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1999
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1998
december
november
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september

++++++++++++

phone home

11/28/00
I just noticed that I've been spelling especially poor and using terrible grammar lately. I go crazy when I see other people making dumb typo mistakes so I'd better get my act together. I did something really gross tonight. Well, it's not that horrible, but I made mayonnaise. I've always hated it, but had this huge urge to eat chicken salad sandwiches this afternoon and since it's hard to make those without mayonnaise, I at least thought that maybe the home made version would be easier to deal with than the creepy store bought variety. I used olive oil and rosemary, which actually made it pretty tasty, but the smell was still hard to handle. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I absolutely can not seem to keep a set of keys for more than a few months at a time. I've lost them at least five times in the last few years. The most recent incident wasn't my fault since they were stolen, but I did have to bust and replace the mail lock (for the second time) and now I'm down to only one mail key so I have to be extra careful. I don't know what happened. I noticed Sat. night when I went out that my Metrocard wasn't in my coat pocket and it really pissed me off since I'd just bought a $15 one and had only used it twice. Then yesterday I was in a hurry to go to this interview thingy and was checking my pockets since I hadn't been home in five days and my keys weren't there. It's not like I got fall-down drunk over the weekend. I don't remember throwing my coat around at any point. The only time my coat was out of my sight was on Thanksgiving when I checked it in at the restaurant, but I swear I had my stuff later that evening because while waiting for the subway I remember reaching in my pocket and having my Metrocard fall on the platform and barely noticing because I had gloves on. I blame my recent key loss on the new gloves. In the past week, practically everyone I know who didn't already have a cell phone, got one. I don't even answer my real phone as it is, so that'd be a pretty pointless purchase. But the first thought that crossed my mind when friends were flashing their new tiny phones around was that I'd lose one in a heartbeat. I could never get married--I wouldn't trust myself with an expensive ring (a. assuming I'd ever feel like getting married. b. that I'd even get a fancy ring). How sad.

(11/23/00)
Ah...Thanksgiving. Yesterday I got the urge to make this Three-Nut Pie with Cranberries, that I've made the past two years. It made me realize what a spenthrift I am. I've been staying at James's apt. while he's home for the holidays and he doesn't have stuff like molasses, corn syrup or pecans (though I did find almonds and walnuts in the cupboard, then realized that I'd bought them for a previous recipe) so instead of going to the overpriced store a block away (I got charged like $1.69 for ONE peach a few months ago), I went home to get the ingredients. That's like 60-80 min. total travel time, plus $1.50 each way just to save about $10. Well, I was going to go to the gym anyway, which is about 3/4 to my house, but it seemed a little crazy to go so out of my way just to save a buck, once I thought about it. I don't know if anyone is familiar with turducken, but I recently read about it and it's stuck in my craw. The idea of stuffing a turkey with a duck stuffed with a chicken stuffed with dressing is just the kind of excess that I can appreciate. I've got to get ready to go out to my early Thanksgiving meal. I mean, it's only 12:30 and I'm not that hungry yet. We had to make reservations at 3:00 rather than a preferred 5:00 or 7:00 because a little beast (whose name I won't use, see?) that I can't deal with already had reservations at the same restaurant at a peak hour. How big is this city? How many restaurants fill the island of Manhattan? Should I be learning a lesson here about thankfulness and forgiving? Heck no.

11/21/00
So, I guess it's the holiday season. I don't really have any big Thanksgiving plans. I think I'll probably end up going out to dinner with friends, which is fine enough. But I recently realized that absolutely every single person I know is going out of town for Christmas. This kind of sucks. I don't particularly feel like being stuck in Queens while everyone else is opening presents and drinking eggnog by fireplaces. I thought that maybe I'd head to England the last two weeks of Dec. but this all hinges on whether or not I have a job by then. Of course I'd like a job, but no employer is going to let a new hire take off for two weeks. But if I don't have a job lined up by Christmas, and I do go to England, that only leaves me one month to find one before my unemployment runs out the beginning of Feb. It's all very tricky. It's really odd, I don't know if search engines have greatly improved over the past few months or if typing in names of family and friends has become a new popular pastime or what. But out of nowhere people have been requesting their own and other's names to be removed from my site. I think that I've had a handful of such requests in the past couple years. Folks ranging from close friends to passing acquaintances to dead strangers, and in absolutely 100% of the cases, I've obliged. When I first started writing here, I didn't think that anyone was really going to read it so I didn't give much thought to using full names. Though in the past year, I've been a little more conscious and haven't used complete names without the person knowing. I don't like causing problems and I've never wished ill-will on others no matter how much shit I talk. I write about silly things that happen day to day and their impact on my life. And of course things that impact my life often involve encounters with others. Maybe you've noticed that this section of my site isn't called Project Klutz who Spilled a Drink on Me in December '98 or Project Concerned Family in Northern Virginia. Uh, it's Project ME. And emailing me daily, acting grief-stricken and sending me the teachings of Buddha isn't going to change my personality or what I choose to write about. I received the following in response to something I wrote in Feb. '99:

