This was the first stay at home, putter around the house and clean and straighten things up weekend in awhile. I am taking care of a Andy, the fine canine that belongs to my friend Erik, so I used that as a justification to by new running shoes and gear. I can do little runs and walk Andy at the same time, I thought. That was great, Saturday and Sunday, but today it snowed. So no jogging. Just cooking. Lots and lots of cooking. Last week I made some sort of pasta and bean thing, Saturday Moroccan chicken for a friend who came up from Brooklyn for dinner, yesterday pesto to put in the freezer, and doctor the above pasta and bean thing, which really didn't turn out so well, and today cabbage borscht. Mainly because I have lots of cabbage.
The weekend is a bit melancholy, as I'm feeling the break up. Also, I am looking at a somewhat crazy week at work. In the big book, these are pretty run of the mill complaints. I'm feeling pretty insignificant these days, in the grant scheme of things.
One thing that makes for a little bit of prime drame is that the dog that is visiting and the cat who lives here don't tend to get along so well. The only reason they get along at all is because the cat is sometimes able to dominate the dog and is therefore relatively calm. I just had to turn around from my computer to break up a fight over the dog's food.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Friday, February 18, 2005
Chi chi
I went to the fancy Dominican-Asian fusion place in my neighborhood tonight with my spanish speaking group. It was nice, although one person brought his non-spanish speaking girlfriend, so we all ended up speaking more English that we should have. I guess its a sign of the neighborhood gentrification that the cheapest entree on the menu was $22, and I don't often drop this much on one meal. On many occasions, my ex-boyfriend patently refused to go there, and now I realize its just as well, because even I blanched at the prices and he was way more money-conscious than I. Some certainly say that the gentrification is happening at the expense of the Dominican community in Washington Heights, and I am sure that's justified as far as rents and sales prices go. But still its nice to be able to eat a fancy dinner on your corner, and it did seem like the chef, who we met, was probably Dominican, so perhaps its not an outsider cashing in on the rising rental prices in the neighborhood. Someone ordered flan. And they did make a mean Mohita and offer a good selection of Argentinian wines from Mendoza. For some reason meals with this particular group of people always end up being exorbitant affairs. But we usually pick good restaurants. So it's probably worth it once and awhile.
In my own defense, I did suggest the much more economically priced Malecon, which someone vetoed for the fancier place.
In my own defense, I did suggest the much more economically priced Malecon, which someone vetoed for the fancier place.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Coming Home
I took a little hiatus, but now Mama's back in business. I think we need some freshening up around here though. Stay tuned for more changes.
Life these days has consisted of going to work in the big medical center down the street, tutoring a seventh grader from the neighborhood, reading the paper on the subway, catching up with my friends, practicing with my Spanish group, trying to wean myself from the TV. It's funny how you can feel like you have a full life, but still feel a little empty. Some big changes, around the relationship precipitated this melancholy. I've cooked some spectacularly disappointing stir fry's, lost and gained the same five pounds, and started novels without ever getting into them. I haven't been reading any blogs, mostly from business as work, so maybe that's why I haven't been writing in mine.
But I'm feeling the need to get back in the game.
Life these days has consisted of going to work in the big medical center down the street, tutoring a seventh grader from the neighborhood, reading the paper on the subway, catching up with my friends, practicing with my Spanish group, trying to wean myself from the TV. It's funny how you can feel like you have a full life, but still feel a little empty. Some big changes, around the relationship precipitated this melancholy. I've cooked some spectacularly disappointing stir fry's, lost and gained the same five pounds, and started novels without ever getting into them. I haven't been reading any blogs, mostly from business as work, so maybe that's why I haven't been writing in mine.
But I'm feeling the need to get back in the game.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Welcome to Junior High School
I'm watching Welcome to the Dollhouse on Sundance. It is so much like junior high school. I can't tell you. It's the best movie.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Cough
Everyone is sick in New York. Everyone. You either have it, or you are about to get it, or you are getting over it. It's just everywhere.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Medical Center Redux
I haven't been writing because I started a new job this week. Well, it's the same job, but in new office, in a new institutional home. Ironically, the transition represents a bit of an unwelcome full circle for me. I now work in a building that is across the street from the building where I first lived when I moved to New York. I am next door to the building where I had my first real job in New York. Both of them were somewhat depressing episodes in an otherwise relative low stress and progressively more successful professional life. Plus it is winter in New York. So it's a bit strange.
Since I've been much to busy to think of anything to say, check out this post on the social security plan push at Talking Points Memo.
"According to the Trustees, using very pessimistic estimates of future economic growth, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until 2042. After that, incoming revenue, they say, will be able to pay for at least 70% of my benefits. In other words, I'm good until I'm 73, after which my benefits could drop by as much as 30% if the US economy does really poorly over the next 35 years and no one does anything whatsoever with Social Security until then.
