This morning I found a dead rodent in the doorway to the bathroom. Judging by temperature and stiffness-level, he's been dead at least a few hours. This is all normal small-town life for me, except I think this rodent was a baby rat, because though it was mouse-sized, it had the hairless long tail and the big external balls that rats have. So here's a question: How the hell did a rat get in here?? I am on the fifth floor. And my windows have screens. Can they climb up through the pipes? I am praying that my cat killed it, and it didn't die naturally of some horrible plague that will now be spread to me.

[Here's a typical blog post for ya. Feel free to skip.] It's my first weekend living in Manhattan and how do I spend it? Watching TV with my sister and her husband. Actually, that's not true. Friday after work a local friend took me wall-climbing at a rec center way West on 59th. I learned how to belay and everything, and nobody fell on my watch. I did great with the climbing part, too, until my arms just kind of gave up. Afterwards we met some of her friends at a Thai place in Brooklyn and we had a fun dinner. And then I went home, but it was 11 p.m. by then, so it didn't feel like a waste of an evening.

Saturday I met my sis in the East Village and we wandered around until it was time for shape-note singing at the Living Room in the Lower East Side. Which was very nice to do. They're a new group, with only a few proficient singers, so I felt very useful during the songs I knew. They sang a bunch I had never done before; different singing schools have different favorite songs to call. I stayed there until it was done at 6, and then I walked around the LES some more. Man, that neighborhood has changed a lot. It's half untouched regular neighborhood where people live, half overpriced clothing boutiques filled with handmade stuff. Plus Moby's vegan tea cafe place, Teany, is down there (stopped in, they didn't have chocolate chip cookies, so I didn't get anything). While I was aimlessly wandering, my bro-in-law called and invited me over to Brooklyn for dinner. At this point I was so tired of walking I couldn't imagine making it the 20 or so blocks back to my apartment, and THEN having to figure out how to get dinner, and then be alone for the night - so of course I said yes. So he made a big pot of shrimp and scallops pasta sauce and we chowed down while I tried to catch up on this season of Deadwood. I love that cocksuckin' show.

And Sunday I came back to Brooklyn for bagels and then a nice walk in the park with the fam. My parents came in. There was a lot of the five adults watching the tiny niece whilst rapt with wonder. And then there was some other stuff but it's all boring, and then it was Monday and time for work. Tonight I went to Metropol down in the East Village, a bar where they show a horror movie each Monday night at 10 for free. Today's was Hellraiser, which is as gross as I remember, with acting much worse and more hilarious than I remember. So that was fun. There are a lot of awesome places within walking distance of my apartment. I discovered a 24-hour diner three blocks away. This may help me in the future. And there's the update for you.

My new office's vending machine is awesome. Not only does it have Now n' Laters and peppermint Mentos, it has Goldenberg's Peanut Chews, which I haven't had in years, but loved when I was a Jersey girl. It makes me so happy!

[written May 4:] The Q train is a nice one. It comes up from underground and goes over the Manhattan Bridge. I have taken it twice now during the evening rush hour. I never noticed before how quiet people are on a crowded subway train. It's like a library in there, and those that aren't reading are staring at their shoes or off into space. But when the daylight hits the keyed-up windows, all heads turn to look outside at the New York skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge and the Hudson River.

I already have a list of about 25 things I want to do this weekend. It's hard to vacation here when you're working all the time. I did some real work at work today, which is going great, even though my new office has military-grade toilet paper and no container recycling. And for lunch I went and got a fancy mixed salad. I think I might have mentioned this a year or so ago, but they do this thing here that they really should do in Northampton, where you pick the type of lettuce and four ingredients and dressing and a guy mixes it all up, chops it, dresses it, and then mixes it some more, before usually throwing a piece of bread on top and sending you on your way. I am still trying to get used to how things are priced here; my salad was $8.50. I am embarrassed to admit that when I saw the "850" the guy had written on the lid, I thought it might be some kind of code for the cashier and couldn't possibly be the price. P.S.: With tax it was $9.23.

I live and work in a kind of a fancy neighborhood. Across the street (Fifth Ave.) from my office is an Anthropologie, a J. Crew, and a Banana Republic. At this point I have browsed all of them. And at all of them, the cheapest and most common price for a skirt is $88, and for a simple top, $48. After looking at clothes for a while today, I started noticing the price, and if the skirt was $88 instead of $98 or $149, I'd actually consider it. This is why people go crazy with the spending here. There's also a small boutique place on my way home, called Agnes B or something, and I went in because the clothes looked simple and not ostentatious. And absolutely everything in there - a dress, a sweater, a silk shirt - cost $240. Good lord. So far I have bought nothing (save a couple of magazines and lots of food) but I don't know how much longer that can last.

