Phone Photo Op - Snow Day

Corporate afternoon view


A Year Ago Today:
Morning-After Text Messages
On Cloud New York
Two Years Ago Today:
I Love Michael Kors

NYC Airports + Bad Weather = Equation for Chaos

Flying out of JFK on time is ranked in my Top 10 List of Impossible Things to Do, just below finding a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City and right above solving the general quintic equation in radicals.

My original flight to Asheville, connecting through Cincinnati on Wednesday evening was cancelled due to bad weather, and every subsequent flight through which I attempted to rebook was cancelled one at a time throughout the evening until no options to Asheville were left. JFK to Atlanta. Cancelled. JFK to Charlotte. Cancelled. La Guardia to Charlotte. Cancelled.

I preferred to remain at JFK for seven hours trying every rebooking equation possible rather than lug my bags around the circumference of the airport on the AirTrain for 20 minutes ($5 each way) to the E ($2 per MetroCard swipe) and ride for another 40 minutes back to Midtown. Only to have to return the following day for a 6am flight. I even considered hopping an express bus to La Guardia - until all their flights were cancelled, too.

To those foreign to middle-class Manhattan dwelling, problem solving in JFK for what was roughly equivalent to a workday may have seemed a fatuous alternative to a 3-hour round-trip commute. But when a 15-mile trip to the airport, dragging your luggage on public transportation, can take an hour and a half door-to-door, you'd almost prefer to sleep at the airport.

Luckily, Mayra and her boyfriend recently moved into a house in Queens, a few stops on the A from JFK. And luckier still, her boyfriend has a brother, who was willing to sleep over and drive me to La Guardia at 5:30am. The ultimate resolution to the quadratic JFK squared equation was to reroute me out of La Guardia and through Atlanta with a final destination of Asheville, North Carolina, at 11am on Thursday.

But the puzzle continued to become more complicated. The following denominators were factored into the following morning.

1) Torrential rain and slow traffic
2) Blown transmission at the exit to the airport
3) Cabs unwilling to stop on the expressway
4) Dodging highway traffic with my small carry-on suitcase to get to a willing cab waiting on the shoulder (still pouring rain)
4) Longest check-in and security lines I've ever seen at LGA
5) First-class security line comes to a halt over a suspicious item when an airport official moves me and another 6:50am passenger to the shorter line
6) The security attendant suddenly decides to go on break and won't let me through the metal detector until someone "tags her out" when the same airport official cuts us back into our previous line
7) The woman sitting next to me in the exit row was unable to assist in the event of an emergency and there was confusion in switching seats with a man who "was promised a window seat for switching"
8) Our plane arrived at a gate at the far end of Terminal A at ATL; my connection was at the far end of Terminal D (click here to see why that sucks)

This blog was posted from Asheville, NC.

A Year Ago Today: Phone Photo Ops - 40/40 Club
My Blog Blows, But It's My Life
Two Years Ago Today: Top Ten Favorite Cullowhee Memories

73° F Feels like 73° F

To quote weather.com for the 10036.

It’s amazing how quiet the office is when it’s nice outside. But today is just a teaser. The weekend forecast is in the low 50s with thunderstorms.

Phone photo ops from lunch in Bryant Park

There was a photographer standing along the railing just behind the man in the baseball cap. He was taking a photo of this gentlemen reading in the park. I tried to capture both of them, but couldn't find my phone before the photographer moved onto his next subject.


Spring arrives in Midtown

Every text I have received from nightclub/lounge promoters has mentioned the weather to lure the girls out (e.g. "DJ [so-and-so] at [insert "Tenjune", "Home", "Prime", "Kush", "Pink Elephant" etc.] tonight. Say [promoter's name or random password] at the door. [Come have fun and praise the springtime] or [Spring is in the air, come raise a glass] or [It's beautiful outside so join me at ...] or [Did u enjoy the beautiful weather 2day? don't forget 2nite I'll be at ...] or [Spring bling]").

Phone Photo Op - No Jersey in Sight

[Not] Overlooking the Hudson River at 1:30 this afternoon


For the view on a good day, click here.

Winter Temps Revisiting Retirement

The warm weather is back ... in my second January in New York City (last year's January 5th colleague reactions).

The ads for the Scottsdale Take Pitty on Me! Contest, which currently line the wall adjacent the Times Square shuttle to Grand Central, tend to lose their appeal in this warm wintery weather.

