Two Poems Are Better Than One

It's poetry month!

I think the only publisher who actually celebrates this month is

Random House.

I get a poem a day from them

for the month of April every year

in my e-mail.

It's a lovely thing.

Anyway, I'm not sure how prolific I will be this month,

but here are two poems

just for you:

"Two Cats"

*(Wee came up with the first two lines.

When I asked her what she does when she's sad,

she said she hugs her cats.)

and

"Dead Bird"

*(It's about the dead bird I saw this morning of all mornings.)

I'm a little rusty at writing poetry, 

so just laugh with me.

Okay, here goes:

Two Cats

Two cats are better than one

Two cats are so much fun

Two cats, paired like peas in a pod

Two cats, neither of them are named Todd

Two cats, frowning at your skeptical face

Two cats, next on The Amazing Race

Two cats hike the Appalachian Trail

Two cats will never fail

Two cats are asleep in your shoes

Two cats got into your booze

Two cats think your stupid joke is funny

Two cats fart after tasting honey

Buht, buht

Buht, buht

Buht

Two cats slide through a box

Two cats chase the fox

Two cats love, love, love fish

Two cats, they share a splish!

Two cats nap on your head

Two cats, they pretend that you're dead

Two cats are better than one

Two cats are so much fun

Dead Bird

Oh, bird.

You once took flight,

high up in the air,

morning, noon, and night.

You loved what you did,

though perhaps a little too much.

Now you're feeling

a bit out of touch.

As they saying goes:

Pimpin' aint eazy.

But just keep swimming,

just keep swimming,

and life was but a dream. 

Naw mean, bra?

Reach Out and Touch . . .

So I didn't touch their equipment,

but I saw Depeche Mode's equipment

outside the stage entrance

of David Letterman

from across the street.

Not a very catchy tune is it?

But not the worst.

March Snow

Ugh. Snow.

I had to walk in it to work

with my messed up toe.

I waited ten minutes for a bus.

Buses are so stupid.

It never came, of course.

I left work late that day.

The snow all melted.

Headed to the Doctor and Istanbul and Fish McBites

I woke up at 7:30 this morning to get ready 

for a physical at the doctor's office!

It was a very satisfying doctor's visit.

It's like I want to rave about her,

but I don't want too many people to go to her

because then getting an appointment will become impossible.

I think she's around my age,

which is why a lot of the patients aren't too keen on seeing her

over the older white dudes at the practice.

The older white dudes are fine,

but I want an accessible GP.

Anyway, she took blood to make sure 

I'm not a sick diabetic/high bad cholesterol lady.

This happened at the office--not some dumb blood test

write up thing like at my last GP's

that I never followed up on.

Anyway, I came home and called my credit card and bank card

to let them know I was traveling abroad,

and I packed. 

I had like two hours to pack, which seemed like a good amount of time.

I was only packing for five full days anyway.

It's winter clothes packing though, which is tough.

I settled on five sets of T-shirts and sweaters, two jeans to alternate,

a dress and tights, a nice sweater and dress pants,

and a bunch of other incidental stuff.

I ran to the ferry 

(which was pretty hard with like fifty pounds of crap on my shoulders)

and my dad drove me and Wee to the airport.

It was such a beautiful day out--like real spring break kind of weather.

At the airport, Wee said that we should wait for Dom and Aunt Is

to check in.

That wasn't a good idea because we had to go back and forth between

economy and elite members--on opposite sides of the hall with all our crap.

In the end I didn't realize that because my aunt Is has elite status,

which she used to buy our tickets, I had elite status too,

and I could've been on the shorter line all along.

In the end, we cut everyone anyway.

And the elite status security line isn't shorter.

The old folk that have elite status can't move very fast

because they're old, 

but not old enough to not have to take off their shoes.

Above: Wee's bag is the big red one.

My bag is the backpack.

Raise your hand if you think Wee overpacked.

Since it was the first Friday of Lent,

we tried to be good and ate some fish snacks

on the plane.

