Movie Addiction

Daniel and I rented "The Life of David Gale" a few days ago and got around to watching it today and wow! I enjoyed it so much! At first I thought that was the title of "A Beautiful Mind" which I saw last year, until I saw the box and was like, oh, that wasn't it. And for each of the plot twists and turns I was like a half second ahead of the current one but could never see far enough ahead to predict the next.

Since Daniel has the week off, we've been binging on movies (A Simple Plan, Madagascar, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Strangers With Candy (good lord, I didn't realize it was that many...)). We also have been walking like fiends and saw the Forbes museum and the Gothic exhibit at the FIT museum (what do they have in common? They're both free!).

Now I'm way overusing parentheses, so it's time to go.

Curious Case of Strangers With Candy

Ooh, it's mystery shop day at the Texas BBQ up on 168th street. Daniel and I are braving the 40 degree weather and walking all the way up there from Columbia, where we are currently basking in the sweet internet glow. I'll probably get the old standby (the constantly delicious pulled pork sandwich) and WHO KNOWS what Daniel will order.

We saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button yesterday afternoon and while Daniel was on the fence, I really enjoyed it. It is a bit long, yes, but it is weeptastic at the end. This could be Mom's new Sweet November or Stepmom or whatever TBS movie it is that makes her cry every time.

Then we watched Strangers with Candy and I was like, Stephen Colbert? Phillip Seymour Hoffman? A strangely attractive Sarah Jessica Parker!?! Wow!

My big accomplishment recently is being able to make homemade popcorn with just some vegetable oil and kernels. I attribute this feat to my multiple years of cinematic servitude. This entire, large jar of organic popcorn kernels was only $2.99 at fairway and I have only made a dent in it after a week. And I have about a 95% kernel pop success rate, AND it's delicious.

Suzy and I went out to a bar nearby for Valentine's Day and I didn't get home until 4:00 AM. I then promptly slept until 2:30 PM. This should do wonders for my sleep schedule.

Random Tasks

A Friday off! But not in the lazy, no-work kind of way - I have to do all of the things that I have been delaying for weeks, like laundry and grocery shopping. The laundry is out of the way, and what a procedure! In my building, it costs $3 a load for the washer and another $3 for the dryer. Too much. So I go across the street (with my dirty clothes in a giant suitcase, like a hobo) and meet Suzy in her hotel and we go downstairs to the scary basement where it's a glorious $1 per load for washing and drying.

Today's fun included meeting some German tourist who had apparently never done laundry in his life and needed a step by step tutorial. Then he asked me "how many degrees Fahrenheit is the cold wash?". How should I know? I told him "colder than the warm wash".

Work is great, because I get assigned tasks that appeal to my primal obsession with organization and order. Recently I have been given lists of books that are scheduled to be returned to different publishers, and it's like a giant, complex scavenger hunt because there's about half a dozen places that these titles are likely to be. I start downstairs, with the new releases. Usually I will find 3/4 of the number I need there. If they aren't on the shelf, they could be in the overstock pile above the shelf. If not there, perhaps they are on display on a table downstairs. If not, no worries. Check the stacks upstairs in the correct section. Not there either? Perhaps in the overstock upstairs. Still no luck? Try the shelving aisle. No? Enter the ISBN into Wordstock and see whether it's being held for a customer. Oh, it's not on hold? This is where you give up out of sheer frustration and pass the list off to someone else.

However, it's still iffy about how many hours I'll be able to glean next week. I sincerely hope I don't have to start looking for a new job, because it's emotionally and physically draining. Not to mention that work is scarce around these parts.

But fun is planned for this weekend! I think that Daniel and I are going to take advantage of that free MoMA admission (thanks, Target) tonight and then my new culture buddy and I are going to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens/Museum tomorrow, as he is from Brooklyn and I need excuses and friends waiting before I will travel that far.

Sunday, I am picking up my brand new rice cooker that I will purchase secondhand (still in the box, though) because I am sick of making rice on the stove. Why doesn't it ever turn out well? It will now!

Now Suzy just texted me so I have to go, you know, dress myself. Adios...and by the way, yes I am alive, apologies for being so absent around here.

Weekend Update

I went wild yesterday and took the whole day off to do things like eat leftover pizza and see Frost/Nixon (which was incredibly good and a lot funnier than I was expecting). I snuck in a Diet Coke and a box of sour fruit snacks and Daniel went all out with this hot, stinky Subway sandwich. Now we're huddled in this mod business building on Columbia's campus and taking advantage of the sweet, sweet internet.

