So I’ve basically been stressing for the last two days over this trip, which has been in the planning for really over a year. Mostly I’ve been worried about getting through security with my very large carry-on and tons of travel-sized bottles of liquids. (I can hear Drew telling me NOT to WORRY. You were right! I know, you’re always right.)
Speaking of Drew, he dropped me off at the terminal at about 9:35. We embraced tearfully, being that we’re never apart for more than a day. (I’m totally kidding. But I do miss him already.)
I walk up to security and there are 5 people in line. So I demand that they open a new line just for me, which they do, because that’s how I roll.
After some tense changes (lol), and about 8 minutes later, I found myself through security, with 45 minutes till boarding began. So I got me a pomegranate pinkberry, and found a place to plug in my phone because it’s gonna have to make it through tomorrow.
This is my first blog post from my phone. My first plane trip by myself in about 20 years, my first trip without Drew forever, and my first trip back to New York since moving back to California. I expect this to be emotional.
Oh, also, I deliberately left my childhood security blanket behind (because, really…) so that’s kind of weird.
Onward! I know to take advantage of some prime reading time when I’ve got it.
Last weekend, we celebrated my friend Liz, who is getting married in November. Yes, her bachelorette party was a little early (like 6 weeks before the wedding), but it was one of the few times that the three of us (Liz, Molly and I) could get together.
First, we all met up at Molly’s apartment in San Francisco. Note the stellar SF parking:
Neither of these people is me, don't worry.
Then we got all dressed up to go out. Because I felt very underdressed, Molly loaned me a giant sparkly necklace.
Once we got outside to the sidewalk, we realized we were not underdressed, as it was not cocktail hour in the city, but rather, 5 pm. But we didn’t let that sway us.
First, a grungy man said “Are you three Charlie’s Angels? I’ll be your Bosley.” Then, a very young-looking (like 12 years old) man with super long hair walked straight up to Liz (who was wearing a tiara) (and had like a foot on him) and said, “Hey princess, I heard you were looking for a man like me.” Molly said, “Probably not, since she’s getting married,” and he very politely backed off, saying, “Oh, I guess it was someone else.”
On the bus, a man drinking a 40 out of a paper bag told me he liked my necklace, then asked another girl (who I doubt was older than me) if she was my mother, because we were both very pretty. Yikes.
Finally we arrived at our destination: The Cheesecake Factory. (We have good associations with this place, and Liz has a special fondness for cheesecake.)
See?
After dinner we jumped in a cab and headed to the Castro Theatre, where they were showing The Little Mermaid, but with a very special twist:
OMG! A sing-along! They also gave us a gift bag with: a paper crown, a plastic pearl necklace, a dinglehopper, a noisemaker (to clack whenever Sebastian talked), bubbles to blow, and a glowstick.
It was kind of wonderful. But dark. So the pictures are lit by glowstick.
Here’s a clip of the entire theatre singing along:
After the movie, as the credits rolled, Part of Your World started again, and the entire theatre began singing it as we exited…out of the balcony, down a couple flights of stairs…and you can’t hear the movie playing anymore, but every single person is singing out loud, and as everyone around us spilled out onto Castro Street, we all finished the song (a big finish), and then everyone clapped and cheered.
One of those moments where you just feel like people are good.
(My apologies to those certain people who have heard this story too many times.)
Then Erin picked us up, and we went to Martuni’s, a piano bar, where we proceeded to drink very colorful cocktails and sing along with the rest of the crowd. Right as we started to leave, he started Cee-Lo Green’s “F*** You” and so we stuck around for that one.
Then back to the Haight for late-night pizza!
And then back to Molly’s to eat chocolate and talk girl talk, and eventually fall asleep all over her studio.
All-in-all, one of the best bachelorette/slumber parties I’ve ever been to. Great job us for planning, and congratulations Liz on your upcoming nuptials! Parties are awesome!
There used to be this show on MTV called “Undergrads” – it ran for one season and everyone I talked to either loved it, or had never heard of it. I actually never saw it on TV, I watched downloaded episodes after it had been canceled. But I have fond memories.
This is one section that I have never forgotten:
Throughout the entire beginning half of the episode (called “New Friends,” which I recommend, but I doubted anyone would watch an 18-minute youtube clip), Brody keeps saying things about film and directors and his awesome film career, Kruger just drops f-bombs, and Dan laughs at them.
Sometimes…I just feel like Dan. Everyone around me is talking, and I just laugh at everything and contribute nothing.
I woke up this morning with my socked foot sticking out from under the covers. I felt very warm under the covers, and outside (while still the inside of my apartment) felt very brisk. This is the point at which I gave up and welcomed in fall.
