What's Happening

Had a fun week at work. I finally got to see my favorite musical Wicked on Broadway this Wednesday. After our office wined and dined ourselves at La Bernadin, an incredibly expensive and amazing midtown seafood restaurant, we headed on over to the Gershwin Theater to see the show. All in all it was a fun day at work :)

Heard it on the Upper Eastside:
"Son, what did I tell you? We never grab other people's noodles, it's extremely dangerous and someone could get seriously hurt!" -woman to her son in the pool at the New York Health and Raquet Club on 76th

My Labor Day Vacation

Went to see good ole' Bean Town and New England this past weekend with Sara!

Our 5 1/2 hour bus ride from ChinaTown was an experience. We took the Fung-Wah bus for 5 1/2 hours to Boston (should have only taken 4 hours), with a screaming baby. To try and shut it up, the parents proceeded to not only change it's poopy diaper on the full, hot bus (which we all then had the pleasure of smelling) but also attempted music therapy in the form of a squeaky dog toy and a stereo blasting their horrible "China Buffet"-esque music (which we all had the pleasure of hearing). But that's what you get for $15, right?

The great news is that in New Hampshire where we stayed, they have really cheap, tax-free alcohol so we stocked up and enjoyed the weekend! Boston was a blast, with the graves of Sam Adams and Paul Revere, the old "first" everythings from public schools to restaurants. I even got to change my first tire all by myself when we got a flat outside of the city looking for a restroom. Needless to say, the flat tire prevented us finding one...you do the math.

The next day we went to Portsmouth, NH to see the beautiful beach-side town and had a delicious lunch followed by a few homemade cocktails on the shore. Then it was back home for game night; aka. drunk Monopoly which I lost miserably even though I bought tons of hotels on Baltic Avenue. Shame!

Then we traveled home on the Boston Deluxe, alcohol in tow to our lovely apartment beds.

A great weekend in all! It made me miss home :)

Showdown at the Landromat

I do my laundry about every two weeks or less. This requires me to lug my huge pop-up carrier of clothes and linens down three flights of stairs, up two blocks and back. You also have to wait twenty minutes for the washer to finish, change the clothes to the dryer and 50 minutes for them to be totally done.

This is all fine. I hate doing the laundry in general, but I do it often since I need to have clean clothes to function. And I go to the same laundromat on the corner of 90th and 1st: "Super Rich". Only this laundromat, "Super Blows".

The little jerk who runs the joint sees me every two weeks, and every time he changes my money for coins and helps bang on the crappy machinery he owns to get the thing going for me. You'd think a sort of bond would form between us since I might be his most loyal customer, and since I've only been nice and cordial to him despite his snotty demeanor. But no.

Tonight I went to do my much needed laundry later than usual. After a long day of work, I hauled my cookies over to the Super Rich and ran my loads. Not a problem, the sign says the store closes at midnight in HUGE lettering. However, when I return at 10:55 to get my laundry, it's not completely dry so I place in two more quarters. As if setting off an alarm with my change, the screeching owner yelps at me "I CLOSE, I CLOSE” as he hands some young guy his clothes back at the register.

The guy, bewildered looks back and forth between us both, shocked as I am at this outburst, and leaves very quickly. So I tell the owner, "Sir, doesn't your very large wooden sign outside say you close at midnight?" He snaps back, "That's wrong then". But I have a whole 16 minutes left to go on my dryer. I'm in advertising and I know that I have the upper hand seeing as this messaging is false. So, what do I do? I stand my ground and lock my legs in front of my dryer. I watch the clock count down, and with 9 minutes to go, Huffy-McHufferson over there screams again, "EXCUSE ME, I TELL YOU I CLOSE!"

Pissed, I stare him straight into his beady little eyes, certain I could kick his ass if I needed to, and tell him, "I still have more time to go."

He runs to the door, "FINE, you want to STAY?? I shut you IN!" The clock on the wall literally reads, 11:10, like he's got some brain surgery he can't miss tonight. So instead of getting locked into the Super Rich for the night by some maniac, I yell back an explicative and unload my dryer in rage. As I start to leave he tries to hand me a dollar, obviously feeling guilty for his being a major douche-bag.

I stare him straight in the eye and firmly but calmly say, " I don't want your money, and you just lost a customer." Then hobbled out of the store with as much dignity as I could carrying an 80lb bag of hot clothes on my back.

It looks like I'm just going to have to walk right past jerk-face's store to the nicer laundromat a block up with the TV's and the change machine. Look at how devastated I am.

I guess there's a little New Yorker in us all, waiting to stand up to the psychos of the world without fear. I heart NY :)

So, got a "Holy SH*T" reality check today:

My gums on my two front bottom teeth have been recessing due to my unfortunate genetic disposition to have thin tissue and due to the fact I had braces. What does this mean?

Apparently, the Russian Periodontist believes that it's necessecary , in fact obligatory, that I PAY him to stick huge needles into my gums and the hard palate of my mouth, basically skin the roof of my palate, take the skin, and jam it into my gums which he will slice open, then sew up the roof of my mouth and send me off to an existence of pain and soft foods for a few weeks. Aka. Gum Grafting; a periodontist's wet-dream

I could literally see the sly smile on his face that he was trying to cover up when he was explaining the procedure to me. Like everything he was telling me about it not being horribly painful was a huge crock of crap and that I'd really be suffering uncontrollably. It's not a good sign when both the dentist you talk to about the pain pause for a good five seconds before answering. Right? "Nothing that a couple of Advil’s will take care of"...liar

Cherry on Top? The procedure, or torturing, will cost approx. $1,400. Thank god I have insurance, but it only covers half of the cost. So I will be paying some guy to mutilate my mouth $737. Like I can afford that with ease.

Plus reading about other people's experiences isn't really making things much better. In fact, I was so nauseated during one I had to stop.

Some day..I think I need a drink

Good Afternoon, Good Evening, and Good Night

Random NYC moment of the day: I saw the friend of Truman (aka. Jim Carey) from the Truman Show at Trader Joe's today. He had his watermelon price checked. I guess even movie stars like a deal every now and then.

Bizzare NYC smell of the day: The 86 street stop smelled like my Grandma's kitchen, not that I'm complaining or anything, just weird.