms that left her pretty much apartment-ridden for a month. Daisy went through a lot of poking and prodding and discomfort for a while there, but within 6 months, we had her in perfect health. The vet felt that she was only about a year old, so getting her back up to speed meant helping to ensure a long, healthy life for her.

Last December, I took Daisy to the vet right after Ryan and I moved here to Astoria. The vet said that she had a fatty cyst on her lower left side and we should watch it to see if it grew. Fast forward to July. I had noticed that the cyst had in fact grown, and was a little concerned about it. I hadn't liked the vet I originally took Daisy to here in Astoria, and I knew that in less than a month's time we would be on vacation in Illinois to visit my parents. There is a vet in my parent's home town that I had taken Daisy to once or twice before for check-ups while the two of us were living our nomadic post-grad school life. I decided to book an appointment for her there while we were on vacay. I really wish I hadn't done that now, but hindsight is 20/20, and this vet seemed reputable and capable...

When we - actually my mom - took Daisy to the vet in Illinois, they determined that the fatty cyst was in fact a hernia. They suggested we schedule surgery. Being the responsible pet-owners/parents that we are, we wanted to have it done as soon as possible and therefore, we booked it at the Illinois vet for the upcoming week. She came home the day after surgery - the vet kept her overnight for "observation" - and she seemed fine. I was surprised that they had sent her on her way with no meds or collar, but I figured the vet knew what she was doing. They gave us a sheet that said "Don't let the animal lick the surgical area." Well, she's a dog. Of course she's going to lick the area, and without an ecollar, you'd pretty much have to stay awake 24/7 and follow the dog everywhere to prevent licking. And even then, the dog would probably get in a stray lick or two before you stopped it. Ryan and I woke up in the middle of the night, the night that Daisy came home, to the sound of her vigorously licking her surgical area. The next morning we woke up to the sound of her vomiting. We immediately rushed her back to the vet's office and another Dr. (who didn't perform the surgery) asked where her collar was and seemed a little surprised that she wasn't sent home with one. This Dr. gave us a collar and gave Daisy a shot to calm her nausea and we took her home. She stopped licking herself and her stomach settled, and all seemed well.

I got her home to NY about 4 days later, and noticed that the area around her incision was pretty red and raw. There also appeared to be a dark area below the stitches, but nothing changed from day to day, so I didn't worry too much about it. I found another vet here in Astoria online - both Yahoo and Google had really positive reviews of Dr. Hatzidimitriou's practice at All Pets Veterinary Care. (That's what I should have done when I first moved here because the reviews of the first vet I took Daisy to here in Astoria were abysmal.) I made an appointment to have Daisy's sutures removed at 10 days after surgery.

Daisy and I both liked Dr. Hatzi and her staff right away. I could tell that the Dr. was a little worried about Daisy's incision area. She made a point to tell me to keep an eye on it and to call her if anything developed. Which it did about a day after she got the sutures out. A huge blood blister formed at the base of the incision, and then it burst, and all the way up the incision, it began to open. I took her back to Dr. Hatzi who began to treat her aggressively with anti-biotics and a routine of warm antiseptic compresses that she had Ryan and I repeat daily at home. Dr. Hatzi asked me for the records from the Illinois vet, and when she got them, was alarmed that the Illinois vet had sent Daisy home from surgery with no pain management meds, no anti-biotics and no ecollar after surgery. She stopped short of saying it was negligent, but she's pretty old school, and I could tell by her disapproving brow furrow and tongue clucking that she was unimpressed with the other vet's work. She also wanted to know what kind of sutures the vet used in the surgery, because Daisy might have been having an allergic reaction to them, and knowing what they were would help her decide a course of action to take. Strangely, that wasn't recorded in the Illinois vet's notes - another thing I could tell Dr. Hatzi thought was less than professional.

This went on for about 4 weeks. We kept shuttling Daisy in to Dr. Hatzi, sometimes because her incision infection looked worse, and sometimes because it looked like it was getting better. Dr. Hatzi wanted to err on the side of caution, because it's expensive to perform surgery, and also it's hell on the dog, so we tried as hard as we could to achieve a medicinal cure for the infection. We switched up to a stronger more broad-spectrum anti-biotic, we took her in regularly so Dr. H could drain the pus, we continued the compresses twice daily. Our life revolved around Daisy's treatments and meds. We would take her collar off of her when we did the compresses to give her at least 30 minutes, twice daily, of freedom from it. We bought her baby onesies and cut a hole for her tail so that she could sleep in them and not have the collar on, but Daisy is apparently the Houdini of dogs and managed to slip out of it (fully snapped!) the very first night we tried that. We really worked it. Finally after a month, Dr. Hatzi and we had to admit defeat and Daisy had another surgery.

Yesterday was surgery number two. I took Daisy to the vet for the umpteenth time in 30 days. Daisy really likes the vet office. Lisa the vet tech and the nurse really make over her, and she meets other dogs and CATS! in the waiting room. The waiting room experience is a real treat for her. Then there's the exam room. She immediately cowers and lays on the floor when it's time to go to the room. I carry her back in there, she gets poked and prodded and squeezed. Then she blames me for the pain, and we go home where she won't look at me for a couple of hours. Yesterday, she got a couple of shots and was scooped away for surgery. I felt uneasy the whole day. This whole process has been so exhausting mentally and emotionally. I came home and just couldn't keep still. I rearranged the furniture and cleaned like a maniac. Finally it was time to pick Daisy up. She was in so much pain, she looked like a doped up, angry mess. The nurse went through the meds and treatments Daisy would need: pain meds once a day after eating, anti-biotic pill twice a day, warm compress 3 times a day. No walking up stairs, no jumping, no licking, etc. It was a long list. I couldn't help but thinking she looked a lot worse and there was a lot more post-op care than there was in Illinois...

The nurse then told me that they didn't just cut out the infection, they also did an exploration of Daisy's hernia to make sure it was holding, and that the sutures holding it weren't infected as well. I will quote her exactly here: "We didn't find any evidence of scar tissue or any remnants of suture material." I was dumbfounded for a second. Did that mean what I thought it did? Did the vet in Illinois NOT perform a hernia surgery?? It's only been 6 weeks - surely there would have been evidence of hernia surgery - those sutures take up to 6 months to fully dissolve. Could it have been a fatty cyst as the original vet in Astoria suggested? Did the vet in Illinois simply remove a fatty cyst? Is that why there was no record of the actual repair in the vet's notes? Did they charge us for a hernia repair and then keep her overnight to hide that they didn't really perform one? The DAY after she had surgery for the hernia (or so we thought) Daisy was running and jumping and generally feeling pretty fine except for the irritation of the incision. Today, she couldn't run or jump if she tried, and all they did was explore around her groin area yesterday, not cut into it. She's three times as swollen, she's on pain meds, and because they performed surgery, she's on anti-biotics to ward off infection. Is it possible that the vet in Illinois misdiagnosed a hernia, opened Daisy up, realized it was just a fatty cyst, removed it, sewed her back up and kept her overnight to hide that she had a minimally invasive surgery and was just fine, and then charged us for the original diagnosis? This would explain the no meds, no collar - because they performed a minor procedure that wouldn't necessarily require all that. But because they didn't give her anti-biotics and a collar, Daisy was able to lick the incision and she either got an infection that way, or got a staph infection at her overnight stay at the vet, or because she was allergic to the sutures - although she had NO problems at all with any of the suture material used when she was fixed 4 years ago...

