And Then There Were Three..

Actually, there are four now, in my friend Stacie's home: she, her husband, her newborn daughter, and a live-in nurse. But as of tomorrow, the nurse will be gone. And next week, her husband will return to work. And then Stacie and her daughter will be left to fend for themselves. But Stacie is prepared. She has taken meticulous notes, documenting her daughter's eating, sleeping, and pooping habits. Rachel's room has been painted a light mauve (weeks ago, so the fumes wouldn't bother the baby) and fully furnished. Her drawers are filled with clothes sized from newborn to 6-12 months. Stacie and Mike have stocked up on stuffed animals and soft blankets, Baby Einstein audio tapes and bottles of formula.
For now, Rachel spends most of her time sleeping--in a bassinet or in the lap of one of her parents. But Stacie has vowed not to turn on the TV in front of their daughter for the next 12 months, unless it's a sports game (her husband is an avid Mets fan). And she has pledged to make sure her daughter gets outside every day, no matter what the weather, once she is old enough to do so.
There is plenty to see outside. Their two-bedroom, two-bath apartment is located in a pre-war, Tudor style building on a tree-lined street in Brooklyn. They live a few blocks from the East River. And there is a nail salon, gourmet grocery store, upscale Japanese restaurant and lounge, and--of course--a Starbucks within easy walking distance.
But the apartment is large enough that Rachel will have plenty of space inside as well to explore once she starts crawling. I actually took a wrong turn on the way to the guest bathroom, when I visited them on Saturday, and ended up at the baby's room.
I loved everything about their apartment, except for one thing. It is exactly one hour and five minutes from my apartment by subway, even though we live in the same borough. (That's because I have to go into Manhattan and then back to Brooklyn via subway. If I had a car, it would take less than half that long to get there). But I have a feeling I'll be making the trip a lot, despite the distance.

