Crazy Fingers

Granted, I graduated from high school over 25 years ago, but I was happy to see in Gothamist that Ward Melville still seems to be a decent school. (Ward Melville has a wikipedia topic.)

It’s that time of year again - when the semi-finalists are the Intel Science Talent Search are announced! The NY Times says that NY State “dominated” the list, with 140 students coming from the Empire State - and there are only 300 semi-finalists total. While Long Island’s Ward Melville High had 12 semi-finalists …

Ward Melville also does well in lacrosse. Members of the lacrosse team (and sometimes the entire team) provided many youthful fantasies for me. Lacrosse players have amazing legs (and big sticks). The team has a championship record going back to 1970. This Ward Melville alum went on to play lacrosse professionally.

The school is named for Ward Melville. I once hooked up with his grandson (like 25 years ago). After doing the deed, I was going through his address book (he left it out; in those days people had actual address books, not Blackberries and Palm Pilots), and I saw an entry for “Ward Melville.” I was like, “why do you have my high school’s phone number in your address book?” He said “that’s my grandfather.”

Check out this New York Times article about people who moved back from the suburbs into the city. It totally resonates with me (recall that I moved back into the city in 2006 after I broke up with my ex).

Paragraphs like this, for example, indicate exactly what life is like for a suburban commuter:

What pushed him over the edge, he said, was the “drama” of his commute by car into Midtown. At 5 a.m., when Mr. Torossian ordinarily made the trip to avoid traffic, it took as little as 17 minutes. But coming home took three or four times that (two hours or more in foul weather), partly because of the bottleneck at his Midtown garage. “Calling ahead doesn’t work because everybody leaves at the same time,” he said. “If you don’t bribe the guys there, you wait 15 to 20 minutes for your car.” He said he spent $100 a week in tips.

I would leave the house by 5 am, at the latest, and hit the gym before work, in order to avoid traffic. Going home would be a total crapshoot. And if I tried to commute by train, it very often went down like this:

“I spent many depressing nights at the Hoboken station,” he added, waiting more than half an hour for a connection. “If you go out for a drink with friends, you’re always watching the clock,” he said. Adding insult to tedium, Mr. McCaul suffered through the suburban version of the Freshman 15, putting 10 to 15 pounds on his normally thin frame, which he attributed to his mostly nonpedestrian lifestyle.

The article is also of particular interest because one of the couples it discusses lived in a house a few doors away from my house on Gregory Avenue, and that house was captured in one of the pictures which illustrates the article.

“You go to these little towns and they are very charming and sweet and have all these cute little shops,” said Brian Lover, who put his West Orange, N.J., house back on the market just three months after moving there. “But I think when you live in these areas full time, those neighborhood shops aren’t so cute. And those neighborhood restaurants that look so great, you know how bad they really are.”

Mr. Lover, 42, a vice president at the Corcoran Group, and his wife, Kristina Rinaldi, 41, an interior decorator, decided to give up their one-bedroom rental on West 55th Street when they had a daughter, Tallulah. They wanted to live in Montclair, N.J., a popular magnet for exurbanites. Outmatched in bidding wars, they expanded their search to neighboring West Orange. There they became besotted by “an old English Tudor with a slate roof, character, an acre and a half of land,” said Mr. Lover, who worked as a fashion advertising director for Esquire magazine at the time.

In July 2001 they bought the house for $480,000; it came with a tinge of unreality. “Every day when I came home, I would say to myself, ‘I really am a king and this is a castle, and who do I think I am?’ “

My house had a lot of problems (such as two leaking oil tanks, a bad roof, and much more) on top of the normal stuff there is to do, constantly, in a big house. That may be why we never got around to decorating very well. There just seemed to be an endless stream of stuff to do.

Though the Sweeneys’ house was many times bigger than their old two-bedroom apartment, it exerted an unforeseen undertow. “All of a sudden you find all these projects to do in the house,” she said. “It keeps you indoors more than you ever thought.”

I got up early this morning and went over to the gym to do cardio. On the way back, I stopped at Gristedes to get some of the new Dannon Splenda-sweetened Lite n’ Fit yogurt. They’ve only recently started sweetening it with Splenda, as opposed to aspartame. I’m psyched! I try to avoid aspartame, so now I can enjoy sweetened-yogurt again (I also try to avoid sugar).

I also discovered Quaker’s new Splenda-sweetened Lower-Sugar Oatmeal, which I haven’t tried yet. Brian is more of an oatmeal eater than I am, and I think he’s really going to like this.

Check out this very cool site that lists blogs by subway station. I’m listed here, at the 23rd Street stop on the E train.

Balducci’s broke my ATM card.

I went in there after work to buy some chicken breast and pre-washed salad, and attempted to pay with my ATM card. I went through the whole routine with the keypad once, and the guy said “It didn’t take. Try again.” Like an idiot, I did. And again. And again. Eventually, the ATM terminal started saying “declined.”

I don’t know why I finally bothered to look at the password-asterisks on the ATM terminal, but I noticed that although my PIN is 7-digits long, only the first 6 key presses were producing an asterisk in the LED. Then it was like, “DUH,” if only 6 digits are going in to the ATM terminal, I’ve been entering my password incorrectly all this time. I reckoned that all those incorrect password attempts locked out my ATM card.

Why did I keep trying? I don’t know. I was stressed out from my first day of work, and in a hurry to get to Billy’s (to buy cupcakes) then home, because Brian’s mother and brother are coming over to have a cupcake with a candle for Brian’s mother’s birthday, which is today. I also wanted to cook in my new kitchen for the first time.

Anyway, I was quite upset. I had two dollars in my wallet and no way to get cash. The manager of Balducci’s gave me the chicken breast and pre-washed salad for free, and threw in some Balducci’s chocolate bars, too.

