Unapologetically Mundane » creepy boyfriend obsession

Still More About the California Trip We Took Seven Months Ago

katie ett — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:00:52 +0000

Remember how Kamran took me to visit his family in California last August and how I just barely blogged about it? Well, here’s the photodump from the trip that you haven’t been asking for:

We were mostly there for Kamran’s parents’ 40th anniversary, which was celebrated at Javier’s with grandchildren, steak, and my first Sprinkles cupcakes in the form of a cake that spelled out happy anniversary. I got the an:

We visited Kamran’s friend Mike, who has a pool in his backyard like everyone else in California,

made eyes at the googly-eyed flowers in Kamran’s parents’ backyard,

and ate In-N-Out the first chance we got:

(There’s nothing more pleasurable to me than sitting in a drive-thru in a car after almost seven years of not driving.)

We met Kamran’s uncle at the Santa Monica Seafood café for ceviche, crab cakes, ciopino, and fish and chips (yes, even I ordered and enjoyed seafood (and by “seafood”, I mean “the batter and tartar sauce that goes on it”)):

And then went next door to Huckleberry Cafe for some suuuuuuuuuuperfine sweets, including a trifle and a fig that we stole off the tree out back and washed off in the bathroom(!!):

Kamran’s uncle took us to a house he and his partner have been designing to perfection for 10+ years now that had this view:

We drove to San Diego to Balboa Park, which contains the San Diego Zoo, The Museum of Man, the Fleet Science Center, the Air & Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, and a buuuuuuuuuunch more:

The architecture was amazing, and so was the weather. The entire time we were there, his parents didn’t need to turn on the air conditioning in their house. And this was August.

This is not a tiny fanny pack on Kamran’s hip but his camera case, so it’s fine:

At the Natural History Museum:

Kamran’s first 3-D movie (he was only pretending to not be excited for the camera):

A huge, bazillion-year-old tree outside the museum:

On the way back to Laguna, we passed the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which look like two boobs rising from the beach, and which Kamran . . .

well . . .

I think this is a good place to end this.

Deep-Fried Everything

katie ett — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:00:49 +0000

Kamran and I went to the Orange County Fair this summer while visiting his parents. Not only did he win me an Angry Bird at the one and only game we attempted

but he also filled me full of things like deep-fried Kool-Aid and deep-fried chicken on a jelly donut.

I figure even those of you who actively hate my food blog might like that.

Happy Birthday, Kamran!

katie ett — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:00:01 +0000

You’re my honeybunch, sugarplum, pumpy-umpy-umpkin,
You’re my sweetiepie
You’re my cuppycake, gumdrop, snoogums-boogums,
You’re the apple of my eye

Five Years of Bliss in NYC

katie ett — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:00:27 +0000

Written in my old LiveJournal, from five years ago today:

I called him at 7:01 to let him know that I’d be a minute late. “Well, more like two minutes,” I said, since I was already at the one-minute mark. “I’m just waiting for you outside,” he said, and I crossed to the opposite side of the street so I could check him out from a distance when I got there. I’d seen a couple of pictures of him, but after my best friend, Tracey, had a horrible almost-blind-date experience where the guy looked great in his pictures and literally like a cartoon in person, I was skeptical. I’d told him in an e-mail earlier this week, “I’ll arrive in disguise to scope you out beforehand, so please plan to be there a few minutes early.” He’d written back, “Okay, fair enough. I have to warn you though, I will also be in disguise. Look for someone dressed as a goofy-looking persian guy in a ‘business casual’ ensemble with a briefcase,” and I’d replied, “I will likely be dressed as a mid-16th Century Scottish warrior and will spend the entirety of the meal playing renditions of Celine Dion ballads on my bagpipes. You should feel free to remove your costume, as I’m not sure I could stand to be seen with a goofy-looking persian guy.”

He wasn’t goofy-looking at all, though. He was born in Iran and lived there for a year, but he just looked like a regular, old white guy. Who happened to dress better than any regular, old white guy I’ve ever dated. He was wearing a brown sweater with a white collared shirt underneath and black pants with brown pinstripes and had-to-be-picked-out-by-an-ex-girlfriend black shoes, and I thought he was pretty much the most adorable human being ever. He stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Kamran,” and I said, “Handshakes are weird, and I feel like I know you already, anyway. Let’s hug.” He said, “We’ll talk about the possibility of a hug if this encounter goes well.” He was trying to joke about it. I said, “Encounter?!”, and he smiled as he opened the door to the restaurant for me.

It was a macaroni bar in the East Village called S’Mac that I’d chosen for us after a co-worker recommended it to me. While we looked at the menu, I asked, “Will you think me too rebellious if I put broccoli in mine?”, and he said, “That is pretty daring.” I asked what he was getting, and when he said he was thinking about the brie, I punched him in the arm and said, “I knew that’s what you were going to say!” He was a little hurt that I’d already pegged his entire personality in the first two minutes of our date.

The place was packed, so we went to the bar at the window and sat next to each other with our feet propped up on the windowsill. I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my hoodie, and I saw him look at my reflection in the glass in front of us. I asked him about his job, and he said he’s a patent advisor at a law firm that’s going to pay for him to go to law school, even though both of his degrees are in physics. He just moved here two months ago after finishing up his Masters at a school that he kept modestly referring to as a “college in New Jersey” until he slipped up once and said Princeton. Princeton! I hate capitalism, and I hate lawyers, but education still impresses me.