My phone has been very disappointing lately -it's on its last legs and now when I open it I just get a blank white screen that takes a minute or two to go away. I went to the Verizon store and the laconic sales clerk told me that I can get a new one in April. Can it hold out until then? Probably not, but we'll see.

I'm almost finished with Dracula and am looking forward to my next book. I'm starting to view the bookstore as my own personal library. I'm not looking forward for the course rush to be over since I'll probably be kicked out of the back office and put back on the registers.

Signs and Things

When I was at the Goodwill in Pittsburgh, I saw this case that looked like some sort of makeup kit for a twelve-year-old. Looking closer, I noticed that it said:
















For those who do not want to click, it reads,

Outdoor life with love
Caravan
Great nature is now calling you for refreshing.
Let's go out for bathing in the glaring sun under the blue sky.
Have a pleasant meat time with your intimate friends.

Turns out, the kit was a picnic set full of plastic dishes and silverware. Had I any conceivable use for it I probably would have bought it. I'm not sure if 'pleasant meat time' refers to eating meat or is just a spelling error for 'meet'.

Also in Mt. Lebanon:

Wow! Dr. Tesla in our own hometown!







How have I passed this so many times and not noticed his name until now?






This, however, I notice every single time I pass the West Side Market. It's been up for weeks. Bluerries? Come on!





More in signs: Duane Reade is classing it up.







This was outside of some hardware store on 105th and Amsterdam. I think the sales associates had too much time on their hands.







Hee, this was funny. On the way home to New Jersey, Rob and I noticed that the driver (or someone) blacked out the last four digits of the "how's my driving?" number on the back of the truck. Smart!

Medical Study

I finally did get a chance to go grocery shopping, but here's a picture of my pathetic fridge the day before.





Note contents: yellow curry sauce, gravy, margarine spread, salsa, hummus, alfredo sauce, jelly, and a pie crust. Note absence of real food. Also, both Daniel and I share the fridge, so he was worse off than I was. He has to be wasting away.





Hot! From Trader Joe's.








Don't hold on to that tomato sauce for too long. Ew.







And here's me! Medical research! This happened last week when Ariel came up to visit. For this one, I had to lay in an MRI tube for about 45 minutes while I looked at graphic images and had to push buttons in this virtual-reality glove about whether or not I'd seen them already.

Let me just say, I loved the MRI tube. I could have fallen asleep. It was so relaxing and comfortable. When I laid down on the slab, one of the MRI tech guys wrapped all of these blankets around me because there's some tundra wind that circles around once you're inside.

Sadly, I was able to keep neither the scrubs nor the sterile booties. I was lucky that my socks matched.






Citizen Kane was the anesthesiologist again, and he is such a nice guy.

Except he kept trying to tell me exactly what he was doing when he put the IV in and I was like, "dude! Please! I can live my life without knowing what you're doing! I am going to look the other way and concentrate on my People magazine and forget that you are puncturing my veins."

My skin looked all old and wrinkly but that was just the tape.







Oooh, IV bag of possible anesthetic dooooom!







But nay! I beat the 2-to-1 odds of drugs to placebo and had nothing but saline. Yay!

Even still, I had to stay in the office for another two hours and just hang out. This time, rather than outdated reading material they set me up with a laptop and a bizarre selection of DVDs and let me go to town. Then they probably sat in the other room and rolled their eyes every time I laughed at Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up comedy routine.

Free Pom! In addition, I ordered the BLT bagel from Amish Market because it was one of the only lunch-related options on their breakfast menu (it was only 10:30 at the time). Tasty! It really was delicious.

Bookstore

Hello! Oh ew, the kitchen sink just made this weird "gluuugooo!" sound like it just cleared out. Ew again.

I've been working pretty much nonstop since the textbook rush is upon us. The law classes start this week coming up and regular classes the week afterward. I was pulled from cashiering to work with the course manager and help get all of the information entered in the computer. It involves data entry and alphabetizing, so I am happy in a really geek kind of way.

Now I am exhausted, since I had a mystery shoppe right after work with Server Matt and it was in Times Square and the lights and the traffic are fatiguing.

I don't even have any funny customer stories since I did so much shelving today. One woman was incredibly rude to me, but that was it. Not even funny rude, just hurried rude.

Oh OH! This morning, someone called and asked for the Personnel Manager, so I put David on the phone. Turns out, it was someone's mom trying to get their college age (!) daughter a job at the store. David had to dish out the tough love and say "it's probably not the best idea for you to be calling places for your daughter. She should probably be doing this herself. Sorry".