If I can make it there ...

Where did you go??

2009-01-08T21:39:00.002-05:00

I haven't been posting much lately, as all three of you might have noticed.

I think Big Apple Bound has run its course. It started mainly as a way to share some photos and stories with everyone back home while we settled in to New York.

Later, I tried morphing it a bit into my version of having a Jo Mathis feature section column. It didn't quite fit. Maybe the forum was wrong, or I was doing it wrong, but I never got over the sense that the whole blog was just a big dig-me fest.

What was I doing besides showing off? Not much.

So I'm changing that. I've launched a new blog. http://newvinegrowing.wordpress.com/

This one's less about me, and more about ideas. It's about people and businesses making changes. Big changes, little changes, personal changes, organizational changes. It's big and open in part because it's new and in part because I want wide open space to play in.

If you still want to see dig-me photos, come on over to Facebook. You'll often see party pics and such there. If you're actually curious what I'm up to, check out Twitter. You can get micro-updates of 140 characters or less.

Or you can just call me. Or email. I'd love to hear from you.

Autumn in New York

2008-11-30T19:08:00.007-05:00

Back around Halloween time, John and I the Young Patrons of Lincoln Center masquerade party -- it was a black tie event in a space overlooking Columbus Circle. As John describes it, it felt very Great Gatsby.

Central Park was absolutely spectacular this fall -- the leaves were so beautiful one afternoon when we took a walk that I couldn't resist taking a load of photos.

We hurt "boom" in the distance one night, and looked out our new windows facing Central Park to discover fireworks. We didn't know fireworks were planned for the New York Marathon, so it was an unexpected treat. We turned off the lights and sat in the living room enjoying the show.

Black Friday turns really dark

2008-11-30T17:53:00.006-05:00

I got sick to my stomach reading about the poor Wal-Mart worker who was trampled to death on Friday as shoppers literally busted down the doors.

An article about the death in the Times suggested that with the sour economy, people are panicked about not having enough, that this behavior isn't surprising. To a certain extent, I could understand if the shoppers had been waiting all night in a bread line and they were desperate to get food for their starving families. But to buy toys and TVs? Really??

Are we such a materialistic society that the potential to save money on extravagances we don't need could cause us to kill someone? This isn't about survival. But do Americans know the difference?

A section of this Times story seems to capture the compulsion to spend:
Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”

John and I have been in Manhattan for more than two years. We sold off so much stuff before we moved, and we continue to take trip after trip to Goodwill to cast off things we don't need or don't have room for.

Living in 695 square feet helps you get clarity about what's a necessity. Honestly, only a handful of times have I missed anything we've gotten rid of, and much more frequently we've looked around and realized that some of what we've kept is just clutter.

Maybe the reason the Wal-Mart incident is so appalling to me is that our forced minimalism gives me no empathy for someone desperate for a third television. Spend some time living with no basement, no garage, no attic, no storage room, really having to be among every item you own, and you develop a different view of the clutter in your life.

Meanwhile, I recently read a heart-warming column in Oprah's O Magazine. An Irish author talked about how her favorite gifts were time -- whether it was a favor by a friend or a hand-written letter, something that really meant something as a connection between the giver and the recipient.

I tried and failed to find an online link for the article, called Acts of Friendship, but one of my favorite anecdotes involved two women who each hated a particular domestic chore. I think one hated ironing and the other hated mending clothes, so once a week they'd get together and the one who hated ironing would mend the other's clothes and the one who hated mending would iron.

Isn't that the greatest gift? Spending time with someone you like AND rescuing her from something she hates?

We're also aware that many of our favorite people are nervously watching the economy to figure out what it means for them. We have loved ones back in Michigan who draw their paychecks directly and indirectly from the automakers, and who earn their living from construction, both of which are shaky these days. Not that working for a university or a school district is bullet proof when tax dollars are shrinking ... really, we're all a little vulnerable.

When you add all this up, what does it mean?

Bottom line: we would love it if you didn't buy us anything for Christmas.

I know, Christmas gifts are an expression of love and friendship. I still greedily want your love and friendship. I just don't need you to get trampled at Wal-Mart to do that.

So here's my alternative Christmas wish list:
1. Come visit us -- come to New York, if you don't live here. It's a great city and we love sharing it with friends. If you do live here, come over for dinner and a night of playing Taboo or Rumikub or something.
2. Write me a letter -- a real pen and ink, put it in an envelope with a stamp letter. I have always loved getting real mail (I think it goes back to the Dr. Seuss book club my mom enrolled me in) and it would be a treat to get a letter from a friend. Tell me about what's on your mind, or a favorite memory you have with me or us, or something you're dreaming of.
3. Donate to a charity -- City Harvest needs help feeding people, Best Friends is a no-kill animal shelter that helps animals all over the country, World Wildlife Fund tries to protect our environment ... or find a well-run charity that serves a mission you believe in.

Of course if you'd like to follow the example from O magazine and come over to do some ironing, you're more than welcome. I'd even swap you a lesson on how to use Blogger or Twitter or something if you want. Or I'd cook you some vegetarian spaghetti. Or I can edit your resume.

Anything that doesn't involve busting down the doors at Wal-Mart.

Amazing times in New York

2008-11-16T14:54:00.002-05:00

John and I went to a little watering hole on the upper west side on election night, figuring that being out and about in one of the most Democratic neighborhoods in the country would be quite an experience if Obama won.

True, the bar did erupt in applause when CNN declared Obama the winner, and we did hear yelling and noise makers on the streets as we walked home. But it turns out the real festivities were in Brooklyn, where revelers poured into the streets, blocking traffic and creating impromptu festivals of democracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUiqs6GT-zo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFpp28yeJCk
http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/archives/2008/11/barack_obama_ce.html

Just a few days before the election, the New York Marathon shut down many of the major streets around us. I'm not much of a runner but I was curious to see all the hubbub, so John and I wandered into Central Park, where the finish line was maybe a five-minute walk from our apartment.

I found myself unexpectedly getting weapy as I watched hundreds of runners concluding the final yards of this grueling ordeal. To my surprise, many of them didn't look sweaty and exhausted, but instead thrilled and jubilant. They waved at family members and smiled for the cameras.

Part of what really got to me, though, was the people lining the course. They were shouting things like "You can do it!" and "You're almost there!" and "Good work! Keep going!" But they weren't just yelling it to one person they seemed to know. They were doing it for all the runners.

It seemed like such a beautiful example of how life should be. The runners were pushing themselves to do something that's mostly about achieving a personal success, not about having to beat someone else to achieve, and all around them, people who had no vested interest in their achievement urged them to continue.

Too much of American culture has held up cynical snarky criticism as the height of funny. Hey, I'm not saying I don't find Jon Stewart brilliant. But we aren't all Jon Stewart, and there's a difference between satirizing American government and directing that hostility toward individuals around us.

What if we directed a little of that snark into cheerleading for each other? Like, "hey, congratulations on trying something new at work!" Or, as really happened to me recently, a taxi dispatcher actually yelled out "Great shoes!" Or whatever it is. Just giving each other a little love?

Yes, we can.

Make 'em laugh make 'em laugh make 'em laugh

2008-10-13T21:45:00.002-04:00

I like to laugh. Ask anyone who's ever worked with me. Bailey and I had the reputation of being the twin guffaws at the U-M News Service, and I once had an editor at my college paper give me a stern talking to because I laughed too much on the job. (I responded that I was sorry she didn't enjoy her job as much as I did, but I didn't think productivity necessarily equated to an absense of fun.)

In case you like to laugh, too, here are some things that have made me laugh out loud recently:
-- Joe Cocker at Woodstock, with closed captioning
-- Lara's blog posting about one of her earliest books (her posting about the worst rejection letter ever is pretty hilarious, too. well, a whole lotta Lara's blog, really)
--The Facebook statuses of our friend Jeff, waiting impatiently for his first child to arrive:
Jeffrey and Rachel are still waiting!!! It's officially a "Hoomaian" baby - LATE!!! (you'd have to know Jeff, but this is proof positive of the baby's paternity)
Jeffrey is waiting for "special package" to arrive - no tracking number, but now "overdue."

What I love about each of these is that they aren't episodes of SNL or professional content. They're people making each other laugh using the Internet. That might not be what the government nerds who thunk up the Internet intended, but I think it's a pretty fine use of technology. (Sure, all new technology is actually funded by porn, but laughter is a pretty benign benefit.)

Not that I'm opposed to professionals making us laugh.
-- Venture Brothers rules
-- David Sedaris is genius, especially when you hear his stories in his own voice
-- Family Guy's absurdity, like in this five-minute sequence of Peter fighting a six-foot chicken

A friend recently said on Facebook she was having a bad day, and she asked for friends to tell her jokes. I offered my favorite.

Knock knock
Who's there?
Interrupting cow
Interrupting co ... MOO!

(It's better when you see it. Like this.)

Hey, the stock market went up 1,000 points today. Don't you think we all deserve a laugh?

Doing the math

2008-10-12T13:26:00.004-04:00

There's a lot about American consumer behavior that baffles me. Their reaction to the economy this year is a perfect example.

Back in the late 1990s, at the height of the dot-com boom, I remember writing a story as a business journalist saying that the average American not only had no money in savings but was several thousand in debt. This wasn't a case that economy had soured so people were using their credit cards to make ends meet. It was a time of incredible prosperity and people were making the lifestyle choice to spend more than they made.

This always confused me. If you can't afford the new TV or tennis shoes or video game now, how will it be different when you charge it, adding the high interest costs to the price of the toy? It won't, but the good news for retailers and banks was that Americans are so gifted at denial that they could pretend the day of reckoning would never come.

Add a decade of increasingly easy credit and you really fuel the fire. No longer did second mortgages carry the stink of economic failure -- they were home equity loans, so much more palatable. Commercials showed happy middle class families using home equity loans to not only pay off their debt but to even have enough money for a swimming pool or a vacation.
Never to save, that I recall. Always to keep on spending.

Maybe because I grew up with working class parents who constantly extolled the value of money, it gives me a knot in my stomach to be in debt. John and I share this priority, and in spite of our ridiculously high rent, we pay off our credit cards every month and have a nice nest egg in savings.

That's part of what makes it hard for me to understand the American ethos of moving into ever bigger houses, ever farther away from work, driving increasingly gigantic cars -- then complaining when the cost of gas and heat go up.

Let's do the math just to make my point. I loved story problems as a kid.

Let's say you live 50 miles from work, so your commute is 100 miles a day five days a week.
That's 500 miles.
Because you're your kids' chauffeur, shuttling them to soccer practice and all the other requisite activities I didn't do, and my parents would have made me ride my bike to if I had done them, let's say you drive 20 extra miles of errands every day.
That's another 140 miles, for a total of 640 miles a week.
You drive a Navigator because an SUV is so much cooler than a minivan, so you get 18 miles to the gallon on the highway, 13 in the city.
We'll split the difference and call it 15 miles per gallon.
To do your 640 miles each week, you must buy about 42 gallons of gas.

At $1.50 a gallon, 42 gallons of gas costs $63.
At $4 a gallon, it's $168.
All this screaming about the high price of gas causing people to cancel vacations or finally consider a hybrid car is about $100 a week?

I'm not saying it's fun to give an extra $100 of your income to the oil companies so they can post record profits. But really, if your home budget can't absorb an extra $100 a week without drastic measures, that might be a sign you want to re-evaluate some of your choices so you have more of a buffer.

A friend asked for my help in making a budget to get out of debt. The first thing I advised was that she had to pay for everything in cash for a month and write down every expense. We then reviewed her spending to look at the difference between necessities and extras, and to look for ways to do the necessities cheaper.

Some things are easy -- no, you don't need another expensive purse, you can do without the mani-pedi. But I think part of our problem is that we've lost the ability to tell the difference between necessities and luxuries. Our parents got along fine without DVD players, answering machines (well, now voice mail), garage door openers and the other gizmos we now simply cannot live without. Look around your house right now and mentally list everything you didn't have 20 years ago, and consider for a second whether you really need it.

Yes, food is a necessity. However, going out to eat is typically a lot more expensive than cooking for yourself, and processed, prepared foods at the grocery store are typically more expensive than simpler foods. Trimming one or two lunches out during the week can save money. For some families, one more dinner in a week might equal the difference in gas.

I would call coffee a necessity. I do not call a $3-4 a day latte habit a necessity. Make your coffee at home, put it in a travel mug, and ta-da, you might have just found a good chunk of your gas budget.

Clothes are a necessity. But one woman I know who seemed always to be complaining about being broke also always seemed to have new outfits. Take care of what you have and stay out of the stores if you don't have the cash. Oh, and I just read that about 65 percent of the clothes women dry clean could actually be machine washed, so if you hate spending on dry cleaning like I do, try out your gentle cycle or give those Dryel bags a whirl.

My personal favorite -- the car payment. In most places, yes, you need a car to get around. But I still can't wrap my head around leasing cars. You build no equity and you never get yourself to a point of not having a car payment. Here's an idea: buy a two-year-old car, pay it off, and enjoy the pleasure of driving it a few years without a car payment. Then when you finally do sell it, put that money down on your next two-year-old car. My '93 Escort had I think 140,000 miles on it when I sold it to leave for New York, and it had been paid off since John and I started dating.

Cut out one car payment a month and you've probably covered the price of the gas increase. Do it for two family cars and you might find some money for a savings account. No, Andy Jacobs, do not spend that money on a pool or a vacation.

I think unfortunately our typical middle class lifestyle becomes a vicious cycle of spending. If you live so far from work, your commute is so long, you might feel you have no time to cook so you get trapped into convenience foods and restaurant food.

Here's something I'd love to see happen from the economic downturn -- people re-assess their lifestyle choices and make some different decisions. Live closer to work so you have more time to cook and spend more time with your family. Live in a smaller house and drive a smaller car so you're a little more immune to fuel costs, and as a bonus, maybe you're better to the environment. Skip the $200 jeans, buy a no-name purse, and generally scale back a bit so you can put some money into a nice, safe savings account. (yes, I know, your 401k is painful right now. me, too.)

Next time you're tempted to grouse about the rising price of food, heat or gas, try this experiment. Spend the next month writing down every single item you spend money on. Honestly assess whether it's a necessity, and if it is, if there's a way you could do it more affordably.

Our culture has been drunk on spending for a so long that you might find the real issue isn't the price of gas.

Wall Street is our Main Street

2008-10-05T22:45:00.002-04:00

I suppose living in the financial capital of the U.S., I'm obligated to blog something about this financial meltdown.

Sidestepping any commentary on the massive bailout/rescue package and instead focusing on the heart of the issue, I think the anonymity of corporate America has relieved us all of guilt in our business dealings.

Yes, I grew up Catholic so I'm well acquainted with community-inflicted guilt. But here, I think there actually is something positive to be said.

My dad likes to tell a story of two big burly guys coming to his parents' home when he was a kid. The men were there to repossess a washing machine my grandfather had missed some payments on. My dad, of course, was mortified that all the neighbors were going to see this washing machine getting bounced down the front steps and into a collection truck.

Think about how much has changed.

John and I recently bought a nice bedroom set from Pottery Barn. Like many Americans, we put it on our credit card. We did not put it on an account with a locally owned department store, where we know the people who work there.

So if we decide to stop paying on our new bedroom furniture, the people at our Pottery Barn store don't care. Not only are they hourly employees of a massive, faceless corporation -- so it doesn't affect their paycheck one way or another whether we pay -- but Pottery Barn gets its money regardless.

Our credit card has already paid Pottery Barn so our obligation is to Chase. Not that we know the people we deal with at a local Chase branch or anything. If we stopped paying on our credit card, we'd likely get a phone call from some hard working guy in India, calling himself Dave or Rick or some other middle America name, urging us to pay.

If we don't, though, what are the real consequences?

Do we have to worry that burly men are going to come take our dressers away? Do we have to hang our heads in shame next time we go to the bank to deposit a paycheck, because we know everyone who works there and they all know we're behind?

No. It's all pretty detached, and I suppose at worst, we'd just screen our calls and let everything go to voice mail so we didn't have to talk to the collections folks. Then we'd go on enjoying our new bedroom set.

I think most people, in their hearts, want to be good. And I think most people don't feel much guilt taking a little extra when they don't think there's a real victim.

So if overextending myself means I know I'm going to have to face the appliance store owner in church on Sunday, I might rein it in. I don't want to hurt someone I know. I'd probably know that his mother's been really sick or he's saving up to send his kid to college -- I'd know how my actions affected another human being.

However, if some amorphous entity, some ginormous bank wants to give me the power to spend myself silly, maybe I don't feel it's actually hurting anyone. On the flip side, if I'm the mortgage officer approving a loan I know full well the people have no hope of keeping up on, but I'm in some far-flung location where I won't have to see those people after they've sat at their kitchen table wondering how to stave off foreclosure, maybe it's not about hurting anyone, it's just making my quota for the month so I get my bonus.

I think back when we all lived in smaller, interconnected ecosystems, our actions probably felt more like we had accountability for them. Like back in the days when lots of people still paid by check, you really didn't want to bounce a check to your local grocery store if you knew they'd do what lots of retailers did -- taping copies of the bounced checks to the register, for all your busy-body neighbors to see.

The more I read and hear about the mortgage meltdown, the more I wonder if anyone felt any accountability: the people taking out the loans, the people making the loans, the Wall Street guys buying and selling the loans.

Maybe if we all worried about how our neighbors would think of us when we got our latest toy repossessed, rather than trying to show off to our neighbors with cars and homes we can't pay for, we wouldn't need a reminder like this -- "Don't Buy Stuff You Can't Afford."

This is like watching our vacation slides

2008-09-30T21:27:00.010-04:00

Except you aren't trapped in the dark on our couch, so you can skim through them as quickly as you'd like without risking offending us.

John and I recently returned from a week in northern California, including a few days in San Francisco and the rest of the time in Sonoma, which is the sort of low-key wine country sibling to Napa Valley.

In SF, we stayed at a funky B&B run by a Brooklyn native who's now a sort of San Francisco fashionista party girl. While we were there, they had a backyard wedding for some middle aged Jewish hippies and on the morning of the wedding, we had breakfast with the bride, groom and pretty much the entire party.

The photos below show the amazing view from our third-floor room, as well as the wake we stumbled into at John's favorite coffee shop, Caffe Trieste, celebrating the life of a beloved SF musician. There were musicians playing inside, musicians jamming and smoking pot outside, and generally the kind of adoring send off we should all aspire to.

Here's me at a hipster coffee shop where they roast their own beans, and John about to dive into a sampler of some microbrews at a brewpub near the Pacific Ocean. Finally, us on one of SF's many hills, with a great view out over the city.

Then it was time to drive north, up over the Golden Gate Bridge, and into Sonoma, where it was grape harvest season.

One of my favorite photos of the trip -- us with Joel Peterson, founder of Ravenswood, which makes some of my favorite wines.

Some vino highlights of our copious tastings: Random Ridge 2002 cabernet, Benziger's about-to-be-released Tribute cab, Little Vineyards syrah, Viansa prindelo, Gloria Ferrer blanc de noir, Gundlach Bundschu gewurtziminer. Can't find these in your local wine shop? The Wine Exchange in Sonoma would be happy to help by shipping wine from tiny wineries straight to your doorstep!

Finding my why

2008-09-14T15:32:00.001-04:00

Since I’ve been neglecting my blog most of the summer, I’m roaring back with a unibomber manifesto on the meaning of life. Fair warning: grab a glass of wine and your reading glasses, this will take a while.

I believe that old adage that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

I also believe the universe (or God, or your subconscious, you decide) sends you hints with decreasing subtlety about what you should be doing with your life.

For example, John has been thinking he’d like to be more musical. He loves Steve Martin, and Steve Martin plays banjo, so John considered that. A musician friend, Evan, suggested that ukulele is easier to learn so John started mulling that. Within the span of about 24 hours, he saw a guy selling ukeleles on the street, we encountered a guy playing hip-hop ukulele (really) who let John strum his uke and we saw a story in I think the Times about the resurgence of ukulele.

I think this kind of thing happens a lot, if you’re paying attention. You get little reinforcements when you’re on the right path, and reminders of what you should be doing if you’re on the wrong one.

A few years ago, I again picked up writing my on-again off-again novel. I was enjoying the process but finding it tough to stay motivated. I wondered if my writing idols like Tom Wolfe and Richard Russo found it tough to stick with a novel and what kept them going.

Then while John and I were on vacation, and I was reading I Am Charlotte Simmons, we ran into Tom Wolfe in the airport. Not sure you’d recognize your favorite novelist? Wolfe is hard to miss in a head-to-toe white suit.

I screwed up my courage and introduced myself. Wolfe seemed to genuinely enjoy being recognized – it’s not like he was hiding behind dark glasses and a baseball hat, dressing like the natty Good Humor man. He posed for a picture, and told us about a talk he was giving later that night.

It wasn’t easy but we found the place where Wolfe was speaking in Amsterdam, and when we walked into a packed auditorium, we somehow scored seats in the second row. Wolfe spoke about, among other things, how journalists make great novelists because they’re trained observers, they’re curious about the world around them and they’re used to listening to dialogue.

I was euphoric. No, I can’t say he gave me the boost I needed to finish my still-lingering book, but it was a surreal moment having a writing guardian angel speak so many things that seemed to urge me forward.

When we began a business-side reorganization earlier this year, my bosses told me my existing job would go away and asked me what I would like to do instead. I identified two possibilities, then seemed to hang in limbo for months while various other structural issues got sorted out.