9. Truthful and Loving Speech: Aware that words can create suffering or happiness, we are committed to learning to speak truthfully and constructively, using only words that inspire hope and confidence. We are determined not to say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people, nor to utter words that might cause division or hatred. We will not spread news that we do not know to be certain, nor criticize or condemn things of which we are not sure. We will do our best to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten our safety.

I've got nothing against Buddha, but I don't lie and I don't aim to impress anyone with anything I do or say. Personal interest? Sure. Isn't that what an online journal is about? Jeez, Feb. '99 had to be the absolute worst month of my entire life. I was miserable. I re-read that chunk of time...talk about unflattering. So, I called a guy a "subway freak." That subway freak works for a major entertainment company and lives in oh-so-hip Williamsburg. If I could be so lucky. What's the fuss. All things considered, I think he's doing pretty well for himself. People get all twitchy and like to make requests out of protection for their loved ones. I never knew family values were so alive and well in this country. You know, "how would my mother feel if she read this?" Well, how would my mother like to read that I was sexually harassed while waiting for the subway. That certainly wasn't made up and I can't say that it inspired hope and confidence in me. But maybe Buddha's teachings only apply to people who do mean-spirited websites and not ordinary Joes who can't control their impulses. Anyway, I don't hate anyone. Not even people with canes who block my way on the stairs, or girls who yap endlessly about the new Prada bag they just scored. I just like talking about people. Random incidents keep life interesting.

11/15/00
Jeez, I just did one of the dumbest things (though, not quite as dumb as washing my face a few months ago, cotton balling astringent all over my chin, smelling coconut and then realizing that it wasn't toner, but nail polish remover). I put on a pot of water to boil, started poking around on the internet, then going to check on the boiling status only to notice that it wasn't doing much of anything, but that the frying pan on the back burner with a dishtowel sitting in it was burning like crazy. Not good at all. You know, I always get things in the mail directed at the Hispanic population. Like ads for cable service that hype up "my favorite" channels like Univision and HBO Latino. Fine. And I get Columbia House promotions where all the cd's are Latin artists, complete with a card for Club Musica Latina. This evening I was sitting here when my buzzer rang and never once in my life has anyone just ever casually dropped by my apt. so I knew it wasn't really for me and ignored it. A few minutes later my door buzzer went off, indicating someone was right outside my door and this annoyed me, but I thought it might be my landlord so I answered it. It was this mother daughter pair armed with Jesus pamphlets, asking me if I spoke Spanish in Spanish to which I replied no because I don't. The daughter said in English that they were looking for Spanish speaking people to talk to and I said, "sorry" then they moved on. How fucked is that, that they go ringing random buzzers of people with Hispanic last names. And don't they even want to convert English speaking people? I was spared their spiel at least, but you'd think they'd want to get as many people as possible, regardless of ethnicity. I wonder if Changs, Kims and Nguyens, get strange Asians knocking on their doors.

