Ring a ding ding

Lenny says I can't wear my thumb ring in New York or people will assume I'm a lesbian -- which is fine, he adds, if I want to work the lesbian scene.
Jen confirms that someone gave her a hard time about wearing a thumb ring when she arrived in NYC from the Midwest.

So in addition to getting a fresh hair cut and getting my suit skirt taken in (thank you, South Beach), I've put my thumb ring in the jewelry box. I feel naked. I've been wearing it since I was in high school -- far longer ago than I sometimes want to admit.

There, New York, are you happy? What else do you want from me??

It's starting to feel real

Last week at work, everyone started saying goodbye and wishing me an early merry Christmas and such. It was surreal in the way that attending your own funeral would be -- I'm not quitting the News Service, but the goodbying gave me a preview of what it will feel like when I do.

Even so, being off for the Thanksgiving weekend didn't feel unusual. I would have been off no matter what.

Monday morning, as I looked at the clock and realized I'd ordinarily be at the 10 a.m. writers meeting, then it started to sink in that I'm off work.
Starting to load up boxes in the living room, and having the cat carrier out so Haley can maybe get used to the sight of it, that's pretty tangible, too.




In this first photo, note the huge ad for the new World Trade Center office building hanging in the background, courtesy of Mary Jean.









Here you can see -- and I swear this isn't staged -- Zagat's NY guide, New York magazine and an issue of Columbia's faculty/staff newspaper, The Record. That's probably more New York material than many people who are actually there.

I'd rather be red than dead

This is a non-NYC related tangent ... I'm ADD, what did you expect?

I've been a faux redhead since my freshman year of college, when the potentially explosive combination of Boones Farm and roommates with hairdye on hand left me with a dayglo shade that looked mahogany inside and fuschia in daylight.

After experimenting with everything from burgundy to plum to copper penny, I figured that grown ups probably don't change their hair color like some people change their socks. I settled on my favorite color: Ultress auburn

Some women are surprised when I tell them I color my hair myself, but without fail, getting my hair professionally colored has been a high-priced disaster, while I almost always love the outcome of my home version, even if I stink up the house by mixing the glop and donning plastic gloves.

In recent months, it's become increasingly difficult to find my shade in stores. Target stopped carrying the brand entirely, and that made me nervous. I emailed Clairol to ask whether they were discontinuing Ultress.

No, they said, but I could try Nice N Easy if I couldn't find Ultress.

Scarred by a bad Nice N Easy experience during Bush the Elder's term, instead I stood hypnotized in the hair dye aisle and tried to judge by the boxes whether one might be close enough to my beloved auburn.
Apparently I'm as good at judging hair color as I am at picking lipstick. I failed.

Then the Internet came through. I found Ultress auburn online and ordered four boxes.

Shortly thereafter, Clairol fessed up -- yup, Ultress is going away. Damn!!

This weekend I colored my hair in preparation for the big trip, and it reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine decides whether her guy is spongeworthy. With just four boxes of my favorite color on hand, it's a big deal to run down the supply.
And doggone if my hair didn't just hit to point of being too long for one box to do the job. Reluctantly, I busted into a second one to finish up.

I may just need to order a case of the stuff while I figure out my long term plan. Sure, I could just go back to my natural color ... but c'mon, don't I seem more like a redhead than a brunette?

Fourteen hours of fun

Saturday was a marathon of Ann Arbor fun, and a great way to spend one of our last weekends with so many of the people we'll miss while we're in NYC.

We started at 10 a.m. with an MBA tailgate on the roof of the b-school parking structure. Parker's buttery spiked hot cider kept me warm on a a crisp, sunny fall morning, laughing with some of the people who kept me company on my five-year Michigan adventure.

















Sure, Dana had an extra ticket to the Ohio State game, but why sit outside on a hard metal bench when you can go to Lenny and Anne's for a BBQ and watch on two TVs in cozy comfort?







Toward the end of a nailbiting game, I actually watched the game, but for someone who cares minimally about sports, it was more fun to enjoy the food, the drink and the company.
This party is a perfect example of what I'll miss about NYC: I sent an email around asking a few people if they had any plans to watch the game any place, and Lenny and Anne took it as a call to action, inviting us all to have a little Midwest conviviality in their house, which is close enough to the stadium that we could hear the crowd noise on the back deck.


