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Thursday, July 26, 2007 ( 7:02 AM ) teahouse Mini-Break I'm heading out of town for a few days. I have another trip to Legal Seminarland, which I'm turning into a long weekend and a chance to visit the Sister. I'll be back in the middle of next week. Everyone enjoy the waning days of July! When I see you next, I'll have more cash. For now, the count is $96.55 for the next 5 days. Not bad; I am pretty sure I can do it. See y'all soon. # 0 comments Wednesday, July 25, 2007 ( 9:03 AM ) teahouse  La Le La Le La!!Yesterday I was on the train on my way home. It was crowded and noisy. But I found myself a good seat, and I was just settling in and had opened up my newspaper when I happened to glance over to the seat across the aisle from me.
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Two young women were sitting together, and each was holding a copy of the new Harry Potter book. They were both having an animated (and loud) conversation. As you all may know from previous posts, I'm on a limited budget until the end of July. I'm now down to $105.95 (I had to pay my cell phone bill and get an oil change and tire rotation on my car). Thus, I haven't read the book yet, because I can't afford to buy a copy out of my meager funds. So I'm going to borrow the Sister's copy when I see her this weekend. She bought it when it was released last Friday, and finished it already. She can't wait for me to read it so we can discuss it. So I kept trying to block out the voices of the young women, since I don't want to know the ending before I read the book. I held my hands over my ears and looked out the window. I pulled my hat down lower on my head. I sang to myself, "La Le La Le La Le La." But they were getting harder and harder to ignore. They were really excited and talking loudly about the plot of the book, and waving their hands up and down. Then I heard one of them say, "I know!! I was so sad when he was killed off! That was a huge surprise!! And how about when Harry goes and finds ...." Nooo!!" I yelled, and got up and bolted out of the train car. I'm sure everyone looked at me like I was a raving lunatic. I found another seat on another car, far away. It wasn't as nice as my first seat, but I didn't care. 0 comments Monday, July 23, 2007 ( 7:02 AM ) teahouse Glued to the Tube The Fiance and I, as well as most of our friends, are addicted to this new show - Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel. Yesterday there was a marathon of about a dozen episodes on tv, and we watched several of them, completely riveted. Bear Grylls, the host of the show, gets dropped by helicopter into these exotic and treacherous locales. Then he has several days to get himself out with nothing but "a knife, a water bottle, and a flint" (as he informs us in his refined English accent at the beginning of each episode). The Fiance loves to make fun of the way Bear Grylls says "water." As in, "I need some waw-tuh. I'm looking for some waw-tuh. I can't survive in the Australian outback without waw-tuh. Hence I will drink my own urine." Bear is especially adept at finding unusual sources of food - grubs, worms, snakes, turtles. He's even been known to fish for piranhas in the Amazon, and eat maggots from a decaying animal corpse while saving more maggots and using them as bait to catch fish. This guy is amazing! The show also provides tips on how to get through survival situations like being lost in the jungle, marooned on a desert island, stuck in a frozen wilderness. Now I feel confident that if I ever get lost wandering around Central Park, I'll know exactly what to do. # 0 comments Thursday, July 19, 2007 ( 6:51 AM ) teahouse  Close CallI was in the City yesterday for a meeting on the East Side of Manhattan. The meeting ended at 6:15 p.m., and I left the building, hoping to catch a cab. When I saw the hordes of people walking up Third Avenue and looking bewildered, I guessed that something was up. While I was standing on a corner waiting to cross the street, an old woman with a wheeled walker rolled up to me and yelled at me, "I think something happened!! This is not a normal crowd! I've lived my whole life in New York, and this looks like something those Al Qaeda folks set up. I swear, what is this world coming to?" She followed me for the next block, muttering loudly to me the whole time. She was amazingly fast on that walker. I don't know why strangers always talk to me in the street like that. Do I have a friendly and inviting face? I've always wondered. Like I said, this woman was fast. She kept up with me for a while. It must have been those tennis balls shoved on the end of each of the walker's legs, that made it a smoother ride. Kind of like these:  I parted ways with her on the corner of 50th St. and Lexington. I hope she got where she was headed (last I heard, toward the West Side). People keep saying things like, "Thank God it wasn't a terrorist attack. It's just our City's infrastructure breaking down." As if it's any less worrisome.
