2009 in Paper

Soeur gave me her old planner - the one that she opened exactly 4.5 times and has since been sitting in a box for an unknown number of years.  I FREAKING LOVE THIS THING.  I'm thinking of giving it a name.  2008 turned out to be the year sans planner.  It didn't go as well as I would have liked and I attribute much of my disappointment to my gross lack of organization.  So at the beginning of this month, I took charge and am now back with classy cream cotton Filofax refills in a pocket-sized leather planner.  It was all hot and heavy for a while there until I hit numerous dead ends looking for a pen that would fit in the tiny designated pen-holder.  For weeks, I told several Papyrus and Kate's Paperie locations to kiss my ass when I saw their crummy ballpoint selections.  I like ballpoint, but why don't you carry fine points?!  My quest ended yesterday: I finally got my hands on the perfectly-sized 3.5" cute-as-all-hell mini gel ink pen...from Staples, no less!  You have no idea how happy it makes me to stare at my complete planner today.  Simple things never fail to deliver smiles to Julia.

Would you believe it if I told you that I grew up on the East coast and had never tried a Subway sandwich until just this past year? I was 27.  The gates to footlong heaven were opened by a work buddy during a quest for lunch ideas in SoHo.  In the land of nine-dollar sandwiches and four-dollar cups of coffee, I enjoy learning about frugal lunch opps.  I'm not a fan of Subway like say, their famous spokesperson Jarod, but it's the only fast food meal that is not entirely disagreeable with my body.  I admit that I'm scared to think about what exactly makes up their sandwich meat: because how else could Subway afford to charge five dollars and forty-two cents for a sandwich big enough for two?  

This was tonight's dinner: whole wheat with turkey, American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, green peppers, banana peppers, mustard, and oil and vinegar.  And now I'm in a Friday food coma.  This work week was exhausting and I can't wait to stay in bed until noon tomorrow.  I deserve it.  And after that sandwich?  Goodness knows my body certainly won't be hungry until this time tomorrow at the earliest.

Oops.

Pardon me as I have been remiss.  I myself get mildly annoyed when a blogger drops off the face of the [cyber] earth.  Where'd he go?!  Did her blind date turn out to be a Prince Charming or a crude prick?!  I need to see pictures of her lime green bridesmaid dress NOW.  Did his kid punch the class bully the next day?  Curious minds want to know.  I hear that occasional eye twitching means your body is low on potassium and could use a banana; but before I can get my hands on said banana, my mind diverts itself to how is that gay Texan-American doing in France with his first au pair gig?!  And now here I am having gone silent in my little slice of cyberworld for nearly a week.  Hypocrite.

I wish I had some news, some crazy shocking tidbit of my life to unveil, but no, this is not the case.  The only news is that my blog-reading has become a little bit of a problem; some may say an unhealthy obsession is brewing.  So I sorta-almost-nearly burnt down our apartment today.  I threw some pasta on a medium flame and walked away to glance at my Google reader feed and then got so hung up on - among the one hundred seventy-seven other blog feeds - this absurdly adorable youtube video (if you love babies, you are in for some giggles):

And then I heard a funny noise in the distance - the distance being a mere twenty-five feet.  I immediately leapt as gracefully as a bear in a china shop through our tiny living room to the kitchen to find this atop my stove:


Have you ever burnt pasta in a pot with a single turkey meatball sitting smack dab in the center?  The bottom of this pot should be shiny, not coal black.  Oops.  The worst part: I came very close to doing the same thing yesterday with my chicken noodle soup - because I got distracted reading blog feeds.  That's two days in a row.

In summary, I have one less Calphalon pot in my name, I don't know if the IKEA couch will smell like burnt funk when Soeur's friend arrives tomorrow night from D.C., and dinner was comprised of three healthy Entenmann's donuts (powdered, cinnamon sugar, and plain).  All because I can't get enough blog news.  

Obama's Working It - Already

US President Barack Obama has lifted a ban on federal funding for foreign family planning agencies that promote or give information about abortion.

Humbled

His goal is to get his driver's license.  He is not yet ready, but he is enthusiastically preparing for the big day.  He is not studying the New York state DMV guidebook.  He is studying from another book, one that will help him learn how to read.  Effectively illiterate, my partner for the evening recognizes letters of the Roman alphabet, but reads below a first grader's level.  He does not know how to write.  His last attempts to learn these skills took place eleven years ago.  He is turning forty-nine this year.  His name is Miguel.