The Escalation of Rage

It starts with minor annoyances at the office-a writer comes in with more changes to a story you've already edited. An interview you'd set up earlier is cancelled. You learn that your pre-cancerous mole will finally be removed a week from Monday--the only opening--at 1:50 in afternoon. Across town. Inconvenient, yes, but better than learning that your mole is cancerous (or, having to wait so long for an appointment that it becomes cancerous in the meantime). Though you're a bit disappointed to learn that this means you cannot have any alcohol or vitamins for the week before.
Then your husband calls to inform you that he's leaving work early (it is now 1:45 pm). He's kind enough to accompany you to pick up a sandwich for lunch before he takes off, and you joke about not going back to the office either. Just keep on walking and don't look back. For the first time in at least a week, the sun is shining and there are just a handful of clouds, and the temperature is in the upper-70s. You're actually warm in a sleeveless shirt and cotton jacket. And you are tempted to play hooky with him. But then you remember your purse upstairs, and the story that needs to be finished. And the phone calls and emails that need to be returned.
He kisses you goodbye at the entrance to your building. You head back upstairs to your office, and he heads down the street to the subway that will take him home. Then your friend emails to tell you she is leaving early. And another friend calls shortly after to tell you that she too has left work. And you are beginning to wonder if you and your colleagues (those that are still in the office) are the only people in Manhattan who are still working. You're getting voice mail messages when you return calls and automated "out of the office" email replies.
So you start thinking that maybe you'll be heading out soon too. You're hoping you'll get to enjoy at least a sliver of that sunshine before it slips beneath the horizon, or behind the clouds. Because there's no guarantee that it will make such a sustained appearance again this weekend. The weather reports are all predicting intermittent rain throughout the holiday weekend.
At the least, you think, you can leave by 5:30--late enough that you won't fear embarassment or reprimands. But at 5:30, as you're gathering your belongings, your editor calls to ask if you could pick up an assignment. A new hire has taken on too much and it's getting late and your editor wants to leave too. So you end up staying in your office for another hour and 15 minutes. And the sun is starting to slip in the sky. And the clouds are darkening when you finally shut down your computer and slip out of the office.
Now it's nearly 7pm. And you're carrying a double shopping bag heavy with books and a box of protein bars and a big bottle of lotion you picked up earlier. And it's still warm enough that your forehead breaks out in perspiration as you carry the bag down two sets of subway steps to the platform. You see subway lights and you hope that it's the express train you need (you can only take 2 out of 4 trains that stop here).
It is! You've parked yourself at the very front of the platform so that you'll be close to the stairway that takes you to the L-train when you exit a few stops away. But what's this? The lights are out in the front subway car--which is not unusual, just annoying since you'd hoped to finish the Esquire article on Ewan McGregor that you'd just started. But then the doors don't open either. And it takes you--and the dozen or so others who are waiting by the doors to the first car--a minute to realize that the other cars' doors are opening. So you bolt down the platform to the second car, your bag full of books banging against your leg (ouch). And just as you get to the first door to the second car, the conductor closes it. And the train sits there and you actully hear yourself say outloud, "C'mon! Open the doors!" (as you've heard many many other people yell at other times, but have never uttered yourself) and then, when the conductor doesn't, you mutter "asshole" loud enough that the woman next to you--who had also run from the first car--laughs. You can feel yourself blushing. But it's not clear whether it's from embarassment or anger. The train pulls away.
Time passes. Two more trains pull up: the B and the D. You need the A or the C. Finally--finally--a C local arrives. And as you're boarding the train, someone belatedly realizes this is her stop and nearly knocks you over trying to get off the train. More muttering (though softer this time).
It's 7:20 when you board the L train. You settle in with your magazine. You've managed to calm yourself a little with deep breathing. Also, you've been able to read more of the story, which is more about Ewan's large penis (and the author's fixation with his own shortcomings in this area and others) than the actor's personality or even his latest film (except for the occasional, and annoying, reversion to yoda speak). But before you can read any further, a woman holding a juice bottle with visibly shaking hands, starts in about how sorry she is for interrupting "all you kind people" but she just wants some money. Could you spare some? She parks herself directly in front of you and addresses the passengers. She's speaking loudly but all you can make out is "spare change" (the rest is intelligible). You feel a pang of guilt. But then you look at her. She's dressed well. She's holding a bag of food and a bottle of juice and, if she weren't asking for money, she'd look like any other commuter--but on drugs. Her voice is getting louder. And now you're just hoping she'll move to the next car, which she does eventually. But then she is immediately replaced by a woman who regularly begs for money on this train--and has yet to change her story (though she should really think about doing so). She lives in a shelter, she says, with her husband and young daughter (neither of whom could be here tonight--or any night that you've seen her). They have to leave each day to look for work. But now her husband's just gotten sick (again? you think) and they were kicked out of the shelter and she and her daughter (if she exists) must beg for food and money each day. Or some variation of the story. You've learned to tune it out--almost. You used to give her money, actually, until she kept coming back with the same story over and over again.
You pull into the station. It's 7:32. And as you step onto the stairs that will lead you above ground, steadying yourself and your bag, you realize it's just starting to rain. Shit. The umbrella is at the bottom of your bag and it requires shifting the heavy bag to your other arm and--well, it really isn't raining all that hard, you think. Now the wind picks up and it's blowing your hair in your face and there's no evidence at all that just 2 hours ago it was bright and sunny and warm.
You sigh and you start walking down the sidewalk when you spot the sign. Tied to the back of a bike that's leaning against a telephone pole is a hand-written sign on a piece of cardboard that reads: "Fueled by 100% pure, unfiltered, clean-burning rage."
You are tempted for a moment to get on that bike and see how far it can take you. But instead you laugh and you think about how close you are to your home and your husband--and the beginning of a 3-day weekend.

Against the Odds

The temperature was in the upper-40s, the winds were gusting (maybe cross-field left to right), and my friend Jen and I were huddled under extra layers of clothing and a thick blanket. But the Yankees rewarded the fans who showed up with a 4-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers--the team's fourth win in five games, or 14th in its last 16. And the rain held off, amazingly, until 11 pm. Just after the game ended.
The highlight of the game--besides the warm pretzels and cold beers our husbands bought for us--was an amazing backhanded catch by shortstop Derek Jeter in the Detroit seventh. With two runners on, one run in, and only one out, Jeter chased a pop fly to center field, trampling over Robinson Cano, the rookie second baseman, while making the catch with his back to the infield. Both players lost their caps and went tumbling to the ground. And for a minute, the crowd thought Detroit had a hit. But Jeter somehow managed to hold onto the ball. The entire crowd started chanting his name and cheering. The Togers got one run that inning, but that's all they'd get.
What about Cano--who missed out on the big catch, and got trampled instead? The collision left him with a cut above the right ankle and a broken spike. But he stayed in the game. "I think I stepped on him," Jeter told the NY Times. "He's young. He's O.K. He's a kid."
He'll bounce back. Just like his team has.