As time went on, I spent more and more time reflecting not on what would be best for my career trajectory or what would look best on my resume but what I could really be passionate about. As a result, I ultimately declined a job that was probably the better career move in favor of one I think I’ll enjoy more.

I turn 40 in 2011 and in some ways I already feel the clock ticking. Our time here is finite and when I hit that milestone, I would like to be living my life in a way that’s consistent with my passions, interests and values.

What does that mean?

Lately, it seems I’m frequently encountering the question “What’s your why?”

I’d been contemplating how I want to live my life for the past few months when a semi-random Twitter connection told me the universe thinks this is important.

I was getting ready to go see U-M alum author Brad Meltzer read from his new novel when I did a quick search on summize.com to see if anyone else mentioned they were going. Surely it would be a full house, but I was just curious about the Twitter traffic.

Only one guy mentioned Brad’s reading in a sort of cryptic tweet, saying he likes Brad’s novels because Brad lives his why. That was intriguing enough that I quickly clicked through to the Twitterer’s blog, where he spoke of running his business consistent with his values and teaching other people to do the same.

Interesting.

I went to the reading, enjoyed hearing Brad, and on my way home, stopped at Maoz, one of my favorite fast food spots, to pick up dinner. The guy behind me in line asked if I liked the reading. At first I resisted making conversation because I assumed he was trying to pick me up. But then something odd happened. He asked how I knew about Brad, and I told him about the Michigan connection, then asked him the same question.

He said Brad’s brother-in-law had introduced them, they’d spent a few days hanging out together, and he has a special connection with Brad because he so genuinely follows his why.

Really? In a city of 8 million people, the guy who makes small talk with me at a falafel restaurant is the same one whose blog I happened upon an hour ago?

A few days later, I was in Vegas at a conference for work. I spent most of the conference working our booth in a trade show set up, but after that concluded, I was able to attend a few conference sessions.

The first session of my free morning? One of Poynter’s faculty members talking about the why of what journalists do. He had the passion of a preacher, even in front of an 8 a.m. crowd in Vegas, and I felt myself choking up when he had us do an exercise writing about why we do what we do.

I don’t get emotional thinking about days on end of PowerPoints and policy memos, but I do feel passionately about the role of the media in society. It’s not only the watchdog that can hold our leaders accountable, it can also provide the glue that holds a community together through shared experiences, it can help people live their lives by providing information, and it can entertain and inspire with good stories.

All of which reinforces the importance of reflecting on my why. I want to get out of bed every morning feeling like if this were my last day on earth, I would have no regrets that I spent it in a way that I value.

In a less existential way, with our lease up next year, John and I have spent a lot of time talking about where and how we want to live. Brooklyn or suburbs? New York metro area or someplace else? The ticking clock of a lease provides a good motivator to contemplate these things, unlike a mortgage which will run as long as your bank stays in business.

Ultimately John would like to get out of New York, preferably to a place with a beach, maybe a tourist town. I don’t want to live anyplace too small but I could see the appeal of a place smaller than New York. But what will I do in that smaller place?

That, she thought, is another reason to reflect on the why.

I guess I'd be Miranda?

2008-07-06T16:14:00.003-04:00

We finally saw Sex and the City, which seemed no small accomplishment since it was sold out all over town on its opening weekend. I'd thought it would be fun to be a Manhattan woman going to see a movie about Manhattan women opening night, and apparently, so did a lot of other chicks. We were out to dinner that night and the streets of New York looked like middle-aged prom -- lots of grown-up girls out together in fab outfits and of course their best shoes.

Though the movie hype got to be a bit much, I always liked the TV show for its smart writing, strong women and unusual plots, so after the initial rush died down, I wanted to see this cinematic love letter to my new home.

Yes, I'm a writer and I appreciate a good pair of shoes, but I think that might be where my similarities to Carrie end. Most of the time, I end up rolling my eyes at the various ways she makes her life more complicated than it needs to be. Most of her man crises seem to me self made. Without spoiling one of the key plots, let's just say I didn't think Big was so out of line and Carrie characteristically overreacted.

Still the movie left me really wistful. Maybe the real reason Sex and the City became such a cultural phenomenon -- if you don't believe me, come to New York and watch the hordes of chicks out on SATC walking tours -- is less about whether Carrie and Big end up together and more about our craving of that kind of deep connection with girlfriends.

I've often bemoaned that modern working women make their friendships a low priority. Time for friends comes somewhere after husband, work, kids, errands, extended family, PTA, church ... you get the idea. Whatever scraps aren't claimed by nearly anything else, maybe those can go to lunch with a friend.

I think that's part of the reason book clubs and yoga classes got so popular. It's easier for women to hold a block of time for themselves and their friends if that time's doing something productive -- so saying "Tuesday night is my time to drink wine and dish with the girls" becomes "We're taking a knitting class."

Carrie & Co. need no such pretense. They unapologetically get together for breakfast to talk about love, sex, sometimes work (but very little. does Charlotte even have a job any more?) and just enjoy each other's company.

When one of the girls hits a low point -- I'm trying to keep it generic -- the others drop everything to go on a week-long cheer-up vacation. This might be the real fairy tale love story, not the much-discussed Carrie & Big wedding. These are women who support each other deeply in the hard times, cheer for each other in the good times, care enough to voice their hurts instead of glossing them over, and offer forgiveness in recognition that friends are human and they will screw up occasionally.

I've always been a fairly independent girl. One of my most cringe-worthy middle school memories involves the birthday party of a nice, mildly nerdy boy in my class. He invited me to come, I got the when and where, and at the appointed time, my mom gave me a ride to the party. I arrived to find I was the *only* girl in a room full of maybe 20 boys. It had never occurred to me to do the most obvious middle-school girl thing: ask who else was going.

In spite of being an extrovert who loves having playmates around, I mostly haven't cultivated the kinds of friends who would fly home unannounced to celebrate my engagement.
Maybe that's because I'm an only child, or maybe because I'm a dork lacking in some fundamental social skills. In life's big moments, high and low, I've tended to fly solo -- or now, to share them with John.

After my relationship with Frank imploded, I made a conscious effort to cultivate girlfriends. I began hosting hen parties at my apartment, which morphed into the tradition of the clothing exchange party. Those parties helped pull me closer to several girls, but would any of them take off to Mexico next week if I got dumped?

So in my re-evaluation of my life priorities, I'm putting real, deep friendships near the top of the list. I know I've been guilty of taking too long to return friends' phone calls, neglecting to send an email when I think of people, spending my entire weekend loving John's company but not making time for friends. If I want the kind of friends who make me me a priority, I need to commit to doing the same.

Living intentionally

2008-06-21T21:03:00.002-04:00

Looks like John and I will spend one more year at 2 Lincoln, but not without a good amount of conversation about whether that's what we want -- do we want to stay here, find another apartment in Manhattan, move to another borough, retreat to the suburbs ... or something brand new?

The question of where we want to live becomes a proxy for many of the other big questions of life. How long do I see myself at AP? What does John expect from his career? What kind of lifestyle do we want?

So much feels up in the air right now. John had a temp gig he really liked at the MOMA and it looked like he was going to land a full-time position but that hasn't materialized yet. We're still sorting out a reorg at my office, and my new role isn't yet settled. Manhattan hasn't yet gotten the memo about real estate prices going down, but maybe there's hope that someday it won't cost $2 million for a two bedroom here?

Ultimately I think it comes down to a question of how we want to live, more so than where.

Having invested considerable time and money in my MBA makes it seem like I should continue to climb the corporate ladder. I'm already quite fortunate to have the position I do, and it looks like I might have a shot at what I might call a career accelerator position -- a new opportunity with a great title and excellent visibility in the company.

Lately, though, I've been thinking long term. What's the ultimate payoff? What am I giving up in return for the payback? There's a delicate balance there -- I don't like being bored and I enjoy the satisfaction of a challenge, but I also don't want the rest of my life to suffer under the strain of my job.

I spent the first several years after college frantically trying to climb the newspaper ladder -- from a small paper to a bigger paper, from reporter to editor, and before long, I got to a spot where I realized I didn't want to keep climbing. Though I made a change, my current position is still climbing from those newspaper beginnings. With the challenges facing traditional media, it's hard not to wonder when the time will come to make more of a clean break.

That's scary, though, since it probably means starting over -- beginner pay, beginner mistakes, competing in the job market with people who have way more experience. At what? I don't know. I've been fantasizing about teaching, typically at journalism departments or a media center like Poynter or API. Probably the bail out many of us in the media consider, and I bet the application stack is huge at all of them right now.

But what about something *really* different? Like what? It's hard to even imagine. John keeps talking about running a bed and breakfast in Key West, or selling veggie dogs from a cart in Venice Beach, something low key in a resort town.

In my perfect vision of our life together:
-- I will work at a job I enjoy, with people I like, doing tasks I feel are meaningful in some way
-- I will make good enough money not to have to worry about paying the bills
-- John will pursue creative endeavors, receiving both accolades and compensation for them
-- We will live someplace with rich culture, interesting people, and natural beauty
-- Our home will offer a great quality of life, including walkable community, green spaces, a reasonable pace of life and peace and quiet
-- Will will share our lives with friends who we love like family
-- Our lives will be in balance. We will work enough to feel valued and connected to our community, but still have time and energy for each other and for our friends.

These are a few of my favorite things

2008-05-27T21:02:00.002-04:00

Poynter had a story today about how blogging might be good for you. An article in Scientific American says:
"Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. ...
Our limbic (primitive) brain may have an innate need to communicate -- akin to our drives for food or sex. Thus, as we blog, our bodies may release the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine.

So my thought was that if researchers think blogging might have positive effects on mental state, what if I blogged about the things that make me happiest? Too meta for you?

In no particular order, I love:
-- lounging in the sun, lazily reading a book or magazine
-- laughing so hard it makes me snort
-- spending time with friends who can make me laugh so hard I snort, and friends who are comfortable enough not to be embarrassed
-- teaching someone to do something that had previously confused them, and hearing the "a-ha!" in their voice
-- a big ol' fruity girltini, or just about any cocktail that can wear a parasol
-- listening to old jazz, tapping my foot or bopping my head OR
-- turning up old rock a little too loud and shouting the lyrics to Van Halen or AC/DC OR
-- dancing around the apartment to '80s techno that reminds of long-gone college days
-- getting a love note from my husband
-- eating a great meal -- whether that's an elegant multi-course affair with wine and such, or a pizza from Lombardi's with garlic spinach, olives, mushrooms and extra sauce
-- just barely catching the bus or subway, instead of seeing it speed away
-- hearing from friends who have good news (not that I don't like hearing from friends when they *don't* have good news)
-- solving a puzzle that previously eluded me -- figuring out a complex problem in Excel, taming PowerPoint, pulling together a business plan that suddenly clicks together
-- playing yenta and introducing friends to friends, or otherwise connecting people who might not have otherwise met
-- getting a genuine hug from someone who's truly happy to see me
-- researching hotels, restaurants and things to do on vacation, enjoying the anticipation of the fun we'll have, then exploring a new town with my hubby
-- coming home from vacation to a clean home (yes, I really do clean before I leave town, because it feels nicer to return that way)
-- learning something new and beginning to feel it click
-- related, talking to really smart people and hearing ideas that are new to me
-- the afterglow of a good workout
-- sleeping in
-- reading the paper and getting sucked into an article about something I previously didn't care at all about

What about you? What do you love? Share the psychological benefits with me and comment!

Technological hyphenate

2008-05-18T17:09:00.002-04:00

For the first year or so after we moved to New York, I mainly chronicled our goings on via this blog.

Then I started to get hooked on Facebook and began putting more of my energy into that new social media and less into my blog.

Lately I've been playing with Twitter to try to understand its appeal. And even more recently, I signed up for BrightKite, which is like Twitter but with an even more narrow field of play.

What? You haven't been paying attention to social networking and you're still stuck at email?

OK, so Facebook is sort of like having a Web site, where you can post things that interest you like photos and videos. It's also a little like Evite, as you can create events and invite others, and it's a little like Craigslist, because you can post things for sale. But where it gets interesting is that unlike the Web, which relies on users stumbling onto whatever you post, you can connect to your friends' pages, and whenever they do anything, you'll get a notification.

Example: a friend from b-school posted pictures of her baby. We haven't been in touch lately and I'm ashamed to admit I didn't even know she was pregnant. Facebook let me know she'd put the photos up and in a passive way, I was able to keep up to date on her life.

Twitter is like blogging for severe ADD. All it does is ask "what are you doing?" and it gives you just 140 characters to answer. It forces an economy of language not unlike haiku. What makes Twitter different from blogging, though, is that most people see it as primarily a wireless toy. You send a text message to Twitter -- a Twitter message is called a tweet -- from your cell phone and tell the world that you're having the best burrito of your life or that there's a big accident on the highway, or ask a question like where to get the best Chinese food in D.C.
Like Facebook, your Twitter account connects to others. You can follow other people and they can follow you. Different from Facebook, where the people you connect to are likely to be people you know in the real world, Twitter culture seems to encourage following people you've never met, based on shared interests or common geography. It builds community instead of just reinforcing community that already exists.

Brightkite doesn't care what you're doing. It's like Twitter but it only wants to know where you are. I'm a little creeped out by the Big Brother potential for that, but you can limit who gets access to what level of detail. And let's say you see on Brightkite that a friend you don't see enough of is at Whole Foods and you're on your way there? You can make a quick call and arrange an impromptu meeting in the coffee bar.

I have Joe Serwach to thank for shaming me into trying Facebook, and Bill Couch for being my Gen Y social media sherpa. I'm still not sure what it's all good for, but as a media exec, I feel like I at least need to give it a try.

And since all this stuff is taking time away from my blogging, you'll see that I've now added my Twitter tweets to the right nav bar of my blog, as well as a link to my Facebook profile. If you really want all Colleen all the time, you've got plenty of ways to keep up to date.

Oh, and if you've lost patience for checking back here to see if I've written anything, you know you can add a Blogger feed to your personalized Google page, right? That way it'll push my latest headline to your Google home page whenever I post.

Leavin' on a jet plane

2008-05-18T16:21:00.008-04:00

This is our first weekend at home in a while, and it feels nice to just sit on the couch and read the Times with a cup of coffee. Yes, I really am *that* domesticated.

First weekend of May was New Orleans Jazz Festival. New Orleans was a troubled city long before Katrina hit and it's struggling to bounce back -- many people haven't returned, businesses have closed, critical infrastructure isn't in place. BUT it's still a magical place where the homogenization of America seems not to have encroached. Its music, food, architecture and culture still feels like no other part of the country I've ever visited.

In some ways, it's like the Caribbean. You know that "no problem, mon" ethos where people in the islands get things done if and when they feel like it? New Orleans has that kind of laid back, almost to the point of comotose, work ethic. To enjoy New Orleans, you've got to lower your expectations and get into its pace, which is shock to a New Yorker's system.

In other ways, it's all about individual responsibility, sort of libertarians sipping sazaracs. In a city with a reputation for hard partying, not only can you still smoke in bars, but you can buy a drink in a bar then wander out the door with it. No open intox bans here. All over town you'll find sidewalks with giant chunks missing and not so much as a cursory splash of orange spray paint warning you to watch your step. If you got drunk and tripped in a pothole the size of a Buick, whose fault is that? You should have been paying attention. Ditto the amount of marijuana smoke we smelled all weekend, bands set up informally playing in the middle of the street in the French Quarter and various other activities that just wouldn't fly in most parts of the U.S.

I think it would be horrifically frustrating to live there but after this visit, I could see making Jazz Fest an annual pilgrimage. Who'se in for 2009? We'll be there the first weekend of May.

Here are some of my favorite images of us hanging out with Matt and Lisa, Bob and Kathleen, Cara and Doug, enjoying food, drink and music -- not always in that order, but, well, probably in that order a lot of the time.

American Airlines screwed us over on our flights to and from New Orleans -- John had found direct flights at perfect times, and without notifying us, they cancelled those flights and put us onto connecting ones that drastically cut into our fun time in NOLA. So thanks to a very understanding boss, we didn't accept the lousy red eye flight they wanted us to take home, which would have trimmed one whole day from our vacation, and instead we added another day to our stay.

That meant we got home, and I only had three days at work before we headed out for a long weekend in Chicago. This was Dad's idea, sort of to celebrate his birthday, and somehow because I think even though he's retired with nothing but time, he would rather visit us in a place he can drive to than one where he's got to pay for airline tickets.

Sadly, we took no photos of hanging out with Dad, or with John's nephew Ian and his girlfriend Jess, John's sister Tracy who came in from North Muskegon with her daughter Amanda and her daughter Bela. But a good time was had by all, with still more eating and drinking.

It's a miracle my work clothes still fit.

No commentary, just some links

2008-04-24T20:49:00.003-04:00

Although people have asked me to share office stories on the blog, I'm careful to avoid work when I'm blogging because I don't want to become another of those sorry tales of someone canned for blogging -- maybe because of blabbing company secrets, not following party line or just not upholding the sort of image the company might want.

Not that I'm postsing pictures of me drunk on our office patio or photocopies of my butt, but still. People accidentally do stupid things and I'd prefer to follow the safe than sorry mantra rather than have my name become online slang.

So with that caveat out there, here's a quick update on what's been happening at work -- without commentary, just some links for you to catch up on if you haven't been reading your E&P.
-- Re-organization of the business units
-- Launch of a new mobile news offering and still more changes for text services, announced at annual meeting
-- And we picked up some new board members
-- Comment on company direction. More.

Have I made you nervous about your own blogging, by the way? Here's an ancient article with some still valid tips.
And you might want to think about your Twittering, too.

When last we left our heroine ...

2008-04-06T20:17:00.004-04:00

As Margaret just pointed out in the comments, yes, it has been two months since I last blogged. Rather than try to catch you up on everything you've missed, here are a few highlights.

Happy to be unwanted

Shortly after voting in the presidential primary, the state of New York thanked me by sending me a jury summons. Appear at New York Supreme Court on April 4, it commanded. So I let my boss know I'd be off doing my civic duty, and when my day arrived, I headed downtown on the subway.

Only on my way down there, when a guy standing near me noticed me holding my summons and started making small talk, did I learn an important thing -- in New York, jury duty is a minimum two-day commitment. If they don't pick you for a jury your first day, they don't dismiss you. You come back for day two. I'd optimistically figured I'd be back at the office before lunchtime that first day. No dice.

Lunchtime of day #1, I treated myself to a meal at City Hall, a nice downtown restaurant where I sat at the bar and got pampered by a bored bartender. I sucked down several iced teas to fight off the inertia of sitting in a cavernous room where use of cell phones is (mercifully) prohibited.

Late that first day, a whole group of us got sent to a courtroom for evaluation in a case. The judge gave us some basics: this is a murder trial involving gangs and drug dealing, and it could go two or three weeks. If anyone feels they cannot commit to that length of time or that they would be uncomfortable with the kind of testimony you're going to hear, raise your hand. Out went half the room.

Those of us who were left were asked to return to the courtroom the next morning.

At the start of day two, Friday, the judge kept screening people out generally -- do you know any of the attorneys, does your religion prohibit you from sitting in judgment of another person, do you know any of these witnesses I'm about to name. Out went another dozen or two.

Then they drew 18 names to be the first considered for jury. I was one of them. We were all given a list of basic questions and we each responded while the attorneys took notes. What's your educational background, what kind of work do you do, have you ever been the victim of a crime?

One of the questions was whether any members of your family are in law enforcement. My dad was a career cop, I told them.
What kind of police work?
Lots of different things. Vice, undercover narcotics, he was shift commander when he retired.
Did he talk about his work at home?
Yes, he did.

The only other prospective juror I thought was a more obvious candidate to get kicked off was the woman to my left whose brother had been arrested for drug dealing and who later died of a drug overdose.

We got a lunch break, and I dined at Excellent Dumpling with two prospective jurors, including an Episcopal priest and an attorney. The dumplings were merely good, but the conversation was enjoyable.

After lunch, we had some follow up questions and we were shown in the courtroom, and out, then back in ... so slow, so inefficient ... until finally, four of us were asked to stay and the rest were allowed to leave. Thankfully, my name was not among those asked to stay.

Not only was I happy not to spend the next three weeks of my life looking at crime scene photos and worrying about the safety of sending a gang member to prison, but I had two other reasons to be happy about my removal -- I'm going to our annual meeting in D.C. in a week and would have missed that, and I was having my bosses over for dinner on Friday.

High-pressure dinner party

It sounds so Bewitched or something to have the boss over for dinner, doesn't it? How about my boss AND his boss?

There's some pressure to hosting a dinner party for guys my dad's age -- everything from wondering whether they'd be disappointed if there wasn't a big slab of meat on their plate to knowing they both live in the 'burbs and our Manhattan apartment is tiny compared to hosting people in a real house.

But I like my bosses and they've been good to me so I wanted to treat them to a meal. Plus in the last year I've gotten to know them better and realized that although they're both sort of shy, they've known each other something like 30+ years so when they're together, it's pretty easy to make conversation.

After my first day of jury duty, I came home and cooked like a fool. I'd chosen a menu based on what I could mostly do ahead. John set the table with his mom's silver and cleaned up the house while I made:
-- a brothy Italian-style soup, sort of like minestrone but not as filling
-- a roasted beet and goat cheese salad -- I got all the ingredients ready for assembly day of
-- marinara sauce -- pasta to be boiled day of
-- three-layer chocolate Kahlua cake with mocha frosting

Then the day of, I put out nuts, cheese, crackers and olives while John worked the bar for cocktail hour. It felt more relaxed than I expected, maybe because I'd done so much fo the work ahead of time? Or maybe because I had a big fat glass of red wine.

