the fair

let me show you a few scenes from the orange country fair! day-to-day life can be drastically different, no? emily and i went home to my parent's house in connecticut this weekend for my favorite event on the town's calendar. it's kitschy, sure, but the fair is filled with so much pride and love. do you remember when i wrote about the fair two years ago? time flies, and things change, but i'll have you know: the orange country fair does not. ever*. change. and that's the best part of it.

the rabbit wall

dreams come true: i am petting a lamb

emily and my parents gazing at misshapen veggies

prized pies

the grease pole (really!)

the largest pumpkin in town:

family fun

*they reinstated third-place ribbons.

spring day

the emilys and i went to brunch today at spitzer's (of course) and then strolled and strolled and shopped around soho. today was the first day of spring for me (as i have missed all of the other spring days being in my office) and it felt wonderful.

the usual. crispy eggs + spinach ricotta terrine

our former front door on eldridge street

i must remind myself that i can not buy vintage clothing that looks like a costume. as pretty as it may look, i will never wear it.

emily is twenty five

emily turned twenty five on saturday! we've lived together since we celebrated her twenty first and it's wild to think how quickly time flies. hayley came to stay with us for the weekend and we went to see blues traveler on friday night (part of emily's birthday present to me!) and we all danced and danced. kara and emily came on saturday and we (and justin!) spent the day at an outdoor market in brooklyn and then had a delicious brunch at the general greene (their french fries are divine). we celebrated at night with friends at elsa in the east village and i think it's safe to say that it's a new favorite. friendly and charming, they treated the birthday girl like a queen. we had the entire back area all to ourselves and it was the perfect evening. happy birthday, em!

twenty five!

my new emerald ring from saturday's market

emily and justin

hello, hayley

richard!

also, it's fun to watch emily's birthday video from last year at sweetiepie.

pizza

i promise you that artichoke is the best pizza in manhattan (must get a slice of the artichoke) and that you probably haven't tasted anything like it before (as much as it looks like a typical slice of pizza).

fest

yesterday was the egg rolls and egg creams festival down the street. a celebration of the chinese and jewish cultures of the lower east side. we ate fortune cookies and pickles and emily said she never felt so much at home!

teevee

after living in the city for almost a year and a half, emily and i have not had television. some people like to boast that they don't own one. it's lowbrow and they have far better things to do than watch it. but not us, we love television! but a) we didn't have a living room until we moved out of the west village and b) now that we do have living space (and a tv!) cable is so expensive, man. we'd rather use our monies for other joys. so after a few months of having a tv in the living room (which only the dvd player had been used), dad suggested and bought us an antenna and, to our delight setting it up last night, we receive twenty one channels. free!

curious/scared to see how this changes life. will we watch it for hours each night? will we never turn it on? we've gotten along just fine without it but now...

sorority

this picture is my official sorority picture from 2005. i look so young and wholesome. precious. i remember waking up fifteen minutes before i had to get it taken. i barely brushed my hair, threw on mascara, a black shirt and ran down the campus green with my girlfriends to be photographed. somehow i managed to look fairly resplendent and perhaps everything was at that point. but things were certainly about to be shaken up only a few days after this was taken.

i pledged the spring of my freshman year. and i loved it. i loved all of my new friends, i loved the history and traditions, the parties, having a house and a house-mom, mingling with fraternity boys, wearing my flip-flops with our letters on them around campus. i even enjoyed the weekly meetings and always having to wear my pledge pin. truly everything. it was just the college experience i was looking for.

and then towards the end of the semester, rather swiftly, the sorority was shut down by the national headquarters. after being on our campus for over one hundred and twenty years, we got the boot. i cried for days afterward. i wept in my dorm room, i sniffled through my classes. i remember waiting for the campus bus during a downpour (in pink rain boots) as tears streamed down my face. a kindhearted girl came up to me and put her umbrella over my head until the bus came. it was out of a movie, it was so sweetly pitiful.

but then the sun came out and i realized that i had all of these new friends. and they were wonderful and great and they didn't go anywhere. and i even lived with a whole bunch of them my junior and senior year. and i still even live with one (hi emily)!