Without any broaching from me, he mentioned how much he wants to see The Science of Sleep, which led to me ranting about why I hate Woody Allen so much. We talked about old David Lynch films and how Zach Braff is so amateur and narcissistic and great. He asked me about the book I was carrying–the new Chuck Klosterman, naturally–which led to me ranting about why I hate On the Road so much. I told him I would’ve never agreed to go out with him had I known he liked Jack Kerouac, and he said, “How fortunate for me that I didn’t mention it in an attempt to impress you.”

He’d used the phrase hits the spot in an e-mail the day before, and I’d written, “I wonder where that comes from. That’s your research project for tomorrow.” When I asked him if he’d remembered, he reached in his pocket for a folded piece of paper, and I said incredulously, “NO!” He recited facts to me about the origin of the phrase and then handed me the paper, which had the Pepsi jingle that supposedly made it popular–and the parodies that followed–neatly typed in a font that wasn’t your run-of-the-mill Times New Roman default. In one spot, he’d accidentally written fo instead of for, and he said he’d noticed the error but liked it too much to correct it. I handed the paper back to him, but as he began to fold it, I snatched it away and said, “I just decided that I should keep it,” and I was embarrassed that he knew I wanted a souvenir of him.

Our food was delivered to us in little skillets with potholders sewn to fit the handles perfectly, and I asked him what he thought we should hide in the potholders. I ripped off a little piece of his Pepsi jingle paper, and he feigned like he was hurt. I asked him what we should write on it, and he said smarts, so I tried to impress him with my handwriting and then shoved the paper into the potholder before putting it back around the handle. We agreed that we were sorry to miss the moment when someone discovers it. I told him about a shirt Tracey had in high school with a pocket in the sleeve where I used to store things like Doritos, and when I finished, I said, “I’m sorry. You’ll have to get used to me talking about her every other minute.” And then I realised that crap!, I’d just assumed that he was liking me and would be seeing me in the future enough for me to mention Tracey another 100,000 times. He went to fetch forks for us, and when I swiveled around in my chair to see where he’d gone, he was watching me from the side of the counter. And he smiled at me and I smiled at him like neither of us could help it, and then I turned back around and had to cover my mouth to keep from giggling. It was one of The Most Perfect Moments in Dating History™.

After we ate, he left me again to get some containers for our massive leftovers, and I noticed a Post-It folded in half lengthwise underneath his chair. I picked it up and read the writing, which was the address of the restaurant, my phone number, and a couple of professors’ names. I’d wanted it to be something scandalous–like maybe a love poem he’d written for me but been unable to give me out of embarrassment, or, you know, a detailed drawing of his genitals–but no luck. When he came back, he saw where I laid it beside his napkin and asked, “Why did I get this out?” I said, “I pulled it from your pocket while you weren’t paying attention.” He said, “What?!”, and then I laughed and he knew I was kidding. Trust me; this was very cute at the time.

He asked me what I do for fun, and I said, “I walk.” As we got outside, he asked where I wanted to go, and I said we should walk to the East River.” He said, “I’ve heard that Avenue D is pretty shady,” and I said, “Luckily, I know Kung Fu.” He asked, “So you could protect my honor?”, and I said, “But I wouldn’t.” He said, “Well, I have . . . a ballpoint pen?”, and I said, “There are something like 36 ways to kill someone with a pen, right?” I led him down the street and asked him if he thought he could ever poke someone’s eye out with a pen. He asked, “Just for fun?” and I said, “No, like, in a rape situation.” He said, “I suppose I could do anything if I had to.” I said, “Not me. I’d take an unwanted penile invasion over that squishy eyeball-poking-out sound any day.” Just then, I realised that we were walking toward Avenue D even after we’d decided not to, and I asked, “Why did you let me take us the wrong way!?” He said he didn’t want to be the one to break it to me, so he decided just to go along with it. I asked, “Do you feel like you’re about to get raped?”, and he said, “A little bit.”

So we turned around and headed back to Avenue B to this amazing bar called Luca Lounge that was filled with Victorian-looking red velvet furniture. We went to the empty back room to sit at the ends of two couches that formed an L-shape and seriously talked about music for, like, two hours. He made fun of me for loving Bush, and I made fun of him for loving Sublime. He told me about his college band back in California, and I told him about all of the awesome band names I’ve thought of over the years. I asked him what his guilty pleasure bands are, and he said, “You really know the right questions to ask.” We talked about the two years of his childhood when he lived in Ohio before moving to Idaho and the fact that he revisited Ohio in 2000 and went to the science museum where I was working at the time. We wondered if we saw each other then and wished for a map of our lives so we could see how many times our paths have crossed. Then we somehow got on the topic of how badly I want to take up smoking and then all of the drugs we’ve tried, and when we were finished, I said, “I can’t believe we just had that conversation. That’s what you talk about when you’re trying to seem cool and impress each other.” He asked, “Aren’t we trying to seem cool and impress each other?”

I kept having to get up to use the restroom, because I seriously drank four gallons of water at dinner, and right before I left one time, I asked, “You wanna time me?”, and he said, “Ready . . . GO!” When I came back, I said, “I just remembered that cellphone commercial where the man asks the woman if she wants to time him while he goes to the bathroom and we’re supposed to think this makes him a horrible date.” He said, “I thought of it, too, but I didn’t want to tell you.” I said, “I don’t care; I always thought it made him adorable,” and he said, “So did I.” And then he looked at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled. !!!

He insisted on paying for my soda at the bar, and I said, “But you already paid for dinner.” He said, “That’s just how I roll,” and I told him that he couldn’t have said anything lamer or awesomer. We both needed to get to Union Square to catch our trains home, so we got on the L together, and he mentioned how incredible it was that the rain managed to control itself all night. I said, “New York is the worst when it’s raining. The garbage smell is about 400 times more powerful, and all of those assholes walk around with their giant umbrellas with the–” He finished my sentence with, “–the two tiers.” Which is just what I was going to say.

