cityblog

Pictures from this weekend’s visit!

Filed at 10:16 pm under New York City, Friends, Daily Goings-On, Photos
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My dear friends since childhood came in last night - both named Sarah, of course. They’re here for the weekend and are throwing me a bachelorette party tomorrow night, as I turned down the bridal shower idea. (They’re just not my thing.) And though we all grew up in the Albany area, neither of them have spent much time in NYC, so they are out gallivanting while I sit here at a desk and write documentation. Tom-the-dearest wrapped early yesterday and hung out with us last night, and he escorted the girls around Brooklyn this morning. Good fun. Good food. Good coffee. ;)

It’s going to rain again.

Filed at 3:26 pm under Friends
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Teehee. (I’m a homeschool graduate myself.)

Filed at 1:28 pm under Funnies
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Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
when there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi

(By way of Katherine’s blog. I remember singing this at Sound Foundations (basically music camp) back in high school. It is lovely. And so good.)

Filed at 9:26 am under Life, Faith
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Two small observations:

1. It’s amazing that a site as inherently and miserably ugly and messy as MySpace is so popular. (Add me! Haha!)

2. Wikipedia = best free entertainment ever, as I was reminded while reading the New Yorker article this morning.

Filed at 3:45 pm under Geekitude
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Tom and I drove home from Albany this Sunday listening to Grey Ghost Stories, one of Linford Detweiler’s instrumental albums. We were talking about something entirely different when Tom laughed and said, “Stop. Listen.”

He reached over and backed up the CD just a hair, and we listened and heard a lovely feminine chuckle in the middle of one of the melodies. “Karin,” I said, and Tom nodded. (Karin Berquist & Linford Detweiler are the married couple that anchor Over the Rhine.)

I told him that I think someday, when we’ve done some real work, someone’s going to ask us who we took as modern-day role models, and we’re going to name people like Linford & Karin and Alfred & Alma.

Alfred, of course, being Alfred Hitchcock, and Alma being his wife of over 50 years. We saw Psycho a couple of weekends ago and watched the “Making of Psycho” documentary afterwards, and Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter, mentioned that he knew the screenplay was good when Alfred came back and said, “Alma liked it.”

In fact, a biography of Alma on an Alfred Hitchcock site says that “she was his assistant in virtually every production” from when they married onward, and that in a biography, “Hitchcock mentions several times that Alma was his harshest critic, and had a great eye for finding out inconsistencies in the rough cut.” Alma was an editor and a screenwriter. IMDB says, “She was Alfred Hitchcock’s closest collaborator . . . contributed to all of her husband’s films, usually uncredited. She would be shown stories, scripts, storyboards and all elements through the final edit.”

Tom and I, when we heard about Alma in the documentary, turned and grinned knowingly at each other. That’s us. That’s where we hope to be - Tom being the brilliant creative people-person guy, and me being the girl who makes things happen, and both of us finding scripts we like and fiddling with them till they’re perfect. Maybe we’ll write one together.

Rarely have I had real-person role models, but now I do. Alma. (Karin too.)

Filed at 4:20 pm under Daily Goings-On, Film, Love
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I love this shirt.

Filed at 4:25 pm under Funnies
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The wedding invitations finally went out late last week, and Tom and I spent the weekend in Albany picking tuxedos and meeting with our officiant, DJ, florist, caterers, and cakebakers. Lots of cool stuff set up but in the interest of keeping elements of surprise for those who read the blog and will be at the wedding, I’ll hold off on most details until after the wedding.

Speaking of that, people have begun to ask if I’m moving the blog after the wedding (since I won’t be Alissa Clark anymore). The short answer is yes, but if I told you the details, I’d have to kill you. Don’t worry, I won’t leave you all stranded.

In non-wedding news (well, not really), my dear friends Sarah and Sarah (no typo) are coming to visit this weekend. We’ve all been friends since we were little tykes in Sunday School and now we’re all doing the wedding thing together, so they’re coming to cram into my Brooklyn pad and have a grand ol’ time.