On the other hand, the Congressional Budget Office, under the leadership of former Bush White House senior economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, says I'll have no problem until 2052, when I'll be 83. After that, they say, there will be a reduction, but again not an overwhelming one.
...We can only conclude that as he has done repeatedly before, this president is deceiving the people he has sworn to serve and defend in order to achieve a policy goal he cannot manage by honest means....So, just as he and his associates did during the build up to the Iraq war, he uses paraphrases, work-arounds and slippery repetitons to communicate the intended falsehood while still providing himself with sufficient wiggle room to evade being tagged as a liar."
Since I've been much to busy to think of anything to say, check out this post on the social security plan push at Talking Points Memo.
"According to the Trustees, using very pessimistic estimates of future economic growth, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until 2042. After that, incoming revenue, they say, will be able to pay for at least 70% of my benefits. In other words, I'm good until I'm 73, after which my benefits could drop by as much as 30% if the US economy does really poorly over the next 35 years and no one does anything whatsoever with Social Security until then.
On the other hand, the Congressional Budget Office, under the leadership of former Bush White House senior economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, says I'll have no problem until 2052, when I'll be 83. After that, they say, there will be a reduction, but again not an overwhelming one.
...We can only conclude that as he has done repeatedly before, this president is deceiving the people he has sworn to serve and defend in order to achieve a policy goal he cannot manage by honest means....So, just as he and his associates did during the build up to the Iraq war, he uses paraphrases, work-arounds and slippery repetitons to communicate the intended falsehood while still providing himself with sufficient wiggle room to evade being tagged as a liar."
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Recycled Stories in the Naugahyde Booths
Driving down the freeway yesterday, I am reminded that Los Angeles is the city of Tom Waits during the Nighthawks at the Diner years. (During most years I guess, but that one is a particularly Los Angeleno album.) For me, its been the city of sleeping late and long breakdasts with friends. It's been quite lovely. I've seen quite of bit of Western Los Angeles. Yesterday, Culver City, today Echo Park, and tonight Venice, and then home again.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Sunny Californ-I-A
It's really shameful how long it took me to find time to sit down to sit down and post something. I am afraid to look. I'm not going to look, oh hell... December 21. Well that wasn't so long ago. I can safely say I survived Christmas with a minimum of holiday strife. The post holiday depression succumbed to post holiday busy-ness in my office, and New Year's Eve anxiety was drowned in a raft of cooking from my new cookbook.
I don't know if depression is quite the right word, maybe Christmas melancholy is more what has afflicted me in past years. There is a wistfulness and tenderness associated with everyone going home to see their family, and gathering with friends. At the same time everything is laced with a slightly elevated sense of anxiety and dislocation. Your schedule is disrupted, productivity stops, sometimes for a couple of weeks. There is a falseness about the presents and the wrapping and the commercialness of it all. People who voted for George Bush send cards saying Peace on Earth. I buy a book for my mother on the chance that she might like it. I give last years gift from a friend to a teenage friend of the family and allow her to believe that I picked it out in a store. And so on.
But we have another year behind us. We have dispensed with the holiday season and it is back to the grind. By virtue of the job transition I strangely have a week to spend on vacation and I find myself in sunny Los Angeles. I have spent the last two days in Venice Beach, California, which really is very charming, there is a little section with canals and lots of little arts and craft bungalows. Plus the beach of course, which has a deserted carnival feel to it. So far the weather has been quite rainy, but it is looking like there is hope for today. It's endlessly strange to me that it does get cold here in winter. It doesn't seem right, that this place you see in the movies always seeming warm, actually gets quite chilly in January. I take it personally.
I don't know if depression is quite the right word, maybe Christmas melancholy is more what has afflicted me in past years. There is a wistfulness and tenderness associated with everyone going home to see their family, and gathering with friends. At the same time everything is laced with a slightly elevated sense of anxiety and dislocation. Your schedule is disrupted, productivity stops, sometimes for a couple of weeks. There is a falseness about the presents and the wrapping and the commercialness of it all. People who voted for George Bush send cards saying Peace on Earth. I buy a book for my mother on the chance that she might like it. I give last years gift from a friend to a teenage friend of the family and allow her to believe that I picked it out in a store. And so on.
But we have another year behind us. We have dispensed with the holiday season and it is back to the grind. By virtue of the job transition I strangely have a week to spend on vacation and I find myself in sunny Los Angeles. I have spent the last two days in Venice Beach, California, which really is very charming, there is a little section with canals and lots of little arts and craft bungalows. Plus the beach of course, which has a deserted carnival feel to it. So far the weather has been quite rainy, but it is looking like there is hope for today. It's endlessly strange to me that it does get cold here in winter. It doesn't seem right, that this place you see in the movies always seeming warm, actually gets quite chilly in January. I take it personally.