Just saying "Hi"

Sadly, I don't have much to report since my birthday. I did have a very nice day. The dinner Greg and I went to was excellent and my chocolate dessert was so good I was a little sad that Greg took a bite because it was one less bite for me. (Hey, it was my birthday, I could be selfish for one day!) We were then planning to go to Coney Island over the weekend, but it's been rainy and dreary ever since Friday night. So we had a lazy weekend. Ran some errands, hung around the house watching movies. New York is a very interactive city, you've got to get out to experience the crazy. We thought it was a little strange that there was a line out the door for this greasy take-out spot near Macy's. It was like walking past Garrett's popcorn on Michigan Ave. on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We had never heard of this place so we couldn't understand the crowd. But then we remembered we were in a tourist area, so certainly none of the people in line were actual New Yorkers... they were probably Midwesterners looking for familiar-looking food.

This upcoming weekend is moving weekend. I have yet to know what day my stuff arrives, the movers tell me it will probably be on the 1st or 2nd, but neither day is guranteed until they call when my things leave. Leave where? Where are my things? I mean, I know they are in storage, but where? Ohio? New York? Nebraska? I am told I will have at least 24 hours notice. So I guess I sit and wait until I get that call. Knowing how movers operate, I'll consider it a success if they show up before Monday.

Where's my birthday pie?

A few years back my sister was working at one of her first pastry jobs in a bakery. A couple of days before my birthday she asked me what kind of cake I wanted. The conversation went something like this:

Leah: What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?
Me: I want a pie.
Leah: You can't have a pie.
Me: Why not?
Leah: Because you have cake on your birthday. It's birthday cake, not birthday pie.
Me: But I like pie more than cake. I don't like all that frosting.
Leah: Well you can't do it.
Me: I want pie. What kind of pies does the bakery make?
Leah: Apple, peach, cherry, etc.
Me: PEACH! That sounds great! I'll have peach birthday pie.
Leah: But you can't write "Happy Birthday" on a pie.
Me: Sure you can, it just won't be flat on top. I'll have a peach pie with "Happy Birthday Lori" written in icing. It'll be great.
Leah: You can't put icing on a pie!
Me: No, but you can.
Leah: You're insane.

Eventually she came around, and a few days later I had a peach pie with "Happy Birthday Lori" written in purple icing. That was four years ago, for my 25th birthday. I haven't had cake on my brithday ever since. I've had pies, tarts, and even baklava, but not cake.

We have fallen into a pattern of celebrating our birthdays twice in my family. On the actual day my mother, sister and I always have dinner together, and then at the closest weekend we'll have another dinner and I usually invite a friend along for that. This year is different. This year I'm in New York, 800 miles away from my family and most of my oldest and dearest friends. Even when I lived in San Diego I flew home for my birthday that year. But unfortunately schedules didn't allow it for this year. It's okay, I'm not complaining, it's just crazy that the first time I am celebrating a birthday without my family is when I turn 29. Lots of people would think that is very strange, and certainly not normal. But I've never cared much for normal anyway.

So this year I am in New York. I'm not alone though, I'm going out to a special dinner with Greg, and will surely be seeing Joe and Shannon (whoops, I mean Jerry and Jenna) very soon. I am very lucky to have such supportive and wonderful friends who have been happy to make time and include me in thier lives to help make this transition a little easier. And I expect to have a very good birthday here in this strange city. I've realized it's a place in which nothing is really normal, and in that regard I fit right in.

I will miss my birthday pie though.

Bad juju

I've been witholding information. From all of you. I know, it's shameful. But I had good reason. You see *sigh*, I have a problem with my juju.

Juju is what I refer to as luck. Traditionally it means magic, but I use it to mean luck. Neither actually exist, so there's really no difference.

