Tag Archives: all of my friends are prettier than i am

Blogfriends in The ‘Burgh

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I have to admit that the first time I read Cassie‘s blog, I didn’t know quite what to think. Well, actually, I did know quite what to think, and what I thought was that she was some mostly-unemployed teen mom who wasn’t sure who her dad is. I wasn’t totally unjustified:

1) She and her husband decided to start having kids right away, so even though they look really young, they’re well out of the age range where old ladies might faint and townsfolk might try to stone Cassie when she runs by with her triple-wide jogging stroller.

2) She only works one day a week because she spends the rest of her time raising her beautiful children to not judge others by the first page of posts on their blogs.

3) Her URL may include the words “whosmydaddy”, but that’s just because she has several father figures. Not because her mom was a lady of the night with an undetermined number of partners.

Anyway. After months of being like, “Who do all of my other blogfriends like Cassie so much?”, I checked her out again and realized that for some reason, I’m really interested in this person who blogs about children, cooking, and exercise.

I know. I have no idea why, either.

So while I was in Ohio for two weeks, Cassie and I made a plan to somehow coerce my best friend, Tracey, to drive me the three hours to Pittsburgh so the three of us could, you know, stuff our faces, taunt some geese, and generally align our menstrual cycles, as women are wont to do.

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

We met as Cassie’s house just outside of the city and said a quick hello to the kids before thrusting them at her wonderful husband, Matt, and driving downtown to enjoy the Christmas decorations

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

and dinosaur decorations,

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

to eat some saucy Mexican food at Las Velas,

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

and to walk along the shore of the Allegheny. Or the Monongahela. I’m not sure.

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

As we were coming up from the riverfront, Cassie warned us to watch our step and to not excite the geese, who frequently attack her with their great, stabby beaks while she’s out running. She began quietly herding them using her best mama duck walk,

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

but of course Tracey couldn’t help but antagonize them:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

Cassie drove us in her fancy rich people SUV to the neighborhood of Mount Washington, which is perched high on a cliff that overlooks the entire city and takes advantage of it with these balconies that hang out over the edge:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

It was a cloudy, rainy, gross day, but the view was nonetheless amazing and had us regretting that Columbus and NYC are both totally flat:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie
view larger

I tried to take some glamour shots of Cassie and pretty much failed,

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

but I was a teeny bit more successful with Tracey, probably because she’s more used to my shenanigans. And is also kind of slutty. (Just kidding! She’s totally respectable!)

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

We took in all of the sights:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

and then Cassie drove us from neighborhood to neighborhood, pointing out all of Pittsburgh’s landmarks, until we go to the most important one of all, Oakmont Bakery:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

This place was extensive. Just cases and cases of pies, donuts, truffles, macarons, cupcakes, chocolate-dipped everything, cake pops, cinnamon buns–you name it. And all of it was astoundingly cheap. When the cashier charged me less than $6 for my mini peanut butter pie, lemon French macaron, buckeye, and black and white cookie (covered with icing on both sides!), I told her she must have mischarged me. But no.

Our diabetes satiated, we drove back to Cassie’s house to let the kids entertain us for a couple of hours. I find children really intimidating and, you know, generally annoying, but hers are both friendly and angelic, quick to smile for the camera and slow to pee on the carpet.

Claire tried on all of her costumes for us:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

Luca played with everything and everyone in the house:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

and Mae proved that no picture can adequately capture her cuteness (but I sure tried):

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

They were the

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

most adorable

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

family ever:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

Even while this was happening:

Pittsburgh with Tracey and Cassie

Cassie did such a great job of tour guiding us that I left feeling like Pittsburgh is place not just for headsick sports fans but for real people who like amazing views, dirt roads just miles from downtown, and lots and lots of baked goods.

Thanks for the awesome time, Cassie! And get ready for our next visit, because I accidentally threw out my macaron and peanut butter pie on the way home with our Burger King trash and the wrapper for the cookie dough we ate that morning on the way to see you (what?), and you know that will not stand.

A Spontaneous Christmas Photoshoot

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, just pictures
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While I was at home in Ohio, my best friend, Tracey, wanted me to take pictures of her and her husband, Dan, with their Christmas tree. Well, he was wearing his Duder shirt,

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

and they found it pretty awkward that I was like, “Just be natural! Don’t pose!”,

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

and the cats wouldn’t cooperate,

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

and the only light we had was from their ceiling fixture,

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

and they kind of just wanted to fight

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

and torture one another

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

and eat each other’s heads,

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

but other than that, I think it went pretty well!

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

Dan and Tracey at Christmas

Aren’t they adorable?

It was so fun to do this spontaneously, but next time, I want to have proper lighting and to make them dress up in matching crushed velvet Christmas outfits and to have tranquilizers ready for the cats.

