This is the first day of the last month that I have not yet spent in New York. Soon I’ll have been here for a year.

I’m happy to announce that I just saw a spider crawling on my desk. It was pretty small and I squished it, but the point is that this is the first bug I have seen since winter set in. It’s like the indoor version of the first robin of spring. Isn’t that exciting?

I always found Valentine’s day to be a silly, borderline-nauseating holiday, but I thought that was because I never had a Valentine. It seems I was wrong. This marks my third year of not being single on Single’s Awareness Day, and I still think it’s a total loose-loose situation. Either you don’t have a Valentine so you’re bitter, or you do have a Valentine and you feel like you should apologize for making your single friends bitter. I feel like my only options on this day are to either feel guilty or gloat shamelessly, neither of which are things I enjoy doing. So it looks like I’m left with no alternative except to do what I have done faithfully on every Valentine’s day that I can recall: drown my troubles in a big box of Russell Stover’s Assorted Chocolates. I recommend that all of you do the same.

I think my lines are lame.
I need to explode my brain.

sunlight on a red wall filtered
through white gauze of dense-lived time
recall darkly
creep back warily to the moment when night burst its seams
small puncture not being enough release
only purge of every moment built
up to this boiling point, point of pressure
pressure of weight, thick
comfortable weight of despair poured out,
squeezed out,
thrown out baby and bath water all to the brink
and over
into unbearable free morning

light strikes deep
in the empty room there is nothing to dim the glare

This just showed up in my Outlook inbox at work. It reminds me a little bit of Beat poetry, or of Hemingway’s “Banal Story.”

At night, flying squirrels passed by his window. “We kept her home from preschool and watched her spend several days in misery, and I felt bad we could not do something to alleviate the coughing and discomfort she was feeling,” Moorer said.
Health professionals say hairdressers can help ease the lingering wariness.
” Strike a Pose These simple moves can help you relax, physically and mentally. On one, he recorded experiences of gratitude throughout the day, such as thanking his partner for cooking a meal, or simply feeling thankful for a sense of abundance. “We’re definitely going to take it out,” he said.
She found others that had labels that were hard to read because of small print or different wording. In one area, however, our values differ widely: My husband, reflecting the predominant view in.
Manor Care said the new organization would make it the sole owner of all the nursing homes in its chain.
“I think it’s a wonderful new development. Kaiser Family Foundation. Sound meters can be bought at stores such as Radio Shack. , a developer of stem cell therapies. government to ensure the safety of toys,” Rep. “This is a plus for child health.
Judge’s Letter Produces Inoculations, And Anger - washingtonpost.
Judge’s Letter Produces Inoculations, And Anger - washingtonpost. Rhett Diessner, a professor of psychology at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, headed the study.
But it can’t hurt to try, right?
Romney, while defending his plan in Massachusetts, has argued that Democrats forced the inclusion of some of its more ambitious aspects and he has not proposed anything like it for the nation. Claire’s and the dollar stores that sold other toys that were tested did not return phone calls requesting comment.
” Strike a Pose These simple moves can help you relax, physically and mentally. Program By Perry Bacon Jr.

Cheers, and happy Shabbos.

The big organization that I work for a small conglomerate-thing of had their Chanuka bash today. It took me two hours to get from Coney to LOWER Manhattan where the party was being held, but I enjoyed it once I got there.

Ok, that’s a lie. I was hoping Jodie and some other VISTAs I know would be there, but I walked into a huge room full of strange people and deep-fried chicken. Jodie was too busy to go a-partying (I kind of was too, but my supervisor was at jury duty today and told me to go ahead since she wants to actually, physically supervise the stuff that I’m working on now.) and I guess the other VISTAs were as well. The only people I knew were the two VISTAs who work at Met Council headquarters and the girl who used to be a VISTA last year and now has a salaried position at Met Co. Some big city and even state officials showed up, though, and I got to see the lighting of the full Menorah as well as hear what I suppose was the traditional Menorah-lighting song. It was all in Yiddish, though, and the only word I could make out was “mitzvah.”

I did eventually meet a new person. I forgot his name even though he told me twice, but he’s a new grant writer at Met Co. headquarters. He was interesting. We talked about how people are all going to have chips in their heads in the future, but before technology has a chance to take over the world global warming will cause most of Brooklyn to be under water, which will contribute heavily to the collapse of everything. That’s what he’s afraid of, anyway. I told him that I was more worried about getting old and decrepit, and that if all of our information were on chips in our heads then at least I wouldn’t loose my PIN number anymore. He seemed rather taken aback by that thought. It was a good conversation. Pretty much saved the evening, actually.

