Like clockwork

I’ve come to expect certain things after my year in the city.  People will push on the subways, step on your, or SIT ON YOUR LUNCH and not say sorry–simply smile at you like “hey, no biggie, right?”  Wrong Tubby.  How would you feel if I sat on YOUR lunch?

But I digress.

The other thing that I’ve come to expect is that New Yorkers freak out when it rains.  They really aren’t very good with any of the elements but rain seems to freak them out.  It’s like they’ve never seen it before.  This is especially true with the first rain of the fall.  It’s as though no water fell from the sky in the last 4 months.  Hell, it’s like no water has ever fallen from the sky.

The subway is just as fun.  The first big rain of the fall shuts down the 96th street station.  First of all, 96th street floods every. single. time. it. rains.  But the first big rain–forget it.  You’d better be wearing your rainboots b/c you’re walking from 86th.

The 6-line just can’t handle the weather.  It stalls between every single stop.  The intercoms crackle so you can’t even hear how long you’ll be stuck for.  And people are cranky.

They tip toe through the station, avoiding the puddles lakes at the bottom of each stairway, trying not to get their feet wet.  Their feet, which are inevitably clad in high heels, many pairs of them open toed.  It’s raining, you morons, did you not notice that?  Did you not look out of the window and see all of the umbrellas?  Did you not check the weather channel?  How did you not know?  I feel no pity for your wet feet.

And so we all sit, stuck between 96th and 86th, with our wet feet (well, not all of our feet are wet–some of us bought rain boots), getting dripped on by all of the umbrellas of the standing passengers.  And, as is always the case, the soaking wet woman with the rain slicker will sit next to you and then spend every delay saying things like “AH! Are you kidding me?!  This is ridiculous!” under her breath.

As though this hasn’t happened every year.

Prediction debunked!!

*SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO STILL HAVE GREY’S ON THEIR DVR!*

So, for once, I’m happy to admit that I was wrong. Rose, the lying little…grrr…isn’t preggers. But she is being kind of a big bitch.

The season premiere of Grey’s was better than expected and it fit a lot of crap into that 2 hours. Rose stabbed Shepard in the OR. Christina got impaled by a huge-ass icicle. The Grey sisters were both a bit whiny (new) and Izzy was also being a bit whiny (so old).  And some rogue Army officer was roaming the hospital, diagnosing people and sucking face with Christina after yanking the icicle out of her gut–and all because he was an Army surgeon and he happened to save a guy’s life by jamming a pen in his throat. Whatever.

That said, I’m still conflicted about my Thursday schedule. I think it’s time I get digital cable.

So what are you gonna wear when it gets cold out?

Today is my first day of boot season.  I’m sick of sneakers, my feet would be numb in sandals (maybe not outside, but I’d definitely lose a toe in the office) and I just didn’t feel like flats.  So I happily pulled my trusty Ugg Boots out of the box that they’ve been sitting in all summer that never actually made it into my closet.  (Wow.)

With my skinny jeans tucked into my Uggs–

Time out.

I’m going to stop right here and say that I don’t want to hear about how Uggs are UGGly.  Yes, ha, I get it.  It was a funny joke 4 years ago.  Now it’s stupid.  I went to college in Central PA.  It’s cold there.  I needed warm boots.  The Uggs are warm.  Now I live in NYC.  It’s cold here too.  And I walk.  EVERYWHERE.  I can’t be flitting around the city in some pointy-toed, leather stilleto boot.  Hell, I couldn’t manage those anywhere, I’m not exactly “heel-savvy.”  But the point is, I like my Uggs and I will continue to wear them.  And until I can find a wider leg jean that doesn’t look like it was pulled from the 70s, I’ll be wearing them with my skinny jeans tucked safely inside.

Time in.

–and my cardigan sweater on, I was ready for the chilly morning commute.  I bumped into my boss getting off the train (second day in a row actually) so we walked in together.

While we’re chatting about last night’s Pro Run, I can feel a lurker to my left.  All of a sudden a voice pops into my ear.

“So what’re you gonna wear when it gets cold out?”

It’s some older dude in a business suit, who I’m sure thought he was being hilaaaaarious, asking me about my Uggs.  Which my boss was also wearing (but was hiding under her wide leg jeans).

I paused for a split second then responded with, “I don’t know!  Sandals I guess, right?” and tried to fake a little polite laughter.