I hadn't eaten lunch

(just a bowl of cereal and yogurt the whole day--and we boarded at like 5 p.m.)

so I was totally loving these McBites.

They're like little balls of friedness and fish.

So delicious!

Of course, we didn't order a vegetarian menu

for our flight ahead of time,

but plane time is different than every other time in the world.

At least I got to eat the beef (over the chicken),

which is what Dom and Wee had to eat--because they ran out of beef.

(Just one row behind us!)

My dad says that since the pope retired,

we can do whatever we want.

Sodom and Gomorrah!

Shortest Railway in the World: Angels Flight

Way back in October, 

Jon and I were in LA.

We stayed a couple of nights in downtown LA

at the Standard.

Nearby was an open air market,

Grand Central Market,

where we got some tacos and horchata.

Across the street from that market

is what claims to be the shortest railway in the world: Angels Flight.

Downtown LA is hilly.

Like big rolling hills.

And this short and cheap and touristy detour

helped us get up one of those hills.

The train wasn't packed,

and those seats in the sun were probably hot enough

to cook an egg eventually.

The station.

Jon and our horchata and leftover tacos.

Mmm!

If you're in the area,

I'd say that it's one kinda fun thing to do.

Glittery Snow

It snowed on Friday.

Superglittery snow.

Like, I guess you get a sense of the glitteriness,

but there were lots more surrounding us.

I finished up a freelance project

and the longest four day work week, ever.

Jon met me at work to go to Bill's Burger.

We sat in a booth and got burgers,

mini corn dogs, and disco fries.

We ate it as if we hadn't eaten anything in a month.

It was Irish coffee day or something,

so their alcoholic shake had Baileys and Jameson.

We passed and got hot chocolates for the long trek home.

(It's been so cold out that getting a cab home has been

scarcer than getting one during a downpour.)

My sister told me about one of her patients

that had a rectal temperature of 70 degrees.

That's cold.

Your butt should be at least around 99 degrees.

NYC didn't seem to bother plowing.

The hot chocolate helped a bit, 

but the snow was hitting our faces.

Jon found it too sweet.

What was pretty about the snow

was that it like shined like little diamonds.

They weren't the fat ones.

They were small and shiny.

This is a photo we took together.

I held the camera and a hot chocolate in each hand.

Jon pressed the buttons to take the photo 

and his held his hot chocolate with each of his hands.

Teamwork!

Katherine's Hepburn's Pants at the NYPL

I love, love, love living in Manhattan.

It's disgustingly expensive to live here

(did you see the article about the middle class in the NYTimes?)

but there is so much free stuff!

Unfortunately, the headache of getting into or out of the city

from anywhere else in the world 

to take advantage of this stuff 

is usually not worth it.

I'm saying that if you're in town,

it's awesome, but asking someone to trek in

is kind of asking a lot.

Take this Katherine Hepburn exhibit

 at the NYPL in Lincoln Center

for example.

It was free, and it was wonderful because it was free.

Definitely a must-see if you were around and had a half hour to stop in.

Though, most people would probably prefer making an effort to see 

an Audrey Hepburn costume exhibit, I'm sure.

Still, Katherine was adorable 

in her crazy accent/pants-wearing ways.

Her costumes in her plays and movies weren't as beautiful,

but they helped create her memorable characters.

Other stuff, like sketches of herself, and a Dorothy Parker review

of her play (Dottie hated it) were nice touches.

It's hard to tell if I'd be able to fit into her clothing.

Some seemed too long for my stature,

some seemed too small for my waist.

Others seemed huge.

I feel like the pants display would be a good campaign for Gap 

or maybe an older women's clothing store.

They should make replica pants.

These are cute, especially since pleated pants,

aren't the worst things in the world any longer.

By the way how cute is that hat?

Pinterest wish list that baby.

Cinderella on Broadway

The other day on my way to work,

I saw a couple of women

carrying what could only be costumes 

from Cinderella on Broadway.

