cityblog

. . . for this reason . . .

I bow my knees before the Father
from whom every family
(in heaven and on earth)
is named

that according to the riches of his glory
he may grant you to be strengthened
with power
through his Spirit
in your inner being

so that Christ may dwell
in your hearts through faith

that you
(being rooted and grounded in love)
may have strength
to comprehend
with all the saints

what is the breadth
and length
and height
and depth

and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge

that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God

now to him who is able
to do far more abundantly
than all that we ask or think
according to the power at work within us
to him be glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus
throughout all generations
(forever and ever)

amen

Filed at 8:32 am under Faith
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Tom has been working for almost fourteen hours so far today (catering somewhere upstate), so I’m hanging out here at home and relaxing tonight. I finished reading A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (amazing book, excellent writing, looking forward to the film) and backed up a bunch of old files to clear some space on my hard drive. Now I’m going to go read V for Vendetta.

Tomorrow morning I am meeting Susan Enan on MacDougall Street to chat about her work for an upcoming article, then heading up to MoMA for the Munch exhibit with Colleen and Josh and Tom. And possibly a film tomorrow night; likely Tsotsi or L’Enfant (and leaning toward L’Enfant). Haven’t watched any movies this week, which is rare for us.

My top five bands of all time (an ever-evolving list):
1. Dave Matthews Band (in all its iterations)
2. Nickel Creek
3. Jars of Clay
4. Iron & Wine
5. Over the Rhine

I bought small red latte bowls, four for ten dollars, at Anthropologie last weekend, and they are too cute for words.

My parents will find out soon if they’ve sold their house. Hard to believe, a little nostalgic, but it’s a great move for them. Everyone is shifting and moving around - I’m moving, Tom’s moving, my family’s moving, my grandparents are moving. Friends are moving . . . life moves on.
A year ago today, I had my last class at RPI. What a year it’s been.

Ok, off to be a geek and read V (yes, a graphic novel - I can’t make myself read it on the subway).

Filed at 8:59 pm under Life, Writing, Music, Film, Books
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New Sufjan Stevens track from the upcoming Avalanche (companion to last year’s Illinois) and review from Pitchfork.

Filed at 2:32 pm under Music
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Finally, the cure for information overload. (It’s fascinating.)

Filed at 1:39 pm under Links, Daily Goings-On
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Oh - a few more happy things.

I had the marvelous experience of paying $3.40 for lunch yesterday, and being full and satisfied (salad by the quarter pound is inexpensive around here).

I bought two kitchen appliances: a Cuisinart 10-cup coffee grinder/brewer and a toaster oven. I haven’t used the toaster yet, but the coffeemaker is automated and on a timer, and the coffee tastes fabulous since it grinds and brews.

I still want a breadmaker on a timer but that can wait.

::grinning::

Filed at 11:04 am under Daily Goings-On
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Yes! I think I have got this apartment. It’s two blocks from the subway and half a block from the Park Slope Food Co-op (biggest in the country, something like 10,000 members!). It’s about 400 square feet, separate kitchen and bathroom, with roof access, on the third floor of a building on the quieter “main street” between the two restaurant/shopping filled main streets. It’s about half an hour’s commute by train from work (glorious), and it’s just beyond cute.

In other news, I finally, after many annoyed phone calls to UPS (whom I now hate) picked up my Anthropologie order of last week:

We are going to MoMA tomorrow.

I may have sold my first real article (a director interview/profile) to Paste.

I joined my church officially as a member last Sunday.

The weather is beautiful, and I love my city, my boy, my friends . . . I am blessed.

Filed at 10:44 am under Life, New York City, Daily Goings-On
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Ironically, I think I found an apt yesterday. Price is similar to now, but it’s a great apartment in a great neighborhood with great light and roof access!

Filed at 9:39 am under Daily Goings-On
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Jason Kottke has an interesting piece on living in small spaces and one architect’s solution.

Filed at 2:10 pm under Daily Goings-On
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I know I haven’t blogged much this week, but looking for apartments is eating all my time.

I’ll be glad when I have a closet-sized apartment of my very own that is signed, sealed, and waiting for me. Then I can get on with normal life.

Filed at 1:55 pm under Life, New York City
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Happy ten-month anniversary to New York City and me!

Filed at 10:28 am under Daily Goings-On
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I’m a connoisseur of little things, and I love it when I find cool stuff (myself, or because someone showed it to me). And I like to list it out occasionally. So here I curate the little things I’ve found in an unegalitarian smattering of stuff that just makes me happy.

The Onion Radio News - from the people who bring us the fabulously satirical Onion (found on streetcorners around New York for free) comes their daily “top story” podcast. Good for a giggle.

Woot.com - Brendan, my all-around partner in crime, showed me this website in college but I had forgotten about it. There’s one huge deal every day on something really cool (a great coffeemaker, a geek toy, etc). You have to check every day and buy it then, but it’s well worth it. It’s also an impulse buyer’s dream.

Martini Shot - KCRW has many good podcasts (”The Treatment”, “The Business”, and the always-popular “Morning Becomes Eclectic”), but this one’s an amusing weekly five minute sketch about the TV and entertainment business.

