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Monthly Archives: October 2012

Well, folks, my office is near Union Square, and the street it’s on looks like this. So, I had no work again today, and will have no work for the rest of the week (at least) for now.

My roommates work above 34th St., so they decided to walk to work over the Brooklyn Bridge. It took two and a half hours and sounded like it was super fun. Neither of them are going to try walking to work tomorrow.

I, on the other hand, sat around my apartment like a lazy worm creature. Well, that’s not entirely fair. I left my apartment to go to the bagel place down the street, and then I came back to my apartment to eat it. Later, I then went to the hardware store to buy a lightbulb for my fridge, and then returned to clean my kitchen. I discovered that we now may have mice. Yay!

Later in the afternoon, I felt like I was losing my mind. So, I thought, maybe I should go to read in a cafe or something. And so did everyone else in Park Slope ever. Seriously, there are about five cafes in a three-block radius from my apartment, and they were all standing room only. Instead I walked up and down my street and bought some flavored pellegrinos. Go capitalism!

Tomorrow, I plan for a long walk. Perhaps additional purchases? I apparently can now take the F train around in a circle in Brooklyn; maybe I can just ride that around for a while.

I have two neighbors. The nice Italian couple on the first floor are having a party; two guys on Vespas rolled up around 10pm with some beer. I bet they live in Red Hook.

Whoever lives upstairs left the building’s skylight windows open, so the wind keeps rattling our front door. The howling wind sounds are nice, though. Very cozy.

It is fucking hot in here and our landlord has it so we are deliberately unable to adjust the radiators. I have my bedroom window open, mostly for ambiance. I can’t really see anything. Something fell out back like two houses over. I was half hoping something would fall on my dumbass neighbors’ pool, to teach them a lesson about having their pool open until November. But only half-hoping, as that would cause major unnecessary flooding in our neighborhood.

I’m going to go watch some Netflix until I fall asleep or we lose power. Whichever comes first. My office is closed tomorrow. Par-tay.

EDIT: Finish your drink if the camera pans back to the newsroom and the anchors are texting.

This is testament to how drunk I am and also how little I play drinking games. Leave suggestions in the comments for additional items!

Drink every time someone says:
– “Worse-case scenario” (this alone could be your game.)
– “It’s really raining out there”
– “The news keeps flooding in right now”
– +2: “robust” anything. +3 if you work at OUP and this happens.

 

Two drinks when:
– news anchor draws football-commentary arrows on top of storm map (+1 more if the map already has arrows)
– news anchor gives advice for disaster-aversion techniques, like you’d be watching your TV for that.
– news anchors in the field can’t hear the news anchors in the studio for more than 5 seconds

Three drinks when:
– news anchor gleefully points out horrific damage (“The Hudson is actually three feet behind me!”)
– weather man stands in front of green screen of a shot of nearby Manhattan street
– Anchor or interviewee, while standing outside: “You should not be outside right now. A tree could fall on you.”
– Blair Witch-style camera work, +1
– Police asks anchor to leave

The NYC ABC local news has some woman and a camera crew driving around New York. It is hilarious. “I’m just going to open the window here, look at this!” “Oh, there’s a policeman; he’s giving us directions. Hector, are you getting this? Hector?”
Anchor: “Well..thanks, Diane, that’s enough…”

 

Also: water on news cameras + camera crew lighting = all outdoor anchors have halos.

Jackie suggested I liveblog the hurricane–I’m in a higher up part of Brooklyn (Park Slope), so I can’t say I have any awesome flood photos for you guys. Lights are flickering, but we still have power. We are watching some TV that is primarily broadcasting about NJ, which is extra comforting.

Plus, we opened some wine.

I like making soup. It makes me feel like I’m a talented chef–your whole apartment smells great, and you feel impressive that you threw all this crap together and it can feed all of your friends. Or, you, for an entire week.

The nearest grocery store to me is an extremely intense organic market. I could walk a few blocks farther to the regular grocery store, but 99% of the time I give in to the siren song of overpriced artisan cheeses and organic local tomatoes. They have so  many odd items there, like sunchokes, and prickly pears, and foie gras in plastic tubs.  It’s hipster food paradise! So, with this in mind, and a desire to feel culinary, I thought I’d kick off fall weather with soup featuring some of the wacky ingredients I’d been hoping to find a use for. Uh, not the foie gras. Maybe next week.

I did indeed feel culinary. Whether or not I exhibited culinary skills–another question. The soup, though, didn’t turn out too bad! In fact it was actually good! My overuse of exclamation marks belies my surprise.

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