80 posts from 2007

On the 29th, my mom had a big milestone birthday.  She doesn't want me to say which it was but it was not her 60th or her 40th.  To celebrate, or ignore the day entirely, she took herself and me to Bliss Day Spa in SoHo.  I'm not so sure how I got such a great gift on HER birthday but I definitely was not going to put up a fuss.  After my wonderful facial, I had a hot salt body scrub.  This was glorious.  From the neck down I was exfoliated and moisturized, a perfect cure for my dry, wintery skin.  One of the most surprising parts of the treatment, however, was not the lying down shower or the rough salt but the technician who scrubbed me.  When she began, she started schmoozing with me and I was prepared to be pretty disappointed.  I hate chatting when I am supposed to be relaxing.  I'd rather just be quiet than make stupid small talk with someone I don't know and may never see again.  When I mentioned London, however, she started talking about her time living abroad.  In college, she had studied in Paris.  After, she went to Greece for a year and a half, followed by Taiwan for almost a year.  In the two latter countries, she earned money by teaching English.  As she sloughed off my dry skin, she told me about traveling through Asia, living in remote villages, and learning from traveling alone.  She was pretty incredible.  The most amazing thing about her was that she was very petite, blond, from Texas and worked in a spa.  Basically, with my horrible pre-conceived notions about people, I had completely decided who she was and what she was about before I knew her.  It was through her stories that I saw she was the total opposite of what I'd assumed.  It is amazing how people can surprise you.  It reminded me to stop being so judgmental and also to appreciate all of the people who perform services throughout my day.  It is sappy but, the nail ladies, taxi drivers, short order cooks, and everyone else I interact with as a patron is not just someone there to provide me with something.  They are interesting individuals with their own stories to tell and it doesn't hurt to stop every once in a while to listen.

Later in the evening, Peter and I went with my mom to this fantastic restaurant called Terrace in the Sky.  Up near Columbia, it is on the top floor of a residential building and, especially on such a crisp, clear night, offers amazing views of the city.  The decor was very over the top romantic, a throwback to another era.  Almost despite the decor and the views, the food was surprisingly delicious.  My mom had taken a cooking class with the chef and he came over to say hello at one point.  We had a fabulous evening and enjoyed celebrating this milestone.

This afternoon, I met my mom and brother on the Upper East Side for lunch.  Before lunch, however, we had to get my shaggy brother all cleaned up at this amazingly old school barber shop.  I'm pretty sure this place hasn't changed in a century.  All of the chairs are huge, leather and chrome, and adjust to many positions to accommodate the hair washing, cutting, and the shave.  The entire shop is paneled in dark wood and there are old advertisements for shaving cream hung on the walls.  It is such a professional and traditional place that all of the barbers wear ties.  After watching the barber skillfully trim my brother's  unruly hair, my mom and I suggested that he get a shave as well.  I don't think I have ever seen a boy so happy.  After a few rounds of hot towel wraps and creams on his face, my mom dubbed it the "man-facial."  Then, he became Santa Claus. 

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I may get killed for posting this on the internet.  Oh well, it's worth it. By the way, this picture is from my mom's cell phone.  Pretty good, no?

A long weekend is always pleasurable.  It is also, however, very bad for sticking to your blog writing routine.  In order to quickly cover the events for the past few days, I am going to do what I always try to avoid and give a day-by-day update of the holiday weekend. 

Friday aka "Catch Up Day":  I was wonderfully busy on Friday.  In the morning, I had my first eye doctor appointment in about six years.  I made the appointment because I thought there was a chance I might need glasses.  I sat through an hour of being tortured and ridiculed by the doctor just to be told that I have nearly perfect vision.  That would have been pleasing news if I hadn't been so traumatized by the experience.  I absolutely HATE people touching my eyes.  Three sets of eye drops and that weird blue light thing later, I was very shaken and dilated.  With overly large pupils, I made my way downtown to have lunch with my friend Matt from Dartmouth.  We spent a lovely hour catching up on school, both law and art, our love lives, and our new cities (Philadelphia and London, clearly).  From there, I popped into Anthropologie, said some awkward hellos to former "colleagues", and tried on endless amounts of sale apparel.   Oh how I miss thee, employee discount.  The afternoon was spent catching up with one of my little sisters from my sorority.  She may be moving to London next year so it was fun to share my impressions of the city with her.  I ended the day with a dinner at Otto, one of my absolute favorite Italian restaurants in the city, to celebrate my friend Meg's birthday.  It was really wonderful to have some great food and great wine with the girls that I miss so much when I am away.

