Tag Archives: New Orleans

New Orleans Diary: Week One

2 Dec

The goal: to write a weekly reaction to my time here in New Orleans. To be honest, reaching arbitrary goals that I set for myself isn’t exactly my strong suit but, who knows, maybe the fact that I can sit outside with a vest rather than a winter coat on the 2nd of December will breath some new life into me. So, here goes.

The Story: I have been in New Orleans, without my road trip companion Jessy, for a week now. It’s been pretty good. Just to catch some people up, I made the decision to move down here just after the presidential election on November 8th back when I visited in May of last year. I just decided that it was time to take a more active role in my own life. Shake things up a little bit. Change my environment. So on November 10th, after crying on and off for two days following the elections, Jessy and I hopped in my car and started on a two-week long trip down South during which we cried on and off about the election. We zig zagged a bit, to put it lightly. And then last Friday, after a really fun Franksgiving Outpost involving the race tracks, an amazing dinner cooked by friends and a few too many drinks at one of my favorite New Orleans bars, I dropped Jessy off at the airport and started my time here for real.

Some feels: As someone who is massively social, sort of to a fault at times, being somewhere that I know a very small handful of people has been…challenging. I have grown pretty accustomed to being surrounded by people that I know and love and while, in ways, getting away from my over-active social life was one of the reasons to move down here, I miss it. I miss walking down the street and seeing people I know. I miss going out with pals to drinks and dinner. I miss popping in to visit my friends at work. I miss sweating it out on a bike next to a buddy exchanging winces of pain when the class gets extra hard. I miss my customers. (Well, most of them.) I miss my kitties. I miss my apartment with its brightly colored walls, shelves full of books, awesome art on the walls and surfaces littered with plants and kitsch. I miss Brooklyn, I really do. (Although I have to say that watching the weather drop day after day up north while I am still able to run in shorts and a t-shirt is pretty killer. Not to brag, or anything.)

Running Group!: But, I am adjusting. I joined a running group that meets on Tuesday nights and is full of really nice people. One of the things that I had a hard time with in Brooklyn, especially after my long-time running buddy and good friend Monica moved her family to the Hudson Valley, was finding a running community. There are a lot of people who run in New York, it’s true. But I have found many of them to be a little too competitive for my taste. New York, at least in the way that I see it, is a Type-A city, with a lot of people taking everything that they do pretty seriously. And I think that’s great! But when it comes to my running, and let’s be honest, pretty much everything that I do, I’m a little more…relaxed about it. And wouldn’t you know it, this group seems to have the exact same mentality. Everyone comes to work hard but there is just, I don’t know, a really positive vibe about it all that I really enjoyed. The workout this week was to run 3-5 by 1 mile repeats at a 10k pace. (Don’t worry if that made absolutely no sense to you, the specifics aren’t important.) Initially it was supposed to be like 65 degrees but instead it was almost 80 and humid as fuck. Everyone was struggling. Some people cut their workouts short because it was hard to breath but everyone stayed around until all the other runners finished, offering high fives, words of encouragement and big congratulations to everyone who managed to get through the entire planned workout. The vibe of the group was like a giant hug, only a figurative one because everyone was too sweaty and stinky and hot to really deal with any human contact.

Bags: This is sort of a weird thing but people here love bags. I mean, LOVE bags. So in New York people tend to be careful to bring their own bags to stores. I think some people do this because they care about the environment. A lot of people, however, do it because in NYC there is a little bit of shame associated with walking out of a grocery store with like 15 plastic bags in tow. People look. They have thoughts; judgy ones. They proudly hoist their own tote bags higher on their shoulders, proud that they were helping to alleviate the pressures of climate change and litter one little white bag at a time. They and their canvas Trader Joe’s bag will save the world! Here in New Orleans people love bags. They give bags out like candy! You practically have to argue with the checkout people to get them to put more than one item in each bag and then, when you succeed, they double bag it. I swear I feel like I end up with more bags in one visit to the store here than I do in like 3 months in New York. It’s very bizarre. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they don’t love bags. Maybe they just don’t trust bags. Maybe there is a higher percentage of faulty bags here in Louisiana than up in Brooklyn. Maybe there was a spate of defective bag handles, handles that snapped without warning and sent the contents spewing willy nilly through the aisles and the parking lots, leaving the residents of the city doubtful of the quality of their disposable totes. I’ll keep you posted.

Driving and Parking: I drive quite a bit down here. Public transportation is, shall we say, slightly lacking and so the best way to get around town is by car. So I go here and I go there. Most of the places I go seem to be about 20 minutes away from most of the other places that I go. And so, like the good New Yorker I am, I leave myself extra time to get places to account for traffic and parking. Only there is barely any traffic and I can almost always find parking right in front of where I need to be. I have spent quite a bit of time wandering back and forth down a street, looking for signs about street cleaning or parking restrictions but there are none. And the days of like 6 fire hydrants per block are long gone, too. Obviously this indicative of some bigger things that I don’t really feel like getting into right now so let me just say this: I have been early to basically every single thing I have had to go to since being here even when I have gotten lost which happens a lot because the signs here are confusing and also sometimes simply not there. So to those people who think that New Jersey signage is confusing, I invite you to shut the fuck up and drive around here for a minute. Also, people in the South drive like maniacs. And don’t believe in blinkers.