The one hiccup in the timing was that I decided to make shrimp scampi as part of the entree, because I just didn't know how old-school guys would feel about a veggie-only meal, and not only was it a recipe I'd never tried, you just can't make shrimp ahead of time. So after the soup, there was a brief intermission while I made shrimp.

Fortunately we have a pass-through kitchen so I didn't feel like I totally stranded John with the bosses, and once the first tray of shrimp came out, I sent those to the table and got people started while I finished up.

Overall, I think it went well. My boss's wife said she'd never been in a Manhattan apartment so if nothing else, she got a life experience out of it.

On the apartment search

Our apartment management is playing games with us so we'll very likely be moving in June.

They want to put in a 14-foot block of windows in our apartment, facing Central Park, which is lovely. But to do this, they basically need to take over half our living room. And they want us to sign an access agreement to get in for construction, but they won't include anything in the agreement about how long the project will take.

They say worst case scenario, it'll take five weeks, but they haven't yet done the first apartment so let's be honest, that's a worst case guess. I know enough about construction to know that no project goes according to plan and they all run late, so the second they find an extra layer of asbestos or realize they ordered some wrong part, it'll get delayed.

I think if it turns out to be 10 weeks instead of five, they should have to address that with us, but they don't agree.

Stephen Ross, the developer who gave $100 million to get Michigan's business school named for him, has an apartment building in my favorite part of town -- where one bedrooms go for about $5,000 a month! Now I understand where that b-school donation came from!

We probably won't be living in Steve Ross's building, unless having a diploma with his name on it somehow nets me a substantial discount.

Stay tuned for more updates on the housing search.

One decade down and still going strong

2008-02-04T21:31:00.000-05:00

I'm a sucker for anniversaries. Dates seem to resonate for me so I especially miss my mom on the anniversary of her death, for example. But mostly, anniversaries I remember are typically good things.

As many of you know, John and I marked the 10-year anniversary of our first date Jan. 1. It seems so "Go Blue!" but our first date was a Rose Bowl party hosted by friends of friends of John's.

Our first date clued me in that dating John was going to mean experiencing life differently. I expected people in sweatshirts digging into big plastic bowls of Doritos and swilling beer from bottles. Instead, the hostess greeted me in a black velvet party dress with a full champagne flute in her hand, and sometime early in the game she served up a platter of tuna sashimi. I wasn't confident enough in chopsticks skills to believe I could reach a piece of raw fish across the laps of people I'd never met, but somehow I managed. After the game, we had Thai-style spicy shrimp. This was not like any football party I'd ever been to, but it was fun.

We celebrated the 10-year mark by watching Michigan's bowl game -- NOT the Rose Bowl this year -- and having Thai food and sushi delivered. My chopsticks skills have improved, but the biggest change is reflecting back on how much life has changed since January 1998.

Several months before that first date, I'd been through the spectacular flameout of a relationship that left me devastated. I licked my wounds for a few months, then when I cautiously started dating again, I lucked into spending time with a guy who so wasn't a real match for me. That was what made him so perfect. Neither of us wanted a long-term relationship. He was holding out hope that he'd get back together with an ex-girlfriend who'd moved on to someone else, and I had no interest in anything beyond getting out of the house a little.

We had a blast together. We played darts and saw movies and made enough other laugh. I knew I could never spend my life with someone who had never in his life voted, and I'm not sure he ever told his mother he was dating a girl who wasn't Jewish. That was all totally OK.

Meanwhile, I was giving a lot of thought what I wanted from a life partner, when I might be ready to actually date again. I made a list of the attributes of my perfect mate -- everything from making me laugh to liking good food, travel and animals.

I wasn't exclusive with Mr. Right For Now, so I went out with him on New Year's Eve, then saw John on New Year's Day. Shortly after that, John and I went on our second date, and I came home and read over my perfect mate list. Mr. Right For Now had almost none of the attributes on the list. John appeared to have almost all of them.

Still, I'd made a promise to myself that I wouldn't get exclusive with anyone until one year after the break up -- again with the dates and anniversaries -- so when John asked me to go steady after a few weeks, I choked. I knew I liked him but I didn't want to rush.

His feelings were hurt and he retreated a little. I knew I didn't want to lose him, and I could pretty easily imagine marrying him. I figured even a girl who's into dates and anniversaries could bend the rules a little.

One year after the break up would have been April. On Valentine's Day, I told John I'd stopped seeing Mr. Right For Now ... because he wasn't any more ... and that I wanted to be exclusive with him. He pouted a little at first, but thankfully, he caved in.

This Valentine's Day, it'll be 10 years since we got exclusive. It's almost hard to imagine that there was a time when I didn't have him in my life. He's been such a cheerleader through business school and my new job, and I can't imagine the move to New York without him. He's still pretty much everything I want and need in a mate.

Oh, and the bonus happy ending to the story: Mr. Right For Now didn't want a serious relationship because he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend, who was not only seeing someone else but actually living with the competition. At nearly the exact time I realized I wanted to be exclusive with John, the ex-girlfriend decided to dump her live-in and give it another go with her ex. They later got married and had a baby. So we both got what we needed out of that layover relationship.

You shouldn't have

2007-12-27T11:45:00.000-05:00

Christmas in a Manhattan apartment can be an exercise in not appearing ungrateful.

It seems hard for anyone who hasn’t shared a one-bedroom apartment with another adult to comprehend the constant vigilance it requires to keep from getting quickly overrun with stuff.

For example, as I was Christmas shopping for John, I came across a lovely coffee table book I figured my hubby would love. It came in a large hardcover or in a smaller paperback. True the hardcover was more expensive, but the real decision came down to space. I figured he’d like the contents either way and the paperback would take up less room.

Until you’ve stood in a bookstore actually evaluating the real estate a book will consume, you may not understand the challenge of Christmas here.

<>People who love us send us gifts. This is, of course, tradition and it comes from a place of love. We simply don’t have room for much more than we already have.

We already have framed art in storage with several of our friends because we lack the space to hang it. Any new item of clothing or pair of shoes means smashing the closet’s contents to make way. We had to cast off great amounts of kitchen gear before we moved, and anything new – even the skinny little mandolin that I now adore – demands standing with cupboard doors open and playing a little mental Tetris.

I have tried to explain to people things like, “if you send me amaryllis bulbs that need to be kept cool and dark for weeks to get them to flower, I have no basement or garage where I can do that.” But even saying it just feels wrong somehow. When someone does something nice for you, how dreadful to feel compelled to explain how they went wrong.

Most middle class Americans live in more square footage than ever before. While a generation ago, Mom, Dad and three kids might have lived in a 900-square-foot house, today the trend is toward ever bigger houses even as families shrink. If anything, many people our age might suffer from not having enough furniture to fill all that space.

From that perspective, it makes sense that it wouldn’t enter someone’s mind to consider “where will they put it?” when they ship us some goodie. Especially for people who haven’t visited and seen first hand that it’s literally the living room/dining room/kitchen, one bedroom and the bathroom. That’s it. No storage outside the apartment. There’s a bike in our bedroom, on the end that’s also John’s office. Our bed is on risers so we can pack our suitcases and extra bedding under it. John keeps blank canvases under the couch. Every square inch is pretty much accounted for.

My dad has historically been a slightly tone deaf gift giver. Shopping was my stepmom’s job when I was a kid, and as I unwrapped Christmas presents, Dad would say without a trace of self-consciousness “Hand that here so I can see what we got you.” After they divorced, he was a little slow to learn that gift giving involves paying attention to what the other person might want – and not just getting them something you think they should have.

When we bought our house, that made life easy on Dad. He could shop for gifts he understood – appliances, tools, stuff you get at Sears or ABC Warehouse – and he was very generous with us.

Moving to a New York rental created new challenges, but Dad rose to the occasion. He’s still figuring out this interweb thing, but I emailed him my amazon.com wish list, John’s wish list, and supplemented it with some restaurants we’d love to go to. Dad knows how much we love food, so he called a few of the restaurants to find out what an average meal goes for, then he sent us a check with specific instructions on which restaurants we’re to spend how much at.

It’s the perfect New Yorky gift. I just need to make sure I use my gym membership so I don’t find a place to keep it.

Third Christmas in the Big Apple

2007-12-26T20:28:00.001-05:00

This year we celebrated our third Christmas in New York but this is the first time we've gotten a tree here. John gets credit for thinking maybe we could possibly fit a teeny little tree into our apartment.

So just as Sarah recently mentioned in an email, our tree came from one of a sidewalk Christmas tree vendor set up in front of Starbucks. John carried it the two-block walk home, and we decorated.

Our go-to gift this year was an herb wreath made by our favorite farmers market vendors, Stokes Farms. First I got one for Katie and Martin, then I got excited about the idea of supporting local farmers we really like, and the irony of being Manhattanites sending farm goods to friends in the Midwest. That's the beauty of New York's Greenmarkets -- it's easier to buy all manner of good things directly from farmers here than it was back in Michigan. Here's a picture of me with the cute kids from Stokes at the farmer's market that's literally across the street from our apartment building twice a week.

It's sort of a New York cliche that all the Jews in the city go out for Chinese food on Christmas because the Chinese, like our Jewish neighbors, don't celebrate Christmas so they're open.

We sort of perpetuated the cliche by going to Chinatown for lunch on Christmas. Then we wandered through Tribeca, and up into the Village. If, like Lara, you don't have a mental picture of what's where on the island, here's a map to help you picture our long Christmas day walk.

My favorite part of the day was hanging out at Le Figaro, a restaurant/ bar on a busy corner in the Village. We scored an excellent little table out of the way and right up against the windows looking out on the corner, and a really friendly bartender tended to us while we just enjoyed an afternoon talking and soaking up our city.

Ghosts of Christmas past

If you're counting on your fingers and trying to figure out how it's possible that we'd already be on our third Christmas here when I only got my job in May 2006, it's because we sublet on the Upper East Side in December 2005 -- is it weird blog etiquette to link to myself and point out my Christmas posting on Dec. 27, 2005?

In retrospect, it was a pretty amazing gift Nancy and Laura gave me to be able to do that. They let me take an unpaid leave from the News Service so John and I could test drive the city -- in effect, they let me try out quitting. It's not like they were investing in me because they figured I'd be a happy employee for years to come.

John quit the radio station and became a full-time freelancer in preparation for our month in the city. I depleted my vacation time, then took unpaid time off to network and schmooze as my full-time job. I also did a freelance gig for the Ann Arbor Observer, so I brought in a little cash.

I'd like to think that one day when and if I'm a boss again, I'd be as generous as my bosses were. John and I were really growing impatient with how long the job search was taking and he suggested the pretty radical step of just up and moving to New York. This is a crazy expensive city and I was too nervous to take that leap without knowing where our stupidly-high rent check would come from. Because the News Service was willing to give me the flexibility to disappear for several weeks, we struck a compromise. I infused new energy into my job search and we made sure this was what we really wanted to do, but I still had health insurance and a job to go back to, and we didn't have to pay our own moving costs.

It was one of the best Christmas gifts I'll probably ever get.

back on the real estate hunt

2007-12-23T12:44:00.000-05:00

Remember those stories a scant year and a half ago of visiting dozens of overpriced, run-down apartments and begging 2 Lincoln to please please please let us sign a lease?

We're going back into the real estate market. Though thankfully this time around we've got much longer to look and we know the city better.

We got a letter this week detailing our apartment building's plans for renovation, including working on ours by next summer. The building has been making improvements, then boosting rent, so this didn't come as a total surprise. But it's our confirmation that we need to find a place to live when our lease is up in June.

We're really hoping the who-you-know ways of New York help us find the perfect place. We've asked dozens of friends to keep their ears open for us -- if someone hears of a friend who needs a subleasor because she's getting married or getting transferred, or has a landlord friend who needs to find a responsible professional couple to fill a vacancy, we want to know.

I'm a big believer in the power of personal connections and referrals, so we're turning to our friends to help nudge us in the right direction.

We are looking for a quiet place in a good neighborhood in Manhattan -- we have several favorites, including the stretch from the Flatiron through Union Square to the Village, most of the Upper West Side, Tribeca, the east 50s ... we are pretty open if it's a vibrant, safe area with an easy commute for me to the Penn Station area.

We have a detailed wish list for our apartment but I'd rather hear about places that don't quite work than have our eyes and ears self-censor themselves from passing along the perfect place.

Finding our current place was excruciating work, even with the help of a broker who busted his behind to help us. (Shout out to Brett)
People routinely lie in real estate listings, we got stood up and shut out of several walk-thrus, and the good places got snapped up before we ever had a chance. Since we have a few months' notice and we're more settled in with good friends who know the city, we're looking forward to a much easier search this time. And no offense to friends who make their living in real estate, but maybe our long lead time can help us avoid paying a broker fee?

The perfect apartment in New York would be the perfect gift.

Be our guest

2007-12-16T12:42:00.000-05:00

One of the nice things about living in a city so many people want to visit is that we get the occasion to see friends fairly frequently.

Our Ann Arbor travel buddies Bob and Kathleen stayed with us for a night before doing Thanksgiving with his family.
John's old friend Tanya, who he first met in Chicago then palled around with in San Francisco, stayed with us for a few days recently when she was in town for business.
Barry was planning to see us for dinner when freelancing brought him to Long Island, but sadly, the weather conspired to keep him trapped on an airplane elsewhere and that fell through. This time.

And that's just in the last few weeks.

Tanya and my writer pal Lara have really got it going on as guests. John has described Tanya as the Martha Stewart of hippies, she being host to something like 60 people on Thanksgiving and organizing countless other soirees, and Lara's just a really generous chick.

With no guest room, consideration really makes the difference when we're putting up friends. And with the holidays coming, a time when lots of people bunk up with friends and family, I thought I'd share some pointers from the best of our guests:
-- Give plenty of warning, and don't skimp on the details -- Saying "I'll be there some weekend in December" doesn't help if your hosts are trying to plan other social events around you. Barry emailed repeatedly with possible dates, checking them with us before locking down flights, and even gave us options about what times he could get a train into the city for dinner. Of course weather undid all of that, but it still made it easier to try to work our plans to get to see him.
-- Try to contain your mess -- staying with someone doesn't give you license to take over their home, and keeping your personal effects in order helps to minimize the imposition. Lara would spread out while she got ready in the morning, then tuck everything neatly away.
-- Tidy up after yourself -- this might be less of an issue in places with a guest room, but even then, it's just nice to treat your host's place at least as good as your own home, but most likely, a little better. Tanya crashed on the couch for a few nights, and every morning, she'd fold up her bedding into a tidy little pile and stash it behind the dining room table.
-- Say thanks -- even among friends, it's nice to acknowledge the hospitality of welcoming someone into your home. If you're saving $200 a night at a hotel, spend a fraction of that on dinner and/or a gift to show your appreciation. Bob treated to Starbucks on Thanksgiving morning, Tanya took us out for a great French dinner then left us a little gift and a note, Lara treated us to a Thai dinner that was fun and tasty. Maybe we're square, but even among friends and family, thank you isn't optional.

Packing up to stay with someone at holiday time? Here are some other good pointers:
http://windowseat.travelocity.com/2007/10/_speak_up_house_guest_horror_stories.html
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/etiquette/houseguest-etiquette-apr05
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-House-Guest

Or if you're Karl and you're sort of looking forward to being a pain in the ass guest, you could use these lists for some inspiration for how not to act.

Jim-Daddy time in the city

2007-12-12T21:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick photo story on my dad's first visit to see us in New York. First, the high points -- chatting with some New York cops, and eating an insane amount of food at a Brazilian steakhouse. Dad's favorites were the ribs.

Here we're watching the Penn State game with Michigan alumni at Metro 53 in Manhattan.

And these are our most touristy moments -- dinner in Little Italy (where the cop in my dad came out, as he wanted to poke around John Gotti's old hangout) and seeing A Chorus Line (hard to believe, but this was Dad's idea).

giving thanks for photos

2007-11-30T22:14:00.000-05:00

I grew up watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade every year. On a day when my football-loving dad typically controlled the TV, it seemed that much more appealing. I'm not sure I'd even seen Miracle on 34th Street -- the best commercial the parade ever got -- and even so, the parade thrilled me. All those enormous balloons and marching bands on the streets of New York seemed exciting and exotic.

So last year John proved his love for me by standing in the worst imaginable weather to watch my first Thanksgiving Day parade in person. It was probably mid 30s, rain/sleeting and so windy that umbrellas were useless. I was soaked, frozen and still unwilling not to watch.

Thanks to global warming, this year we watched the parade from the roof of our building in shirt sleeves, no coats required. Instead, I was frustrated that I haven't found a new pair of sunglasses because it was so sunny and beautiful that I spent a lot of time squinting.

Besides getting to watch the parade live, and talk to my dad on the phone as he watched it on TV, another bonus for my inner 8-year-old is getting to go to balloon night. The night before the parade, streets get blocked off on the upper west side to prepare for the parade. When I heard that you could go watch the balloons get inflated, I imagined a cool backstage pass sort of thing, something in-the-know New Yorkers do. Instead, imagine the crowd trying to press into Michigan Stadium 10 minutes before kickoff. It's a dozen people across shuffling block after block before you're even anywhere near the balloons.

Somehow, though, our visiting friends Bob and Kathleen put up with it and we got an advance peek at some of the balloons, including Hello Kitty.

Back to Thanksgiving. After the parade, we got on the subway and trekked out to Brooklyn for dinner at Jim and Courtney's apartment. They decided years ago that Michigan isn't their home any more, New York is, so this is where they want to spend Thanksgiving. And they invited about a dozen of us who similarly wanted to spend our Thanksgiving in New York.

Part of me felt bad -- I'm an only child and not going back to Michigan meant my dad didn't have family to have dinner with -- but the thought of fighting the crowds to fly back on a crazy holiday weekend so I could pretend to be thrilled to eat turkey made Jim and Courtney's a hands-down winner.

Pay special attention to the geometry skills involved in getting a table long enough for the crowd diagonally wedged into their living room. Kudos to the hosts for a great meal, and for squeezing us all in.

You light up my life

2007-11-26T21:52:00.000-05:00

Even though we're renters, John and I decided to splurge on a real chandelier recently. We'd spent more than a year being annoyed that there was no light over the dining table, and after seeing the six-figure works of art in New Orleans antique shops last year, we were inspired by the beauty that can come with an every day thing like lighting.

This isn't as decadent as the ones we saw down south, which looked more like they should be hanging in the grand entrance of the Titanic, but it makes us happy.

There's a whole district down at the south end of Manhattan where there's block after block of lighting stores, adjacent to the same sort of thing for furniture, and then the same thing for kitchen supplies. For people who live in teeny-weeny apartments, New Yorkers obviously spend enough money on furnishings to keep these places in business.

Should I stay or should I go?

2007-11-10T20:47:00.000-05:00

John and I have been indulging in a little real estate fantasizing lately -- yes, you know you're a middle aged married couple when ...

We aren't ready to give up on Manhattan yet. I remain committed to the idea that I moved to New York to live in New York, and there's no other experience in the U.S. like being here. I can walk out my front door and within minutes be at my choice of grocery store, book store, clothing store, news stand or restaurant, not to mention a couple of world-class cultural institutions and Central Park. It's a really amazing way to live, not needing a car and feeling so integrated into a community.

But let's be honest. It's tough being a grown up couple living in 695 square feet. (our rental agent corrected me when I called it 700. thanks for not letting me delude myself into that extra 5, Nick) And if we wanted to own our own place again, this itty bitty place we're in now would go for more than $1 million.

Sometimes we really miss certain parts of Ann Arbor life. For example, we miss having a back yard and a deck. We spent a lot of mornings drinking coffee out there, and most of the summer we'd cook on the grill and eat at the picnic table. We're outside a lot here, too, but it's different when it's a space that's just yours. Here it's pretty infrequent to be able to escape other human beings.

So the fantasy we've been kicking around is getting the best of both worlds. We'll buy a house someplace outside New York but within a semi-reasonable commute. We'll have a little pied a terre in the city. I'll work from home at our country estate a day or two each week, and we'll spend a few nights at our city apartment.

John's starting to look for a day job, so having his steady income contributing to the mortgage could make something like this doable, though maybe a stretch until his children's book sells and maybe I get a promotion or something. It doesn't have to happen tomorrow to be a good idea, right?

That hasn't stopped me from looking at real estate listings to figure out just how big a stretch it is. Back in Ann Arbor, a $300,000 house sounded pretty darned fancy. You know you've been reading the NY Times real estate section too much when a $600k house starts to sound reasonable.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Tarrytown, a community north of here on the Hudson River. Interestingly, when Lara came to town this past week, she interviewed a Michigan grad who has a high-end farm in Tarrytown. John went with her as the photographer, and several people made offers to come back and check the place out. Is the universe telling me I'm on the right track?

Here's a house I keep daydreaming about. Is it coincidence that it's on John Street?

This one is worth the wait

2007-11-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last blog.

Much has happened since the end of August -- my dad visited us in NYC for the first time, I was on a team that presented recommendations at our corporate retreat, John and I took mini-vacations near Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh.