Drugstore.com - I hate visiting drugstores in New York. They never, ever have what I want. They almost - almost - make me miss WalMart. Lo and behold, drugstore.com, which sells everything I want or need plus much more, at WalMartworthy prices, and the lowest level of free shipping gets to me within two days.

Live From Nowhere, Volume 1 - Over the Rhine’s new live album, hopefully first of many.

IN:NYC Card - My very first American Express card. It accrues points for purchases that are exchangeable for stuff in the city (also in Chicago and LA). Plus, double points for dining/movie tickets/etc.

Park Slope - Awesome neighborhood in Brooklyn, good chance I may live there soon.

Google Calendar - I sing the praises of the Google calendar, which only needs a Blackberry-compatible interface and a tasks list to send me towards complete ecstasy. Exactly what I needed, when I needed it, and integrated with my entire life so prettily. ::cartoon hearts::

Time Out New York - everyone knows about Time Out here, but I’m surprised how many people never read it. I decided that if I subscribe to Time Out (about $25) and the New Yorker ($40) every year, I’ll never need a NYTimes subscription (can be $100 and upwards) and I’ll always know what’s going on.

Filed at 12:02 pm under Links, Geekitude
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This is your friendly neighborhood Bank of America employee reminding you that in the month of May, if you are a Bank of America customer, you can get into museums all over the northeast for FREE with your BofA ATM or credit card or your MBNA credit card (since we now own MBNA). Check out the list of museums.

Filed at 8:48 am under Daily Goings-On
3 Comments

Tom and I send a lot of emails back and forth with links and other random things (though Google Calendar has helped greatly in cutting down the “when were we going to that?” emails). So he decided we should pick a subject line each day, since Gmail handily files emails under the same subject line on the same day. (We are googlophiles.)

Today’s subject line: “Wubber Boots”.

It just makes me giggle inside.

In other, more grown-up news, I now have a functioning BlackBerry in my possession, and I know how to use it. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Filed at 1:56 pm under Funnies, Work
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I got an email from my gym today, with the subject line “Get Ready for April 26th!” and reminding me to buy a gift card for my personal assistant.

Filed at 12:48 pm under Facepalm
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So yesterday, I had to leave class (Mercer Street & West 3rd) a little early to get to Lincoln Center in time for The Double Life of Veronique (a movie which deserves its own entry). I figured I’d take a cab to the 1 train at Christopher Street & Seventh Ave (about a $5 ride), hop on the train, ride to 66th, and meet Tom for the movie.

I hail a cab. The guy starts driving down the street, takes a few turns. I see a girl in the street and he slows down, then speeds UP again and very extremely narrowly misses her. Of course, he has to get out of the cab and check on her. He gets back muttering that she wasn’t visible, starts driving again with a paper on the steering wheel that he’s reading. I’m thinking that maybe if he was looking out the front windshield, she would have been visible?

Right. So then he is sitting at green lights, trying to take one-way turns down streets that run the other way - nothing dangerous but obviously has no idea what he’s doing. Then, we get to the intersection and I tell him I can get out. The ride is a little over $5, and in New York you usually round up to the nearest dollar and that’s the tip.

I hand him a $20. He only has $12.

At that point, I should have just gotten out of the cab without paying. What business do you have picking people up when you only have two $1 bills and a $10 bill? You can’t make change for anything with that!

I paid him anyhow, took his $12, and proceeded to go down and wait for 20 minutes for the 1 train. Two 1 trains ran by on the local track, without stopping, and I lost count of all the 1 trains that ran by on the express track (along with the 2s and 3s). Finally, a train stops and picks us up.

So we ride up to 42nd Street (Times Square, for the uninitiated) and the conductor announces that the train is now running express to 72nd Street.

Bugger.

Walked from 72nd Street. Good thing we bought tickets in advance and Tom went early, because it sold out. He got me popcorn and hugged me and everything was ok. But . . . oooh, I’m still a little steamed about paying $8 for a cab ride where the cabbie almost killed someone.

Filed at 4:42 pm under New York City, Facepalm
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My brother (17) and his friends made this movie, and it is brilliant. (About a minute long, hosted on MySpace.)

Filed at 4:15 pm under Daily Goings-On
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Best sight of yesterday:

A guy sitting on a stoop outside the West 4th subway stop, with a paper cup and a big crayon-on-cardboard sign (homeless-style) that reads: “BRAD AND ANGELINA HAVING A BABY. NEED MONEY FOR GIFT.”

Filed at 9:01 am under New York City
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Looks like Google Calendar is released.

Filed at 1:38 pm under Daily Goings-On
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Tom texted me and said he was downstairs and could I come down for a second?

He brought me orchids.

(Isn’t he cute?)

Filed at 1:14 pm under Daily Goings-On
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For all its semipretension and gazing upon the masses from a slightly elevated plane, the New Yorker remains my second-favorite publication of all time (behind Paste), and this week’s issue - well, April 17th - has two interesting religion-related articles. I actually have learned more about evangelicalism’s history from the New Yorker than from any history book (the article on Billy Graham last fall was great) and I’m always surprised by the thoroughness of their coverage.

