Home is where your hairdresser is

A while ago, when I met the Irishman's best friend, he asked me what I missed most about New York. I had just booked a haircut with my New York hairdresser Paul for my visit home a few weeks later, and said that he was definitely at the top of the list. The Irishman's friend turned around and made a sage comment about how it meant I hadn't full transitioned to London if I my heart was still with a New York hairdresser.

Well fast forward nearly a year and I still hadn't found someone to replace Paul; for the last few haircuts I've gone from salon to salon seeking out someone I trusted to take care of my very unruly mane. Until last week: I was at the pub having a few too many glasses of rosé where I met my friend Ben's mate Daniel who cuts hair and is amazing. He immediately diagnosed the issue with my constant frizz and gave me a stern talking to about the state of my locks, and told me to come around and see him to get sorted out.

On Friday night, I went round to his salon and for £30 I've got a new lease on my hair. It was funny - usually I seek out trendy salons with edgy stylists and chic interiors, but Daniel's salon is like a neighborhood family business. At any given time, 4 or 5 people who were related to or close friends with Daniel and his business partner Natalie popped round to say hi. They were drinking pints from the pub across the road and were good citizens to take the glasses back after they were done. Someone came in and asked to use the loo and was welcomed with open arms, just as the myriad kids who came round with their parents. It was such a cosy environment that I overlooked the poor hairwashing (a lot of water ended up on my face, rather than my hair), and having to wait 30 minutes to get in the chair.

So am I ready to completely transition from Paul to Daniel? Maybe - maybe not. A lady can't give up her loyalty to her hairdresser so easily, and Daniel and I have only had one date. We'll see if the magic lasts, and if my hair continues to look fabulous. But lets just say, London is feeling a bit more like home lately.

Empire State of Mind

I know I'm about 3 months late to the party (I'm finding 3 months to be the typical lead time for me to pick up on American pop culture trends), but this Jay-Z song is really amazing. I have been bopping along to it in the office for a while now, trying to explain to the Brits around me why it's JUST SO GOOD, and making myself homesick in the process. Good thing, then, that I'm headed back to the Big Apple on Friday for Thanksgiving.

It's been a long time since I've been to US; last time I was home was last Christmas. As much as I love living abroad, I get really excited to go home and hear American accents, experience New York bluntness, and even get told off by cab drivers. This year has been difficult for me, careerwise, and I'm really looking forward to seeing my old friends, having a lot of chats, catching up on their lives, meeting their new partners, and generally just being around people who know ME and with whom I don't have to try extra hard. I'm going to have a lot of brunch, French food in the West Village, and carousel sushi with my dad in Gramercy, and when I get to New Jersey my mom has a list of the food I want her to cook for me. I'm even paying a visit to Paul at Mudhoney Salon for a new haircut. I'll be asking for bangs – NOT fringe – and I'll be smug about it.

For the eight days I'm on the East Coast, I'm planning on doing nothing but being myself in the place where I'm from. I'm really hoping that when it's time for me to head back to the UK, I'll be renewed, full of my old vim and vigor and Lower East Side vinegar, and that, as Alicia Keys points out, walking down the New York streets will have made me feel brand new, the lights have inspired me. I know they will, and they can't appear over the wing of my Virgin Atlantic plane too soon.

London Christmas Markets

Are a big sham!

I love a good Christmas market, and in Europe they are really popular. Flights to eastern European cities like Vienna, Salzburg, Berlin, and Prague (to name a few) skyrocket during the weeks before Christmas as each city puts out handmade craft and food stalls. Nigella even filmed part of one of her episodes at the Salzburg market!

Of course London tries to get in on the game, with Christmas markets set up in and around its existing markets. But I'm here to tell you that they stink. They're all the same vendors selling the same junk, and the same food. The Irishman and I went to the Cologne Christmas market at Southbank last weekend, and I was highly disappointed in the lack of actual GERMANS that were working the stalls - as well as the lack of GERMAN ITEMS for sale. How does the genuine wooden tie count as a German Christmas craft? The most authentic thing for sale was the bratwurst!