The task for the evening is to read an article out loud and answer several reading comprehension questions.  The article is about the previous day's inauguration.  He does not recognize Barack or Obama.  He cannot sound out the names and throws his hands up in frustration, but when I hint "our new president," he smiles and looks up at me, the first time he makes eye contact.  I am about to ask if he had voted for Obama but catch myself - how would he have distinguished the candidates without pictures of Obama and McCain next to their names?

More than twenty-four hours later, I am still deeply affected.  Indeed, I am humbled.  I am humbled to have met someone like Miguel: someone who was raised in the most powerful country in the world and yet cannot write much more than his own name; someone whose illiteracy has instilled low self-esteem and beckoned nervous laughter; someone who awkwardly admits that he confuses "b" and "d" to his reading tutor twenty years his junior; someone who has matriculated into a program to overcome an obstacle that has defeated him for nearly half a century.  I am humbled because if it were me, I would bury my dream of driving and hop the subway for the rest of my days.  I am humbled because I lack the courage and strength to climb the same mountain that Miguel currently scales.  I.  Am.  Humbled.

Obama Is In: That Makes Georgie Out

The last Democrat to lead our country was Bill Clinton.  When was that?  1993?  I had just turned twelve.  I remember watching the ceremony in MG class next to other Mentally Gifted children.  (I attended a Philadelphia public school at the time where it didn't take much to be placed in such a program.)  I remember Mrs. Gilmore - who wouldn't have hurt a fly - remarking that Chelsea looked like a horse.  Well, Chelsea turned out to be a lovely woman.

Here we are in 2009 and I must state the obvious: the First Children share no resemblance to any animal.  In fact, we have one beautiful First Family in the White House, ladies and gentlemen.  Aren't they a handsome bunch?  That's what I was thinking as I sat in the La Mer conference room and intently watched CNN on the large white Samsung flatscreen monitor today.  Of course that wasn't the only thing going through my mind...

America has turned a new leaf in the history books.  And the world is fiercely proud.  Let's see what Obama will do for America.  

Image from The New York Times

MoMA: Pipilotti Rist and Annette Messager

I went to the MoMA today to check out the Pipilotti Rist installation.  (To be perfectly frank, the Swiss artist's name reminded me of the spunky Pippi Longstocking children's book character - whom I found terribly amusing as a kid - and that's why I went to see the installation.  I figured that the Swiss have yet to fail me: Swiss Miss hot chocolate mix, Heidi, Pippi Longstocking, and have you ever tried a chocolate swiss roll?  'Nuff said.)  Rist was commissioned to re-invent one of the MoMA's gallery spaces.  

I walked in and felt nothing other than a mild shock that the installation specifically requested visitors to remove their shoes and kick back on the shag rug or the circular couch.  They want you to lounge comfortably and absorb the visual experience.  I felt...unimpressed. That may have had more to do with the fact that there were tons of four-year-olds screaming their heads off and guests were sprawled with their backs on the floor to watch the psychadelic colors and images cast onto the room's walls.  I nearly stepped on some poor guy's hand.  Neat idea, but I was kind of not digging this:

That's a naked white woman crawling through a grassy field on all fours.  This image is cast all around the walls FOR THE CHILDREN TO SEE. I'm not one for censorship, but I could just imagine the kids asking "Mommy, why does she have bumps hanging from her chest?" AWKWARD.

The photo above is the piece I found most striking during today's visit. Details from the website are below.

Annette Messager. (French, born 1943). My Vows. 1988-91. Photographs, colored graphite on paper, string, black tape, and pushpins over black paper or black synthetic polymer paint, Overall approximately 11' 8 1/4" x 6' 6 3/4" (356.2 x 200 cm). Gift of The Norton Family Foundation. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

This work brings together hundreds of photographs, each of which presents a small part of a human body: mouths, ears, feet, noses, genitals, hands, breasts, and so on. Each hangs from a string, joining and partly obscuring others. Together they make a dense circle whose diameter is barely greater than the height of a person or the span of his or her arms. The individual elements—male and female, old and young, seductive and repellent—form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Their physical, psychological, and sexual identities co-mingle in an inexhaustible variety of unpredictable relationships, which, together, overwhelm the stable patterns of our familiar arrangements.

Messager's Vows might be the passionate devotions of sexual love, or they might be the votive offerings of an old religion, hung in a chapel to ask for the healing of an ailing eye or limb. These divergent allusions are fused in this hybrid work—part photography and part sculpture.