I have been secretly devouring fashion blogs lately. What is going on? I know that clothes aren’t important (I mean, consider the flowers of the field, and all that), but I do like being pleasant to look at and I like to think that I have a personality. ;) I was looking around the subway today and noticing how feminine women’s clothes have gotten in the last few seasons, especially with the whole dresses craze this year. So refreshing, and I still can’t get over how jaded I was after four years of RPI.

And along those lines, I was thrilled and delighted that the very selective Beacon’s Closet took five of my items (out of two monstrous garbage bags) - am I now a hipster?! - and I have a bit of store credit to play with. It’s the kind of place where the turnover is rapid, but I may make a few stops there to see if I can come up with some new clothes for le honeymoon in Cape Cod (yay!), or maybe some cute shoes. I am so low in the shoe department. The only sandals I own anymore are men’s Teva flip-flops from last summer and a very old olive green pair of Old Navy flipflops - oddly, also men’s. I need girly shoes.

I remarked to Tom yesterday as we were driving back from Albany that he lets me be a girl, and I love it. He wants a wife! I think a lot of guys want a buddy, but with feminine appendages, if you catch my drift. Ahh, I love my Tom. (I still love hockey and geek toys and once in a while have a sip of Brooklyn Lager, so hey, some things never change.)

Here’s my deep thought for the day (ha) - have you ever contemplated just how loved you are? Even putting the intense, unrestricted love of the Father aside (which is hard to do, but it’s such an underpinning to life that it’s almost unnecessary to say) - nearly all of us are blessed with families that love us, friends, children, dogs . . . the list goes on. And most of us are relatively unloveable in our raw state. I’m so glad this capacity was placed in our hearts.

It’s worth remembering.

Filed at 12:32 pm under Life, Faith, Love, Wedding, Girlyness
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After browsing through the beautiful Laura’s pictures (blogs here and here and great pictures here) and seeing the ridiculously awesome and feminine style she’s able to pull off . . .

. . . I think I’ve been inspired to make my first year of marriage the “year of the thrift shop” (and supplementary thrift-shop-price-level things).

I live near a number of great and trendy thrift shops, including the venerable Beacon’s Closet, and well, I’m not a fashion nightmare but I don’t think I know how to get the bang for my buck without looking like everyone else.

Plus, Tom likes me in feminine clothes, and I’m still recovering from my RPI years (jeans and t-shirts and hoodies) and re-learning what it means to be a real girl. ;) I’ve been offloading bags of old clothes onto thrift shops and charities and getting rid of anything I don’t love wearing. And, it means more money available to us to clothe my soon-to-be-husband, who dresses impeccably but whose wardrobe is running low (and I’m still determined to get him into a really great pair of jeans because he would be HOT in them).

I bought a dress at Beacon’s Closet (see it here) and loved it - brand, “Lux”, which is from Anthropologie or maybe Urban Outfitters. And it was $14!!!

The only exceptions to my plan:
- underthings, which are far too skeevy when bought pre-worn
- bathing suits, same diff
- possibly stellar shoes from Payless, as I’ve never been disappointed with them
- ribbons! I want ribbons.
- maybe a piece of jewelry
- the possible occasional awesome buy at Anthropologie, if I find one, because I cannot live without that store

So, Laura! You have inspired me. I want to be as cool as you. :D

Nota bene: I inadvertantly picked the same wedding dress as her. Hehe.

Filed at 11:23 am under Girlyness
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On Tuesday night, I went to Symphony in the Park with IAM. When Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony concluded, and the fireworks were over, the hundreds of thousands of people crammed onto the Great Lawn started filing out. (My remark: “I am so glad we’re not all driving out of here.”)

Nobody was really expecting the immediate crashing massive thunderstorm, and I personally got caught under the awning of a building for half an hour waiting for the rain to let up. It didn’t, and despite my lack of umbrella, I decided I didn’t want to be out there till midnight and have to take the late night trains. So I made a break for the subway, realizing as I left that I had no idea what street I was near or really where the edge of the park was, exactly.

I looked for buildings, finally found Central Park West (fully soaked at this point) and came out at 77th Street. Unfortunate, since there’s a subway at 81st and a subway at 72nd, but none at 77th. I trudged down to 72nd and joined the literal throng of people waiting for the downtown train - any downtown train.