We also stumbled upon the Slow Food Market, which was disappointing as well because it was the same vendors as in Borough Market and Spitalfields. At some point one has to ask, what is the point of having all of these markets, if the people selling in them are all the same? I wonder if there is a market mafia in London, like the street fair people in New York, making millions off of produce and gift markets. If so, then I say FEH and I boycott them all out of principle!

Return to NYC = Twilight Zone

Last week I had a whirlwind business trip to New York for three days. It was absolutely surreal. After a full day of meetings in Amsterdam on Tuesday, I boarded my first British Airways flight to JFK on Wednesday morning. 8+ hours later, I was in New York and in a car stuck in traffic on Park Avenue as tourists choked the sidewalks getting ready for the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. How truly bizarre!

The rest of the week was a whirlwind: dinner with Laura, Jon, and Jeff; reunion with former co-workers; lunch at EAST with Mom and Dad; Belmont Lounge with Dave, Fern (!!!), Rietje, Sam, and Allison; meetings; drinks at the Modern; home. Phew.

Being in New York was really nice, actually: I haven't been away long enough for it to be completely alien. Things still have changed, though - what is this $7.00 for 8 rides Metrocard option? What is going on with the calories on menus? At the same time, though, even as I walked familiar avenues and visited old haunts, it's clear that New York isn't my city anymore. It always will be - I'll always have New York - but London is quickly becoming home. By Friday, I wanted to be in MY bed, in MY apartment, in MY neighborhood. And that was disconcerting unto itself.

Plus, visiting my old office in New York made me really notice the difference between that office and London's office of the same company. I belong to both, and feel at home in both, but can only work for one. While washing dishes the other day it occurred to me that this sentiment is the reality of an expat - feeling at home everywhere, but not having one place to call home. As once moves around the world, one assimilates to each place, picks up a bit and leaves a bit behind.

So what is home? I've been thinking lately that home is where you choose to be - whether it be where you are at the moment, or the place you eventually end up. So far, I'm happy where I've landed, but I really don't think this is it... and I'm excited by that prospect of what lies around the next turn.

NYC Marathon

Ashley and I are currently watching the New York City Marathon on Eurosport2. The ladies were off first, and just ran through my old hood of Ft Greene, Brooklyn. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of Clermont Avenue and the Masonic Temple and the school band playing the Rocky theme, but these Brits are more interested in talking and aerial shots. Hmph. Peeps who are there or watching at home on TV, let a girl know how the race is going!

VOTE, you twits

Today, I was reminded, marks the final 2 weeks before the US Presidential election. Today, I also voted.

Way back in June, I requested an absentee ballot from Brooklyn but I still haven't received it. Worried about the time and the Warden's message on the US embassy website that I should have voted by Oct 14, I downloaded an Emergency Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot. I put it in the mail today, and if I get my Brooklyn absentee ballot in the meantime, I'm to send that as well.

DK, my token Friend In Politics, chided me for not calling Brooklyn's Board of Elections and asking where my ballot it. I did call, but didn't get through after 3 minutes of a phone tree. At this point, I sort of gave up - New York will swing for Obama, and my vote, if it ever gets there and is actually counted, won't (really) matter. But in the end, it's the principle of the matter.

This is taking a lot more work than just standing in line at my polling place and pulling the lever to exercise my right, as an American citizen, to vote. I am annoyed by this process, and now have a sense of what it must feel like (in a very peripheral way) to be disenfranchised. If I stay here for an extended period of time, will I have to go through this for EVERY ELECTION?

So. Grumbles aside, I voted, I wrote in BARACK OBAMA/JOSEPH BIDEN on my absentee write-in ballot, put it in a security envelope, which got shoe-horned into another envelope, and mailed it off. Now you homekids back in the States who have the luxury of the polls being open from 9am-9pm on November 4th better go vote too.

Followup: Read Jezebel's post about voter disenfranchisement. I found my emergency absentee ballot here: somehow I feel this website is part of the Help America Vote Act provisions. I hope my ballot actually gets counted…

Followup II: Even Ben & Jerry want you to vote! So DO IT!

