Tuesday, February 16, 2010
by Amanda.
On Saturday, I was fortunate to get a free ticket to the Magnetic Fields concert at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). I’d tried unsuccessfully to buy a ticket at face value, so I resorted to the last-minute date thing. I found two different guys with a ticket they were hoping to put in the soft clutches of a lady who would be friendly, and hey, maybe even cute.
Anyway, both guys were real people with real extra tickets. I went with one, and shared an armrest with another. And they didn’t know each other.
This story might come off as a sort of highly coincidental Memoirs of a Geisha tale, but it turned out to be more like an episode of Three’s Company. (Don’t be gross - I don’t mean it that way).
Posted in: Lurve/Luff/Like.
Monday, February 15, 2010
by Amanda.
After Mike kicked off Project MAMM, I started getting nervous. Eating food my friend prepared for me was a great idea. Having to reciprocate without giving anyone salmonella poisoning? Tricky.
I don’t know how to cook. It wasn’t something I intended not to learn - it just happened. Well, didn’t happen.
But I know how to clean most surfaces and decorate a living room, so Martha Stewart hasn’t killed me. Yet.
The easiest option for my turn at lunch was sandwiches. I envisioned something like the kind my mom once made me, except maybe with more than just ham in them. (I was a picky eater). I also decided to pass on the Capri Sun and ever-constipating fruit snacks made with strawberry-flavored rubber.
Posted in: Work.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
by Amanda.
A good book is a good friend. Some books - the really special kind - are lifelong loves.
But even if you have a briefly entertaining fling, it’s all good. Books don’t start immediately sleeping with trashy girls from Craigslist once you turn that last page.
Well, maybe some library books do.
Posted in: Lurve/Luff/Like, Overbooked.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
by Amanda.
NYC got something like eight inches of snow today. School was cancelled, shops closed, sidewalks salted.
I could’ve worked from home like many of my co-workers, but there’s something you may not already know: Precipitation does not kill me.
While many people apparently chap walking two blocks from the subway to the office in cold weather, I don’t. I also manage not to slip on slush, fall through a subway grate, and freeze into a giant popsicle to be nibbled by rats.
Perhaps it’s my unattractive down coat?
Or maybe I’m just one of the chosen.
Posted in: I Live NY, Work.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
by Amanda.
I work in the Financial District, home of thieving Wall Street fat cats and really bad Chinese food.
You can opt for a martini and steak lunch at a few famous restaurants, but those are fancy places for jowly men in suits. A typical workday involves scrounging at one of 3,452 delis with interchangeable lukewarm food bars, a greasy fast food joint, or the random hole in the wall.
I enjoy leaving my desk as much as the next person, but lunch offerings are pretty bleak.
My friend and co-worker Mike recently came up with a plan: We could each choose one day a week to bring lunch from home for the both of us and then eat it in one of the public plazas near our office.
Genius, right? Yet I felt one little nugget of worry - Mike had asked me to participate. Me, secretary-at-arms of the I Screw Up Microwave Popcorn League.
Posted in: Work.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
by Amanda.
Life Coach texted me some writing advice just now:
Posted in: Conserved Conversations, Writing.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
by Amanda.
It wouldn’t be the first time I discovered someone cool online and wanted to reach out and say, “You. Me. Friends for life. Got it?”
Such is the case with Ryan Chapman, this guy I somehow discovered last week. I haven’t had time to Google the bejesus out of him or even to find out if he’s 1) a nice person, 2) not creepy, 3) cool, or 4) no really, I mean it - not creepy at all.
My first and only impression of him is from his blog, where he recently came up with this idea:
Can you summarize your past or present relationships in 140 characters? Valentine’s Day is coming up, which should add to the general cheesiness/vitriol of people’s responses. You can use the #lovetalk hashtag to see everyone’s contributions.
Posted in: Lurve/Luff/Like.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
by Amanda.
I’ve mentioned a few times that I have trouble sleeping, right?
It’s not that I go days without sleeping and become a shell of a human being.
I go days without sleeping well and become a shell of a human being.
There’s a difference.
Posted in: Everyday, Snark.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
by Amanda.
I see this ad every time I log in to my Yahoo! email account.
I know the face that boy’s making.
Posted in: Snark, Ties that bind...and gag.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
by Amanda.
My to-read list looks something like the paper queue for NYC’s elite prep schools. It’s the stuff of reams.
One of the books I most wanted to read last year was Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, a novel based on the author’s teenage years in the 1980s. Whitehead comes from an upwardly mobile black family in NYC that summered (yep, I’m using that as a verb all pretentious-like) at their beach house in the Hamptons.
And that’s the premise of Sag Harbor. The 15-year-old protagonist, Benji, and his brother, Reggie, are left to fend for themselves during the week. Their parents work in the city and join the boys on weekends.
So you’ve got teenage boys + the 1980s + no supervision. It makes for an easy story full of magical coming-of-age first times and potential drownings. The thing is, the book is really funny and intelligent and more sly than that.
Whitehead is the first to admit the book isn’t heavy on plot, but when you’re a kid, most summers aren’t either. You hope they’ll be, but they’re usually not.
Posted in: Overbooked.
