My dad, always a little too quick to torture my sister and me when we were kids, probably invented Pinch Day one year when he realized he’d spoiled us with too many gifts yet again. It’s the day after your birthday, the day when everyone can make up for how nicely they treated you the day before by pinching the crap out of you.
Similarly always a little too quick to torture, I’m sure I introduced my best friend, Tracey, to Pinch Day quite soon after we became inseparable in 7th grade. And since she’s the perfect best friend, she had these flowers sent to me at work yesterday:
with this note:
How personal and sweet, right?
My roommate/landlord/co-worker, Jack, recently wrote me this little questionnaire while I was on the phone with Tracey one day:
And it’s true–TV, movies, and leading insanely interesting lives does fuel our conversations. But just plain loving each other for almost 30 years doesn’t hurt anything. Thanks for making my Pinch Day special, Tracey!
This weekend is my birthday. I usually throw myself an elaborate party just so my friends will be forced to dance, but this year, Kamran and I are just planning a nice, quiet lunch at Per Se. And by “nice, quiet lunch”, I mean the extended tasting menu. It will hopefully include:
• so much caviar and roe that I’ll spawn baby fishes in my stomach and pee out a hatchery later in my toilet
• truffles equal in value to the GDP of some of the wealthier small African countries
• enough drink pairings to put me to sleep so that I wake up just in time to have fully digested the meal and can down a dozen doughnuts
• a table overlooking Central Park, because if they seat me away from the windows, so help me god, I will downgrade their donuts4dinner.com rating to a 4.5 SO FAST they won’t even have time to ply me with take-home giftbags full of notepads and baked goods
Just kidding.
But it’s going to be awesome.
I’ve also requested that Kamran re-create the chocolate room from my very favourite movie of all time, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, so that I can bite the ears off gummy bears, drink myself sick on fat-boy-laden chocolate milk, and lick some cocaine paste off the tops of mushrooms. That’s what that was, right?
He claims that it ain’t gonna happen, but I’m pretty sure this is me in about 24 hours:
The only sad part about Steve Jobs being dead is that now I’ll never get to tell him personally how awful the iPod earbuds are.
Seriously, is there anyone out there who regularly uses his or her iPod or iPhone and hasn’t bought separate in-ear earbuds for it? And if you haven’t, is it only because you’re cheap and don’t believe that you should have to purchase new ones when you already paid for the sucky ones that come with every Apple purchase?
Kamran bought me some of the in-ear ones a couple of years ago, and the moment I put them in, I was like, “HOW HAVE I SPENT THE LAST THREE YEARS IN MISERY WHEN THESE EXIST?” Because the Apple earbuds are miserable. When my earbuds from Kamran started only half-functioning last week, I pulled the crappy Apple ones out of my old Nano box–I had clearly hung onto them because I anticipated wanting to punish myself for something later in life (maybe this post?)–and was immediately reminded that they almost seem engineered to suck.
Not only are they way too huge for my delicate, feminine ears, but because they don’t actually fill my ear canal, I now have to actually, like, hear children talking about the nonsense they always do to their parents on the bus. I had to listen to a kid complaining about wanting her hair brushed for TEN ENTIRE MINUTES the other day. Why are you not brushing your kid’s hair, mothers? And why are you letting them audibly complain about it during my morning rush hour commute? AND WHY DID YOU THINK THE WORLD NEEDED YOUR SPAWN IN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Anyway.
Apple earbuds are the very worst, and here are ten much better alternatives I found in five minutes of Googling:
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