Last stop -- Lara's rockin' 30th birthday bash in the crowded sports bar din of Fraser's. A close loss to Ohio State didn't send the masses home to pout. It was cheek to jowl as stranger after stranger bought Lara birthday shots.
Lara, drink lots of water and maybe you'll feel better by the time your actual birthday arrives on Thursday.






























When I think about moving to New York for good, it's hard to imagine leaving our friends behind. We want to have a guest room that gets lots of use -- are you listening, gang?

Helping us get settled

Ben, our temporary landlord, is fantastic -- he sent us a five-page document listing multiple emergency contacts if anything goes wrong, instructions on using the wireless network and the home theater system, and just about anything else we could hope to need.

Take, for example, his section on restaurants in the neighborhood:
So many. We have a bunch of menus under the coffee maker in the kitchen. Check out menupages.com to locate the places I’ll list here and to get their phone numbers.
-Roma Pizza. Pretty good, greasy NY pizza across the street at 88^th & 3^rd.
-Pesce Pasta. Pretty decent basic Italian across the street at 88^th & 3^rd.
-Saigon grill. Excellent Vietnamese at 88^th & 2^nd. Cheap. My neighborhood favorite.
-Haru Sushi and Haryu Sushi bar. Somewhere like 78^th and 3^rd. Look it up. My favorite nearby sushi. Can get crowded.
-Jaques. Just decent french bistro around 84^th & 3^rd.
-Elaines. Colleen you must check out this famous literary/publishing hangout at 2^nd ave and 89^th. Way overpriced.
-Beyoglu. Sit down middle eastern food. Cheap. Great Value. 3^rd and 81^st.
-H&H bagels on 2^nd ave around 78^th or so. Iconic NY bagels.
-Le pain quotidian- bakery/café on Madison near 80th. Very good.

Thinking about which dry cleaner we'll use and where we'll grocery shop (both covered by Ben) is making it feel more real.

One more tip from Ben:
In general, this neighborhood is very safe. Just keep an eye out and I’m sure you will be OK. Gets a little sketchier north of 110th street.

If you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you get there?

This summer, Katie and Lara and I got together to talk semi-formally about our life goals. We each made a list and talked about what it would take to achieve our goals and what's holding us back.

Since this trip to NYC is about living out a life goal of living in New York, this seems like a good time to publicly declare what I want from life.

I wrote my list in present tense, describing the life I want to live. In abbreviated fashion, the list I presented the girls:

1.) Career goals
- I work at a job that's challenging, interesting and rewarding.
- I fit in culturally with a team that works well together. We value and respect each other, and there's warmth between people.
- We have a culture open to trying new things.
- I work for a company I respect and that will look good on my resume.
- My job helps me learn skills and get experiences that will help me move into self employment.
2.) Financial goals
- I am well compensated for what I do, making enough money to allow for a superior quality of life and to keep putting away money in savings.
- We have enough money in savings at all times that if one of us gets laid off or quits our job, it is not a crisis.
3.) Personal goals
- My marriage with John is fun and vibrant.
- We live in a great place. The city is vibrant with much to do, we have great friends and an active social life.
- We love our home. It is comfortable and relaxing and we feel at home in our neighborhood.
- I have a good work/life balance. I enjoy my work, but it doesn't dominate my life.
- I keep learning. Now that my degree is done, I don't close the door on the learning and growing part of my life.
- I finish my novel and love it.

How's that for some new year's resolutions?

Making my list, checking it twice

Packing for our month in the city is a little daunting. It's not quite packing a few outfits for a vacation, but it's not packing up and moving, either.

I'll need casual clothes, party clothes, interview clothes, workout clothes, a swimsuit or two for the pool and hot tub ...
But beyond wondering exactly how many pairs of shoes to take, I get visions of lugging eight steamer trunks when I think of the provisions of daily life.
We love to cook, so we'll need to take at least a few of our favorite cookbooks. Should we take coffee, tea, spices, sauces ... the effort and expense of outfitting a second kitchen seems daunting, but so does taking it all with us.
Ditto for a bathroom worth of toiletries. I usually travel with a hanging toiletry case, but my mini bottle of conditioner won't last for a month.

We're really lucky that Ben and Gabrielle are leaving their printer, their cat's litterbox, even a bike, so we'll have several big, clunky things that we don't need to drag with us.