The first article is about the Episcopal church, its history, and how it relates to the conflicts about ordination of homosexuals. I’m still reading the article but I wanted to point out this quote because it shocked me.

The liberal American bishop John Shelby Spong, of Newark, disparaged the Africans’ form of Christianity - “They’ve yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we’ve had to face in the developing world” . . .

What an enlightened statement, Bishop Spong! Such tolerance and understanding of cultures outside your oh-so-advanced New Jersey (COUGH!). Sheesh. I mean, we all know that all of Africa is just a bunch of guys in loincloths running around with sticks, right? There aren’t actual intellectuals there.

The second article is about the Gospel of Judas, and this quote was thoroughly intriguing.

The orthodox canon gives us a Christ who is convincing as a character in a way that this Gnostic one is not: angry and impatient and ethically engaged, easily exasperated at the limitations and nagging of his dim disciples and dimmer family relations, brilliantly concrete in his parables and human in his pain. Whether one agrees with Jefferson that this man lived, taught, and died, or with St. Paul that he lived and died and was born again, it is hard not to prefer him to the Jesus of the new Gospel, with his stage laughter and significant winks and coded messages. Making Judas more human makes Jesus oddly less so, less a man with a divine and horrible burden than one more know-it-all with a nimbus. As metaphor or truth, we’re sticking with the old story. Give us that old-time religion - but, to borrow a phrase from St. Augustine, maybe not quite yet.

Filed at 12:18 pm under Church, Theology, Faith
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without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here
sin would reduce me to utter despair
but through Thy free goodness, my spirits revive
and He that first made me still keeps me alive

—-

Last night Rosie Thomas played in Hoboken. She is tiny, with chin-length brown hair and a completely adorable high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like her singing voice. She was wearing a yellow knee-length babydoll dress. And she had her band with her. It was delightful, and she was delightful. In between songs, she told stories about something called UrineOut that she saw on an infomercial and other hilarious tidbits of life. If you get a chance, you should go see her play. You’ll be an instant fan.

Thanks to a blogger (Katherine) who left a link on my blog, I’ve found SoMA Review, with which I instantly bonded when I saw that one of the articles was by Miroslav Volf. SoMA stands for Society of Mutual Autopsy, an allusion to Kierkegaard. Check it out.

It is over 70 degrees outside today and I am inside under a flourescent light. Oh, the inhumanity.

Filed at 12:01 pm under Daily Goings-On, Music, Faith
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I sat in Starbucks after a great film journalism class with my hazelnut latte, immersed in The Blue Castle and the student jazz quartet playing pop-rock tunes. And I had a conversation with a guy who looked just like I think Jesus did who said he’s located “about 40 feet west of Garibaldi” in Washington Square Park - said that he didn’t like the word homeless, because he chooses to live this way - pulled out his iPod and his digicam and pointed to his nice frame backpack and said that real homeless people don’t have these things - talked about the countries he’d visited during eleven years in Europe and his favorite cities in Canada and his impressions of Albany, my hometown.

I’ve never talked to a random person in New York for more than a couple of seconds in an elevator or to give directions. And it fascinated me. He fascinated me. I said that well, I imagine people thought Jesus was a homeless bum, and he told me that he thinks it’s horrible that most of the people who worship a homeless guy would pass him on the street without a glance.

Unrelatedly, I think there’s a very good chance that I am moving to Brooklyn. Maybe Williamsburg or Park Slope. Still hashing things out. I’ll be so edgy and cool.

Further unrelatedly, work has been uberhectic lately.

Filed at 2:24 pm under Daily Goings-On
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A great geek link from Wired News: weirdest USB gadgets.

Filed at 10:17 pm under Links, Geekitude
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Tom, who is brilliant, discovered that Over the Rhine is playing New York in June. Hallelujah, amen.

Also, I had bought their limited edition live CD from Paste about two months ago, and it just shipped. Yay!

Filed at 9:13 pm under Music
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There’s nothing quite as adorable or funny as watching your boyfriend laugh hysterically - enough to have tears rolling down his cheeks - at Jon Stewart doing a “heh heh heh” dance. If Tom had been drinking milk, it would have come out his nose last night.

I fully intended to go to girls’ group this morning, and even rolled out of bed at the ungodly hour of 6:15 am, but I got somehow lost in the Pile Of Clothing That Is My Bedroom and it was suddenly 7:30 am and it was just too late to go. But I was showered and dressed and blow-dried. So I did what any sensible chick would do and got myself to Joe for a huge chai (I had ten stamps on my coffee-drinking card and therefore it was FREE) and finished a book and read a few pages from my half-a-Bible (it was paperback and split in two, so it starts at Psalm 9:11b) and started The Blue Castle and scribbled some ideas for the homework I never did for tonight’s film journalism class and drank my chai and watched people go by. It was a splendid decision. I think I need to make sure my next apartment is near a coffeeshop so that I can do that sometimes. It made the whole day start on a good foot.

Downstairs in Rockefeller Center, they’re having some sale of Elton John’s wardrobe for charity. To which I say . . . dude, what were you thinking?

Filed at 8:50 am under New York City, Daily Goings-On, Funnies
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