I’m actually not done talking about bags: I had intended for this to be a little bit more serious of a post than this but I lost my way a little. Mostly because this whole week has been peppered with me being really taken by the situation with the bags. I don’t know why I find this so interesting but like every time I go somewhere I either mention to my friend Carie — who has been kind enough to allow me to stay with her while I look for a spot — about the number of bags we end up with or I just say something aloud to myself as I walk back to my car like a total weirdo. I’ve done other fun things, too. I’ve run quite a bit along the levee, wandered around the city and gone to see some live music with a new friend but I just can’t get over the bags. Hopefully I will have more interesting things to discuss next week. Stay tuned.

 

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Tip #17 on Being a Good Bar Customer

24 Jun

Alright, once again with the tips. But first, a little background information for you. In case you didn’t know this about me, I really don’t like money. Or, well, I guess that isn’t fair. To be more accurate: I really don’t like what money does to people. So many of the problems that we have in this world can be traced back to money and what it does to people. Here are some examples:

  • The looting of the Amazon and other natural wonders
  • The fact that we cannot seem to get our heads out of our fucking asses and enact actual, reasonable gun reform
  • The Detroit water crisis
  • The lack of actual, sustained help for New Orleans and all its residents regardless of race or economic status in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
  • The fact that Hurricane Katrina did the damage that it did in the first place
  • War
  • That athletes, musicians, politicians and basically every other male in power (and many of those not in power) get away with sexual assault and rape
  • Global warming
  • Donald Trump

You get the picture. All that being said, I do understand that money is a thing that is necessary for survival in this world and so, in order to make survival possible, I work. And when I work, I want to make as much money as I can. And that, friends, is a team effort. My ability to make money really depends on you coming into the place that I work, ordering the things that you want from me, and then tipping me appropriately. My livelihood depends on you. That’s right. You. (I am pointing at you right now. Is it making you feel weird? It should.) But that’s not all! It also depends on you understanding that the seats at my bar and tables are like real estate. You rent a space for your ass by buying things and tipping me on them. And when you stop buying things, and stop tipping on them, you abandon your rented space and make room for the next guy. This isn’t to say that the second you take your last sip I expect you to walk away from whatever conversation you’re having, game you’re watching, or Tweet you’re Tweeting, but it is to say that you should be aware and respectful of my need to pay my rent and buy food for my two adorable little kitties. Stories!

During the World Cup last year I was at work and my bar was packed. But there, at the bar, was an empty stool. How odd! Upon closer inspection I came to realize that two people sitting at the bar were saving the stool for someone who had yet to arrive. Now on a normal day when there is plenty of space, I wouldn’t mind that. Save away! There’s nothing better than getting to a bar to meet your friends after a long day of work and finding that they have saved a seat, just for you! But on a day when the bar is jam packed with people wanting to pay money for things (and tip on those things) saving a seat is sort of cutting into my business. People notice there is no space and move on to another spot. Or, because they are behind a wall of people, they are not able to buy drinks with the regularity that they, and I, might like. And so I looked at the people saving the seat and I said

Excuse me, but do you think you could move your bag so someone could sit in that seat?

And the lady of the pair said

No, I’m actually saving this seat for someone.

So I smiled and said

Yeah, that’s great, except that certain someone isn’t here yet and we are well into the first half of the game and there are other people who are actually here now and would like to sit.

She stared at me. I stared at her. She moved her bag. Therefore I won. I almost always win staring contests. Her friend, by the way, didn’t arrive for over an hour. So this lady and her companion were actually going to sit at the bar as person after person asked if they could sit and they would respond

Nah, my friend is coming.

Only their friend was not really coming. Not right then, anyway. And the two people sitting at the bar only had one drink each. And then they drank seltzer! And didn’t tip on it. (Which, if I’m being honest, might have had something to do with the fact that I had told her she couldn’t save a seat for her incredibly tardy friend.) So that’s another thing. Don’t occupy a seat at the bar for like 4 hours and only drink seltzer! I mean, whatever, occupy the seat, but do like my friend Cherie does when she drinks seltzer and tip on your soda! Don’t be that guy at the coffee shop who occupies a table for like 5 hours and drinks one cup of coffee. No one likes that guy. That guy is a dick.

And here’s another thing. No one likes to be all packed in like sardines at a bar. I understand that. That is why I don’t hang out in busy bars. I work in them; I do not hang out in them. Busy bars are awful when you don’t have a giant slab of wood protecting you from the masses. And even when you do have that lab of wood they sometimes suck. And so I understand the desire that some people have to make a space around them by saving a seat with their backpack for no reason whatsoever other than to keep someone else from elbowing them. But the thing is, that’s rude. It is rude to other people who are stuck standing so your backpack can take a load off, and it’s rude to me who wants to make money off the seat your backpack is occupying. So unless you want to pay rent on two stools by tipping me double on every drink you have, put your bag on the floor or on one of the hooks conveniently located under the bar for just such an occasion. Or! Be one of those people who travels with their own hook! I always admire the foresight of those people.

So yeah, I don’t know, guys. I guess it all comes down to respect. Respect the fact that the bar only exists if people buy things, and your missing friend and your backpack do not buy things. Respect the fact that under the current system I can only survive if you tip me and, again, your missing friend and your backpack don’t tip me. And respect the fact that you are not, in fact, the only person in the universe. There are other people here, too. People who aren’t missing or an inanimate object that you use as a means of conveyance. Other people who want to go out, have fun, drink drinks, watch games and, yes, even sit down on a bar stool. So please, let them sit.

