Tag Archives: creepy boyfriend obsession

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: Southern Roosevelt Island

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Between the East coast of Manhattan and the West coast of Queens is Roosevelt Island, a strip of land two miles long and 800 feet wide. You can walk from one side of it to the other in literally five minutes. It’s considered part of Manhattan, so the rents are high despite there being exactly one subway stop on the island and no actual way to get there from Manhattan by car. But the way you do get there is glorious. Before you actually get there, though–at least if you’re Kamran and me–you have to make a couple of stops.

Roosevelt Island Walk

We started at Kamran’s neighborhood CoCo for bubble teas and took them to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, which is clearly the most rolls-off-the-tongue park in NYC. Birds cooed on the arches above us, the United Nations building beckoned from across the street, and a heavily Photoshopped sky loomed darkly over Jesus.

Roosevelt Island Walk

Roosevelt Island Walk

Roosevelt Island Walk

We walked along the river in the park below Beekman Place and stared across the East River to Roosevelt Island, which has this creepy old shell of a building on one end that’s always lit up at night, making it even creepier:

Roosevelt Island Walk

On the way, we’d stopped at Choux Factory for cream puffs that aren’t nearly as huge and gushing as the ones at Schmidt’s in Ohio but come in more interesting flavors. I barely care about blueberries at all and nearly passed out from the deliciousness of this:

Roosevelt Island Walk

Kamran looks pretty pleased with his boring vanilla, too:

Roosevelt Island Walk

But then we spotted this on our way out of the park and threw them both up:

Roosevelt Island Walk

We walked up to 59th Street and watched the tram to Roosevelt Island come in:

Roosevelt Island Walk

Roosevelt Island Walk

And then we boarded it ourselves and took it across the river. I’ll never get over how it feels to hang so far up in the air, to see taxis look like matchbox cars, and to peek into the windows of twentieth floor apartments like that pervert Superman.

Roosevelt Island Walk

Roosevelt Island Walk
hanging in mid-air over the East River

Roosevelt Island Walk
the many apartment buildings of Roosevelt Island

Roosevelt Island Walk
a sign evidently left over from the days when Roosevelt Island was known as Welfare Island

Roosevelt Island Walk
the Queensboro Bridge, which passes over the island on its way from Manhattan to Queens

Roosevelt Island Walk
Kamran under the bridge with a Queens power plant in the background

Roosevelt Island Walk
seagulls over the Goldwater Hospital

Roosevelt Island Walk
Manhattan through the gates surrounding Southpoint Park

Roosevelt Island Walk
this was a really terrible picture, but then I made it look retro, so now it’s art

Roosevelt Island Walk
the Pepsi sign, one of my favourite parts of Queens, through the grass on Roosevelt Island

Roosevelt Island Walk
the tippy-top of the old Smallpox Hospital

This thing was built in 1856, lasted 100 years, and then fell into disrepair after it was abandoned. (Here‘s a picture of it from the 1870s that’s so romantic it makes me kind of want smallpox.) In 1976, it was designated a New York City Landmark and then . . . left to rot some more. The city is currently working to stabilize the building so that it can be open to the public when the new park on the very Southern tip of the island is finished. It’s lit up at night with green lights that make it look suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper haunted-housey from Manhattan, so it was awesome to finally see the thing up close and realize that it’s just as creepy as we thought.

Roosevelt Island Walk
Kamran, looking pretty wary of the ghosts

Roosevelt Island Walk
and then looking happy

Roosevelt Island Walk
and then looking like he really wishes I’d stop so we could eat the Milky Way we brought with us

After walking all over the Southern tip, which is really just a couple thousand feet long, we got back on the tram and rode into 59th Street again:

Roosevelt Island Walk

Roosevelt Island Walk
looking North up 1st Avenue

Roosevelt Island Walk
a, um, rather specialized store on 60th Street

Roosevelt Island Walk
Kamran looking sad, because Sprinkles was closed

Roosevelt Island Walk
purdy archytecture

Aaaaaaaaaaaand then we went home.

The End.