11/13/00
I just remembered one more thing I bought online during my frenzy--"Billy Liar" on video. This has always been one of my favorite 60's British films and I've seen it a million times, but sometimes it's nice just to have the tape. The weird thing is that all of a sudden Film Forum is doing a huge British New Wave series that started Oct. 27 and goes til Nov. 30 and "Billy Liar" is playing for two weeks. Now I'll finally get to see it on the big screen. I wish that the movies weren't $9 a pop because there's like at least 10 or so I'd like to see. All these films that I went crazy over trying to track down when I was a Smiths-obsessed teen. Some of the more obscure documentaries, I've never been able to see, though in Feb. '99 MOMA showed a few of them and I was dumb not to go and I remember hinting the fri. before Valentine's Day to my stupid crush that I really wanted to see them and tried to get the nerve to ask him to one, but couldn't do it and then totally fouled things up on Valentine night anyway so there wasn't a chance. I never thought I'd get to see them after that flub-up, but this is a good omen that they're playing again and this time I can talk the old crush into going (at least I think so). Ack, that was incoherent. I'm all frazzled. It makes no sense. I don't know what I'm doing with myself. I feel like I don't have enough time to do anything I want to which is just stupid since I'm not working. It just worries me, like once I get a job (if I get a job), I'll be a total wreck. I don't know if everyone in the world is cut out to work full time. I'm certainly not. Somehow I got suckered into working for my old boss today and there was too much crap to do and now I have a headache. I literally sat at their computer from 9-6 with no break, not even for anything to eat, and they wanted me to come in tomorrow too and I hemmed and hawed and they were like, "don't you need money?" and I do, but I value my time more, which no one in New York understands at all. I finagled this thing where I can work from home tomorrow, which isn't too bad. I just don't feel like getting up at 7:25 to work for someone who laid me off in July and now in Nov. is all demanding. But it will be a couple hundred dollars tax-free so I don't know why I'm complaining. Fri. night there was this plan to go to this place in the 50's called the Twist Lounge. It's some hotel bar that got written up for having the best martini and I don't even drink martinis and the whole cocktail thing is over, but it sounded appealing and it was vaguely near where James's parking lot is so the idea was we'd get a drink then pick up the car because it's usually this big ordeal to go uptown and get it and it's nicer when you can stop along the way as a diversion. But I hate midtown. Especially on a Friday night. There's just this bad vibe and we got out at the 51st St. (I think) F station and went upstairs and it was all freaky because all the exits were chained up and closed. There were other people wandering around up there all baffled too. Like there wasn't any way to get out and there weren't any signs indicating this. had to go back down and look for a different exit and then I noticed all these pinkish-red drips along the platform. I thought in my head that maybe this was blood, but it seemed too bright, like berry juice or something. The blobs of liquid trailed the way were going and then I noticed the huge pool of what could only be blood. It really freaked me out and no one else seemed to care. People were sitting right near it like it was no big deal. I tell you, midtown is scary. All these dead ends in the station and bodily fluids running all over the place. Blech. Well, anyway, made it to the Twist Lounge right at last call (I guess they close at 1 am) and it was all mod in a comfy, not annoying way, and a bit spendy, but I just wanted to have a whiskey sour and forget about that random blood.

11/8/00
Help! I'm getting out of control with online shopping. I used to think buying things online was a pain because you could never coordinate being home with when deliveries would arrive and all that (sure, people can get things mailed to their job, but it always seemed like a hassle at the places I worked). But now that I'm home so much, I've gone wild buying things. I used to like real shopping, but more and more I've gotten really freaky about crowds. I just can't stand them. I've been wanting a pair of boots for awhile now, but I haven't been able to muster up the strength to head out into the fray yet. Boots are the kind of thing that you really need to see up close and personal so I'll refrain from getting those over the internet. In the past month I've bought cd's: Kleenex Girl Wonder, "Why I Write Such Good Songs," Stars, "A Lot of Little Lies for the Sake of One Big Truth," To Rococo Rot, "The Amateur View," Eno, "Here Come the Warm Jets," Belle and Sebastian, "Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant" (which I had been putting off buying since I thought it might suck, and it sort of does), The Luckmiths, "T-Shirt Weather," and the latest, "Little Darla Has a Treat for You" sampler. A bunch of make up, which wasn't a complete out of pocket expense thanks to Isabelle, a nice Australian who does a website that you should read if you don't already, who let me use her e-gift certificate to Sephora since they won't ship out of the U.S. Yesterday I got these expensive (for me) Puma running shoes with the logic that if I have better shoes I'll exercise more (though I have been doing 2-3 miles 4 times a week, and still smoking a pack a day, which isn't making my lungs very happy). Then last night I got bored with the election on TV and went to Ebay, which I haven't looked at in ages and impulsively bid on this Holt Howard cottage cheese dish with two cats kissing. I ended up winning and that's good, but the item was a little on the spendy side, especially for someone without much of an income. Oh well, it's mine now. I have an interview tomorrow for a relatively decent paying job. If all goes well, I won't feel so guilty about buying a $50 kitchen knick-knack.