Awesome!

MetroCard Bike

So on our way home from watching the Central Park fireworks,

we came across the MetroCard bike.

How fun is that?

The last time I saw it was in like 2010, I think.

It's legendary!

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot, and Old Lang Syne? That Is the Question.

2-0-1-3 is ready to be dropped on by a huge lit ball.

The gates are ready to pen people in.

December 31, 2012 9 a.m.

Times Square

Hollywood!

In late September/early October,

I went to LA for my third cousin's wedding.

I couldn't believe that LA was as bad

as a lot of people said it was,

but it was--even with Jon.

Other than layovers, the last time I was there I was a junior in high school.

The band performed at Disneyland,

and we went to the San Diego Zoo.

We had the worst turbulence coming back home,

and I felt so sleep-deprived from that trip

that I was pretty suicidal when I got home.

It was a weird time.

The time before that

I was about twelve or thirteen, 

and I went with my brother and dad.

(My mom and sister went to China on a gymnastics trip.)

We flew in to LA and drove up to SF,

then flew to Oahu and Maui.

It was a really awesome trip,

yet odd because I was at that age where

I hated my body,

and I was really introverted and thought I was being very philosophical.

I had a uniform of

traditional low-top black/white Converses,

indigo jeans, men's tank undershirt (or the light blue girl's one),

and a blue and navy cardigan from Esprit,

and the alternative was jean shorts and polo shirts.

When I wanted to feel girly,

I had a striped polo dress.

I wore everything with my Cons.

 I had to tell myself to stop living in my head

and start experiencing life.

I wrote a lot of terrible poetry then,

if only to get my thoughts out of my head.

When I first landed in LA,

I was in awe of the palm trees.

Actual, real-life palm trees, like on TV and the movies,

existed in LA.

My dad rented a car, 

and we drove north on the PCH highway 

until he got too sleepy to drive further.

I remember eating a lot of salami and pizza (AWESOME!)

and getting car sick from the twists and turns (not awesome at all) on that trip.

When we drove through Malibu, I thought that it was

the scariest place on earth.

There were so many HUGE houses--like mini castles--on top of sprawling hills.

The people crossing to the beaches were so tan and built and blond.

It looked like Baywatch.

Totally unreal.

The first night we stayed at a hotel that was so booked up that

we had to sleep in one of the really fancy suites.

It was so fancy that you had to use your elevator key to get to that floor

AND it had a free buffet breakfast in the special suites' floor lobby area.

I hated eating in public and didn't want to be judged by all those snooty families

that had planned to stay in those suites (not landed there because there were

no vacancies otherwise), so I didn't really take advantage of it like I should have.

The bed was so big that it fit me, my brother, and dad with

no overlapping issues.

We went to Monterrey Bay and SF.

It was awesome fun.

And Hawaii was even better.

I remember being so enthralled with the rolling hills and valleys and mountains of CA,

thinking about how when I'm old enough,

I was going to live in each state for at least two years of my life

to really see the USA. And then I thought some states suck,

so I didn't have to live in all of them--just the cool ones.

Now that I'm old enough to know better,

the only states worth living in are NJ or NY,

and I can spend weeks at a time in any other city in the world.

Oh, young Christina.

In any case, here's the Hollywood sign as taken from the top floor 

of one of the buildings at the LACMA.

I think it connotes a lot of different things for everyone.

Colony. Onward.

There are quite a few places I've always passed by

and never went into in midtown like

the peep shows and XXX video stores,

the men's hat shop where the New York Times building now sits,

and Colony.

Mostly I didn't go to those places because

I didn't think I'd feel comfortable,

so I maybe stared as I passed by

and that's all.

Oftentimes in the last few years,

I passed by Colony.

They sold music scores and bought CD collections. 

(I think it was something like it had to be at least 300 CD or more

that you had to sell to them

or something like that.

Now that's a collection.)

I love the idea of records,

but we have so many books to transport already

whenever we move.