Still More About the California Trip We Took Seven Months Ago

Filed under boobies, creepy boyfriend obsession, just pictures, travels
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Southern California Trip

Remember how Kamran took me to visit his family in California last August and how I just barely blogged about it? Well, here’s the photodump from the trip that you haven’t been asking for:

Southern California Trip

We were mostly there for Kamran’s parents’ 40th anniversary, which was celebrated at Javier’s with grandchildren, steak, and my first Sprinkles cupcakes in the form of a cake that spelled out happy anniversary. I got the an:

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

We visited Kamran’s friend Mike, who has a pool in his backyard like everyone else in California,

Southern California Trip

made eyes at the googly-eyed flowers in Kamran’s parents’ backyard,

Southern California Trip

and ate In-N-Out the first chance we got:

Southern California Trip

(There’s nothing more pleasurable to me than sitting in a drive-thru in a car after almost seven years of not driving.)

Southern California Trip

We met Kamran’s uncle at the Santa Monica Seafood café for ceviche, crab cakes, ciopino, and fish and chips (yes, even I ordered and enjoyed seafood (and by “seafood”, I mean “the batter and tartar sauce that goes on it”)):

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

And then went next door to Huckleberry Cafe for some suuuuuuuuuuperfine sweets, including a trifle and a fig that we stole off the tree out back and washed off in the bathroom(!!):

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Kamran’s uncle took us to a house he and his partner have been designing to perfection for 10+ years now that had this view:

Southern California Trip

We drove to San Diego to Balboa Park, which contains the San Diego Zoo, The Museum of Man, the Fleet Science Center, the Air & Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, and a buuuuuuuuuunch more:

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

The architecture was amazing, and so was the weather. The entire time we were there, his parents didn’t need to turn on the air conditioning in their house. And this was August.

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

This is not a tiny fanny pack on Kamran’s hip but his camera case, so it’s fine:

Southern California Trip

At the Natural History Museum:

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Southern California Trip

Kamran’s first 3-D movie (he was only pretending to not be excited for the camera):

Southern California Trip

A huge, bazillion-year-old tree outside the museum:

Southern California Trip

On the way back to Laguna, we passed the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which look like two boobs rising from the beach, and which Kamran . . .

Southern California Trip

well . . .

I think this is a good place to end this.

Deep-Fried Everything

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Kamran and I went to the Orange County Fair this summer while visiting his parents. Not only did he win me an Angry Bird at the one and only game we attempted

OC Fair

but he also filled me full of things like deep-fried Kool-Aid and deep-fried chicken on a jelly donut.

I figure even those of you who actively hate my food blog might like that.

Happy Birthday, Kamran!

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You’re my honeybunch, sugarplum, pumpy-umpy-umpkin,
You’re my sweetiepie
You’re my cuppycake, gumdrop, snoogums-boogums,
You’re the apple of my eye

Five Years of Bliss in NYC

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Written in my old LiveJournal, from five years ago today:

I called him at 7:01 to let him know that I’d be a minute late. “Well, more like two minutes,” I said, since I was already at the one-minute mark. “I’m just waiting for you outside,” he said, and I crossed to the opposite side of the street so I could check him out from a distance when I got there. I’d seen a couple of pictures of him, but after my best friend, Tracey, had a horrible almost-blind-date experience where the guy looked great in his pictures and literally like a cartoon in person, I was skeptical. I’d told him in an e-mail earlier this week, “I’ll arrive in disguise to scope you out beforehand, so please plan to be there a few minutes early.” He’d written back, “Okay, fair enough. I have to warn you though, I will also be in disguise. Look for someone dressed as a goofy-looking persian guy in a ‘business casual’ ensemble with a briefcase,” and I’d replied, “I will likely be dressed as a mid-16th Century Scottish warrior and will spend the entirety of the meal playing renditions of Celine Dion ballads on my bagpipes. You should feel free to remove your costume, as I’m not sure I could stand to be seen with a goofy-looking persian guy.”

He wasn’t goofy-looking at all, though. He was born in Iran and lived there for a year, but he just looked like a regular, old white guy. Who happened to dress better than any regular, old white guy I’ve ever dated. He was wearing a brown sweater with a white collared shirt underneath and black pants with brown pinstripes and had-to-be-picked-out-by-an-ex-girlfriend black shoes, and I thought he was pretty much the most adorable human being ever. He stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Kamran,” and I said, “Handshakes are weird, and I feel like I know you already, anyway. Let’s hug.” He said, “We’ll talk about the possibility of a hug if this encounter goes well.” He was trying to joke about it. I said, “Encounter?!”, and he smiled as he opened the door to the restaurant for me.