But there’s where I had to smile. You may or may not have experience New York City before, and in any case, you likely know that New Yorkers have a distinct reputation for coldness and rudeness. That pretty much means that you haven’t been there during a thunderstorm.

Three guys, obviously musicians themselves, were singing at the top of their lungs, and a few others were singing along, grinning, talking to the people around them. The train got to the station and I squeezed on, sliding into the six inches between the wall of people and the door and managed to push far enough in to let the doors close. The guy who I was pressed into kept apologizing and finally offered me a bottle of wine (he had three unopened ones in his bag) - I declined, but it was sweet. Everyone was talking to people they clearly didn’t know about the music and the evening. The whole city turned out for the symphony, and they all went home together, best of friends.

Yesterday it was hot and dry again, and most people were back to reading and listening to music on the subway. But I’ll insist, over and over . . . this is a great place to live.

Filed at 10:33 am under New York City, Music
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So the authors of Emily Ever After & Consider Lily blogged about their interview, and you should read their blog, because it’s great fun.

Filed at 3:43 pm under Writing, Books
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One of the few things we actually registered for were some cute espresso cups (a set of four, because espresso makes you wittier and therefore should always be shared with friends). But if we hadn’t . . . aren’t these ones from Nestle (of all places) great?

Filed at 3:29 pm under Links
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The last 24 hours have been a wee bit on the stressful side, culminating mostly with me (generally a polite, friendly person on the phone, who isn’t even rude to telemarketers) demanding emphatically and assertively that a certain company providing certain invitation-related services to us fix their own mistake at their own expense and hand-deliver the results. It worked.

But it’s just been a lot to deal with, and then today has been so busy at work (I know, right?) that I didn’t get to get out of my chair until about 3pm.

So I threw caution to the wind, picked $1.95 in change out of my wallet and the cup of pennies I keep near my desk for emergencies such as this, and marched down to Starbucks to purchase a fruit slice cookie.

Ohhh. Soooo good.

Filed at 3:21 pm under Daily Goings-On, Facepalm
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I’m going to Philharmonic in the Park tonight with IAM, and it appears that they’re playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven’s Fifth.

Score. I miss classical music. (Well, romantic music, I guess. No, wait. What period was Prokofiev?)

Filed at 3:13 pm under New York City, Music
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. . . check it out.

Filed at 4:01 pm under Writing
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I took Friday off, because my brother, Sean (17 years old and very tall, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of his acquaintance) came to visit for the weekend. So I dropped the wedding invitations off at the printer in the morning, then met him at Penn Station and got us on a train to New Jersey. We spent the rest of the day hanging out with the cast and crew on Tom’s set as they filmed the big fight scene from the movie. Highlight of the day - getting unexpectedly sprayed, along with the whole crew, by some very enthusiastic fake blood during a fake gunshot, and having to keep quiet because the cameras were rolling.

On Saturday, Tom came over mid-morning and we made a huge breakfast (scrambled eggs with olives and fresh mozzarella, maple sausage, biscuits from a can!!!, orange juice, and grapes). We checked out Beacon’s Closet, which is a very hipster “selective” thrift shop a block from my apartment that is awesome and has great clothes and fabulous prices. Hopefully I can offload some of my nicer cast-off clothes onto them in exchange for store credit.

We then trucked up to BAM for Psycho, which was awesome (I think Sean thought so too). I hadn’t seen it before but I adore Hitchcock movies (I wrote a paper on North by Northwest for a class once :D). And that evening we bought pizza and went to Prospect Park and listened to some experimental Northern Mexican video-based electronica (uh, yeah) and left after six songs and went to the Cocoa Bar and oversugared ourselves.

Sean and I actually made it to church early on Sunday (that is truly amazing), then went to lunch with friends at an Afghani restaurant in the East Village, followed by ice cream, followed by watching pigeons in Union Square and buying sandwiches and root beer floats until we had to send him home. And then Tom and I went back to the apartment, ate chips and very good but very hot salsa, and watched the very long documentary about the making of Psycho.