After he passed (but probably before he was out of earshot…oh well) my boss and I exchanged one of those “what the hell was that?” glances.

“So…that was really weird,” she said.

“Uh, yeah…yeah it was.  I mean, I thought it was kinda chilly already.”  That was it.  We continued talking about Pro Run.

But I’ve got to wonder.  Why did this guy decide to stop a random girl on the street to try out his little joke on?  Is he asking this of every girl he sees in Uggs?  Because I’ve seen quite a few already.  Did he ask me because I didn’t have time last night to transfer all of my crap from my white purse to a more fall appropriate brown purse?

This guy was a real risk taker.  If I had been a (stereo)typical New Yorker, I could have responded with something frightning like, “I was going to make a pelt out of you, a-hole!” Or something less creepy.  Like a really mean New York stare.

On the one hand, I should look a little harder for those boot-hiding jeans.  On the other hand, I’m going to keep tucking my jeans into my Uggs, daring old men in business suits to chat me up.

Come on, vote for crap!

There are some very important votes that need to be cast in the upcoming weeks. Huh? No, not the election.

Vote 1: Our very own Crissy has been nominated for Hottest Mommy Blogger. And our very own Stoogepie is giving away all kinds of crap if you vote for her! So get on it!

Vote 2: Jamie Lovely, who’s celebrating her bloggy birthday this week, is in need of votes too! Give her blog the happiest bday ever by voting for her!

Vote 3: This one is HUGE!!!!  I love these shoes…but what color should I get?  They’re going to be my ‘walking in the city doing all the exploring that I didn’t do last year because I was an unpaid intern and couldn’t afford to explore” shoes!

Well hung David Blaine, well hung*

Oh oh oh it’s maaaagic!  Or, you know, endurance and stuff.

Last night the roomie, her coworker and I headed to Central Park to hang with (yup, you’d better believe I’ll be using that pun as many times as possible) David Blaine (because I had to tell him that he sucked for another bloggy friend of mine).

We pushed through some people, made our way to the area underneath D. Blaine and waited for our turn to take a picture with the magic man.

After over a day of bat-like behavior Blaine was taking some breaks, presumably to stop his eyes from exploding:

Small and scrappy as we are, we pushed our way to the velvet rope and got our picture taken with the (admittedly a little bit dishy) Blaine!

Wanting to make it look good for the cameras, Blaine stretches out:

And then they raise him up…

…and he gets on this crane.  Um.  This is interesting.  What’s going on here?  Are you, the man who froze himself, calling it quits?

Nope.  Potty break.  Apparently even magicians on liquid diets have to take a poo now and then.  And, since I know some people draw the line at poop pictures**, I thought I’d try and fill the void.  Okay, in all fairness, I was too icked out to take the pooping picture myself…but I’ll still post it for all of you who need your feces fix.  (Oh, gross right?  Too much?  Yeah…too much.)

And there you have it.  My magical afternoon.

la

la

*Title and pooping picture courtesy of the roomie!*

**You know I love you Crissy!**

My day in smells

Yeah, you read that right.  My day.  In smells.  But really, it’s 2 days because if it were my WHOLE day I wouldn’t be posting this until tomorrow and you’d have to read more about how I’m going through The Change–office hot flashes for everyone!

So, here we go.  The things I’ve smelled in the last 24 hours:

Peppers.  Or onions.  I’m not entirely sure which but someone is always cooking something fabulous in our kitchen at work.  I never see who it is or what they made but damn, it smells incredible.

Wild Mushroom Potato Pancakes.  Aka my lunch.  Aka one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.  Ever.  EVER.

Popcorn.  100 calorie packs that my co-workers snack on.

B.O.  In the 3 seconds it took for someone to pass me (walking in the other direction too, mind you) I got such a whiff I almost passed out.

Poop.  For some seriously gross reason, 23rd street always smells like a toilet.  Doesn’t matter if it’s 90 or 60.  Garbage day or not.  It always has that…stink.  My commute is gross, isn’t it?

Flowers.  I bought them on Saturday and felt very New York carrying the bouquet around.  Since then, they’ve been rotating between my bedroom (where they have a shot at natural light) and my living room (where they’re really pretty!).

Cigarette smoke.  I think someone in the hostel has an addiction.  I almost liked it better when it was weed.

Bacon.  Now this is cruel.  If I smell bacon in the morning it had better be coming from my kitchen.  Otherwise, I want nothing to do with it.

