Author Archives: plumpdumpling

NYC is Toooootally Just Like L.A.

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 20, 2010 – 3:01 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, travels
Tagged as ,

I remember visiting my then-boyfriend while he was in grad school at NYU in NYC before I actually moved here. We were on our way to Panna 2–which is easily the best Indian restaurant in the East Village, both for its suuuuuuper cheap food and its crazy photogenic ambiance–when I saw this dog on the sidewalk. Its owners were dining at another Curry Row establishment and had tied it to the leg of one of their chairs so he could stand and watch them eat.

Coming from Ohio, I thought this was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen next to the butter cow at the state fair.

Last week in Santa Monica, we saw this dog doing the same thing:

Only this dog was TEN TIMES BIGGER THAN ANY DOG THAT HAS EVER LIVED IN NYC. Because L.A. apartments are ten times bigger than NYC apartments. And that is the only difference between the two cities.

Haha, just kidding.

Kamran and I were hanging out with his friends Gary and Diana one night and were talking about where we’re going to live when we inevitably move to the Southland, because while I used to put up a fight when Kamran talked about reuniting with his parents someday, I now understand that IT IS HEAVEN OUT THERE and that having lived in the two best cities in the U.S. would make me the best person in the U.S. Right?

We checked Zillow just for an idea of how much a 2-bedroom in Irvine would cost and found that for what the two of us are paying now, we could easily get 3 bedrooms in new builds with gyms and pools and parking.

I asked Diana if apartments in L.A. include dishwashers or washers and dryers, and she said, “You can’t find an apartment here that doesn’t have appliances.”

I die.

Run and Tell THAT, Homeboy

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 16, 2010 – 12:30 pm
Filed under music is my boyfriend, stuff i like
Tagged as ,

The day before I left for vacation, my co-worker Steve came to my desk and said, “Type ghetto bed intruder into YouTube.” Obviously you can’t go wrong searching for videos with those keywords, so I wasn’t surprised to laugh out loud while watching this interview (which I’m sure you all saw weeks ago, because I’m 100 years behind everyone else when it comes to the Internet):

Then Steve showed me the Auto-Tuned remix of the footage, which was so ingenious I found myself basically putting it on repeat:

I made Kamran pause his 17th viewing of an “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” episode that night so he could watch the videos, and even though he was skeptical at first, because I never find the right things funny, he actually laughed out loud, too. And we sang bits of the song to each other over the next couple of hours as we did laundry and packed for California, but I kind of figured that was it.

It happened, though, that the song would become the focal point of our entire 10-day trip. We were whispering quotes from it on the plane. We were watching it on Kamran’s iPod under the table while out for lunch with his parents. We were pretending to show it to his friends just to have an excuse to watch it again ourselves. One night, I woke up to it and thought I was going crazy until I realized Kamran was listening to it in the bathroom while pooing. And last night, a full 11 days since I first saw the thing, I couldn’t sleep because “hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband, ’cause they’re rapin’ everybody out here” kept running through my head.

I’m Going to California, and I May Not Come Back If the Grilled Cheese Truck is Good Enough

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 5, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, travels
Tagged as ,

I sing Phantom Planet’s “California” nearly every time my friends and I do karaoke. I’ve loved the song since 2002, long before it was the theme song to a stupid teen drama, long before teen dramas about California were a thing, and long before I met Kamran.

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be sharing a snackbox with him on our way to Orange County for 10 days of:

• In-N-Out burgers

• quality time with his family, which hopefully will include plenty of watching “Bonanza” and eating Persian dishes full of pomegranate and blackened pickled vegetables

• DISNEYLAND! with his friends Gary and Diana (but not their kids mwahahahaha)

• his friend Diana’s wedding, which I assume will not involve homemade moonshine, UNLIKE OTHER WEDDINGS I HAVE RECENTLY ATTENDED (god bless you, Ohio)

• trying out my Farsi on his parents (so far, I can say poop, pee, hungry, and thirsty, so obviously they will be impressed)

• hot dogs from Pink’s, where the line is apparently as long as it is here for Shake Shack

• Alberto’s carne asada burritos

• touring the San Juan Capistrano Mission (and reenacting scenes from The Birds using the Barbie my best friend bought for me)

• anything from Del Taco (because, come on, it translates to of the taco)

• a day-long tour of L.A. that includes Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, the Santa Monica pier, maybe not going to the Chinese Theatre unless someone tells us we have to, and a very adult dinner with his uncle that will include quiet conversation

• generally being in Laguna and acting like a semi-retarded teenager

Obviously I’ll be singing “California” while we do every single one of these things, too. Look forward to the videos.