At any rate, I know that something was fishy about what happened at the Illinois vet, and I am so upset and angry about it. Not just that they defrauded us monetarily, but more that they have put this poor little dog, and the two of us through emotional, and in her case physical hell. We spent $500 on her "hernia surgery" and another $500 to clean up after it. Dr. Hatzi's nurse was really careful to go line by line and itemize all the expenses for her surgery yesterday to make sure that I understood exactly what they were charging me for, and showed me corresponding notes and the biopsy, etc. because I could tell she felt like I'd been taken to the cleaners by the Illinois vet and she wanted to make sure that I saw that this vet was on the up and up. They even knocked off a couple of smaller things to bring the overall bill down - because they felt badly about the fact that we were having to pay for the other vet's screw up.

The worst part of all of this is Daisy is a little scared of me. I have been the one who's taken her most often to the vet and it always results in pain for her, so she's now associating me with pain. Which SUCKS. She's clearly traumatized. Today she won't accept food from me, doesn't want me to touch her - she screams when I come near her - and she looks the other way when I look at her. If I walk towards her - she leaves the area. I have to carry her on the stairs to take her walks and she literally screams the entire time I'm carrying her in this high pitched loud squeal that makes everyone on the street look at me like I'm a dog abuser. That's bad, but what's worse is that I will have to spend a couple of weeks rebuilding my relationship and the trust between Daisy and me. That and her physical pain are the worst parts of this ridiculousness. She's a dog, she needs to be free from the collar, she needs to be active and happy and playful, and up until this ugly episode, she has been. This is a dark time for Daisy. It's a bit like a person suffering from depression. She's very low energy and low interest. I don't know how people with sick kids get through it. This is just horrible. The worst part is you can't explain anything to a dog. She doesn't know why all these things are happening to her - she's just suffering. She may not be human, but she's our baby. And we love her so... We just want her to be well.

Jes Has Cool Hair

I'm kind of obsessed these days with "Rock of Love" on VH1. I know it's total trash tv, but it's really engaging and well done. And kind of hilarious. It's sort of like WWE wrestling - no one really believes that Bret Michaels is looking for real love on the show, nor that any of the girls really is that in to winning the undying love of a washed up 45 year old rocker who hasn't has a hit record in 15 years and wears more eyeliner than they do... But it's great to watch the ladies all bitch fight as if they really do.

Jes is my favorite girl. Because she has fabulous hair, a great attitude and is probably the only one who sort of gets the irony of the whole thing. Plus her commentary is incisive and always funny. And she's from Chicago. Chicago girls rule. She's got a great accent, too. And did I mention her hair? It's pink and platinum. She sometimes wears it up in a total punky rock faux hawk, and then sometimes smooths it down in a chic femme mullet. (I mean that in the best possible sense.) Anyway. Jes' hair is the bomb. If I were brave enough, I would totally do the same thing with my hair, but sub peacock green for the pink.

For the past several years, work and acting have prohibited me from having the hair that I really want to have. I've always wanted some pure rock and roll hair, but shows I was in, or jobs that I've held just weren't compatible with hair self-expression. I love hair color. I mean real color - red, blue, pink, green. And I love really artistic haircuts. Asymmetrical, choppy, severe - love 'em. But I've never really had one. So Jes is my hair super hero.

Recently, my friend Michael gave me a really awesome baby steps to rock and roll haircut. The front two inches of my hair is platinum, and the rest of my hair is darker blonde. It's noticeable, but not too radical. I love it. It's my own personal color statement that says "I'm a little unconventional, but not too much." And Michael gave me an asymmetrical bob. It's longer in the front than back, and longer on the left side than right. Just a little bit. Again, a little edgy, but not over the line. It's very cosmo. Again, I love it. I'm hoping that in the next year or so, my life will afford me enough freedom to take the next step to a really radical cut and color. But for now, I'm loving Jes' hair. And my own.

The Vacation is Burning! (Finally Some Relaxation!)

August 7, 207. After a large lunch at Pickelman's Pantry, the 6 of us decided to spend the night in Grand Marais, MI, which is located on the shore of lovely and tumultuous Lake Superior. We got the two last rooms at a hotel called the North Shore Lodge. It had old brown shag carpet and 70's wood paneling on the walls, but each room had two double beds and the hotel is literally right on the beach. It also boasts an old crappy indoor pool and hot tub, all for a mere $80/night, so we were totally in white trash heaven. Every time Ryan and I have gone to his cabin, he's brought us all to this beach. It has a huge breaker wall that is perfect for diving on days that the Lake isn't boasting 8' plus waves. Last year Ryan and I literally body surfed on a small craft advisory day. The waves were at least 8' and it was deliriously fun, if not a little bit scary. This year the Lake was a bit calmer, but warmer. At least 65 degrees, which is WARM for Superior. Animae and Jay and Michael's dog Opus - a ridiculously adorable Beagle - were romping in the water with us and chasing each other up and down the beach at break neck speeds. The sun was high in the sky and everyone else was hanging out on the beach. A great morning. But, where to go after check out at 11am?

The previous year at the cabin, the generator went kaput and we had to get it fixed. We took it to this town called Curtis which was a few miles south of Newberry. Curtis is a great little vacation town. As I remembered it, it had two lakes. I kept saying "We should go to Curtis because it has TWO lakes!" all morning and pretty soon everyone thought Curtis sounded just fine. So, we were off to Curtis, which we found out actually has THREE lakes - North Manistique, Manistique and South Manistique. We stopped at the log cabin general store in town and picked up some supplies and they told us where to look for waterfront cottages for rent on Manistique Lake. The entire coast of the lake alternates between private homes and little cottage resorts. The Red Cross was housing many of the displaced evacuees and fire fighters at these cottages, so we had a hard time finding vacancy. Finally a woman who ran a place that was at full occupancy suggested a place called the Buckhorn Resort. She said it wasn't fancy, but it was reasonable, run by a really nice man and most likely had a vacancy. So we gave it a try.

Eureka! Due to a cancellation there was a 3 bedroom cottage with bath and kitchen and living room, new grill, deck and use of a fishing boat with trolling motor available for $78/night. Say what!? And Scott, who runs the place, was just the sweetest man imaginable. He went everywhere on the property in a golf cart and talked in a slow, "easy does it" manner. He recently lost his wife, and spent his days taking care of the property and fishing. He seemed genuinely happy to have us city folk and our crazy two dogs on the property. We booked it for 3 nights. Strangely enough, the cancellation on the cottage was due to the original booker having a heart attack, and the person he got to replace him had to have hip surgery. I hope both of those gents recovered, but I sure am glad we got the cottage. Finally, some relaxation! Jay and Michael and I blew up the floaties that Michael brought - all of us were practically passing out from light-headedness when Scott came up and said "I got a compressor that'd make that job a lot easier..." Hilarious. Then we set them afloat on Big Manistique Lake. That's pretty much all I had wanted to do since we arrived in the UP. Float with my friends and a Molson Canadian and a book on the warm lake under the hot sun. And it was divine...