It’s been feeling more and more autumny for days now – I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly. A smell? A certain snap to the air? Maybe the trees are changing colors and I just haven’t really been paying attention? Suddenly all I want to do is shop for new boots and sweaters. Not to mention school supplies…oh, the school supplies…
I can’t stop reminiscing, as of late. Mostly I’ve been thinking about being in high school. Which isn’t to say that I want to go back to high school. I mean, even the memories I’m getting trapped in are of being in bed when the alarm goes off, and it’s so early and dark out. It’s not particularly welcoming.
I will try to steer my thoughts toward fall in college – with its classes that start later. (Remember when we were all in high school and we would get up at like 6:00 to go to zero period? And it’s just what you did? That ish is crazy.) College is good fall memories. I’ll have to buy some strawberry conditioner (works every time) and a pumpkin pie spice candle.
Or I can think about being in New York – working at the haunted house in October (October is even the coolest word!), and everything gets windy, but not cold yet, and leaves are everywhere, and you’re just so freaking happy that it’s not summer anymore. The landlord turns your heat on for the first time in 6 months… Everything is burgundy and burnt orange and brown. I mean the clothes, of course.
I’m really looking forward to the fact that this show and the next show we’re doing are in Mountain View. Downtown Mountain View in the fall is pretty darn perfect. Again with the leaves and the wind. And soon it’ll be Halloween. I don’t like dressing up for Halloween, but I love every other single thing about it.
I will bemoan one more time the fact that, living where we do, we don’t really get seasons. This just means I’ll have to be sure to go to Lake County this fall to enjoy it. And take advantage of every second I’m down at work.
I love spring and I love summer and I even love winter, but above all else, man I love the fall.
I might hate CDs. I feel like they multiply, and they are everywhere in our apartment. But when do I play CDs? Occasionally, in the car. But why play a CD when I have all my music on my ipod? The CD in my car player right now is disc 1 of the PBS “Broadway – The American Musical” 5-disc series. It’s been there for months. I never listen to it. Not sure why I even picked disc 1 and stuck it in there. I should switch to a different one. (For a full listing of all the songs on each disc, click here.)
The down side of going through all your childhood stuff is that, if you’re a child of the same time period that I am, you have collected a lot of CDs. A lot of factory CDs, but also, a lot of CDs with unfamiliar handwriting – The Rocky Horror Show, or Poe’s Haunted, or even non-music CDs, like Mario’s Into The Woods Pics. It’s actually a relief when I flip a disc over and discover that it’s scratched beyond repair, and I can just toss it. Otherwise, I have to sit and think about whether I need a CD version of Poe’s Haunted, when I have the entire thing in digital form.
When I Google “recycled CDs,” I find this website telling me ways I can use old CDs for fun crafts. Here is an excerpt from that site:
Others have used old CDs to make disco balls, sun catchers, wreaths, mosaics, mobiles, party invitations and even bird treats — just coat the disc with peanut butter or bacon grease, dip it in bird seed, attach it to a tree with yarn and watch the birds flock to your yard.
Um, yuck. For some reason, the idea of using a CD for a bird feeder – covered in bacon grease, no less! – just grosses me out. What’s wrong with the good old-fashioned bird feeder, using a pine cone coated in peanut butter and seed?
Anyway. For now I’ve just been kind of stockpiling the CDs that I can’t bring myself to throw away, and chucking the ones that I can justify.
Future generations: You are so lucky (or, potentially, so unlucky in some way that I can’t even fathom) to have everything be digital. It’s so much easier, and you don’t constantly feel like you’re being wasteful. Although it makes me nervous to have everything just be floating around in cyberspace, I can usually tamp down the urge to print out everything and store it in a box for 12 years.
In a crossword puzzle yesterday, a clue was “a button on a cassette player” and the answer was “rewind.” Do you even know what that means, people who were born after 1995?? (A coworker suggested we call them “Generation Text.”)
PS. This is even crazier – I found this:
If I hadn’t already found the bound paper version of this Nanowrimo, that I had printed at Kinko’s back in 2003 (before it was Kinko’s/FedEx), the discovery of this floppy disk would have thrilled me, while also panicking me, as I have no idea where I could even put this thing.
Late at night is when I get my bursts of inspiration for cleaning. Tonight I went through two boxes of stuff my parents gifted me with months ago…and pared it down to the throwaways, the donatables, and the keepsies.
Example throwaway: notebooks from college classes filled with notes about the Puritans and protest theatre. (Two different classes.) Nothing really of note to keep here. Although Drew pointed out my copious margin notes: “Syche + Drew” and then one page where I apparently decided to practice signing my first name with his last name. As we pondered this, I said, “Whoops!” and he said “GAWD, you’re obsessed with me or something.”
Example donatable: Pretty tin box, that I remember always having, but don’t have any specific attachment to, and which I will be much happier giving away than moving two more times.