There's Shape-Note Singing this weekend; Saturday is in Manhattan, Sunday in Brooklyn. I will try to make the Saturday one; It’s in the East Village, at The Living Room. Rock.

I wrote a long post at home but then I lost my "borrowed" wifi connection and couldn't publish it. Couldn't connect this morning either. Darnit. I did save the post, but that doesn't do me much good, as I can't just email it to myself at work or anything. ... I am looking into alternative strategies. Things here are fine, by the way. Keep them comments and emails comin'.

Today while wandering around Noho (the real one) I found a small dumpster filled to the brim with brand-new, trendy shoes and sneakers. All of them were paired, all looked perfect, except someone had slashed the uppers so they would be unwearable. The retail clearance system is cruel.

My drive down to the city was easy and traffic-free, and once I got to my new house in Manhattan I got even more lucky with a metered spot right across the (very quiet) street. Which meant that my sister could help me schlep stuff instead of keeping watch over the illegally-parked car. Rock. Everything in this apartment seems to be in order, except that there’s no microwave oven or toaster oven, so my dining habits are going to have to change a bit. That’s probably for the best…

My plan was to empty my car, drive it to Brooklyn, leave it in a garage with a newly-purchased monthly space, and subway back to Manhattan. But when we pulled into the garage, the guy very flusteredly said “Can’t – too busy! Come back at 10.” We offered to stay and wait but he waved us off. Sunday night is their busiest time. So I left, and weaved up and down the streets until I found a nice parking space where my car doesn’t have to move until Thursday morning. And since my plan is to watch The Amazing Race at my sister’s place Tuesday night, I’ll get my garage space then.

Right now I’m eating a scone and drinking orange juice bought at the two-story Whole Foods at Union Square. Tastes just like the stuff from Hadley, except for these I had to push through massive crowds (including at least one family of tourists moving at a bridal-procession pace). And to deal with the crowds, they have a whole check out system where you wait in roped-off lines for a helper person to direct you to the next available cashier. Even with at least 22 cashiers working it took me about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line. Besides the extremely thorough prepared food bar, the most excellent part of the store is the shopping cart escalator. Downstairs is where the serious shopping happens, so that’s where you can pick up a cart. To get it upstairs, right next to the human escalator is a cart one, where little knobs grab into the wire mesh on the sides and drag it along upstairs. Pretty nifty.

Last night I woke up when it was still dark to loud music playing. I assumed it was someone’s radio alarm, but it kept on going, not being shut off. Annoyed, I checked the time - 4:55 a.m.! Gah. I considered what I would do if someone had left their clock radio on while they were away on an extended vacation. But then as I listened I realized that it wasn’t just bass-y, I could hear the treble – in fact the sound was fairly clear. So I opened my bedroom door, and there was my computer, playing a song on iTunes all by itself. Somehow my cat had stepped on the mouse button, and the cursor must have been poised over “play” on iTunes…. The best part: it was a Cat Power song.

Here I go. I am about to pack up my computer, shove a whole lot of stuff into my car, and drive down to Manhattan. You might think that there wouldn't be that much stuff to bring to a fully-furnished apartment, but you would be wrong. Expect updates soon about country mouse living in the city.

Today is the last day of my extended unemployed-but-still-getting-paid vacation. Weekends don't count, as there will always be weekends. On Monday I start my new job in the city, and it's going to be much busier and more difficult than my previous job. Task-wise, my last job was very similar, but the pace was often languid, to say the least.

I have been doing a lot of organizing and sorting in prep for my leaving my apartment to its own designs for a few months (with periodic check-ins). I dropped off 26 of my 28 plants (I counted, just for fun) at a friendly co-worker's house yesterday. I also had a fun dinner at Thai Garden with A and T. Saying goodbye to them was hard. Harder even than saying goodbye to Thai Garden.

Today I am going to drop a bunch of stuff off at the Salvation Army, I'll try out my awesome new Swiffer Duster, I'm going to do a complete kitty litter clean, and maybe vacuum (maybe tomorrow for that), and then tonight there will be dinner with friends at a restaurant and afterwards there will be frivolity and drinking and semi-madness.

