Christmas Eve

Last night was Christmas Eve and I had dinner at Rothy's apartment, where she and her boyfriend made apple avocado salad, chili, and latkes and AM shucked a plate of oysters and seven of us polished off six bottles of wine in descending price order.

youth in brooklyn

On Saturday night on my way to a gathering in Williamsburg I listened to two girls gossip on the L train about which friends one of their alleged man friends had slept with and who hated whom. I got off the train and as I was walking to the bar I listened to a couple walking behind me where the girl was confronting the guy about his drinking problem and inability to know when to stop. Once I arrived at my destination, the hostess told me I was actually looking for the bar next door. I went in and bought a drink and after talking to the bartender he told me I was actually looking for the bar next door. I swallowed the drink in a single gulp and went back to the first bar and found my school friends on my own this time, and then stayed there gallivanting until 3:30am or so before taxiing back to Bushwick. 

good night world

< 3

sleep in a wigwam

I just discovered the existence of the WigWam Motel, a chain of motels built in the US in the 1930s and 40s. They're clearly the inspiration for the Cozy Cone Motel in Carsland in DCA. There are still two locations in Arizona and California and I'm adding sleeping in a wigwam to my to-do list.

i woke up at 4 am in a panic about my life and lied awake for at least an hour completely manic

taylor splitter

on my last day of work for the season i set up an hdmi splitter for the first time so i can play taylor on two screens a once in the workshop

driving flying driving relocation

Yesterday I packed up all my things yet again and moved to Windermere, where I'll be living in a bachelor pad with two dudes come January. I moved to Florida with one suitcase and one carry-on and somehow my possessions were fruitful and multiplied into a carload of crap.

As a person who is fairly resistant to change, it feels strange and somewhat mournful to think about how I've moved ten times since graduating from undergrad in 2010:
08/2010 Pudong / Shanghai
11/2010 Normandie Ave / Los Angeles
09/2011 Bach Way / Cerritos
02/2012 South Point View / Los Angeles
04/2012 West View Street / Los Angeles
09/2012 Butler Street / Brooklyn
10/2012 Thames Street / Brooklyn
09/2013 Willoughby Avenue / Brooklyn
08/2014 Cropping Street / Winter Garden
12/2014 Overstreet Road / Windermere

In the afternoon I looked at the Christmas trees and gingerbread houses on display in different hotels around the resort and then hopped on a flight to New York for the holidays. Upon landing, New York was almost instantly more interesting than Florida. My taxi driver from JFK told me about how he came from Dubai when he was young for school, but ended up dropping out and drove taxis. He told his father that he was in America getting his PhD and used a combination of the money he'd made along with the money his father was giving him for tuition and bought two taxi medallions. After years of working he ended up going home to Dubai where his 53-person family lives in one house. Now he's back in New York for just two months, spent $5,000 to rent an apartment in Flushing, so he can sell the two taxi medallions for a huge profit and then go back to Dubai. He said also that he speaks 5 languages, has been to 49 countries, and has a house in San Diego. He dropped me off at my apartment at midnight and I abandoned my suitcase and walked two blocks to Rothy's 27th birthday party at Tandem. Now I'm on my couch, nursing my waning hangover.

Fall 2014

Tonight we ended the internship season with emotional goodbyes.

Bowie

My mentor's beloved cat-child has gone missing and last night we drove through the neighborhood from 11pm to 1am looking for him. The car played an audio loop of my mentor's wife calling the cat's name and shaking his favorite bag of treats. In the dark we saw a raccoon, opossum, bunnies, someone else's cat, and even a gator - my first wild gator - peeking its head out of the water in one of our thousands of ponds and glinting its eye under the beam of our flashlight. We saw all the animals but the one we wanted to find most.

Gather near to us

Tonight Mofitz and I were invited up by the piano player at the Rose and Crown at the UK in Epcot to sing Christmas carols in front of the entire bar. We sang The Christmas Song and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. I'm no Judy G but I really enjoyed crooning to my captive audience.

Babbys

This morning I was up at 6 and at magic kingdom at 7am to attend the Christmas parade filming, but hilariously apparently the portion being filmed today was not the part with the parade or Neil Patrick Harris or even the Ariana Grande performance, it was the opening number with 300 little girls dancing around in a circle in front of the castle and everyone was supremely pissed to have gotten up so early for it.

Speaking of little humans, in the afternoon I went to Animal Kingdom and visited the gorilla exhibit, where there was a near-stampede to see the mama and her baby gorilla. Everyone was pushing and shoving and I thought it was quite funny how we were all fighting while surrounded by an endless number of human babies who all look basically the same as the baby gorilla. By the way, that was my last task on the intern challenge so as of today I have ridden all the rides and seen all the shows in Disney World.

orion

i was up at 4am this morning so i could leave the house at 430am so francus could drive evilbetty and me to cape canaveral so we could all watch the orion launch at 7:05am. there were tons and tons of people out pulled over by the side of the road, armed with their big fancy cameras and ready for a big rumbling space show. we stood deep in wild grasses by the shore and were surrounded by spiders and the droppings of an animal unknown and we waited and waited but the launch was delayed for wind issues and then delayed for mechanical issues and delayed for almost three hours until the flight window officially closed and everyone felt dejected and got back into their cars. while we were stuck in heavy traffic heading back inland i noticed a number of ospreys in the air and remembered the animal report i did on them in elementary school. they're going to try to launch again tomorrow morning but i don't think i can get up that early again because all day my eyes and head have felt swollen from lack of rest.  

Leaving the falcon nest

Back in my bed in winter garden, dreaming feverishly of not sharing a room ever again after the end of next week

Red-eyed baby

I'm in the Orlando airport, fresh off of one of the worst flights in recent history. It was a four-hour red-eye that landed at 5:20am, which feels actually like 2:30am when you've been staying on the west coast, from which I would have to go straight to work, and a baby cried blood-curdling screams the entire way. For my only for hours I had blurry visions of violence in my head and could not imagine what kind of person would bring a baby on a red-eye.