Vanilla cake.  Lord knows who was wearing the vanilla lotion on the train but I’m so glad they were!

Bleach.  Which is of some concern as the smell came from our box of samples.  But, whatever.

Shrimp…or alfredo…or pizza.  Something smelled good in the kitchen.  I finally asked.  No one seemed to know.

la

There it is.  And it’s no wonder my nose is tired at the end of the day.

Hot flashes

Sometimes I think I’m going through The Change a little early.  I’ll be sitting at my desk, minding my own business, writing an e-mail or working on an Excel chart or whatever and the next thing you know, I’m sweating my ass off.  So I strip down (I ALWAYS layer at my office–I’ve learned my lesson!).  Sweater comes off.  I’m good.

I sit there, typing away in my t-shirt then, out of nowhere, I’m freezing.  Sweater goes back on.  Then comes the extra office sweatshirt.  Then (and this why I love that my co-worker handles accesories) comes the gloves (fingerless, so I can still type), the scarves, and on the really cold days the hat.  There is also our secret weapon, but we’ve been told it’s a fire hazard and we’re not allowed to use it, so I’ll just leave it at that.

The chattering of my teeth subsides and I regain the feeling in my fingers.  Slowly, the layers come off.  The hat, scarf and gloves.  The extra sweatshirt.  The sweater.  The sweater goes back on a few minutes later when I realize it’s still freezing, but it stays open, to allow for ventillation.  This seems to help.

By the end of the day, I’ve had 19 variations of my outfit–including changing the hair from up (during the hot streaks) to down (to try and cover my neck) back to up (partly b/c it’s hot again and partly b/c it’s kinked from being up earlier).  I leave the office one sleeve pushed up, the other rolled down, the sweater half-unbuttoned, all in the efforts to avoid these weird work hot flashes and to find a way to keep myself from either freezing or melting.

For the last 4 months, it’s been an ice box in the office.  My cute summer skirts–wasted.  My adorable little sundresses–wasted.  I spent the summer in jeans and tees, with sweaters in my bag and deoderant in my desk drawer (you try walking to work when it’s 95 with 73% humidity and NOT sweating).

It’s just not fair.  All summer I stared longingly at my tanks, skirts and sandals, knowing full well that if I wore them, I would be a icicle by the end of the day (but risking it anyway when it came to the sandals).  And now?  Now that I’m ready for my sweaters and my boots?  All my old fall friends?  Now it is 9000 degrees in the office, plus it’s as dry as the Sahara (I’ll be rocking the specs all winter, just so I can see my screen).

This is, in every sense of the word, not cool.

la

*Happy (belated) birthday to Mama B and happy bloggy birthday to a lovely blog!  Jamie’s celebrating it, Etsy style!*

And the OTHER winner is…

Here’s Chris‘ winning entry.  (And sorry for the delay…I was out sick yesterday…*cough cough*)

Win in the End

“I’m going to have an aneurysm trying to suck this thing out,” he thought to himself.

Of course this was happening to him. He had told his friend Steve that he could suck an almond through a straw and now that the damn nut was in there, he was dying trying to get it to come any further than halfway.

Actually, his exact words to Steve were, “Steve, you are crazy! I could do it just like I did your Mom.” This of course led to Steve punching him in the chest and then telling him to prove it.

This is what he does though.

He accepts any challenge no matter how much he knows he’ll never be able to accomplish it. That was how he ended up watching The Lion King fifteen times in a row. The bet was for twenty, but by the time fifteen rolled around, the only thoughts he could form started with wondering what Simba would do, so he had to stop.

Not this time.

He was not going to stop sucking on that straw no matter how much he thought his brain might explode and leak out of his ears.

Steve could laugh all he wanted, and he could taunt him with “Dude your head has this huge vein coming out of it!” but he would not stop until he won.

Plus, if he gave up now, there would be no way he’d ever get to tell Steve’s Mom about his triumph, and maybe – just maybe, get the chance to see her naked.

He’d heard she liked winners, and he was determined, with thoughts of her making Socially Unacceptable Noises while wearing an apron in his head, to become that man.

And the winner is…

…a TIE!  Between the only 2 guys who entered.  That’s right.  All of you slackers let me down.  But then, 2 of my favorite funny guys sent their stories my way and winners were born.  Er, uh, voted on.