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A Tail of Two Kitties

18 Jan

In my post from yesterday on ChafingIsReal.com I alluded to the fact that I would explain to my readers why it was that I missed writing a blog post this past Friday. Over on that blog, for those of you who don’t know, I am documenting my progress in a challenge to run 2,015 miles in the year 2015. In case you are wondering, it is going pretty well. So far this year I have run 64.64 miles which means that I have another 1,950.36 miles to go before I can call this journey a success. It is a little bit daunting, to say the least. This all means that, if I were to run every single day for the rest of the year (which I will not do because I don’t want to hurt myself and also that sounds miserable) I would have to get in roughly 5.6 miles daily. So, yea, that’s some work. If any of you readers (a) live in New York City and (b) are runners please let me know. I wouldn’t mind a touch of company every now and again.

Moving on. The other part of the challenge, which is an aspect that I designed for myself in order to improve my writing, is to post a blog post on that other site every single day. Obviously, I have failed. But that’s okay! I am not throwing in the towel! Sometimes life gets in the way and keeps us from doing the things we set out to do and we can either be mad at ourselves about it or just shrug our shoulders and realize that we are not in control of everything and sometimes cats, and a movie and a night that both turn out to be a lot longer than you anticipated, just happen. So, without further ado,* the story.

This coming Wednesday at 6:50am (uuuggghhh) I will be departing for New Orleans for my annual visit. I have friends down there so I like to get down there and hang with them for a week, give or take. In anticipation of this, I decided that it would be smart to bring my two kitties, Clark and Grete, over to my parents house so I didn’t have to cobble together people to feed them and give them scratches for the 9 days I will be out of town. My parents were not incredibly pleased about this turn of events but they love me so they agreed. (Thanks Mom and Dad! You’re the best!!) I happened to be watching my friend Katie’s car while she was in Costa Rica this past week (so jealous) and so I figured it would be easy to put the kitties in their little houses and drive them out to my parent’s place in New Jersey. So, while my friend Ben looked on, I packed my kitties into their little houses which caused some not so serious injuries to my shoulders. I should have cut Clark’s nails shorter. Live and learn. We then loaded the kitties, kitty accoutrement, and laundry into the car and I made the relatively short, but incredibly stressful, trek to my parents’ place. It’s actually not usually that stressful but have you ever driven for 40 minutes, including some time on the BQE (the lanes are so tiny!) with two yowling cats in the back seat? I do not recommend it. They make the craziest noises. Ben said they sounded like dolphins. I don’t know about all that but what I do know is that I spent the entire car ride cooing at them and oscillating between incredible guilt for having taken them from the only home they have ever known and crammed them into little carriers and fear that I was going to get rear-ended and my kitties were going to fly through the front windshield. Poor, poor kitties. Anyway, we got there safe and sound. Physically speaking, anyway.

So I called my mom and she came out and helped me carry the two little beans (that’s what I call them) into the house and down to the basement so we could show them where the litter box was. Clark quickly emerged from his box and hid underneath a shelving unit and Grete remained in her box, where she apparently felt safe, for the next 4 hours. Just in there. Sitting, staring, occasionally crying. It was heart breaking. Eventually she came out and hid herself, face against the exposed brick wall, behind some paintings that were leaning there. I am still unclear as to why that seemed like a good place to hide but there you have it. After dinner I decided that maybe the proper course of action would be to carry each of them upstairs into the less scary part of the house where my parents and I were hanging out so they could begin the adjustment period. Big mistake. Huge. They were shaking. Grete spent the first hour of upstairs time wedged between my left arm and the arm of the sofa, with her head behind a cushion. Clark spent his time hiding behind Grete. You guys, they are the wussiest kitties ever to have kittied. It’s really something. After some time Clark got spooked and went into the living room and hid between the back of the sofa and the wall. He remained there for something like 12 hours. I brought Grete up to my bedroom, thinking, again erroneously, that maybe being with me would make her feel more comfortable. She slept on the bed for a little bit but eventually ended up jumping down and hiding underneath it. Where she remained for the next 48 hours until my mother, bless her, went upstairs and pulled her out and brought her down to the basement were the litter box was. Oh, yea, I forgot to mention that in an act of both bravery and seething anger Grete took a shit on the bed.

Cats are such assholes.

As a person who considers herself a better-than-average cat mom, and who was really trying to do what was best for her little kitties, I spent almost the entire 24 hours I was at my parents house worrying about the kitties, talking about the kitties, trying to find the kitties and laughing at the kitties. I feel sort of bad about that last part but I can’t help it. Poor, pathetic little fuzzballs.

So as of the update my mom gave me last night at approximately 10:30pm, things had not changed much. My mom did manage to get Grete to come out from under the bed by sitting on the floor and reading. Eventually Grete, who is very much in need of attention pretty much whenever she is awake and not eating, came out purring and let my mom scratch her head. My mom then brought her downstairs where Grete is currently hiding. Clark, although he has still been taking refuge under the sofa in the living room, has used the litter box. I think both of them have eaten some snacks. Grete loves snacks.

Anyway so that is the Tail of Two Kitties (teehee) and also a long, drawn-out explanation as to why I did not run on Friday and also did not write on my blog. I simply couldn’t run. I had to meander around the house trying to figure out where the kitties were hiding and also at one point I had to drag Clark out from underneath the oven where he decided to wedge himself. That is not a good place to be a kitty. Also when I got back into the city I saw Boyhood with my friend Revaz at IFC. It was good. You should all see it. But maybe wait till it comes out on DVD (or streaming or whatever the kids are doing these days) because it’s almost 3 hours long. And that’s a long time.