I was told that the weather was going to turn crappy tomorrow, so today I went on my favorite hike on the Mt. Tom reservation. I've taken a ton of photos of it, so this time I took just a few. It's a great time to go stomping around in the woods because things are growing green, yet the mosquitos aren't flying.

Shadowy trees:




Shy Flower, figure one:





Shy Flower, figure two:





Heh.

It turns out that being unemployed while waiting for a new job to start is kinda boring. I mean, it was fun the first week. However it is still way better than actual working.

The apartment I am going to sublet comes with linens (sheets et al). A couple of ladies I know have suggested it would be "gross" to use them. They are clean, though, so I figure it's like staying at a friend's house; are you gonna wash the sheets they provide you, even though they said they were clean? Hmm? ARE YOU?

I have been on an imposed vacation for a week now, and am starting week two of three, so I have been spending lots of time not in front of my computer (happily). All of this is to say that I am sorry for not writing sooner. I picked the second apartment I mentioned below - the expensive Gramercy Park one. Even with the crazy price, I have enough of my "allowance" left over that I can buy my car a parking spot in a garage over in Brooklyn, a mere 15-minute subway ride away.

I went to the library and looked for information on the area I'll be living in. The only thing of interest I read was in a book written by Shackleton (not sure if it's the stuck-in-Antarctic ice one or not) in 1917 or so. He praises the park itself, mostly because of the fact that it's surrounded by a heavy iron fence and is only accessible with a key, meaning that the people in the nearby tenements in the East Village can't get in and dirty it up. Sigh. I told my brother-in-law that I want to have lots of guests in for picnics so we can "reclaim the space." We'll play salsa tunes on a boombox and smoke and spit on the ground and drink. There was a suggestion made that I make dozens of copies of the key, mark them as to what they unlock, and leave them around the city. I will neither confirm or deny that I would ever do such a thing.

Happy Ruination Day, everybody! (This song happened to play during my three-hour ipod-on-shuffle drive last night.)

Hi there. So, my company, following the rule of "the higher up you go, the less you have to pay for things," has alotted me a relocation budget for my summer living expenses. And here I am in NYC, looking for a short-term furnished sublet apartment. It is just as difficult to find as you might think. I walked about 235 miles (approximate) in Manhattan today, looking at places. All were your typical shoebox-sized places, but that's okay for four months (most of my belongings are staying elsewhere).

If you visited a 10-story building and were looking for apartment #23, what floor do you think that would be on? Two? That's what I thought. I walked into the elevator-less building and looked at the apartment numbers on the doors of the first floor and noted they were single-digit - 1, 2, 3, and 4. Huh. On the second floor, after finding 5, 6, 7, 8, it hit me that the building's numbering system was much simpler than I had imagined. Yep, it turns out, 23 is on the seventh floor. The bedroom is the size of a full bed plus an 18-inch border of floor around two sides of it. And the window looks out onto the roof, which would be fine, but means the machinery pumping air through the building is two feet from your bed. The living room is an okay size (about two parking spaces-big), and it's in the Village, and the furnishings aren't terrible. And at $1800, it's a bargain. I am serious. See how I am already thinking like a local?

The other place I saw today that didn't give me visions of myself composing suicide notes inside of them was a very, very small (I mean really, really small) sixth-floor place with nice, funky furnishings, windows with nothing but views of other close-by building walls, that happens to be on the magical Gramercy Park block where only that block's tenants get keys to access the pretty and well-manicured park in the middle. That one is $2400, with a one month's broker's fee - so $3000 a month, really. But the location! And the key to the park! And the elevator!!

Real estate is fun and everything, but having to make the decision between the lesser of two evils is my least favorite kind of decision. And I get anxious deciding whether puppies or kittens are cuter, so you know this is hard for me. I'm going to see some places tomorrow morning, hopefully, and might have to come back this weekend to see some more. Unless I just pick one of these two.

If you do not know what a Scopitone is, you should. From the Scopitone blog, a clip of an article from a 1964 issue of Time Magazine:

"In some 500 bars, restaurants and servicemen's clubs throughout the U.S., the center of attention these days is a monstrous new machine called Scopitone. It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26-in. screen, flooding the premises with delirious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination."

The films themselves are also called Scopitones. They're low-budget and creative and strange. There are a bunch of websites about them, many in French (they started in France - go figure) some of which have the actual films online. One of these is Bedazzled, which is a sister site to the scopitone blog, and has lots of other amazing bits of film and music ephemera (just click back to the main site).