And then we had tons of babies.

Or, uh, I mean, . . .

When we got to Union Square, he asked, “Can I have a hug?”, and I said, “Isn’t this your stop, too?” He said, “Yeah, but I want a hug, anyway.” So we hugged, and it was wonderful, because he’s so close to my height–which is a perfectly respectable 5’7″–that our faces touched. He walked downstairs with me to ask me questions about my schedule for the weekend while we waited on the platform for my train, and we decided to go see the new Zach Braff movie. He said, “I’ll call you,” and I said, “Thanks for taking me out,” and he said, “The pleasure was mine,” which is really cheesy in writing but really nice in person. I gave him another hug, and he said, “I’m still going to wait until your train comes.” I said, “But we’ve already said goodbye! Now we’re gonna be all awkward.” He asked, “What’s better than two goodbyes?”, and I said, “No goodbyes.” And I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, and he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and Tracey says that this is the moment in the trailer of the movie version of the date right before the screen goes black and the title comes up.

And here we are, five years later:

And I’m still just as excited about him today as I was back then.

That Little Voice in Your Ear

plumpdumpling — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:00:08 +0000

For a short while, the recording that played when you called my company was of my voice. When our new phone system was installed, the woman who records the greetings company-wide was on vacation, so the IT department asked me to record the greeting.

Wait. Actually, they asked me to recommend someone with a good speaking voice to do it. And I was like, “Well, people have TOLD ME that I should be a voice actor. I wouldn’t want to, you know, toot my own horn or anything, but . . .” And they were like, “Oh, all right.” Embarrassing.

Naturally, during this time, I had extensive fantasies involving all of my exes finding out about this and then calling my workplace continuously, waiting anxiously for the part where I seductively said quality assurance. I later went on to do the voiceovers for two of our marketing videos, which I now assume they’ve favourited on YouTube and listen to quietly in the bathroom on their iPhones after dinner, the soothing words enterprise content management system the only thing keeping them from raising their hands to their nagging new girlfriends and wives some nights.

These are the kinds of thoughts that get me through repeated friend request rejections by them on Facebook.

Oh, Yeah, Remember When I Went to California?

plumpdumpling — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:00:09 +0000

We’re going to visit Kamran’s family in Southern California for the second time starting tomorrow, and I thought maybe I should actually post some photos from our first trip now. This way, it seems like I’m not lazy but just, you know, holding out for the right time. Or something.

I’ve already made a few posts about California–what I expected to do, the one and only difference between L.A. and NYC, Laguna Beach, the lovely wedding we went to, and one-half of our trip to Disneyland–but here are the things I didn’t mention before:

The flight over the desert was pretty incredible. Growing up in Ohio, the colors were entirely new to me, and so was the lack of vegetation. Or vegetation that wasn’t brown, at least.

Kamran’s parents’ backyard happened to be a little oasis with palm trees, a fountain, roses, and bunnies, but driving for miles and miles and seeing nothing but dried-out brush and actual tumbleweeds and bare mountains was kind of awe-making for me; I couldn’t stop taking photos of lovely Saddleback Mountain especially. I absolutely loved the scenery but wonder how long a person can live there without noticing that everything around her is dying.

And seeing the landscape wasn’t the only first for me. It was my first time seeing what an absolute nerd my uber-cool boyfriend was in high school

and my first time being driven by him in a car, which he tried to make our last time by trying to kill us:

It was strange watching my usually-lovable gentleman friend for the past almost-five years become this lane-switching, aggressive-passing, going-with-the-speed-of-traffic maniac. (Just kidding, but seriously, I would’ve surely died my first time trying to merge onto the highway.)

It was my first time eating a giant beefy burrito at Albertaco’s, which Kamran claims all the locals call Alberto’s, but I think he was secretly just embarrassed by his evident illiteracy:

and my first time eating in a room full of people from California:

I had Wienerschnitzel for the first time

mousing over this photo may amuse no one but me

and learned what the big deal is about In-n-Out (the big deal is that it’s delicious, and I wouldn’t die if I had to eat that every day instead of Shake Shack, although obviously there will be a Shake Shack in L.A. in about .02 seconds):

We made Kamran’s friend’s wedding more about us than her,

Disneyland more about us than any kids,

and nights with Kamran’s friend Gary and his wife, Diana, into creepy family portrait time:

We walked around downtown San Juan Capistrano, which is like a little hippie village thrown into the middle of rich, Republican Orange County. We found an antique store that stretched a whole block, a movie theatre with maybe two screens, a pay-by-the-pound frozen yogurt shop that was evidently a new concept in California, and a new friend for Kamran just wandering the streets:

My friend Beth drove down from San Francisco, and we met our friend Bridgette,

who lives in the most stereotypically 1970s California neighborhood I can imagine,

for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, because I apparently have to eat there every time I leave the state. We sat on the water underneath portable heaters in the middle of August, and I couldn’t imagine liking weather more.

We left early one morning for Kamran’s old undergraduate stomping grounds, stopping at a shady convenience store with a wall that happened to be modeled after Kamran’s shirt:

We drove around Pasadena for a while:

and then stopped at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles for a lunch of Arnold Palmers:

chicken dripping with syrup:

and waffles soaked with both:

both chicken and syrup, I mean; not Arnold Palmers

Afterward, we went for a long walk around the Caltech campus, posing with Kamran’s old swimmin’ hole:

his old dorm hall:

and the room in the physics building that houses a copy of his undergraduate thesis:

This was the last time we would see the Caltech t-shirt he’d purchased in the gift shop an hour earlier.

