Okay, more like RAT RUN AWAY!
One of my very favourite NYC sights either way.
Okay, more like RAT RUN AWAY!
One of my very favourite NYC sights either way.
I’m too busy today to pound something out, so I was gonna be like, “Umm . . . Fake Wordless Wednesday, guys?”
But then I realized that oh, crap, it IS Wednesday. WIN.
Anyone who’s lived in NYC for five minutes can tell you that the electric company, ConEd, sucks. Now that I’m nearly halfway to becoming a “real New Yorker” (they say it takes 10 years, and if how New York you are is based on how much you despise all other New Yorkers, I believe them), I have a few horror stories of my own. But Monday night’s takes the cake.
On Monday morning, I posted about tiny and therefore easily air-conditioned apartments being a good reason to never leave Manhattan, and Bachelor Girl said, “At least you live in a place where you will not DIE without air conditioning.” I should’ve known it was foreshadowing.
So, my friend Tessa was staying with me, as I mentioned, and after work that day, we met up with her-friend-who-I’ve-also-hung-out-with-once, Mark, and my friend Ash at Caravan of Dreams, a raw organic vegan restaurant that goes against everything I believe in but is delicious. Afterward, we went for a couple of hours of karaoke, which turned out to be amazing, because I somehow only make friends with people who have incredible voices.
Tessa and I got back to my apartment at around 11 p.m. and sort of started getting ready for bed but then ended up chatting for 45 minutes or so about how much better we are than everyone else, how people try to ruin our lives because we’re so great, the usual. And then all of the lights went out. Had I been awake alone and, say, in the bathroom, I would’ve freaked the hell out. As it was, we sat in shock for three seconds, and then I realized I was holding my BlackBerry and scrolled the trackwheel on it so the screen would give us a little light. The air conditioner was oddly still on, so I went over and switched it off to see if that would fix anything, and then we went to my bedroom window to see if the whole block was down, but the houses across the street were still lit. Tessa has some experience with fuse boxes, so she went to work on ours, flipping everything every which way, but nothing changed. I tried to turn the air conditioner back on, but of course it wouldn’t work anymore.
We slipped on our shoes and trudged out to the street, and while the houses across the street really were lit (with one smug asshole surfing on his computer right in front of his bay window), neighbors on my side of the street were all filing out of their houses in confusion. A ConEd emergency truck parked right in front of us and set about making some horrendous noise as it worked on the cables below the street, no doubt waking up anyone who had been sleeping peacefully and hadn’t noticed the power go out (my roommate).
We stood outside for perhaps 15 minutes, figuring 95 degrees and a slight breeze was better than 95 degrees and a non-functioning air conditioner, and then a girl from my building came out and announced that ConEd had called and left her a message about how it was a planned outage meant to last anywhere from two to six hours. WHO PLANS AN OUTAGE ON THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR THUS FAR? And who thought midnight, when there’s nowhere to be except your apartment, was a better idea than, say, noon, when most people are at work, anyway, and everyone else can just walk down the street to an air-conditioned coffee shop? Oh, ConEd.
The thing is–despite the fact that:
1) we had to sleep through the sweltering heat that night with no relief,
2) the two to six hours ConEd promised turned into twelve, and
3) Kamran’s Manhattan apartment has free and unlimited air conditioning,
I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. All of us hanging out on our stoops, my landlord’s non-English-speaking Italian mother coming out of our building in her housecoat, an old lady who still had electricity yelling from her window for everyone to shut up and let her sleep . . .
It was so Brooklyn.
Our friend Emily introduced my friend Beth and me to the Renegade Craft Fair last year, but I had absolutely no money at the time and bought only a $2.50 ice cream cone (which is what ice cream should cost) and an $8 plastic strawberry necklace (that broke on me after the second wear, but nevermind that).
This year, though, I brought stacks of cash with me and was ready to do all of my Christmas shopping like Emily does. But instead I bought only things for myself.
Everything was so cheap, right? But that’s because I didn’t buy a $90 sterling silver deer necklace like Beth did or a $110 hat like Emily did. But the hats were pretty cute, right?
We were walking around with these giant margaritas, and about halfway through them, Emily and I agreed that they must not be very strong, but by the time we finished them, we were able to talk each other into buying anything. I even bought something for Tracey that was more expensive than anything I bought for myself and everyone agreed didn’t even make sense. And then, of course, there was the mad dash to the restroom area, followed by the mad hunt to find a porta-potty that still had toilet paper:
The craft fair was about 100 times better this year than last, because it was in McCarren Park rather than in McCarren Park Pool. In the pool, all of the booths were lined up perfectly, and the sun was beating down on the concrete, and we were generally miserable. In the park, the booths were sort of willy-nilly, and we got to walk on grass, and everyone was generally delighted.
This is how my Halloween was supposed to go:
Dr. Boyfriend and I faux-carve the letter B onto our faces and give ourselves faux black eyes a la this girl and head to his law school friend’s party down the street. We drink some punch, make a few 9th-Circuit-Court-of-Appeals-related jokes, and head home to stuff ourselves full of candy pumpkins (and maybe some candy corn, even though everyone knows it tastes entirely different) and watch loads of horror movies (but only the cheesy ones from the 80s, ‘cause otherwise I get too scared).
Instead, I went to my friend Emily’s house, where my friend Beth and I helped rip up her Little Red Riding Hood costume and cover it in blood to turn her into Little DEAD Riding Hood:
Then a couple of her friends came over, and we all took one look at their costumes and were like, “ . . . ? . . .” But then someone said, “Oh, Royal Tenenbaums!” And it all made sense. The costumes were brilliantly done, actually, even though poor Gwyneth shrank a bit:
Then Emily’s roommate, Michelle, came out in her homemade Geico Gecko costume, and the cuteness wholeheartedly abounded:
We piled into the train at 10 so they could head off to an all-you-can-drink loft party and I could head home to . . . my sleeping boyfriend, who had to be at law school for a seminar at 8 the next morning. LAME! No party, no law jokes, and most importantly, no candy pumpkins! But at least I have this video of Michelle ravaging Emily’s costume with a gigantic kitchen knife that she seems to have absolutely no control over:
Better than all the candy pumpkins in the world.
Yeah, not really.