Some Like it Hot

And for awhile, I thought I was one of them. But then I spent a summer in Scottsdale. Arizona tourism brochures will assure you that it's a "dry heat"--so it is not as bad as, say, a summer in Baghdad (for more reasons than the weather). Still, when the thermometer climbs above 100 degrees, the air may be "dry," but you will be soaked with sweat. Not only that, but your lipstick and your favorite CD will be reduced to a molten mess should you happen to forget to remove them from the front seat for a few hours one summer day (before you invested in window tinting and a foldable metallic "shield" for your front window). Your friend's dog will literally burn his paws on the black asphalt parking lot--requiring medical treatment and the purchase of four leather booties. Hiking trails will be filled at 5 a.m. and empty by 9 a.m. Golfers will tee off when it is still dark. And outdoor misters actually spray patrons with water as they sit on the terrace of local restaurants and bars (the temperature so hot that most of the water has evaporated before it touches your skin).
I write about this now because it is unseasonably cold in New York, which has me thinking about that wonderful week in Arizona in April when the temperatures were in the 80s and I spent hours in a bikini lounging by the pool (even occasionally dipping in). But I'm not so sure I'd want to be back there now. While the cold has lingered in New York, it's prematurely hot in Arizona. As Del pointed out, this can be particularly unpleasant when your A/C is not in working order (and there's a daylong wait for a repairman). Meanwhile, back in New York, many residents were turning the heat back on this morning.
In fact, the temperature today in the city is literally HALF that in Phoenix (52 degrees right now in midtown Manhattan, and 104 in Phoenix, according to weather.com).
I'm not sure which is more uncomfortable. Though I can tell you that I am wearing boots, pants, a thick long-sleeved sweater and a jacket--and my friends and I are still planning to bring along blankets to the Yankees game tonight. And, as my husband wrote, not-so-secretly hoping that the rain will start soon and the game will be postponed. That's mostly because we do not want to end up getting soaked once we're there. But also for the Yankees' sake. As a handy little feature I discovered today on weather.com points out, the team doesn't do so well in the cold weather. The Yanks have won three times as many games on days when the temperature was above 70 than on days when it was below. The most favorable weather conditions for the New York Yankees, according to the experts at weather.com, are daytime games with temperatures between 74 and 83 and winds cross-field left to right. So not only will we be shivering in the stands, enduring 20 mph wind gusts, but the chance of rain showers tonight (60 percent) is higher than the chance that our team will win in these weather conditions. Though, of course, they've beaten the odds before.

And the winner is...

First name: Rachel (What is the ethnic origin? Biblical. What does it mean? Sheep.) Middle name: Morgan. (What is the ethnic origin? Celtic. What does it mean? From the Sea.)
So, sheep from the sea?
Not quite. With parents like Mike and Stacie, she's definitely not going to be a sheep. Though they do live by the sea (well, a few blocks away).
I think the origin of Rachel they had in mind was more along the lines of the Hebrew meaning, "lamb of God" or "one with purity." (Rachel is only 47 hours old, after all). Morgan also means: bright.
Not a bad combo. A pure, bright lamb of God.
And she is.

It's a Miracle!

It took more than 24 hours of labor, two additional pain medications along with the anesthesia administered through the epidural, and the threat that some of the pain medication would need to be stopped if this went on much longer (which prompted the final mind-over-muscles push that finally did the trick), but Stacie and Mike's new daughter arrived at about 11:30 pm ET on Saturday. She was three days late, which might explain why she was a bit larger than the other babies in the ward at 8 pounds 3 ounces and emerged with a full head of black hair, long fingers that were clutching her mother's hair and night shirt within hours, and neck muscles nearly strong enough already to hold her head up. One thing she did not emerge with, though, was a name. Her parents have narrowed it down to three choices, none of which I am at liberty to reveal here. But as my friends and I told Stacie today, she and Mike can't go wrong with any of the short-listed names. They're all beautiful and they all pass the playground test (e.g. they don't rhyme with anything tease-worthy).