If anything of note happens with the kitties I will be sure to let you all know. Feel free to send messages of love and concern. Also, read my other blog. It’s not that great but the posts are short and sometimes have something to do with running but usually have more to do with my imagination. Okay thanks.

* “Without further ado” is a phrase that I have said and never written and so I went on the internet and learned some things! Apparently people oftentimes write “without further adieu” instead of without further “ado,” even though if you were to translate the former it would mean without further goodbye? And that doesn’t make sense although it does look awful pretty. There is something to be said about the aesthetics of a bunch of vowels in a row. The word “ado” actually means hubbub or fuss, which I am sure all of you well-vocabularied people already knew but I thought I would throw it in here anyway. And also this one last thing because I didn’t know this and I think it is really cool. When people confuse words like “adieu” and “ado” it is known as an eggcorn! That’s what it means to confuse two words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. Eggcorn! Who knew! I will now try and work the word “eggcorn” into casual conversation on the regular so be on the lookout.

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Happy Bloody Valentine’s Day, Folks.

14 Feb

It’s Valentine’s Day which, as far as I can tell, is just as good a day as any to get my blog rolling again.  So, here we go.  I have no plan (except to stir up zero controversy) so let’s just see where this takes us, shall we?

Things have been stressful around here recently but, never fear, while all of the stress has been raining (snowing?) down on my head, embarrassing things have not stopped happening to me.  I don’t know if you have noticed but embarrassing things happen to me often.  And I find that I become less embarrassed if, rather than skulking around feeling like an ass, I broadcast my embarrassment to all who feel compelled to read about it.

Before I continue I should probably let you know I am about to write about my period.  For those of you who are weird and don’t like reading about such things, you should maybe just stop reading now and then go in the other room and grow up a little.  Then come back and try again.  You’ll get there eventually.  I believe in you.  (Dad, maybe you get a free pass on this one.)

This past Tuesday I returned from my annual friends-visiting trip to New Orleans.  My period always comes on vacation.  Always.  No matter what time of the month I go, no matter when my last period was, it always always always comes.  I know this and yet I never pack accordingly.  It’s like a game of chicken I insist on playing and my period always wins.  Every single time.  When I was packing I even thought to myself, “Self, you should probably pack some tampons. Nah. There is no way it’ll come.” Stupid.  I was just like willing it to arrive.  Taunting it.  You know what periods don’t like?  Being taunted.  Take my word for it.  So there I was, on Monday morning, realizing that perhaps it was coming.  But did I do anything about it?  No, of course I didn’t.  I just went about my day, casually passing all manner of store, not stopping in to buy the appropriate gear.  I made it through Monday unscathed and then Tuesday came.  All morning I was good to go.  I decided that it would probably be in my best interest to buy a box of just-in-case tampons.  But I was on a time crunch so instead of walking to where I knew there was a pharmacy with all kinds of choices, I went to a little store in the Quarter to buy a box of “regular” tampons which, when I am in the midst of my flow, are utterly useless.  But did I think about that?  No.  And did I think about the impending danger when I put one, yes one, useless little tampon in my shoulder bag and the rest of the box in my bag that was checked under the plane?  No, if course I didn’t.  Because I am a smart and reasonable human being.  I bet you can guess what happened next.  But in case you can’t, I will tell you all about it.

Cue dramatic music.

It was exactly halfway through the flight when I decided to stretch my legs and take a walk down to the bathroom.  I stuck the one solitary tampon in my pocket and moseyed on down the aisle.  I got into the bathroom and wouldn’t you know it, blood everywhere.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is my worst nightmare.  Being on an airplane in a teeny tiny bathroom with a toilet that I am always afraid is going to suck me in and spit me out into the open air, impossible to use sinks, no maneuvering room, clothes packed up and locked under the plane, and one stupid ass tampon with the absorbancy of a fucking cotton ball.  Obviously I had a mini panic attack.  And of course there were like three dudes waiting to get into the bathroom when I emerged after trying, in vain, to blot all the blood away.  And to bring the trio of terrible home, there was only one female flight attendant and she was without supplies.  I took a stack of napkins to sit on for the rest of the flight in an effort to not run the upholstery.  She looked on in pity and said “we’ve all been there.”  I don’t know if we’ve all sat in a pool of our own blood on the plane for over an hour, but I appreciated the sentiment.

And then the plane landed. Hurrah!  I felt lucky that I had worn my darkest pair of jeans but sad that my sense of style did not allow me the foresight to wear a long enough top to cover my ass.  I also cursed the vanity that simply would not allow me to tie my sweatshirt around my waist.  I figured if I walked really fast to the bathroom people would be none the wiser.  Only do you know what they no longer have in the bathrooms at John F Kennedy International Airport?  Tampon and pad vending machine things.  Do they think only bionic and pre and post-menopausal women travel by air?!  Clearly yes.  Obviously all of the women in the bathroom fit into the latter category.  As I ran to the door to go to my flight’s assigned carrousel to check and see if my bag had miraculously not been the last one to emerge from the depths of the plane, a woman appeared, as if from heaven itself, and handed me a pad.  Oh, happy day!  Of course I was wearing a (ruined) thong which meant that when I stuck the pad to my underwear and walked around it just burrowed further and further up my ass.  Not terribly comfortable but better than blood dripping down my legs, am I right?

