A virgin no more

The Times has a great story about the emotionally exhausting experience of finding your first NYC apartment -- though it's focused on 22-year-old undergrads coming to Manhattan, it rang true for me.

I especially liked this bit from the first paragraph:

It has been a summer of firsts for Mr. Snydacker, a Skidmore graduate: after scuffling in the city’s rental market, a sometimes-lawless agora peopled with good guys, bad guys and all the shape-shifters in between, Mr. Snydacker has emerged a little tougher and, emotionally, a little older. He is no longer a housing virgin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/garden/24new.html

Did I mention we *still* don't have a copy of our lease, two-plus months into living here? Apparently we aren't alone -- the doormen tell us they hear all manner of complaining about late leases, getting stood up for showings of apartments, all the same stuff we went through. And yet, NY real estate being what it is, people put up with it. Getting a NY apartment is every bit a bizarre journey as losing that other virginity, except at least then you didn't have to put down a $3,000 deposit.

Duck duck goose

This week, Chicago becomes the first city in the U.S. to ban foie gras because it tortures ducks and geese by force feeding them to fatten up their livers.
BBC story on the ban

Apparently chefs all over the city are protesting by "giving away" foie gras along with regular menu items, since the ban prohibits selling foie gras.

When there are so many tasty things in the world to eat, why do we need to have a fight over something that harms another living being in an unnecessary way? Yes, I'm a vegetarian so I have a different view than the majority but even if you want to be a carnivore, you can do that in a way that's humane. Raise animals in a compassionate, kind way and kill them quickly and painlessly.

We have such abundant food choices that, for example, there's no excuse in the world for taking a baby cow and putting him in a crate to prevent him from moving because veal is more tender that way. A cow is a sentient being, not an inanimate object. If you wouldn't do that to the family dog, how is it acceptable for a cow?

All of this reminded me of a story I read in the NY Times earlier this summer about ethical eating that I meant to share in the blog. So thanks to a prod from Chicago, here it is.

Discuss amongst yourselves. I'll be here eating my veggie burger, and counting the seconds until Karl makes some snarky comment about how much he loves foie gras.

Feeling like a dinosaur

Riding the subway to work in the morning, I occasionally feel like I have time traveled to modern Manhattan.
Wearing nylons and heels, I glance at the other female commuters and wonder if I am the only woman who doesn't wear flip flops to work.
In my knee-length skirts and blazers, I must look nearly Victorian to the working girls tarted up in lacy lowcut camisoles, supershort skirts, form-fitting city shorts and sequined everything.
Apparently there's no longer a distinction between what one wears clubbing and to the office? I feel like such a prude but I have to wonder if they really look in the mirror and think that their bosses will take them seriously when they're showing that much skin?
A woman walked in to my office building the other day wearing a midriff bearing see-through white tank top with a black bra under it. Black bra straps hung out, not that it mattered since the entire bra was visible through her tank. She wore a flouncy little short skirt and flip flops. I gasped at the chasm between my generation and hers.
I see dressing for work as part of how you convey an image of being professional and responsible. It's a uniform just as much as a nametag and polyester shirt at McDonald's. I would never, as our interns often did at U-M, show up in hip hugger jeans with my muffin top hanging out. But apparently somewhere along the same path that made it acceptable to send a professional email sans punctuation and capitalization and with greetings like "hey there," the call went out that business casual means what you wear to the bar on weekends.
Another "what the hell were they thinking?" style: it seems pretty common among 20-something women to dress for work, do their makeup and head out for the train with their hair still soaking wet. I'm not talking damp on the ends or maybe they got a little sweaty on the subway platform. This is "towel it off a little and you're good to go" wet. I don't care how many stops you have between home and the office, their hair is guaranteed to still be wet when they arrive at work. Why?? Everyone wakes up late once in a while, and maybe that's the day you just can't make time for the blow drier, but this is a common enough sight that it has to be a conscious decision. I can't imagine walking in to a meeting with my bosses looking like I just stepped out of the shower.
I know I'm not the only one who thinks there's still reason to dress professionally.
http://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/louisville/content/story.html?story_id=1291693
http://www.ehow.com/how_49_dress-business-casual.html
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=17400301%26method=full%26siteid=50082%26page=1%26headline=why%2dshowing%2dmore%2dskin%2dis%2dstill%2dan%2doffice%2dsin%2din%2dthe%2dprofessional%2ddress%2ddepartment%2d%2d%2d%2d-name_page.html
It only feels like I'm the only one.