So now my apartment is a complete wreck and I have a million and one things to do this week, but very little to worry about. My one and only concern these days is that more people will be able to make the wedding than we expect, and we’ll run out of room and money simultaneously. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will all work out. :)

Filed at 9:45 am under Life, Film
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49 days! 7 weeks! Wooha!

Filed at 11:33 pm under Wedding, Engagement
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The wedding planning finally feels like it’s moving along . . . because invitations are getting near printing. ;) They are lovely and we are so thrilled for our amazing friends who helped out with getting them to look good. Woohoo!

Tom called me about an hour and a half ago and said that they wrapped early and he’s going to drive into the city to hang out with me this evening. Double woohoo!!!

I have tomorrow off. My super-cool brother is coming for the weekend. We are going to paint the town red and hang out in hipster areas like the East Village and Williamsburg and and spend some time on the movie set. That will all be fun, but right now I’m concentrating on how incredibly happy I am that today is “my” Friday!!

Filed at 4:11 pm under Daily Goings-On
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Yesterday was not one of my more shining moments, as I got up insanely early to make it to girls’ group and spend the rest of the day alternately chasing the electric company, Kinko’s, various people at work, and wedding-related people in an attempt to regain sanity. So, after work, I decided to be a teensy bit irresponsible and disappear for an hour and a half to see The Devil Wears Prada.

I was astounded at how much better it was than the book. I couldn’t pinpoint it till I read the review in the New Yorker this morning and realized that by removing all of Andy Sach’s internal dialogue, which is very wordy and repetitive and snotty, the story works much better. They completely streamlined the plot and Meryl Streep was brilliant and even if the fashion was bad, I loved about half of it. Particularly the shoes. I heart the shoes.

I could relate, a bit. I’ve never, ever had the proverbial Boss From Hell. Every boss I’ve ever had has been amazing and I’ve loved them and they’ve loved me and all has been peachy. But I have had a handful of high-stress jobs where I was on point all the time and where when things went wrong, it was specifically my fault. And I’ve had that experience of people close to me resenting the job. So I could sympathize with Andy and was even a bit ticked at her friends, because I know what it is to be nailed to a job and to be doing work you don’t want to do and have people think you’re being overdramatic.

It was totally bizarre to be able to pick out where, specifically, they were in every shot. The “Elias-Clark” building is actually on the same block as mine - it’s Time Warner Books, I think - and I pass it constantly. You can catch Radio City Music Hall in a few shots - I’m right on the other side of that at this exact moment. I’m actually not sure how I missed seeing them shoot the movie. Good ol’ midtown.

And as my own “Overheard in NY”, I heard this conversation as I walked out of the theater:

Man: Wow, that was pretty good.
Woman: Yeah, it reminded me of that movie with the White Witch.
Man: Oh, yeah! 101 Dalmations!
Woman: Right!

Filed at 9:34 am under New York City, Film, Facepalm
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Not sure why, exactly, but I was looking over IMDB’s trivia for Four Weddings and a Funeral - which, by the way, is a great movie with a horrible ending. But anyhow, these two bits made me laugh:

The budget for the film was so small that the Scottish wedding wasn’t filmed in Scotland, and the extras had to bring their own suits to the weddings.

(Tom will be glad to know that.)

While making the film, Hugh Grant thought the movie was awful.

Filed at 2:53 pm under Film, Facepalm
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Started pounding the B vitamins today. GNC tells me that they “replinsh B-Vitamins lost during stress - essential for energy production”. Let’s hope so.

Filed at 10:20 am under Daily Goings-On, Wedding
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I spent most of the day working from home on Friday, in the vain idea that someone was coming to check the leak in my downstairs neighbor’s roof and would therefore want to get into my apartment. But then I found out they came on Thursday. Ha!

So, I caught a train after “work” to New Jersey to hang out with my adorable fiance. We had dinner with his parents, and it was fairly late by the time we got home so we didn’t do anything else that evening. The next morning we headed out to Panera for a while and he taught me how to do film scheduling. Sorta. Really just hour-by-hour schedules. But it was fun and I was productive and hopefully thorough. After a graduation party, we went to Starbucks and continued on said schedules. We took the train back into Manhattan on Sunday and went to church.