Anyway, I retrieved my bag, got in a cab, got home, threw my underwear out, used that shout stain guard stuff that works pretty well and also gets this song stuck in my head for days (still singing it!), and took a shower.  I haven’t had the guts to look at my pants to see whether or not they are ruined foreva.  They probably are.  And that, my friends, is what happens when you taunt Aunt Flo.  She eats you alive.

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I Want to Be Friends with the Person Who Runs the Jet Blue Twitter Account

4 Feb

I figure that since my blog is sort of blowing up thanks to a rather, um, unkind message I got on an old blog post, that I would take advantage of the situation to share with some of you readers, both new and old, a bit about the minutiae of my day.  So come along!

Tomorrow I am going to New Orleans.  Well, let me reword that.  Tomorrow I am supposed to go to New Orleans.  For those of you who don’t live on the East Coast and/or don’t program the location of some far flung friends into your phone so you can obsessively check their weather and alternate between intense jealousy and a sort of self-righteous belief that you made the superior geographic life decisions, there is a storm a’coming.  But didn’t the we just have a storm, you might ask?  Yes, yes we did.  It was yesterday.  Starting this evening we are supposed to have a sleet and snow extravaganza.  I decided that, given the forecast, I should probably go on the Jet Blue website and check the status of my flight.

Canceled.

Damnit.

So I poked around the website and since at that point I had not received any information about how I might get to New Orleans as soon as possible, I decided to call them up.  I was informed by the prerecorded lady that it was going to be at least a 30 minute wait.

Damnit again.

So I did what any other reasonable person who lives in this technological world but is also tied to the phone and its accompanying hold music:  I took to Twitter.  What happened amused the hell out of me and made me come to the following three conclusions:  (1) Twitter is an incredible source of entertainment; (2) I want to become friends with the person who runs the Jet Blue Twitter account because that person is hilarious; and (3) I will make even more of an effort to fly Jet Blue because clearly they know a little something about staffing.  Like I always say (or, well, like I am going to start saying now): make me laugh and you’ve got a customer for life.  So this is what went down:

@franklyrebekah (that’s me!): Stuck on hold with @JetBlue.  Seriously, “The Power of Love?” Please do something about this hold music.
@franklyrebekah: AND now it’s Benny and the Jets.  Talk about instant gratification. Thanks @JetBlue #onhold #sobored #canceledflights #travel

(At this point my old high school friend, Seth, asked if it was Huey Lewis, Marty McFly, or Jimi Hendrix.  Unfortunately, it was Celine Dion.  I hashtagged that my ears were bleeding)

@JetBlue: @franklyrebekah Sorry about that one…
@JetBlue: @franklyrebekah… but we’re glad it got better so quickly! Thanks for hanging in there.  Someone will be with you as soon as possible.

Anyway, blah blah blah, then I told them that I talked to someone and she was really nice.  Then they told me to send along my confirmation number and they would pass the compliment along.  Then I admitted that I don’t understand how to use Twitter properly.  Then they managed to not mock me.  Also they sent funny hashtags like #NoMoreHoldMusic and, in regards to my flight actually taking off on Thursday AM (I got on a new one!) #FingersCrossed #ToesToo.

You know, this all seemed a lot funnier when it was actually happening.  But I guess here is the actual thing.  Sometimes it is easy to forget that on the other side of the computer is a real person.  I guess it was a nice thing to know that I (potentially) amused the person in charge of the Jet Blue Twitter account and that they, in turn, decided to amuse me right back.  In a world overrun by anonymity, it is nice to know that there are people out there that, even though they are anonymous in that they are the voice of a company and have to represent and promote a specific image and message, they still find the space to express a little good humor.  Also, and this is sort of an unrelated lesson that I learned this week, we should always assume that the person we are talking about online could potentially read the words that we type.  So we should be aware of whose feelings might get hurt and decide whether or not we care.  I know that, going forward, I will continue to write my posts with my opinions and observations and I will continue to put my name on it, but I will take a step back and really think about the impact my words might have on the person I am discussing.  With some people, honestly, I could give a shit.  But there are some who I don’t think I have necessarily been fair to.  So, I will work on that.

Anyway, thanks to the person who is in charge of the Jet Blue Twitter account for amusing me in the midst of an otherwise disappointing situation.  Keeping my fingers crossed for a Thursday departure.  New Orleans, here I come.

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Two Storms, Two Gardens and a Thesis Topic

9 Apr

Update!  They posted the piece along with my original abstract on the journal website.  You can read it here, if you want.  Or you can just read it on this site.  Although my site doesn’t have an accompanying photograph or an abstract.

Later this month I am participating in a conference at my school during which I will be presenting some ideas on a topic that is sort of connected to what I am writing my thesis about.  Anyway, seeing as how I am a touch behind in the thesis writing process (surprise, surprise!) applying for admittance into this conference was perhaps not my best ever idea but there you have it.  As part of my participation, I had to write a 5-7 page paper on my topic, which I turned in yesterday, along with a short bio and a little teaser about what I plan on talking about to get people excited, or warn them, or something.  So I did all that and then I got an email from the staff of the school’s academic journal, which is apparently partnering with the conference organizer, asking me for a short piece about what had gotten me interested in the topic I decided to write on in the first place so they could publish it alongside the abstract I sent in as my conference application a few weeks ago.  If they like it, anyway.  So, I wrote that and then I decided well, if they decide not to publish it, then I would feel as though it was a semi-wasted effort so in an attempt to prevent that from happening, I am going to post it here!  So, here it is.  The story of why I got interested in my conference topic via the story of how I got interested in my thesis topic.  Enjoy.