I didn't leave the property for three days. We played charades at night, woke up late, made breakfast, read and played with the dogs, floated in the lake and made a wonderful grilled dinner every evening. We all talked and enjoyed each other's company. It was abbreviated, but we did get some actual vacation in with our friends without any disturbances. The fire kept raging north of us, we checked on it every day on the fire hotline, and Ryan was able to get permission to go back and lock up the cabin. We checked in with Daisy and my mom in IL. Her surgery went well on Friday morning and she would be able to go home on Sunday morning. Everything seemed to be going just fine. Our time was too short, but great, nonetheless.

Saturday morning, we reluctantly packed up our stuff, had a last lunch together at Pickelman's again, and said our sad goodbyes. Shelly was coming back to IL with us, and the Boston Boys decided to take the scenic route home, all the way through Canada. So, each car pulled out of the parking lot at Pickelman's, the boys heading east, and ours heading west. We were all a little tanner, a little more relaxed and a little sad to see our time up north come to an end.

The Vacation is Burning! (Run For Your Lives!!)

August 6, 2007. Ryan's birthday. First thing that morning, Shelly called us to tell us that her flight to Detroit had been canceled. After about 20 minutes of us all freaking out, she was able to get a flight to Flint, MI later that afternoon. That was good. Flint is actually closer to the cabin than Detroit. Problem solved. We packed our stuff and Animae into the car, kissed Daisy, Grammi and Grandpa goodbye and headed off for MI. Somehow we managed to avoid Chicago Monday morning rush hour - maybe our luck was turning around!

About one hour south of Flint, while listening to NPR, we heard a local report that a huge forest fire was raging out of control in the UP. Uh-oh. In Luce County. UH-OH. 6 miles north of the town of Newberry. RUH-ROH, Scooby. Specifically along County Road 407... WHAT!? Short of giving specific GPS coordinates, that pretty much described EXACTLY where Ryan's cabin is located. So, Shelly was in flight, and Ben, Jay and Michael were in a car somewhere in Ontario on their way to MI and apparently the cabin was on fire. Ry and I spent the next 30 minutes trying to decide what to do, and what to tell our friends. Finally, we remembered we had the number of the lake resort across the 407 from the cabin. Ryan called there. They were still on their land and frankly seemed unconcerned about the whole fire thing, so we decided to just keep on truckin' and hope for the best. We picked up Shelly, got to Mackinaw City around 9pm and got some groceries, and headed over the bridge to the UP.

Around 11pm, we pulled into Newberry, MI. The air smelled like a huge campfire. Instantly, our hair, clothes and the inside of the car stunk of smoke. We stopped at the local Holiday gas station and the kid behind the counter told us that the fire was up to around 15,000 acres and he was sure we wouldn't be able to make it back to the cabin, especially at night (the pic above was taken from approximately where the gas station is, looking North). Several of the roads north of town had been shut down by the state police and DNR. We decided to try anyway. The road we were on was shut down going North, but we were able to turn onto 407. As we neared the cabin, the air actually cleared and the smoke was far less prevalent. This seemed hopeful. We got to the cabin - it was quiet and still, but all seemed well. Shelly and Ryan and I started unpacking the car and began the task of getting the cabin ready for living. Ryan's Uncle Bob lives in Newberry and spends a lot of his time living at the cabin. He's a pig. A complete and utter pig. His mess this year was particularly grand. I felt a little disheartened and Shelly, bless her, offered to work on the cabin while Ryan and I went to meet the Boston Boys in town to lead them back to the cabin.

We met the guys at the gas station in Newberry around midnight. They'd also talked to the gas station dude, and were a little concerned that we were possibly driving into our fiery deaths. We assured everyone it was ok and we all drove back to the 407. This time, just an hour later, the smoke had shifted and was pretty thick on the road. At one point, Michael said "There sure are a lot of bugs out tonight... Wait, that's ASH!" And he was right. Still we pushed on. When we all got to the cabin, we were all exhausted from hours and hours of road trip. We all stumbled around the property in the dark and looked at the lake. It was really low. The sky was really hazy. Definitely not like it usually is. But we were all really glad to be together, so we basically stayed up all night to celebrate Ry's birthday, and drink some of the duty free liquor Michael picked up at the Canadian border. We all fell asleep around daybreak, except for Ryan who took the opportunity to go fishing. Dude, when you love to fish, you love to fish...

About noon the next day, we all woke up to a large Chinook helicopter flying very low over the cabin. Within an hour, several helicopters and water planes had flown over, some with huge water and flame retardant buckets beneath. Michael, Jay and Ryan decided to head into town to get some more groceries and get the news on the fire. They left. Ben had coincidentally packed a book for the trip about forest fires, called "Fire!" by Sebastian Junger before he knew he was driving into one, and I perversely decided to curl up on my bunk and start reading it. Ben was reading another book on his bunk and Shelly took a dip in the lake. About 15 minutes later, I hear Michael's truck pull back in and hear Michael and Jay start yelling "We have to evacuate, pack everything, we have to get out NOW!" For a second I thought they were kidding, but then I realized there was no way they could have gotten to town and back in that amount of time, so they'd obviously been stopped on the way. By the time they got from the truck to the cabin, I'd gotten off the bunk and gotten dressed in like 20 seconds.

We all started grabbing things and throwing them into bags, suitcases, whatever we could find. Then I realized Ryan wasn't with Michael and Jay. They'd left him at the turn off into town because the cops there had tried to keep them from coming back to get us. Ryan had tried to explain the situation to get permission to come back and Michael and Jay had taken the "screw you" attitude and jumped back in the truck before they could be stopped by the authorities, who'd brilliantly asked them if they were the people who didn't speak English and had refused to leave their cabin when the evacuation order went out... Um, no. Apparently, the whole area had already been evacuated the evening before, and we'd cluelessly driven right into the evacuated area afterwards. And no one had known we were back there, because the cabin has no electricity, phone, etc. It's just simply not on the grid. As we packed, we noticed that planes were starting to buzz the cabin. One came in so low, it rattled the windows and sounded like it was going to crash into us. Obviously, they were trying to send us a message - one we'd been too thick to get earlier in the day, something like: "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, IDIOTS!!"

The next 10 minutes are sort of a blur. We were all very on task, but scattered. For example, I was very clear about getting Animae and her bed and bag of food in the car, but forgot her bowls and leash. I also realized when Michael announced that his car was full and the rest would have to be packed in Ryan's car, that I was going to have to drive Ryan's car out of the fire zone. Then the "Where are his car keys?" panic set in until I found them. I ran up and down the path to the car about 52 times, constantly realizing something else I forgot - the last being my purse with all my money, ID and personal effects in it. I'd actually started the car and was driving away before I realized I didn't have it. At one point I was panicking about how to close and lock up the cabin, until I realized that if it burned, it really wouldn't matter whether the door was locked or not. And even if the cabin didn't burn, we were likely the only breathing human beings that weren't emergency workers for about a 4 mile square area. So off we sped, about 13 hours after arriving. Along the 407, we drove past fire fighters in their yellow suits and hard hats setting up the fire line. The only others on the road were state troopers and electric company workers cutting the power lines so that the transformers wouldn't blow, should the fire burn that far. As we drove to the turn off to Newberry, we saw a beet red Ryan walking in his flip flops toward us. Abandoned by Michael and Jay, he had attempted to WALK back to the cabin. He was a little upset. And sun burned. But back with the tribe. So, here we all were. Between us all, we'd traveled approximately 7,700 total miles to get to the cabin, considering Shelly's origination point was Honolulu. We'd encountered numerous setbacks, but darn it, we'd made it, and now, we were all displaced in the UP. Just great. As Michael said, "What's next, locusts?"