From the contest website:
"Tired of shoveling snow? [No.] Ready to wave bye-bye to wind chill? [Could always do without, but haven't had to deal much.] Done with frozen nose hairs and snotsicles? [Meh. I always look forward to those.] As temperatures plummet in the north this winter [or once or twice in January], Scottsdale will be enjoying sunny blue skies and warm winter days. Enter the Take Pity On Me Contest and you could win a trip to thaw out in Scottsdale! Just submit photos or a video of yourself suffering in the worst winter weather conditions [can I Photoshop myself into an Antarctica scene?] and you could win a trip to sunny Scottsdale!"

Visit http://www.pleasepityme.com/ for more information*

*Unpaid advertising opportunity under the pretext of editorial content.

First (Maybe Only) Freeze of '08

It is so cold outside right now (at least for this New York transplant who has yet to experience a truly harsh New York City winter thanks to the "earth-warming gremlins who've been hired by Al Gore to win him awards*"), my entire face chapped during my evening commute. I just finished lathering my face with Vaseline.

Quite a contrast from this last year.

However, I did warm up while laughing at this in my not-warm-enough-because-the-building-management-is-stingy-with-the-heat apartment.

*BNR Theory

Phone Photo Ops - Wellies

So I finally gave in and bought a pair of these.

I'm actually not sure how I made it over a year in New York without them.

I'm Melting

I melt in the subway, on the streets, in my sleep, before work, after work. This evening I tried in vain to reach behind me on a crowded uptown no. 1 train to wipe, through my shirt, the bead of sweat running down the hollow of my spine. And now I sit in my apartment with chronic forehead perspiration and my box fan placed strategically on the floor to circulate warm air in my direction while the backs of my legs lightly dampen the microsuede of the couch. Even the inside of the pantry is warm. I had to put my protein bars in the refrigerator.

Why I'll splurge on a new outfit at H&M or cocktail hour at the bar - yet I haven't bought an air conditioner, I'm not quite sure I know. Maybe because my window won't accommodate a window unit or wall slide-in. And according to every PC Richards in this city, I have to purchase the $399 in-sleeve A/C and pay an additional $80 to have it delivered and installed in the sleeve under my window. It just pains me to spend that kind of money when a window unit can cost as little as $99.

I've been talking myself in and out of the purchase for weeks while I swim in my bedsheets during the heat waves and convince myself I can get through the summer every time the temperature returns to a comfortable degree.

And so tonight, I swim again. I know, I know. Cry you a river. It's so hot. Poor her. Blah-blah-blah. If I can't determine the importance of an A/C over a week's worth of happy hours with friends and coworkers, I really can't have it that bad. I probably won't cry you a river, but I could definitely sweat you one.

Heat Wave

And so it came to pass that a fireball would beat down from the heavens scorching New York City as it had be prophesied by the channel 7 news weatherman, causing the snacks in my pantry to soften and creating a subconscious fear that my laptop may melt in my apartment like a VHS tape* in a parked car. On an un-airconditioned downtown no. 1 train yesterday I was fanning myself with the latest edition of amNY featuring a cover article entitled "Scorcher! City braces for first heat wave," and this morning I awoke from the damp swamp that is my bed to catch a morning spinning class at the gym and discovered that it was already 80 degrees at 5:30 a.m.

*Definition and description of VHS tape is available on Wikipedia

The New York City Blogging Thermometer

Another witty post from the East Village Idiot. If I don't get off his balls soon and keep reposting his entries or linking to his blog, I'm going to rename my blog "East Village Idiot Groupie."

That random, lone crack of thunder over midtown just now was really loud.

To A/C or not to A/C?

On Sunday, May 27, I blogged about the heat and my need for an AC:

"... Despite roughly four hours of sleep, I woke up early this morning in a puddle of sweat in the sauna that is my apartment and immediately decided that today will be the day that I make legitimate efforts toward finding an air conditioner and having it installed in the air conditioner box under my window.

As the back of my legs began to stick to the normally soft microsuede on my couch, I came across reruns of "Run's House" on MTV and noticed in one particular episode that DJ Rev Run's birthday party had been held in Tenjune recently.

"Oh, that's where we were last night," I thought to myself as I seriously debated whether or not to buy a lawn chair at the corner $.99 store and camp out in the frozen food section of the C Town across the street. I've had two cold showers in the last seven hours."

