Author Archives: plumpdumpling

A Pathetic Attempt to Regain Your Love After a Week of Absence

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 7, 2011 – 3:00 pm
Filed under stuff i like
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Between recovering from the Hamptons and getting ready to leave for Ohio tomorrow night, I don’t know if I’m going to have time to blog. Ever again.

Or at least this week.

Instead, here’s a set of wildly off-kilter skits and songs by the I’m-not-sure-if-he’s-actually-retarded-or-not YouTube sensation Julian Smith, whom my friend Chantee introduced us to one night in the Hamptons while we were busy holing up indoors, trying not to get Long-Island-serial-killed:

These are listed in order of awesomeness. So don’t skip around, ya jerk.

Back to the Hamptons

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 2, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york is neat, travels
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So, I’ve been sick since Friday. I left work after lunch that day and haven’t been back since, but I still managed to infect at least two co-workers in my wake.

And now today, twelve of us are going back to the house we rented in the Hamptons last year so I can infect even more of them! Despite having fallen on my head while Rollerblading last year, crying for five hours straight, and getting so sunburned I still have tiger stripes on my back a year later, I am so excited for this trip. We’re right on the bay, right across the street from the ocean, and right next to some people who stare every time a non-white friend shows up.

There’s literally nothing to do but sit on the deck with our feet in the pool or sit on the beach with our winterpale shoulders collecting sun. But not too much sun.

Check out the rest of last year’s photos here!

I Have a New Camera! And Apparently I’m Now a Nikon Person.

Posted by plumpdumpling on May 26, 2011 – 12:05 pm
Filed under narcissism, stuff i like
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Before I bought my Canon S90 a year and a half ago, I thought long and hard about getting a DSLR. On one hand, I knew that a compact camera, all-manual functions and 3200 ISO availability or not, simply wasn’t going to take the best-quality photos because of its tiny lens. But on the other hand, I knew I wasn’t going to lug around four pounds of camera every day, and not having a camera with me at all times is not an option.

So I bought the S90 and have loved every moment with it; it’s forever impressing me with pictures like this and this. But no matter what photographers tell me, I still think owning a really great camera is half the battle, so I wrote $900 into my budget this year for a DSLR and figured I’d be able to afford it after Christmas if I didn’t blow my wad on more cat butt magnets for my cousin.

But then Kamran offered to buy one for me right away! My attachment to my Canon made me think that I was a Canon person, despite having loved a Sony before that and an HP of all things before that, so I almost immediately settled on the Canon EOS Rebel T3i. I read all about the differences between the T2i and T3i, looked at sample pictures from the Canon line, thought about the lenses I’d put on my birthday list this year, and pictured myself having a whole family full of expensiver and expensiver Canon cameras.

But then, on a total whim, I happened to find Snapsort, a site that compares cameras side-by-side. And it turns out that almost everything about the Nikon D5100 beat the Canon. And then I found a site that showed the same scene shot by the two different cameras, and I just plain liked the way the Nikon photos looked more: the colors were more realistic, and everything was just a little more crisp. Every review I read said that the biggest part of being a Canon or a Nikon person was just liking the way one or the other felt in your hands, but since I like the way all cameras feel, I just went for it and asked Kamran to get me the glorious Nikon D5100.

And I love it! I haven’t, you know, taken any actual photos with it yet, but it feels so fine in my hands, like it was molded just for them. Now if only I can get over the fact that Ashton Kutcher is the Nikon spokeman.

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

Posted by plumpdumpling on May 25, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat
Tagged as , , ,

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:

More Food After Momofuku Ko

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.

More Food After Momofuku Ko

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.

Grappling for the Single Seat

Posted by plumpdumpling on May 19, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as ,

Earlier this week, I told you about the advantages of the single seat behind the driver on the MTA’s fleet of new buses. Now let me tell you what happens when everyone realizes those advantages.

For a while, I really thought I was the only one who even noticed the seat. Most people board the bus through the middle or rear door–to avoid having to say hello to the driver, I assume–so it makes sense that they wouldn’t even be aware of the hidden seat all the way in the front of the bus. Obviously I like sitting there, but I’m also young and healthy and svelte enough to be able to fit comfortably in the too-small seats the rest of the bus boasts, so I tend to leave it for someone who could use the extra room, storage space, and privacy. (That may change as the summer months approach and body odor season is upon us, but as a daily-showerer and deodorant-wearer, my sense of entitlement will be deserved.)

So the other day, I was standing at the bus stop near the marker sign where the driver usually halts. I was playing it cool, standing a couple of feet back from the edge of the sidewalk so I didn’t look too eager, but I had an armful of bags with me that day and secretly planned to nab the single seat. Only when the bus began to pull up, this wild-looking woman came from behind me, where she’d been casually sitting on a bench, hiding her ninja-like seat-stealing skills.

Read about the fight! that ensued here.