The Vacation is Burning! (Daisy Has a Hernia)

August 3, 2007. Ryan and I slept in till late morning. Nice. Daisy had an appointment with the vet that afternoon. We had noticed a little lump in her bottom left mammary back in Dec. We took her to the vet in Astoria who told us it was probably just a fatty cyst and if it got any bigger, we should have it biopsied. I hadn't really liked the Astoria vet's casual attitude about it, so we decided to take Daisy to my mom's vet. Ry and I were going to visit Eddie that day, so mom volunteered to take Daisy to her appointment. Ry and I set off for Bloomington, IL and the Illinois Shakespeare Festival to see Eddie around 11:30am.

It's always weird to see an ex. I haven't seen most of mine since we broke up, but Eddie and I have made an effort to keep in touch. Over two years had passed since we'd seen each other. A couple of months ago, Eddie asked me to come see him at the Festival. He wanted to hang out with Ryan as well, which was cool of him, but also made the visit seem a little surreal. We got to Bloomington (my birthplace incidentally) around 1pm and decided to go to lunch. Ryan and I ordered a duck breast salad. Obviously we've lived in cities too long. We were both stunned when the salad came with deep-fried lumps of duck meat on top. Eddie had sort of warned us that we were brave when we'd ordered it...

Anyhoo, things were going along just fine when Ryan's cellphone rang. He excused himself from the table and came back looking a little, well, stressed. Apparently he'd gotten a call from my mom who very gaily (?) informed him that "Daisy has a hernia and needs surgery!" We finished lunch and got a cup of coffee with Eddie, but then we split in an effort to get to the vet before they closed to plan Daisy's hernia surgery. We had to cut our visit short, but I think Eddie and I might have been a little relieved, though. The first time you see an ex after a long time is a little strange. Hopefully next time will be more comfortable and without an emergency intervening...

Ryan and I booked it back to Sandwich, but missed the vet. On the upside, we thought we'd at least get another relaxing night on the barca-loungers, but my brother, called and wanted the two of us to join him and his girlfriend Wendy for dinner and bowling. Up until last year, my brother was the guy who was going to live in my parent's basement until he was 30 and never have a real job. Now he's out of the basement, owns a condo is Naperville, owns a Mercedes and he's still under 30. He lives with his super fashionable and hot girlfriend Wendy and their two dogs, Baby and Mocha, and is the No. 1 salesperson for Bebe in the country. Yes, that Bebe. And no, he's not gay. So, we headed to Naperville, and had a bitchin' good time with Jonathan and Wendy. I was kind of surprised when Jonathan wanted to go bowling, because he's not really the let's-play-a-game-that-requires-us-to-rent-shoes type. He's more of a Gucci loafers guy. The bowling alley was one of these new bowling alley/hipster lounges called Lucky Strike. They got 'em all over, I guess. We has such a good time, we were kind of surprised when they turned the ugly lights up and kicked us all out at 2am. We bowled until closing time. Good times!

The next day, we met with the vet who suggested Daisy get the surgery pretty quickly, as her hernia was pretty well ripped. We were supposed to drive up to MI on Monday, August 6, pick our friend Shelly up from the airport, and then head up to Ryan's cabin in the UP, but the vet could only fit the surgery in on the 8th or 10th. Either way, we'd have to drive all the way up to the UP only to turn around a few days later and leave our friends alone at the cabin. We called everyone to tell them, and pretty soon, they were all backing out. The guys didn't want to drive all the way from Boston for just 3 days of vacation, and Shelly was going to cancel her flight... Our vacation was turning into a disaster. Once again, Ma came to the rescue. She stepped in and volunteered to take Daisy in for the surgery on Friday and we would come home on Saturday when Daisy got back from the hospital - saving our vacation and giving Daisy a safe place to rest up for her surgery. I actually think Mom was pretty psyched about getting a week with her Granddog. She really needs a dog of her own. Or a grandkid. Or both.

We spent Saturday laying around recovering from our bowling night. Jonathan and Wendy brought Mocha! and Baby over to the parentals that night and we all got some pizza and watched a movie while all four dogs ran around like crazy. Then, Sunday night my parents took all of us out for Ryan's birthday dinner. We had a really nice meal and my dad was only slightly embarrassing. I had to keep reminding him to use his "inside voice." My dad enjoys making really bad jokes and then laughing heartily at them himself. It's pretty funny, actually, for all the wrong reasons. It was a really nice dinner, and I have to say, I'm really enjoying my family these days. It wasn't always easy growing up, but everyone seems to be in a pretty good place these days, for which I am very thankful. So, after a bit of a set back, we were ready to set sail on Monday morning for MI. Problems behind us... Right?

The Vacation is Burning! (The Road to IL)

August 1, 2007. So, we slept in a few hours later than we'd planned, but we were up and moving by 9:30am - I mean it was our first day of vacation, right? We took care of our last minute business, packed the car and went to pick up Animae, our friends' dog, in Brooklyn at 11:30am. A mere 3 HOURS LATER we actually cleared the Lincoln Tunnel on the Jersey side. Another hour later we'd woven our way through the Jersey traffic and were finally on the open road at 3:30pm. About 4 hours later than we'd planned. We'd hoped to get around 700 miles into our nearly 1000 mile trip the first day, but it was becoming apparent that that wasn't likely to happen. Somewhere in the middle of PA, I became obsessed with getting as far as we could that night. I guess I felt the success of the entirety of our vacation depended on our progress that first day. Meanwhile, Animae, a Boston Terrier, starting making these amazing high-pitched squealing noises in the seat behind me. The dog was literally having multiple mini-breakdowns/freak-outs. Understandably so: she got removed from her house by some guy she only peripherally knows, and then shoved into a car with another dog who actively disliked her (bad Daisy!), and a woman she'd only met once before (me). Neither of her mommies were anywhere to be seen... You can see how that might upset a dog.

At around 5pm, we were listening to our XM radio and news of the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse hit the airwaves. Pretty maudlin stuff to be listening to on a cross country road trip... Made us VERY aware of every bridge we crossed. Finally, we stopped at a hotel outside of Columbus, Ohio at around 12:30am. We'd been in the car for 13 hours and we'd only managed to travel a little over 500 miles. We paid like $100 for a crappy Red Roof Inn motel room which had an air conditioner set to "meat locker," one less pillow on the bed than it should have, and we discovered we'd forgotten to pack our toothpaste. The only thing on tv was more of the bridge collapse. Animae started full on freaking out and whining and squeaking like she'd swallowed an actual squeak toy. Neither dog wanted to eat their food, but they both wanted to eat the other's food. All of us were hungry, cold, and sullen. Ryan was mad at me for pushing us on an extra hour and a half and making him miss "Rescue Me" which he'd planned on being his reward for a hard, long day of driving in insane traffic...

