Unplanned Parties

This weekend was full of unplanned events and misplaced time. That's why I'm posting my Monday haiku on Wednesday - and backdating the entry. I'm so sneaky. Ha!

Freezing Friday Dinner

Too cold to go out
Boredom leads to overcooking
Plus: Week's worth of meals.

Surprise Lessons Learned

Emergency wine
Kept on hand in a warm room
Skunks after a month.

Saturday Night

Impromptu dinner
Soup filled dumplings, Chinatown
Good, but hard to eat

Saturday Night: It Keeps Going

"Around the World"/dorm
Themed drinks with future lawyers
Highly organized

Saturday Night/Sunday Morning

Into the abyss
Just when you thought it was done
Night speeds to daylight

Note: For those of you who know me, I am having a *very* planned party this Friday for Groundhog Day. Shoot me an email for the Evite!

Today at work I...

...slammed my forearm in the cabinet above my desk.

...spilled coffee on my hand and burned myself while opening the door for our visiting software vendors.

...pinched my index finger in the trash can flap while throwing away the paper towel I used to dry my hand after washing off the coffee.

All before 10 am!

It's taken over 12 hours for me to recover. Fortunately I didn't encounter any talking seltzer water, so the recovery was smooth.

Some days, I am just not with the program.

Tick Tock

I have an alarm clock problem.

It's not your run-of-the-mill, hit-the-snooze-bar, can't-get-up-in-the-morning problem.

(Actually, I have that one, too).

It's an alarm clock-purchasing problem.

My problem is that I have somewhat of an obsession with good design. I want everything around me to be beautiful, but also functional, and frequently, practical. Thus, I refuse to go to Radio Shack and buy a crappy, motel-grade brown plastic thing with a beady red display. Likewise, I'm not paying $100 for some crazy CD orb.

Right now, I'm using an old cell phone to wake up, whose dulcet tones wear on me more and more every morning. It's dreadful. There's the clock I wanted to buy, pictured above - until I realized that it worked on battery power alone. Useless. (Not to mention that I had actually decided to accept the ridiculous shipping cost at Kmart.com - $6 shipping on a $14 item because they do not carry it in the store. Oh, drama.)

But it wasn't always like this. In high school - and throughout college - I had a sleek, white plastic clock radio. It looked like a miniature stereo, with clean lines and a slim profile. But in its heart of hearts, it was a piece of crap - and it was entitled to be; I think it may have cost me $7 in 1994.

Of course, it was not meant to last... more than 10 years. Like all poorly made electronics, it eventually started to buzz - at first only when the radio was on, and then incessantly. I thought about unplugging it - but that sort of defeats the purpose of having an alarm clock, you know?

Still, it would usually shut up when I knocked it against my dresser a few times. Eventually, even that didn't work. One fine day during my senior year, I sat down at my computer to start browsing eBay and Amazon for a new piece of plastic to abuse - and spoke aloud about my intentions to one of my roommates.

And then the buzzing stopped. And it didn't start up again all year.

The moral of the story? If you threaten cheap electronics with replacement, they will behave.

Until you spill beer on them during senior week.

The End.

Still Tired

A few haiku -

Bad decisions I

Friday evening nap
Enabled Friday night bars
And insomnia

Bad decisions II

Slept in this weekend
Awake at noon, up til 2
Tired once again.

Bad Decisions III

Saturday sunset
6 cups of strong black coffee
There is no excuse

The Marathon Continues

Another day of speeches, bad coffee, name tags, heavy food and too much to drink. I think I'm staying in Friday night.

Unrelated to my liver:

On the Burning Man front, tickets for 2007 are on sale now. Buy them at Burningman.com.

As an added incentive, the Duchess and I are already planning to host an activity there: Interpretive Uterine Dancing!

(Men welcome.)

Please Do Not Make Me Drink More

I am back from Las Vegas - and I have a work event tonight and another one tomorrow.

50 sales people from around the country. In one room. Open bar. All night.

Dear lord. I hope no one takes pictures.

Off Again

I am off to Fabulous Las Vegas for the weekend with my entire cast of characters: The Duchess, the Private Eye, Cardinal, the Cheese Princess, Moonshine, and some guy the Duchess is shacking up with! The Writer was supposed to be there this weekend as well and we were going to both bring our laptops, get drunk at the penny slots and hold Live Blogging Las Vegas. Unfortunately, she is going over President's day instead and thus, I will not be hauling my laptop. I have some choice feelings about Vegas, it's really a shame.

I may breakdown and find an internet kiosk. We'll see.

Pictures to come later at any rate. Though it may be a while until I get my FILM developed.

I'll be back posting on Wednesday at the latest.