I'll share some photos soon to catch you up on the high points of events as fall arrived in Manhattan, but ultimately, it's the Columbia band that's lured me back to Blogger.

John and I have been wanting to check out a Columbia football game for a while. When you move to New York from a Big 10 football city, the concept of Ivy League football is curious. We drafted Jim, Courtney and Rick to journey way up to the northernmost tip of Manhattan for Columbia vs. Harvard, and my first observation was that more people filled the stands at my high school football games.

Then came half time. A tiny, rag tag marching band took the field as the announcer narrated a skit. Even as I write that it featured Faust's deal with the devil, characters representing the presidents of all the Ivy League universities, and the phrase "As Faust ponders her bargain with evil, the Band now forms this devil's trident and plays 'Shaft'," I know you won't believe me.

Here are photos (that's Harvard's president/Faust in the red cape, getting tugged on by Satan in the black cape) and the link to the band's script for the halftime show.

http://www.cumb.org/scripts.php?script=50737

At one point during the half time extravaganza, Courtney leaned over and said "I didn't realize I'd dropped acid on the subway up here." Here are our fellow witnesses to the first marching band performance I've ever seen that included a Goethe reference.

What's for supper?

2007-08-26T18:28:00.000-04:00

Anyone else grow up being forced to watch Hee-Haw? (I suppose I didn't actually have to watch the TV just because it was on, but that hardly seemed an option when I was a kid.)
There was this standing skit where someone off screen yelled "Hey Grandpa, what's for supper?" Then this impossibly old (by my 8-year-old standards) guy would describe some southern cooking feast and everyone would say "Yum! Yum!"

So on the count of three, you say "What's for supper?"
I'll wait.

Really.

If it's summer, some likely possibilities at Chez Tebeau are:
Panzanella salad
Tomato pie
Cucumber salad

Basically, we wander out our front door to the farmer's market across the street, see what looks good, and plan our menu around that. Tonight it's green peppers stuffed with rice pilaf, with some roasted root veggies (carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic) on the side.

Yum-yum!

is this global warming?

2007-08-22T20:28:00.000-04:00

Today it's in the 60s in New York. Tomorrow it's supposed to be in the 70s. Friday in the 80s. Saturday, the 90s.

That sounds more like "by the decade" sorority rush week theme parties than a weather forecast.

It's mid-August and people on the subway have that wardrobe confusion I usually associate with fall and spring -- someone in short sleeves and flip flops sitting next to someone in a turtleneck sweater and wool pants. It's hard to know who's right, especially with how quickly the target is moving this week.

Chippewas in Manhattan

2007-08-19T22:36:00.000-04:00

I suppose there's some sort of potentially un-PC pun to make about how Manhattan used to be Indian territory ... but rather than risk offending, I'll just get straight to the point.

Apparently there are something like 1,100 graduates of Central Michigan University -- whose mascot is still, surprisingly, the Chippewa -- living in the New York area. A young grad coordinated a happy hour for those CMU alums and I met some interesting people who all share memories of The Bird, even if some of them are too young to remember when the journalism department was in the basement of Anspach Hall.

Cool jazz, hot jazz

2007-08-19T22:12:00.000-04:00

John and I rented a car and drove to Newport for the jazz festival last week.

The upside is that most of the weekend we had fantastic weather for lazing on the beach and listening to some great music.
The downside is that even with all the public transportation options here, there are obviously still too damned many people with cars. Traffic was horrific getting in and out of the city, and a cold, unrelenting rain on our drive out didn't help.

But by Saturday, it warmed up. Surprisingly so. We were roasting at the jazz festival, which thankfully had a shade tent where we lounged and just enjoyed some downtime.

We had a fantastic time, even if next time I might be willing to pass on the Mustang convertible John scored in favor of a leisurely train ride and walking around the downtown of Newport.

Promgate

I've been really busy at work, and probably will be for another month or so, with a huge project that's due mid-September. It's interesting stuff, really challenging and I hope worthwhile, but it's meant that I haven't had tons of spare time evenings or weekends.

I tried my best to leave work behind while we were in Newport, so instead of reading financial forecasts for the media industry, instead I read a draft of Lara's new novel, Promgate.

I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say that Lara could become a later day Judy Blume. It's a young adult story with scandal, intrigue, conflict and yes, even sex. It's still in its early stages but already it's such a good read that I tore through nearly the whole thing on our four-day weekend.

I've been Simpsonized

2007-07-30T23:13:00.000-04:00

I keep seeing these illustrations popping up, and it's genius marketing for the new Simpsons movie -- you upload a picture of yourself and out comes the Springfield version of you.

Or in this case, me.

Hey, hey Daddio!

2007-07-30T22:30:00.001-04:00

My dad's booked his tickets. He's finally coming to visit in late September.

It's not as though Dad's afraid of New York -- he was a cop for nearly 30 years and I bet he'll still be packin' when he checks into his hotel in the Disney-fied Times Square. It's not even a matter of him not being interested in New York. He's road tripped here before, when he was on a mobster kick. He read all the books he could on Gotti, then went and staked out some coffee shop in Little Italy to check out the crime scene himself.

No, it's more that my stubborness is genetic and Dad just refused to come visit after I had the audacity to leave Michigan. And just as the economy is doing so well, too. Wonder what ever possessed me to want to go someplace else with a top 10 business degree and an interest in the media?

But apparently we've worn him down. John's been collecting these fantastic care packages since we moved here. He keeps enormous envelopes on his desk and every time he sees an article in the Times about something he thinks my dad would like, or grabs a menu for a restaurant that he thinks is Dad's style, or anything at all remotely interesting about our adoptive city, into the envelope it goes. Dad's probably gotten half a dozen of these piles of New York goodies so far, including cigars from a shop John was fixated on for a while and a review of A Chorus Line, which my straight-arrow Dad is really interested in seeing.

I'll be glad to finally show him around, including a visit to the AP, a walk around Central Park and a stop at our favorite coffee shop. Maybe he'll be the Tom Hanks character who meets his Meg Ryan on the upper west side and he'll move to the city ...

Not likely.

Dancing in the dark

2007-07-23T21:04:00.001-04:00

This is about the coolest public art I've seen -- enormous screens in the courtyard at Lincoln Center, where each evening images of dancers are projected. Each screen shows a single dancer, doing anything from break dancing to classical ballet, in super slow motion so you can see each minute muscle movement, each way a costume flows or hair swings.

Even in a city like New York where everyone's in a hurry, on any given night you'll find dozens of people standing in the courtyard transfixed by these images.

http://www.nysun.com/article/58458

Another year at 2 Lincoln

2007-07-15T13:38:00.000-04:00

Our building is poorly managed and maintenance is slow, if it's done at all, but John and I just couldn't stomach the idea of another apartment search, followed by boxing up all our belongings. We're finally feeling settled in here.

So we re-upped for another year's lease at 2 Lincoln. We figure maybe by next summer we'll be ready to look for something else, but it's kind of nice mostly knowing where things are and feeling a little settled. Besides, we didn't have to pay for the move from Michigan, and if we relocate within the city, we'll have to pick up the tab.

And by then, John will be making good coin from his paintings and prints, so we'll up the ante and move into something like this or this. (Wow, one month of that sort of rent would cover about a year's worth of our Ann Arbor mortgage payments.)

More to say, or just more ways to say it?

2007-07-15T13:30:00.000-04:00

There's a great story in this weekend's Times about the confusion and frustration from having so many different ways to communicate -- some people rarely check email and only want you to call their cell, others hate if you call their cell and might want you to IM, some people only want email. How can you keep it all straight?

I've been peer pressured into signing up on Facebook, and I hear that young people think of email as something their parents do while Facebook is a primary means of communication. Likewise I got peer pressured into signing up for IM a few years ago.
So now you can call my work phone or my cell phone, you can email me on my work or personal address (my work email goes to my Treo, so it's always with me), you can IM me, message me on Facebook, send me a note through my LinkedIn profile ... and you know what I'm really excited about these days? I got my own personalized stationery and I like writing letters my with fountain pen. You know, letters that you put in an envelope, with a stamp, and they show up in the other person's mail box.

As I read many Facebook profiles, I'm struck by the content-free nature of many of the posts people leave. Is our human desire to connect with other people so strong that we can't resist saying something, even when we don't have anything to say?

Or maybe if you can call, email or IM any time you want, you just run out of things to say?

Still sorting it out

2007-07-02T21:29:00.000-04:00

When John and I visited Michigan in December, we organized a few big group events -- we'll be at the Earle at 6 p.m. Tuesday, stop by if you can, that sort of thing.

The upside was that we got to see lots of people. The downside was that on our few nights in Ann Arbor, we basically said hello and good bye to many of those people. We were blessed with having maybe 20 people or so come by one night, over a dozen another time, and while festive and celebratory, it's not really conducive to real conversations. You just sit down to talk to one person and someone else is coming or going.

This time we decided to try a different approach. We aimed for more quality, less quantity. We thought about the people we missed most and the people who've made the most effort to stay in touch. We thought out who we wished we'd had more time with last time, and how much we could realistically do without feeling overwhelmed.

So this summer visit was much more about us hanging out with another couple or two than about big come-one-come-all gatherings. It was mellower. We even purposely had a few nights of us just dining by ourselves, because we wanted some private time.

In the course of the two weeks we were in the Midwest, we spent a few days in Saginaw, a couple days in Chicago, I worked three days remotely, and we were committed to two weddings. (sadly, one's been rescheduled, but that's a story for another day)
Once you do that math, you find that we had just a few open evenings in A2, and in choosing to spend them in a much mellower way, we missed seeing lots of people we think of often.

It's all part of the tradeoff and of learning how to be a tourist in a place we used to call home.

Maybe we'll be back in September for a quickie visit? Details TBD.

I left my heart

2007-06-27T21:55:00.000-04:00

John and I just spent two weeks touring the Midwest -- Ann Arbor, Saginaw, Chicago, Whitmore Lake, Plymouth, Birmingham, Detroit ... we took the rental car company seriously when they said unlimited miles.

Getting on the plane to fly back to New York felt harder than moving here in the first place. I love my adopted hometown and we really enjoy living here, but after a year in NYC, I realize I'm no where near having the kind of deep, amazing relationships we have in Michigan.

While in Michigan, I performed the wedding of two of my favorite people in the world, Rob and Lara. What an honor, and what an amazing way to feel intimately connected to the love they share for each other. A little like being midwife to their marriage, maybe?

I asked my cousin Anna if maybe she and/or any of her siblings might have time for a dinner while I was in Saginaw. It was a spectacularly beautiful Sunday smack dab in the middle of graduation party/wedding/family vacation season, and there we were, five of my cousins and their spouses, one of their sons, my aunt ... all on pretty short notice.

We had dinner in the homes of several couples we're friends with -- including grilling at a few, which we totally miss. Kara got up early so she could make homemade dessert for the evening we spent with her and Sean. Amazing. Barry and Carrie played euchre with us late into the night even though they're sleep deprived new parents.
And when we couldn't find the keys to our rental car after dinner and a slumber party with Jeff and Rachel, Jeff was offering to drive us to the airport so we could live up to our promise to pick up Rob and Lara from their honeymoon. Mind you, it was 8 a.m. on a Saturday and he's never met them, but that's just the kind of friends we have.

There's a lot about our vacation that was nice -- spending a few days with my dad and maybe convincing him to come visit us in New York, sailing with John's nephew Ian and his roommates in Chicago, eating at most of our favorite Ann Arbor haunts ...

But the overarching theme is how far we are from having our roots down here like they were in Ann Arbor. (apologies to those folks not pictured here -- we were shutterbugs for a lot of the trip but the camera didn't make it everywhere we went. we have your images in our minds)

New Yorkers rude?

2007-06-05T21:45:00.000-04:00

John and I are headed back to the midwest Friday and I expect one of the questions that might come up is whether New Yorkers are as rude as their reputation.

Ironically, I'll be keeping my eyes open to see if midwesterners are as polite as people in my adopted hometown.

New Yorkers have the reputation of being rude, but I think that comes from people misunderstanding that in a city of 8 million people, the way society works is by speaking up if someone's doing something to offend. If someone stops at the top of an escalator, you don't silently seathe as you try to squeeze past, maybe murmuring something in passive-aggressive frustration. You firmly say, "Step aside, please." Or if someone's laying on the horn right outside your living room window, instead of wishing they'd stop, you might throw open the window and let them know.

It can see how that would be a little shocking if you live in a city where strangers don't interact, but once you get over your shock, it actually makes sense that sort of how dogs will nip at each other if one gets out of line, the pack here self polices the rules.

Meanwhile, people are so aware of looking out for each other, and I'm curious to see how my midwestern compatriots stack up.

In New York, men will flatten themselves against the wall of a crowded elevator to let a woman off first. At first I didn't get why the guys were standing frozen in front of me in an elevator -- I was behind them, so I'd go after they did, right? Absolutely not. If you're a woman on an elevator, chivalry says you get off first.

Men often open doors for women here, too, but men open doors for men and women open doors for whoever ... to be sure, there's some gender-based chivalry, but people are also really aware of not letting a door slam in someone's face and of helping out if someone has their hands full. You will see people in a huge hurry, talking on the phone, and still making sure they hold the door for the person behind them rather than letting it close.

On the sidewalk, people are pretty aware of one another. If there are just too many people trying to fit into a space, people coming at you will turn sideways to help you get by. You don't have to ask for it, it just happens.

I think of it as the rules that make the Autobahn work -- when lots of people are trying to go places fast, you all have to agree about the expectations. If you're in the far left lane, you better have the pedal down. If you're on an elevator, well, I'm getting off first.

See you soon, midwest.

Where there's smoke

2007-05-28T16:34:00.000-04:00

For anyone who's ever worried about their safety in a city where drivers rarely seem to pull over for emergency vehicles, here's some encouraging news -- apparently when there's a fire of any size, 10,000 firemen drive their bright red trucks in from every direction, and prepare to battle the blaze.

In the last week, I've had two opportunities to see NYFD on the job.

First, John called me from the gallery district, Chelsea, just about 10 blocks south of my office, to ask what was going on up around the AP. It was only then when I figured out the sound of helicopters overhead was because it was prime 6 o'clock news hour and there was an actual fire in progress.
I walked out on our outdoor basketball court (a leftover from when our office housed Doubleclick) and watched as flames shot out of the roof of a building one block west. Naturally in a company full of news geeks, there were dozens of us out there, including several with cameras.
Nothing can beat the melodrama of this news item on Firehouse.com.

Then last night, John was channel surfing when he came upon Brothers and Sisters on ABC, and stopped for a few minutes out of curiosity about Calista Flockhart's new show. (more about why in a minute) We caught the tail end of the show before the screen went dead air. Strange.
With no TV noise in the apartment, we tuned in on all the sirens outside -- and looked out to see them all surrounding ABC headquarters, right across the street from us.
Still a news geek, and the tiniest bit concerned that our building might be the one burning, we went downstairs to scout it out. Along with most of our neighbors, who were shooting pics on their camera phones.
By the way, I love that several ABC affiliates used our story, and not one from AP, about the fire.
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=nation_world&id=5322047
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=nation_world&id=5345027

Celeb spotting

My best celebrity spotting so far was on a plane headed from New York to LA last week.

I was cutting it really close to catch this flight, thanks to a super slow cabbie, and as I raced for the gate, I thought it was a little weird that several flight attendants had their cell phones out taking pictures. Maybe it was one of their birthdays or something? Who knows. Gotta hurry onto this plane.

A group of three or four people were ahead of me and I think we were the very last ones to take our seats. I was just thankful I hadn't missed the flight, and immediately stopped thinking of the flight attendants taking pictures.

Then the group in front of me stopped abruptly in first class, and when I stopped, I recognized Calista Flockhart saying hello to the people getting on. The guy in front of me was taking his own sweet time, then started backing up, not realizing I was behind him. He very politely apologized and offered to get out of my way so I could get past, as I realized it was Rob Lowe.

Being a somewhat anti-TV snob, I didn't realize they were in a new show together until I googled them to find out why they might be traveling together.

Apparently also in their group was some girl from 24, who I'd never recognize since I haven't seen the show. And Michael Bolton, who I probably wouldn't have recognized without his mullet except my stewardess was very excited and told me he, too, was in first class.

To answer your question, Calista is just as skinny in person as you'd think. But Rob is better looking in person than I expected, even if he never took his sunglasses off.

Is it just me, or is it weird to see celebrities getting their own suitcases off the conveyor? Even if it's sort of a used-to-be celeb now having a come back, I'd sort of expect they'd have people to do that for them.

A year in the life of a New Yorker

2007-05-10T21:07:00.000-04:00

Wednesday I marked one year of living in the city.

John and I celebrated my dad's birthday last May 8, then the next morning we headed to the airport to spend a week looking at apartments together. Surely, I deludedly thought, we'd find something that week, then we could just enjoy a little vacation time and celebrate our wedding anniversary in our adopted hometown before John headed home to tend to our house.

That seems like such a long time ago. Before I'd seen a gazillion apartments or begged Nick to show us this place, before I'd had my first day at the AP.

Here, for contrast, is us last May 9 waiting for our morning flight at Detroit Metro:

And here's us this May 9, hanging out on the patio at Tavern on the Green, about a block from our apartment, with our neighbor, Kristi.

Helping to re-invent the AP

I've mentioned to a few of you in recent weeks that I was working hard on a high-profile project that I couldn't really talk about yet.

AP's CEO introduced it to our members at our annual meeting Monday -- a new way of offering our services:
http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_050707b.html
http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/wn_050707b.html

Few people outside the industry seem to understand how AP operates, but at a very simple level, we sell services to newspapers, which use them to produce their news reports. They can choose from several kinds of sports content, different flavors of elections coverage, bigger and smaller packages of business news, etc. We literally offer hundreds of different services, each with its own rate structure.

Here's the nugget about what I've been part of:
As newspapers focus increasingly on locally relevant news, Curley said the AP is proposing changes that would allow members to subscribe to a core package of breaking news and then add other news packages. Currently, it offers broader packages of news defined mainly by the volume of news delivered -- small, medium or large.

Under the proposed restructuring that would take effect in 2009, members would have access to a core breaking news service that would include, for example, news from a neighboring state that might not otherwise be available. Members also would be able to add extra content such as analytical stories and premium tiers of news in categories such as sports, lifestyle, business and entertainment.

The new system would allow news organizations to make individual purchases of stories and photos as needed, something that's not currently offered. Curley noted in his speech that some members do not want to pay for certain kinds of AP news content that they don't use.

It's probably too inside baseball to even make sense if you aren't a newspaper publisher, but the bottom line is that I'm really excited to be on a project that fundamentally looks at how we sell our services and how we serve our members.

Bragging up my friend, the author

2007-05-03T22:27:00.000-04:00

Publishers Marketplace

25 April, 2007

Children's:
Young Adult

Lara Zielin's debut novel DONUT DAYS, in which a sixteen-year-old girl, the daughter of evangelical pastors, is faced with serious choices: creationism or evolution, faith or freedom, Harley bikers or Frodo wannabes, and, of course, cruller or glazed, to Stacey Barney at Putnam, by Susanna Einstein at LJK Literary Management (world).

An Ann Arbor deli getting attention in NYC

2007-05-03T22:21:00.000-04:00

It felt like an inside-out experience on my way to work this morning, reading the NY Times business section on the crowded subway, and running across a huge feature about Zingerman's, the iconic deli in Ann Arbor.

Think about it for a second. New York is kinda known for its delis. And yet, I'm reading one of the biggest papers in the country, based in New York, and it's profiling the place where I first learned to like olives. The place where John and I got the goodies for our first New Year's Eve party together. The place my dad's heart almost gave out when he saw the price of a reuben, and then again when he tasted the reuben.

Tonight on gmail, I looked up and saw this: NYT Most E-mailed Articles - Small Business: A Corner Deli With International Appeal

So apparently I wasn't the only one reading that story today.

Here's the link for anyone who somehow hasn't seen it yet.

Catching up

2007-05-02T21:35:00.000-04:00

This always happened with diaries when I was a kid.

I'd get a little behind. Then the next time I had time to write, I wouldn't because I didn't have enough time to catch up everything that happened since I last wrote. The gulf grows, the time demand to fill the void increases, and pretty soon the whole thing grinds to a halt.

So I'll just say now that I'm not going to catch up on the last month and a half. Sorry. I'll hit a few highlights, but otherwise, this task is just too daunting.

Euchre comes to Manhattan

The web site for the World Series of Euchre -- yes, there is such a thing -- says the classic card game was very popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that during the Napoleonic Era in Europe, Euchre was modernized and introduced to America. Apparently it caught on like crazy, before poker was widely known, but then it lost some of its popularity.

Except in the Midwest, where euchre can be like religion. Yes, the World Series of Euchre is happening in Lansing this fall, if you'd like to plan your vacation around it.

Meantime, I helped organize a euchre tournament for University of Michigan alumni this weekend. We had two eight-team brackets, one social and one competitive, with most teams being U-M grads but also with some competitors from other schools, including Iowa and even Ohio State.

Here are some photos, starting with my co-organizer, Brett, then showing you the crowd.

Media giants and Michigan Media

The 92nd Street Y is a really active social center that puts on a great range of events, including lectures by interesting celebs like Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons.

John and I spent three Sundays in April hearing super-huge TV news guys talking about their careers, the state of the industry and what's ahead in news, politics and the country: Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Mike Wallace.