I think tomorrow is the last day of Chanuka. So bust out that Menorah, light ‘er up, and order latkes all around. Mazel tov.

Everything is better in New York, especially pizza and including bad days.

I have a post from the early spring that goes into rather too much detail about a bad day I had then. Today was another exceptionally bad day, but compared to that one it was hardly a blip on the radar.

I use my cell phone for an alarm clock, and I put it on top of my chest of drawers so I have to get out of bed to turn it off. Sometimes even this doesn’t work and I climb down from my loft bed, turn off the alarm, and climb back up the ladder to dreamland as if compelled by an outside force, but there’s nothing else that comes close to working so this is what I continue to do. Anyway, today I went to tangle with the ladder without realizing that the entire right half of my body was still asleep. This only became apparent when I landed on the floor, on my back, and my still-sleeping roommate made disgruntled noises at me.

The rest of the day, in summary, went as follows:
1. left keys AND cell phone on coffee table when leaving
2. just missed every express train
3. even missed one of the slow trains
4. waited twenty minutes for a bus
5. consequently arrived at work half an hour late
6. re-arranged the format of one of the newsletter pages for the 23rd time, and the 24th time, and the 25th time, etc.
7. accidentally spent half the cash that I’d withdrawn to pay back my roommate
8. arrived at home and was relieved to see one of my other roommates standing on the stoop
9. became un-relieved upon discovering that he was standing there because he didn’t have his key, either.

There were lots of bright points, too, like one of my co-workers bringing a ginormous amazing cake for everyone in honor of her son’s bar mitzvah. Mazel tov.

I think tomorrow will be better. I think it would almost have to be…unless I weren’t in New York.

Happy Guy Fawkes day, everyone!

I wish you all an exciting day of making politically-oriented dummies (typically of Guy Fawkes, but other public figures are also acceptable), collecting pennies for the Guy (or whomever), burning said dummy in a really great bonfire, and maybe shooting off the odd firework. You should also watch V for Vendetta, which won’t change any of your convictions about life or really make you think that much at all, but is a very entertaining movie nonetheless. And really, how many Guy Fawkes Day movies are out there?

I had every intention of faithfully blogging every week or so upon moving to NYC, but so far I haven’t posted so much as an uninformative haiku (which I think I did a lot when I was in London).

Sorry.

I love New York so far. My tune may change when the weather finally decides to get cold, but so far it’s been either gorgeous or hideously muggy so the change in lattitude hasn’t been an issue. I’ve pretty much settled into an apartment (still need some shelves, a chair, and a few other small things) and even though it’s pretty cramped with my four roommates and I living in a small 3-bedroom the rent is very reasonable so no one’s complaining yet.

A lot of people have asked me to clarify what exactly I’m doing here as far as a job goes. The short version is that I’m doing Americorps VISA (which you can google) and for me that mostly involves writing grant proposals for a small community organization in Southeast Brooklyn. I was pretty ambivalent about the job for awhile but it’s growing on me more and more as I get further into it. It’s a lot like writing research papers but with a very different kind of information that what I’m used to.

When I’m not at work, which is pretty often since it’s a Jewish organization and there are lots of Jewish hollidays in September and early October, I explore Manhattan and west Brooklyn or go to free/cheap music venues. I don’t do this on purpose, but when I go to get my live indie rock fix I usually find myself in extreme hipster territory, and this bothers me mildly since I’m very much not a hipster and none of my friends here are hipsters. This also makes it harder to get my friends to go with me to shows. But when I go alone I always find at least one interesting person to talk to, so it works out.

My roommate James and I found some great bluegrass in the Lower East Side (of Manhattan) last night. It was at a place called Banjo Jim’s. Yes. Banjo Jim’s. How could they not have great bluegrass? Anyway, James was doubly excited because it was a bar that served PBR, which is an elusive drink here in New York City. I don’t really care for it, but then I’ve never been to the Northwest, which is apparently where you go to get addicted and become a card-carrying member of the inexplicable cult of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I’m personally missing my Shiner, but it doesn’t exist here in the Northeast so I settled for Pabst and watched the guitar-and-washboard duo do their thing. It was a great thing, too. The guitar player was good, but I’ve never seen anyone tear up a washboard like that girl, and she had a gorgeous voice as well.

I’m sure there’s lots of other important things going on that I should post about, but none of them are coming to me at the moment. So post your questions, comments, rude remarks, or whatever, and I’ll do what I can to respond.

Cheers.