We had a lunch at Pink’s:

which is known for its block-long lines full of celebrities (we saw no one remotely famous and were only in line for a few minutes for this cole-slaw-covered beauty):

We then spent the afternoon wandering around Santa Monica. Well, actually, we spent an hour in Santa Monica traffic and then had only enough time to walk to the Santa Monica Pier:

before meeting Kamran’s uncle for dinner at Joe’s, where we had delicious beef and a sighting of comedian Andy Kindler:

(this is not Andy Kindler)

We had lunches with Kamran’s family, where I got to try my first albaloo polow, or Persian sour cherry rice, and wildly saturated kebabs:

Kamran’s niece basically cried through the entire lunch, and Kamran’s dad had to entertain her, and I was reminded that I’m way more interested in food than children, but the kid sure is cute, snot and all:

I met so many of Kamran’s old friends (this particular meeting included fried ice cream!):

and had probably the best beach experience of my life, even when my bathing suit was coming off and Kamran was having to tell the children around us to shield their eyes:

But more than any of this, being in California was just feeling different. There’s so much about it that can’t be recorded in pictures, although you can bet I tried. It’s driving past the power station at night, where the sky’s filled with yellow light in the otherwise empty desert. It’s eating the foods from Kamran’s childhood that he didn’t even like back then but craves now. It’s trying to find a song we can agree on from his iPod full of punk music on the way home from houses of friends I’ve heard about for years. It’s the corner of Antonio and Banderas Streets and trying to remember my high school Spanish to translate the city names. It’s having perfect hair and skin every day and people giving up their parking space for you at the beach and all of the houses looking exactly the same but entirely different than any other houses anywhere else. I’m sure I felt the same way when I moved to New York, but the point is that it’s not New York.

Like a Dog, I Only Love You When You Feed Me

plumpdumpling — Wed, 25 May 2011 16:00:21 +0000

Sometimes, I get upset that Kamran really can’t hang with me when it comes to guiltless gluttony. I have wild fantasies about consuming entire Ritter Sport bars in one sitting, of sitting down with a bag of Doritos (Cool Ranch, of course) and just going to town. Meanwhile, Kamran has wild fantasies about lightly-dressed raw greens and filling up on soup so he can just pee it out later and not gain anything. The times I love him least are when he’s denying my request for pizza for the 27th weekend in a row.

And the times I love him the most are when he comes home and asks, “Do you think we could get a reservation for Momofuku Ko tomorrow?” It’s easily his favourite meal we’ve ever had and also easily in my top two. It’s also one of the hardest restaurants to get into; its reservations system comes online at 10 a.m. every morning, and all of the spots are taken ten seconds later.

But I managed to snag one thanks to hundreds of website-refreshings Friday morning, and we went for an amazing 18-part lunch on Saturday. And then we went to the all-French-fry place again and got Vietnamese pineapple mayo topping:

Then we went to 16 Handles, a frozen yogurt place where you fill you cup with any combination of–wait for it–16 flavors and then cover that with any of about 40 toppings and then pay by the pound. UH-MAZE-ING.

There are totally two strawberry slices in there, which makes the mini Reese’s cups, crumbled regular-sized Reese’s cups, sprinkles, Cap’n Crunch, caramel sauce, cookie dough, and gummy bears totally fine.

Look how jealous that blurry guy behind us is. (Also, is that Ward Williams or what?)

Point is: if I ever loved Kamran, it was last weekend.

Haha, Remember When Sitcoms Starring Black People Used to Be on Primetime Television?

plumpdumpling — Wed, 11 May 2011 16:00:33 +0000

Remember the 80s sitcom “227” starring Jackée Harry as Sandra and Marla Gibbs as Mary? Well, Kamran and I both grew up watching it, and now he loves to say “Mary” in the way that Jackée used to on the show. Which is of course something more like MAAAAAAAAAAY-ree.

And every time he does it, it CRACKS ME UP. It’s never less funny to me.

So we were on our way to our so-so dinner at Flex Mussels the other night when we spotted this doorway and somehow thought it was so serendipitous:

Of course, as soon as we took it, we realized that there’s a 227 on basically every street in NYC. But still!

Katie Makes Passes at Boys and Girls Who Wear Glasses

plumpdumpling — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:00:08 +0000

When I was in Ohio at the end of March, I woke up one morning at my best friend, Tracey’s, to find that one of my contacts had ripped. I think I almost willed it to happen, because as I’d been packing for my trip, I’d thought about the fact that I was on my last pair of contacts, hadn’t ordered more, didn’t plan to see my eye doctor while I was home, and wasn’t going to bring my glasses, either. So of course something bad had to happen.

I called up my eye doctor’s office and spoke to his receptionist, whom I’ve known since I started wearing glasses in 7th grade and whom the rest of my family has known even longer. “I’m home visiting from New York,” I said, “and I ripped one of my contacts. If I stop by later today, can I buy a replacement pair off of you?”

She paused for a moment, evidently checking my record. “Sorry, but we really can’t do that. You haven’t been to see the doctor since 2009.”

“I’m desperate here,” I said. “I don’t have another pair, and I didn’t even bring my glasses home. I’m going to be miserable. I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

“Schedule an appointment with the doctor!” she cheerily advised.

They gave me a replacement pair that day, and then Tracey took me in to see the doctor ridiculously early the next morning to have my prescription checked and buy a new batch of lenses. The doctor, as always, scolded me about the fact that I’d managed to stretch a six month supply of contacts into two years’ worth and told me that since it was the beginning of the month then, I just needed to remember to replace my lenses at the beginning of every month.