Part of what struck me at the Mike Wallace evening was that he said some pretty bawdy things -- like he doesn't like Hillary as a candidate because she reminds him of his second wife -- but it didn't turn up in the media the next day. There's so much happening in New York that someone like Mike Wallace doing a lecture is just another ho-hum who-cares calendar listing. If that same conversation had happened at Mendelsohn Theater at U-M, I wouldn't be surprised to see it on A1 of the Ann Arbor News, maybe with a photo and a quote box.

And when we aren't going to media events someone else organized, there are the Michigan Media dinners I've put on here. The premise is one successful guest of honor in a dinner with only about 20 people, enjoying real conversation rather than a presentation from behind a podium.

Here's a shot from our first dinner, featuring Ellen Agress, a vice president at News Corp. (Oh, to be having that same dinner this week ...)

Here are a few more from our night with Larry Kirshbaum, former head of Time-Warner Books and now founder of his own company, LJK Literary. (which incidentally signed my fantastic friend Lara, and sold her first novel to Putnam!)

Somehow I got not a single picture from the dinner with Rob Roth, the CFO of HBO.

Part of what I've loved about these dinners is they've given me a chance to get to know some truly impressive alums at the height of their careers, plus a whole mix of other grads who've come out for the dinners. They've helped me feel more connected to a community here.

University of Michigan Entertainment Coalition

No one who knows me will be surprised that it didn't take long for me to fall into a leadership role with an alumni club here in New York. An extrovert who likes to throw parties and meet people seems destined to get hit up for such things.

UMEC is an organization with huge potential that's struggled some in recent years because the people heading it just didn't have enough time for it and didn't have enough support. My fervent hope is to avoid the first pitfall by working on the second one.

I'm the new president of UMEC NY, and I'm actively shaking the branches looking for enthusiastic, dedicated people who want to make UMEC thrive as a professional organization, offering networking, professional training, a crying towel, whatever people in the entertainment, media and sports fields need.

Much like the Entertainment, Media & Sports Club at business school, I hope that with a group of maybe 8 officers or so, if each person commits to organizing only one or two events each year, we can provide a pretty good calendar of activities without any one person feeling a huge strain. Plus, it is a perfect excuse to pick up the phone and contact some U-M alum you'd love to know.

Anyone want to be our web master?? http://www.um-ec.org/

Regrets, I've had a few

2007-03-10T21:58:00.000-05:00

Though plenty of people associate Mardi Gras only with the drunken debauchery of New Orleans with its boob flashing and bead gathering. I was brought up Catholic so I know that the reason behind it is getting all your sinning out of your system before the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of penitence before Easter.

Some people mark Lent by giving something up -- when I was a kid, it was often chocolate, and as an adult, my go-to has been swearing -- and others do something extra, like going to church more often. Either way, the goal is to make yourself a better person to be more worthy of the love God showed humanity by giving up his son to death.

Regardless of whether you believe the catechism lesson, there's something valuable about having an annual reminder to take stock of how you measure up against your ideal self. I've had an on again, off again relationship with church since high school but Lent still serves a powerful function in getting me to think about how I should correct course.

This year that's gotten me thinking a lot about regrets -- things I would do differently if I had the chance, and what lessons I can apply in situations that aren't too late to change.

Perhaps predictably, most of my regrets involve boys.

In high school, I found myself blessed with a great circle of girlfriends. They were nerds like me, and though there was frequently some sort of teen-age girl tension within the ranks, more often than not, if something social was happening it would involve all of us.

The core four girls had known each other for several years before they adopted me by including me in their plans for football games, school dances, shopping trips. My mom had just forced me into Catholic high school after eight years in public schools and Jody, Julie, Marie and Trisha were an amazing gift to welcome me into this foreign environment.

Sophomore year I began dating a guy who ultimately drove a wedge between me and the girls. To call our relationship stormy would be an understatement. We broke up and got back together for three years, spewing drama and crisis onto anyone who got too close. If I'd had any sense at all, I would have walked away after the first break up. Instead I was hypnotized by someone who manipulated my insecure need for affection and love, and every time I'd get close to breaking free of his orbit, he knew how to yank me back in.

Understandably, the girls grew weary of this nonsense. By the time senior prom came, I was not invited to go with them, and I'm not even sure we saw each other at graduation.

It's heartbreaking that I let great friends slip away because I was too distracted by the lousy treatment of a boyfriend who would ultimately cause me to spend a big chunk of my senior year grounded, encourage me to drive my mom's car someplace I wasn't supposed to be and thereby get into a crash that required massive reconstructive surgery, and even try to extort money from me by threatening to tell my parents we'd been sneaking around seeing each other.

Flash forward to college, where apparently I'd learned a little from this experience but not enough. I dated a guy on and off for about three years (sound familiar?) before I finally got the backbone to make it stick.

The primary lesson I had to get this time was that loving someone doesn't make that person compatible with you, and missing someone after you break up doesn't mean it was a mistake. I regret how much time and energy I wasted on angst about break up after break up with the same guy, and I often wonder how much better my whole college experience would have been without that drag on my emotions.

What would Aesop's moral be from these two stories? The top lesson is to be constantly vigilant about keeping people in my life who bring me joy and uplift me, and keeping people out who don't. If a relationship is hurting me, it's time to either fix it or end it.

John and I are calling our move the opportunity to be mindful about who we draw into our social lives. We're starting from scratch, so every friend we make is a choice. My visual for this is I want to spend time with people who uplift me, like balloons and kites, and steer clear of any who are anchors on my soul.

Bringing it back around to Lenten self improvement, I also want to uplift those I'm around. I want my friends, family and coworkers to think of me as the positive person who serves as their cheerleader, the person who makes them laugh, and the person who makes their life better.

The NY Times agrees:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/business/yourmoney/11career.html

Colloween starts Sunday

2007-03-10T17:40:00.000-05:00

As anyone who knows me probably realizes, I love birthdays -- mine in particular, but I'm all for celebrating everyone else's, too.

I guess it's my inner 8 year old. Christmas is a great season, and Halloween can be fun, but there's something especially good about a holiday that you don't have to share. If someone wishes you Happy New Year, the polite response is something like "You, too." When someone wishes you a happy birthday, your only obligation is to smile and say thank you. It's just yours.

Sure, I share my birthday with Jerry Lewis and Erik Estrada so for them, I'll make an exception. If Ponch wishes me a happy birthday, I'll pull down my sunglasses, hike up my boots and say, "You, too."

A few years back, I somewhat inadvertantly launched a tradition called Johnukkah. I'd been crazy busy with school and wanted to make sure he didn't think I took him for granted, so I gave him little gifts for the seven days leading up to his birthday. He not only took to the idea enough that it became an annual thing, but his friends started wishing him happy Johnukkah. In fact, somewhere out in cyberspace is a Johnukkah web site Jack built after John's 40th birthday.

In the natural evolution of such a perfectly indulgent idea, of course I needed my own named birthday festival. I'd already informed John when our relationship was very young that I expected a very big fuss to be made about my birthday -- hey, you don't ask, you don't get -- so this was just attaching a name to my previously declared demands.

Friends tried a few options, but I think it was Parker who finally landed on Colloween. It doesn't have the natural implication of a several-day observance like Johnukkah, but how many options are there? Collolent? The 12 Days of Col-mass?

Today's mail brought my first birthday gift: an outstanding leopard-print flask from Katie. It's just the thing for the fashionable girl who wants to smuggle hooch into an overpriced Manhattan lounge.

Lara informed me recently that if I get a package from Vintage Lucy's, "it may or may not be
from Rob and me." Lara's the perfect mix of fashionable and hilarious, so I may knock our crabby old mail lady down to snatch that package from her hands. The suspense is killing me.

Colloween officially starts tomorrow. This means that through executive fiat I can just declare my every desire and John is honor bound to provide. If I want coffee in bed, then brunch at someplace swanky, that's my prerogative. Or I might feel like hanging around all day at home and having John cook me dinner. Or maybe I'll just want a big piece of banana cake from Billy's.

On my actual birthday, we're going to Carnegie Hall for Marvin Hamlisch conducting the New York Pops. (I remember digging him on The Great Space Coaster as a kid.) We'll probably get dinner before, but it's tough to squeeze in much between when I get off work and the start of the show. Could be a cart knish on the street. And you know what? I love those, too.

No horsing around

2007-02-25T08:29:00.000-05:00

TV shows and movies can be revoltingly lazy when it comes to reaching for cliches.

How many times have you seen the image of a couple so hot for each other that they run an arm across the top of the nearest table or desk so they can climb up and go at it? I often wish we'd get the next scene, where the disshelved exec starts trying to reconstruct the files now strewn everywhere or one of the now-sated duo inspects glassware to see if it's hopelessly chipped.

Likewise, if you're making a romantic comedy date movies and it's set in New York, sooner or later you're going to have to put your Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan characters in a horsedrawn carriage through Central Park. Maybe Louis Armstrong plays in the background? Even my favorite smutfest Sex and the City succumbed to the image's allure.

What could be more romantic than a horsedrawn carriage ride through Central Park, the clip-clop-clip-clop of hoofbeats marking a leisurely cadence as the lights twinkle on Tavern on the Green?

How about walking through the park on your own two feet? Asking a cabbie to take the long way around the park? Staying home and renting a movie? Anything at all??

Horses are noble, intelligent creatures who don't deserve the life they get when they pull tourists along the concrete of one of the loudest, most traffic-congested cities in the world.
When I look at the city's horses, I don't see romance. I see that they're often fighting at a bit that's too tight in their mouths, and when they aren't giving a ride, they don't get a break. They stand on Central Park South with no trough of cool water nearby or a soft pile of hay to lay down, often tugging at their bits, shaking their heads aheads the blinkers and other gear they wear all day and night. Would you like to do manual labor for a nine-hour shift with a piece of cold metal laying across your tongue, and never getting to sit down?

This isn't just my bunny-hugger view of the world, though:

http://www.friendsofanimals.org/news/2006/september/a-life-and-death-wit.html
http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pro_horsehistory
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/campaign/sport/omnibus.htm
http://www.satyamag.com/aug94/jordan.html
http://www.equineadvocates.com/carriage.html
http://www.all-creatures.org/nyca/ch-why.html

The American Society for the the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has primary responsibility for enforcing cruelty laws in New York. Its web site says: In 1989, we overcame vigorous opposition to get Local Law 89 passed to better protect New York City’s carriage horses. This legislation restricted the horses to Central Park during the day. Unfortunately, it was designed to expire, and many of the gains were reversed in 1994 with the passage of the current law.

What can you do?

When you see a carriage, look for abuse like horses working when it's hotter than 90 or below 18, or evidence that the cinch around the horse's belly is causing sores. If you see anything that causes you concern, contact the American Society for the the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. enforcement@aspca.org or (212) 876-7700, ext. 4450.
If you aren't sure what's allowable, check out the city's horse licensing regulations
Donate to the ASPCA's Equine Fund
Contact New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and tell him that you strongly support the effort to ban the horse-drawn carriage industry in NYC.
Friends of Animals, encouraging the letter writing campaign, say: People from all over the country and the world are encouraged to contact Mayor Bloomberg, since horse carriages are considered a tourism draw. NYC officials need to hear from potential tourists who are outraged that this exploitative industry exists in NYC, and caters to tourists.

If you were planning on romancing your sweetie with a carriage ride, here are some alternatives:
http://www.nyctourist.com/topten_romantic.htm
http://newyork.citysearch.com/roundup/40714
http://www.amazon.com/Romantic-New-York-City-Restaurants/dp/0963440330

Because cruelty is never romantic.
Actually, that's a different movie cliche, and a different blog post.

Willing to be lucky

2007-02-24T15:28:00.000-05:00

When we were trying to get ourselves to New York, John read a story by E.B. White that has a great line about how "No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

We adopted that phrase as part of the job search process, that we're willing to be lucky. John, of course, is the luckiest person I've ever met so this was mainly a reminder for me that sometimes things don't need to be logical or happen in a linear fashion. Just step off the cliff and expect that the bridge will be under you.

If you want to read an excerpt, log in to your amazon account and go here.

The Museum of the City of New York just had an exhibit based on this premise of Willing to Be Lucky and it was a fantastic reminder that people make it in New York not just because they're talented or hard working -- the place is lousy with people with both those attributes -- but because they are in the right place at the right time. Or they did something a little illogical and trusted it would work out.

(A story about the exhibit in the Times)

One of my favorite stories featured at the show was this fat, homely immigrant woman who came to New York and just decided she was going to throw the most fabulous parties that anyone who's anyone is going to beg to get on the guest list.

She's my new idol. I'm not a Trump or a Rockefeller but I'm willing to be lucky enough to throw the kind of Manhattan parties that will be legendary for how fun they are. Maybe you'll see Ed Koch or Tom Wolfe there. Maybe it'll be Scarlet or Fergie. Who knows?

I'm working up to that by organizing monthly networking dinners for Michigan grads working in the media. This month it was a dinner featuring a VP at News Corp. Next month it's the CFO of HBO. If I can get the former head of Time Warner Books to be my email pen pal while we plan an alumni dinner, that seems a step in the right direction.

Maybe by the end of this year you'll see us in a pic on the society page of the Times. I'm willing to be lucky.

I heart George Clooney

2007-02-22T22:27:00.000-05:00

JT's out of town visiting a friend, and my date tonight is George Clooney.
(sadly, on TV, but that will have to do)

To use a friend's phrase, George is H-O-T.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2894849&page=1

How rich are you?

2007-02-01T22:33:00.000-05:00

Living in Manhattan can make you feel pretty poor pretty quickly -- who are these people who pay $1.2 million for a 1 bedroom apartment?

I like this web site as a reminder that on a global scale, we're pretty danged lucky.

Fill in your salary -- it's a little vague about whether it's asking for individual or household, so it might be a little off depending -- and it'll remind you that generally speaking, Americans live a cushy life.

I'm loaded.
It's official.
I'm the 35,732,201 richest person on earth!

How rich are you? >>

My new audience?

2007-01-17T21:36:00.000-05:00

I used to see my name in print nearly every day when I worked for newspapers, and most of the time, it didn't freak me out to think that thousands of people were either reading my stories or glancing at my byline as they papertrained their puppies.

When a business school prof included one of my articles in his coursepack, and MBA friends commented that they'd just had a class discussion about the business issues raised in the article, that was a little weird. Typically as a journalist I thought of my readers as a nameless, faceless blob, not people I might have a study group with.

For some reason, it just strikes me as really odd that my amazon.com list of book recommendations has gotten more than 1,500 visits. That's a far smaller audience than even the tiniest paper I ever worked at, but since it's my personal page without the hometown newspaper's masthead above it, it seems surprising.

In case you don't believe me, here's a screen shot I just pulled tonight. The page views are listed over on the right.

Chez Tebeau in the Sky

2007-01-16T21:51:00.000-05:00

My cousin Anna complained over the holidays that I haven't posted any recent pictures of the apartment, showing what it looks like since we got more settled in.

Since we had the place all spiffed up Saturday for our first New York dinner party, I took some pictures of our spacious high rise abode.

First the view from the entry way. The kitchen is to the right just as you walk in, so then there's a view from the kitchen of the living/dining area, of just the living room, and one back toward the dining area and kitchen from the living room.

Our new comforter just arrived today -- thanks to a Macy's gift card Dad gave us for Christmas -- so pictures of our boudoir/ John's office will follow a little later.

Finally, here's one of John in the kitchen after just about every dish we own had been dirtied serving up soup, pasta, dessert and a whole lotta wine.

The last first kiss

2007-01-15T14:19:00.000-05:00

John and I recently marked the ninth anniversary of our first date. Like a couple of true Wolverines, our first date was a Rose Bowl party, hosted by friends of some friends of John's.

That first date reaffirmed my belief that dating John might be different than previous guys I'd spent time with. If someone invites you to a Rose Bowl party at a private home, what do you imagine? Sweatshirts, bowls of chili, big bags of Doritos? Try being greeted by a hostess in a black cocktail dress, offering you a brimming full champagne flute, and then having a plate of tuna sashimi for halftime snacks. Expect the unexpected.

When I first met John, I really liked him, but from a first impression, there are no guarantees that this is your life partner. He could just be a funny guy with great legs. I'd been dead wrong about guys before.

Because of that, you never know when you're having your last first kiss. At that point, the relationship might last four more dates or the rest of your life, and all you have is hope and curiosity and the butterflies of attraction.

I was lousy at dating. I had no patience for the whole game of it -- we last saw each other on Saturday and it's Monday so is it too soon to call or should I wait until Wednesday? I'm too brutally honest, and just want to get to the point where we're both really ourselves and have a chance to relax and discover if we like being together.

But I always loved that thrill of the first kiss. Maybe because it's the first moment of risk, when you stop fanning your feathers at each other and make a move declaring "I think this might be something."

There's a spark in that, and also no small amount of risk.

Years back, after my first engagement blew up but before I met John, I dated a guy I'd known for years. Acting entirely too much like a middle school girl, I told a friend of his I'd kind of like to go out with him. Shortly thereafter, he called, and we went on the classic "I'll pick you up at 7 for dinner and a movie" night. Still, we were crossing a barrier that had been up for years by moving beyond friendship. At the end of the night, we lingered at my doorway for what seemed like an eternity before he finally caved in and asked "So, was this a date?" "I think so," I replied. "And, does that mean I should kiss you?" he asked. Something about the "mother may I?" quality of the moment cracked me up, and still does when I think about it.

With John, we went to this party, then he came back over to my apartment, where we hung out and talked for what seemed like a very long time. Then he walked to the back door to leave. He stood facing me, hands at his sides, then grabbed both of my hands and pulled me gently toward him. I smirked at what I figured was a move he'd patented in years of dating, though he swears he'd never done it before, and he still professes his surprise that I kissed him then.

It was a magical moment of connection, of open declaration that "I like you." But I had no way of knowing this was the beginning of a relationship that would lead to engagement, marriage, a move to New York ... no way of knowing much of anything except that I'd just had an unexpectedly romantic date involving a sport I don't care much about.

If I'd known, I'm not sure what I would have done differently, but I still think it's somehow unfair that you don't get to savor the importance of what's happening the last time a date leans in to kiss you.

We're programmed to understand the significance of that lean. Generally someone's got to do it first, and you have a split second to either reciprocate or remove yourself from the line of fire.

One of the most profoundly embarrassing moments of my adult social life (adolescence had far too many to count) involved the lean. A male friend was leaving a party and came by me on his way to the door. He leaned and I reflexively snapped my head back like a crash test dummy experiencing full frontal impact. Then I realized he was kissing me on the cheek for my birthday and I'm sure I blushed 13 shades of crimson for misinterpreting the gesture.

So maybe the night of the Rose Bowl party nine years ago wasn't the last time I'll experience the lean, but with luck, it's the last time that I'll return the lean and declare "I like you, too."

It's beginning to look a tiny bit like Christmas

2006-12-28T22:27:00.000-05:00

I realized today that most of the photos on the blog are either of me or John but not of us together. That's a little sad.

So here are some photos of us from Christmas weekend, when there was not a flake of snow on the ground but we actually did have to wear winter coats a few days. (something of a change after a very mild winter)

This is a little after the fact, but a few people asked about how you buy a Christmas tree in Manhattan. I think it's one of those things like grocery shopping that's hard to picture if you're used to driving a car someplace and loading up the trunk.

One of the things I love best about the Christmas season in New York is that there are cut trees on just about every corner, often with corny carols playing on a jambox, so you smell evergreen and hear The Little Drummer Boy on your way to wherever you're going.

Here are trees for sale in front of the Starbucks a block from our apartment.

The scaffolding comes down promptly on Christmas and there is no sign there was ever a cute girl in Carhartts helping to wrap trees in twine to transport them home.

Pay it forward

2006-12-18T22:17:00.000-05:00

Moving to New York hasn't been easy on John. Sometime late this year, he became convinced that everyone in the city was out to rip you off.

You could see how he might feel that way. He'd go from Food Emporium charging him like $6 for a mushroom (prices are high here but not *that* high), to the Door Store saying we still owed for our bookcases even though our receipt said paid in full, to 2 Lincoln saying we never paid security deposit. He had to get a copy of the cancelled cashier's check to show we had, amidst rumors Nick had been fired and $400k was missing.

We watched some of the Ric Burns History of New York, and John latched on to the idea that the city is founded on ripoffs and greed. Remember that story of buying Manhattan from the Native Americans for some cloth and beads? The first big real estate ripoff on the island, but surely not the last.

It was becoming something of a mantra -- New Yorkers are all out to screw you -- and I think New York was getting offended.

Saturday night, she decided to show him otherwise.

We were in a cab, headed to a Christmas party, when John paid the cabbie, scooped up some Christmas cards to drop in the mailbox, a gift bag with some wine, and got out of the cab. We walked into a restaurant not a half block away when John realized his wallet was gone.

John is a master of many details. He balances our checkbook without a calculator, he makes sure we never run out of stamps, and that our dry cleaning is always picked up. Without him, the household would swirl into chaos because he is infinitely better at such things than I am.

One exception to that rule is maintaining control of material possessions. He leaves behind an umbrella or hat or backpack not infrequently, and he often thinks he's lost his cell phone, only to find he put it in a different pocket. At first, I assumed this was such an event -- he'd put his wallet in a different pocket, or dropped it in the wine bag, or set it on the bar. He'd find it.

After numerous pat downs, I realized this was not a drill. He'd really lost his wallet in Manhattan on a Saturday during peak tourist season.