However, I have been dealing with this inner turmoil over the purchase of an air conditioner since I moved into my apartment last November. I knew when I moved from North Carolina into my best friend's living room in the Bronx during the hottest month in New York's recorded history (August 2006) that an air conditioner would be a necessity. I even had all those winter months of opportunity when air conditioners were cheaper.

Yet the same financial reasonings of a recent East Village Idiot blog post have had me in my own internal back-and-forth for months while my family and friends (who live in the South and don't understand housing without AC already included) regularly ask me, "Have you bought an AC yet?"

PLUS, I can only buy an AC that fits in the huge sleeve in my wall, which - though covered - is not insulated and let in the cold air all winter. My ONLY window won't accommodate one, which would ultimately block my view of Jimmy Hoffa's burial ground anyway (= Hudson River) and the only ACs that fit in sleeves at PC Richards currently cost more than another plane ticket to Miami.

And don't even get me started on how I'd get it home. Ever since I sold my car and became a card carrying member of the MTA, I've been stuck in that dark public-transportation abyss: if I can't carry it, I generally can't have it.

That abyss has kept me from making large purchases in New York that I would have easily made in the South without having to mull over the following options: 1) pay for delivery, 2) pay for a cab, but then figure out how to get it up to my apartment, 3) push, pull, heave, drag it - or a combination of (2) and (3) - all the way home.

And thus the question of a new New Yorker becomes: To be with AC or not to be with AC?

Crush on Ellen and Need an Air Conditioner

I am weirdly attracted to Ellen DeGeneres. This isn't a new revelation. I was watching a rerun of her show on the Oxygen channel last night, and decided that I'm finally able to admit it in the blogosphere. I had a conversation with my friend Eileen, Annisha and Gina B. about my female crush after Ellen hosted this year's Academy Awards show.

"Female crushes are normal and do not mean that you are a lesbian," Eileen had said to me over brunch at Cafe Noir after I had said, "Ok, girls. I am weirdly attracted to Ellen DeGeneres. Does that mean I'm gay?"

"But it's not your normal female crush," I had replied, "Most heterosexual girls have hot-girl crushes, like on Jessica Alba, or say something trendy like, 'I'd make out with Angelina Jolie.'"

I know I am strictly interested in men - at least in terms of intimacy. In fact, my fantasies of Ellen simply involve frolicking hand-in-hand in a meadow and laughing at her jokes while we rest in the shadow of cherry trees.

Anyway, I really need an air conditioner. It was so hot today.

This photo sums up today's temperature:

Yesterday & Today

Two nice days in a row. Weather-wise and life-wise.

New York bloggers have a common theme in recent posts: great weather. Yesterday several colleagues and I were looking an empty table in Bryant Park during our lunch hour, and I said to Jenny, "How great is life right now?"

"Seriously!" she replied.

Later in the afternoon, I dipped out of the office to catch a friend's Broadway debut in the opening number of "The 21st Annual Easter Bonnet Competition" on Broadway. At 4:18 p.m., I ran out of the office as fast as I could in stiletto sandals, jumped in a passing cab and paid $6 to go two avenues. It was worth the investment - given my footwear - as I was just in time to pick up the ticket Stephanie had left for me at will call and find my seat before the lights in the theater lowered and the curtain rose.

I pride myself in not crying during movies, but Broadway always makes me a little emotional - even when the songs are happy. The music is so powerful that I have no choice but to let it move me. And "The 21st Annual Easter Bonnet Competition" served as a fabulous teaser for various shows that are currently running and featured multiple cast members and stars from "The Fantasticks," "Company," "Les Miserables," "Mamma Mia!," "The Color Purple," "Wicked," "The Lion King," "Phantom of the Opera" and "Beauty and the Beast" (to name a few).

"The Lion King" is now definitely next on my list of must-sees. After Stephanie's amazing performance, we had dinner in Bryant Park, where a bird dropped a surprise in my water glass, but knew better than to mess with my glass of wine!

Yesterday was followed by another gorgeous day, which found me lounging on the front steps of the New York Public Library again with my coworker Jenny. As we were crossing the street, Jenny said, "Days like today are what make winters in New York worth the wait."

This evening was my first night back in the gym after last week's bout with mild illness. I struggled through the cardio kickboxing class, but stuck around to lift weights and get a really good stretch in before heading back uptown. Now I'm back in my apartment, which is still warm after baking in the sun all day. I need to end this post and google eco-friendly air-conditioning units.

Here's to tomorrow.

