I Am A Shopping Fiend

in the last week -- because i have been on vacation -- i've sauntered in and out of dozens of stores of all kinds. these include h&m, the gap, lush, linens 'n' things, borders, payless shoe source, target, conway, marshalls, wal-mart, cvs, the yankee candle company, shoe mania, fortunoff, cliquer's herald square, dsw, best buy, old navy, the sony style store, macy's, urban outfitters, the apple store, strand, ann taylor loft, and random furniture stores (plus makeshift stalls on manhattan street corners). i actually bought stuff at many of these places; other visits were for pure diversion.

(needless to say, my credit card bills are... interesting. i feel insane. i've never shopped this much in my life!! hello, after-effects of blatant capitalism and shrewd marketing.)

to make matters worse, i am online at 3 am clicking through websites and daydreaming about accessorizing: <http://www.ikea.com>, <http://www.pier1.com>, <http://www.overstock.com>, <http://www.homegoods.com>, <http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com>, <http://www.target.com>, <http://www.fabindia.com>... oh god.

(ps, perhaps this selection of stores websites does not quite match your own tastes, and you think i must be a crappy dresser and decorator because of my choices. but i'll have you know i have a martha inside me, too; i am just a shopper on a budget with a pretty little apartment to decorate, and a unique dress sense. and since i am given to want many things at one time, i do better when i save while spending. so perhaps i am not a fiend who is given to ridiculous splurges, but i am a fiend nonetheless!)

A Cloud On The New York Skyline

well, actually, today there aren't any (literal clouds, that is) -- and i can attest to that authoritatively because i am sitting sealed in on the 32nd floor, capable of seeing over the roofs of pretty much every building for the next 10 or so blocks uptown and the next 5 or so cross-town.

but my new york landscape is changing more quickly than ever before, and it ain't never going to be the same again. see, mel-lo left years ago. luis and jackie have slowly faded into the background. xan i last saw after she broke up with dan (ancient history now, i imagine). but gaurang, kunal, udayan, diksha and gautam have left over the last year. soon bani and nishad will leave. rhea will presumably make a new home in the next six months. michael and tarini are here for the summer, but how long will that last? and amit and amrita, too, are in transition.

sure, caitlin might be here... but she's a part of my boston past now, i guess. tina and sushil are probably still here, but i haven't spoken to them in a long while. (sway will stay, as might devang -- but i hardly ever see them anyway!) and i still can't call jack.

but anoushka will move here in the fall. and lindsey, bethie and aditi will stay -- and i suspect they, along with daniel and the faithful LIRR and the suburbs (like stamford and paramus), will be fragmented consolation on increasingly-intermittent visits.

i will still love new york, but abhi, under the street but above the subway on 49th street, was right: life here is too damn fast.

Shoulda Played By The Rules

one of the rules of the fast life, the experts tell me, is to try everything once.

well, i now know that it should apply to the nerdy life too.

because, you see, i was given the opportunity earlier today to cast a sort -- a little gothic letter "a" with its own little type-high body (exactly 0.918", if you please) and its own little "jet" (or "tang") and its own little idiosyncrasies -- using a 600° F alloy of molten lead, tin and antimony, and a hand mould made by stan nelson. (for more information on hand typecasting, see the wikipedia article here -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_casting_(typography)> -- or ask james mosley.)

and i passed it up.

next time someone offers me such a nerdy opportunity, you can bet your well-worn copy of harry carter (or daniel berkeley updike, if you're old-school) i'll be first in line.

Pieces Of Eight

the "eight random things about you" meme has been floating around for the last little while... and it makes sense that this round seems to be the province of book people, too; only librarians and other varieties of bibliophiles could conceivably concern themselves with digging up and digesting this degree of personal trivia.

well, here goes.

1. i've been a calligrapher for about 12 years now -- half my life. if you asked me what hand i most preferred, i'd vacillate between italic and gothic, but my heart really belongs to copperplate, for which my pumpkin nib is perfect but at which i'm not as proficient as i'd like to be.
2. my favourite kind of flower is the gerbera daisy.
3. countries i currently want to travel to: egypt, greece, turkey, italy, peru, australia, the maldives.
4. i have 10 piercings (7 in my right ear, 1 in my left, nose, navel). next up: a tattoo.
5. i am obsessed with the new york times's real estate and weddings sections. what can i say; all those heart-warming stories about people finding beautiful rent-controlled apartments (and equivalent soulmates) make for addictive reading! (i can't remember where i found the following website, but this couple's story, although not narrated in as much detail as i would have liked, mixes the two genres, and therefore takes the cake: <http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/9-month-cure/index>)
6. one of my guiltiest shopping pleasures (which i think proves that i am not really that high maintenance) is buying fruity-smelling shampoo. my sense of self depends on few things more than it depends on the way my hair smells when i randomly get whiffs of it on the wind while whipping busily around at work. for years i used generic crap by revlon (oh, right, it was called flex. ugh.) but then i finally invested in some orange-scented stuff by suave. i can't remember what came after that (it was junior/senior year of college, which is a total sensory haze)... until i discovered herbal essences. fruity goodness in all colours of the rainbow! w00t! and then, a few months ago, courtesy of royal chemists near liberty cinema, camellia, chamomile and hot tea. not so much fruity as... clean and classy, but clairol and therefore damn good. last week, though, came the pièce de résistance: i was poking around at the local on my way to my daily swim, and saw the curviest, prettiest pink snap-top bottles -- body envy volumizing shampoo and conditioner, with a fusion of white nectarine and pink coral flower. "do i want to feel uplifted?" hell yeah! (my only disappointment? yellow liquid in pink bottles. what the bleep is that?) (yes, i am a cross between a ditzy teenager and a stern anti-blatant-false-advertising biznatch. deal.) but whatevs, all is forgiven, for the glorious smell, and since they even come with trivia on the bottles for when i'm shampooing away earnestly and need on-the-fly reading material! yummy.
7. i prefer silver/platinum/titanium jewellery to gold/diamond bling.
8. i could totally subsist on noodles (maggi/ramen, flat rice noodles, udon, soba, glass noodles... not to mention dishes like mee goreng, hakka, pad thai...) and veggies. basically, if it has a slurp factor, and mushrooms, i can eat it.

i like how this list randomly ended up being all about the good things in life. i must be happy.

(last time it was five rather more intense things -- see <http://simran.nomadlife.org/2007/01/five-things-you-dont-know-about-me.aspx> for a total of 13 factoids!)

Mars And Venus

i will confess to having stumbled upon this very cool series of photographs almost a month ago, but for some reason i didn't blog about it immediately, and it got lost in the depths of blogger's "edit posts" page (and my ridiculous social life).

however, in light of some recent profound conversations about marriage, men, brains and biology (names of participants redacted for the benefit of everyone's mental health), it now holds extra dimension as the most appropriate metaphor for... well, everything:

<http://saraheartbacon.com/pages_html/hands_page.html>

heartbreak lies in overthinking, but life is in the details. this is an inalienable truth.

(i've never seen anything quite like her work before. the fact that she is a seven sisters alum further warms the cockles of my heart.)