Manhattan Pre-Birthday Celebration

I dragged mommy away from her teething child for a full day on this crazy cold island called Manhattan.  She had wanted to visit for an ungodly long time but never had time what with the pregnancy and then the baby and, you know, life...so I thought, well, what better reason than for her birthday?  With her husband on board (a great dad is a dad who agrees to solo Saturday diaper duty), mommy finally made the trip up and made me do all sorts of things with her.  Ok, technically, I made her tell me what she wanted to do so she didn't force me to do anything.  Anyway, this mommy is one heck of a trooper and deserved a full grown-up day of activities to her liking.  I mean, I can't imagine sleeping in two hour shifts for seven months straight.  Can you?  I'd have gone nuts by week number three.

After lunch in KTown, we swung by the theater district to see Avenue Q and then had an early dinner chez Julia.  Here's the birthday girl feeding herself and her baby (well, indirectly) simultaneously.  I know: the panini looks scrumptious.  That was all me.  Ham, salami, muenster cheese, and olive fig jam on whole wheat tuscan bread.  Really.  Tasty.

Big Daddy's Does HoCho Big

Big Daddy's knows HoCho

Just what a body needs when the wind chill reads negative three: a ginormous mug of after-dinner cocoa in the company of three girlfriends.  Kerplunked atop the hot beverage's floating marshmallows is a cloud of fluffy whipped cream (from a can, not fresh!) drizzled with some old-fashioned Hershey's chocolate syrup.  On frigid nights like this, there is no room for healthy - just sugar.

Steaming Hot Rice: It's What's for Dinner

With the wind chill dipping into the negatives again, I am grateful that I wasn't on that plane that landed in the Hudson River this afternoon - because hypothermia must be the most unfunnest thing ever.

As I pondered the plane plunge on my frigid walk home, I craved warmth by the time I reached the front door.  In particular, warmth delivered in the form of hot Korean soup.  It could be 곰탕, 설렁탕, 대구매운탕, or heck, even some 육계장.  Beggars can't be choosers, 'naw mean?  Whatever the soup, bring it.  But of the utmost importance is that it be served scalding hot - as in the roof of my mouth is in danger of getting burnt.  Unfortunately, since I didn't have the time, preparation, or ingredients necessary to prepare these old recipes of my people, I whipped up a batch of 김치찌개 and warmed up with a couple scoops of steaming white Korean rice instead.  It did the trick.  But now it stinks like cabbage stew in the apartment.  If you've ever boiled cabbage, you know what I'm talking about.  

Facing Facebook

Dear Sarah:

I know the world is mad for Facebook, but I most certainly am not.  Yes, I have an account activated in 2005 which my work-study student begged to create on my behalf using my alumni e-mail because that was what was required in the olden days.  Now any old fart with any e-mail addy can join this crazy club.  And while I have no shame regarding my unremarkably low friend count, there is a good reason why I do not have a public wall, do not have my settings set to send notifications when Jane Doe becomes a fan of All Things Mundane or, you know, breathes, and do not care to poke anyone: I am not a Facebook slut.  So send your impotency sales pitches to a place where the sun don't shine and stop the spam.  

Regards,

Julia

Staycation Day 7

DING.  Time's up.  I go back to work tomorrow.  I am moaning audibly in my apartment as I write this. I sound like a sheep crying pathetically.  I've never heard a sheep cry before, but I have heard one bleat and what I hear now sounds like a cross between a human crying and a sheep baa-ing.  You can't argue with me on this.

Today's big blog-worthy news: the New York Public Library system lent me a copy of Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture.  It was finally my turn.  I was something like number 152 of 157 in the queue when I last checked my status, but I guess the 155 before me suddenly lost interest this past week.  I don't know who to thank, but I'm really looking forward to reading Dr. Pausch's words.  It's fascinating how one man's words can so deeply touch a generation.  I'm curious to see how I will react.  If it reads anything like a memoir, I have a hunch I will find much to appreciate.

Today's star sighting: Tatum O'Neal was looking seriously annoyed talking on her mobile phone today surrounded by Whole Foods bags of groceries and trying to hail a cab around 2:40 this afternoon on E. Houston.  She looked tired and overdue for a day of R&R.

Staycation Day 6

They said it was a lunch combination for one, but the spread was enough for two.  What is it, you ask?  Chicken negimaki, shrimp shumai, spring rolls, miso soup, rice, salad, and a california roll.

In more important news, my bedroom is dust-free, houses two less shoeboxes of crap, and...Tony Almeida is back on 24!  I don't know which is more exciting: my cleaner bedroom or Tony's reincarnation.  You know what would be really exciting?  Tony IN my clean bedroom.  I'm pretty sure I'd just sit there with drool attractively dripping down my chin; you know, while taking in all the beauty that is Carlos Bernard.