Perspectives on Pain

As I write this, my dear friend Stacie is either a mother--or damn close to becoming one. When she called me just before noon, the doctors had broken her water and given her an epidural and she was dilated and having contractions--all terms that have only become familiar to me in the last several months as I've heard them from my friends, my sister and my step sister-in-law (who just had her third!).
Apparently, the confluence of all these events indicate that Stacie's baby was about ready to come out and face the world--even if her mother just wanted a nap (she'd only gotten two hours of sleep last night). Stacie's doctor predicted she'd have a new baby within eight hours. That was seven and a half hours ago.
In the meantime, I told Stacie I'd call some of our other friends with the update while she tried to get in the last few hours of uninterrupted sleep she'll have for a long, long time.
When I called Joy to check in and let her know about Stacie's impending motherhood she sounded a bit muffled. I asked what was up. Turns out she got electrocuted at the dentist's office this morning! Q: What's worse than getting a root canal? A: Getting an electric shock to your gum when the wiring in a dental instrument misfunctions. Worse, her mouth--or at least her mood--was in such bad shape after the experience that she had to reschedule the filling she was there to get.
But hearing that Stacie was in labor, she says, helped put things in perspective. On a scale of 1 to 10--with a torture scene choreographed by Quentin Tarantino rating a 10--we agreed giving birth would rank slightly higher than an unintentional gum frying, if only because of the time element. Labor can last for several hours (more than 24 in the case of one good friend, who has actually blacked out entire hours of the experience in her memory) while an electrocution--though it carries a higher risk of death--usually lasts just a few seconds.
If the past is any indication, I should be well equipped for giving birth (though I've also learned from past experience and anecdotal evidence, that having an epidural is probably not a bad idea regardless). I seem to have a higher threshold for pain than some. A few beers and I didn't feel a thing when I got the tattoo just above my hip. The most painful part of getting a tattoo was the amount of money it cost to get it removed once I sobered up. But I endured the 10 laser treatments to remove same tattoo without any numbing cream, just a couple minutes with an ice pack beforehand (which, I'll admit, may be more reflective of my impatience to just get the damn thing off than of my tolerance for pain).
I once had surgery on my ear while I was conscious, a decision that meant enduring more than a dozen shots of local anesthesia. That was pretty unpleasant, I'll admit, but it was the tugging and snipping of my ear that really creeped me out. (I had to have some extra cartilage removed from my ear lobe and figured I'd save a few bucks by opting for local anesthesia. Note to readers: if you're going to skimp somewhere, anesthesia is not the place to do it.) Another time, I was accompanying a friend of mine to get his belly pierced. And then I decided, on the spur of the moment, to do it myself. After my friend watched me go through it, he chickened out.
But I had a relatively pain free day today. My husband, meanwhile, figures he got into at least 10 to 12 fights this afternoon. Amazingly, he walked away with hardly a scratch, though his right thumb is jammed and slightly swollen and he has bruises on his forearms and shins. That's because Victor's fights occurred at his karate dojo under the watchful eyes of an instructor, who usually stops the fights before there's any blood. Though I watched a video once with Victor called "Fighting Black Kings" that captured some training sessions at the dojo in the mid-1970s before a world tournament in Japan. In one particularly bad fight, a student took an accidental blow to the nose (punches and kicks to the front of the face are prohibited--even in full-contact fights) and started bleeding all over his once-white gi. But Victor assures me that is the exception. He is a first-degree black belt and goes to "fight class" almost every Saturday. The worst injury he's sustained in more than six years happened last summer (fortunately, a week after I added him to my health insurance) when he broke three toes during a fight--painful, yes, but the sort of injury even non-karate practitioners can get. Albeit, it sounds a lot better to say you broke your toes kicking a black-belt oppponent during a fight than kicking a jammed door, as I did my senior year in college. Trust me.

Subway Snippets

The New York City subway has long been regarded as the great equalizer. Board the L train, for example, on any given weekday, and you're likely to share a car with Hasidic men sporting curls, black hats, and dark wool suits; Hispanic schoolgirls in skintight acid-wash jeans, metallic lip gloss, and high-top sneakers, smacking their gum and chattering in Spanglish; hipsters in low-slung Imitation jeans, flip flops, and CBGB tank tops grooving to their iPods; Polish women in thick-heeled pumps, polyester pants, and painted lips; and a handful of English-speaking commuters like me, in skirts and slingbacks or suits and ties, carrying a bag or briefcase and copies of the New York Times, the New Yorker or, occasionally, The Economist.
But on Tuesday, I shared the morning commute with a whole new category of rider (at least to me): the butt grabber. It was a first in my 5+ years of regular subway commutes. And initially I thought I must be imagining it. The morning trains are packed so tightly that you often end up pressed against total strangers. But when I glanced over my shoulder, this man grinned at me and on his way out at the next stop, tried to do it again! This time, I moved a little quicker. Still, I was in such shock I didn't even say anything. Though, of course, I ran through various alternative scenarios in my head for the rest of the day.
Other subway experiences are more benign, but still memorable. Last week, I shared an A train car with four well-behaved seeing eye dogs in training (two German shephards and two Golden retrievers) and their trainers, and about 20 kindergarten students on a field trip. You can only imagine the amount of love in that car. The dogs lapping up the kids' attention, the kids cooing over the dogs. The adults smiling at the interaction between the two.
The next night, Victor and I were alone in a car with two well-dressed guys, one of whom started belting out the title song from "The Neverending Story" at the top of his lungs, as his boyfriend harmonized. I might have said something, but he was a pretty decent singer. And he was having such a good time it was hard not to smile. (I might have even sung along if I could remember more of the song).