John lost his wallet once in Detroit while we were dating and opportunists wasted no time before using his credit card. I assumed this time that the cash he'd gotten out of the ATM five minutes earlier was a goner and worried the credit cards would be next. I was sick to my stomach thinking of our credit card sprinting toward www.shipmesomesuperexpensivestuff.com, and of the possibility for opening new accounts, given access to his driver's license and such.

We spent maybe an hour working our respective cell phones to call the Taxi Commission to put in a lost and found claim, Equifax to put a fraud alert on his account, our credit card company to put a hold on, our bank to cancel our ATM card. John spent maybe 20 of those minutes just trying to cancel one credit card. That's frustrating under ordinary circumstances but when you're stressed? Nearly unbearable.

Once the calls were done and there was little else we could do, we had a decision to make. Go home defeated, or make the best of the night. Years ago, we were driving west to Muskegon for a long weekend when our car died on the highway halfway there. Instead of giving up a weekend we'd been looking forward to, we simultaneously arranged to have the car towed back to Ann Arbor and rented a car to continue our journey. Total time lost: about an hour. We arrived in Muskegon a little frustrated and a lot hungry, and we had a fantastic meal to celebrate our triumph. I conjured up memories of that Muskegon victory and said we should go out for the fun dinner we wanted before the wallet fiasco.

We were just deciding where to go when John's phone rang. He couldn't get to it fast enough and he missed the call. Caller ID said it was a New York number he didn't know. He paced waiting for the voice mail message to come on. It did.

Allison found his wallet. John's driver's license still has our Michigan address, but she riffled through until she found his business cards with a New York number and she called.

We hopped in a cab and headed across the island and south to the Mexican restaurant where she was out with her sister -- her sister had told her to just leave the wallet in the cab, by the way, but Allison had a stranger recently return her wallet so she had to do the right thing.

Not only did we get his wallet back, every dollar still in it, but the restaurant looked great. We decided to celebrate the turn of events with one of the best meals I've had in the city. And by giving Allison money to buy a round of drinks for her table.

Reinvigorated by this obvious demonstration that some New Yorkers are kind and helpful and honest, we continued on to the party. We were about three hours late, but it was a crowd that was still going strong when we left at 2 a.m. so I don't think it was too rude.

After a long, arduous trip back from Jersey City in the middle of the night, John made a big show about doublechecking the seat of the cab when we got out, not wanting to forget anything this time.

Would you believe he found someone else's wallet?

The college kid who had the cab right before us dropped his wallet, so John has a chance to return the favor to New York. He can show her that he gets it. Not everyone here is looking to rip everyone else off. Allison didn't rip us off, like the guy who found her wallet didn't rip her off, and we didn't rip Andre off.

And that, my friends, is how karma works.

Michigan memories

2006-12-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

A year ago, we were Michigan residents in the midst of a month-long visit to New York.
This year, we're New York residents who've just returned from a week of visiting Michigan.

It's a little hard to believe it was only a week -- we packed so much socializing, eating, drinking, laughing and catching up into just a handful of days.

We kicked off our whirlwind social circuit with cocktails at Cafe Felix, only hours after landing at Detroit Metro.

Then on to Conor O'Neills, and finally the Alley Bar, sending Karl off for his new gig at Duke University.

The next day was a mellow afternoon of hanging out at Ashley's right across from the University of Michigan diag.

Who knew Rob and Lara were closeted Martha Stewarts, inviting us over to make gingerbread houses? Fortunately for us, there were no points awarded for perfection and instead the emphasis was on laughter and cocktails.

We spent one evening at Arbor Brewing catching up with John's pals from his Michigan Radio days. Seems everything old is new again, the alpha is the omega, as Christina Shockley, who he worked with on the Todd Mundt Show, now is returning to Michigan Radio and will host a show of her own.

Even with all this photographic evidence of our pre-holiday excursion, there's a lot we can't show you -- not because it was confiscated by police or because we need to protect the guilty, but we just didn't get pics of every fun thing we did. We got no pictures during a leisurely Zingerman's Roadhouse dinner with Barry and Carrie, and our camera batteries died early at the Earle, before Jeff and Rachel, Lenny and Anne and a few others made it. We didn't get a single picture during the Saginaw leg of our trip ... sort of photo weary, I guess.

Even as jam-packed as our time was, we didn't get to do everything we might've liked. Good thing we'll be back again in the summer.

Roll out the six-pack

2006-11-19T21:53:00.000-05:00

This is for those of you in Michigan -- if you've wanted some of John's art but just haven't quite pulled the trigger on the investment, here's a way to get some of his work into your house for less.

John's designed the labels and six-packs for Arbor Brewing's new bottled beer, which is available all over southeast Michigan.

Check out some of the labels on the Corner Brewery web site. And find out here where you can simultaneously be a patron of the arts and get a little barley pop to make it through your week.

None of John's paintings have a 10 cent deposit, either.

Un-undefeated

2006-11-19T16:23:00.000-05:00

It was a fun season to be a Wolverine, with the Michigan team undefeated, and one of those schlocky football movies couldn't have imagined a more dramatic way to head into Saturday -- the big rivalry, both teams with perfect records, and the legendary Michigan coach dies the day before the big matchup.

You'd think Bo Schembechler's death would have given Michigan its "win one for the gipper" inspiration, but sadly, Ohio State was just a better team.

And that means I've got to pay up on a bet with the bureau chief in Columbus and with one of our VPs who went to OSU.

From the Be Careful What you Wish For Department: apparently Bo said earlier this week that he wished he could watch the U of M-OSU game with his departed one-time rival Woody Hayes.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/472879p-397902c.html

Six months on the job

2006-11-12T15:16:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I updated the blog, and I suppose I could blame it on Blogger's technical difficulties, but that would be a fib.

We've just had a busy couple of weeks.

First Barry and Carrie came to visit for a weekend. We had designs on doing a heck of a lot more than we did -- we never even played a game of euchre, which for the four of us, is unheard of -- but it was still great to get to show them our new hometown.

Right after they left, I took off for a week in New Orleans. I was representing our department at a big annual convention AP puts on for its member newspapers -- my first time playing diplomat for the company. I was nervous that someone would ask about a service I'd never heard of or want details about satellite delivery versus FTP pull, but thankfully, the questions were confined to the new products I can discuss in my sleep.

The timing for the New Orleans trip made it too tempting not to stay over to play. The conference ended on Halloween weekend, so John flew down and we wandered the French Quarter soaking up the madness and admiring the costumes of the revelers.

(Sadly, our camera was dying and my Treo was on the fritz, so no photos. Take my word for it -- people who do up costumes for Mardi Gras also dig Halloween.)

The New Orleans bureau staffers took turns giving tours of the devastation to all of us out of towners. If you think you've got a sense of what happened, driving through block after block with no sign of life makes the scope of the uphill recovery effort more real. As one photographer said, this was a city that in some ways was hanging on by a thread before the hurricane -- poorly managed, lousy infrastructure, race and poverty problems -- and Katrina just exacerbated all those existing issues.

We came back, and just a few days later we were both packing our suitcases again -- John to go to Chicago to visit his nephew, niece and sister, and me bound for Michigan to do the annual CMU Journalism Hall of Fame dinner.
It was most ironic and sad that Rob and Lara came to NYC for the weekend just as we were dashing off -- figures that some of our fave people would be staying at our apartment but we wouldn't be there to enjoy it. At least I got to take 'em to one of my favorite NYC restaurants before my flight out. (That makes it sound like I treated, which isn't fair, since these fab peeps picked up the check.)

This weekend's been similarly busy, with a very fun New Yorker-sponsored gallery tour in Chelsea yesterday, and Saejin in town for eating, shopping and culture. We're so triple-booked we didn't even see Lenny's band play in the city this weekend.

(photo apology #2: we just got a new digital that I haven't yet figured out, so though I tried to get some pics of Saejin, I just couldn't make the doggone thing work. maybe next time?)

Oh, and can I just say how cool it is to be part of the media organization that everyone turns to on election night? When it was unclear what was happening with control of the Senate, AP was the first to call Virginia and everyone else followed. That's intense.

On Wednesday I'll have been there six months. I'm feeling pretty settled in, though I still have an immense amount to learn.

Lots of news is good news

2006-10-22T15:23:00.000-04:00

I'm buzzing with good news I've heard recently.

One of my favorite couples is planning to move to New York, and I can hardly wait to have close friends here in the city.
Another of my favorite couples is three months pregnant. Well, more accurately, she's pregnant, but I think the way we enlightened folks are supposed to talk about it is that they both are, although only one of them wants to vomit if she smells chicken.
A friend who's been hard on the job search accepted an offer for a fabulous new gig in a beautiful part of the country.

And my oh-so-talented hubby has a meeting set up on Wednesday with the illustrations editor at the New Yorker.

It feels like there's good luck dust floating all around our world right now. As Arwulf might say, it's a good day to be in your skin.

Music, man

Our Sunday morning ritual in Ann Arbor was to listen to Arwulf play classic jazz on WEMU. His show is the stuff that preceded big bands, not the jangly experimental stuff that you couldn't tap a toe to if your life depended on it.

Last weekend we were listening to Arwulf thanks to the magic of the World Wide Web, when he gave a shoutout to John's college roommate, Matthew, and his wife, Lisa, who were similarly listening online in Pittsburgh. The magic of technology made the world seem smaller and more interconnected.

To fill in the times when we can't have Arwulf around, have you noticed my Pandora radio stations over to the right? Pseudo-Wulf is like Arwulf's show but without his charming banter, while the other buttons get you to selections for different kinds of moods. Pandora is a fun little toy that helps find music that's like what you already like.

And Friday we went old school, going to see Doc Severinsen head up the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Hearing a big band play A Train in the heart of Midtown felt like a truly New York moment.

It'll be just like starting over

2006-10-17T22:07:00.000-04:00

I've been in New York for five months and in that time, I've had my hair cut once. The haircut I got was great, but it was also 85 bucks and I'm paralyzed trying to figure out if I should suck it up and pay that kind of money or find another salon.

This is just one of the zillions of decisions vexing me as we establish ourselves in a new city.

John and I had owned our house for six and a half years in Ann Arbor. Before that, we'd both been renters in A2, and before that, John was an undergrad at U of M. When friends wanted the name of a handyman, or plumber, or dentist, they often asked us.

Now we're in this huge city, where the choices are limitless, and it's daunting to imagine how to select from the zillions of choices. The valet in our building offers dry cleaning service but it's outrageously expensive. How to choose a new dry cleaner when there's one on every corner? How many doctors do you imagine do business in Manhattan, or even on the upper west side?

I'm embarrassed to keep asking our same circle of friends and acquaintences here in the city every time we have another need. Do you have a good shoe repair shop, ob/gyn, tailor, travel agent? I imagine their eye rolls as they wonder if we can't just Google our way out of whatever the latest quandry is.

Whole businesses are built around problems like ours -- angieslist.com, insiderpages.com, etc etc -- so I know we aren't alone. There was even a NY Times article earlier this summer about them. (Here it is, for you TimesSelect crowd) But getting a recommendation from a web site, no matter how well orchestrated, still highlights the fact that most of these are questions we haven't had to ask for a very long time.

I loved our doctor in Ann Arbor. Phil Rodgers at Briarwood Family Practice, if you're interested.
My dentist, Doug Hock, has the most gentle, wonderful hygienist ever. If you go, tell Judy I said hi.
We were blessed to be friends with a talented seamstress, Heather Phillips, who designed two of our friends' wedding dresses but would still take the time to put buttons back on shirts, and with Steve whoselastnameIcanneverspell, a hell of a cook and also the most conscientious handyman we could have ever hoped to have paint our house.
I could go on and on, and that's before we even get talking about restaurants.

I think this is part of what makes people homesick. There's such a comfort and ease to knowing who you call to make your life work, and it's exhausting to move from that autopilot mode to putting energy into basic things like learning the layout of a new grocery store or figuring out where the nearest ATM is to your office. Every time something like that comes up, it's yet another reminder that you're new here, and you're no longer in the safe, comfortable, easy place you used to call home.

Anyone got a recommendation on a New York stylist who charges less than $85?

World Series!

2006-10-15T22:15:00.000-04:00

The good news: Tigers are headed to the World Series for the first time in two decades.

The bad news: If it turns out to be a Tigers-Mets series, I won't be around to appreciate it. I'll be in New York for the first two games of the series, played in Detroit, then I head to New Orleans for a big work conference.

Our friends Barry and Carrie were at the Tigers game Saturday that clinched the deal -- the above photo is theirs -- and they'll be in New York next weekend. So at least we'll have the chance to spend some time with them and revel in Detroit's return from truly lousy baseball before I have to leave town.

But then again, it's hard to complain too much about getting sent to a hotel on Bourbon Street on the company nickel. I'm betting I'll be able to find a fun place to watch the game ... and it'll be the weekend of Halloween while we're there.

Thanks to Jim, if the Bless You Boys audio wasn't '80s enough for you, here's the video.

Visiting
And speaking of visits and lousy timing, Lara signed up for a writers conference in NYC and got all excited about getting to visit -- except that John and I will be out of town that weekend. So she and Rob are coming to town a little early so we at least get to have dinner together, then they'll camp out in our apartment while I'm in Michigan and John's in Chicago.
Hurray that I get to see some of my Michigan pals, but boo that I'll have to get on a plane to leave instead of hanging out more.

Michigan gang, mark your calendars: John and I will be back for the holidays the week of Dec. 2-9. Plan is to spend the first weekend in Ann Arbor, then be in Saginaw by the second weekend for my family's big Xmas party. There's much up in the air about the trip, but we hope to see lots of you.

The most wonderful thing about Tigers

2006-10-12T21:35:00.000-04:00

What kid who grew up in Michigan in the 1980s doesn't remember the '84 Tigers winning the World Series? The Tigers were all-consuming that year. Stereotypes about girls and sports aside, I remember being at a party with my girlfriends that summer and all the girls were showing off that they could identify the Tigers in a team photo and knew what position they played. The song "Bless You, Boys" got frequent airplay, praising the Tigers.

It's been sooo long since the Tigers have been any good. Back in 1997, a friend who did PR for the Tigers was certain they had the talent to have a great season. He was either dead wrong, or nine years early, because this year is certainly phenomenal.

When the Tigers squeaked into the playoffs, I thought it cruel and unusual punishment to have to play the Yankees in the first round. I hoped that my hometown team wouldn't embarrass themselves too much, so I wouldn't have to slink in shame around an office full of Yankees fans.

Then one of my coworkers, a diehard Yankees fan, issued a bet. If the Yankees won, I had to wear a Yankees hat to work. If the Tigers won -- fat chance, right? -- he'd wear a Tigers hat to work.

I don't have to tell you how that bet came out. Meet Eddie, AP paralegal and rabid Yankees fan.

Living in New York, where it seems mandatory that the Tigers make it to the playoffs and the Mets fans hate them for it, it's been a fun experience cheering for Detroit. We watched the first round games at bars around town, where Yankees fans might sneer a little but Mets fans would smile and high five us because any team that beats the Yankees is a friend of theirs, at least for now.

Here's us out with Jim and Courtney, the Michigan contingent cheering on our team from back home.

Now that the Tigers have crushed the mighty pinstripes, and have two games under their belt for the division championship, we had plans to go watch the game tomorrow evening with a bigger group of Michiganders. But Jim just emailed to say the game's been moved up to 4:30 p.m. Gotta run to find out what the heck's going on with our Friday night plans.

Bless you, boys!

No, the plane didn't hit our building

2006-10-11T23:32:00.000-04:00

I'm much delayed in blogging about the fabulous performance of the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs -- more about that later -- but in the interim, I wanted to reassure all my guardian angels out there that the plane that hit a building in Manhattan today was nowhere near my office or our apartment.

Here's a NY Times story about the plane crash and their locator map:

See how the plane crash is almost as far east as you can get on the island? Our apartment is on the west side of Central Park, on the upper west side. That's a good long haul from where we live. And my office is down in the 30s, about 40 blocks south of there.

So thanks all for checking, but nothing to worry about.

Big Guy Tebeau, 1990-2006

2006-10-02T21:23:00.000-04:00

Just about anyone who visited our Ann Arbor home will remember our big, fat, loud-mouthed Siamese. His given name, the one he had when we adopted him at the pound, is Guy, but most of the time we just called him Big. (as compared to my foul-tempered bratty cat Haley, also known as Little)

Months after John and I got married in 2000, we went to the pound looking for a kitten. John is a huge cat lover, and since my cat is nasty and unaffectionate, he wanted to have a pet that might actually like him.
While John was off in the kitten room, surrounded by perky little fluff balls, I met a fat, old Siamese coughing and sneezing with an upper respiratory infection, one eye swollen shut and dripping goo. Somehow, through all of that, he was so affectionate, and when I asked to have his cage opened, he crawled out, curled up in my lap and started purring.
John came looking for me, saw that I had this wheezing behemoth in my lap, and knew what was going to happen. I sobbed that they were going to kill him -- an old sick cat at the pound is Dead Kitty Walking, and his position at the far end of the hall, on the bottom, confirmed that -- so John resigned himself to it and said, "Do you want to adopt him?"
"Can we?" I squealed.

We sequestered Guy while we nursed him back to health. Getting him out of the pound and giving him some affection almost immediately improved his condition, but he was always to be a sickly feline. He had a chronic eye infection that required a whole battery of drops and often oozed clear yuck. He had dreadful bowel issues, and would you believe we even took him for kitty enemas?

Though you wouldn't think so after reading that litany, Guy was a terrific pet. He was the people-lovingest, funniest, biggest character you could pack into 15 pounds of furry blubber. He brayed with a full-throated gravelly voice that John described as sounding like an old lady who chain smoked her whole life. He befriended every person who ever walked through our door, including staying under foot when the meter reader would head down to the basement and trying to get in the car of the pizza delivery guy. People who swore they didn't like cats would always ask about Guy.

Haley was less charmed by her roommate, perhaps because he chased her around the house and swatted her while she slept. We became less enamored with both of them when the started what John called excrement wars, Big pooping in numerous spots in the basement and Little peeing on the floor, on rugs, on our bed. After years of the two cats being at war with each other, we finally decided to split them up. One of John's oldest friends, H.T., adopted Big, and they each got to be only cats, as they both seemed to want.

H.T. took fantastic care of Big, ferrying him to frequent vet appointments and buying copious medications and special food to tend to his needs. He reported in after he got a new apartment this summer that Big was the grand poobah of the courtyard, inspiring the respect of all other cats who dared tread foot.

But recently Big's health has taken a turn. His trips to the vet became more frequent, and his improvement was not as marked. It seemed his time had come.

So as I'm writing this, John is booking a ticket to Ann Arbor. He's going to go with H.T. to the vet to put Big down tomorrow.

At times, it's hard to imagine that our Ann Arbor house isn't sitting there waiting for us to return, that we couldn't get off a plane in Detroit, drive west to our house and find everything just as we remember it. It's inconceivable that when we go back to Michigan for the holidays, Big will be gone.

Exploration

2006-09-24T21:59:00.000-04:00

It can be fairly tempting to stay within about a 10-block radius of the apartment -- with all of life's creature comforts easily found within walking distance, it takes effort not to get too provincial. This Saturday and last, John and I have pushed our boundaries out by exploring the far reaches of what we know about New York.

Last weekend we walked from our place in the 60s up to 125th Street, one of the main drags in Harlem. Along the way we strolled through a street fair, fed ourselves at Zabar's, wandered around Columbia's campus, discovered a tiny little museum, and visited Grant's Tomb, among other things. Then we hopped a train to the far northern tip of the island, where there's a lush park and Columbia's football stadium. Yeah, I know -- Columbia has a football stadium?

This Friday, we trekked out to Brooklyn for pizza with a couple we met at a recent dinner party. They were great hosts and a lot of fun to hang with, and Park Slope is a hopping area. We didn't want to seem like tourists with them, so JT got a few arty shots on the subway but then kept the camera put away for the night.

Saturday we got a slow start. While I was lounging in bed, reading the paper and sipping coffee, I saw an article that mentioned an old Lipton tea factory in Hoboken that's been converted to condos facing the Hudson River. We keep hearing how people love Hoboken, so after a little Googling about the condos and good restaurants, we headed off to the birthplace of Frank Sinatra.

The moment we got off the train, I loved it. Loved it! The downtown area has great old historic architecture, and the business district seems to have the aesthetic appreciation of a place like Amsterdam, where each shop and cafe is more beautiful than the last.

We spent the afternoon mainly walking around and taking it all in, including a little real estate fantasizing. If we had any notions that getting out of Manhattan would mean affordable housing, the dozens of real estate offices with million-dollar homes advertised in their windows disabused us of that foolish notion. It's cheaper than Manhattan, but for the price of a pretty nice Old West Side home in Ann Arbor, you might be able to get a one-bedroom condo. Seems everything's becoming "luxury" housing, with prices to match.

Fortunately, there's still some of Sinatra's hometown that hasn't become pure yuppie-ville. Like Leo's, an old-school Italian restaurant where the waitress grabbed my arm and told me we couldn't get the spinach -- haven't I been watching the news, sweetie?

Five years later

2006-09-11T22:34:00.000-04:00

This is the view from our roof deck tonight, looking downtown at the lights shining up from Ground Zero.

Twin Beams to Light Sky Again. But After 2008?

Sporty Spice

2006-09-10T16:10:00.000-04:00

Few people who know me would mistake me for a jock. My eye-hand coordination leaves a lot to be desired, and I am proud to have earned my high school varsity letter by serving as a manager for the boys' swim team.