I've been having a pretty long run where my juju has been out of whack. Or is whack. Has been whacked. There is definitely some form of whack going on. My own personal road to success/happiness/fulfillment has resembled the Dan Ryan reconstruction project in Chicago. Potholes are everywhere, I couldn't get off where I wanted to, and in order to make any kind of forward progress I had to take the long detour route down Ashland. It seemed everytime I was finally moving, BAM, I'd slam into one of those flashing divider things. At this point I'm a little scared of my own juju, and I don't like to anger it because it is clearly out of my control. I find nothing fuels my juju's anger like being prematurely excited about something good on the horizon.

So what I am about to share with you I do so with trepidation: I had a job interview last Wednesday for a great job. THE job. The best job I could possibly ask for at my level. It went so well. Even my hair looked good. They loved me. I met with the president of the company, and he loved me. I got a call today asking me to come back to meet with one more guy on Friday. Basically, they like me a ton, and just want to run me past one last dood. It's not a sure thing until I have an offer, but this is really good news, and I wanted to share. But I'm not going to share more details than that. I may be asserting a little independence from my juju here, but there's no reason to reach out and slap it right in the face.

So I ask my juju to cool out, stop being so angry, and not get in the way this time. Good juju, good. Nobody wants to be bad.

Don't believe the hype

I had a great weekend. My mother, who I will refer to as "Ma" to protect her anonymity and stress her Italian-ness, came to visit me. As is typical of New York, we had good meals, bad service, saw a musical and did a bunch of shopping. But we went budget shopping. Ma did great at Century 21, the downtown discount clothing store (Think the clothes of Filene's Basement, Saks Off Fifth and whatever fell off the Prada truck with the crazed attitude of a bridal gown sample sale). It's kinda insane, but you can definitely trade your cash (and sanity) for really good stuff. Case in point, my Ma's furry Michael Korrs boots. They are so cool. They will be perfect snow bunny boots on our annual ski trip this year. I liked a pair of tall Born boots, but since I have a normal size 7.5 foot they didn't come in the color I wanted. Curses.

The day after Century 21 we decided to check out the Barney's Warehouse Sale, heralded as THE place to pick up cheap designer stuff. The prices were good compared to the original prices, but the stuff was all old. And torn. And stained. I couldn't believe the herds of women winding through the racks for 4-year old off-season stuff that looked like it belonged at the Salvation Army, but somehow still cost over $150. We didn't get it. Although we just don't care about labels. If my shirt looks good I don't care if it says H&M or Dolce and Gabbana on the label. So needless to say, we struck out there, and won't ever go back. But we did walk out saying, "It was a New York experience."

We also made time for a Broadway show, Sweeney Todd, a musical about the demon barber of Fleet Street in London. As you can imagine, it wasn't a happy story, but very well executed. The leads were great, and the cast served as the orchestra, playing all the instruments on stage. Its run is over in 2 weeks so we are glad to have caught it in the nick of time. I may be careful who I book my next haircut with...

There's a new address for fun

And that address is...

Yeah right, like I'm going to post my new home address on the web so all you psychos can come hunt me down while I sleep.

But the news is real, I do indeed have a place to live on September first. It is the apartment described in the previous post. Greg and I met the landlord and signed the lease yesterday. We feel really good about it and are excited to explore our new hood, and have a home again so we don't have to be transient ner-do-wells anymore. I'll send out an e-mail with the address soon.

On a completely different topic; I realized yesterday that I should never leave the house in this city without my camera. I turn the corner in Union Square at 11am yesterday and see this thing...
My camera phone wasn't going to do it justice. As you can see, this thing is huge. And mind you, the rat was on a busy corner in Manhattan, not hanging out in a field somewhere in Ohio with his good friend Big Sky Bob. And it's really kinda creepy. It has red eyes and what looked like blood on its mouth and teeth. I can only assume it's some giant inflatable man-eating rabid rat. There were a few news crews and people around, but no obvious reason for the presence of the rat in pleasant Union Square. Nobody was passing out any flyers or shouting anything like, "PUT YOUR GARBAGE IN CANS! STOP GIANT RATS!" or "SEE, ANIMAL TESTING DOES SUCK." So I didn't really get the statement.