We spent the night shivering under a thin little blanket while Animae kept running over us on the bed incessantly. Ryan kept getting up to put her back in her bed and discovered that Daisy had taken over Animae's bed as a show of her alpha doginess. Neither of us got very good sleep and at 8:30am we were back up again and pushing on to IL. We stopped to get coffee and ended up throwing out 4 cups of coffee from two different places - apparently iced coffee in Ohio translates to: a sugary milk suckee with a splash of coffee. GROSS. Ryan and I got into a fight over throwing away an empty cup in a trash can in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's - uh, what? We got onto the road and didn't speak to each other for two hours (a first for us under any circumstances).

Around noon, the I-70 turned into a parking lot about 35 miles outside of Indianapolis, and more tragically, just one mile, ONE MILE!, from an exit with a Starbuck's. I decided to check the atlas for a possible alternative route and Ryan ventured to cut the silence by asking if there was another way. We used a police highway turnaround and drove back 18 miles to the previous exit that connected to a parallel smaller highway - great idea! That apparently every 18-wheeler in the vicinity also had... 2 hours later we'd crawled through about 5 little Indiana towns, each with a population of about 500, with our trucker convoy. Finally we found a Starbuck's and got a decent cup of joe and walked the dogs. It was hot and humid and turning to late afternoon. Again, on day two, we were extremely behind our projected travel time. But the coffee tasted good and the dogs started socializing. Ryan and I realized that this was our vacation, we were together, we had no obligations outside of caring for the cute puppers frolicking in the grass, and we were traveling to spend time with many of the people we love the most...

We got back on the road and decided to head to my parents. We called Eddie, who we'd planned on seeing that afternoon, and told him we'd see him the next day because the roads were conspiring against us. It took almost 5 hours to get from Columbus to Indianapolis (175 miles) and only 3 1/2 hours to get from Indianapolis to my parent's house (230 miles). It's always great to go home to mom. Especially when you have a Midwestern mom. They take momming seriously. Ryan always says my mom reminds him of Mrs. Poole from "The Hogan Family" (aka Grace, the Secretary from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"). I guess she sort of does. All I know, is as soon as we got there, I finally felt like our vacation had truly begun, and peace and relaxation followed.

For one night at least.

The Vacation is Burning! (Prologue)

I've been AWOL for awhile, I know. My Aunt Margaret and a few others expressed a desire for more blogs, so after a summer off, I'm back, with a longish tale about our summer vacation. I'm going to split it into sections, and roll it out over the next few days as it's kind of a doozy. So, today I give you: "The Vacation is Burning! (Prologue)."

As some of you may know, since we've been together, Ry and I have taken a yearly vacation to his family's cabin in the UP of Michigan. It's always a good time - quiet, serene - a place and time to let the rush and bustle of the city drift away and reconnect with nature and each other. We take Daisy and let her off the leash. We swim, play cards, listen to country music on the radio. Ryan fishes. We grill and read books. That's about it. On these trips, we also make time to see each other's families. Everyone lives in the Midwest, so we try and see as many people as we can over a two week period, which means we get to drive the circle tour around the Great Lakes region each year. There's only so much time, and there are always people we want to see but miss. It's a lot to fit into two weeks, but we give it our best shot.

This year, we planned our vacation as such: we would leave NYC on August 1st, picking up our friends' dog, Animae, in Brooklyn on the way out of the city and make it half way to IL that day. Our plan was to get to a hotel in time to watch "Rescue Me" that night. Then we'd push on to IL the next morning, see my friend/ex Eddie at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, then get to my mom's late the night of the 2nd. We'd planned to stay with the parentals and see some family over the next 4 days, and then drive the morning of the 6th to MI to pick up our friend Shelly from the airport in Detroit. Then the three of us would drive to the cabin, arriving early that evening (Ryan's Birthday, actually), where we'd meet up with our friends Ben, Jay and Michael who were driving from Boston to spend the week at the cabin with us. We all were to spend a relaxing week at the cabin, with Ryan and I taking a day or two to visit with his sister, brother-in-law and nephew who were also up in the UP on vacation that week, then I'd hitch a ride home to NYC with the Boston boys on the 12th and be back at work on the 14th. Ryan would stay another week in MI with Shelly, and spend a few more days with his family, including his dad, and then drop Shelly off at the airport, and come home alone with Animae on the 18th. This way we'd get to see just about everybody. Easy Shmeasy, right? Well, let's just say pretty much NOTHING happened as we planned. I'm going to break this thing down into 4 parts: The Road to IL, Daisy has a Hernia, Run for Your Lives, Finally Some Relaxation! Hope you enjoy it!

BAM Good!

So, like at least 80% of artistically inclined New Yorkers, I wait tables part time to pay the bills. It makes sense, because it takes a minimum of your time and provides maximum money. By that, I mean you can live on it. Even in New York, because like everything else in New York, eating out is horribly expensive, which means bigger tips. I'm not saying you can raise a family of 4 and own property on a wait staff salary, but you can keep the lights on, keep food in your belly and pay the rent on time. I work for a cafe at the Asia Society Museum on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side. It's lunch only, but I still make more than I've ever made anywhere else waiting tables. And it's pretty easy. Lots of support staff, cool management (see Bobby Miranda, I told you I'd mention you in my blog!), a great menu, nice clientele - UES ladies who lunch, museum patrons, Asia Society staff, neighborhood locals and of course, tourists - but the type who come to NY to see Sasanian Art, as opposed to the type who want to find the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company... Anyhoo, it's a good job, in a beautiful environment - our cafe is a glassed atrium designed to be an Asian meditation garden, complete with live trees growing inside - and I average 22 hours a week which pays my bills and leaves me time to pursue the other slashes that I do.

The company that runs my cafe is called Great Performances. They also run several other high-end museum/art/cultural center cafes in NYC. Our sister cafe is at BAM - the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Our cafe is only open from 11-4 and BAMcafe is only open from 5-8, so sometimes, our staffs will pick up shifts for each other when needed. My first shift at BAM was last night. If you're going to see a performance at BAM, you should definitely check out the cafe beforehand. It's got a full bar and full dinner service served in the Gillman Opera House lobby, which is gorgeous! The menu is yummy, the wine list is great, and obviously the service is fantastic. The craziest thing about it is, as a server, you get there at 4pm, eat a staff meal, and then you set up the space. By 5pm the cafe opens... And no one comes in. I had one person from 5-6pm. The other waiters kept telling me, "Just wait until 6pm!" At 5 till 6pm, I got another table. I took their order and entered it into the system. When I turned around, I had 4 more tables. At the same time. Then my other 3 tables got sat, and at 6:10pm I had a full section who all wanted to order at the same time, get drinks at the same time, get their food at the same time, get dessert and coffee at the same time, and pay their checks at the same time. It was like serving one big table with 22 people at it. CRAZY! And suddenly, it was 7:25pm, the bells were ringing to let people know that it was almost curtain for their shows, and magically, everyone got up and left. 7:30pm - it was over. Another 30 minutes of settling up the cash and checks and by 8pm, shift over, out the door and on the train! And I made pretty good money, too, since the average check was over $100 (drinks, appetizers, dinner and dessert/coffee). WOW.

