My favourite photo from Cape Cod:
Of course it’s of myself, right?
Category Archives: narcissism
Someone Once Told Me That Flies Poop Every Time They Land on Something
Filed under just pictures, narcissism, travels
Tagged as cape cod, just pictures, narcissism, travels
Tagged as cape cod, just pictures, narcissism, travels
I Have a New Camera! And Apparently I’m Now a Nikon Person.
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.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly, Incredibly Close
Filed under living in new york is neat, narcissism, readin' and writin', stuff i like, there's a difference between films and movies
Tagged as living in new york is neat, narcissism, readin' and writin', stuff i like, there's a difference between films and movies
Tagged as living in new york is neat, narcissism, readin' and writin', stuff i like, there's a difference between films and movies
I got to Kamran’s apartment after work yesterday to find these signs taped in front of his building:
I know it really steps on a lot of people’s toes to say things like this, but I really feel like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close means more to me than it does to anyone else.
Okay, maybe it means more to one other person. And maybe it means just as much to you. But it means a lot–a lot–to me.
I read it just after I started working at Barnes & Noble in December of 2005. I had lived here for just over five months and was, as I’ve previously embarrassingly admitted–crying all over the damned city. And of course the book is about walking all over the damned city. I missed my dead mom, and Oscar was trying to find a piece of his dead dad. I knew I was being manipulated by cutesy phrases like heavy boots, but I felt like my own boots were dragging me into the concrete, so I didn’t care.
My then-boyfriend kept asking me why I was reading this book that would make me cry two minutes after I sat down with it, but it was too beautiful to put aside. Ability to produce continual, pathetic tears or not, a well-written book still eases my mind. I haven’t been able to touch it since, and my copy sits on my bookshelf still tabbed with sticky notes on every other page to mark my favourite spots. And I’ll never forget the way the pages leading up to the end just fly by, building up to the climax so much that I felt like I could actually hear a trumpet fanfare in my head. Apparently this is something that happens to me with books I really, really love, because I remember it with my very favourite book, Dandelion Wine, and one of my other Top Fives, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
So it seems really meaningful somehow that the movie version of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is taping right outside of Kamran’s apartment tomorrow. I feel like I should take off work to watch. I feel like I should have desperately tried to become an extra. I feel like I should rush the set and try to talk about the book with Tom Hanks.
But I doubt it means as much to him as it does to me.
In your FACE, Hanks.
That’ll Teach Me
I’m walking toward Kamran’s apartment and see a man just ahead of me stepping out of his little red sports car. He’s a little too short and squat, patterned scarf tied cunningly at his neck, expensive herringbone coat flapping open, pointed nose, grey hair curling away from his face. He aims his key fob at the car, and the headlights flash to draw attention to themselves.
I decide specifically to ignore him as I pass, even though I know a man with a car like that isn’t interested in curly-haired nerds in their late 20s, anyway. He stares into the window of the store on the corner, and just as I’m steps away, he turns and says, “Hello.” I stop pretending to stare at something off to the right and find he’s smiling. I say too breathlessly, “Hi,” and feel strangely good.
Inside the building, I’m walking to the elevators, and two of the maintenance men are parting ways. One of them looks at me, and I smile. He looks away. Then he looks back again and smiles. Then he waves. I’m friendly with all of the doormen, porters, and maintenance crew in the building, but I’m a little surrprised by the wave.
Still, feeling extra-friendly after my little sports car encounter outside, I beam wildly at him in return. And then he looks past me and says to the old lady at my heels, “Hello! Hope you’re feeling better.”
Bah.
So Lonely Even My Hair is Depressed
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, living in new york is neat, narcissism
Tagged as creepy boyfriend obsession, living in new york is neat, macaron day 2011, narcissism
Tagged as creepy boyfriend obsession, living in new york is neat, macaron day 2011, narcissism
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.