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0 comments Tuesday, July 17, 2007 ( 9:26 AM ) teahouse  Bada Ba Ba Ba..Obesity!!Yesterday was a crazy day. I was stuck in meetings all day and missed lunch. Then I was stuck late at the office finishing up a project. So when I left the office, I knew I was going to miss my regular train. The next train was 40 minutes later, so knowing I was going not going to catch the earlier train (and starving) I went through the drive-thru at McDonald's on my way to the train station. Ugh, what a mistake. I had a Big Mac meal. I hadn't had anything from McDonald's in at least a couple of years. I sat on the train platform, ate the burger and the fries, and drank the soda while waiting for the train. By the time the train came, I was feeling pretty disgusting. Now, over 12 hours later, I feel old and fat and lethargic, I'm having difficulty breathing, and my back hurts, of all things. That Big Mac meal aged me by about 10 years. I feel like the dude from Supersize Me. I should have known better. I'm too old to eat this crap anymore. The worst thing is, of the $275 I had left to get me through the end of July, I'm now down to only $269.23. I'm pretty pissed off about that. # 0 comments Monday, July 16, 2007 ( 7:50 AM ) teahouse Whoa..Livin' On the Edge I had various mid-year expenses that came due this week. Stuff like my car insurance, an assessment on my common charges, my home insurance payment, a big student loan, etc. With those expenses, my mortgage and other stuff, I'm pretty much flat broke. The bottom line is that I have $275 to last me from now until July 31. Of course I know I've made choices. I decided to live in a part of the country with a high cost of living. And I'm stretching myself with my mortgage. I know I could live in a cheaper area. And I made a choice going in-house, knowing it would be a huge paycut. But gosh..when I was in law school, I never imagined it would still be like this so many years out.. I remember my law school financial aid counselor telling all of us, "Save your money! If you live like a lawyer when you're a law student, then you'll be living like a law student when you're a lawyer!" Well, I've been living like a law student for a long time now..when do I get my bag of money? Ok, I've accepted that it's never coming. And I'm off to work. Another week, another dollar. Well, er, another week, another 100 dollars! Yay! # 0 comments Thursday, July 12, 2007 ( 6:48 AM ) teahouse The Next Best Thing A bunch of my friends and I were supposed to go hear the New York Philharmonic perform on the Great Lawn of Central Park last night. They do summer concerts every year, and it's always fun to go out there, lie on a blanket in the grass, have some food and wine and listen to the music. Alas, it was not to be. A huge thunderstorm brewed up yesterday, and the whole thing was canceled. So we hung out at my place instead, and consumed all of the picnic food and wine, and watched a couple of episodes of The Sopranos on my DVD player. It wasn't quite the same effect as sitting in the Park and eating and listening to classical music would have been, but it was still nice. For one, we sat on the couch instead of the ground on a blanket. And we had a microwave nearby to heat up our dinner, and lots of ice cubes readily available from the refrigerator. Also, we didn't have mosquitoes buzzing around. Which was good, because I couldn't have lit the citronella candles indoors. But it was a pleasant evening nonetheless. # 0 comments Tuesday, July 10, 2007 ( 12:07 AM ) teahouse Takin' Care of Business So I've been so busy at work these days, I barely have time to breathe during the day. Because of the sheer volume of work I'm responsible for, I've figured out some useful shortcuts for multitasking and getting lots done each day. In short, I've become a super high-efficient lawyer machine. I've perfected the art of typing an email while on the phone talking to someone. Of juggling two files at once. Of making revisions to a contract while in a meeting. My whole super multitasking system was working well, until yesterday, when one of my coworkers caught me coming out of a stall in the ladies' room with two legal files tucked under my arm. I'd been in there for about 15 minutes, uh, taking care of business. Or multitasking. Whatever you want to call it. # 0 comments Monday, July 09, 2007 ( 7:42 AM ) teahouse You've Gotta Fight (whump whump) For Your Right (whump) to Party!!! Thankfully, the presentation went well on Thursday. Afterwards I rounded up some friends for a night of heavy drinking. Well, it wasn't that heavy. I had half a beer, and a Sprite, and was ready to call it a night. I swear, I'm getting too old for this. The night of sober geriatric semi-carousing almost, but didn't quite make up for the ruined July 4. But hey - that's life. And what did I do this weekend, other than sleep and lie around? The Fiance (he's being upgraded from "Boy" to "Fiance") and I looked at wedding venues. Oh yeah, right... there's NOTHING stressful about that. Sigh. Let's just say that we can't agree on what to do, and we don't have enough money to do whatever we can't agree on anyway. So it's moot. My wedding reception is looking more and more like it's going to be a kegger in the lobby of my apartment building. # 0 comments Wednesday, July 04, 2007 ( 11:13 PM ) teahouse  All the Way to the TopI hope everyone has had a wonderful July 4! It did kind of suck that Independence Day was on a Wednesday this year. I spent the entire day hunkered down in my apartment, hunched over my laptop. I was preparing for a super-duper high-level meeting to be held on the morning of July 5. I could hear the fireworks outside, but I did not go out to see them. This meeting is too important. We're talking, as high up as I can go. I'm super-nervous. I'm getting ready to go to bed now. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep. Wish I could tell you more about it, but suffice it to say that I'm super stressed out and I really can't wait for this to be over. Wish me luck!
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0 comments Monday, July 02, 2007 ( 10:18 PM ) teahouse Make Yourselves at Home Yeah, I haven't blogged since the middle of last week. The Boy's friends were in town for a few days, staying at my place. And when I have out of town guests in my one bedroom apartment (with the computer in the living room), it's impossible to blog in secret. They slept on my fold-out couch in my living room, so there wasn't much room to maneuver while they were there. His friends were a married couple. The husband is a heavy-drinking, boisterous frat boy-type who basically never outgrew his college partying mentality. In contrast, the wife is quiet, reserved and not easily excitable (so it would seem). But last year, when they stayed at the Boy's place, they told him a few months later that they'd had sex on his futon AND the floor AND his kitchen counter (while the Boy was asleep in his bedroom). This morning I left for work early, but the Boy stayed at my place to spend the day with them before they caught their flight home in the afternoon. He called me after they left. "Well," he said. "When I woke up this morning I heard the two of them, uh, frolicking in your shower together. They didn't know I was awake." Ok, that is too much. Who showers together when they're staying at someone's place AND that someone is there? I need to hose down my bathroom walls with bleach. # 0 comments |
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