You wouldn't know that based on our social calendar lately, though.

We've been at the Park Avenue Country Club the last two Saturdays to watch Michigan football with hundreds of other U-M alumni. This Saturday I felt a mixed allegiance since U of M was clobbering my undergrad alma mater Central Michigan, but at least we got to hang out with fellow MAC undergrads Rick and Gladys, and we got in our first euchre playing as New Yorkers while we killed time during a rain delay of the game. (We split 1-1 with our uber-competitive real estate agent Brett and the partner he drafted, Aaron. A tiebreaker will come when Brett rounds up a partner who won't confess to reneging before he's caught.)

Jim and Courtney gave me an extra bleacher ticket for one of the Detroit Tigers' games at Yankee Stadium. They got their tickets through the MSU alumni club, so it was a thrill to be surrounded by Tiger fans as our typically lousy Detroit team beat the Yankees.

Last night we took the subway out to Flushing for the women's finals of the U.S. Open. When John opened our bank account at Chase, the staff was slow and unhelpful and not terribly bright but the upside was the free U.S. Open tickets they gave us. We didn't realize at the time they would be for women's finals, and we didn't realize until we got there that we'd get a double feature -- the mixed doubles finals followed, including Martina Navratilova playing in the last game of her career. This was after seeing -- and hearing -- the tennis tart Maria Sharapova win the finals.

(these photos courtesy of the US Open web site)

(these photos shot on my Treo cell phone -- can you tell the difference?)

We haven't been all sports and no culture, though.

We took in First Friday at the Guggenheim, including a great exhibit by Jackson Pollack.

And inspiring massive jealousy, and reminding me I need to finish my novel damnit, we went to a reading by fellow Wolverine Brad Meltzer. Brad is a multi-hyphenate writer, hitting the NY Times best seller list with his novels, as well as writing comic books and the short-lived TV series Jack and Bobby.
http://www.bradmeltzer.com/
If you look closely, you can see me and John in this video of Brad telling a hilarious story about a junket to Bulgaria: http://www.bradmeltzer.com/2006/09/video-book-of-fate-signing-in-new-york.html

This is a cell phone picture so sadly you probably won't be able to make out the guy in the Star Trek Convention T-shirt who asked the first question during Q&A. Yes, as Brad joked, it was a comic book guy.

And finally, in honor of this week's total eclipse of the moon, one of my favorite scenes from Old School:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2Vy4Iqu0fU

Oh, that?

2006-09-06T21:38:00.000-04:00

New Yorkers are generally not people who take things in stride -- they honk like mad if someone impedes their travel on the roads, they are unabashed about calling someone out who cuts in line, forgets to put cheese on their sandwich or otherwise wrongs them, you hear them all over the city in the midst of impassioned cell phone conversations about some thing or other that cheesed them off.
In a city this densely populated, it seems you learn not speak up firmly and promptly if something chafes you, lest you get trampled upon.
That's the context that makes it so bizarre that New Yorkers seem so nonchalant about the prospect of terrorism.
Recently we had a fire drill at my office. Our department walked down 16 flights of stairs then blocked traffic with a few hundred other employees in a chaotic mess on the street. New York does not have the market locked up on fire drills -- we all did them in elementary school -- but there's something that is just unspoken about knowing you might be evacuating for reasons other than a garden variety electrical fire.
My office was completely empty on my first day -- not a single piece of paper in any filing cabinet, not one book on a shelf. What I did have was my standard issue respirator mask, which is issued to every employee. They're on desks all over the place, just sitting there in a box, with the same nonchalance as having a box of tissues.
Meanwhile, I've gotten involved in a committee that's called, innocuously enough, disaster recovery. The premise is to ensure that we have redundancy in our operations so that if our headquarters were ever, ahem, not around, the company could continue to function.
We're apparently late to this game. The financial services companies all have duplicate trading floors and such 50 or 100 miles outside the city so that if a bomb goes off in Manhattan, they can be up and running in a matter of minutes ... if they still have any traders left.
Is it just me, or doesn't it seem like if a bomb is dropped that wipes out a chunk of Manhattan, maybe society just might be in too much disarray to care whether they can short a stock that day or whether their weekly payment was on time to the AP?
Truth is disaster planning can also apply to much more mundane events like a power outage or a pipe bursting or computer system failing. That all makes sense.
But being blase about terrorism seems strange ... unless maybe you just happen to think that with two completed acts of terrorism on our soil in the last 11 years, maybe the danger is overhyped. Unless maybe you think that Americans take off their shoes and throw out their carry on lip gloss before getting on planes, but we get on subways, trains, bridges and highways without getting screened and we are willing to trade some security for ease of living. Unless you perhaps think that shopping malls and elementary schools and health clubs and hospitals are all places where lots of people are vulnerable every day, and we mostly do just fine.
I know that a lot of people think of New York as having a terrorist bullseye painted on it, but like many New Yorkers, I made a very conscious decision to live here anyway. If the terrorists really wanted to nuke NYC, maybe they would have already. Or maybe they will tomorrow. But we choose to live our lives the way we want to, and if that means dying young in New York instead of living to be 90 in North Dakota, well, that's just fine with me.

A virgin no more

2006-08-26T14:00:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-22T21:07:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-19T18:29:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-16T21:38:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-15T22:04:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-08-05T20:47:00.000-04:00

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.

That's cold

2006-07-23T22:30:00.000-04:00

I meant to catch up with postings this weekend about going to see Avenue Q with the Michigan alumni club, and about taking advantage of New York's Restaurant Week -- but those will just have to wait.

I woke up Saturday morning with a summer cold, so I've spent the weekend sniffling through a sort of mental fog. It's not that I didn't have time to write, just that in my dimwitted state it sounded like more exertion than I could handle.

Upcoming in the next two weeks: work trips to Kansas City, LA and Baltimore.
Goal: get better before then, because flying with a stuffed-up nose and ears is nearly as awful as flying hung over.

While you wait oh-so-anxiously to get my other reports, here's a photo of our first guests -- Bob and Kathleen, stopping by NYC on their way to visit Bob's family. This is the view from our roof patio, with the sun setting over the Hudson River.

Vacation, all I ever wanted ...

2006-07-18T22:39:00.000-04:00

We just returned from four days at the far east end of Long Island, in a beach community called Montauk.

If you go past the uber-rich party spots of the Hamptons, you get to Montauk, which feels how I imagine Fort Lauderdale might have in the 1960s -- low-slung motor lodges with names like the Surfside and the Beachcomber, and groovy little restaurants like Mr. John's Pancake House and Shagwong. Not even Starbucks has penetrated this town that somehow balances vacationing city folk and commercial fishing docks.

We picked our vacation time sort of at random. My boss wanted vacation requests for the summer within a week or two of when I started, and we had no idea what summer had in store for us, so we just chose a July weekend and an August one. We got really lucky. It was about 100 in the city, and almost that in Montauk, but with the ocean breeze and swimming in the ocean or pool, it felt more tolerable.

I ate roughly my body weight in seafood, mostly lobster, but with some oysters and mussels thrown in for extra girth. I also tempted the skin cancer gods by lying on the beach in full view of the shiny orange orb.

Who knew we were such trendsetters?

2006-07-11T22:50:00.000-04:00

Almost 10 years ago, I invited some girls over to my apartment for my first attempt at this crazy idea I'd heard of -- everyone cleans out their closet and brings over their castoffs, and everyone looks over the other girls' goods to find potential treasure in that trash.

It turned into a tradition, with girlfriends getting together a couple times a year for clothing swapping and potluck dinner.

Frequently I'd get together with a friend and she'd proudly show off that she was wearing a sweater or jeans or something she'd picked up at the last party. Other times I'd get an email saying "I need another party. The bag in my closet is almost full and I've got a lot to get rid of."

It's a thing of beauty when you can pick up a few new treats absolutely free, while simultaneously clearing out all the underbrush. I love the feeling of a closet where everything that's in there might actually be something I'd wear. Erica uses this rule: is this something I'd want to have my picture taken in? I love that. Plus, when your new items are free, it's liberating to try something you might not pay for -- and if it doesn't work out, you take it back to the next party for someone else to try.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the story in the NY Times about clothing swap parties actually becoming a business!
Jo, Kat, Margaret, Katie, Saejin, Mary Jean, Joy, Laura -- did you realize we were part of a national craze?

I haven't yet figured out how to bring clothing parties to NYC. My apartment is too small, you can't exactly bring over 8 bags on the subway, and I think potlucks are completely out of the question here. Hmmmm...

Back online

2006-07-11T22:41:00.000-04:00

Today, I am officially back in the 21st century -- John and Jeff worked hard this morning to set up a new router, and tonight, I have wireless internet again. How quickly we get addicted to our new toys: wireless laptops and Treos with email and various and sundry other gadgets.

Tonight we went to a University of Michigan Entertainment Coalition happy hour. Even with only a week's notice, we had about 20 people turn up and that was really encouraging on a hot night in the traditionally slow summertime.

Then we walked home and it was sweltering. I'd been fooled into thinking the evening was really cooling off, because the happy hour was on a roof deck with a really pleasant breeze. Down on the street level, though, it was still h-o-t. What a kooky experience to just be drenched and swampy walking home through Central Park after dark.

Now John's on his computer, I'm on mine, and we're just two nerds enjoying our spacious 695 square foot estate.

I-tal-ia!

2006-07-09T21:44:00.000-04:00

My cousin, Anna, recently sent me an email that said something like "you must be on vacation."
I can take a hint. I know I haven't been posting regularly -- we went a few weeks with no Internet at our new place, and even now, our router isn't working so I still can't connect on my computer. I only get to check my email when I boot John off his computer, and I haven't been keeping up with the blog.

But enough of this whining. We've just had a really festive weekend.

First we had John's old roomie Jeff, and his sig O Barbara over for an after work happy hour Friday, followed by dinner at John's favorite Chinese, Ollie's.
Saturday during the day, John hung out with Jeff and I indulged my nesting instinct -- I put up a towel shelf in bathroom and tried to bring some order to the kitchen. (In their infinite wisdom, whoever did the kitchen cabinets didn't install any that are deep enough to accommodate frying pans, so we've been keeping them in the oven. Not a great permanent solution.) In the evening, Michigan b-school alumni chartered a doubledecker bus for a three-hour tour ... a three-hour tour ... of the city. We chatted with some U-M folks, learned some about NYC, then had dinner at a fun cajun place in Hell's Kitchen.
Today we went down to the Village to watch the final game of the World Cup. Our last name being Tebeau, we were cheering for France but we were definitely in the minority -- most of the bar was emotionally rooting for Italy. Or as they said it in a boisterous cheer "EEE-tal-ia!"

Here are our friends Rick and Gladys right in the heart of Little Italy as the fans went wild after the win.

Earlier this week, we celebrated our first Fourth of July in the city by watching what's said to be the biggest fireworks display in the world. Macy's foots the bill for three barges side by side in the East River, and it's sort of like synchronized swimming -- all three of them shoot off the same thing at the same time.
We'd been warned that the crowds would be horrific, but thankfully it rained and thundered until about an hour before we left to claim our spot and it seemed that scared off the faint of heart. Thanks to our fabulous NYC guide, Cecil, and his sig O Rebecca, we got a great spot and really enjoyed the Fourth.

Of course, truth be told, we'd seen fireworks just a few days before. From our apartment. I was sitting in the living room trying to figure out what that noise was when John yelled from the bedroom to look out the window. Fireworks were going off over Central Park a block away and we had a perfect view.

Last weekend we went out to Coney Island, home of the old-school roller coaster, the Cyclone, and some of the best known pizza in New York, Totonno's. We had plans to enjoy a day lounging on the beach in the sunshine ... but the mood was sort of wrecked when some guys next to us on the beach lost control of their volleyball when I wasn't watching, and it smashed me in the nose. My nose went numb, then started burning. Some of you know that I was in a wicked car accident in high school that destroyed my nose and I was nervous that breaking a nose that's held together with paper clips and bubble gum was going to mean serious trouble. Thankfully, all I had as a souvenir the next day was a tender bruise and some pics of John wading into the ocean.

It hasn't been all play. We've spent a lot of time unpacking, or perhaps more accurately, trying to figure out where to pack/stash/hide our goodies. We put our bed on risers, for example, so we can fit our suitcases and some other junk underneath. We've made numerous trips to Bed Bath and Beyond a block away to buy various organizing things -- plastic storage drawers for under the bathroom sink, closet shelf racks so we can stack higher and deeper in the closet, all that sort of thing.

And now for a little virtual tour of our apartment, in mid-unpack ...

Reunited -- but only for a few days

2006-06-19T22:44:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, but the last few days have been a flurry of activity -- I flew back to Michigan after work a week ago Thursday, the movers came and packed first thing Friday morning (we were still asleep when they rang the doorbell), we had our second-round garage sale Saturday, the movers took away our worldly possessions Monday before we had goodbye dinner with my dad, we closed on our house Tuesday, then flew to NYC.

Exhausted yet?
Well, there's more.

We still had to meet with our new landlord Wednesday morning for final approval -- don't get me started -- then pack up my corporate apartment before starting to move Thursday. The movers delivered our stuff from Michigan Friday, and all weekend we tried to tuck three bedrooms worth of stuff into a 695-square-foot apartment.

But wait, there's still more!

At the moment, I'm in Columbus for a week-long business trip. So John is finally in New York, along with our stuff and our cat, in our new apartment, and I'm not there.

Here are a few photos to catch you up on our relocation week.

Breakfast with Barry and Carrie at A2 institution Fleetwood Diner:

Our house, packed and waiting for the movers to take it all away:

Our lead movers, Jack and Louie, who patiently put up with our naivity in how it works when someone else packs and moves your stuff. (Moving has always meant buying beer and pizza for friends, what do we know??)

Us with our Realtor, Robin, who was with us when we bought our first house, and was with us when we sold it 6 1/2 years later. He was such a godsend for us, helping us through things like knowing when to counteroffer and when to just accept, and coaching us on remembering to get the utilities out of our name.

Me lounging in our new palatial apartment, amid all the boxes.
Note to viewers: I'm actually wearing shorts, so this picture isn't quite as peek-up-my-skirt as it might seem.

The weekend wasn't all work and no play -- an MBA friend, Steve, has just accepted a job that will bring him back to the city so he rounded up a big group for dinner when he came to town looking at apartments Saturday, then John and I had a quiet picnic in Central Park Sunday evening. Well, as quiet as it can be with a few hundred strangers around, but with a little champagne, some cheese, bread and olives, it's easy to tune everything out and just enjoy a sigh of relief that it's all coming together.

It's lonely at the top

2006-06-06T23:43:00.000-04:00

I am an extrovert. Not a little, but a lot.

When the whole staff at Argus did Myers-Briggs personality tests, we used the test scores to line up by score on each of the test's four scales -- from most introverted to most extroverted, most thinking to most feeling, etc. Maybe it's not such a huge accomplishment when most of your colleagues are master's degreed librarians, but I was by far the most extroverted in the office.

That means I draw energy from people, I solve problems by talking to people, and my most comfortable state is with people.

This past month has had me scratching and clawing for human contact.
For the the past eight years I worked in a cubicle surrounded by people. Now I go to work all day in my own secluded office. I've been married for six years, and I've been going to sleep alone every night in NYC. In between, I've jumped at any social opportunities that have come up. Yesterday I was so excited when the owner at my fave Italian sandwich shop wanted to chitchat for 20 minutes about feeling the protection of your dead relatives.

Even the physical layout at work is isolating. We have three floors. I'm on the top floor, which is the CEO, some VPs, finance ... all the really rowdy departments.
Each morning when I come in, I share the elevator with other folks for most of the ride, but I'm usually the only one left by the time I get to our floor. But I'm not even on the actual floor, I'm on a balcony overlooking the floor, tucked behind some file cabinets, so even if someone else does get out with me, I probably lose them in the lobby.

Maybe that's part of why these super-long meetings we've been having every week haven't bothered me. I'm just so excited to come out of my cave and talk to people that a meeting sounds pretty good. (plus my coworkers are so smart and informed on what we're doing that the content is like a seminar in how things work and why)

I've had some truly funny moments realizing that I'm an executive now, and not just one of the minions.
Like I went to the mailroom to borrow pliers to fix my watch. A guy down there fixed my watch for me and we were just happily chatting away while he did it. Then he asked me where I worked, and I saw him sit up straighter and get quiet.
Even funnier was the guy who gave me the "how you doin'?" smile on the sidewalk -- then when he got in the elevator with me, I saw the sudden jolt on his face when I hit the button for the exec floor. I could imagine him telling some sports copy editor how he just tried to make a play for one of the suits upstairs.
So there's another reason I probably won't be getting a ton of invites for drinks with the gang after work. It's no fun to complain about work if someone up the food chain makes you feel like you've got to watch what you say.

This is all the prelude to how excited I am to go to Michigan, where I'll get to see friends, cohabitate with my husband again, not eat dinners alone and generally have more social input than responses to my blog.

Once we're both here and we've got a home, that'll go a long way toward meeting my need for connection.

It's official!

2006-06-05T20:48:00.000-04:00

John and I first saw an apartment at 2 Lincoln on May 14 -- and it took until this morning for me to FINALLY sign the lease.

Here's a picture I took myself of me and Nick, right after I signed the lease. He not only didn't stand me up, but he was even early for our appointment.

Now that it's official, here's a little tour of our new home.

And now, a fashion minute ...

2006-06-04T14:33:00.000-04:00

As if scoring a New York apartment doesn't have enough money flying out of my wallet, I've been doing my part to support the NY economy by buying some new clothes for work.

I'm doing my shopping like Noah's Ark, two-by-twos. Two suits, two pairs of shoes, two necklaces. Yeah, I probably didn't need more jewelry, but the necklaces snuck up on me while I was looking for shoes and suits. And they were buy one, get one free, so I had to buy two.

The photos below are seeking the approval of my fashion consultants back home.
As you evaluate, know that girlfriend can smell a sale from a mile away so these two Jones New York suits cost me about what you might expect to pay for a nice blazer.

Closing the Michigan chapter

2006-06-02T20:55:00.000-04:00

I've just booked tickets to head back to Michigan June 8-13 -- at the end of that, John and I will fly out together and we'll both be New Yorkers.

The movers will show up June 9 to pack for us. Anybody who's talked to me about this move knows I'm squealing with delight about not having to roll coffee cups up into newsprint.
On either June 10 or 12, they'll load whatever we think we can realistically fit into a 700 square foot apartment onto a truck. Estimate is it'll arrive June 15, but I've known enough people who've used movers to expect that John and I might end up on an air mattress for a few nights. Fortunately, my cell phone has an alarm clock and I have most of my survival gear (toiletries, work clothes, etc.) already here.

It looks like we'll have Garage Sale 2.0 on June 10 to get really vicious about clearing out the remaining goods. Stay tuned for details.

And our house passed inspection for the buyer, and I think we're signing all the documents June 13 before we leave town. John wants to get our new cleaning lady -- the goddess who whipped our house into shape for selling, thanks to a referral from Nancy and Laura -- to clean after the movers come. I've always had to do a big cleaning of every new place I moved in to, so that seems optional but obviously nice.

I wonder if I can expect Nick to be cleaning the windows and wiping the walls behind the stove at our new place?

Home-apartment security

2006-06-01T06:53:00.000-04:00

There's a story in today's Times about NYC and D.C. getting cheesed off because Homeland Security cut their funding by 40 percent to help boost appropriations to obviously high risk places like Omaha and Louisville.

Maybe Dubya and his minions felt OK cutting New York's budget because they got word that NYC landlords had this terrorism thing under control.
Our lease at 2 Lincoln includes a clause prohibiting us from being terrorists. I'm not kidding. "Neither you nor any other occupant of the apartment is engaging in or supporting, threatening or conspiring to engage in 'terrorism' (yes, it's in quotes) as defined in any federal or state laws, rules, regulations or order ..."

Because, as I snarked to Brett, if I was masterminding a terrorist plot, and I realized Nick might evict me, clearly that would keep me on the right side of the law.
Phone call to Osama: "Blah blah blah 40 virgins in heaven for being a martyr -- do you have any idea what I went through to score an apartment with five closets in New York? Uh-uh, dude. I'm audi. "

I want to wake up in the city that doesn't sleep

2006-06-01T00:48:00.000-04:00

I don't know about the rest of the city, but the last few weeks, Colleen the New Yorker doesn't sleep so well.

The first week of my job, which was also the first week John was gone and I was here by myself, I slept terribly every night. Probably nerves mixed with strange noises, compounded by not feeling 100 percent secure about living here by myself. I'd have trouble falling asleep, wake up every hour or two, then wake up way before the alarm. Only by the twin blessings of Starbucks and nervous energy did I survive.

Then I started to settle in at work, and the apartment search seemed less uncertain (though certainly not without its frustrations) and I began to sleep a little.

This week is off to a lousy start.

Last night I had just fallen asleep when my work cell phone rang. Twice. The first one I almost slept thru, but then the second came, and I spent the next half hour doing a reverse lookup on the number, trying to call it back ... basically I was awake and I wanted to find out if someone was actually calling me on a number I don't even know or if it was a mistake.