Example keepsie: A diary I kept around the time I was 5 and 6. My bffk (best friend for kindergarten) (well, sort of…I mean I guess she was my best girl friend, but I’d still say my two best bffks were boys) actually went through and wrote “I love Kelly” on most of the pages (she’s Kelly), but some of the pages still have my original journal entries. I present you with two of them:
If I'm being completely honest, these are still my top three fears.
And from later…I would say around 4th or 5th grade:
B) and C) don't really matter. Amirite, girls?
That being said, today I tried out a set of hot rollers that a friend gave me, and they worked great! And I spent much time looking in the mirror and admiring my pretty hair, and taking pictures of myself. So don’t worry about me, I’ve got plenty of self-confidence now. A generous amount. Maybe even too much?
Tonight was kind of a frustrating night at work. It had nothing to do with my own co-workers, for which I am grateful. However, it does have to do with people I have to interact with on a regular basis, so some of these issues will come up again. And probably again.
But, it’s come to my attention over and over again lately that I can’t really keep any secrets in this forum. That’s partly because I keep linking my name with this blog. So I guess it’s my fault. This is about 90% blessing and 10% curse. Sometimes I wish I could just bitch about something or someone – but I can’t.
That being said, in 2007 I worked at this deli-type place in New York. Every week we had a “special” salad, and one week, I convinced the owner to name the special after me! Here’s proof:
Anyway, I worked as a cashier, and took orders over the phone. It was often an annoying job. Also, it was way less fulfilling than my job now. Except I did get free food everyday. And I often took extra food home for Drew. We didn’t pay for very much food during the 8 months I worked there.
One day I made a list of all the things customers did at the register that drove me crazy. I have carried that list around – inexplicably – for 4 years. Since I can’t very well talk about all the things that frustrate me now, here is a list of annoying things that customers used to do.
Leaving trash on the counter for me to throw away
Setting things down and then going to get more stuff – especially when there’s a line behind them
Waiting until I’ve bagged all their food to say they want to stay
Wanting me to bag their drinks*
When I say “Is that all?” and they say “Yes. And also…”
Digging for change while I wait, and then they don’t have any change
A guy who only has a $5 bill out to pay for a tuna sandwich (it’s $5.75 before tax)
Paying with a credit card for a small soup**
Talking on their cell phone, then acting all “why are you interrupting my call?” when I try to talk to them
People asking for stupid things (forks, napkins, etc)***
Handing me money all folded up
Throwing their money on the counter
Giving me awkward change (like if their total is $11.65, and they give me $20.05, so their change is $8.40 – fail)
Looking pained while doing any of the above
*This still baffles me. The weirdest New York thing I discovered, was that they put your drinks into a bag for you. Not just your bottle of Snapple – but your coffee in a styrofoam cup, or your fountain diet Coke. Drew and I discovered this in Brooklyn, when one day out of desperation for normalcy we walked about 40 blocks to the closest McDonalds, and the bored cashier put our Sprites into a bag and handed them to us. We were all like, WTF is that about? But they do it there all the time! It’s so weird! Please don’t put my coffee into a bag – if it’s too hot to carry I’ll take a sleeve or a double cup…
**I am guilty of doing this now. So I can’t really complain anymore.
***I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. In retrospect, it’s okay if they ask for forks. I think it’s stupid because they just watched me put a fork and napkins into their bag.
The show that we’re opening on Saturday is set in 1965, against a backdrop of the NYC blackout. One of the best pieces of dramaturgy they had in the rehearsal room is a copy of LIFE magazine from November 19, 1965, which has a giant spread on the blackout. The story and the accompanying pictures are crazy beautiful – pictures of the city from Brooklyn, with zero lights on and only the light of the moon and cars on the road; ditto a picture of the Statue of Liberty as the only light around. Breathtaking.
But then I started flipping through the rest of the magazine, and I was hooked. The 60s! Such a decade! A decade where they ran ads that would never run now.
This perfume ad:
Gender conformity, I say!
This insurance ad:
I love the quaintness of the idea of both husband and wife working.
Fourteen ads for alcohol – well, at some point I stopped counting:
This cigarette ad! This almost makes me want to pick up a pack of Chesterfields!
This ad for bikes. Look at these kids! Where are they now?
Look at him, doing a little BFF pose with that Bronco.
This article about parachuting dogs! I’ve totally heard this story recently – meaning within the last year – but I can’t remember where.
Speaking of things that never go away – these are letters to the editor, and even in 1965 they were talking about Hugh Hefner. We still talk about him today! Jeez.
I just googled Hef - apparently he's 85. Huh. I would have guessed older. Like 10 years older.
But life wasn’t all fun and games and Hugh Hefner. They had to worry about the draft:
And this is my absolute favorite thing. I don’t know why. I just want to be with these people, in autumn, in this tree, drinking a Coke from a glass bottle, without even knowing how bad it is for me. It looks so nice.