If one more British woman asks me if NYC is just like it looks in SATC…

I'm going to scream.

It's not that it is or isn't, it's that it was for some people and now isn't for anyone.

Sex and the City came out around 2000, 2001ish: the nascent days of the latest reincarnation of the (doomed) Gilded Age. New York was moving at the speed of light, gobbling up capital and pumping cash into a machine that spawned every imaginable service and boutique. Did you want to get some obscure kind of cat and then give it a relaxation pedicure once a week? Sure, that service existed - and if it didn't, you can bet it would shortly. For a small minority of people in New York, the Sex and the City lifestyle, though completely absurd and extremely ridiculous, was their reality for most of the early Naughts.

And, to be honest, the rest of us wanted it. And we did manage to mirror it on a much lower scale: we didn't spend $15 on a single cocktail every time we went out, or wear Manolos, or have financiers picking us up at our walk-ups in cars with their own drivers. Instead, we got dressed up in our very best H&M and treated ourselves to one extremely cher cocktail at a very chic-chic nightspot, and then went downtown to some dive bar and drank $2 PBRs until we stumbled to a subway or splurged on shared cabs to make our ways to our shared railroad apartments in Brooklyn.

It's not just that I was in my early 20s and just starting out; it wasn't that I didn't want to date suave, emotionally unavailable financiers; Sex and the City represented an idealized portrait of such a small minority of women in New York for such a finite period of time, that it can only be fantasy. I always mocked the Midwestern ladies who came to New York with their stilletos for girls weekends, trying to emulate Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte; they thought those characters were the epitome of New York women, and the New York way of life.

And therein lies the crux of the problem: no four archetypes can accurately portray all women in one city, and one television show can accurately portray life in a city as dynamic as New York for all time. It boggles my mind that women are still asking me today if New York is like New York in SATC, when the world is so vastly different from that moment of time in all ways - period. New York has always been its own creature, and its residents live a precarious existence on the brink of either succumbing to the beast or taming it no matter the cultural zeitgeist of the moment. Sex and the City depicted four mid-30s women in that struggle during a period of extreme wealth and prosperity; make that show again tomorrow and the storyline will look completely different, influenced by a completely different set of circumstances.

As annoying as it is to be asked about SATC every other day, I'm strangely okay with it. Somewhere along the way I realized that every woman who asks me is really just hoping the answer is yes - yes, there is a place where the economy is okay, women can live their own lives and do what they love and can afford a really nice apartment with a really great wardrobe and men aren't douchebags and if they are they at least take you to nice restaurants. Outside of SATC, that seems like a tall order and pretty impossible. Once in the comfort of that pink-boxed complete series boxset, however, the future can feel quite rosy, no matter what perfect storm - economic, cultural, political - is raging outside.

9/11

Thursday morning I woke up and felt like shit. Not physically - physically I felt fine - but mentally and emotionally I just didn't want to get out of bed, didn't want to see anyone, and didn't want to go to work. I was in a funk, and it didn't get any better when I stepped out of the house wearing my suede Puma sneakers and it started pouring down rain.

The whole walk to work I was annoyed and my sadness was growing. I figured it was because it was Thursday and I really wanted it to be Friday, yadda yadda, and also the onset of fall, combined with a dash of introspection of the "shit, what am I doing with my life" variety. But when I got to work and switched on my computer, the first thing I read on opening the web browser were the words 9/11. I couldn't believe I had forgotten, and for the rest of the day I couldn't tell if my overwhelming sadness was a product of my current life situation or some sort of subconscious reaction to the yearly anniversary of my lifetime's defining national tragedy.

Okay, I am the first to admit that I am lucky: I was not in New York on Sept 11, 2001, I lost no family members or close friends. The most I was physically affected by the events on that day was that it was harder for me to get around Europe the following summer without having to explain that I didn't support President Bush. But for someone whose family history is rooted in and around New York City, whose father worked (and now works again) in that capital of business, and who has built a lifetime of dreams upon walking its streets, watching that invasion was like having an organ removed without anesthesia. It physically hurt to watch the CNN broadcasts that day, and the days following, and it still hurts to remember those visuals.