Hot off the presses

If you didn't get your copy of AP World magazine today -- you really shouldn't let your subscription lapse, when you know how much you love reading the World -- then you might not have seen the item about yours truly in the "For the Record" listing of hires and promotions.

But there I am, on page 15, between the new director of election services and the new bureau chief in Boston. Surprisingly, I even kind of like the mugshot they took of me.

Staycation

Time Out New York recently had a cover story headlined "Staycation," featuring ideas for ways to enjoy time off without leaving the city. John and I were inspired to spend our four-day weekend exploring our new hometown. The weather could not have been more perfect, giving us four full days to roam many parts of the island we'd never seen.

Now we're nearly worn out, having done about 20,000 steps on just one day of Staycation. (That's about 10 miles on foot.) I needed to go back to work to rest up!

Here's us heading out on the first day, walking by Lincoln Center right across from our apartment.















We took the hop-on, hop-off Water Taxi down the Hudson, out to the Statue of Liberty, then up under the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges on the East River. We didn't so much hop on and hop off as just lounge in the sun on the upper deck like a couple of lizards. Tourist lizards. Like, I guess if that Geico lizard spent a long weekend in New York?


























Here are some other random photos of us enjoying everything from Chelsea to the East Village.











Conventional wisdom is that all New Yorkers leave the city in August -- it's so unbearably hot in the concrete jungle that the only wise thing to do is to head to one's beach house, lovey.
All those folks who left this past weekend missed one of the most beautiful weekends ever. It was 80s and sunny during the day, and cool with a breeze at night, even chilly enough for a sweater. Just perfect.

Happy to be home!

In the span of just over a week, I was in Kansas City, LA and Baltimore -- these were regional meetings with AP bureau chiefs from all over the country, and it was great to get to meet them in person since I work with them by email and phone quite a bit.

Still, that much coming and going (it was back to NYC in between each, not from one place to the other) was pretty tiring. Especially the trip back from Kansas City, which included a layover at Chicago Midway and a cancelled connection back on the low-cost, low-service ATA.
The upside of spending a surprise night in Chicago was that three other travelers in the same boat became fast friends and we hung out in the airport bar laughing about the situation. The guys even started going off on the ATA desk on my behalf when everyone else got an 8 a.m. flight the next day but I was told the soonest I could fly out was 5:40 p.m. Here are my traveling companions:











To wind down after long hours away from home -- up 'til midnight, then starting meetings at 7 the next day -- John and I lazed away a lot of the weekend in Central Park.
A few observations about Central Park:
-- whatever you do there just seems to be normal. If you want to do tai chi by yourself, or make out with your boyfriend, it seems like people are not at all self conscious about treating the park like their own back yard, which they happen to share with a few million other New Yorkers.
Take for instance these guys playing guitar. In the first picture, two guys who didn't know each other both brought their guitars to the park and one asked the other if he'd like to play together. In the second, a guy smokes a cigarette while he plays his guitar ... and his pet rabbit hangs out behind him.












-- the cell phone has not only become ubiquitious, but it's changed how people behave. People no longer meet their friends by saying "I'll be by the big tree at 2 p.m." Instead, the last person to arrive calls the party that's already there, and the person getting the call stands up, waves, and starts to describe everyone around him or her, playing a sort of electronic Marco Polo. It's almost uniform the way it's executed dozens of times a day. I especially like if there are multiple people waiting for a friend. Those who are not on the phone will call out something like "Tell him to look for the guy in the white T-shirt," because it seems no one thinks the person giving directions is giving the *right* directions.
Also, is it just me, or is it strange to see people sunning in bikinis chatting away on the phone? This girl was calling a guy who it sounded like she'd maybe met at a party or been introduced to by friends. That means everyone within earshot was getting to hear her try to be nonchalant calling this guy and flirting.











Then back at home tonight, John and I took one more step toward becoming official New Yorkers -- we were sipping tea after dinner, reading the Times, when John felt something tickle his foot.
Ewwww.
Still, even though it's our first cucharacha, we couldn't kill it. John captured it and sent it to cockroach heaven by dropping it down our trash chute.


This weekend we were supposed to host Barry and Carrie, who were on a week-long road trip that was to wrap up in New York. Instead they had car troubles and had to call off the last stop on their trip. Doggone it. Though we probably wouldn't have been great hosts, what with still being pretty unsettled here and me being worn out from traveling, it would have been great to see them. Maybe sometime soon.