changed my mind

the whole idea of holidays in NYC was charming at first.  we visited the toy stores (on weekdays - we weren't going anywhere near them during the weekend crazy), where we blew our budgets shopping for our youngest nephews.  we elbowed our way through the crowds to see the tree at rockefeller center, enjoyed the department store windows (mostly - the windows that just had holiday scenes on flat-screen tvs were kind of lame), and escaped the midtown madness to return safely home to the village.  and that was all fine and great and lovely.  we've frequented the Christmas markets in grand central and in union square (where i played with the little stuffed donkey ornaments ("charlie! candy mountain charlie!") to the great amusement of the couple behind us).  also wonderful.  so what is the problem, you ask?  those outings were undertaken on relatively sunny days when the temperature was at least into the forties (a respectable, but not oppressive, wintry range).

today i intended to finally complete my stocking stuffer mission.  but ... a mere 3 or so miles walking to a doctor appointment, to the pharmacy, to a store to pick out wrapping paper, and a brief visit to the MoMA store did me in.  the walk involved a temperature of 22 degrees, getting hammered by the wind, and freezing my face off (oh yeah, and my heels are still missing a layer of skin - i had to supplement them with gauze and resort to wearing (actually functional) running shoes (j thinks maybe we bought the boots a half size too big and that is why my heels were slipping around a bit ... i hope he's wrong because i really don't want to break in another pair anytime soon)).

thus, since returning home today, i've now reconsidered our choice of NYC over LA.  i think maybe we should have negotiated separate winter arrangements.  i've also changed my mind about spending the holidays in the cold northeast.  dear loved ones, our holiday rendezvous point will be kauai.  to those who would like to see us for the holiday, we look forward to meeting you there.

new boots

j and i went out to find a pair of boots to replace an overly loved pair - it was well past their expiration date.   i am really loving boots lately - much more than is probably healthy, especially given that women's shoes are nothing more than glorified foot binding (i love them, but let's be honest - they are not made for walking).  nonetheless, after many weeks of searching (i guess i'm a bit picky about shoes), we finally succeeded and made a purchase last night.  but of course, you can't just buy the boots.  you also need the spray stuff to protect the boots from the elements (okay, fine, i'm willing to accept this).  and you also need the silly little stickers that make the boots almost functional.

you see, when we were checking out, the tricky little salesman pulled out stickers, demonstrated affixing them to the bottom of the soles, and asked j if he wanted those too "so she won't slip."  tricky, tricky, tricky.  the salesman didn't ask me - he asked j. because what kind of heartless jerk wants his girl slipping and falling down all over the city?  j responded that i am capable of healing myself should i fall over, so why should he pay extra for a feature that came with me?

just kidding.  he told the salesman that yes, we wanted the silly anti-slip stickers.  as i peeled them off and stuck them to the soles, we did wonder why the soles could not have been manufactured in such a way as to have tread already on them.  nonetheless, i also sprayed them and took them out for a walk today as i continued my stocking stuffer quest (which, so far today, has been wholly unsuccessful because the "city that never sleeps" actually sleeps in pretty darn late, and none of the stores i wanted to visit were open until 11.00 or even 12.00 ... so i'll have to go out again).  as further evidence that women's shoes are built to constrain, in the course of the 2 or 3 miles i walked this morning, i lost a couple patches of skin from my heels.  yet rather than return the boots and buy sensible shoes, i'll wear them a couple more times until they are broken in, and then continue traipsing about the city in completely non-functional heels.  because they are so cool.  so rather than freely walking about now that the stores are finally open, i am instead chilling in my teeny tiny apartment until j comes home for lunch, bearing gifts of neosporin and gauze.

dear little shoe salesman, i think you should start peddling moleskin "so she won't lose chunks of flesh from her heels."

the east village hates children

i spent the morning on a quest for stocking stuffers (and for the record, let me just say i found the wild and wonderful world of the internet barely more than minimally helpful in directing me to unique, quirky little places to find stocking stuffers .... i ended up just bundling up, opening the door, and walking in the directions that i intuitively sensed would have what i was looking for ... so it was more of an adventure than an exercise in efficiency, but it's all good).

my trek took me into the heart of the east village, where literally hundreds of mr. and mrs. santa clauses (and, here and there, the nonconformist reindeer or elf) were pouring into the streets or disappearing from the streets into little shops (though when i looked closer, they appeared to be disappearing into little pubs more often than little shops).  every corner i turned was speckled in red and white.  ordinarily, i would really have to argue that the west village is much cooler than the east village (because i am, of course, quite biased).  but maybe there would be less enmity between the villages if the eastern side were to share its "dress like santa claus" memos with the western side.  you know, invited us to play too.  or at least just let us know so we would have taken our cameras on our stocking stuffer expeditions.