It was a macaroni bar in the East Village called S’Mac that I’d chosen for us after a co-worker recommended it to me. While we looked at the menu, I asked, “Will you think me too rebellious if I put broccoli in mine?”, and he said, “That is pretty daring.” I asked what he was getting, and when he said he was thinking about the brie, I punched him in the arm and said, “I knew that’s what you were going to say!” He was a little hurt that I’d already pegged his entire personality in the first two minutes of our date.

The place was packed, so we went to the bar at the window and sat next to each other with our feet propped up on the windowsill. I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my hoodie, and I saw him look at my reflection in the glass in front of us. I asked him about his job, and he said he’s a patent advisor at a law firm that’s going to pay for him to go to law school, even though both of his degrees are in physics. He just moved here two months ago after finishing up his Masters at a school that he kept modestly referring to as a “college in New Jersey” until he slipped up once and said Princeton. Princeton! I hate capitalism, and I hate lawyers, but education still impresses me.

Without any broaching from me, he mentioned how much he wants to see The Science of Sleep, which led to me ranting about why I hate Woody Allen so much. We talked about old David Lynch films and how Zach Braff is so amateur and narcissistic and great. He asked me about the book I was carrying–the new Chuck Klosterman, naturally–which led to me ranting about why I hate On the Road so much. I told him I would’ve never agreed to go out with him had I known he liked Jack Kerouac, and he said, “How fortunate for me that I didn’t mention it in an attempt to impress you.”

He’d used the phrase hits the spot in an e-mail the day before, and I’d written, “I wonder where that comes from. That’s your research project for tomorrow.” When I asked him if he’d remembered, he reached in his pocket for a folded piece of paper, and I said incredulously, “NO!” He recited facts to me about the origin of the phrase and then handed me the paper, which had the Pepsi jingle that supposedly made it popular–and the parodies that followed–neatly typed in a font that wasn’t your run-of-the-mill Times New Roman default. In one spot, he’d accidentally written fo instead of for, and he said he’d noticed the error but liked it too much to correct it. I handed the paper back to him, but as he began to fold it, I snatched it away and said, “I just decided that I should keep it,” and I was embarrassed that he knew I wanted a souvenir of him.

Our food was delivered to us in little skillets with potholders sewn to fit the handles perfectly, and I asked him what he thought we should hide in the potholders. I ripped off a little piece of his Pepsi jingle paper, and he feigned like he was hurt. I asked him what we should write on it, and he said smarts, so I tried to impress him with my handwriting and then shoved the paper into the potholder before putting it back around the handle. We agreed that we were sorry to miss the moment when someone discovers it. I told him about a shirt Tracey had in high school with a pocket in the sleeve where I used to store things like Doritos, and when I finished, I said, “I’m sorry. You’ll have to get used to me talking about her every other minute.” And then I realised that crap!, I’d just assumed that he was liking me and would be seeing me in the future enough for me to mention Tracey another 100,000 times. He went to fetch forks for us, and when I swiveled around in my chair to see where he’d gone, he was watching me from the side of the counter. And he smiled at me and I smiled at him like neither of us could help it, and then I turned back around and had to cover my mouth to keep from giggling. It was one of The Most Perfect Moments in Dating History™.

After we ate, he left me again to get some containers for our massive leftovers, and I noticed a Post-It folded in half lengthwise underneath his chair. I picked it up and read the writing, which was the address of the restaurant, my phone number, and a couple of professors’ names. I’d wanted it to be something scandalous–like maybe a love poem he’d written for me but been unable to give me out of embarrassment, or, you know, a detailed drawing of his genitals–but no luck. When he came back, he saw where I laid it beside his napkin and asked, “Why did I get this out?” I said, “I pulled it from your pocket while you weren’t paying attention.” He said, “What?!”, and then I laughed and he knew I was kidding. Trust me; this was very cute at the time.