Ten Months in the Making

They're not high quality prints or frames, but together, in their imperfectness, as of this afternoon, this group now graces the wall above my bed.  And I am glad for it because we moved into the apartment in March and that's too long a time to have done nothing more than collect dust.

Film Count

Top three flicks enjoyed in the past 48 hours in the order of appreciation:

1. Friends With Money.  REAL characters.  Favorite character: Jane, as played by Frances McDormand.  She had me at Fargo and her movies have since never failed to make me laugh out loud.  

2. Ushpizin. The protagonist and his wife are married in real life.  The wife isn't an actress, but she could have fooled me in this touching Israeli film about a Hasidic Jewish couple and their celebration of Sukkot.

3. Eulogy.  This made me laugh out loud not because it was well-scripted or that it was particularly well-executed, but because the family dynamics were exceptionally ass backward.  It's true: every family is dysfunctional, but this one is absurd.

I tried yesterday and today to get to a matinee showing of Gran Torino, but failed miserably evidently enjoying my own company in the comfort of my warm home over trekking through wet snow and sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers.  So be it.

Staycation Day 5

This is all I have to show for today:

It ain't much, but let it go on record that it took a lot of energy to walk the twenty steps to the kitchen, pull out the menu, and make the phone call.

Staycation Day 4

Dined at my favorite Land and enjoyed minced shrimp dumplings (which curiously resembled boiled versions of their mouth-watering fried shrimp parcels from their dinner menu) soup, pork chops, and sweet iced coffee.  And over that delightful cup o' Thai joe, I took my dainty old time reading short stories in Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.  I'm going to assume that this is, in fact, this month's book club selection since it was Soeur's turn to pick the read and I found it hanging out in the living room.  I have reacquainted myself with the pleasures of dining alone.

Milled around the second and third floors of the Neue Galerie.  That Alfred Kubin fellow was infatuated with death, sadness, darkness, and all things fraught with angst.  What a disturbing exhibition.  

Browsed along Madison Avenue in the 80's.  Reality check: I can't even afford a single button in any of those stores.

Tonight, I will watch the DVR'ed season premiere of FX's Damages from last night.

[On another note, I am way too unimportant and low on the totem pole at work to be peppered with phone calls and text messages from the office while I'm on vacation.  Who's with me?]

Staycation Day 3

Dwelling, Charles Simonds' miniature permanent clay installation built right into the Whitney Museum's stairwell.  Try to locate it if you visit.

Terribly non-special mapo tofu at Shanghai Palace, an upper east side Chinese restaurant where we once saw Woody Allen, his wife Soon Yi, and his children hop into for dinner.  Not planning on going back.

Whitney Museum to check out Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933 exhibition.  The Calder family is a legacy in Philadelphia.  In fact, a certain Mr. Calder was our college guidance counselor and my junior year American History teacher.  Anyway, this is what I learned today: Alexander's nickname was Sandy and Sandy's pet name for his wife was Medusa.  Medusa.  Ha! 

Found favorite Bonne Maman strawberry preserves for under six dollars.  Manhattan bargains hold a special place in my heart.  Also trying out a new brand of peach nectar for bellinis.

Kung Fu Panda for this evening's entertainment.  Hi-ya!

Staycation Day 2

Nada.  Oh, except for the season six premiere of Nip/Tuck.  

Staycation Day 1

I am on a staycation, the wallet-friendly version of a local vacation.  I watch DVR'ed movies, run errands on a whim, start my days at eleven, and chillax.  This is what I have to show for my first day:

That's a lot of clean underwears - almost a month's worth, in fact.  Remember that time when I had washer/dryer access in my building?  That was ages ago, and boy, those were good times.  Good times, I say.

My Chai

I trekked to the UWS today on a hunt for my Oregon Chai.  I haven't seen it at Trader Joe's for months now and am totally not digging paying Starbucks four dollars every time I want some of my drink.  I tried my darndest to ignore the ten thousand other New Yorkers who also had to shop at Fairway right there and then with me.  No matter.  I finally found the precious drink with the help of two knowledgeable employees.  In case you're wondering, it's not housed in the organic section; it's on the ground floor below the soy milks.  I heart my $4.19 Oregon Chai.  Tomorrow, I will try the slightly sweet version with almond milk.  Fo' shizzle.

Bidding 2008 Adieu