From broadwaycares.org: "Reputed to be the hottest ticket on Broadway, The Easter Bonnet Competition features a parade of bonnets hand-crafted by the casts and crews of dozens of participating productions. This annual spring event is the culmination of an intensive six-week fundraising effort by the companies of Broadway, Off-Broadway and national touring productions. Curtain speeches, sales of autographed posters and programs, auctions and cabaret performances are just some of the activities that enable these companies to bring in generous contributions from audiences."

For more information on Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids and The Actors' Fund of America, visit www.actorsfund.org

Phone Photo Ops - Yesterday & Today

Searching for a lunch spot with colleagues in Bryant Park yesterday


The new grass is on the lawn (not open for lounging yet after removing the skating rink and replanting)


Lunch hour for New York professionals


From the mezzanine of the Minskoff Theatre after Broadway's 21st Annual Easter Bonnet Competition yesterday afternoon


Evening chess in Bryant Park after Stephanie's Broadway debut, in which she sang a duet during the opening number of "The 21st Annual Easter Bonnet Competition"




Lunch today with Jenny on the front steps of the NYPL


And a closer angle

Spring is Here!

Spring began officially at 8:07 p.m. yesterday after my cardio kickboxing class at Equinox.

Will someone let the weather know?

About the season, that is; my exercise class is irrelevant.

Phone Photo Ops - White Out

Leaving the office on 42nd Street after work


This is why I need rain and snow boots


I can't believe I was just eating lunch here on Wednesday
without a jacket


Dragging my suitcase through this in the East Village tonight

Say It Ain't Snow!

I blogged too soon. Snow is expected tomorrow. Yesterday's weather was a warm front fluke. Quoting Liz Cho of Channel 7 Eyewitness News, who just provided a preview of tonight's 11 o'clock news during a commercial break for a new television show called October Road: "The biggest snow storm of the year may be heading our way."

The impending frozen participation isn't the only thing hanging over my head. I had a screw-up at work today. It turned out to be a minor mistake because the meeting I didn't confirm wasn't a vital meeting, but it was a major mistake because the mistake shouldn't have happened. Last week, we moved a meeting from the downtown office to the midtown office. I sent a quick email to the vendor to notify them of the relocation. But even though I received no reply or notice of receipt, I didn't double check with the vendor.

Apparently the email was not delivered (which isn't likely because I received no undeliverable error) or it was overlooked on their end. Either way, I should have called them yesterday because the vendor showed up today at our downtown office. Right time, wrong location. I'm usually in the habit of double- and triple-checking everything, but when you're assisting two executives with demanding and diverse needs and overwhelming amounts of busy work, some things are bound to fall through the cracks. Picture "The Devil Wears Prada" x2 - but luckily without the deliberate bitch.

Our downtown and midtown offices are about 20 minutes apart by taxi, but we'll be rescheduling the meeting because the vendor had other appointments scheduled after ours. I'm sure they were frustrated - as was my boss - but they didn't express their frustration because they want our business. In fact, they were gracious.

Some days I really enjoy my job, but other days I question whether or not I have what it takes to get ahead. I never aspired to get into digital advertising sales and marketing, but when I happened to fall into it upon moving to the city, it seemed so glamorous and sexy. Days like today remind me how glamorous and sexy I am not in the corporate world. And it's hard to be confident when you sometimes feel like you're struggling to keep up.

I think the fact that I like my job and that I really like and admire my bosses causes further frustration for me when I mess up. I want so badly to always do a good job for them. I guess days like today are like forecasts for snow when you were expecting the start of spring.

Phone Photo Ops - Yesterday's Weather

Union Square Park - 14th Street & Broadway


Line for the ice cream man at Fifth Avenue & 43rd Street


The snow is supposed to be back tomorrow

Spring is in the Air

Annisha and I planned to meet for lunch on Friday, but it was so beautiful outside this morning that she emailed me and asked if I wanted to meet in Bryant Park around 12:30. So we did, and the day was indeed beautiful. In fact, it was almost too warm along the perimeter of the park since the canopy of leaves hasn't grown back yet to shade the lunch crowd from the sun.

It's kind of funny that everyone in my office was so excited about the weather today - as if we've had a hard winter. However, after the record cold temperatures we had in February, it's easy to forget that it was 71 degrees Fahrenheit on January 6. I guess it's the anticipation of spring that really has everyone talking.

I meant to take some camera phone photo ops during lunch, but since I forgot, here are some images taken in Bryant Park during my first fall season in New York City.