This is another thing that amazes me about New York. People eat out all the time. In my previous "Happy Passover" post I mentioned that no one, not even the rich, have functional kitchens. And people pay a lot of money to eat out. The company I work for is particularly good at installing semi-permanent food venues in convertible spaces. Sort of a hybrid between catering and restaurant food service. They find a needed niche and really exploit it - and I mean exploit in the nicest of terms. I mean, I'm grateful for it - I made an average of $50/hour last night and was home before 9pm! You can't beat that.

Now, I don't want to wait tables forever, it's hard work. Lots of running, lots of details - people get pretty picky about their food... But this city has a lot of really unique ways to earn money. It's just another example of New York's possibilities. Which opens up time to explore all those other NY possibilities! Like taking a class, auditioning, writing a screenplay, running your own business... Crap, I gotta wrap this up, I've got a lot of stuff to do today!

Movie Magic!

While I worked Easter Brunch yesterday, Ryan and our friend/collaborator/DP/business partner Renzo Spirit Buffalo shot the final shots of Ryan's short film, "Billy." Ryan conceived of, wrote, stars in and produced the short. I helped him brainstorm about it, held a boom, schlepped a few bags and produced, largely in name only. This was definitely Ryan's labor of love. Our friend Larry Tobias appears in it in an HILARIOUS turn, and he helped shoot the inside shots. Ryan's friend Elizabeth Durham also appears in it, and is wonderful. The whole thing cost about $600, but it looks like a million damn dollars. It's a simple story, well told by good actors and a DP who made every single outside shot look like it was shot on a $250,000 camera. It doesn't hurt that Renzo has shot big studio feature movies on $250,000 cameras before...

Anyway, all that's left to do now is post-production: editing, music, titles. The stuff Ryan does at work every day. I think he'll probably have a rough edit within a couple of weeks! His first movie. Our production company's first personal project! As Ryan said at our wrap dinner celebration last night - "My whole life I've dreamed of making my own movie, and now I've done it!" I'm SO proud of him. He had an inspiration for a character about 4 months ago, and now he has his first short film shot and ready for editing. He believed in it and made it happen: on his days off, after long days at work, before long days at work - whenever he could steal some time. He borrowed cameras, rented equipment, got friends excited and involved in the project. He schlepped all around the city, asked for favors, bartered trades. Whatever it took, he made it happen. The power of the creative spirit and the determined will. There's still a lot of work left to do, but the hardest part has been completed, the rest is just lovingly laying it out on a timeline and letting it tell its story. And then, of course, marketing the hell out of it. Creativity meets the real world! As the movie progresses, I will document it here!

Happy Passover

About twice a month, I work for a nice little catering company called 2 Peas and a Pot. It's run by two chefs, Lauren and Phil, who also happen to be a couple. They are really cool and fun to work for and we always have a good time at the dinner and cocktail parties that they cater for their upscale Manhattan clientele. Some of the clients are crazy - after all, it's Manhattan, and the clients all have money. Some of them have money and no manners, or money and no taste. For example, a Rockefeller (yes, as in THE Rockefellers) didn't tip the waitstaff, nor did the philanthropic widow with 15 Matisses adorning her 5th Avenue apartment's dining room wall. Nice. Other clients are low-key, fun and fabulous. You just never know who you'll be working for. It's also cool to see the inside of luxury multi-million dollar Manhattan apartments. No matter how large and lavish the apartment, the number one most common denominator in all these places is that every one of them has a small, inconveniently laid out kitchen - proof that no one in Manhattan cooks.

Last night, I worked a Passover Seder for a family in Soho. Their apartment takes up an entire floor of their building. I've worked for them before. The husband is either a partner at a large legal firm, or a high-powered investment banker. Don't know, really. He's a cypher. He completely ignores the "non-essential" people - I don't know that he's ever said anything to me besides, "I'll have a gin and tonic." Otherwise, he looks through me like I'm invisible. It's a little disconcerting, but I treat him the same way, so it's fine. The wife is a former speech writer for the Clinton administration turned Manhattan housewife, complete with the late-fertility child accessory, pill addiction and laundry list of philanthropic events and parties she participates in. I wouldn't say that she's horrible, but I wouldn't call her nice, either.

Anyway, the chefs were not working last night, they had their own family Seder to attend, so they prepped the meal and dropped it off, and it was my job to basically do the final food prep and serve it with another waiter. The plan was, we would arrive at 4pm to begin food prep, guests would arrive at 5pm for an hour of hors d'oeuvres and cocktails, and then dinner would be served buffet style at 6pm. At 4:30pm Natalie, the other waiter, and I had been standing in front of the building for 30 minutes when the nanny returned home with the child and kind of casually asked us if we were the help for the night, and let us in. The hostess didn't arrive home until 4:45pm. The first guests started arriving early at 4:50pm, asking for food, which wasn't ready yet, and drinks which hadn't been delivered from the market yet. The dinner was supposed to be for 15, and I immediately noticed that the table was set for 20. Right off the bat we are short on food, and late on prep - non of which was our fault. What a mess.

Around 5pm, the hostess announced to Natalie and I, "I hope this won't be a problem, I hate to even mention this because people just get so weird around celebrities, but we will be having celebrity guests tonight - Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts. Please just be yourselves and don't gawk." Coincidentally, I've already worked a party where Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts were in attendance. This is New York and I cater waiter, lady. I've seen it all. I've seen Victoria Secret models doing blow and throwing up in 23rd Street Armory bathroom, ok? The hostess went on to say, "I really feel that the famous should just stay in their own circle, but they're my husband's clients and they have no Seder to go to on Passover, so I HAD to invite them, I couldn't turn them away..." How gracious of her.

As expected, all anyone talked about after the celeb couple arrived was them. Naomi had no makeup on, had her hair pulled back in a ratty unwashed ponytail, and looked really cute, but normal, by the by. Liev hadn't shaved. In days. Frankly, they both looked like they'd rolled out of bed late that afternoon just in time to make dinner. They brought cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery for dessert. Naomi had to use the bathroom like 5 times - she's in her second trimester of pregnancy. Liev asked me for horseradish and when I found it for him, he was thrilled. I think it may have been his favorite moment of the whole meal. It was pretty surreal to be standing in someone's tiny kitchen and have a film actor of international renown come in and ask you for a paper towel because he'd dropped a glass of water on the rug in the living room. By the by, Natalie and I were the only people at the party who didn't gawk at them, and Liev and Naomi were hands down the most down to earth, gracious guests at the party. The hostess, who was so concerned about "the help's" reactions to being in the company of greatness, proceeded to put on a three hour show while they were there - playing adoring, gracious hostess-with-the-mostest, and Manhattan Power Wife. It was pretty hilarious. She even made her kid sing for them. I'm sure she spent all day today telling EVERYONE she knows how she had Liev and Naomi over for Passover, and pretending that it was a real hassle to have them show up. Whatever. She ate it up like kugel.

My Worst Nightmare

Just read this little number from the NY Times. It's the second item in the article. Rats on trains - the classic combination of one of the best things about NYC and the absolute dreaded worst aspect of NYC. (See my previous post on "Trains" for more rat/train action.)