Happy Bigtime Birthday, Tracey!

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, holidays don't suck for me, just pictures, no i really do love ohio, par-tay
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I know presents are the reason for the season and all, but I was really back home in Ohio for the past two and a half weeks to celebrate my best friend, Tracey‘s, 30th birthday. While I celebrated my last birthday quietly and with fingers crossed that no one would remember it was my 30th, Tracey celebrated hers with karaoke, gigantic 3-0 candles, and Justin Bieber cupcakes all around:

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Tracey pretending that she’s not really into this whole party thing.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Guess who ate these in abundance and wore the Bieber rings without irony. This guy!

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
This is a hilarious picture until you remember that the noisemakers Tracey bought actually turned out not to make noise.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Only a party at Tracey’s house would include a bowl of just pepperoni.

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Tracey totally made this for her husband’s last birthday and not for herself. Just so you know.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Tracey’s husband, Dan, presents Tracey with her cupcakes while Erin serenades her.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Graham is mesmerized by the non-noisemaking noisemakers.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Happy 30th birthday, my best best friend!

You are my life partner, my lab partner, my partner in crime, the wind beneath my wings, my baby bumblebee, the demon seed and the factor!

And I love you.

The Time I Had a Couple of Freaks from the Internet Come Stay with Me

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, living in new york is neat, par-tay
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My longtime blogfriend Ellie found me because my old LiveJournal icon was a still from the movie Grey Gardens. My longtime blogfriend Kinard found me because we both had an unnatural-yet-totally-not-fangirl-ish love of the band Jump, Little Children, and she sat next to me at a concert without introducing herself. They found each other when Ellie moved from Oregon to South Carolina, and I told her to look Kinard up. They became fast friends and left me in the dust.

Until Ellie’s birthday approached, and they decided that the perfect way to celebrate would be to spend a few nights not doing touristy things in NYC with me. We planned extensively and then totally changed our plans. We watched the TKTS discount ticket listings and tried to convince Kinard she didn’t really want to see Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone on Broadway. I woke up the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Ohio and clicked repeatedly and extensively on the Momofuku Ko reservations website until I secured us a dinner spot after mentioning to Ellie and Kinard that it’s the most interesting restaurant in NYC and finding out that they knew of it and wanted to go but never thought we’d be able to get in. We tried to figure out a way to eat both truffles and caviar while they were here. I didn’t tell them our living room still doesn’t have blinds after a year and that they’d be sleeping in full view of our nosy neighbors.

My roommate/landlord/co-worker seemed totally fine with their visit until he realized halfway through our workday on Friday that:

1) I had never actually met either of them, and
2) they were alone in his condo.

But they didn’t steal anything that we know of (not that my candy wrapper clutch is interesting to anyone but me), and I met them and my other blogfriend-turned-real-life-friend Kim at Tocqueville for dinner. It’s one of my favourite restaurants ever, despite what our chef at Momofuku Ko said about it being stodgy. HE HAS NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN THERE. HE DOESN’T KNOW.

We ate hearty squash soups and roasted Brussels sprouts over succulent chicken breasts and truffled grits with dunky eggs and were plied with bowls and bowls of ice creams and sorbets on the house until 7:59 p.m., at which time we decided it was time to leave for our 8 p.m. Broadway show, which was Seminar starring Alan Rickman of Harry Potter and Love Actually fame. It was basically what I wanted every one of my college writing seminars to be and made me nostalgic for a time when people thought I had potential and I wrote on actual paper.

Ellie and Kinard's Visit
via seminaronbroadway.com

Afterward, we unintentionally walked out into Times Square, and while Kinard and Ellie acted like they didn’t care about it, I definitely caught them doing this:

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

And also this:

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

And this:

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

Even Kurmudgeon Kim was having a good time:

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

But then Pedophile Mickey Mouse showed up

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

and we had to go.

The next day, we rode the train into Madison Square Park

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

and ate sloppy Shake Shack burgers

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

and cheese fries with little wooden forks:

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

An evil squirrel came within inches of Kinard’s candy cane/hot fudge/marshmallow shake

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

but there wasn’t a chance that thing was wrestling a bite away from a girl enjoying her dessert this much:

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

Ellie, meanwhile, was trying to play it cool and succeeding wildly:

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

We spent the afternoon at MoMA, which I’ll have to recap in a post of its own, and then stopped at a nearby coffee shop to refuel for that evening’s big dinner at Ko. There was nowhere to sit in the coffee shop, so I had the brilliant idea of leading us down a few more blocks to Rockefeller Center, where there are sprawling plazas full of unoccupied benches.