Saturday:  Saturday was broken up into two large chunks.  The first chunk was spend shopping in SoHo with Peter and Pam.  I had a list of shops I wanted to go to and places I wanted to stop in that I had been thinking about while in London.  I dragged the Ps to Reiss, to see if a dress I loved was cheaper in dollars, Molton Brown, so Peter could stock up on his new favorite, British brand, Sur la Table, to buy bar utensils for New Years, Le Labo, to look for a new perfume, and a few other random stops.  One of them was to Vosges, and amazing, high end chocolate shop that mixes realling unusual ingredients into its truffles, bars, and other sweets.  Here are two of my favorite people enjoying my favorite hot chocolate:

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Sunday aka "Peter's Family Day":  After a much needed breakfast of Gatorade and bagels, Peter and I took the E train out to Queens.  We watched the, surprisingly exciting, Giants game with his family and were overjoyed when they won.  In the evening, we went to Long Beach to his aunt and uncle's house for a belated Chanukah party with all of his family.  Having spent over a week on vacation in Israel with his family, I know them well and am comfortable with them so it was a lot of fun.  I also got some cute little gifts which was totally surprising, unnecessary, and amazingly thoughtful.  Finally, his two youngest cousins, aged five and one, are so incredibly adorable it made the whole trip out there more than worth it just to spend some time with them.

Monday aka Christmas Eve:  Monday morning we allowed ourselves to sleep in pretty late because we had been running around the last few days.  Peter and I then went for brunch at my old standby, Coffee Shop, in Union Square.  From there, we bought one last holiday gift I had to buy at the Union Square Holiday market that was closing later that evening.  We then started the endless search for Trivial Pursuit.  For all of those early shoppers and non-Christians out there, a word from the newly wise:  Don't ever go shopping on Christmas Eve afternoon.  Just do not do it.  From one bookstore or toy store to another, Peter and I fought our way through the crowds and scoured the nearly empty shelves looking for the elusive game.  Sadly, it remained so.  Eventually, having made our way through the awful Manhattan Mall and Herald Square, we finally settled on Taboo.  Well, Peter did, that is.  I was standing on the endless line to buy train tickets out to Jersey to see my dad, brother, and Grandma.  Another tip: avoid traveling to a suburb around rush hour on Christmas Eve.  You would have thought we would have realized that but, now, we seem to have checked our brains out for the weekend.  We finally made it out to the burbs and had a nice evening having dinner, playing taboo (which apparently I am awesome at and Peter and Andrew cannot handle that AT ALL), and stopping into a Green Pond holiday party.

Tuesday aka Christmas Day:  Peter and I saved the last day of the weekend for just the two of us.  After a morning bagel from the, thankfully open, grocery store around the corner, we headed to Wollman Rink in Central Park for ice skating.  It was an amazingly crisp, sunny day and we had a wonderful time skating.  Well, after waiting on the tremendous line and when we could actually find some open ice between the crowds.  It was really nice though.  At the end, Peter took a bit of a fall.  Thankfully, he didn't hurt himself since he landed on his natural "padding" so, when I realized he was fine, I found it quite amusing.  Especially when the five employees came over to peel him off the ice. 

[I'm having another bout of writer's block.  I'm going to try hard to overcome it but there is something about being on vacation that makes me just a bit lazy with this task.  Here is an post I have been attempting to write since Wednesday.]

