Overheard in NY

Overheard today at Starbucks: "So I just don't wanna talk about any of this money financial shit today, okay?"

Random Dude, I hear ya.

Oh, the places you'll go!

I've been freelancing/writing full-time (er, unemployed?) for about six weeks now, and I've more traveling since than I think I ever have. No place to be at 9am?! I can go to IKEA! Or get a delicious bagel across the street! See the sights! Like, you know, Court Street! Jog along the promenade! Look at me, I work from home!

Much to my mother's delight, I also went "home" to Pennsylvania for a week and a half. The last time I was home for that long? My junior year of college. Really. It felt a little strange to plan the trip, knowing that only a few weeks before I thought I would be moving back there for good. I looked for jobs and apartments and contemplated which local bank I would use, and how far I could feasible be from a Sheetz. But my life is a little wackadoo sometimes and that didn't happen the way I thought it would. Because, ya know, I was going to be a real WRITER and make it here in New York, finally.

Ahem.

Hershey and the surrounding area is never the same as I left them. When my hometown got its own Dairy Queen, I was like, WHOA. This time I came back and heard about a WEGMANS. I was concerned... that I'd died and gone to HEAVEN! I didn't get to visit the Wegmans, but it was reassuring to know that it was there.

Next week I will venture even further and travel to Florida via one of those airplane things I've heard so much about. I hear it's sunny there. And there's more air conditioning! Weeee!

Life in the time of air conditioning

My "new life," as I like to call it, improved significantly when we had a professional install our industrial-sized air conditioner last Friday. It's 15,000 BTUs of goodness. And I didn't even have to fake a pregnancy to get it. One of the nights last week when it was 976 degrees at 10pm, Rachel and I were talking about how our grandparents didn't have air conditioners and they just toughed it out. They sweat and were miserable bitches to one another. That's the way things were. My grandparents were better people than me, obviously, because I was freaking hot.

This week has been nothing but humidity-free bliss when indoors. I occasionally venture outside, though. To do silly things like run. I took up running. Yes, me. "My middle name is 'exercise is stupid.'" Yep.

I run on the promenade, two blocks from the new apartment. It's pretty. I see the Brooklyn Bridge. I try desperately not to compare myself to the scads of late upper middle class thirty-something mothers running with their strollers. They have hot bods, and my goal to look like Kim Kardashian seems eons away. Each morning that I run, there's a contingency of elderly Asian women walking and stretching alongside me. I do my best to keep up with them. It's challenging enough for now.

Then I come inside to the air conditioning, collapse on the floor in front of it, and all is right with the world again.

Soundtrack Edition (5, 6)

One of my all-time favorites... Morrissey, you are my idol.

(Track 5) The Smiths, "This Charming Man"




And this, too, because it was just freaking ridic!

(Track 6) Alex Wong and Twitch Hip Hop, So You Think You Can Dance