Real Estate

I'm obsessed with real estate right now. I've been living in apartments for a very long time, moving from place to place, and always imagining what I WOULD do with the apartment if it were mine. Take out a wall here, paint the room a bright not-even-close-to antique white color, put some new flooring in, etc. All things I can't actually do as a renter. Right now I'm dying to put down a white laminated wood floor and take out a door in our current apartment. Not going to do it, but I'm sure I'll obsess over it the whole time we live here.

In the last apartment - the UES apartment - we had to do about $750 in improvements just to tolerate it. It was a horrible place. The floors were 2 inches lower towards the middle of the building, so everything ran down hill. The kitchen floor had vinyl flooring held down with DUCT TAPE, over a lumpy, uneven tile removal. We scrubbed the crap out of it and put rugs over it so we never had to look at it again. The bathroom floor tile was so disgusting, I covered it with press 'em tiles so I'd also never have to look at it again. We scrubbed until our skin cracked and bled, and what still wouldn't come clean, we painted over, including the pepto-abysmal pink bedroom and kitchen - ??? We used paint as a cleaning agent, caulking agent and repairing agent. The kitchen cabinets and countertop were starting to sink toward the middle and due to numerous leaks in the 100 year old pipes, they were starting to rot a little, too. It was a total rathole (somewhat too literally - the week before we moved out I found two rodents fighting over the garbage in the kitchen - eww!). It was the only apartment that I imagined torching for the insurance money if I owned it, and our rent was $600 more than the American median mortgage payment. Gack!

Our Astoria apartment is pure Grandma retro. Wood panelling, for reals. But it's really clean, has pretty good light and everything works. It's rodent free and the rent is cheap. It may not look as good superficially as the last one did after our ghetto rehab, but it's a million times more solid underneath. But it's not ours and never will be. We're priced out of Astoria already, which stinks. So, I keep web searching for what we can afford. It's amazing how many neighborhoods in NY we can't. The entire island of Manhattan, for instance. Conversely, we can afford half the apartments in the Bronx, none of which we want. There are only about 4 nabes left in Brooklyn in our price range: Sunset Park, Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach and Bay Ridge. Great water views, but WAY out there. We'll probably stay here in Queens because there are a lot of neighborhoods we can afford here, and many of them are actually less than a day's long commute to the city. I exaggerate, but seriously. Bay Ridge?!? You need a passport to get there, don't you?

The NY Times has a great real estate section online - you can look at all the pictures. Ryan made me stop looking at it and come to bed around 2am on Friday night. Like I said I'm obsessed. I can tell you exactly what $240,000 will buy you in Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, Woodside, Flushing, Corona, Bayside, Forest Hills, and all of the above mentioned Brooklyn nabes. Some of them, not much. Others a lot. I'm ready for a piece of the American dream. Even if it comes in a 550 sq. ft. package. At least it'll be mine. And I'll be able to paint it whatever color I want. Besides, who wouldn't want to live in a place called Sunnyside??

The Glory of Wash-N-Fold

I hate laundry. I don't know why, but doing laundry to me is just about the worst chore imaginable. I'd rather scrub the toilet than do laundry. At least with scrubbing the toitey, I get a sense of satisfaction when it's gleaming and smelling good. Laundry just sucks. There's the lugging of it to the mat, the loading the washer, the unloading the washer, the loading the dryer, the unloading the dryer, the folding, the lugging home, and then the putting away... Ugh.

Once I had an apartment that had a washer/dryer in it - that was a little better, but I still hated it. Instead of lugging 40 pounds of laundry to the mat once a week with an Us mag and a Dr. Pepper, I did multiple loads throughout the week at home, which made me feel like the live-in washerwoman. But no matter how onerous it was, I always did my own laundry, except for those rare times when I visited home and my ma did it before I could. (Bless you, ma!) The thought of someone else doing my laundry seemed like a luxury that only rich people who had "help" could afford. Then, I moved to New York.

Since moving to NYC, I've done my own laundry less than 10 times, because I discovered the glory that is the Wash-N-Fold service. I'm sure they existed in the other cities I've lived in, but nowhere else are they so prolific, so prominent. At my old apartment in the Upper East Side, there were two within half a block of each other - I didn't even have to cross the street to get to them. There was also a laundromat right next door to one of the Wash-N-Folds on our block, and for the first week or two after I moved I did my own laundry there. But one hot July day, after lugging 40 pounds of dirties down 4 flights of stairs, I just didn't feel like spending 4 hours in a stiflingly hot laundromat watching Spanish telenovellas on the mat tv, so I walked one door down and for the first time in my life, dropped my laundry off for someone else to do. It cost $0.65 a lb. - $26.00 to drop off the clothes, turn and walk away and not worry about it again until I had to pick it up the next day. Wow. What a bargain!! It would cost me almost $20 for me to do all that laundry myself, and in old machines that never seemed to get the smell out of Ryan's t-shirts no matter how much detergent I used.

The next day, I went to collect my laundry from the Wash-N-Fold. Like magic, the two HUGE bags I'd dragged in were now two tidy sized plastic wrapped cubes. When I got them home and opened them, the smell of freshness filled the air, and all of the clothes were folded into precise, tight little squares that let me fit about twice as many things in my drawers, which is a big bonus when your apartment is the size of a bread box. I knew right then and there, if at all possible, I would never do my own laundry again. A mere 30% differential in price for 100% freedom - delightful. Then I found out that my Wash-n-Fold picked-up and delivered... I never took advantage of that, because it was such a delicious, delightful thought, that it almost seemed perverse. I might go to hell if I indulged in that.

Over the course of the next year, Ry and I tried several of the Wash-N-Folds in our UES neighborhood. We'd evaluate them on price ("Wow, I found one that only charges $.55/lb!"), smell ("Hmmm. Not quite as mountain fresh...), fold ("Look, I can LITERALLY bounce quarters off this shirt!"), and turn around time ("Dude, they want 24 hours to do those 6 loads, who do they think they are!"). In short, we got spoiled. And it was GOOD. Manhattan is hard, and anything that makes it easier is GOOD.

When we moved to Queens, life got a little easier, and I thought I'd take the high road and go back to doing my own laundry. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, right? I was shocked and pleasantly amazed to find that it costs about half as much to wash and dry a load of laundry at the laundromats here, and like Manhattan, we have about 6 laundromats in a two block area around our apartment, so proximity isn't a problem. Again, I spent about two weeks doing our laundry before I once again realized that I HATE doing laundry. HATE it. So, I'm back to dragging 40 pounds of dirties to the neighborhood Wash-N-Fold. Strangely, the one thing that isn't cheaper here in Queens is the price of a lb. of laundry - it's around the same $.60-.65 here. Probably because no one really wants to do it, unless they're properly compensated for touching your dirty underthings. Makes sense. The only difference is that in this neighborhood, the Wash-N-Fold is run by a Latino family, and in Manhattan it was a Vietnamese family. Both can make laundry smell like flowers and fold clothes so tightly, they seem to defy physics. God bless them.