We had the surreal experience of watching the Italy vs. France World Cup finals on a Spanish TV station in a Japanese sushi bar on the lower east side. Not something you do every day. We had to leave before the second overtime finished (but not before the head-butt incident) to catch Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest, which was great fun, very like an amusement park ride. Woohoo!

And then we wandered about town, tossed around ideas for the wedding, and eventually went to our respective dwelling places.

I got to work today and had a voice message from Tom - “Hi, it’s me, just heard about the building and wanted to make sure you were ok.” What? I went to CNN and found this. I’ve been hearing the sirens all day.

Filed at 3:21 pm under New York City, Daily Goings-On
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A few pictures from last Saturday night. Tom and I met up with Tara Leigh (on a rare in-town stint, even though she lives here ::cough cough::) and her friend Doug for dinner/coffee/conversation. A good time was had by all.

P.S. As an added bonus, one of the pictures has a decent shot at my ring - or my “anti-gravity” rock, as Ken likes to call it.

Filed at 11:14 pm under Photos
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I’m sitting here at work on a veeerrrry slow day and I just opened a fortune cookie that says:

The skills you have gathered will one day come in handy.

Good to know.

Which reminds me of last night’s fortune, which, I kid you not, said:

Tastes like chicken.

Filed at 12:47 pm under Funnies, Facepalm
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I haven’t had much urge to blog lately. Hmm.

Anyhow, I was able to leave early on Friday due to everyone else leaving early on Friday. So Tom came into the city and worked from his phone while I picked out bridesmaid dresses at David’s Bridal. I finally settled on this one, in Peridot (light green). It looks horrible on that model but when I tried it on, it was lovely.

We went to see Double Indemnity on Friday night, after Thai food in Astoria. ‘Twas good. Film Forum is having a Billy Wilder festival of sorts and so we were trying to hit them.

On Saturday, Tom came over in the late morning and I cooked scrambled eggs for the very first time (I don’t usually eat eggs, but I’m learning) and we had chocolate biscuits and grapes and orange juice while he tied up some loose ends. Then we headed into the city for another premarital counseling session (which was great). Then we met up with Tara Leigh and her friend Doug (who she calls Danger, for no apparent reason ;D) for dinner/coffee/lots of conversation. Twas an excellent evening. Will post pics soon. They are blurry, unfortunately, mostly because we were at this grill & bar place that’s on the end of Pier 46 in Chelsea, right on the water, and you can feel the dock floating. It was a weird sensation.

We went to church on Sunday, and then brunch with a bunch of people (including Angela, who is in town for most of the month, hurrah!). And then to see Some Like It Hot. Odd bit of trivia from IMDB about filming that movie:

Marilyn Monroe required 47 takes to get “It’s me, Sugar” correct, instead saying either “Sugar, it’s me” or “It’s Sugar, me”. After take 30, Billy Wilder had the line written on a blackboard. Another scene required Monroe to rummage through some drawers and say “Where’s the bourbon?” After 40 takes of her saying “Where’s the whiskey?”, ‘Where’s the bottle?”, or “Where’s the bonbon?”, Wilder pasted the correct line in one of the drawers. After Monroe became confused about which drawer contained the line, Wilder had it pasted in every drawer. Fifty-nine takes were required for this scene and when she finally does say it, she has her back to the camera, leading some to wonder if Wilder finally gave up and had it dubbed.

And they wonder why people make blonde jokes.

I spent Monday kicking around the apartment, checking my work email and messages (there were none; everyone apparently took the day off), doing laundry, working on some websites, buying groceries, cleaning the bathroom, etc. I tried to go see The Devil Wears Prada, and even walked all the way down to the theater at 16th St (like 20 blocks), but it was sold out. Pooey. Better luck later.

And yesterday I went to Jersey to hang out with Tom and his family. We ate Chinese food and ice cream and watched fireworks. ‘Twas a thoroughly enjoyable holiday.

Filed at 11:05 am under Daily Goings-On, Film
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