Hate Hate Hate

I hate meetings. I hate Hate HATE meetings.

Do you know why I hate meetings?

I will tell you why I hate meetings.

When you are in meetings, you cannot get your work done. Also, when you are in meetings, you are asked to report on that very same work that you are not getting done.

"It's not done," you must say.

"Why is it not done?" they will ask.

But you cannot say, "Because I am in this meetings." Oh no. This meeting is but one of many meetings and they do not care. They do not care!

And thus, you are assigned more work when you are in this meeting. Because they do not care.

And that is why I hate meetings.

Love and kisses,

Audrey.

Better Visit the Mediterranean Before it Smashes into Africa

Pangea Ultima and one fantastic visual.

Anyone who doesn't like continental drift animation is invited to leave. That's my childhood, right there.

(I assure you that there are stranger children of geologists walking this earth than me. )

Lunchtime Ephiphany

I enjoy eating salad for lunch. In particular, I enjoy eating Crazy Salad for lunch. You know - you choose your own lettuce, your own ingredients, your own adventure.

I rotate between four or so delis near my office during the course of the week. There is one that has a particularly prime deal on Crazy Salad and thus, I always order it there. Fresh Mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, red onions, avacado and spinach with balsamic vinagrette? Excellent. Celery, mushrooms, red onions, bean sprouts, colored peppers and mixed greens with cracked pepper caesar and croutons? Delightful. The Crazy Salad Technician asks no questions - he only creates a masterpiece.

Unless I ask him for roasted red peppers and point at the box behind the glass.

"No." My Crazy Salad Technician refuses and gestures to the next box. He mumbles something that I can't understand, but the message is clear. "You want these."

Far be it from me to turn down advice offered by a worker at an eatery. When a waitress, a chef, a Chinese food mastermind tells me, "You don't *really* want that item," I listen. They obviously know something that I don't know and I'll take all the advice I can get. So for the past few weeks, I have accepted Salad Guy's advice and taken the wet-looking roasted red peppers instead of the dry-looking ones that live next to them. They just look so crispy and delicious, I can't help but want to chew them.

Until today. I went to fetch Crazy Salad with one of my coworkers. She watched the one-act play of my order. After she got her salad, I ran through the actions with her. "Why does he deny me the other peppers?" I beseeched her. "What does he know that I don't?!"

"Audrey," she said. "Those are sun dried tomatoes."

Oh.

Venture Capital

And now, a guest post by my friend Patel:

On a fine Monday morning in the middle of January, I sit in a class titled Venture Capital. The professor scrawls something on the blackboard.

[redacted]@dtventures.com
646-452-****
Secretary: Kathryn

“Buy the book! You must have it!” He waves around an inch thick course pack. $29.95, I estimate. That’s the value of this class. I can picture the binder stacking thirty piles of uncut books in a basement print shop. I tune back in – he is still talking. “Attendance is important. You’re going to learn something in every class,” he claims. The promise is not new; it has been made before, in other classes, in other semesters, by other professors. It’s kept about as often as, “Baby, I’ll always love you.”

He cites C. S. Lewis. This businessman must be an aspiring academic. He cites Yogi Berra. A sports fan too, or perhaps just a philosopher. “Grades do not matter, we’re here to learn.” Phew - I thought I was the only one who had figured that out.

“Are you from New York?” he asks the student sitting to my left, trying to be friendly. “Connecticut,” the student responds, equating the two with a light nod. One student says she has practiced law in a Russian-sounding city at a Russian-sounding law firm. China, India, Japan, Korea… the Legum Magisters, Masters of Law students, LLM’s or whatever we are called, are well represented in this business school class. Rahul sits one row in front of me, across the aisle. He, too, is an unshaven Indian. I wonder if the doppelganger LLM’s can tell us apart from the other three unshaven Indians in the room. Rahul gazes through the wall, clearly using his X-ray vision to peek into the class next door. He doodles. His twitching foot gives away the cup of black coffee he had before class.

“The successful entrepreneur turns a concept into cash.” I like this professor. “The venture in venture capitalism is really an ad-venture.” I reconsider. He cites Crassius’s private firefighters, whisking me back to 300 AD. I make an edit to a previous paragraph, and he’s past World War II. Total venture capital funds in 1980 equaled $2B; by 2000 they had risen to $100B. Nice.

He starts talking shop, describing the economic parties and the different economic entities. A chatter of typing sweeps the room, then tapers off. I mentally model the Brownian motion. I regret purchasing the laptop with the more clicky keys—I only want to be the critical feather that causes the auditory snowball, not a full-on distraction. But Gladwell invades my thoughts, interrupting my pontifications.