“Absolutely, doc!” I promised, secretly rolling my eyes.

On Saturday night, Kamran and I went out for a seven-course tasting menu that included NINE DRINKS. Even after not even coming close to finishing all of them, we nevertheless stumbled back to his apartment and literally crashed onto the bed sideways. At 4 a.m., I woke up and realized my contacts were still in. Being the good girl that I am, I down a bunch of water and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and take out my contacts. And promptly ripped one of them.

GRR!

I looked all around Kam’s apartment, but of course my new supply of contacts was at my own place, and there was no way I was delaying our Easter Indian buffet plans to go to Brooklyn. So with untamed hair and thick-framed glasses from 2003, I went with him to have some of the best Indian food ever. Except that I was totally miserable, because it was hot outside, and my blood was boiling from the spices, and my hair looked crazy, and my glasses kept slipping down my nose, and I feel half-retarded when I have to move my whole head to see anything to the left or right of me clearly.

So what I’m saying is: god bless all of you glasses-wearers. If you knew how great contacts were, you’d never put up with those things. But you look totally great in them, and I appreciate that you’re willing to sacrifice comfort to look awesome. Especially you, Kamran.

Another thing I’m saying is: I KNOW YOU MADE THIS HAPPEN TO FORCE ME TO CHANGE MY CONTACTS, EYE DOCTOR, AND I WILL FIND A WAY TO SPITE YOU.

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: The Ten-Mile Walk Around Manhattan

plumpdumpling — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:00:34 +0000

Months ago, my best friend, Tracey and her husband, Dan, introduced me to “Adventure Time”, the most imaginative little 15-minute program on the Cartoon Network. Kam and I started watching it together, and while we were out walking and uncovering unknown parts of the city a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how “Adventure Time with Jake and Fin” should really be “Adventure Time with Kat and Kam”. And at the same moment, we said, “We should probably start a blog for that.” Well, I can’t even keep up with the blogs I have now, so I’ll just try to make it a feature here.

So I present the very first:

The night before our walk, I submitted a plan to trek down 2nd Avenue to Meatball Shop, since Kam had never been there. He objected, citing the fact that we’re trying to live healthier, non-sandwich-oriented lives and blahblahblah. So instead I found us the health food restaurant Natureworks, where he would get something dumb like a Super Salad, and I would attempt to pass a meat lover’s pizza (with low-sodium cheese, Dishy!) off as something one might eat when one is not trying to slowly kill one’s self. And then we would go to my favourite pay-by-the-pound frozen yogurt joint, where I promised I would only get fruit toppings instead of my usual cookie-dough-gummy-bears-Cap’n-Crunch combo. (But I was lying.)

Fortunately for me, Natureworks is closed on Sundays. So instead, we decided to play it casual and look for something delicious on our way to the fro-yo. Thanks to Tasting Menu, Kam’s favourite food blog (other than donuts4dinner, of course), we knew to stop into Kalustyan’s for a falafel sandwich when we came across it, only we were never actually able to locate the falafel counter.

What we did find were rows upon rows of shelves upon shelves stocked with every single spice you have and haven’t heard of. We’re talking twenty kind of cinnamon, beet powder, granulated garlic, five kinds of mustard seed, tomato flour. We saw pickled wild cucumbers, every flavor of honey, canned ghee, every color of salt, nut mixes like you wouldn’t believe, fifty kinds of sugar. Kam was in I-haven’t-seen-this-since-the-last-time-I-was-in-Iran heaven, and I just enjoyed listening to Indian music while I perused.

Next, we made our way down to Gramercy Park to admire the fine architecture (which still isn’t as pretty as Kamran’s building) and watch a squirrel dig a nut out of the ground (we don’t see a lot of wildlife around these parts, if that isn’t obvious):

Kam informed me that Gramercy Park is actually private and requires a key for entry. Indeed, we saw tourists leering at locals through the iron bars and watched as one man flounced his coveted key about before unlocking the gate and settling down among the manicured greenery to read his Sunday paper.

We continued downtown and resolutely concluded that it was finally the day that we were to try Artichoke Basille’s famed pizza. Since its launch in 2008, Artichoke has been lauded as one of the best–if not the best–pizza in NYC. You have your Lombardi’s holdouts and your Grimaldi’s hangers-on, but I can tell you definitively and unquestionably that Artichoke is ten times better than either of those.

Let me state for the record that I like a thick crust. I would say that I like Sicilian-style pizza, but that’s not even true, because in New York, they always overbake the crust. The point of thick crust is that it’s bready. So what I’ll actually say I like is an underbaked crust. I don’t even mind if it’s straight up dough in the very middle.

Artichoke is not a thick crust. It’s a thin crust, and it’s a crusty crust, and I should not, therefore, like it. But it was delicious. It was perfect. It could convert me. It was done but not overdone. It wasn’t burnt! DO YOU HEAR THAT, OTHER NYC PIZZERIAS?! IT IS POSSIBLE TO BAKE A PIZZA AND NOT BURN IT.

We got a crab slice and an artichoke slice, and although you’ll have to wait for the full review on donuts4dinner, I will tell you that the artichoke slice was like eating a piece of crusty bread coated in the Alfredo sauce they serve in the little cup with the pizzas at Olive Garden. I know that won’t seem like a big deal to you snobs who refuse to like chain restaurants, but those of you who have tried the Alfredo will understand, I know.

We also saw what we think might be the tiniest apartment building in NYC. Do you see how thin that thing is? Even if each apartment takes up the entire length of the building, that’s still only . . . 200 square feet? Less?

