Colorful Pictures

This is grandma's happy happy joy joy face



This is grandma's OMFG I'M ECSTATIC face



The Harry Potter series continues to suck all the happiness and love from my dusty heart. I started Book 7 this morning.

My Updates To Art Garfunkel

Flushing will always hold a special place in my heart, everytime I go out there it's so familiar and cute, and I always look forward to the dirt cheap Chinese drink shops (mmm Taro bubble tea) bakeries (red bean pastries are my faaaavorite) and dumpling houses (15 for $3!), and I was out there again on Saturday... and ate at Applebee's. Lolololol. Even in this economy Flushing is still All American! I got to meet Baby Olivia for the first time! Turns out they really don't do much being a month old, but at least she didn't cry. (And when she did, like once, Joe just said "If there's no tears, it's not real" lulz) and then we went to their place out in Bayside to relax. I saw trees! And heard birds! And could smell soil (not DIRT, that's all you smell in the city) so it was a win-win situation. I have pictures of the baby but don't want to put them up, even though Jenny probably couldn't care less.

Yesterday I ventured a few blocks away to a sunshiney outdoor table of the famed Hungarian Pastry Shop. My reaction was: "Okay." I'll probably go back. But considering how people RAVE about it... I don't get that. Then again, I didn't have a pastry, only a Viennese coffee. And you know I'm a changed woman when the site of the Harry Potter title warms my heart more than the look of that delicious coffee



And today SUCKS. It's downpouring and thundering, and a MONDAY. Rainy days and Mondays, man. My one pick me up was a work email I received. Let me explain. Last week I had to go to a training for editing privileges of our alumni database. Towards the end we would be doing edits on the beta version, and the instructor gave us handouts of profiles to choose to edit, all of famous Columbia alum. Because he wanted us to be able to discuss different scenarios, we all needed to pick different people, and he went around the room asking everyone who they would do. I was to be last. Among Hilary Clinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and others... was Art Garfunkel. I cringed everytime the next person was choosing... until there was only me left. "I CHOOSE ART GARFUNKEL". I wasn't sure whether to be happy for myself or disappointed in my clearly boring coworkers. Then I get an email where the first words to greet me were:

Congratulations Kristin! You did a great job with your updates to Art Garfunkel!

It made me smile for two second until the thunder cracked and I remembered I was at work on an awful rainy Monday. Not even my coffee tastes good.

Who Knew It Was Two?

I have been such a chicken without a head lately that I've barely noticed that today marks two years that I've been living in New York City now.

Two years should be so short but in a way it feels like the longest two-year stretch in my life. If I'm looking back now it feels like I've merely scraped by. But I'm sure I'll look back on now and think it was a hard time to come out of as well.

Suffice it to say that the rose-tinted glasses have come off. I'm no longer excited at the mere idea of living in New York, it's not a novelty, and there's no newness. Occasionally I get that feeling like I just arrived here and am seeing the Tetris-pieced skyline and monstrous avenues for the first time, and the excitement at being in the thick of the Times Square subway junction at rush hour, but for the most part I just live my life, and I'll tell you the vast majority of us (the "99%" if you will... lolololol) live unglamorized lives... schlepping groceries for four blocks after a ride on the subway, having hour-long detours when your stop is under construction for the weekend, constantly badgered for money by buskers and homeless, fleeing from the scene at the mention of a bedbug in the summertime, fighting for a decent place to live in a decent neighborhood.

And yet... I'm still here, cause I like it, cause there's too much to do and too much to see and never enough time! This summer is when things are really about to get real.

I haven't gotten many pictures from the weekend yet, so here is a small teaser until then:









Tomorrow I have to help with Columbia's graduation. I'm already graduation'ed out. I wonder if I just "happen" to get "mixed up" in the line of graduates if I can walk across the stage and con my way into a graduate degree? I'll let you know the verdict tomorrow afternoon.

The Order of the Phoenix

OH MY SQUIB. Call in Madam Pomfrey and all the Healers at the St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries because I am all torn up inside with these weird feelings and mourning for magical, fictional characters.

I was closing in on the end of The Order of the Phoenix, Book 5, and even got my Tuesday lunchtime reading buddy to hey, read Harry Potter, and oh look I have a bookmark right here, that's a good place to start. I was thinking about it all afternoon. After work I went to my bar and pulled it open over Yuengling, I sat there in poor light and blazed through about 50 pages. I went home and immediately pulled it open and went through another 150 pages to end... crying, mourning, and utterly confused.



I don't know if it was the combination of the raining day, the beer, and the doleful French soundtrack I had been listening to all day, but finishing page 870, I felt complete agony and voided loss at the deaths that had occurred, at the position Harry was in, at the entire sequence of events and the courage and loyalty of all those faithful Gryffindors, ESPECIALLY NEVILLE! I wanted to help them fight! I wanted to be there to join in and hug them and encourage Harry Potter! You look at his life and what he does and you just think, damn that kid has some demons but he is SO EMPOWERING!! I can't decide if I want to help him or be him! How do I find them? What can I do?! I am still on the verge of crying just remembering. And who are these people?! They're ink on a page.

If I stop reading, will I spare myself further death and destruction?? I re-scanned the denouement as Dumbledore goes into lengthy explanations to Harry, and on second glance I thought, wow you could replace Harry with me and Dumbledore with JK Rowling and it's exactly how I feel about this damn book series:

Harry: "I DON'T CARE! I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE-"

Dumbledore: "You do care... you care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."

I will be wearing black until further notice. Well played, JK Rowling, well played.

Panini's at Tiffany's

Ronnie is going to self implode if I don't update this already so allow me to enlighten you of our recent adventure.

Ronnie, Claire and I wanted to make an annual tradition of our Breakfast at Tiffany's, which we declared on May 4th, Audrey Hepburn's birthday. It fell conveniently on a Friday, but Ronnie was too tired to make it happen on a weekday, so we rescheduled for Saturday. I was out far too late on Friday, to the point that when I woke up, we could only reasonably make it Dinner at Tiffany's. Still, it felt right to get a danish in front of there at least.

Well you never know WHAT Ronnie will come up with. So while I helped myself to some sort of almond danish, Ronnie decided on a PANINI. A PANINI AT TIFFANY'S.





Now following this, it was "real" dinnertime. And it was Cinco de Mayo. I am not picky. I was even fine with CHIPOTLE for dinner (plus the Chipotle's here sell Corona and other beers) but Ronnie actually dragged me in to some buffet-style bodega in midtown where you pay by the pound. He got $27 WORTH OF FOOD. I got a spicy chicken burrito.



You're looking at the meal (replete with chopsticks) and thinking to yourself: oh there's no way they ate that, that's disgusting, they threw that all out. And you would be right. If it were opposite day. Here was the finished meal.



That's right. "Cinco de Mayo" was celebrated by eggrolls, lo mein, macaroni and cheese, crab salad, burritos, tomato & mozzarella, sushi, pasta salad, buffalo wings, barbecue potatoes and whatever else you can find in that I Spy plate of food. We finished the night by karaoke on the East Side.

I had quite the splendid Sunday as well, I slept in and then spent the beautiful sunshiney day walking around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park to the East Side, where I then went to the Museum of the City of New York, read some Harry Potter in Starbucks and then had family dinner with Ronnie and Betsy.

I also turned in my last project this morning so I am officially done with my classes here at Columbia for a nice long summer!