“Exit strategies…” He has my attention. “Everyone has an agenda. Parse through what’s really going on. Admit your mistake.” Ah, Professor Life Lessons. He’s losing my attention. I wonder if the woman in the green shirt, the one healthily showing pregnancy, will give birth before summer. I could count months, but I still couldn’t reasonably estimate how far along she is. I wonder if most women my age could accurately assess her progress, either.

The professor assigns the reading for class two, which meets the week after next because of Martin Luther King Day. “Read A Short History of Financial Euphoria, and the two pieces by Jack Levin.” Easy enough. I focus in on the course pack of the LLM in front of me. Price: $122.25.

Perhaps this class is worth something after all, if the professor can get away with highway robbery.

Monday Haiku Return from Hiatus

Sorry. I do love you, really.

I have two short Haiku - for you - and then, a special treat. My first guest blogger, Mr. Patel, has written you some words of wisdom. Good thing, too, as this gas smell in New York today is melting my mind beyond the point of blogging.

Misguided Nightlife

Paperwork 'til twelve
Then bars until 4 am
Not a good idea

It's a Gas

Light-headed Monday
Though midtown always smells foul
Maple syrup, please?

UPDATE

Apparently, it isn't global warming.

It's the ever popular EL NINO!

Insert your own jokes here.

Global warming

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas

A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

Millions of degrees... and more of those degrees seem to be reaching out towards our lovely blue planet than in past years. It is *January* and the temperature in New York City has dipped below freezing maybe twice? thrice? this season? Unbelievable. Sure, all the global warming jokes are cute, but when a warm, wet rain is falling on me in January, we have a problem.

I know I complain when it's too cold. So now I'm complaining when it's too warm?

Yes.

Note that I have never suggested a move to Los Angeles, or some other year round balmy locale. I like seasons. I like snow. I like "wintery mix" (damn you and your names and graphics, weather.com). I like the way my nose feels when it's thawed by steam rising from a hot chocolate.

Because I like seasons, by extension, I like complaining about them. That's why I'm here in New York - to make sure that I do my part to contribute to the world's querulous quotient. My only consolation is that it's good I'm living in New York now, before the glaciers melt and the oceans fill the streets. I suppose I don't need to bother visiting Venice now, as I'll be able to experience the canals without leaving the comfort of my own time zone.

Bring back the stuff that falls from the sky and looks like snow, feels like rain, and chills like ice!

Question Time: Ads Down, Ads Up

The Cup O Noodles in Times Square is dead. (If anyone can find an actual news article on this subject, please send it my way.)

And Geico put ads up on the toll booths of the George Washington Bridge.

How can I feel so nostalgic about that old faded Cup O Noodles sign and simultaneously repulsed by Geico's defacing the bridge? Granted, Times Square has dozens of ads and the bridge is pristine. But the ads are going up on the toll booths, not the bridge itself.

What was Times Square like before it became a virtual sauna of neon? I have never looked into the advertising history of Times Square (project!) but was there ever any opposition to the large scale outdoor advertising there? Did it simply follow in the steps of the theatre marquees? Was the area so seedy at the time that no one cared?

Conversely, were the first ads in Times Square considered eyesores, or worse, defacement, just as critics have called the Geico placements?

Well, they are eyesores. But Times Square wouldn't be the same without them.

Also, how long ago did the Noodles come down? Did this happen in the summer and have I not noticed for 6 months? I famously walk with my head pointed up towards the smog, but inevitably, certain items escape my gaze. Please enlighten me.

The Frutels Frontier

Happy New Year! After a busy busy four-day weekend spent ricocheting around Manhattan, I am back.

And so are Frutels. Only they never really left.

There is no more appropriate way to ring in the new year than to update you on the Frutels Frontier. It was last year at Desert Boy Gaz's infamous annual New Year's Party that I encountered my first frutels. And my, have they come a long way. Last year we were simply eating them; this year I could have sworn I tasted them in the Garbage Can Stick Punch.

(Stick punch is a "cocktail" made in a trash can and must be stirred with a stick from Central Park. I'm not exactly sure what else was in it this year.)

A gummy vitamin that seeks to eliminate the internal causes of acne

Frutels have been taking it to the streets in the Frutelsmobile:

Frutels are expanding their sphere of influence across the Isle of Manhattan, the Internet, the International acne scene, and now, the Inside of your TV on several elite cable channels in the New York market.







(note - the phone number is not real, this is a test version)

They have popped up in several stores in New York, Chicago and California. Notably in New York, they are at Ricky's. If you are outside of those cities, or you live above a Ricky's on the Upper East Side and simply do not like carrying your torso around on your legs, they are also available online.