Next, we went to Porchetta, a tiny storefront where the pig is given top billing, both with the giant stencil on the wall and with the display case full of the most succulent scored pork:

We took our sandwich to Tompkins Square Park and sat at one of the chessboards to chow down and throw back some ginger soda.

The sandwich was–to put it lightly–very, very good. The pork juices soaked into the crusty bread and dribbled out onto our fingers, and the moments where we bit into those suuuuuuuuper-crispy bits of skin were truly blissful.

So blissful, in fact, that I guess I sort of audibly expressed my joy. Without realizing that a makeshift soup kitchen had been set up behind me. I had thought it was just a large family enjoying Sunday lunch in the park until Kam told me I might want to keep it down. “Soooooogooooood,” I was murmuring in a porkdrunk stupor as the homeless people behind me were eating what was probably their only meal of the day.

So what did we do to repent for our gluttony? EAT MORE! This time, we went to Pommes Frites, which literally only serves French fries with a bazillion different sauces of your choosing.

We went with the black truffle mayo, which was delicious but probably too heavy to follow a slice of pizza and half a pork sandwich. Their wasabi mayo or peanut sauce is what you need when you’re already ten pounds heavier than normal due to pig and cheese grease. But we dutifully finished our cone of fries, dutifully scooped the strays out of the bag, and dutifully threw what we couldn’t eat onto the sidewalk for the homeless. And then Kam kicked them around a little accidentally, inciting a deep conversation about how much sidewalk flavor is too much sidewalk flavor for a homeless person.

Are we bad people?

Next, we casually walked through the Lower East Side and realized we were near our very favourite store for discount sweets, Economy Candy. But, you know, since we were eating healthy that day, we popped in for two tiny Cadbury Creme Eggs and popped right back out, no chocolate-covered s’mores in hand. And they were only 50 cents each! Why, that’s what they cost in places like Ohio! Kamran pocketed them for later and proceeded to make incessant testicle jokes.

I was trying to push Kam to take me to a riverfront park, but the farther we got from the center of town, the shadier things started getting. There were parking lots and people playing Latin music from boomboxes in front of bodegas and . . . OH!

You guys, there was this one dude on the street who was literally just stopped dead in his tracks on the sidewalk with his feet at weird angles and his head lolling to one side. He was clearly unwashed and clearly on a bender, all stooped over with his arms hanging limply at his sides. I swore he was going to reach out and grab me as we passed, but he seemed to be asleep. Moments later, though, we turned back to stare some more, and he was hobbling along the sidewalk. SO CREEPY.

Needless to say, by the time we came upon this GANG GRAFFITI, we knew it was time to hightail it out of there.

Just kidding! Nice mural, PS 140! Oh, yeah, have I mentioned that the public schools are named by number here? Pretty creative stuff, guys.

While we were down there, we figured, “What the hey, let’s cross the Willamsburg Bridge.” Because Kamran, believe it or not, has never set foot on a bridge in his five years here.

The Williamsburg Bridge is actually quite nice, despite what I’d heard. Everyone says it’s too loud for good walking, and it’s true that you walk alongside traffic for a quarter of it, but at that point, the traffic has continued on straight the whole time, but you’ve been steadily climbing higher and higher above it on the sloped platform in the center of the bridge. Then you run into this lovely sign that I think pretty much embodies NYC as a whole:

It’s kind of pretty, but it’s also kind of super jacked up, and nobody cares to keep it nice, including the people who are paid to, so the sign ends up reading WI LIAMS U GH BRIDGE. But the nice thing about the bridge is that at the sign, the platform splits into two so that pedestrians get the lane to the right, and bicyclists get the lane to the left. If you’ve ever been almost run over a zillion times by bicyclists on the Brooklyn Bridge (not that I blame them, because pedestrians are always inconsiderate and hog the whole thing), you’ll understand what a good idea this was. Plus, the bridge was sooooooo much less crowded than the Brooklyn Bridge.

And had better graffiti, too.

mouseover this photo for hilarity

The one thing the Brooklyn Bridge has going for it is that it’s not entirely encased by fencing like the Williamsburg is. This isn’t really the best place to get pictures of the city from afar, youknow. But I kinda like ‘em, anyway.

We went halfway across the bridge and then started back, just in time to catch the J train whizzing between us and the cyclists, to find someone’s dropped keys but not do a damned thing about it, and to learn that Vomito loves NY.

Just off the bridge, we found ourselves on Attorney Street, which was an excellent reminder for Kam that his New York State Bar results won’t come for another month and a half. But look how happy he is still!

And look how trashy those girls behind him are. Is that a leather jacket you’re wearing backward over your denim jacket, ma’am?

We had been out for more than five hours, and our grocery shopping duties were calling, so we started back toward Kam’s apartment in Midtown. We walked up Avenue B past Luca Lounge, the bar he took me on our first date, lo those four and a half years ago, which has been closed for years but still sits abandoned.

At 23rd Street, we started to feel a little weak in the knees.

At 29th Street, we started talking about how much pain we were in. “But good pain!” we exclaimed, trying to fake our way into fitness.

At 34th Street, we had to sit down on a bench for five minutes.

By the time we got home, it hurt to lower ourselves onto the couch.

By the next day, we couldn’t stand without wincing. Five days later, we’re just now feeling normal again. So maybe we weren’t quite ready for a ten-mile walk. But we sure did have an adventure.