The day after Hurricane Sandy left large swaths of New York and New Jersey damaged, burnt and under water, I took a walk down to the Red Hook neighborhood in Brooklyn to survey the damage.  I was shocked by what I saw – three foot high water marks on the public housing buildings, puddles the size of small ponds, piles of drenched belongings stacked on the sidewalks, cars that had floated from their parking spaces and had landed, water-logged, in the middle of normally heavy-trafficked streets.  I thought about the long road ahead for the people of Red Hook and other seriously impacted neighborhoods.  Quickly, my mind raced backwards to August of 2005 and the destruction wrought on the city of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  I thought back to the images and stories that spewed out of that storm-ravaged city during the weeks, months, even years following the storm.  I started thinking about what it takes to repair.  Or, more specifically, who it takes.  I thought about the aid money flowing into New York from all corners of the globe.  I thought about how long that money would continue to come our way, what areas would receive most of it, what areas would soon be forgotten.  I thought about the Lower Ninth Ward.

During my walk through Red Hook on Tuesday, October 30th I started questioning my own thoughts about the abilities and, perhaps more importantly, the priorities of the United States government.  I am a staunch believer in the importance of a big government.  In the modern, capitalist society that we have created, I think the role of the government is largely to protect the people from the injustice of the unfettered market.  For years, I have been avoiding the reality that rather than being a beacon of hope for the millions of people forgotten by capitalism, the government has become a protector of the system at all costs.  The government has become a partner in further disempowering those most devoid of power to begin with.  I finally realized that if areas like the Lower Ninth Ward and Red Hook wait for the government to clean up a mess that is largely, through the persistence of its racist and classist policies and rhetoric, its own doing, they will be waiting forever.  Indeed, the Lower Ninth Ward, almost 8 years later, still has not gotten even close to the kind of sustained help as the French Quarter despite the fact that it sustained significantly more damage.

Once the waters and the aid money recede we are left only with ourselves and our desire to rebuild.  I began looking into similar movements in the Lower Ninth Ward and Red Hook that incorporated my own interest:  agriculture.  What I found were two separate organizations – The Backyard Gardener’s Network in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans and Added Value in Red Hook, Brooklyn – both working to better their own neighborhoods in the aftermath of the storm through community gardening and youth empowerment in agriculture respectively.  This idea of using community gardening and urban agriculture as a means through which a neighborhood can build bonds, power, and resilience in the face of future disaster became my thesis.  Through my reading and interviews, I began to delve into the idea that the same structural racism that undergirded the poor response by the United States government, particularly in the case of Katrina and the Lower Nine, actually exists in our current conversation regarding urban agriculture.  This idea of certain people’s lives being hidden from the public eye is not something unique to disaster deterrence and response, but is something that works its way into a lot of what we do and what we talk about.  It exists in the interstices of lived and documented reality.  Urban agriculture is not something that is new but is instead something that has been happening in urban centers for generations and yet that experience has largely been omitted in our current narrative.  My idea was to use this conference as a way to delve a little deeper into a topic that is of great interest to me but which is only tangentially connected to what my thesis is principally concerned with analyzing.

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Post-Race Recap

25 Feb

So I figured that since I wrote a blog about my Pre-Race Jitters, I might as well recap the run (I will spare you the boring details), following a similar format to the original post just for accuracy.  For those of you who didn’t read the initial blog, that’s okay, you can read it here, or where I already linked it above!  Or not at all.  Whatever, it’s your life.

1.  The training, yea, I didn’t really do a good job of it.  I ran the 13.1 miles in roughly the same time I ran it last year, plus a few minutes.  My 2013 time was 1:48:23 and my 2012 time was 1:45:15.  Not too shabby.  But my hips hurt because I stopped doing hip strengthening exercises about halfway through my training cycle.  And today my quads are sore because I don’t like to do squats at the gym because of this stupid trainer there who butted into my workout and gave me bad advice.  I wrote about that here, if you care to refresh.  But all in all, it was what I thought it would be.  Cardiovascularly* I was good to go, muscularly not so much.  But it was fun after I relaxed into it so that’s something.

2.  I decided, with the advice of my good friend C., to wear the old shoes that I had already run too many miles in instead of the new shoes that hurt my ankle bump.  I think this was the right choice although I felt like I ran the entire race with cement feet.  Also, for the second time this week my pinky toenail cut the inside of my fourth toe during the run.  Gross.  Also, ouch.

3.  My period started the day before the race which was exactly the wrong time for it to start but also exactly what I expected because my period is an asshole that wants to ruin my life.  I will spare you the gorey details on that one but suffice it to say that it was necessary for me to wait in the obscenely long port-o-potty line before the race, making me almost late for the race start, and then rush to the port-o-potty again right after the race.  For those of you who might never have used a port-o-potty either before or after a race, there is basically nothing grosser.  In short, runners are disgusting.  Also, there may not be any Purell left by the time you get there.  Not that I had that problem personally…right…okay…moving on.

4.  I know that my initial blog only had 3 worry things, but now that I am recaping I want to add something to this list that I never would have thought to worry about before the race but that then occurred during the race and made me feel really sad.  So, in my experience as a person who has run a lot of races of all different distances, I always find that runners are a good and supportive bunch.  I have seen people encourage others, help them up if they trip, support people over the finish line when they are completely out of energy, run a fallen comrade’s shoe over the final time mat so she could receive her medal.  Never have I encountered someone who was intentionally rude and disrespectful to their fellow runners.  That is until yesterday.  Yesterday I got stuck next to these two bros from miles 2-4, give or take.  One of them didn’t say much but the other…oh man was he a piece of shit.   So, there was this girl who got overheated and pulled over to the side of the course to take her long sleeved shirt off.  This is a normal thing.  And what did the asshole do?  He screamed,

“Oh yea! Take it off!”

