Just a little taste of what I’m living with at the moment.  Needless to say, I spent a great deal of the weekend outside of my apartment . . .

Looking back, I ate quite well this weekend.  A somewhat belated birthday dinner with my love, courtesy of the Lovely Miss Katie, brunch at Prune with Adam L., who was visiting from California, and Easter dinner with family in New Jersey, complete with a spiral ham!

It’s going to be a big week!  New paint and light fixtures are underway.  My goals for last week were to finalize the paint colors (done), move some things into storage (done), and drop some stuff off at the electronics/clothing recycling event (done).  Got some love from Apartment Therapy this weekend, too!  I also started what I hope to be an ongoing process — digitally capturing some of my memorabilia that it doesn’t make sense to save.  More on that later.

Well, I’m doing my Apartment Therapy Cure a little out of order this time around, partially because I started before, and partially because I’ve got painters coming on Tuesday.  What this means is that I completed this week’s assignment ages ago [This Week’s Assignment: Get your hands on a copy of the book and
read through page 69. This gives you all the ground work and gets you
started with the interview and short quiz on the health of your home…] and that next week there will be changes on a grand scale in every part of my apartment.  For your amusement/horror, the before pictures (from the fall) are here.  I’ve done some decluttering since then, thank God.  Next week is about the kitchen, which I’ll try to tackle a bit while I’m getting ready for the painters this weekend.  Stay tuned for some new light fixtures, a new bathroom shelf and towel rack, and, yes, color on the walls!

Flashback to the holiday season — I want to pick up a Starbucks gift card to give to my trainer (he’s got a little Starbucks addiction).  I’m in Barnes and Noble and walk up to the counter in the cafe.  "Do you have Starbucks gift cards?"  The woman glares at me.  "No," she replies, "This is Barnes and Noble."  "Right," I respond, slinking away.  Given how much they look like Starbucks and the amount of cross-marketing out there, I had always assumed that the B&N cafes were in fact Starbucks plopped into the bookstores.  Hell, there’s a Starbucks in our office, why not B&N?  (Why didn’t I check to see if the one in our office sold gift cards?)  Sigh.  My dad must feel pretty good about all that cash he funneled into my education right about now.

I am exhausted.  I spent a chunk of the weekend doing homeowner-ish things, like trying to finalize my paint colors (more on that later), buying light fixtures (including one that ended up being broken, which means I’ll have to haul BACK to friggin’ Ikea), dimmers, switch plates, and a towel rack and shelf for my bathroom.  I have learned some interesting things about myself, primarily that I do best with decorating when I am limited to a finite set of possibilities.  I have also learned that I need to have a deadline (like the fact that the painter is coming) to get my butt into gear.  Stay tuned!  Oh, and on a semi-related note, the Spring Apartment Therapy Cure is underway.  This time I mean business.

In response to my last post a friend emailed (he seems to like to do this more than posting in the comments) the following astute observation: "This is what people do in most other places, and this is why I’m afraid that NYC might be a shitty place to meet people. Here, we only meet people when we plan to meet them. We’re getting screwed by a lack of serendipity since we all block out everyone from our personal space."  I agree only in part.  I agree that as New Yorkers, we don’t tend to meet strangers on the subway, at the grocery store, or while walking down the street.  Note that I said "tend to."  I know of a woman who is dating a guy she met while discussing bed linens at a store, for example.  New Yorkers do, however, meet people when we are doing things like dining solo — I have a few very close friends who I literally met hanging out at Otto.  Now, of course, this could be because I am fairly friendly by nature — who knows?  If I were sitting eating alone with my nose in a book rather than half listening to everything around me, or chatting with the bartenders, I might not have met them.

I’m trying to think of other places I’ve met people, other than the typical dinner party or deliberately social event — certainly through AIDS ride training rides, but not at the greenmarket (at least not yet).  Maybe I’ll be the one who starts talking to strangers on the subway — do a little social experiment for the next week or so.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

First of all, it is DAMN cold.  I’m sure it’s even colder in NYC, so I can’t really complain, but I wasn’t expecting it.  I did not pack anything that warm; I won’t freeze, but would love to have one of my nice wooly sweaters here.  Second of all, people talk to you here.  I mean, people are friendly in New York, but twice already, I’ve been walking down the street and people have just started talking to me or made comments out of the blue.  This morning for example, on my way to the gym, I guy approaching me felt the need to tell me he had just gotten some pancakes, which he was carrying.  Not sure why.  I made some comment back ("sounds tasty!") and kept walking, confused.  As tasty as pancakes sounded, I got eggs for breakfast.