Salon and the City

These days, the word salon is often associated with shampoo and color treatments, manicures and massages. But there was a time--namely, the 1920s and 30s--when the word conjured up an image of a smoky lounge filled with artists and 'intellectuals' debating the depiction of Spanish bullfighting in Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon" or Picasso's Surrealist, Bataillean revisions of classical art.
It's the last definition that the three co-owners of a two-story space on the far west fringes of the Village hope to recapture. Housed below the Riverview Hotel (where sailors from the Titanic,once stayed after the ocean liner sunk in the Atlantic), Salon audaciously bills itself, as "a restaurant and lounge for people of social, artistic and intellectual distinction."
I'd like to think that's why I received an invitation to attend a tasting there, and later the opening. But I think it has a lot more to do with my media affiliation.
Nonetheless, I took them up on the invites, bringing my foodie friend, aka Vittles Vamp, to the three-course tasting last week. I sampled squid over chicory salad with chorizo and roasted yellow tomato sauce, and a grilled salmon entree. She had a roasted beet and goat cheese terrine salad on baby greens and a steak (if I remember correctly--I'd had a couple cocktails before the entree arrived). The bartender was serving up an array of impressive concoctions, including a lychee and champagne cocktail called the White Star, a tribute either to the company that owned the tragically-fated trans-Atlantic steamship or the pier across the street where the ship would have docked--had it not sunk en route.
We ate downstairs, in a high-backed velvet booth. After dinner, our German waiter "Fritz" set down a mille-feuilles pastry filled with a thick vanilla custard (delicious) and a round plate with three scoops of sorbet (I can only recall the watermelon flavor) surrounded by crescent-shaped cookies. Two of the three owners wandered by during dinner, asking us what we thought of the menu. The Vamp pronounced it "well done"--with the exception of the sorbet, which she said lacked the flavor apparent in the other dishes. (We later learned it was the one item on the menu not prepared by the chef--but imported from a generations-old eatery in Queens).
After dinner, we ventured upstairs to the "lounge." Velvet curtains and settees, 20-foot ceilings and 10-foot-high windows with views of...the West Side Highway. And, beyond, the Hudson. And then, New Jersey. Still, when you sat in the booths, only the tops of trucks were visible through the window, and you could almost pretend, as the sun slipped below the horizon and the lights twinkled across the river, that you were sitting in a cafe along the Seine in Paris.
An 18-foot-long mural stretched along the wall behind the bar upstairs, inspired, according to the press materials, by Otto Dix (read: transparent flapper dresses, exposed nipples, and splay-legged, big-breasted women dangling from red-faced, cigar-chomping men). We preferred to look at the Art Deco clock, which, one of the owners confided, cost just $40. Money well spent, I think--though last night, when I returned with my husband for the opening, the clock was behind by about an hour and five minutes.
Last night's official opening bash ran from "9:3o till ?" according to the invite. (Code for: no one shows up before 11 but the hosts, the band, the PR people, and media types with day jobs). My husband and I arrived before 10. The band was still warming up. There were open spots at the bar and even empty booths. We slipped into one of the velvet booths upstairs that was built for six (at least). But as the place started to fill up, we felt a bit guilty monopolizing it and found two seats at the bar. We stayed about an hour--just enough time for Victor to down three vodka drinks (a martini and two vodka tonics) and for me to sip a cocktail (White Star) and a kir (which I enjoyed, Victor, really). The drinks were free, but we tipped generously.
When we went to collect our jackets and bag, the coat check girl (who was probably a decade younger than us, and was reading an inch-thick biography of Miles Davis) asked: "Did you not have a good time?"
"We did," we assured her. "But we're married," we said, as if that explained our unwillingness to stay out late. She looked at us blankly, so I added, "And we have to go to work early in the morning."
Truth is, we were hoping to get the L train before it switched to one track at 11 pm (of course, we missed it) and to catch the last half of "The Daily Show." We did see the last two minutes of Jon Stewart's interview with Tracy Ullman, who was hysterical. But that was the closest we got last night to any celebrity sightings.

O My Darling Publishing Deal

I just finished a beautiful, poignant, and thoroughly engrossing novel by Chang-Rae Lee called, "Aloft." But don't take my word for it. In fact, while I wholeheartedly agree, those adulatory adjectives actually come from reviews in The Boston Globe, USA Today, and The Baltimore Sun (and, more specifically from the jacket of the book, which also lists excerpts from an additional 17 reviews). I liked the book so much, in fact, that I'm now planning to go out and buy Lee's first and second novels "Native Speaker" and "A Gesture Life"--well, right after I finish "O My Darling," a newly published novel written by my husband's cousin, Amity Gaige. I'm not just reading it out of familial (or extended familial) obligation--my husband already bought a copy of it--but because the first two chapters she read aloud at KGB in the East Village on Sunday were actually very good (not that I should be surprised: she is a graduate of Brown University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop). Still, she says the book took her six years to write, and was turned down by several publishers before Other Press accepted it.
I'm guessing the folks at Other Press will soon be as glad as she is that they took her on. She already has a second manuscript finished. And the reviews for her debut have been good so far.
Stories like this give hope to the rest of us who plan to seek a publishing deal in the not-so-distant future (my mom and myself included). My mom went to a writing conference a couple weekends ago and said the best thing she got out of it was Mary Higgins Clark's story of how her first manuscript got forty rejections. Even her first novel was turned down by two big book publishers, before another house agreed to sign her on with a $3,000 advance. That book, "Where are the Children?" is now in its 75th printing.