nonetheless, should i someday become a nyc parent, i'm going to not only have to explain why santa claus looks different depending on which store my kid sees him in, or why the miracle on 34th street parade santa claus is publicly quite drunk, or how there can be multiple santa clauses at once, but also why hundreds of potentially drunken santa clauses annually flood the city.


okay ... so apparently this was not just an east village thing.  i have just discovered it is a city-wide convention - the drunken santas were still going strong at 9.00pm and had indeed more than infiltrated the west village.  http://nycsantacon.com/ (and oops ... they say "every time you call santacon a bar crawl, a sugarplum fairy dies" ... i hope my above insinuation results in nothing more than maiming).

cashier #9

trader joe's seriously has 20 cashiers on duty at a time.  and someone on staff to direct checkout traffic.  it is crazy and efficient all at once.  i'm a fan.  i'm also a fan of cashier #9 in particular for taking a strange request from me into full-fledged ocd.

trader joe's is a mile from home, and i regularly walk there for groceries because a) i like that they sell organic stuff cheaper than all the other stores sell their non-organic stuff, and b) it seems far too easy to just walk out the door, cross the street, and go to the closer grocery store.  i like to get a little more physical activity because, let's face it, everyone in my neighborhood wears a size 2 and it's quite intimidating.  if i don't keep moving, i think i'm going to get deported.

the challenge is that, as everyone knows, when you carry something, it gets heavier with each step that you take. the second challenge is that j really likes their orange peach mango juice ... and those get especially heavy.  for those reasons, i have to make sure groceries get packed such that i can manage to carry them without one arm getting more of a workout than the other (it's important to train muscles evenly ... both arms must get the same workout, lest one arm feel less loved).  usually, i just stop by the door on the way out and double check how the cashier packed the groceries before starting the trek home.

when checking out during my last trip, though, i decided to preemptively ensure that the two bags were relatively balanced.  so with a straight face, i informed cashier #9 that the two cartons of juice were having trouble getting along with each other.  i then asked him if he could please separate them when bagging the groceries.  cashier #9 not only smiled, but really went the extra mile.  he also separated the two oranges, the two peppers, the two containers of broccoli, and the two boxes of j's cereal.  he even separated the tofu from the chicken (which i secretly appreciated quite a bit - the tofu really doesn't get along with the chicken).

and that is why i love trader joe's.

new toys

thanks to a few very kind family members, i recently had some graduation money to indulge some of my hobbies.  and thanks to a slight delay between finishing the phd and starting a "real" job, i have also had time to indulge them.

NY Cakes acquired a respectable portion of my bounty.  i don't even like cake (maybe it's the frosting - the massive amount of sugar tastes like diabetes in a bite ... but then again, sweet things aren't my own personal vice - i've got others).  but i do like attempting to turn cakes into a pretty creation.  or a strange one.

i have never had so much ambivalence about a store before.  on one hand, the place is stocked well beyond even the best of the basics.  it has gadgets for baking and decorating that i never knew existed.  so at first, it was quite exciting to take in the impressive collection of tools and to pick out which new toys i couldn't live without - paints to color my own fondant, new pans, glorified modeling tools, etc.

but then, as i realized the vast amount of available shortcuts, some of the magic of decorating disappeared.  you see, i went from doing everything the hard way (e.g., using very basic cake shapes and carefully carving them into the shapes i needed and assembling the shapes into 3D objects, always covering cakes by rather painfully squeezing out little drops of buttercream icing at a time, etc.) to obtaining tools to do much of it the easy way (e.g., collecting a variety of usefully shaped pans, stocking up on fondant, etc.).  so now i feel like i'm cheating - that some of the challenge is gone.  and then when i think about how many more shortcuts would be available if i were willing to drop a few hundred dollars or more into this little side hobby (and buy things like machines that would do the heavy labor of rolling out the fondant for me), i admit i get a little bit jealous of bakeries.  suddenly the cake shows that champion their crazy confections are less impressive - yes, practice and skill are still very important, but it is so much easier for them.  dear santa claus, i would like a bakery for Christmas so that i can make birthday cakes as needed.  thanks.