The summer preceding September 11th was the first summer I worked in New York City. I commuted via NJ Transit to Newark, then took the PATH train to the West Village and walked down Hudson Street to Soho where my job was located. I was a young and dreamy designer, and everything from the coffee at my favorite coffee shop to the children going to camp at a local elementary school to various shops located on my walking route inspired me. Not in the least, my skyline view on my walk filled me with a tenderness for New York that only residents of the city can even begin to understand: walking down Hudson, the twin towers rose above the hundred-year-old brownstones and gleaming glass galleries and converted warehouses like a beacon and symbol of what could be. New York's West Side was once home to the city's hard industries, and today it has transitioned to manufacturing tons of capital. The World Trade Center was a defiant stake in the ground of Manhattan, and America's, future progress, anchoring the island in a sea of turbulent economic and political change.

My internship ended that summer on August 25ish, a Friday, and by that Sunday I was back in Syracuse for the beginning of my junior year of college. Everything I did that year was influenced by my summer in New York; I had seen what being a designer was like, what working in the creative capital of America could be, and I was hooked. So to see such a massive symbol of that summer come crashing down mere days after I left was soul-crushing. I remember not really breathing as the birds continued to twitter outside and the sun actually shone in Syracuse. It was surreal, that whole day was surreal, and pain in my chest lingered for days.

Every year now, no matter where I am, I feel that pain. When I lived in Philly, 9/11 was discussed on television and radio news shows and I tuned in voraciously; when I lived in New York, there was a palpable feeling of anguish in the air that no one acknowledged but everyone felt. Every year I would see the day on the calendar, and know it's coming; then I'd exit the subway the night of September 10, look up and see the twin beams of light, and it was the beginning of a ritual atonement. This year, I nearly forgot. My body remembered, however, and I think that is the most frightening - yet reassuring - part. Frightening in that I could even begin to forget an event that has so defined my life, yet reassuring how the body processes information and releases chemicals to remind us of what is important, what we know we should do yet resist. I could have simply let 9/11 go by and shut out the memories, but instead my body said slow down.

Not long after 9/11, Robert DeNiro directed and narrated an American Express commercial that was an ode to New York. Every time I watch that commercial, even today, I tear up and think of how much New York means to me. It's hard being this far away from that city where I cut my teeth and scraped my knees. It was hard, on 9/11, to be in another part of the world and read the newspaper reports of Obama and McCain tried not to campaign in the pit, how the government(s) are screwing around with the memorials, and hear how grieving relatives still justifiably demand answers. But at the end of that long day, I realized that this is what true remembering really is: doing what one needs to do to keep a memory of a moment in time alive, while continuing to move forward. Not an easy task, but DeNiro did it the best way he knew how - through film. If, as a designer, I can, through my work, help people do that for themselves, then I will have really learned something during that summer and its postscript.

The Telectroscope: No Sleep 'til Brooklyn

Saturday afternoon, at 3PM GMT / 10AM EST, Jeffrey and I had a date to meet and say hi via the Telectroscope. I wrote about the Telectroscope a few weeks ago, as Jeff had read about it in the New York Times and sent me the article as something we should do.

The Telectroscope is a sculptural installation on the South bank of the Thames near the Design Museum in London, and on the riverbank in Brooklyn Heights under the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. It is a fiber optic cable that allows you to see, in real time, the other side of the cable - Brooklyn to London, or vice versa. The sculptural element makes it look like something out of the fanciful era of exploration novels, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

I waited in line for about 35 minutes, making phone calls to Jeff to find out his ETA. Once he got there, kind people manning the line in London fast-tracked me to the front so I could see the Hefs. It was awesome; we were on the phone with each other, talking, and looking at each other; there was a delay, which was weird, because you could see the other person's lips move after you heard what they said. But the idea was awesome, and it was great to see Brooklyn in its sunny glory (and great to see Jeff in his Hefster hipness!).