I could look through this magazine all day. Just imagine all the things I didn’t scan – the actual pictures from the blackout, the coupon for a 59-cent bottle of steak sauce (the coupon unfortunately expired April 30, 1966), and more ads for alcohol!
I never really cared about the 1960s before…well, that’s not true, I did a whole History Day report on the 60s when I was in middle school, but what do you know in middle school? I just liked Simon and Garfunkel. But this magazine made me wish for a time machine so I could experience the 60s just for a little while. You know, the Golden Age. (I guess I didn’t learn a thing from Midnight in Paris.)
PS. The show that we’re opening on Saturday is called Fly By Night – it’s a World Premiere musical, I love the music, it’s going to be great, it’s running tonight through August 13th, see http://www.theatreworks.org for more details. There. What kind of marketing person would I be if I didn’t at least mention that?
I thought this would be a good time to go over all the ways Drew and I have ever celebrated the Fourth of July. (I actually thought I might have done this last year, but it appears I didn’t.)
2005 – In Davis – We made egg rolls and probably watched Sex and the City.
2006 – Still in Davis – We hung out with some good friends, swam all day, then we dragged the guys out of the pool because the girls were starving, and we bought way too much KFC.
2007 – In New York – We hung out with some new friends, and there was drinking and game playing. Later, we went up on their roof to watch the fireworks. It was raining and so we were under umbrellas watching Manhattan.
2008 – In New York – Drew and I were home alone and we realized we could sort of see the fireworks from our living room window. We went upstairs and found out we could get onto our roof, so we stood out there for awhile. It was raining.
2009 – Our last summer in New York – Megan came over, we made buckets of guacamole and margaritas. Later Joe came over as we were on the roof watching the fireworks…you guessed it, in the rain. Lasting memories, y’all! I miss New York.
2010 – In San Bruno – Erin and her (underaged) sister came over and we drank, and popped poppers, and watched the fireworks from our balcony.
I recently became the proud owner of a smartphone. Until that fateful day last week, I identified myself as a hardcore texter and an occasional phone conversationalist, but I didn’t have the luxury of Google-mapping my way out of being terribly lost, or being able to check the weather in any part of the world with a single swish of my finger (85 degrees and thunderstorms in New York!).
I’m one week into smartphone ownership, and I’m still deep in the honeymoon phase. That is to say, I like to have it on me at all times, in case someone asks how to say “grapefruit” in French (the answer: “pamplemousse,” although I can’t pronounce it), or someone needs a timer for a quick game of Charades.
Last weekend I used a Fandango gift card, purchased tickets online, and took my confirmation number to the box office. No cash involved; no printing of tickets. That is what I call: a miracle of the times. Super convenient. And yes, it’s fun to be that “linked in.”
One thing I haven’t yet conquered: my fear of taking this brand new, very-expensive-to-replace toy into the bathroom with me. I have heard a thousand stories of people dropping their iPhones and their Androids into the toilet. Why on earth would you take that risk, people? My phone stays on my desk, where it belongs, until I come back from the bathroom, hands clean, and resume playing Words with Friends. (Which, by the way, is completely addicting. I’m sychela. Feel free to start a game with me.)
I want to go on record as saying that I do also manage to accomplish work things on it: for instance, right now I’m involved in a big social networking push as part of my job, so it’s nice to be able to have Twitter and Facebook and “checking in” places at my fingertips…something I couldn’t do on my little old regular cell phone.
But – there’s always a but – but, at the same time, I worry about my newfound dependence on this. I hear of people importing their entire calendar into their phone, their contact lists, their lives. What happens if it disappears? The good folks in charge have provided us with a contingency plan if the phone happens to become lost or stolen: simply sign into your account online, lock the phone, leave a message asking for its safe return, or if all is lost, you can remotely wipe all your data and give up the thing for dead.
But what should happen if the entire world, grown reliant on our handheld devices that are really no more than grown-up GameBoys that can also make phone calls, was suddenly struck by some kind of disaster? Unrelated to phone ownership, I’ve been reading a lot of Young Adult, post-apocalyptic books lately, and they’re always finding themselves in situations with no electricity, or no connectivity, or worse.
For the time being I have to just keep crossing my fingers and praying that an EMP doesn’t explode over the United States. If it does, I assume I’ll have worse problems than not being able to download the latest Angry Birds app. In the meantime I’ll just enjoy this phone, which, by the way, takes better pictures than some of the cameras I have owned in my lifetime.
And there’s probably an app to locate the nearest Costco, so I can stock up on canned food, bottled water, and paper products, just in case.
7/1/11 in the Lake County Record-Bee, available here for a limited time!
The Cameraphone Diaries 