A Tale of Two Cities

I know I'm long overdue in sharing my Arizona adventures. But, since this blog is primarily about life in NYC, I figured I could hit two birds with one stone with a comparison of two Girls Nights Out--NYC versus Phoenix.
For my Phoenix night out, I met up with three friends--Del, Michelle, and Beth--whom I'd known when I lived in Arizona in the '90s. Del was an East Coast transplant and friend from grad school, and Michelle and Beth are both reporters and former colleagues. It'd been months since I'd seen Del or Beth, and years since I'd last seen Michelle. Since Del lives in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix, and I was crashing at her place that night, we opted to meet at nearby Kona Grill, "a stylish Pacific Rim restaurant that attracts lively bar scenesters," according to Citysearch. Actually it's one of five Kona Grills in the Phoenix area, which posed a problem you'd rarely have in New York (unless you were meeting at a Starbucks--a friend once mistakenly told me "the Astor place location" and I spent half an hour at a Starbucks across the street from the Starbucks where she was waiting, until she called to clear up the confusion).
Similarly, I had to specify which Kona Grill we were meeting at to Beth and Michelle, which proved especially confusing because I'm not at all familiar with Chandler and at least two of the locations are in similar-sounding suburban malls or "fashion centers." I gave them each the street address (which proved meaningless, since I later learned it belonged to the mall, so Kona Grill was one of dozens of retailers or restaurants with the same address). Both of them got lost at the mall and had to call me on my cell phone for more specific directions ("southside, across from Dillards"). Apparently, mapquest had mistakenly pictured it on the other side of the massive mall.
Beth arrived first, with a new pixie-ish haircut and tiny diamond stud in her nose, which intrigued the hell out of Del. By the end of dinner, she'd nearly convinced herself, and us, that she was going to get her nose pierced that night. In the end, we opted for cherry-apple flavored tobacco instead, but I'll get to that in a bit.
I drank wine. Del sipped at a stronger drink, but only one since she was driving. (Public transportation was not an option, and neither was walking. This was Phoenix after all, the largest metropolitan area in the country by size, where it took nearly 10 years just to get approval to build a one-mile-long light rail track downtown that has yet to actually be constructed). I kept peering over my shoulder to catch the final minutes of the New Jersey Nets game on one of the large-screen TVs that hung from the bar (they lost to the Miami Heat in a second OT, 108 to 105).
Michelle called from the bar a couple minutes after Beth arrived, and I directed her by phone to our table. It's a good thing she spotted me and waved because I hardly recognized her. She'd lost 70 pounds since the last time I'd seen her during a visit to New York, and she looked about 10 years younger. I'd barely gotten over the transformation in her appearance when she shared news of another major change in her life. After 21 years of marriage and four children, she was getting a divorce! And a new tattoo.
I'd just pulled out pictures from my wedding last year, and was sharing my plans to remove the belly ring I'd had for more than six years and my efforts--eight laser treatments, so far--to try and remove the tattoo above my hip (which, incidentally, have cost me about $950 more than the tattoo itself did, but that's a different story). Not only was I the only married person at the table, but I was the only one who had not recently had, or was currently considering, any piercings or tattoos. I found myself in the strange position of cautioning Michelle, who is a decade older than me, about the permanence (or painful reversal process, at least) of tattoos. I didn't need to dissuade Del from piercing herself. By the next morning, she had changed her mind--or at least, lost the urgency--about getting her nose pierced.
In the midst of our discussions on the pros and cons of tattoos, piercings, and marriage, smoking hookah somehow came up. And we all agreed it seemed like a good idea (better than heading to the piercing parlor that night, at least). So after dinner, we drove in three separate cars to a Middle Eastern place in a strip mall in central Phoenix, where a mostly college-age clientele clad in tank tops, T-shirts and flip flops sat on chairs or cushions around two-dozen tables, taking drags of flavored tobacco from two-foot-high water pipes. We ordered a combination of cherry and apple tobacco flavors, along with rice pudding and baklava. Alcohol, fortunately, was not on the menu.