I hate Balducci’s because, even though I got my groceries for free, this is a monumental inconvenience and I feel like the guy at the register should have had some clue what was wrong, and not encouraged me to keep trying again. When I said (loudly) “these machines only take a six digit pin” other cashiers knew about that limitation. I just feel like my guy should have known and prevented me from repeatedly attempting to use my ATM card.

I’m also sort of annoyed with my bank. I called Chase to confirm that I really did disable my ATM card and to get it turned back on, and some guy in India said that although I was correct that my card was locked out, and although I had all the verification information, I would still have to walk into a Chase branch to fix my ATM card. (Since I work in Jersey City now, that ain’t happening.) I protested, and he transferred me to someone who said the card would automatically reset at midnight. You’d think they’d be able to do something on the spot, but no.

We’ll see if the card actually works again at midnight.

Have I mentioned that Brian’s apartment has a fireplace and a terrace? Contact me if you want to sublet it.

Brian and I had our apartment painted. The building management gave us a free paintjob, which would have left everything repainted all white. Brian and I selected some colors and schmeared the painter, who (after a difficult negotiation process) was willing to paint the apartment with our colors. (Maybe I’ll share some details about the multi-day color-selection process when I have some more time.)

The guy started yesterday and finished today.

Here are some before and after shots.

Before	After

This is the painter, hard at work. He did a great job. We’ve got his number if you need a good painter in New York City.

That’s me and Brian on New Year’s Eve at the Urban Outings New Year’s Eve party.

There’s no real reason for me to have posted that picture with this post. I had been planning to write something about the Urban Outings party, but almost a week has passed and it doesn’t seem timely anymore. I also planned to write about the firemen Brian I saw on Christmas night, the ones who took a truck out of the fire house to help a pretty girl get back into the apartment out of which she was locked (and I have pictures, too), but that was almost two weeks ago. I started a post about Brian and his fireplace, and the mess in his apartment, but that, too, languishes in my drafts. I may still finish the post I started about the process of choosing colors and painting the new apartment. I may also finish the post I started about the Cream Puff War — the fact that there are two chains of stores (this one and this one) in New York which sell nothing but cream puffs.

But life intrudes.

I’ve been, for all intents and purposes, living at Brian’s for the past three weeks. This is not an official “move-in” situation, so I’ve been living out of a suitcase. We’ve been sharing a computer, and since it’s his, he gets to kick me off. We’ve been running around looking for apartments, eating, working out, sleeping, eating some more, shopping, picking colors, visiting with family and friends, and doing all the other real-life stuff that people do.

I’ve noticed that it takes a long time to write a post I like. It’s a minimum of half an hour, usually much more. Pictures get posted, links get found, words get agonized over. (Preferably, I avoid sentences like that last one.)

So the blog has languished.

I start a job next week at a great company, and I think that whole situation is a huge opportunity for me, so I’m not going to blow it by blogging from the office. I still want to get to the gym twice most days (cardio in the morning, resistance at night), and in the new apartment, we’ll be cooking dinner most nights (in part because we’ll have a great new kitchen, and in part because we won’t be able to afford to eat out, or order in, every night). At least I’ll have my own computer at home again, assuming I actually spend any time in the new place, as opposed to spending most of my time at Brian’s, since he’s not officially moving in until March, when we’ve been a couple for a year. At least until we’ve known each other for a year. Anyway, maybe next week I’ll find some time to write before bed or something.

As for right now, I’ve got to go feed a parking meter. I left a good spot (good until tomorrow morning) because I thought I could find one that’s good until Monday morning, but that was a big mistake, and now I’m parked at a meter on 8th Avenue. Then we have to go take a look at the new apartment (the old tenant is moving out today) to make sure we like our color choices, then buy paint, then hit the gym with Brian to do back, then go for drinks with my former coworkers at DSTi, then out for dinner at the new Italian place, Del Posto, on 10th Avenue (Brian is excited about it, and about 10th Avenue in general, even though what’s happening on 10th Avenue is symptomatic of why he and I will have difficulty being able to continue to live here in Chelsea).

Oh, and today is our 10th monthiversary.

Bonnie posted some great Coney Island pictures yesterday.

Brian and I are going to the Urban Outings New Year’s Eve Party tonight. Before that, we’re going to a party at his friend Steven’s house.

It’s going to be a busy day. I’m going to the gym. Brian needs to get music together for the Urban Outings party. I have to pick up my pants from the dry cleaner. I bought the pants at Banana Republic this week especially for tonight. They’re charcoal gray, and I’m going to wear them with a black sweater.

I’m picking up four-dozen cupcakes from Billy’s Bakery on Ninth Avenue in the Shire. Two dozen are going to my family’s party tomorrow (New Year’s Day) at my Aunt Barbara’s apartment, and the other two dozen are going to the party at Brian’s Aunt Lynn’s apartment. That’s Billy, the guy on the right. He’s cute, right? (Brian just smacked me.)

Brian and I have both been sick. I got sick the first day of the transit strike, and I’m only starting to get better. Brian took me to his doctor yesterday and I got some kick-ass antibiotics (Biaxin) and some kick-ass cough medicine (Hydrocodone with Homatropine) for what the doctor described as bronchitis. He took a chest xray right in his office, to rule out pneumonia. (How cool is that? An internist with an xray machine!) Brian didn’t get drugs. (I win! I got drugs!) The doctor said he has a viral infection.

My friend Kevin is sick, too.

I’m excited about 2006.  On many fronts, I expect it to be a great year.  Brian.  Great new job.  New apartment.

I hope all of you have a great 2006.