It looks like our friend HT might housesit for us while we're gone, so I suppose worst-case scenario, if there's something we forget and just can't live without, we could always ask him to UPS us that warmer pair of mittens or a string of Xmas lights.

Anyone have any advice on how to manage the balance of too much/ not enough stuff?

airline price fixing

Just out of curiousity, I checked the fares to NYC from Detroit -- looks like Northwest, Continental, Delta, United, US Airways, American and Independence Air (who??) are all colluding at a standard price of $163 round trip for flights in December.

The air mattress is open the weekend of Dec. 10. :-)

It's not what you know

I'm so excited -- the U-M Entertainment Coalition officers met last night in NYC and they like my idea of doing a media networking event in December. This gives me the perfect reason to pick up the phone and call all kinds of big deal Michigan grads and invite them out for a happy hour. Plus with luck it'll concentrate 30 or 40 people in my industry in one room. I couldn't meet that many people in a month of happy hours if I was just doing one on ones.

UMEC does great things, and beyond the self-serving part of this, I'm delighted to get to help build up the media part of the club. It'll be great if the next media nerd doesn't have to do as much heavy lifting as I did to find people to talk to.

Several of the UMEC folks, including the super wonderful president Dominic, were in town tonight for a networking event hosted by Communications Studies so I'm even more fired up to get involved.

Shameless plug: www.uofmentertainmentcoalition.org

P.S. UMEC is launching a new web site this week. Check it out at http://www.uofmentertainmentcoalition.org/dev/

Does an air mattress count as a guest room?

John and I don't exactly live in a palatial estate in Ann Arbor, but we do have a guest room with a double bed. In our 700-square-foot Manhattan apartment, that's one of the amenities we'll do without.

But our temporary home does come with an inflatable air mattress. And if you're willing to sleep on an air mattress to save yourself 200 bucks at a Manhattan hotel, then I guess it passes for a guest room.

It looks like Sarah and Saejin might be the first to take advantage of Hotel Tebeau. They're mulling coming to the city Dec. 17-20 for a little Christmas shopping, maybe a manicure, and general hanging out.

Katie and Lara were talking about the possibility of Dec.10-13, but Lara had to back out because she's got to go to Chicago to accept a CASE award for LS&A magazine. Such is the price you pay when your friends are fabulous.

Blitz and Joy might join us for New Year's Eve. New Year's in the city sounds like an absolute blast, even if all we do is plop ourselves someplace to watch the revelers staggering to and from the Times Square mayhem (from a comfortable distance).

It's exciting to think of showing off the city to some of our friends --kind of like introducing your boyfriend to your friends. I hope we can show them why we love it so much.

Celebrate good times

Bailey is so cute -- she's insistent that John and I can't leave for New York without a big sendoff celebration.
But we're only going for a month, I responded. You wouldn't throw a going away party if I was just going on a vacation.
This is not a vacation. This is a big deal, and there will be a party. End of discussion.

So because I think it's so perfectly corny, here's her invitation (open to one and all!)
start spreading the news
They're leaving...well..... not today -- but SOON, and we want to be a part of it! To help the Tebeaus make a brand new start of it, we're gathering to wish Colleen and John a fruitful month in the city that never sleeps! Grab your vagabond shoes and stray by Dominick's anytime after 5:30 on Friday, Nov. 18 to help them start to melt away their little town blues. We figure people will probably arrive anywhere from 5:30-7:30 p.m. but we can stay until we feel like leaving. Hope you can make it!! Dominick's is at 812 Monroe Street

Don't count your chickens

I've been networking toward a post-MBA job for years -- going to New York, putting on events related to the media, talking with Michigan alumni, all that jazz. And yet, graduation came and went with no job.

Could it be that even before arriving in NYC, this trip is changing my luck?

Over the weekend, I applied for a marketing job at the Advertising Research Federation, and by this morning, I already had a response that they'd like to meet with me when I get to the city in December.

Then later today Columbia called to see if I might still be interested in an editor job I applied for ages ago.
(I don't find that posting online any more, but yowsa, they need a business editor for CJR!)

I'm still crossing my fingers on the AP, too. I interviewed there this spring and loved everything about it: the organization, the job duties, my would-be boss. I've heard through the grapevine they haven't hired anyone since I was there, so there's still hope. (I hope there's hope)
I've pinged two people there and they both said they'd be willing to have coffee when I'm in town in December, and I'm trying to be casual about it instead of forcing them to commit to a date and time right now.