I literally almost lost my shit.  I thought about saying something but then I was afraid I would be stuck next to them for the entire race and it would ruin my own experience so instead I sped up to get ahead of them and snarled in the dude’s ear as I passed,

“You’re a real fucking gem.”

He didn’t hear me because he was wearing headphones which he technically shouldn’t have been doing anyway but whatever.  I thought I was safe but then they caught up with me again and there was this guy wearing a tight pink running top and some capri running tights — not at all a weird outfit to see — and the fucking dude hit his friend in the arm, pointed at the guy and started quietly laughing at him.  I had half a mind to say,

“How dare you laugh at people who worked hard to get here. Who do you think you are?  Grow up.”

But I bit my tongue partially for the reason I mentioned before but also because I didn’t want the pink dude to overhear me scolding them and realize they were making fun of him and then feel self-conscious and therefore have a bad race.  I really wish I had written down his bib number so I could have written a letter to the race organizers.  Which I would have done and then shared with you all.  Oh well.  Hindsight.

And now for the good things!

1. I didn’t actually end up running with C. because she is fast and just cannot help herself from running fast.  She kicked butt in the race despite not being super well-trained for it.  What a talented jerk.

2.  There was music!  And some of it was really awesome and fun.  I loved the people who put huge stereos outside of their super cool Southern-looking houses.  What I didn’t love was the band stationed at the mile 3/7 mark who played the most unmotivating music ever.  Purple Rain?  Patience?  Really?  You need a runner friend to lend you their motivating playlist, band.

3.  C. and I did not become friends with either Kara or Shalane.  But I ran with my hands in my armpits anyway.  I am totally kidding.  Or am I?!

4.  I had a Bloody Mary (or two..).  Melvin shared this one with me:

IMG_04685.  In the afternoon, I went to a bar with my friend Carie and we had a vodka soda and then this ridiculous thing happened which made us mad.  There we were, minding our own business, sipping our insanely-strong vodka sodas with straws when some dude reaches between us where a candle was perched and goes

“I’m just gonna borrow a little light for our candle”

and proceeds to reach into my drink, grab one of my straws, and try to light it using our candle.  He took a straw with his filthy ass hands that he may or may not have washed right out of my drink!  Who the fuck does that?  When I objected by grabbing the straw out of his hand and telling him exactly how not okay it was that he did that he says, like a fucking dickwad would,

“Calm down, killer.”

Ugh!  Needless to say this sent Carie and I into “put a douche in his place” mode.  I will let you imagine how that went.

6.  I am still planning on watching the AT&T American Cup on Sunday (when will USA Gymnastics announce the competitor who is replacing Elizabeth Price for crying out loud?!) and I am still planning on writing a letter to NBC about their need to fire one or all of their commentators and replace them with Alicia Sacramone.

So, yea, that is pretty much that.  Oh, and to the person who came across my blog by searching the term “what melts dog poo” I hope that it answered your question which is nothing.  Nothing melts dog poo you stupid idiot.  Just pick it up.

*I would like to acknowledge the fact that while WordPress does recognize the word “ginormous” as being acceptable in the English language and therefore not in need of a red squiggly line underneath it, it does not feel the same way about the word “cardiovascularly” or its own company name.  Seems fishy to me.

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Those Pre-Race Jitters

22 Feb

Tomorrow morning at 4:45am a car, driven by the awesome Leo, will come pick me up to take me to John F. Kennedy International Airport for my 6:50 flight to New Orleans.  I will arrive a few hours later in the Big Easy for my fourth time, and only the third time I’ll make the trip by plane.  At exactly this time last year I was leaving New York by car.  With me behind the wheel and two friends, a cat, a disco ball, and a life-size cardboard cutout of R2D2 taking up the backseat of a rental car with Tennessee plates (glad to avoid New York plates on a drive through the south!) we set off from New York City to New Orleans, by way of about a dozen different states, to set a friend up in her new apartment in her new city to start a new chapter of her life.  It was a fun ride followed by a fantastic few days of exploring a new town and then a great 13.1 miles through a city I knew I would be visiting yearly, if not more.  I had no expectations of that race considering I had spent the better part of the previous week either sitting in a car, sitting in a bar, or exploring every inch of New Orleans by foot.  It turned out better than I had expected.  It was my best time in a half marathon up until that point, my best time, that is, until I bettered it by almost 6 minutes about 3 months later in the Brooklyn Half on a gorgeous day in May.  2012 was my year (for running)!

As I was saying, tomorrow morning I will be en route to New Orleans, about 24 hours after I fell asleep this morning following an 8-hour shift behind the bar.  I will arrive in the city at around 9:30am to the expectant faces of two of my closest girlfriends — one of whom keeps an awesome blog and came in 4th among women in the New Orleans Marathon a few years back (and she didn’t even have a great race! Asthma attacks! Who does that?!) and the other who busies herself bartending, making jewelry, doing investigations, practicing Reiki, and trying to turn herself into a glitter unicorn, she is so close.  I’ll spend the day at the Marathon Expo and catching up with my girls before my third night of minimal sleep leads into a 13.1 mile run, once again through the streets of New Orleans.  I have to say, I am a little nervous.  As I sit here thinking about the upcoming race, I can’t help but focus on all the potential negatives. I can’t help but pressure myself a little bit to better my time from last year, to try and set another personal record.  But then there are those nagging concerns.  So now I am thinking if I mention them here, to you, I can release them and just go into the race with a clear mind the way I have entered all my other successful running experiences.  The way I have always managed to have the most fun.  So, here goes.