11/5/00
Something is definitely up. I've been all busy trying to learn new skills like javascript and Flash and crap like that and brushing up on design programs. And I was doing this Photoshop tutorial where you were supposed to take this guy's head and put it on someone else's body, making it realistic as possible and they had this gallery of notable efforts from other people. The first example that popped up was a photo of Poison, and you can only guess which member of the band had the random guy's face super imposed. Yes, it was C.C. Deville's head that had been changed. What is C.C. trying to tell me? He's everywhere. He's slowly permeating my life. Other than messing around on the computer like some fiend, I haven't been doing much else. Let me see...a week ago Sunday I went and saw Elliott Smith play, Friday I had to go to that horrible unemployment thing in Flushing and was completely scarred by the stupidity of 90% of the attendees, but that was to be expected, the past two nights I've stayed out too late just going out, drinking and milling around which wasn't a good idea because I've been getting sick and now today my throat hurts so bad I can barely swallow and I feel like a zombie from too much cold medicine. Now I'd better get back to my lesson on Cascading Style Sheets before the Theraflu kicks in and I fall asleep at 1:30 in the afternoon (I just woke up an hour and half ago and I'm ready to get back into bed again).

11/1/00
I just realized why it seems like I haven't had the free time to write here. It's not that I don't have the free time, I have more than enough of that, it's that I don't spend much of it at home. I'm really only here 3-4 days a week. I go out Friday night and don't usually come back til monday or Tuesday afternoon, depending. I've tried to make my apt. homier and it's working a little bit, especially now that I have a nice pink table for my computer, scanner and all that, but it doesn't change my environment once I walk out the door. It's starting to scar me, I swear. I forget how much people just going about their business can get on my nerves. Of course, there are the cripples. The many, many handicapped and disabled that literally flood the stores and the sidewalks (I'm only barely joking--there really are lots and lots of physically impaired over here). You might think that a good thing to keep in mind when and if I ever move is to steer clear of neighborhoods with disproportionate elderly populations, but it's not just old people. This morning I went out to go to the post office, run some errands and go to the gym and in the first block I see a heavyset black woman with a cane. She couldn't have been more than 35 and other than being a little chunky, there didn't appear to be anything wrong with her at all. Nothing. And she didn't look like she was having any trouble walking either so it just annoyed me. In the next block it was the exact same thing, but with a regular-looking white guy wearing a baseball cap in his early 20's. Why the hell did he have a cane?! He wasn't even limping. Ack! I get to the post office (about 8 blocks later) and wasn't even keeping count intentionally (though I did see an old lady out of the corner of my eye with a cane in front of a restaurant by the subway), I'd forgotten about looking for cripples, when I noticed a cane hooked up on the counter. Enough! I guess the owner of the cane was old and maybe she needed it for real, but the sight of it just enraged me. I don't want to live in some society full of perfect bodies and physical beauty, but I wouldn't mind looking at some functional limbs and semi-symmetrical faces every now and then. Sheesh. I really wonder about people. It wasn't that long ago that I got that random email with the subject, "I want to get more friend" and no message. Then last week I noticed these little pieces of paper scattered up and down Woodbine St. from some lonely character named simply, Bandu. It's not a Queens address so I can only imagine how they made their way to the streets of Ridgewood. Initially, this sort of thing cracks me up, but then if I think about it too much it's really sad. Is Bandu a kid? A foreigner who doesn't know anyone yet? A pedophile with bad grammar, using the penpal approach to lure his victims? Or is it even a guy? Maybe it's some old woman with ten canes and a glass eye who can't get out and meet people. I've heard that it's hard to meet people and make friends in New York. This may be true, but I hate to see people resorting to xeroxed handbills. I'm like the ultimate un-socialized shut-in, so maybe it's just a matter of time before I journey down this path.