What a cool idea, to connect people across an ocean via art – literally and figuratively. To be honest, the experience was like a 3D version of Skype, but by taking people away from a computer screen and into the outdoor environment, it somehow made the experience more human and less virtual by giving it context and place. Which is nothing more than life itself - a series of events given context by place, characters, and time. The Telectroscope enabled encounters between Londoners and New Yorkers in a very memorable way.

Movie review: Sex and the City The Movie

I never thought I'd say this, but I think I've outgrown Sex and the City.

Maybe it's because after living in New York, watching four women live a completely unrealistic "New York" lifestyle garners an eyeroll. Maybe it's because the gratuitous name/label/brand dropping that goes on throughout the movie is ludicrous, and no one I know actually owns a "Louie," wears Manolos, or would ever dream of wearing a Vivienne Westwood wedding gown. Maybe it's because I now live in London, and watching a movie about life and love in New York is, well, foreign.

I agree with all of the reviewers who said that something was lost when they expanded SATC from its snappy 30-minute episodes made for a small screen to two-and-a-half hours on a big screen. Sort of like when a very crisp clear photograph gets enlarged to poster size, and the pixels blow out and the clarity and definition are lost, SATCTM was a less-than-perfect representation of itself. I really wanted to see the movie and be happy with it, but I had mixed feelings about it in the end. The dialogue was great, as usual, and some of the situations were classic craziness that made the series great. But some of the ancillary storylines were just that - unnecessary, and extra baggage. The "plot twists" that everyone knew about from the trailer were things that would have happened over an entire season, and let's be honest - Sex and the City the series had a happy ending, so of course Sex and the City the movie had one too.

One thing I was glad about was that the writers didn't shirk away from the fact that this movie takes place at a critical point in these characters' lives - they are older, want to be wiser, but the movie doesn't pretend they are still 25. Samantha turns 50 at one point in the film, and yes they're still dressing like young sluts, but at there are several points in the movie that you see them looking, well, old. On the beach, they wear more flatteringly cut (read: mom style) bathing suits. They have jiggly parts, crows feet, and wrinkles. But they also still have each other and their men (whether or not they are speaking to them), and that's a great thing to see in a movie that values superfluous wealth and sophistication.

In the end, I am glad I saw it; there was no way I wouldn't see it. But it didn't make me miss New York, it didn't make me wish I were there, it didn't make me wish I had a boyfriend, and it didn't even make me wish for my college apartment when the opening notes of the SATC theme song (do-do-do, do-do-do-do!) were enough to pull five warring girls from all corners of the house to sit together for hours and laugh hysterically. Sex and the City tightly defined New York and its women in a very narrow time period of hope and prosperity that somehow doesn't seem to fit anymore. I prefer to keep my warm and pleasant memories of that moment when anything seemed possible if you had your lady friends and fabulous fashion locked into the series, with its perfectly imperfect ending, rather than knowing what its creators thought happened five years out. I know what happened to New York five years out, because I lived it; these four women seem to still be in that fantasy, and the bubble has literally, and figuratively, burst.

West End Girls

Sloane was here!!! My very first visitor!!!

I just spent a wonderful weekend hanging out with my New York friend in London. She stayed in a hotel in Earl's Court, so I found myself in the West End for most of the weekend. Sloane was here for another friend's wedding, so while she was busy with the wedding events, I was wandering around a part of town I remember (but not quite) from my previous visits to London.

Saturday I had lunch with Sloane, and when she left to get ready for the wedding, I walked up to Notting Hill and down Portobello Road through the market. I was a bit disappointed by the market - so touristy! so much crap! - but the produce vendors were great and there was extremely good people watching. Saturday night Ashley and I went to Leicester Square and saw the McDreamy chick-flick, which had lovely scenes of New York - SoHo, Central Park, the Village - that didn't make me cry! It was a big step for me to see a NYC-based movie and not burst into tears. So go me!