college continued on. my interests expanded and i challenged myself to become immersed in new adventures. i joined a feminist group on campus and i volunteered nine hours every week at the homeless shelter in burlington babysitting the sweet, sweet children. i'm not sure if i'd have these same experiences had i been in the sorority. i'm not sure i'd have the time to juggle everything. or even the desire or need to branch out.

it's amusing to think of what my college experience would have been like had the sorority remained on campus. but i will never know. what i do know is that my experience at vermont still turned out to be wonderful. it was one of the first times i realized that life can change in the most unexpected of ways, but never without reason or purpose. who even knows if i would have the wonderful job that i do now, as there were so many twists and turns that led me here? it is all just part of the fun and i'm thankful.

gem

in college, i had a massive room in the attic of our (six friends and myself) three-story [haunted] house. my room was quiet and creepy with hallways, corners and twists. i never felt completely comfortable alone. i would usually sleep with a light on, and i always needed noise in the room.

keeping my television on at night was tricky too, since the shows i'd want to watch, even if they were pleasant, always seemed to have creepy commercials for horror movies. the slightest things kept me up all night, especially since i'd hear weird and random noises as it was.

and then i found the perfect solution.

gem television! a home-shopping channel devoted entirely to gemstones and jewelry. it was lovely. and it was constant and calming. the stunning gems, the pleasant women with their southern accents describing the jewels. i would make my roommates watch it whenever they were in my room. emily and i really started to get into it. our favorite was this segment where gems were showcased on a revolving lazy-susan, each with a corresponding number for easy ordering. we'd start calling out numbers we liked ("twenty four! five! eleven!") and watch as they would rotate back around. hypnotizing, really.

i knew all of the names of the fancy stones, and i once even dated a boy who was studying geology. that brought gem tv to a whole new level.

at one point though, i called in to order a bag of five hundred (loose) semi-precious gemstones. i wasn't sure how they would be put to use, gazing at them was the only thing i could come up with. and then midway through the call, when they asked for my shipping address, i hung up. i realized then that i had gone too far. what started out as white noise was fast becoming a potentially expensive/useless endeavor. i am too young to be addicted to home shopping channels!

sweet nothing

moving to a different neighborhood a few months ago has really opened up a new world for me, which is just what i wanted to happen. new restaurants, pizza places, coffee shops, new boutiques. places to explore. there are so many little and wonderful shops in the lower east side and weekend strolls always include popping into them and seeing what we can find.

this weekend emily and i bought these adorable sweet nothings pendant necklaces at in god we trust.

they look completely innocent but have rather cheeky sayings on them. you would never know unless you looked very, very closely. some were vulgar but ours are more silly.

guess which ones we picked up? wink.

in god we trust

153 ludlow street

(between rivington and stanton)

new york, new york 

10002

and

and it's starting to look (and feel) like home.

west, east

i have been up all night packing. emily and i are moving tomorrow.

i will certainly miss our little home, our charming bedford street (lined with antique shops, bakeries and the most divine restaurants) and, maybe even, our (cute and polite) neighbor boy.

but i must not get too sentimental. 

after all, we are only moving down houston street.

emily is twenty four

happy birthday to emily! twenty four years old. i hope you have the happiest of years. truly. you're the most wonderful friend and roommate. and, as always, you're the best emily in the world. 

we celebrated em's birthday at sweetiepie on friday night. quite possibly the most charming restaurant in all of new york. with an absurd amount of tater tots and the loveliest of friends. 

(song: wolf parade, i'll believe in anything)

a little experimentation

i made my roommate become part of my experiment.

for seven days, she had to practice writing with her left hand. she had three minutes of practice each day, and then had to write her name and the alphabet. this wasn't really about her actually having progress, but rather to see if there were any changes. absolutely no pressure.

day one to day seven:

result: questionable. the first day really looked great and the last day of the experiment was a little bit worse, but i think that was lack of effort on her part. also something to note, in the practice pages, she wrote like she was six years old and learning to write, such as "lindsey, lou and i are having a lovely afternoon in the west village. today is saturday. last night, we all went bowling," and that is rather silly.

we came up with other ways to track her progress on the road to ambidexterity, like sewing a circle with her left hand, but we'll see. em is now studying for the GRE and training yourself to write with your left hand may not be the most impressive activity to a graduate school.