He asked me what I do for fun, and I said, “I walk.” As we got outside, he asked where I wanted to go, and I said we should walk to the East River.” He said, “I’ve heard that Avenue D is pretty shady,” and I said, “Luckily, I know Kung Fu.” He asked, “So you could protect my honor?”, and I said, “But I wouldn’t.” He said, “Well, I have . . . a ballpoint pen?”, and I said, “There are something like 36 ways to kill someone with a pen, right?” I led him down the street and asked him if he thought he could ever poke someone’s eye out with a pen. He asked, “Just for fun?” and I said, “No, like, in a rape situation.” He said, “I suppose I could do anything if I had to.” I said, “Not me. I’d take an unwanted penile invasion over that squishy eyeball-poking-out sound any day.” Just then, I realised that we were walking toward Avenue D even after we’d decided not to, and I asked, “Why did you let me take us the wrong way!?” He said he didn’t want to be the one to break it to me, so he decided just to go along with it. I asked, “Do you feel like you’re about to get raped?”, and he said, “A little bit.”

So we turned around and headed back to Avenue B to this amazing bar called Luca Lounge that was filled with Victorian-looking red velvet furniture. We went to the empty back room to sit at the ends of two couches that formed an L-shape and seriously talked about music for, like, two hours. He made fun of me for loving Bush, and I made fun of him for loving Sublime. He told me about his college band back in California, and I told him about all of the awesome band names I’ve thought of over the years. I asked him what his guilty pleasure bands are, and he said, “You really know the right questions to ask.” We talked about the two years of his childhood when he lived in Ohio before moving to Idaho and the fact that he revisited Ohio in 2000 and went to the science museum where I was working at the time. We wondered if we saw each other then and wished for a map of our lives so we could see how many times our paths have crossed. Then we somehow got on the topic of how badly I want to take up smoking and then all of the drugs we’ve tried, and when we were finished, I said, “I can’t believe we just had that conversation. That’s what you talk about when you’re trying to seem cool and impress each other.” He asked, “Aren’t we trying to seem cool and impress each other?”

I kept having to get up to use the restroom, because I seriously drank four gallons of water at dinner, and right before I left one time, I asked, “You wanna time me?”, and he said, “Ready . . . GO!” When I came back, I said, “I just remembered that cellphone commercial where the man asks the woman if she wants to time him while he goes to the bathroom and we’re supposed to think this makes him a horrible date.” He said, “I thought of it, too, but I didn’t want to tell you.” I said, “I don’t care; I always thought it made him adorable,” and he said, “So did I.” And then he looked at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled. !!!

He insisted on paying for my soda at the bar, and I said, “But you already paid for dinner.” He said, “That’s just how I roll,” and I told him that he couldn’t have said anything lamer or awesomer. We both needed to get to Union Square to catch our trains home, so we got on the L together, and he mentioned how incredible it was that the rain managed to control itself all night. I said, “New York is the worst when it’s raining. The garbage smell is about 400 times more powerful, and all of those assholes walk around with their giant umbrellas with the–” He finished my sentence with, “–the two tiers.” Which is just what I was going to say.

And then we had tons of babies.

Or, uh, I mean, . . .

When we got to Union Square, he asked, “Can I have a hug?”, and I said, “Isn’t this your stop, too?” He said, “Yeah, but I want a hug, anyway.” So we hugged, and it was wonderful, because he’s so close to my height–which is a perfectly respectable 5’7″–that our faces touched. He walked downstairs with me to ask me questions about my schedule for the weekend while we waited on the platform for my train, and we decided to go see the new Zach Braff movie. He said, “I’ll call you,” and I said, “Thanks for taking me out,” and he said, “The pleasure was mine,” which is really cheesy in writing but really nice in person. I gave him another hug, and he said, “I’m still going to wait until your train comes.” I said, “But we’ve already said goodbye! Now we’re gonna be all awkward.” He asked, “What’s better than two goodbyes?”, and I said, “No goodbyes.” And I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, and he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and Tracey says that this is the moment in the trailer of the movie version of the date right before the screen goes black and the title comes up.

And here we are, five years later:

And I’m still just as excited about him today as I was back then.