If you’re curious about our path, here’s a glorious map version with all the stops:

The Impression That I Give

plumpdumpling — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:00:35 +0000

Kamran and I try not to do gross couple-y things around our friends, but it’s kind of hilarious that this is how people think of us:

So Lonely Even My Hair is Depressed

plumpdumpling — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:00:24 +0000

Kamran flew to California Friday morning to visit a client in Palo Alto but made a stop in Orange County first to celebrate the Persian New Year with his family, which now includes a baby nephew named . . . Cameron! My roommate wasn’t feeling well that night, so I went to Kamran’s apartment to take care of the 20 hours of “Criminal Minds” saved on his DVR but got out of the bus at 34th Street to enjoy a few minutes of walking through the almost-spring weather. I didn’t know anything about the whole moon-being-closer-to-the-Earth-than-it-has-been-in-18-years thing, but I did notice it looked particularly lovely over Long Island City across the river in Queens:

Along with the “Criminal Minds”, I watched the Alli-goes-to-stay-with-Johnny-at-college-but-they-don’t-make-out-WTF episode of “Degrassi” while recording the first two Harry Potter movies so I could later fast-forward through the FIFTEEN MINUTES OF COMMERCIALS the channel plays for every five minutes of movie and see how the films compare with the books now that I’ve succumbed and read the first two. (I guess I like all the detail in the books, but reading them is a lot more fun when I already know how everything looks in the movies. Maybe I’m unimaginative.)

On Saturday afternoon, I ordered the same kebab plate that Kamran and I get every Thursday night to enjoy while watching the previous night’s “Top Chef” episode. I’ve grown so accustomed to watching food-related shows while I eat with him that watching non-food-TV felt funny. It could’ve had something to do with the fact that it was a serial killer drama involving cannibalism, but still, it makes me wonder if I’d spend the rest of my life eating dinner to Tom Colicchio or Ina Garten even if Kamran wasn’t around.

My roommate, Jack, was planning to be home that evening, so I took a shower around 1 and then sat around for the next three hours checking obsessively for Kamran’s IMs, tweeting about hearing the ice cream truck for the first time in more than four years outside Kamran’s apartment, hating Dobby the House Elf so much, and finding out that left alone with the Ritter Sport Alpine Milk chocolate bar, I didn’t want to eat the whole thing in two bites as I had originally planned. At 5, I finally got bored enough that I decided to go for a long walk around the neighborhood and saw so many French bulldogs at the Beekman Place dog park and so many goddamned happy couples rubbing their coupledom in my face. A man with an impressive old-timey mustache made eyes at me, and I decided to reward myself with a black and white cookie, but it turns out I just don’t enjoy getting fat as much by myself and went home empty-handed.

I stopped by the convenience store in Kamran’s building on my way back up to the apartment for some soda and a Fage yogurt to replace the one I’d found all dried up without its lid on in the back of the fridge, and the man behind the counter said, “Where’s your guy? You look lonely.”

GRR! So even though I’d secretly been planning to stay at Kamran’s alone all night again, I decided to go to my own apartment and be entertained by Jack and his new Xbox Kinect. We ate bahn mi and bubble tea from Hanco’s, and I watched him play Halo for a couple of hours before taking the controls myself and learning that video games aren’t for girls.

The next day, I woke up late to meet my friend Ash for Macaron Day NYC 2011. My hair usually needs about 3 hours to air day, so I decided to save time and blowdry it for approximately the third time in my life and the first time in at least five years. I knew it had the chance to turn out looking like this, but I was willing to put up with that if it meant not going out with wet hair. So I took my shower, put on the big fluffy robe my grandmother got me for Christmas, watched an episode of “Southland”, made some oatmeal, and came back to the bathroom to check my hair’s progress. When I ran a comb through it, it was perfectly straight and lovely.

So I turned on the hairdryer, flipped my head upside-down, and came up looking like this:

So apparently you’re not supposed to blowdry upside-down when you don’t want a small afro?

When I met up with Ash, she said, “What happened to you?!” Luckily, the macarons were good, and Kamran’s coming back tonight.

The Private Lives of City Dwellers

plumpdumpling — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:00:05 +0000

Kamran is officially finished with law school and the bar exam! Now he has great plans for his free time:

I’m not sure you want to know the story behind that.

But obviously I’m going to tell the first person who asks in the comments.

My Boyfriend or My Butt: A Conundrum

plumpdumpling — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:30:33 +0000

I hate to admit that advertisements sometimes work on me. I used to have a roommate who would mute the TV every time the commercials came on so she could avoid being sold to, and I always loved her for that. The advent of the DVR has obviously made it easier to live commercial-freer, but I’m still met with ads I can’t ignore on the streets and subways.

And it’s not always a bad thing. After seeing FreshDirect trucks all over town, I finally convinced the ever-reluctant Kamran to try it, and it turned out to be kind of life-changing for us. Not only is it much less expensive than Manhattan-based grocery stores because they don’t have to pay Manhattan rent, but they also offer the kind of selection you could never find at small Manhattan retailers. We used to have to make a choice every weekend to walk in one direction to the health food store or in the other direction to the traditional grocery store, but FreshDirect has both your traditional (meaning terrible) items like sugar-free Jell-o and your local, organic, pastured, antibiotic-free stuff. And they deliver it right to your door. Swoon.

I have a problem, though. Last night, I saw an ad on the subway for Soap.com, and when I checked it this morning, I found that they have my lotion, my powder foundation, and my shampoo at Ohio prices. (Yes, I kind of feel bad about not supporting my local economy, but I feel worse about paying $9 for a $5 bottle of mostly water.) So obviously I want to order from them, but here’s my dilemma: they have the toilet paper Kamran likes but that none of our local stores carry. I don’t like it because of the way dust-like miniscule paper particles fly all over the place every time I rip a sheet off, but I think he really misses the stuff.