My problem with job hunting is the reason I was lousy at dating. I'm no good at playing hard to get. If I feel the connection, I don't want to pretend to be coy.
When I was dating, I never got the "if we went out on Saturday then he called me on Tuesday and today's Thursday, is it too soon to call him?" BS.
Similarly, I want to send five dozen roses to the AP and propose marriage, but we're still at the "will there be a kiss good night?" stage of the relationship. It's maddening.

At least the trip to NYC gives me a reason to get back in touch with some people about leads that might've gone cold, and makes it easier to see people face to face without it involving a flight and a hotel just for an interview. The pressure is off a bit. It's more like a "hey, I'm having some people over ..." than an official date.

I just hope one of these dates puts out eventually.

The right guy for the job

John is in NYC right now. He gets home this afternoon, after being away for more than a week. This is the longest we've been away from each other since we started dating and I'm anxious to get him back.

The sacrifice was worth it, though. He went to the city in part to scout apartments for us for December and he came up with a winner.
As I said, John is beyond lucky. He just believes things will work out, so they do.

Everyone recommended using craigslist to find our sublet, so he emailed a ton of people with listings that sounded like they'd work. Almost no one responded. One who did respond was a place a little out of our price range, but with few other choices, he went to look at it.
When John got there, a Siamese cat greeted him, which he took as a good sign. (You'd have to know Guy, the loudest Siamese ever, to appreciate why.) The couple who lives there are a lot like us: she's a career gal who just finished a degree, he's a creative-type, and they're going to LA to job search for her.
John and the guy clicked, and when John confessed that it was a little more than we wanted to pay, he came down on price. That would sound crazy, that he'd come down on an upper east side apartment, except the story involves John, so it's totally normal.
So now we have a temporary home that's almost too good to be true. Here's the craigslist post:
Our luxury one bedroom is available Dec. 1-Jan. 3. This spacious corner unit has floor-to-ceiling windows, a large balcony, and stunning views from the 23rd floor of a full-service doorman building. Just 4 blocks from the Guggenheim and easy walking distance to 5th Ave's Museum Mile, home to nine major museums (including the Met.). Gym, sauna, steam room, pool, laundry. Very clean with hardwood floors, home theater, wireless Internet, queen size bed plus extra inflatable mattress, much more. Steps to subway, cinema, restaurants. Just 4 blocks to Central Park. Great for jogging.
(This is our living room -- note the wrap-around balcony -- and the view from said balcony)

Even the timing is perfect. We wanted a place Dec. 1-Jan. 2.

I'm having a hard time believing this is all really happening. But I'm married to John, so of course it is.

Start spreading the news ...

I swear I won't quote Frank Sinatra every time I post. But it does seem appropriate to do it for this inaugural item. Then I'll quit. I can quit any time I want.
A little background to kick us off ...
When we first got married, moving to New York was my dream. John had lived in Chicago and San Francisco, and had sort of gotten his fill of big city living. He is nothing if not open minded, though, so if I really wanted to move to NYC, he'd do it for me.
Slowly, though, he fell in love with the city, too. He even went a few times without me. That's when I knew he was hooked.
New York is a good place for both of us to be careerwise -- I want to work in the media, and you can't buy a slice of Famous Ray's pizza without bumping into someone who works at Time Warner or NBC or wherever; John is an artist, and it's hard to imagine many places better for selling art than NYC.
But it's more than that. It's not a purely logical decision to relocate to better our careers. It's how the place feels, and how we feel when we're there.

We've long anticipated moving to New York in 2005, as soon as I finished my MBA. But after sending off 32 gazillion resumes, networking like crazy and going on a few promising interviews, I haven't yet gotten an offer.

John is the kind of free spirit who would just plant a "for sale" sign in the front yard and go, letting everything sort itself out once we got there. He's done that before and to describe his results as lucky doesn't begin to describe the good fortune that's come. The universe loves my husband.

I, however, am more conservative where it comes to giving up my income, and taking on Manhattan rent with no job lined up. I tried to get up for it, but it gave me serious agita.

Instead, I hatched a compromise plan: we'll go for a month. My gracious boss granted me unpaid leave, so I keep my job security and my health insurance, but we get the benefit of going to the city to take people to coffee and go to cocktail parties and just let divine providence happen.