1.  My training has really not been the best.  As I think I might have mentioned in this post about a run I took with Ira Glass (sorta), I originally planned on running the full marathon.  I even got through a few 18-20 mile runs.  The thing was, none of them felt all that good.  There was always something.  Three colds; hands that wouldn’t warm up even when I stopped on the side of the road, crouched down on the floor and stuck them in my armpits (I did this, don’t mock me); hips that ached with every step.  All this happened, I know, because I was lazy about doing speed work and strength training.  Did I do something about it?  No, obviously not.  My last super long run was meant to be 20 miles long.  About 12 miles in, my body and my brain had had it.  I called it quits.  It was then that I decided to drop down to the half.  It was, overall, a bad training cycle.  Never the best thing to ease a mind.

2.  I bought new shoes and they hurt.  They are the same models as my old ones and, added bonus, they look really cool!  Bright blue and green!  You can see me from miles away!  My first few runs they felt good, albeit a little stiff, but that’s normal for Mizunos in my experience.  But then after an 8 mile run last week, when I was running the downhill stretch to my house, I felt this super uncomfortable feeling on my right ankle bump (learned that term in anatomy class).  It hurt!  And now it hurts every time I run in them.  It’s too late to buy new shoes so what do I do?  Risk injury by wearing a pair of shoes that already have about 300 miles too many on them or risk bruising the shit out of my ankle bump and having an uncomfortable race?  You’ll be able to find me stuck over there, right between a rock and a hard place.

3.  I think my period is about to start and I am pretty sure the heaviest day is going to be the day of the race.  I won’t go into that.  Just read about it here.

But then there are some really good things!

1.  My running friend, C, is probably going to run with me and we will talk through the whole thing, leading to a slower time but a higher quotient of fun!

2.  Music!  Brass bands!  Other kinds of bands!  All along the route!

3. Kara Goucher and Shalane Flanagan are running it.  C. and I plan on stalking them down and making them be friends with us.  And then we will all be buddies and we will run together, only Kara and Shalane will be fastest, C. will be almost keeping up with them, and I will be bringing up the rear with my hands in my armpits like an asshole but then we’ll all make jokes about it and it will be great.

4. After the race, regardless of my time, I will take a shower, wash my hair and then drink the biggest bloody mary that New Orleans has to offer.  I have very high expectations for this.

5.  For the glorious week following the race, I will not set foot behind a bar.  In a bar?  Yes.  At a bar?  Yes.  Behind a bar?  Oh, hell no.

6.  When I get back to New York on Saturday, March 2nd it is only 24 hours until the AT&T American Cup, the first big elite gymnastics meet of the 2013 season.  Don’t get me wrong, I could do without Tim Daggett, Elfi Schlegel,  Andrea Joyce, and Al Trautwig’s overuse of the words “catastrophic” and “phenomenal” and I will be writing a letter to NBC telling them to get rid of one of those clowns and hire Alicia Sacramone because she rocks.  Those things aside, I will watch that meet and I will love every second of it.

Oh, hey, look at that. Three bad things, six good things. And those were just the good things that went directly from brain to fingers to keyboard.  I bet I could even think of more if I didn’t have to start packing. (Fingers crossed I don’t forget something important like a sports bra.  That would go into the list of bad things.)  So, okay, my training didn’t go great, I’ll probably be bleeding and I have uncomfortable shoes.  People have run through worse.  I think it will be fine.  And if it isn’t?  I’ll just have to have TWO ginormous* bloody marys.

*Totally didn’t know that was actually a word.  Another wonderful addition by us Americans, no doubt

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Remembering Cell Phone Numbers is Important

4 Mar

This morning I ran a half marathon in New Orleans. My friends Cherie and Carie came to support me and we decided, after much deliberation, to convene after the race “near the trees.” Seeing as how the race ended in a park this was probably not the most well thought out plan. There were trees everywhere. Lots of trees and lots of people.  I searched for Cherie and Carie high and low but couldn’t find them. “Why not just call them?” you might wonder.  That’d be because I ingeniously left them with all my things, phone included.  To add insult to injury I, like most cell phone-reliant people these days, have nobody’s number memorized. What to do? After a good 45 minutes of searching I had a moment of clarity: call my mom, have her call my dad, dad has boyfriend’s number from a missent text incident, have boyfriend call friends (that’s right…I forgot the last 4 digits of Pete’s number…sorry Pete).  Borrowed phone, called mom to tell her to pass the message that I would be waiting by the water fountain outside the medical tent, dad was playing tennis. Drats! New plan. Call old friend! He has Carie’s number! Okay, awesome. Borrow another phone, call friend, wrong number. Apparently the only number I have memorized is my boss’s.  Told the nice medical tent phone owner that if my boss called he should not answer…there would be too much confusion. Then, I saw her… Cherie! A lucky encounter 1.5 hours after the end of the race.  I will now proceed to a tattoo parlour and get some numbers tattooed on the inside of my forearm. Or just make some flash cards.

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