Here's an excellent representative, as is this one.

P.S. Even though this one may not be a Scopitone, it is glorious: Oh, yes.

Big news 'round these parts: The venture I've been working for over the past nine years is being terminated as of the end of the month. Luckily, I already have a new gig lined up, the one that takes me to NYC for the summer. My co-workers are not so lucky. It's very sad and disappointing; we're a little dysfunctional family, how dare they ruin what we have! So, yeah. That's what's up.

Hooray! This article uses the term "turd burglar," one of my favorite nonsensical insults. It is another good day to be an American.

Today is a good day. On my way to work, stomach-tumor man said he liked my hair. And now it is actual spring outside. I went to get lunch without a coat on, just a hoodie sweatshirt (and a skirt, but no stockings!), and was not cold ever. This is Progress.

It's tough to remember it right now in the rain and the cold and the wind, but it was very lovely outside on Saturday. I took a long walk that took me all over town. On my way down Pleasant Street towards Valley Fabrics I was confronted with three happy drunk guys in their 30s, all boozy-smellin'. The ringleader was wearing a Red Sox shirt and bandana on his head. He was very, very happy.

Red Sox Guy: Hey, you have a nice smile. Can you answer a question for us?
me: Sure.
RSG, putting his arms around his buddies: Which one of us.... (long dramatic pause) looks the most gay?
me: Hmmm.... (they crack up as I settle on the smallest one who has kind of long-ish hair) I've gotta say him. But none of you look gay, really! [for one thing, they'd be much better dressed...]
(The other two head off arm-in-arm to Northampton Lodging. RSG decides to keep talking to me, saying that he wants a TV show where he asks questions to random strangers on the street. I say it sounds like a good idea. He peppers me with questions.)
RSG, condensed: So what's your name? Are you in school? Have a boyfriend? Pining over someone? Man, I've been hung up on someone for three years. She's already had a serious relationship and had it end, and I still haven't dated anyone!
Me: (Minimal noises of sympathy.)
RSG: Let me ask you, how old do you think I am?
Me (Considering I can't see his forehead and he's all puffy and beer-bellied, it's actually hard to say, but I am always careful with this question, so:) Um, 28?
RSG, very proudly: I'm nearly 40! Come on, you didn't really think I was 28, did you.
Me: Well, it's hard to tell, plus, y'know, I was being polite.
RSG: So where are you heading right now?
Me: I'm going up to the fabric store, because I'm making some clothing for my niece.
RSG: Wow, so you're one of those people that, like, finishes stuff. I wish I could do that.
Me: ... Okay, well, I'm going to get going.
RSG: Deb, do you mind if I holler at you the next time I see you on the street? I'll be like "Hey Deb!"
Me: And I'll be like "Hey, there's that crazy guy!"

And that was that. I have a soft spot for the friendly drunks. It's probably smarter to just ignore them and keep walking, but I don't mind engaging in stupid banter with them. I don't entirely blow them off unless it feels semi-threatening or too creepy. I mean, RSG was coming onto me, but he didn't seem dangerous or out-of-control drunk (wasn't slurring his speech or swaying). And I'd never, say, go "party" with them, or give out any personal information off any kind. So what's the harm? Maybe someday I'll be getting robbed in an alley and RSG will lurch out of the shadows and tell his buddy to stop mugging me because I'm a friend of his. I'm just sayin: You Never Know.

I just wrote something about my hair over at Craftytown. Don't all stampede over there at once, their server might crash.

I finished watching season one of Deadwood last night. The last episode, The One Where They Do It (note: not official ep title), was awesome. Like the other HBO series on DVD, I became so addicted that it was very hard to not immediately start a new episode after the previous one was finished, no matter the time of night or what other plans were waiting. Also, I tend to become so engrossed that I start talking like the people in the worlds I've been watching (moreso with The Sopranos, lesso with Six Feet Under). With Deadwood, this means I have a strong desire to call everyone a cocksucker, and to start calling women "pieces of strange" or just simply "strange," as in, "So, are you going to Hugo's tonight to find some strange?"

I also want to speak in sentences so long and well-planned out that they could only have been written down first. But then I'd have to write everything down first, and that's just going a little too far, cocksucker.

Also, a line I want to find a place to use: "Whoa, slow down honey! You got a stage to catch?"