Let's not get too excited here

I think we've finally found an apartment. After seeing a ton of overpriced crappy ones and getting to a point where we were very frustrated about the lack of inventory with the brokers, we stumbled across a gem. It is in a neighborhood of Brooklyn called Boerum Hill, which is located between Brooklyn Heights (where we started our search) and Park Slope (which is where our search was headed and where my friends live). It is very convenient to all of the subway lines, has a new 24-hour laundromat across the street, as well as close to two major resaurant and shopping rows. So there's lots to do, lots of ways to get around, and it's even close to a Target!

The apartment is recently renovateted, not just internally but the structure of the building. So all the floors and stairs are actually level. The kitchen is nice, and the bathroom is a decent size for New York. The bedroom is absolutely gigantic, which I don't really understand, but we'll use it as an office too. The kitchen is open to the living room which is long and narrow. There is a small alcove that we might use as a makeshift guest bedroom, with a screen to seperate from the living space. We'll see how that works out.

My big sacrifice is that it's on a busy street. I'm not crazy about that. The windows are double paned and keep out the noise, but I definitely like walking out my door into a neighborhood. But in this rental market, beggers can't be choosers. It's on the 3rd floor of a four-floor apartment building, and the store underneath is retail so at least we won't have any restaurant smells or noises.

We've got our application in, and should be meeting with the landlord tomorrow. It's an exclusive listing with the broker so we aren't going to get beat out by anyone else. If the landlord likes our credit and us, we win! Finally!

UPDATE: The landlord loves our application and doesn't even feel the need to meet up first. The place is ours! Now all that's left is signing the lease! YIPPIE!

RUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

I saw one of these this morning on my way into work. Where? Where else? In the subway. There's just something creepy about it. They are the same color as the ground and the tracks down there, so you just see something moving out of the corner of your eye. Then when you turn to look... icky rat. This particular rat wasn't as large as the grandious stories of New York rats, but it wasn't small. It would definitely not be confused with a Chicago rat. Chicago keeps them small by putting garbage in alleys in - get this - various garbage cans and receptacles. Isn't anyone here seeing the solution to this problem? Get the garbage up off the streets where rats can get to it. Less food = less rats.

Or at the least, smaller malnourished rats.

Shhh... I'm hunting apartments

Many of you have not had the displeasure of searching for an apartment in New York. It's not so easy. Back in Sweet Home Chicago the biggest problem you had was finding the time to look. Once you ran across the right place, it was yours (assuming they didn't figure out you robbed a bank, stole Grandma's identity and have no SSN). Not so in NY. Greg and I have missed out on two key apartments so far... the first we were third in line but in the name of fairness the landlord gave it to the first people who saw it, and the second we were first in line, but the landlord didn't care, and went with someone who wanted to sign a long lease (without asking us if we would do so). Okay, we can get over it. Well, we can pretend to get over it.

So problem number one is that you never get the meet the landlords to charm them with your personality so they don't make completely arbitrary decisions. Another huge problem with the system is that it's not even close to affordable. To start with, we are looking at 1 bedroom apartments in Brooklyn (read: not Manhattan) in a price range of $1800 to $2500 per month. This is considered affordable. In general, it's also very difficult to find an apartment without a broker. This person charges you 12% of your annual rent ($2500 to $4000) for the pleasure of having you call them based on a free ad they put up on Craigslist and meeting you at the apartment to show it, where they insist upon telling you why they are worth the fee and then get pissed if you don't like the crappy place they showed you. They then remind you how low the inventory is now and that, basically, you had best take this place lest you be sleeping on the subway.

