I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
My body’s going through some tough stuff this week. You may have read about it in a Judy Blume book or five back in the day.
My estrogen-heavy internal organs are getting divorced. Or maybe they’re feuding friends who miss bonding over training bras and secret crushes.
All I know is I’m so cranky, I could cut a bitch. And so ravenous, I would probably then eat said bitch. With that leftover Manchego cheese in my refrigerator.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Life Coach texted me some writing advice just now:
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.
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.
I see this ad every time I log in to my Yahoo! email account.
I know the face that boy’s making.