Now, I’m not saying they both won because they were the only 2 who entered.  They both had very funny stories and each gave it that little something extra.

Our first winner is Matt.  His something extra?  He got 2 one-liners into 1 story!  Bonus points!!

Our second winner is Chris.  His something extra?  He actually came pretty close to the real context of the one-liner.  Bonus points again!!

On to the prizes!  Their first prize is getting their stories posted on this here lovely site.  The second prize, well, they shall have to be checking their mailboxes!

Today’s winning post is from Matt.  Enjoy!

la

la

The Story behind the great Prison Riots in Alcatraz, May 1946.

Juan was due for parole in a couple weeks and he could not afford to screw that up. He had been sentenced for 2 years (over a slight misunderstanding of marijuana not being legal) but they decided to let him off early because of his good behavior and all the work he had put in inside the jail cafeteria. His specialty was roasted chicken. It was the most delicious chicken, even better than Boston Market’s version. Juan made this particular jail very famous for its little piece of roasted deliciousness. The guards would take the chicken home to feed it to their families.

His secret came from the apples he hid under his bed to ferment into alcohol. He would keep his apples from lunch, put them in a sack under his bed until the bag of apples turned into alcohol. It made his bed smell like he pissed on it everyday, but nobody else really seemed to mind so Juan kept doing it. Once the smell of piss went away, Juan knew the apples were now alcohol and ready to be infused into the chicken. He would do so by marinating the chickens in the alcohol overnight and then slow-roasting them all day long until dinner was served. He would usually have this once a month and they would allow him to cook extras so everyone could eat them the next day.

Everyone was jealous of Juan. Insanely jealous. He was pretty much the Britney Spears of the Joint and everywhere he went people just wanted to shake his hand and rape him in his congratulate him on his successful recipe. All the attention was on him. He was a total Diva.

So much attention was on him, in fact, the other caught on to his little recipe and started trying to immolate his success. It became somewhat of a competition…almost like the competition of homemade sex films. See it all started with Pam Anderson, and then before you know it, every Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are making their own movie. Juan was pissed…before he knew it, there were no apples left for him.

“You apple hoarding bitches!,” Juan screamed into the cafeteria.

“G’head, roast your chicken and I hope you enjoy it.”

These words led to the biggest Prison fight ever known to mankind.

You know what Facebook? You are PISSING ME OFF!

I never thought I’d have to say it, but Facebook is becoming a pain in my ass.  I used to love it.  It used to be cool.  Well….okay, it was cooler than say, MySpace.  And no, I will not get into a battle about which is better.  I had issues with MySpace.  I had an ex who proved to me that MySpace is for creepers and weirdos.  That is all I am going to say about that.

But now…Facebook.  What are you doing to me buddy?  First, the applications.  I kept trying to ignore them.  Trying to pretend that they weren’t there.  Then, slowly but surely, I got sucked in to the application chaos and there’s been no turning back.  But it wasn’t bad.  I mean sure, I wasted a few more minutes in my day, but I was okay with that.

Then they brought out this “new” Facebook.  And it sucks.  No one likes it.  Statii (statuses?  Matt, didn’t you have this issue?  What’s the plural here?) all over the place are exclaiming the hatred of New Fbook.  Some rude folks are bragging about how they still have the Old Fbook and ice cream sundaes every day and a pony of their very own.

Well.  Maybe not the pony or the ice cream.  But they are definitely bragging about how they haven’t been forced into the new, shitty, less-user friendly Fbook.

But now for the last straw in the Facebook-is-irking-me basket: I have to “confirm” that I am the “author” and “owner” of my own blog.

Because having the WordPress application on my Facebook page for the last 8 months wasn’t confirmation enough.  I’m being punished for not being tech-savvy enough to make html changes to my page.  I have to beg people on my friends list to confirm that I own my own blog.  And this is a pain.  Like most people, I’m not actively friendly with half of the people on my list.  The half that I consider real friends versus people I had classes with or met while I was on a bar tour or some team or another, well, they don’t all read my blog.  I don’t spite them for this–I tend to be a bit, verbose, and people don’t always dig that.  That’s cool.  But it pisses me off.

So, Facebook, while I sit and wait for that one last confirmation that I need to prove to you that yes, I AM the owner of my blog, I hope you enjoy this post about how much you are pissing me off.

Because you know it’s going to show up in my stupid, un-collapsable mini feed.