The other day one of the brokers we are working with calls about a great 1 bedroom with a den. I think this woman is pretty stupid, but she actually calls me, so I like her more than all the others. She says she has this fantastic apartment, tells me how underpriced it is and that last time an apartment came up in this building they had people waiting outside the door before they even had the keys to see it. But she tells me not to come down yet because they don't have the keys and doesn't want that to happen again. In the 5 minutes we are on the phone she suddenly says. "someone just came in to see it, so I'll call you when I get something else." Okay, we lost an apartment we didn't even get to see because someone came down there and sat in the office until the keys arrived. Huh?

Last night we saw another 1 bedroom plus den with a different broker. This one was a great space, was in an acceptable location, but was on the third floor and didn't have laundry in the building or nearby and could have been more updated, but we figured as a designer I could work with it. After we have filled out most of the paperwork to put our names in for it, the broker tells us the owner wants two-months security. So, to do the math... $2100 for first month + $4200 for security + $2520 broker fee (she was willing to come down from 12%) = $8820 to get this apartment, all to be paid by lease signing. Um, that's insane! Today I saw the same apartment listed for $2200 through another broker. Someone really needs to tell the landlady that she's going in the wrong direction on price, especially if she requires two-months security. We passed. It was just too much for a compromise apartment.

So we trudge on. The Stupid Broker has another apartment or two for me to see this week and promises to call as soon as she has the keys. Let's just hope nobody shows up before I can walk the 15 minutes to get there.

What's that smell?

Okay, everyone knows that New York doesn't have alleys and so they have to put the garbage right on the street; causing enormous rats, blocked paths, and the worst smell on the planet, especially in these very hot days of summer. But this is not the smell I am referring to because this is nothing new. I am referring to the smell of New York water.

We have a small bathroom in our sublet, which smells distinctly different than the rest of the apartment all the time (and not because of bathroom activities, you dirty jerks). Upon closer examination, all the towels smell this way. When I used to visit Greg I noticed his towels would smell, but I thought he was just a man with no time to wash his towels. It turns out that it is the actual water they are washed in that smells this way. I can't really describe the smell, other than that it is most decidedly "not fresh."

So I did a little research. Apparently New York is well known for having some of the best tap water in the world (as is Chicago, but Chicago's water doesn't smell). Some people think it's the lead pipes in old buildings that make the water smell and taste badly, which wouldn't make sense in this case as Greg's old building was only a few years old. So I'm not sure what is causing this smelly water, and why it seems to stick to our towels. I have to say, I'm quite worried that after washing my clothes in this water in the time that I'm here will also make them smell. That would be so sad, I do love my valuable t-shirts.

Until I figure it out I'll be using extra detergent and keeping Febreze in the bathroom.

Day one in the sublet...

So my first weird thing happened in NY today. I'm in the sublet apartment working when someone buzzes at the door. I open it up to find a little old lady (our building has many roaming the halls). She waddles up into the small foyer in the apartment and asks me for change for $20 because she has someone working in her apartment. This is initailly strange to me because I've always lived in brownstones in Chicago and not buildings so I've never had more than a few "neighbors" let alone ones that come around knocking. Also, in Chicago we tend to keep our old people in the old people housing. So you'll see them on the street, but not in your building.

I open my wallet and show the lady that I only have two fives and a one. So indeed, I do not have change for a 20. She just stands there looking at my wallet like she doesn't know what to do. Mind you, she is sorta in the apartmet. I say sorry and she says, "Weeelllll, I can't take your money, you need it." To which I reply, "Yeah, I do." I come from a long line of Italian guilt, so little old lady guilt doesn't get anywhere with me. She looked up at me one last time before putting her head down and slowly closing the door as she shuffled out. I think she really expected me to just give her money.

Am I crazy? This is weird right? Should I be handing out money to ladies who knock at my door? I mean, I was raised with the midwestern values, but I don't remember my parents telling me you have to give your money to little old ladies who knock at your door.

More to come I'm sure. It is New York City after all.