Do I order from them, save a bunch of money, get my bathroom essentials delivered for free, and risk having a dusty bum again? Or do I go to a retail store, pay Manhattan prices, and continue to ruin Kamran’s life with my super-soft, non-shreddy toilet paper?

Happy Anniversary!

plumpdumpling — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:00:30 +0000

I just think it’s so sweet of couples everywhere to join in celebrating my four year, five month anniversary with Kamran today.

Oh, it’s Valentine’s Day, you say? I had no idea.

See, while the rest of you will be busy eating romantic dinners, receiving roses at your various workplaces to make your single co-workers jealous, deciding if you’re going to share any of the chocolates from your Godiva sampler, or in the absolute most embarrassing case, getting proposed to, I’ll be sitting home alone.

My boyfriend of four years and five months will be taking a bar exam prep course for twelve hours and then spending the rest of the evening in the library with his study partners. (Who are both male, if there was some concern.)

He’s promised to take me to dinner and shower me in chocolate once the bar is over in another week and a half, but in the meantime, I’m on my own. We usually do laundry together on Sundays, but he was studying all day yesterday, so I went to my own apartment but foolishly volunteered to come back to his place to do it alone tonight. On Valentine’s Day.

So I’m going to wear my t-shirt that says, “My Boyfriend Totally Loves Me Even Though He’s Making Me Wash His Underwear on Valentine’s Day.” Then I’m going to tap each person in the laundry room on the shoulder and individually tell them that I’m only there because my boyfriend’s training to be a totally important intellectual property attorney.

And then I’ll make a big show of folding the pillowcase I got for him:

That’s not pathetic at all, right?

Those Happy Golden Years

plumpdumpling — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:00:20 +0000

Remember the days before Kamran actually cared about law school and before he was studying for the bar exam when we used to leave the house on a whim to do things like go to the novelty Dave & Buster’s in Times Square and win a bazillion tickets

on the Wheel of Fortune game

and not spend them on anything at all because our love was all we needed?

No, me neither.

Juuuuust kidding. But Kamran’s staying late at school for the next two weeks to study for this darn test so I don’t distract him with my feminine wiles and my unfortunate sudden interest in television cop dramas, and I feel whiny.

Donut Hole Babies

plumpdumpling — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 17:00:22 +0000

I spotted this picture on a Tumblr the other day, and it made me sad, because when one of my friends had a baby, I sent her this same pacifier as a gift:

I thought it was hilarious and pretty much made me the coolest fake auntie ever, but I’ve never seen it in the many times I’ve visited her since, and I’ve especially never seen it actually in the baby’s mouth. Her other kid does use the ice cream cone lamp my best friend, Tracey, and I got her. But still.

I should probably have kids just to buy them cool stuff. And I should especially have them with Kamran, because then they’d turn out looking like little donut holes:

Snow Day 2011!

plumpdumpling — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:00:51 +0000

The snow bunnies go out to play!

Kamran finds that the snow is perfect for packing, much to Katie’s chagrin.

The view down 42nd Street, the only street that seemed to get any plowing.

The treacherous walk down the 42nd Street bridge stairs.

The line between the shoveled part and the unshoveled part of the sidewalk looks like a cutaway in a science lab.

With the snow piled so high, the benches in the Tudor City park look like comfy couches.

And with a single snowball thrown, one picture of yellow snow taken, and matching Sauconys soaked, the snow bunnies burrowed back into Kamran’s apartment for the day.

Long-Lost Videos of 2010: Part 2

plumpdumpling — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 20:30:44 +0000

I know that people hate to/are unable to watch videos, but these are mostly for me.

Our poor, sweet German intern finds himself a Lucky Cheng’s drag show participant (“Ms. Tess Tickles”) during our company’s monthly dinner club. It’s long, but you guys, he dances.

Even when we’re on vacation, Kamran pays absolutely no attention to me. (This one couldn’t fit my “creepy boyfriend obsession” tag any better.)

My friend Sylvan tries to scare me my first time eating jellyfish.

Aaron visits from Australia and boldly sings Backstreet Boys at karaoke. When I ask if I can use the video on my blog, he says he sounds “like a really creepy old country/western singer” and then adds, “Of course you can use it.”

Refuse, Facial Hair, and Shameless Flattery

plumpdumpling — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:15:02 +0000

I realize I didn’t say goodbye to you guys, but I’m sure it wasn’t hard for you to figure out that I left on the 22nd of December for Christmas in Ohio and returned to NYC this past weekend to lots of this:

Yeah, that’s trash covered in snow. But they’re recyclables! So that makes it okay.

But also a boyfriend who’d hottly grown out his beard because he’s out out of school and off of work for the next two months to study for the Bar Exam:

And a few lingering Christmas trees not-hidden behind frosted glass:

Now I need to go get caught up on your lives. Did Bachelor Girl give an in-depth account of the events leading up to her notorious Christmas card? Did Serial and Kinard become BFFs behind my back? Is Cristy a medical transcriptioner yet? Did the Super Bowl happen, and was Bluz there to wreak havoc? Has Jessica had her baby yet (I think she has, like, 12 weeks to go, but WHO KNOWS)? And what about Tessa and Julie and Kim and . . .

Happy Anniversary! (12)
My Doctor Don’t Know CPR, but He Knows How to Treat Me Right (Eventually) (4)
Why Life is So Great Right Now (5)
Haters Keep Hatin’ (5)
Another Birfday (13)
Scammed! (14)
Don’t worry. The tights are only for Sonya. (14)
Do You See? (10)
Easter Candy Memories (15)
And I’ll Never Get Christmas Presents Again (8)

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