Smoking hookah, I learned, is perfectly legal in Arizona (though smoking cigarettes is now prohibited in most Phoenix bars and restaurants). So is carrying a firearm, if it is not concealed. I'd forgotten about this law, which doesn't exist in NYC, when I initially spotted a 20-something guy in tight jeans and cowboy hat with a gun strapped to a holster on his hip. At first, I thought, "I gotta stop smoking this hookah."
Even after I'd been assured I wasn't hallucinating and he wasn't breaking the law-- well, assuming he had a permit--I had to question the logic of carrying a loaded gun in a place where half the customers were clearly drunk and the other half were high on the potent tobacco blends. Then again, this is the state that nearly passed a bill allowing residents to carry loaded firearms into bars.
By midnight, all of us were having trouble keeping our eyes open and soon decided to call it a night. So, there is at least one similarity between my night out in Phoenix and last night's festivities in Manhattan. They both ended--at least for me--not long after midnight (though midnight in Phoenix was really like 3am for me, since I was still adjusting from NY time).
Last night, back in New York, six girlfriends and I took our friend Joy out to celebrate her 32nd birthday. I headed out just after 7pm, taking the subway to 8th Avenue and walking down about six blocks to meet two friends, Laura and Jen at Employees Only, a relatively new bar in the West Village that is recognizable only by the subtle "EO" on the awning and a fortune teller in the window. The three of us were scouting out a potential after-dinner spot. And this was the perfect place--at least at 7:45, when it was crowded enough to be interesting but empty enough to find a place at the bar and get the bartender's attention in less than a minute. (Even he warned us that by 10 or 11 it would be "much beezzzier"). It's located in a narrow space that's dimly lit and Art Deco-ish with walls covered in wood paneling. My friends were sitting at the curved bar, looking over the cocktail menu. The bartender, a tall, balding man with a wide smile and faint French accent who introduced himself as Duchamps, fixed Laura a lovely gin cocktail infused with lavender. I opted for a peach cocktail, made with homemade peach bitters. At $12 the drink prices seemed a bit steep, but they were well worth it. Jen sipped ours then ordered a glass of Riesling.
At 8:15 we headed over to the appropriately named Macelleria in the Meatpacking District. Much of the menu at Macelleria, which means "butcher shop" in Italian, is devoted to different cuts of steak and there's a helpful drawing of a cow at the top of the page, with its various parts marked and labeled. Laura and Cindy split a prime rib. But I ordered baby squid in black ink and split a salad with Pam. Dinner was supposed to start at 8:30 but it was 9 p.m. before the birthday girl and Stephanie arrived, complaining that their cab ride from Murray Hill had taken twice as long as expected because several blocks had been closed off for a street fair in Chelsea and the detoured traffic was at a near standstill. (The rest of us had walked or taken a subway). By the time we got the bill, we'd gone through two bottles of sangiovese, several pitchers of water, three baskets of bread, a half-dozen cappucinos and an apple struedel, tiramisu, and almond tart--in addition to the appetizers and entrees. We lingered even after the plates were cleared, talking and trading "regifts" (Amy's idea--I gave away a copy of "Life of Pi" and the galley for a Candace Bushnell book and netted a shower rack with some sweet-smelling magnolia scented soap, body lotion, shower gel, and bubble bath). By the time we finally got up to leave, the restaurant was almost empty--and so was my wallet. But the bars in the neighborhood were just starting to fill up. There was little reason to trek back to our original spot, which was several blocks away, so I promised to go back with Joy another night. She was anxious to check out the rooftop bar at the Hotel Gansevoort across the street, and two other single girlfriends agreed to join her. Citing colds (Cindy), husbands (Jen and I), age (Pam) or plain exhaustion (Laura), the rest of us headed home. I took the subway and got back to Brooklyn at 12:58, just as Johnny Knoxville was signing off as the guest host on Saturday Night Live and the midnight munchies were catching up with me. I dug into box #2 of my chocolate Panda faced cookies while Victor entertained me with Jay Z videos from the AOL Music on Demand channel. And we were both in bed by 2--well before, I'd imagine, the birthday celebrations had ended.