Go see Juno. This film is so wonderfully quirky and heartwarming.  I've found that it is often difficult to have combine both of those adjectives in one movie.  Heartwarming films tend to go a bit over board and be sugary sweet.  So, while you're happy at the end, you leave with a bit of a toothache.  Quirky movies, on the other hand, often go a little to far out there and loose track of the main narrative that holds a movie together and makes the audience want to sit there for two hours.  Juno managed to walk the line between these two.  The acting was pretty good, the cast was fantastic, and the writing was snappy and funny.  The cherry on the top of this sundae was the soundtrack.  Mostly comprised of songs by Kimya Dawson, the sound was slightly raw, a little folksy, and very very good. 

Go see Martin Puryear at MoMA.  All I knew about Puryear before seeing this exhibition was what I had read in various reviews.  It can be surprisingly pleasant to see works with little to no knowledge and just experience them for their pure presence.  Especially for works like these.  Made mostly out of various types of wood left raw, Puryear's sculptures are assembled with traditional woodworking techniques.  His involvement with the wood and love of the material is incredibly evident in his work.  There is a sensuality and sensuousness to each piece that forces your eyes to caress the surface since, as signs everywhere remind you, you cannot actually touch the works.  The craftsmanship left me in awe as did the forms and concepts themselves.  There was a quiet spirituality to many of the works that was only enhanced by titles like "Reliquary" and "Confessional."  Each sculpture was also a study in contrasts.  Puryear explored the dichotomies of interior/exterior, hard/soft, and motion/stillness.  The show was so easily pleasurable that I really would recommend it to almost any audience. 

Yesterday, I went to see the exhibition Richard Prince: Spiritual America at the Guggenheim.  I'd been looking forward to seeing it for a while since I had been considering writing on Prince for my first assessed essay.  Prince is a big figure in the contemporary art scene and a major player in postmodernism.  His work deals with issues of appropriation and collecting.  Overall, I have mixed feelings about the show.  Seeing a Prince retrospective was very interesting.  His oeuvre encompasses many different styles and themes and, when an artist is so versatile, it is always interesting to see a large collection of their work in the same place.  For that reason, and because the work itself raises many interesting questions that are pertinent to my studies, I really enjoyed the show.  What perplexed me, however, was the organization of it.  It was mildly chronological, and mildly thematic, but did not stick strictly to either mode of organization.  This would not have concerned me if the wall text and audio guide did not deal with each theme in his work so individually.  For example, he has a number of large, monochromatic paintings on fiberglass car hoods.  These works were discussed in one section but interspersed throughout the space in between some of his joke paintings.  I am not sure this is necessarily a bad things, but it confused me.  What was bad, however, was the audio guide.  The very short descriptions were completely inane discussions of tangential issues that were reiterated ad nauseum.  For example, for a large number of Prince's paintings from the 80s through today, he has used and reused one-liner jokes.  The audio guide, somewhat helpfully, talked about the origins of these jokes being ethnic, often Jewish, performers in Catskill type resorts.  What was not helpful, however, was the recordings of comedians musing on stand-up comedy and the way in which it works.  Each of the recordings on the guide took the theme that Prince was engaging in an individual work and examined it almost completely separately from the works themselves.  Maybe I was looking for too much of an education through the audio guide, because I did go in hoping to learn a lot more about Prince, but I was sorely disappointed.  I should end all of this by saying that I don't ever really like the Guggenheim's exhibitions.  I think that, while the building is awe-inspiring and beautiful as a piece of architecture, it is an awful place for art exhibitions.  So, take my opinions with a grain of salt because I always go into shows there expecting to be disappointed.  In the end, however, the works themselves did rise above and you can hear the questions Prince raises above the distraction of the exhibition's shortcomings.   

I've been putting off blogging a bit for the past two days because I'm not sure what I want to say.  I am really enjoying being home, being in my familiar and much loved setting of New York, and spending time with Peter and my parents.  I also feel a bit strange about being home.  I haven't yet put my finger on what feels weird.  It's not bad weird, just not yet "normal."  So I'm waiting until I settle in a relax a bit before I pontificate on New York and, possibly more interestingly, New York versus London.