Sunday Sloane and I visited my new flat (22? days to go!) and conducted an anthropological study by eating at Pizza Express (it IS quite nice), before heading to Kensington to shop. We tried on tons of clothes and bought none, which is responsible shopping, and found a ton of scrumptious shoes that I could have eaten for dinner. We also checked out the Conran Shop, which is what I like to call furniture porn, and I flipped out over throw pillows embrodiered with the Eiffel Tower. Sloane lost it for some stacking red chairs. We ended the day with a traditional Sunday roast; picture above is at the "local" (the local pub, for you Americans) in Clerkenwell Green. Unfortunately, I only know the pubs close to my office so I always default to them.

Monday Sloane and I had a traditional English breakfast: 1 egg, 2 sausages, 1 slice of bacon (really a side of pork), toast, and a stewed tomato. Sloane added beans to hers. After a fun inspection of Boots and some silly picture taking of me with my umbrella blown inside out, Sloane had to leave and I was left to my own devices in the driving rain. I spent the afternoon wandering through the V&A, and then headed home to get dry.

This was one of my better weekends in London, mostly because I had a second familiar face to share it with. Sloane and I have such a great time together doing normal things like chatting, shopping, getting coffee, and we laugh a lot. It was really comforting to have a very normal New York weekend in my new home, and I am actually hopeful that I can continue to have these types of weekends with the new people that I meet here.

Small rodents

This is a 2 part post.

Part 1 is a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAM! Sam is one year older (but still younger than me) today, and I'm sorry I can't be there to give him a huge hug. Sam and I share an affinity for cute small rodents, such as guinea pigs, hamsters, and chinchillas.

Part 2, however, is about the small rodents I DON'T like, specifically rats and mice. Yesterday I started my run rather late, at about 8PM; it was still light out but dusk was approaching rapidly. As I rounded the first bend in the canal, listening to Jimmy Eat World, what pops out of the bushes but a RAT. Now. I lived in New York. I watched the rats frolic on the subway rails in between trains. I saw them scurry out from under garbage bags and disappear into the sewer. But this rat, which was not that big but still a RAT, was running full speed ahead STRAIGHT AT ME on the towpath.

What did I do? What I normally do when confronted with a rodent that's not domesticated: I automatically screamed like a banshee and jumped up and down until it made a sharp left and headed back into the bushes. As soon as it left the path, I continued my run while laughing at myself. It made the rest of the run seem like cake.

First wave

Well, I tried to bring back the snark but unfortunately you're stuck with more rants of despair. Today is my first day of real homesickness. I'm sitting here about to burst into tears at how much I wish I were in New York right now.

I'm sequestered in a room the size of my Brooklyn bathroom with 3 suitcases that have lost all semblence of order or tidiness, and I have no energy or interest in resolving the situation. My two brand-new suits are crumpled in a ball somewhere in the midst of all of this, and I'm angry beyond belief at myself for having just spent $500 on new work clothes only to let them get cruddy before I even wear them BUT I JUST DON'T CARE.

It takes me an hour to get anywhere in the city from here. I feel like I'm in the way if I try to cook in my host's kitchen, or watch TV, or take a shower. I don't even have anything to COOK WITH because I don't have staples like olive oil or Balsamic vinegar! Everything goes bad here in 2 days because they don't use preservatives! AND I HAVE NO MONEY TO FOOD SHOP because I don't get paid until 28 May!

The only places I feel remotely comfortable in this city are my office and my friend's temporary flat. Obviously, I'm not spending any more time at work than I need to because I sense a very quick upswing in work coming right around the corner. And despite my own personal ease and comfort at my friend's place, my poor friend's host is I'm sure ready to have the consulate revoke my right-to-stay because he sees my face every 3 days. I'm like a squatter on their couch every weekend!

I don't have any of my music, because it's all on a portable harddrive in a box next to my desk at work. I don't have any place to put any of the flyers or postcards or other artifacts I collect when I walk around. I'm running out of toothpaste, but I can't find the tube that I brought from home. It's somewhere in this hovel. I also can't find my sports bra, and that is starting to become a problem. I haven't practiced yoga in 3 weeks, and even if I wanted to practice it on my own, outside of a studio, where would I do it? In my hosts' living room?!