Trains

I'm totally in love with the NYC subway. It was one of the first things that I enjoyed about NYC. Being able to just catch a train in your neighborhood and take it, with a few transfers, just about ANYWHERE in the city is so amazing to me. I've lived in other cities with public transportation - New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee. The pub trans systems in these cities vary in their quality and usage. Chicago's CTA has fantastic coverage of the city and on the grand scale of things, is pretty efficient and affordable. Detroit, the Motor City, has a joke of a system, as you could probably guess. The powers that be, when designing the city, decided encouraging people to take mass transit was encouraging them to reject the very industry that made the city what it was, so the only train in Detroit, the hysterically monikered "People Mover" (thepeoplemover.com) is like the train of the same name at Disney's Tomorrowland - it just takes you on a continuous loop and only tourists ride it. The Streetcar in NO was nice. I took it to work every day and it cost a buck. But there's only one line left, and it only goes up St. Charles and Carrollton and back. There's a bus named Desire now, no streetcar. I never took public trans in Milwaukee - I think it just has buses. Someone I worked with got mugged while waiting for a bus in a generally safe neighborhood about 2 weeks after I moved there, so I walked or drove everywhere for the 10 months I lived there.

I hate buses. I will do just about anything to avoid a bus ride. Not sure why. Probably due to the fact that I've had bad experiences on buses in every city I've lived, except for Milwaukee in which, as per above, I never rode. The fact that there isn't a subway under Central Park still steams me. I'd really rather walk through the park than take the Crosstown bus. HATE it! Ryan, my fiancé says it's irrational. It makes perfect sense to me. Why ride a bus when you can take THE TRAIN.

Since moving here, I've taken nearly every train line somewhere. Even the infamous G, which everyone in NY calls the Ghost train since you almost never see it. They sometimes stink, they're often crowded, on the older unautomated trains you can rarely ever understand the conductors' announcements or if you can they're at ear-splitting levels... The trains are delayed a lot, and sometimes, like the 7 train on the weekends until the middle of April, they don't run at all, forcing you onto (I shudder to think) a Shuttle bus. Some of the lines have cars that are so old, you feel like you just walked onto the set of 1979's "The Warriors" upon entering them. But I love them.

When I lived in Manhattan, I lived off of the 4/5/6 (Green) line. All the trains are new on the 4/5/6. The announcements and doors are operated automatically and they have digital read-outs that show you what the next stop will be and what the current time is. The computer voice that announces the stops is soothing and set to a comfortable volume level. The cars are, relatively speaking, clean. But for some reason, the cars are narrow. Very narrow. AND, the East Side of the city only has one train line, as opposed to the 3 on the West. Friday afternoon in a 6 train is like taking a joyride in a sardine can - smelly, wet and extremely crowded. But the 4/5/6 trains run pretty reliably and they aren't always packed...

Now I live off of the N/W (Yellow) line in Astoria, Queens. The first time I took this line, I got on the wrong train. I was trying to get to Flushing. I got some instructions on hopstop.com (a treasure for anyone living in DC, Chicago, NY, Boston, or SF using pub trans) which told me to take the R train to a dreaded bus. Hey, I was a newbie - now I know you take the N/W to the 7 to get to Flushing. Duh! But, I was ignorant. Really ignorant. I got on the N instead of the R and as soon as we cleared the East River, the train miraculously rose up, up, up right into the daylight. I'd taken the R to the Queens Target before, so I knew I wasn't supposed to be above ground. But what a sight - just like my hometown El train! Here I was on an elevated train, looking out on the sun-dappled graffiti filled urban landscape that is Long Island City.

The big joke was I was on my way to a work assignment as a cater waiter, and as always happened to me when they sent me to Queens, I got lost. Every trip to Queens for the first year I lived here involved me getting lost, calling Ryan and asking him to look up where I was on Google maps and asking him to help me get unlost. He was my ghetto GPS. I got to the job just a little late, after taking the train all the way to Astoria (my first unintentional visit to my current beloved nabe!), getting a kind bus driver to literally take his bus PAST the end of his line (the first good experience I ever had on a bus - although the engine on it died and he had to pull over and restart it about 4 times) to drop me off at the walking path at Flushing Bay on which I literally ran a mile to the jobsite. Anyhoo, I digress.

I've taken trains at all times of the day and night. I've gotten lost, missed my stop and wound up in the wrong Borough and had to go back, I've gotten shut out from stations by using my unlimited MetroCard at the same station twice in under 10 minutes (don't even get me started on that one)... I walked 7 miles round trip to work during the MTA strike of Christmas 2005 in the bitter cold. I've watched urine roll back and forth across the floor of a train. I had a rat stand right next to me on the 53rd Street station platform while waiting for the E train on Thanksgiving morning, like he was waiting for the train, too. I've been harrassed, panhandled, yelled at by crazy people, pushed, hit up to buy candy about a million times... I've waited an eternity for a train to come - like "I could've walked home in the same amount of time" long, and yet, I love the NYC subway. I wish it could take me everywhere. I could write a whole blog entry on the brand new N trains... Maybe I will!

Qboro or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

It occurred to me this past Friday night, as I was rushing through the Times Square station transferring from the N train to the 1, that like it or not, I am becoming a NEW YORKER. It was a stunning discovery, one that's been creeping up on me for the last couple of months. January marked the official 18 month anniversary of my moving to New York and I have resisted and fought the notion of becoming a New Yorker with all my might. I am a nice Midwestern girl with Midwestern manners, values and folksy charm (or so I'm told - especially by New Yorkers: "You're so NICE!").

I've watched New Yorkers on the streets for the past 18 months, and the one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty about them, is that they are an ANGRY bunch of people. Ok, I generalize, not all of them, but a LOT of them are angry. A lot of the time. About a lot of different things. None of which really matter that much. But, it's not their fault that they're angry. Here's why - Manhattan is an island. A small island. And 3,000,000 people live on it. Several million more commute to work to Manhattan everyday, as well. Needless to say, it gets a little crowded. And as we all saw on the national news a couple of weeks ago, it's not the cleanest place in the country, either... (Anyone up for some Kentucky Fried Rat?) Manhattan is smelly, it's cramped, it's loud, it's dirty and everyone's personal space is invaded on a daily basis. You can spend entire subway rides lodged in a stranger's armpit (I'm looking in your general direction L train). Facing this first thing every morning can make people... uptight. Venomous, really.

Oh, and did I mention that Manhattan proudly proclaims itself to be the most expensive piece of real estate on the planet? It is exactly the crazy lack of space that drives up the prices on everything in Manhattan to the point where even a stinkin' apple at your dirty, dirty neighborhood Gristedes is at about a 200% markup compared to the rest of the country. You think I'm exaggerating? Then you haven't lived here. Anyhoo. All of these things led me to mentally distance myself from the place I was living. New York was where I lived, but it sure wasn't home. And I sure as HELL wasn't a New Yorker.

So... why did it dawn on me, as I juked and zigged and zagged my way through the teeming throngs Friday night in Times Square station, that I am becoming a New Yorker? That's what I will be exploring in my future posts at this very site! If you like it, bookmark it and come back and visit. Tell your friends! If not, thanks for dropping by for this one time only visit. Nice to have you. Don't forget your umbrella, it's by the door there. For the rest of you, see you in a day or two!