Record Breaking Beer

While my single friends hit the bars last night, wearing halter tops and hopeful smiles, my husband and I headed home together wearing wrinkled work clothes and weary expressions. In one of those strange NY coincidences--though really not all that surprising, given we both work at magazines--our offices are located across the street from one another. The stranger coincidence was that we were both able to get out of work by 6:30 on a Friday night, a rarity for either of us, much less both. Home by 7:15, after a brief stop at a gourmet deli for a chicken wrap and three boxes of chocolate panda face cookies (I basically bought out the stock--and I'd give you the proper name, but it's written in Kanji), I headed straight for the shower to wash away any lingering residue from work. My husband, Victor, headed straight to the bar, where he removed the strangest shaped beer bottle I have ever seen and put it in the freezer to chill. The Samuel Adams Utopias "extreme" brew is distinctive not just for its packaging--it comes in a commemorative copper-colored, brew kettle-shaped bottle--but for its alcohol content and its price tag, both of which are the highest of any beer in the world. My husband got #1090 of 8,000 limited edition bottles of the 2005 re-issue Utopias at work, where it had arrived along with a folder full of press material in the hopes of a magazine mention. He brought it home ostensibly to see if it tasted good enough to write about.
So how does a $100 bottle of 25% alcohol-by-volume beer taste?
Well I'll tell you this, it does not taste like any beer I've ever had. And I like malty, high-alcohol beers like the Brooklyn Brewery's Monster Ale (11.8% ABV), Canada's Fin du Monde (9% ABV), and strong Belgian beers like Duval (8.5% ABV) and Chimay Blue (9% ABV). Utopias, according to the Samuel Adams press release, is brewed with a "fine selection of Bavarian Noble hops" and different types of malts and yeast (including, surprisingly, a variety normally used in champagne) in oak barrels aged up to 11 years. The complicated process sounded to me a little like that used for making scotch, which should have clued me in to the fact that this was no ordinary beer. That and the pungent aroma that escaped when Victor poured the honey-colored brew into the special snifter that Sam Adams had kindly provided, along with instructions to "savor slowly in a two-ounce portion." This is definitely a sipping beer. Sweeter and stronger, and more complex, than I'd imagined, it tasted like a combination of plum wine (which is too syrupy sweet for my tastes) and a good scotch. And that isn't an entirely bad thing. It's just unusual. And definitely not something you'll want to sip too fast--and not just because of the intensity of the flavors, but because you'll be smashed before you know it. After one snifter full I was stumbling around the bedroom. Three more big sips and I was in bed. Sleeping. Soundly.
So, if you plan to drop $100 in July when this bottle hits stores, a few cautionary tips: This is a beer in name only. Sip it like a cognac. Slowly. And limit yourself. Utopias has held the record in the Guinness Book of World Record for world's strongest beer since 2002 (not that I'd imagine there's a lot of competition there, when you get above 15% ABV). After the way I felt this morning, I'd say it's a pretty strong contender in the category of world's worst beer hangover too.

Blast from the Past

This morning at 3:35 a.m. ET (8:35 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time), two "novelty" grenades packed with explosive powder blew up outside the 14-story building in midtown Manhattan that houses the British consulate, ripping a one-foot chunk of concrete from the planter where the explosives had been buried in dirt and shattering a plate of glass from the front door. No one was injured or killed. Had this happened four years ago, the detonation of two toy grenades in the pre-dawn hours might have been dismissed as the work of teenage pranksters. But post-9/11, the taped off area was soon swarming with FBI agents and firefighters, as well as members of the NYPD's bomb squad, counter-terrorism bureau and intelligence divisions.
The placement and timing of the blasts--in a planter in front of the British consulate offices shortly after polls opened in England--made the incident more suspicious. Nonetheless, I doubt that an errant explosion hundreds of miles away will affect the outcome of England's national election. Tony Blair is widely expected to win a historic third term as prime minister, despite dissatisfaction with his decision to support an invasion of Iraq.
I'd imagine that the explosions are the work of a British expat, or maybe just an American anti-war protester, who figured an early morning explosion would help him (or her) avoid injuries--and probably detection--but garner headlines in the U.S. and the U.K. just after polls opened.
But I admit when I first saw the headlines, I thought: "Not again." And even when I learned that the explosion had happened in the dead of night with no one around, I wondered, "Is it a practice run?" I don't think there is a single person in New York who doesn't believe the terrorists will try again. We just try to push it to the back of our minds and go about our daily lives, hoping that when the next attack occurs here, we will be lucky--again.

Vacation and Proscrastination

You'd think I'd actually have more time to update my blog on vacation, but I didn't get a chance to write a single entry while I was in Arizona. This is partly because the few times I did get online, I was under pretty tight time constraints: I went with a friend (who didn't have a computer at home) to a local library one day to log on, and we got an hour limit and an annoying on-screen ticker that counted down the minutes while we surfed. And when I was staying at my dad's place(I split my time between family and friends), he and my stepmom wanted time on their PC--and with me--so I'd barely have time to check my email (and read my husband's blog, of course) before someone was tapping me on the shoulder. The more time passed, the more daunting the thought of bringing my blog up to date. So I admit to procrastinating a little bit.
Now I've got more than a week's worth of happenings to catch you up on, and about half an hour--and one interview to finish writing up--before I have to split for an event tonight (more on that tomorrow), so I'm hesitant to play catch up now. But I do promise to fill you in on all my Arizona adventures this week.. Stay tuned.