so in any case, i have begun to sell out and am playing with my new toys.  this past weekend, the project was a volcano birthday cake for my geology major sister.  p.s. here's a tip for all you pyromaniacs out there - putting a bunch of birthday candles in very close proximity makes for a delightfully large flame.

self checkout

when J and i were deciding what to do and where to go when we finally finished school, our choices boiled down to NYC and LA.  on one hand, the thought of becoming a california girl had been very enticing - a perpetual tan, the southern california coastline, eternal sunshine, and some really great friends in the area were exceedingly difficult to turn down.  but deep down, i kind of always knew that as much as i might really, really like the idea of being laidback and carefree (and as much as i like to tell myself that if the world weren't so demanding, i would be), the reality is that NYC does serve my personality better (not that this was the reason for the move - the decision was primarily job- and family-related).  but personality-wise, i need efficiency almost as much as i need air.  here, most everything i could possibly need (and just about anything that i could never imagine needing) is a short walk away.  and service is generally quite efficient.

take this morning, for example.  i ran a couple errands in preparation for yet another trip (because no, J and i cannot seem to stay in the same place for more than a week or two at a time this whole summer ... hence, i hardly feel like i live in NY at all).  first, i walked to Bagel Bob's to carry on what has quickly become a tradition for us: exporting fresh, yummy NY bagels to our hosts when we leave the city.  despite a rush hour line from the door to the counter, i was in and out in a matter of minutes.  so i proceeded to CVS to get J some gatorade for the trip (personally, i'm deciding between ginger ale and sangria (for prevention of motion sickness)).

CVS is where my morning got really interesting.  i was second in a line of 3 people (with one person checking out at the counter), and i was even managing to be patient while waiting my turn (because, let's face it, the Bagel Bob efficiency was unfortunately lacking).  i was thinking about the bagels - they were so warm and fresh and i wished i could have given them to our hosts while they were still right out of the oven.  the fifty-something woman in front of me started behaving a little erratically (we'll call her Erratica).  Erratica began mumbling a few words here and there and making partial movements as though she were going to reach for something or walk somewhere, but suddenly changed her mind and stopped mid-movement.  she then left the line twice - once to wander off and grab some nutritional shakes and once to put them back.  and okay, i admit i may have gotten slightly annoyed when Erratica left the line because i didn't want to have to wait any longer if the cashier became free while she was gone ... but the annoyance was fleeting because i decided i would go ahead of her if she didn't make it back in time.

as it turned out, Erratica did manage to make it back in time AND i went ahead of her.  the cashier dealing with the customer at the counter must have been having some trouble.  so another cashier, standing by the self checkout counter, stepped up and said "next."  silly me, i thought Erratica would proceed with her purchases, and i would wait for the next available cashier.  but Erratica responded as though she feared for her life.  she quickly and loudly protested, "no!"  she paused for effect, and only continued when the cashiers exchanged startled expressions.  "i do not wish to go there! i do not wish to use those machines! i am waiting in line - " i didn't quite make out the rest of the tirade (something about a human?) because although i was amused by the event, i had other errands on my list.  so my ears were primed to pick up cashier #2's response: "okay, that's fine.  who is next in line?" and i proceeded to the self checkout (that incidentally, wasn't self checkout - the cashier scanned the gatorade, took my money, and handed me my receipt ... so i can only conclude there must be something ominous about the machines themselves).  i completed my purchase.  as i took my receipt and cashier #2 uttered, "next," it was deja vu.

Erratica protested again, "no!   i do NOT wish to use those machines!" she was oblivious to the cashiers' assurances that they were talking to the person behind her.  Erratica continued, "i do NOT wish to use those machines!  i wish to wait in this line (for a human being?)! where is the manager?  is there a manager? i want to talk to a manager!"

i don't know what happened next because my Type A triumphed over my curiosity this time and i walked out the door.  i can only hope those evil cashiers didn't drag that woman, flailing and screaming, to the self checkout machines, scan her retinas instead of the bar codes, gag her with a receipt, and stuff her into a plastic bag.


(side note: many people erroneously believe Type A personality is associated with cardiovascular problems.  but Type A is actually a big collection of traits that includes not only preference for efficiency, being driven, perfectionistic, etc. (the traits that perhaps are typically thought to make up Type A personality) but also things like hostility and cynicism.  we've known since the 70s that it is only hostility/cynicism portion of type A that is associated with cardiovascular problems (okay, well, someone has known since the 70s - i didn't exactly exist then, but the data have been around that long).  so no worries, NYC will not be giving me a heart attack anytime soon.)