EXCEPT DURING CHRISTMASTIME, OF COURSE. The streets were brimming with families leaving the Rockettes show at Radio City Music Hall. There were barricades at every corner meant to corral traffic that only succeeded in making the sidewalks unpassable. We finally did make it to 30 Rock, only to discover that the “sprawling plaza” was packed with strollers and women yelling, “Someone’s going to get HURT!” It was, to say the least, a mistake.

So we took the train down to the East Village, made a couple of laps from 1st Avenue to 2nd Avenue and back again until it was time to meet Kamran at Momofuku Ko for the girls’ first Michelin-starred-restaurant experience. Dinner was phenomenal: cheese-flavored broth with bone marrow over brioche, snail and chicken sausage on top of hand-torn pasta, the famous frozen shaved foie gras over fresh lychee and Riesling gelee, just to name a few. Plus that first taste of caviar Ellie was looking for, served in a heap next to a smoked egg. Ellie and Kinard were pros; they ate everything without question and said that some things they hadn’t liked so much in the past were made to taste delicious at Ko.

Kamran said I was being a snobby show-off at dinner, and it’s true that I complained to our James-Franco-look-alike chef that when we were in two weeks prior, the guys beside us had an embarrassing lack of knowledge about food, and yes, even James Franco told me to stop being a snob, but he hadn’t even eaten at Tocqueville, so I think my snobbery is deserved. No? Really? Okay, fine. Ellie and Kinard took it in stride, though, because I imagine they expected me to be a total braggart, anyway.

BFFs!

We spent the rest of the night visiting dive bars and pretending like we’re the kinds of girls who do shots. There was, for some reason, a surprising lack of people out anywhere, so I think NYC came off as this nice, serene place where you can just walk into a bar and actually get a seat and/or service from a bartender. Must have been the cold.

The next day, we went to Artichoke for pizza, because:

1) it is delicious.
2) it’s unlike any other NYC pizza.
3) normal NYC pizza is bland and dumb.
4) some people call it the best pizza in NYC (maybe me, too).
4) I wanted them to have an awesome insider pizza-eating experience.

So of course they were naturally like, “This pizza is okay, but we were really looking forward to getting the bland and dumb pizza Ellie’s boss recommended.” And then I died.

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

Ellie and Kinard's Visit

Look at that! So cheesy and creamy and thick-crusted! How could they not love it?!

But we followed it up with karaoke, which they were awesome at despite Ellie’s poor choice of Neil Diamond and my even poorer choice of Cat Stevens, and fries from Pommes Frites in the courtyard of St. Mark’s Church and a quarter-ton of frozen yogurt topped with mochi cubes and peanut butter cups and gummy bears from 16 Handles.

And then instead of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge like we had planned, we went back to my apartment and watched Jackass 3 and “The Virgin Diaries“. Like not-tourists.

And then they left the next day without having seen any New York friends other than me. I win I win I win!

Happy birthday, Ellie, and happy four-days-since-meeting-me anniversary, Kinard!

The Practice Thanksgiving

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, holidays don't suck for me, living in new york is neat, par-tay, super furry animals
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One of the things about living in NYC that I’ve found hardest to adjust to is not hanging out at people’s apartments. We all either live in places too small to hold more than two people at a time or places too out of the way for anyone to want to travel to. If it’s not one, it’s the other.

But this year, my friend Ash was determined to have a practice Thanksgiving at her apartment and went all-out with impressive invitations, a massive menu, and promises that she would hunt us down and stuff us if we didn’t make it worth her while to take up her entire refrigerator with a brining turkey for two days. So we took cabs or spent three hours navigating weekend subway construction to make it to her and her husband, Michael’s, Queens apartment last Saturday night for a pre-Thanksgiving feast our families will have a hard time topping tomorrow.

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

Michael and Ash got rid of about half of the furniture in their place to make room for this new dining table they bought especially for the occasion. Well worth it, I say.

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

Ash carved a turkey for the first time and looked smokin’ doing it.

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

The turkey was about the moistest meat I’ve ever had in my life. The stuffing was fruity, the sweet potatoes spicy, the twice-baked potatoes bacony, the cauliflower casserole creamy, the green beans smoky, the apple pie belly-warming, the lemon cheesecake rich.

There was gravy, too, but I never eat gravy. Am I the only one who thinks it’s tooooooootally weird stuff?

Michael was in high spirits,

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

Ash was being Betty Sue Homemaker,

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

Jack was his usual pleasant self,

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

Jeff was complaining that the ice cream was regular vanilla and not vanilla bean,

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

Gizmo was pretending to innocently play with a ball under the table while secretly waiting for dropped turkey,

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

and Penny, the cat we found in the Hamptons, was acting like all of us would be about two minutes after dinner:

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's

Success!

Pre-Thanksgiving at Ash and Michael's