Why Life is So Great Right Now

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 30, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, everyone's married but katie, living in new york sucks so hard, no i really do love ohio
Tagged as , , , ,

1) Last weekend, I was out all afternoon on the hottest day of the year, and Kamran texted me at one point to say that he thought the air conditioner had stopped working. I arrived at his apartment later with a couple of iced coffees just to make fun of him and his overactive imagination, but no, there was definitely warm air coming out of his vent. We spent the remainder of the night sitting perfectly still on the couch, afraid that moving would allow the sweat rivers dammed in our hair to unleash on our foreheads. It. Was. Miserable.

Way wore than the night we lost power in my apartment, because Kamran lives in a studio with windows on only one side of the room, so there’s no way to create a cross breeze unless you open the door. And I wouldn’t have been entirely opposed to propping the door if New Yorkers weren’t so infamously curious about other people’s habitats; you know every single person who walked by would’ve stopped dead to watch us gnawing on ice as we watched Manhunter.

I texted my best friend, Tracey, about it, and she suggested I fly to Ohio and enjoy her central air. I also considered going back to my own apartment, figuring that a single wall unit for all 900 square feet was better than nothing, but I didn’t want to leave Kamran alone with his take-home law school exams. We went to bed around midnight, but Kamran woke up at 2 a.m. feeling like he was having trouble breathing and thinking we’d need to go to a hotel, which made me EXCITED. But then he remembered a box fan hidden in the back of one of his closets and aimed it right at us so we could at least not die during the night.

Two days later–after his exams were all finished, of course–his landlord graciously had a guy come and install a brand new unit with a timer and remote control so we never have to leave the couch again.

2) You may think of me as some huge important chef thanks to my starring role in Julie & Julia and my wildly popular food blog, but the truth is that about the most I do is heat up some hotdogs for breakfast in Kamran’s convection oven. But his oven went out in March, and we kind of didn’t bother to do anything about it, which means I’ve been heating up my hotdogs in skillets.

Skillets.

But early this week, when the new air conditioner went in, the landlord also sent him a new microwave. A huge one, with a light underneath to illuminate the stovetop, and a vent on top to keep the apartment from smelling like pigparts.

3) Last night, I met Kamran to go shopping for toilet paper (romantic!), and as we were leaving Duane Reade (a pharmacy that got its start in NYC at the corner of Duane Street and Reade Street–clever!), I realized that it was my chance to buy my favourite generic lipgloss, which I’ve been without for several months now but have been too lazy to walk an extra block to the Duane Reade for because the CVS near his house is so much nicer. I forget sometimes that the littlest things can make such a huge difference to my happiness.

4) I’m in Ohio for the weekend for my stepsister’s wedding! This means I’m the only one of the five of us kids who isn’t married. Last time I was home, I told my grandmother that Kamran and I are going to California to visit his parents early next month, and she said, “Oooooh, are you going to pin him down while you’re there?” And I said, “Um, haven’t I done that already? We’ve been together almost four years now. The only thing we haven’t done is move in together.” She didn’t like that.


And you?

The New Kindle is Coming!, and the Best Cover for Kindle 2

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 29, 2010 – 4:30 pm
Filed under readin' and writin', stuff i like
Tagged as ,

My friend Jeff pointed me to Engadget’s article on the new Kindle today, and it got me thinking about how my Kindle has been so life-changing and will only be more life-changing for other people now that it’s available in different colors, has an even faster refresh rate, and is selling for $139.

Have you looked at my Shelfari shelf recently? It’s exploding. Now that I’m never without a book, I’m flying through them like never before. Even crappy books like the Sarah Silverman one. Even books I thought would be crappy but turned out to be engrossing, like Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures. If I get 20 pages into a book and don’t care about it yet, I don’t have to wait until I’m home or at the library to get something else; I just click over to my home screen and choose another one. There’s literally nothing I miss about real books.

I assume you’ll all run out and buy the new version when it’s released on August 27th, but in case you decide to buy the Kindle 2 on eBay for even cheaper, let me recommend the cover that I have. I shopped around for days and finally decided on the TrendyDigital MaxGuard Leather Cover in purple. It’s so sleek and feels so good in my hands with its leather shell and soft suede-like interior. The Kindle slides into its pocket and fits so snugly that it doesn’t need any elastic bands or metal prongs to hold it in. The magnetic closure makes this great little snapping sound when you flip it closed that sounds so smart I can’t help but feel as if everyone on the train has heard it and is envious of me.

I’ll tell you who I’m envious of, though: these people who carry their Kindles without any case at all. I see them on the train with their 1/3rd-inch-thick readers, and I think, How rich must you be to not care about scratching that thing up? I’ll bet they’re all reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, too.

(Okay, fine, I read it and didn’t hate it.)