In the meantime, a bit of an update on the things I've done since being here:

When I got in on Friday, I headed straight to my mom's where I dropped all my stuff in a huge heap, took a steaming hot shower, and laid around in a robe.  She cooked and we chatted while we waited for Peter to arrive.  Dinner, consisting of latkes, my favorite chili, and key lime pie, was fabulous and filling.  We stayed around as long as we could but, when my eyes started to droop, Peter and I hailed a cab downtown.  On the FDR Drive, the cabbie was stopped in the right hand lane because of traffic when we felt a shove from behind.  Yes, our cab was rear-ended.  At first, I was about to completely flip out because I was exhausted and didn't want to wait for them to do the insurance exchange dance.  Fortunately, it was a small tap and both cars, and all four people, were perfectly fine.  So, we went on our way.  It actually wound up being quite humorous and a bit of an adventure.  Welcome back to NYC!

Saturday, after waking up at 6 am (oy) and beginning my TV catch-up, Peter and I went for brunch at Gold St., the fancy dinerish place in his building.  Oh brunch, how I love thee.  After eggs, he went home to do work and I went and got my nails painted a glorious red.  Oh cheap manicures, how I love thee.  I then went to Soho to meet my mom and get my haircut.  All spiffy and blown-out, we then did a bit of shopping.  We got her new glasses at Morgenthal Frederics and then went to Uniqlo and got ridiculously cheap cashmere cardigans.  Oh the dollar, how I love thee.  After being a bit worn out by the Saturday afternoon crowds, I went back to Peter's and bugged him while he tried to get work done. Then we went out to dinner with my Dad at the new, Upper West Side outpost of The Mermaid Inn, a really good seafood restaurant (where I ate no fish). 

Sunday was a tad lazier, due to the crummy weather (although you'd think a light spritz wouldn't bother this rain-proof London gal) and Peter's work load.  In the morning, I had a lovely brunch with my high school friend Stefanie at Craftbar.  We got to do some much needed catching up on each other's lives.  We then went to Barnes & Nobles where I bought the Art Spiegelman books and she got office holiday gifts.  The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to not bug Peter too much while watching really crappily wonderful television such as Oprah's Favorite Things show and Tim Gunn's Guide to Style.  Around 6, layered in very warm clothes, we headed out to Giant's stadium for Sunday Night Football!  I say that with an exclamation point where it may not really deserve one.  I love going to Giant's games but this one wasn't as fun as usual due to the below freezing temperatures and the horrible performance by the home team.  We did have hot dogs though! And a knish and pretzel.  Yummy.

So all in all, a very nice welcome home weekend.

I noticed a phenomenon on the plane today that really intrigued me.  Normally when I fly, I incorrectly assume that, if I am going on vacation, everyone else on the flight is too and, inversely, if I am returning home, so are the other passengers.  At some point on my flight today, I realized that I had not made this assumption once all day.  I started thinking about why and realized that I was neither going on vacation or returning home and, simultaneously, I was both going on vacation and coming home.  While that may be self-explanatory, let me try to elaborate.  If I was living in London indefinitely, that would, by default, be "home."  Since, however, my time there is possibly limited to this one year (this comment does NOT invite a discussion of my plans for the forthcoming year) London will always, in some ways, remain "the vacation."  Not that it is a vacation, but it is temporary.  Therefore, New York stays home.  In the reverse, I feel very settled in my flat and life in London so, therefore, New York becomes "vacation" and London is home.  I can easily force these feelings to flip flop back and forth and have them occur simultaneously.  While this feeling is probably similar to one that I had at Dartmouth, for some reason I never noticed it.  That may be because I was never flying, keeping it within a certain geography of "home."  It also may be because college is the time when you go back and forth between your childhood home and your campus.  This year, however, is very different from that in all ways. 