Tonight I smugly turned off the Treo before bed, only to have my personal cell phone ring about 12:30, jolting me from a sound sleep because the doorman had a FreshDirect delivery.
I threw on some clothes and went downstairs to get my groceries, which were supposed to come this evening and didn't, only to discover the front desk had called me but it wasn't my delivery. I could have kept this other woman's delivery, but who wants 8 rolls of paper towels in a 600 square foot apartment?
Only in New York can you get a 1 a.m. booty call from a grocery delivery guy.

So now I'm awake again. Good thing John got me hooked on coffee, because I have a three-hour meeting tomorrow morning and I need to be on my game.

One step closer to reality

2006-05-31T06:01:00.000-04:00

In newsrooms, there are numerous cliches likely to elicit a groan from an editor -- among them phrases like "Rain didn't dampen the spirits of those in attendance at (fill in the blank with lame parade/festival/county fair you didn't want to cover)" or "More and more people are doing X" (because I'm supposed to write about needlepoint/sudoku/amateur porn and because I've noticed it, it must be a trend that's on the rise, or why else would I be writing about it?).
One of those groaner phrases typically comes out of covering something like a city council vote on some new development: "Blah blah blah is one step closer to reality following yada yada meeting."

But since I'm a suit now, I got no editors. Our landing an apartment is one step closer to reality following a productive meeting with Nick at 2 Lincoln Square, who, it turns out, actually exists.

It's a long, ridiculous story, but Brett twisted Nick's arm into setting up an appointment for Tuesday night, only to have him later start back peddling, saying he had a doctor's appointment that conflicted. You understand, all those last-minute 6 p.m. doctor's appointments can be a real hassle.

I show up about half an hour early, to see if I can get into the apartment before his "appointment." Nick startles me by being there. I was working up my righteous indignation about getting stood up the whole way there, and didn't get a chance to use it. He takes me up to the apartment, which is great, we have a nice long conversation about the building and the apartment and our tight time constraints ... whereupon he agrees to forego redoing the hardwood floors (they don't really need it) so that we can move in faster. AND he offers, without me asking, to take the rent down because of that.

Brett hasn't even shown up yet and I'm dumbstruck because I've seen the apartment, I have a lease in my hands and a volunteered rent reduction. When Brett arrives for our scheduled meeting time, I greet him in the lobby with the lease in my hands. Victory is mine!

Well, almost. Now I have to fax it to John, get his signature, and set up a time to take it and our money to Nick, hopefully tonight.

In the meantime, I celebrated what feels like the end of this quest over dinner with Brett and some of his pals at an Italian restaurant where the food was lovely and I had entirely too much red wine. I was pacing myself reasonably until I found a bug in my wine, the waitress brought a free bottle ... now I'm suffering what Mary Jean and I have referred to as the emotional hangover and trying to reconstruct everything looking for signs that I was the embarrassing midwestern girl. If only red wine didn't taste so good, I wouldn't have this problem.

The Michigan connection

Rick Lucas, a Michigan evening MBA who graduated this spring, accepted a job with MTV the same week I accepted with AP. He called me on I think Tuesday of that week to find out if I was in New York, and I sulked because I hadn't heard anything yet. By the end of the week, we were both preparing to move from Michigan to NYC.

I emailed him early in the day Sunday to check in, see if he's here yet, suggest that we should catch up. Then I packed up some stuff to go enjoy a beautiful afternoon in Central Park.

Walking up 8th Avenue, I hear a familiar voice next to me. It's Rick and his wife. They were heading to Central Park from their apartment a few blocks south of where I'm staying. We hung out in the sheep meadow for a few hours, soaking up vitamin D and chitchatting about relocation.

In a city this big, how weird is that?? Apparently the Michigan connection runs deep if you can just will someone to bump into you by thinking of them.

Keep those cards and letters coming
Even with an apartment (hopefully!) set up, it'll likely be two weeks before I get back to Michigan to supervise movers. This period of being in a vanilla furnished apartment on my own is starting to wear on me.
I want my wardrobe, my kitchen supplies, my husband ... it's one thing to be on vacation in a hotel room for a few days, but a month of living in a place that's purposely beige and inoffensive while flying solo is too much. At least at Ben and Gabrielle's in December, we were together and that place felt pretty darned homey.

Sooo... I've gotten cards from Mary Jean, Rob and Lara, Jeff and Rachel, and I've got a fountain pen, a whole load of notecards and a book of stamps searching for a purpose.
Email, write, call, whatever. Once the apartment search isn't taking up every spare moment of my life, it's going to be a long two weeks until I get back to A2. Help keep me entertained?

Memorial Day weekend

2006-05-28T00:14:00.000-04:00

We had a big, all-day meeting Thursday, and still coming down from the intensity of that, everyone got early dismissal Friday -- the practice there on Fridays before holidays. I'd never heard of such a thing before I got to University of Michigan, but apparently U-M didn't just make it up. It's some sort of unwritten rule they don't tell you about in business school.

Albert, one of my MBA media pals, also got out early from his job at VNU, but apparently they're on this kooky New York thing called "summer hours" -- he's going to get out early every Friday this summer. Wow. We had plans for dinner after work, so we both killed a little time before finally having an old people dinner at about 5:30.

That was pretty much the extent of my plans for the weekend. I was just lazing around the apartment Saturday when Jeff and Barbara invited me out for a BBQ that night.

It was something of an adventure, since they live in New Jersey and getting there involves going to the Port Authority to hop on a little white bus that heads under the Hudson and into Jersey. They barbecued and had a bonfire and about a dozen of us enjoyed a perfect summer evening.
Jeff was John's roommate in San Francisco, and the way that I know Rachel, who I mentioned in a recent post. See how even in New York, our social network all connects back and around?

Cecil Shepherd, king of the Michigan business school alums in NY, said he's thinking of heading to the beach Sunday, so maybe I'll tag along. Who knows? I'm just taking the weekend as it comes.

I'd kind of like to find a place to watch the Tigers-Yankees game Monday afternoon. Not that I'm a huge baseball fan or anything, but just my luck -- I leave Michigan and the Tigers are having an amazing season, so it might be fun to root for the home team against the Yankees. Of course, if I was a guy, that sort of thing might be grounds for getting my ass kicked.

Anchors away!

2006-05-25T20:20:00.000-04:00

Walking home from work tonight, 9th Avenue was awash in seamen. Seamen, people. Sickos.
It's Fleet Week, which means everywhere you look, there are sailors in white uniforms trying to chat women up with lines that probably didn't work when On the Town was fresh comedy. Will I take your picture? Are you serious? Let me guess, I look just like someone you know.

If I were a Sex and the City character, I'd be out drinking cosmos and twirling my hair at sailors.
Instead most of my social life has involved MBAs -- who, while interesting in their own way, don't have sexy uniforms and jaunty little hats. (Their shoes are often well shined, though, so they've got that.)

Last Saturday, Chris treated me to dinner at Citrus and we hung out at a cool bar near there until late into the evening. He peer pressured me into taking my first cab this month, rather than waiting for a subway at 1 in the morning. It was good call. Girls who've been drinking probably shouldn't stand on a subway platform for half an hour alone.
Chris graduated ahead of me by a few years in the evening MBA program and he's been in New York since then, so he said he was acting as the welcome wagon. Guess that means I've got to pay it forward to the next Michigan MBA who comes to the city.
Sunday it was dinner with Rachel, a friend we met when she dated an old roommate of John's. They broke up but we didn't. She recently finished her executive MBA at NYU and she's got a kickin' job at Warner Music. Who gets to go to the Grammys for work?
Tomorrow I'm meeting up with Albert, a UCLA MBA I met at an MBA media and entertainment conference a few years ago. He got a job here just a few weeks before I got mine at AP. We're going to share some war stories about apartment hunting and settling in to a new job, and probably throw around phrases like win-win and core competency.

Maybe once John gets to town, we'll socialize with people who don't wear suits or know about Porters Five Forces.

I live in the greatest American city

2006-05-24T20:58:00.000-04:00

and I'm sitting on my couch, laptop open, watching American Idol for the first time ever. Even a city girl's got to have some downtime, right?

If I had a death wish, I'd call Katie right now to ask her what she's doing for her birthday on Friday. Katie is more into American Idol than anyone I know and the finals are tonight. Figured I should watch so I can participate in American society.

But since I don't really care whether it's the grey haired guy or the super-styled girl, I can half watch while I post some more pictures.
I'll start with a photo of me on my way off to work on my first day. When I was growing up, my mom had a tradition of taking a picture of me on the first day of school and the pose was always the same: carrying my book bag, at the door, with my hand on the door knob. I would have done that on my way to my AP job, but since John went back to Ann Arbor the night before, I had to figure out how to shoot it myself. I borrowed John's trick of taking my own picture in the mirror.

Here's what my new office looks like, and the view from the east-facing windows in my office. In the foreground is some sort of vent thing in the roof of the next floor down, and the Empire State Building is just right of that thick, black building in the right third of the photo.

This is roughly what our kitchen will look like if we get the place at 2 Lincoln Square. All new appliances, a pass through counter and swinging doors that shut the kitchen entry off from the foyer. It's actually a better set up than our kitchen in Ann Arbor, especially if we have people over. They can hang out at the counter instead of trying to crowd into our little galley kitchen.

Lara and Rob responded to my angst about corporate fashion with a little gift -- a little pink furry coat with coordinating high heels and purse.
They are now decorating my printer.

Finally, Brett only learned this week that he's got a starring role in BigAppleBound. To welcome our Wolverine alum real estate agent to the blogosphere, here's a little gem Google turned up on the U-M business school web site: Brett and his family at a New York alumni function.

Now that I've embarrased him a little, here's the plug -- Brett has probably shown me 20 apartments and I don't even want to know how many times he's called the guy at 2 Lincoln Square trying to badger him into letting me see the apartment there.
Need a NY rental agent who'll do what it takes to get you the apartment you want, including driving you all up and down Manhattan in his Cooper Mini and dialing a building so many times he memorizes the number?

2224 Frederick Douglass Blvd
New York, NY 10026
P (212) 678-7233
F (212) 326-3061
E brett.grabel@corcoran.com
http://www.corcoran.com/agents/profile.aspx?region=NYC&userid=BGRABEL

OK, Brett, now the pressure's on... :-)

Finally! Pictures!!

2006-05-23T21:37:00.000-04:00

For the second time, we came to NYC without the cable that connects the camera to my computer -- but today, hurrah! John sent me the cable and it arrived today, so I can finally share some photos.

Blogger's not so great with showing me how photos and text will work together, or with wrapping text around pics. In Netscape, this should look OK, but in Explorer, you might have some gaps between photos.

First, some pictures of getting ready for New York.

Our garage sale to cast off some of our Midwestern furnishings that won't fit in our New York apartment.

Then, some pictures from our going away lunch with my Aunt Glennie, her kids and their spouses -- the group we loosely refer to as "the cousins."

Me and John with my dad on Dad's 60th birthday -- the night before we left for NYC.

This is us at the airport the day we flew to New York.

Here's my home away from home -- the corporate apartment where I'll live for my first month in the city. After the interior shots is an image of the view off my balcony.

Here's me and JT on our first full day in town, enjoying an afternoon respite by the water, then having a strategy talk about apartments at the Soda Shop, my fave little hangout in Tribeca.

Here's me in Central Park on our six-year wedding anniversary, May 13. Right after this, we saw a bride and groom getting their wedding photos taken near the fountain so we went and congratulated a couple that'll share our anniversary.

I've got more, but that's got to be more than enough to bore you for now.
For now, a teaser of the next installment: My First Day at Work

Upper west or Tribeca??

2006-05-22T22:03:00.000-04:00

I think our rental agent, Brett, is spending more time with me than his wife. I may have to send her flowers to apologize for being a demanding client hogging up his time.

We met this morning at 8 a.m. to look at 2 Lincoln Square but -- quelle surprise!! -- the ever-elusive agent for the building didn't show up. We sat there for half an hour waiting before I finally had to catch my train to work, but Brett managed to get the guy on the phone to set up an appointment for Tuesday before work. I remain skeptical.
Then we met after work down in Tribeca to look at a condo at Greenwich and Chambers, where the owner is renting it out privately. Man do I dig that part of Tribeca, and the condo, while being the same standard issue layout that seemingly every post-war one bedroom has, was nice. Living room is painted soft green, bedroom is pale yellow, and there's even the tiniest balcony known to man.

Now John and I have a decision to make. The apartments we're looking at are, for all practical purposes, the same. The prices are pretty close. It comes down to the real estate mantra: location, location, location.

John says upper west has the edge for him. I totally see the appeal. If we were at 66th Street and Broadway, right across from Lincoln Center, that is about the coolest, most city experience I can imagine, plus it's only about a five-minute walk to Central Park. Even the lobby and the doorman are fantastic.

My heart is still in Tribeca, probably leaning toward Tribeca Pointe if I can get a viewing there, but otherwise, Tribeca Park. (John's too wary of renting from a private individual, who could decide to sell after we've been there a year.)

We left it at this -- I'm going to trust my gut when I go to Lincoln Square in the morning, and we'll talk again later in the day. If I have applications in at two or three places and then decide, so be it.

Wish me luck tomorrow. I'm not worried we'll make a bad decision. I just want to make the best decision we can, based on our budget, our timeline and what's available.

The lease of my worries

2006-05-21T11:21:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I made about a zillion phone calls all over town, just cold calling apartment buildings asking about June availabilities. Brett told me some just don't show up in his database, and with the clock ticking on my month in corporate housing, I was feeling panicky.

After burning off a lot of minutes on my cell phone, about the only lead I had was at Tribeca Park, where they had a one bedroom available for June 15, but the rent was more than we wanted to pay.

I wanted to head downtown anyway for Taste of Tribeca, so I figured I'd make it a multitasking trip and take a look at the apartment.

A funny thing happens every time I go to Tribeca. As much as I like the rest of New York, Tribeca casts a spell over me. It's like that flush of infatuation when you're 15. I want to write Tribeca's name on the front of my folder and dot the I with a heart. TLF. TLA.

Taste of Tribeca was pricey but it's a fund raiser for art in public schools, so I got to do a little philathropy while nibbling on goodies from some of the best restaurants in the city. Lenny and Anne would have shaken from food orgasm on the spot. Enjoying the street fair vibe with live music and a perfect sunshiney day, I had an heirloom tomato salad by Tribeca Grill, miso-marinated black cod with shredded filo by Nobu, a smoked trout cake and fresh berries with creamy something or other by Blaue Gans, and a chocolate egg cream from my pals at the Soda Shop. (among other things. I meant to remember it all but alas, I my taste buds distracted my brain)

Belly full, skin loaded with vitamin D, I strolled the few blocks down Chambers Street to where it dead ends at River Terrace. All along the Hudson River is beautiful, bucolic Rockefeller Park, popular for everything from picnics and frisbee to wedding photos and kite flying. The whole area was redeveloped after Sept. 11 and it's so lovely. You walk across the West Side Highway and it's like a residential oasis. No sirens. No graffiti. No panhandlers. Just new apartment buildings, new retail, and loads of baby strollers.

I sat in the sun with the river breeze blowing in my face and I got giddy about Tribeca all over again. River Terrace is probably more appropriately Battery Park City, but developers are trying hard to cash in on the cache of Tribeca so they're naming all the buildings Tribeca Park or Tribeca Pointe or I Can't Believe It's Not Tribeca.

In this frame of mind, I put in an application on the most expensive apartment we've seen. At the time, I was delirious about being in that area and happy that the apartment on a perfect timeline to get me out of corporate housing.

Now I'm having buyer's remorse about the rent. An application doesn't obligate you to sign a lease, so worst case scenario we could walk away from our $100 application fee.

Still, it's reassuring to think that I'm at the front of the line on an apartment. When I looked at a place last week, the agent there told me that vacancy rates on 1 bedrooms is something like .7 percent right now, and that put the fear of God into me. As I was filling out the application yesterday, I thought paying more than we wanted is preferrable to being homeless.

There are still two other places I want to see before we sign a lease anywhere:
-- 2 Lincoln Square -- I finally have an appointment there tomorrow before work. Assuming it's the same basic layout most of these highrises seem to have, then the decision basically comes down to neighborhood and price.
-- Tribeca Pointe -- they have a 1 bedroom for significantly less than the rate at Tribeca Park, and it looks like the view would be better, too. (The Tribeca Park apt. faces the city, but at Tribeca Pointe, the 1 bedroom they list as available faces north, so that look up the Hudson)

Those are the three finalists at the moment, and Brett doesn't see anything else coming up for June or July move in. I think any of the three will have lots of upsides, so stomach knots this morning notwithstanding, I think we'll be happy with any of the choices.

OH! And we have an offer on the house, with a buyer who wants to take occupancy by June 15! It must be those great photos showing off our friends.

Who still reads newspapers?

2006-05-21T10:03:00.000-04:00

If you're reading my blog with your Sunday paper, maybe you'll appreciate this email joke Parker shared. I've seen it make the rounds before, but now that I'm responsible for American newspapers that are AP members, it seems even more timely.
(insert standard disclaimer here: I didn't write it, the views expressed here may not reflect those of management, any similarity to persons living, dead or in the White House is purely coincidental)

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country--if they could find the time--and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who is running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy provided, of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

12. None of these are read by the guy who is running the country into the ground.

You better shop around

2006-05-19T21:44:00.000-04:00

John and I just celebrated our six-year wedding anniversary, and we were together a few years before that -- so it's been a long time since I grocery shopped and cooked for one.
Add to that the consideration of what I can actually carry home from the store to my aparment, along with trying hard not to end up with an entire duplicate set of everything from soy sauce to peanut butter, and you might understand how I could spend an hour wandering Whole Foods tonight to buy one bag of groceries.

Being in NYC stag has also changed some of my shopping habits because my breakfast routine is all thrown off. John and I had this great ritual of getting up to exercise, then while I was in the shower John would make coffee and the most fantastic omelette or yogurt with bananas and walnuts. Yes, I admit it. I'm terribly spoiled.
Now I've got to actually think about breakfast, and buying something to eat for it, since my omelettes aren't as good as John's and even if they were, it'd add another 20 minutes or more to my morning routine. That's sleep I don't want to give up, so PB&J it is.
Earlier this week, I made the discovery that the walk from my building to the subway stop is just long enough to eat a PB&J, which was helpful since I was paralyzed in front of my closet figuring out what to wear.

Dress for success

No, it's not the most important consideration in career success -- but how you dress does matter. As the new kid worried about making the right first impression, I've tried hard to make sure I'm wearing the right thing.
Part of the challenge is that I work in a small group where there aren't many women. The guys wear a shirt and tie with nice dress slacks and loafers every day. I think most of the other executive-level men dress the same, up to the CEO, and there aren't enough women to feel like I can really generalize. For example, one woman my age dresses really nicely, but I can't tell if I should follow her lead or if she's just fond of suits.
What's the female equivalent of shirt, tie and slacks? Lenny suggests sweater sets and even says they're sexy. I always thought of them as sort of prim suburban soccer mom, but sexy? Who knew?
Finally I cracked and asked the well-dressed woman what she thinks the dress code is for women. She laughed and said it really varies -- from suits or blazers to blouse and skirt or blouse and pants.
Thus far, it feels like most of my News Service work wardrobe is too casual for work. Yesterday a sudden downpour soaked my favorite utility work shoes and this morning they were still sopping wet so I was forced to wear my brown velvet spider flats. (bad packing = lots of casual shoes, not enough work shoes) I felt so self conscious walking in because it's not so much of a funky place, but fortunately my pants were long enough and I spent enough of my day sitting down that I'm not sure anyone really noticed.
Still, I need to do a little shopping. Yes, need. The sacrifices I make for my career.

Walk the line

2006-05-17T21:42:00.000-04:00

Rule of thumb in NYC is it takes about a minute to walk a block on a north-south street. East-west blocks are longer, so those might be more like three minutes.

I'm staying about 20-some blocks north of work, and a few blocks over, so my crude math was that it should take me about 30 minutes to walk. That's part of how I ended up cutting it so close the first morning -- I assumed (wrongly) that if I could walk there in half an hour, surely it would take less than that to take the subway straight down two stops. I was wrong.

I decided to conduct a semi-scientific experiment and time myself walking home, and compare that to the subway ride. My first attempt flopped, since I foolishly chose 8th Avenue as my north-south route, taking me straight through the center of Times Square tourist log jam hell. Tonight I chose 9th Ave. instead, and confirmed that it's about a half hour walk, making the subway a choice purely about laziness, not time.

My experiment also helped me understand one reason midwesterners think New Yorkers are rude. It is damned near impossible to get a good stride going on a sidewalk in NYC without constantly bobbing and weaving around people in the middle of the sidewalk at a dead stop with a map out or someone smoking a cigarette outside a bar or a couple holding hands and blocking most of the sidewalk walking slooowly.

Let me put it in Michigan terms for my pals back home: imagine you're on your commute on 696, and every lane in front of you is clogged by people out for a Sunday drive 10 miles under the speed limit. One unexpectedly stops in front of you. How patient do you feel?

New Yorkers don't walk to enjoy the great outdoors. It's transportation. They walk like Detroiters drive, looking for openings, cutting around slowpokes, getting frustrated when people in front of them clog the flow of traffic.

Advice to visitors: if you want to check a map, fumble for your cell phone, look for an address or generally not move along, take a second to pull over. Step in toward the buildings, or out toward the curb, so you aren't a big speed bump right in the middle of traffic. Or prepare to have people brush by you on both sides, maybe even grumbling a little as they go by.

If you stopped in the middle of the highway during rush hour, you don't think you'd get honked at?