It is 4PM in the afternoon and all I've accomplished today is to get waxed and take a shower and write this. It's miserable outside. I'm wearing a wool sweater!

What I want right now is to get on the subway (NOT the goddamned tube) and exit at 49th-50th Street/Rockefeller Center and go into the MoMA where I get in for free and find one of my favorite paintings like a Morris Louis or a Joseph Cornell box and just sit there for a while and think. Then I want to go over to Sloane's, or Rietje's, and hang out and chat. I want to get dinner at the pasta place on Prince Street or get Indian food on 5th Street. Then I want to go back to Brooklyn and drink PBR at Alibi and play Big Buckhunter and stumble 2 blocks to my big bed with A FUCKING BOXSPRING MATTRESS (seriously, can't anyone in this country do anything for my back?!) in my tiny garret room with the Danielle-sized sloped ceiling.

And I want to go to the Greenmarket, and I want to get milk from a farmer, and I want to compost. And I want to go to Central Park and I want to go to the design stores in SoHo and I want to go to Cobble Hill and get coffee beans from D'Amicos where the little old Italian ladies yell at their sons to get married already. And I want to see the Sex in the City movie with my friends, and I want to talk about how American men are all douchebags, and I want to dissect their behavior with my ladies and try to understand why they act the way they do, but still hope that tonight might be the night I find the one.

I want to complain that my parents are showing up at the interminable gap between lunch and dinner so that we can't find someplace to eat. I want to spend a lazy Sunday on my bike riding around Brooklyn ON THE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE ROAD. I want to sit by the river and smell the pungent brine as the river water mixes with the sea.

Yes, I know that there are all kinds of things I could be doing with myself right now besides whining and complaining. And yes, I know that I just posted that I should be grateful for this opportunity. But until June 18, I reserve the right to be really fucking PISSED OFF that I'm stuck in seemingly interminable limbo. I am 27 years old, for god's sake... I should be living like an adult, not some trustfund hosteller. This is the part of fate where I really want to grab control of my destiny and wrangle it into place. If this is some kind of sick joke on karma's behalf, thankyouverymuch but I'm over it.

Sigh. I miss you all. Hugs.

Sigh.

Robert Rauschenberg, dead at 82.

More on this later… I'm feeling a bit melancholy right now.

What the F (train) am I thinking!!?!?!

I think it's only fitting that my first post is about how much I love New York. Ever since my leave date was finalized, I've been revisiting my favorite places in New York in order to memorize exactly how they look, feel, sound, smell (ew, F train), and taste (yum, Choice Bakery). And of course, I'm feeling like I'm making the worst decision of my life. How can I leave this city? My hairdresser is here, my heritage is here, my best friends are all here... BAGELS are here. C'mon – my subway ride to work every morning includes picture-perfect views of the Statue of Liberty, South Street Seaport, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Everyone keeps telling me that moving to London is the biggest and best adventure I'll ever have, and, well, yes that's true, but New York is my home. I know this city like the back of my hand, and everything about it comforts me. I feel like the minute I board the plane in Newark the flight attendant is going to take my security blanket away and I will WAIL. I've lived in New York since 2003, with a 2 year leave of absence to try out Philadelphia; while I was there, I'd visit New York monthly via Greyhound; as the bus approached the Lincoln Tunnel and the New York skyline appeared over the trees, I'd unconsciously whisper "Hello friend!" in greeting. New York City is like the best friend you love to hate but can't live without – one minute sharing special secrets with you, the next minute not returning your calls and being infuriatingly stupid and petty. Frank was right when he sang in "New York New York" that if you can make it here you can make it anywhere, because learning to live well in New York means learning to stand on your own two feet, trusting yourself completely, taking everything you can get, and then passing it on.

When I took my detour down I-95 to live in Philly, I really thought I was leaving home and going out on my own. That was not moving away from home – it was simply me not having spent enough time in New York to understand that I was still a child who needed just a little more time to grow up. I'm so glad I realized it, and came back to finish the job in the place I love the most. I hope I know myself well enough by now to trust my instincts with this move. So here it goes – I'm holding my nose and jumping in – no toe test.