Anyway, this was one of the many strange emotions I experienced today upon my return to New York.  There were many other things I felt (excitement at seeing New York again, enjoyment of my Mom's home cooking, comfort at being back at Peter's) but I expect all of these things to continue over the next few days so I figure I will isolate one emotion at a time.

This is going to be as short and sweet as possible because I wore myself out packing, stuffed my belly with curry, and have to wake up at 7 am. 

Molly and I decided to have a fun day on the town before we left for break.  We have both been meaning to go see the Turner Prize retrospective at Tate Britain for a long time and, since Molly had two free tickets (and because she's fun, clearly), I really wanted to go with her.  We met at noon on what was a very bright, and crisp day.  It finally felt a bit like winter around here.  The exhibition was pretty good.  It was organized chronologically from 1984 until last year with selections from most of the artists who had been shortlisted and/or won.  It made for a very disparate body of work.  It allowed me to, finally, match a lot of artists that I've heard of with their work, and visa versa.  It was also a great short schooling in the YBAs (young British artists).  The two artists who I think stunned me the most were Chris Ofili, whom I've always had a fondness for but never seen works on the same scale as those in this show, and Grayson Perry.  What I loved about both of these artists was the virtuosity of their technique that made for visually stunning work layered with socially challenging subject matter. 

After the Tate, we made our way up to Liberty (the department store I raved about a week ago).  Molly had wanted to see it, I wanted to go back and look at some boots I saw last week, and we both wanted to have a traditional high tea before we left for winter break.  Let me just say, high tea is incredible.  I knew this already, but my love for the meal was rejuvenated today.  We were both starving to the point of having trembly hands when we sat down.  When we stood up from the table, our stomachs felt like it was Thanksgiving evening.  There was tea, little dainty sandwiches, scones, and cakes.  It was delicious.  And then there was the browsing through the store.  It was nearly four by the time we left.  From there, we made our way up to Selfridges, another swanky department store, because on Thursday nights until Christmas they have special beauty evenings.  We smelled tons of perfumes, looked at lots of things we can't afford, and learned from a "face designer" at Armani how to do a perfect smoky eyelid. 

What a wonderful send off.  Thanks, Molly!

As my departure for New York rapidly approaches and the first term of school comes to an end, I am naturally reflecting back on all of the things that have happened in the last three months.  You're probably expecting me to mention all the things I've learned, the people I've met, and the foreign city I've been living in.  While all of these are incredibly important, the biggest change that I've noted has been my level of grownupedness when it comes to taking care of myself.  The things that I never did until now may be a complete shock to some of you, and to others you realize how major it is that I've started doing these things.  My first major accomplishment, and one that I had planned on attempting before I got here, was my new skin care regiment.  Being blessed with pretty good skin, I've never had to take care of it the way other people do.  I figured, however, that it was time to start.  Every night, before bed, I have added washing my face with special face wash, putting on face cream, and then using eye cream to my evening routine.  I have only skipped a day or two here and there.  This is pretty big for me.  I've also made my bed consistently.  There are rarely clothes on my floor.  This is probably one of the biggest accomplishments as all of my former roomates and parents can, and will, attest to.  More than just putting my clothes away, I've been doing my wash on a fairly regular basis.  This may have to do with the fact that clothes here are too expensive to justify shopping instead of washing my clothes but I'd rather just say that I'm maturing and not blame the weak dollar.  Finally, and what partially prompted me to document all of these achievements, was my accomplishment of yesterday.  Our fridge was getting a little bit out of control and there were a lot of leftovers in there that Libby asked me to throw out before I left.  Instead of just tossing the old food, I took everything out of the fridge, dismantled the entire thing, and washed each piece separately.  I checked the dates on all containers and threw out all the old food.  I even touched some moldy things! After all that was done, I put the clean pieces back in the fridge and reorganized the food inside of it.  I can almost hear the gasps of certain people across the ocean.  All this bragging will hopefully keep me accountable when I'm home for taking care of myself in the same way.  It will, however, be difficult to transport my new routines and habits into my old ones.  I do intend to try.