(I've lived eight places in the last eleven years:

4 dorm rooms,

4 apartments.)

We nearly always end up with more boxes of books than any

of our other belongings.

Collecting another set of things

that can easily be transported,

saved, used, and organized,

like records,

seems ridiculous.

Maira Kalman's piece from the New Yorker a few weeks ago

below drives home the point:

"So where are we? . . . No more paper?"

Like Fats on her wall,

we have Murakami, Wallace, Rowling, Pynchon, and Batali and others,

plus tons of children's books, lining our shelves 

to build walls in our small apartment.

A house room of paper.

"No time to mourn the past.

Onward . . ."

Traveling with Baby Chase, His Terrible Parents, and Other Things About Flying That Suck

I'm feeling like a major poop today.

Our flight back (LAX to EWR) yesterday/this morning was suboptimal.

There was a toddler

who would just

NOT

SHUT

UP.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECHing

into my ear

EHH, EHHHH, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHH!

for four of the five and a half hours of the flight.

I've never hated a baby before,

but, Baby Chase,

you are on my shit list.

Your useless parents, too.

Your parents should've tried the following:

1) drugged you--there's a lovely thing called Benadryl that makes kids tired 

and miraculously a side effect is that it makes the people around you on a cramped airplane

not want to throw you and your parents off the plane 

or give you something to really be upset about.

::punches fist in palm::

(MAKE NOTE: Sleeping babies are adorable; red, crying ones suck.)

2) apologized profusely to the neighboring passengers, for having terrible luck of having given birth to the Devil's spawn, and bought them DirectTV and headphones and/or alcohol for the flight.

(I saw something like this on TV. I thought it was brilliant.)

3) entertained you more--you were obviously bored, so was I. 

But what did your dumb dad do with his tablet? 

He watched a movie until the battery died instead of playing a dumb game with you.

Which is why your dumb parents should've had some BOOKS.

(I have many recommendations.)

Option three is a bit risky, but if you're averse to drugging your kids,

it's a good option--but only if you're up for the task.

If your entertainment requires sound though, bring headphones for your baby.

I don't want to be listening to some drowsy man sing Twinkle Little Star

every time your kid hits an image of a star or something.

(As a side note: If you're a good person, you don't give kids toys with noise.

You leave it up to their parents to decide 

what obnoxious sound they can tolerate for hours on end.)

I myself am too cheap to do option two though I feel that would be totally baller,

which is why I'd go with option one IF I desperately had to bring a child on a plane.

Which leads to the obvious question of: Why do people bring babies on planes?

My parents always drove to their destination with my siblings and me when

we were too small to reliably behave like humans.

I don't see why more people can't do that.

Anyway . . .

the plane was booked to capacity due to a noon flight

being rescheduled to an hour after our flight took off.

I don't understand why more people didn't just want to wait the extra hour

because what happened was that our flight was an hour late taking off anyway.

The airlines really need to figure out a balance between

not charging for carry-ons and getting everyone's shit on board on time.

Because the Tetris game of fitting everyone's shit into a nearby overhead bin is what delayed us.

(Jon and I checked our bags--squishy backpack-type luggage

that fit BEAUTIFULLY in overhead luggage bins

--because I have free bag-check privileges.)

Also airlines need to figure out how to NOT punish people

who checked their bags and don't have any overhead storage as a result.

(Jon and me.)

Because waiting to leave the back of a plane when you've got all your shit ready to go

for twenty minutes (at least)

with Baby Chase or similar useless people,

who cannot take down their hundred pound carry-on from the overhead bin,

is soul-sucking.

Fact is that sitting at the back of the plane can save your life

(the middle will crack in half and you can fall to your death

and the front of the plane will go up in flames).

But what about the soul-sucking?

What about the

soul-sucking?

Baby Chase,

soul-sucker extraordinaire.

Derecho: Or a Very Cloudy Afternoon

A few weeks ago,

NYC and the tri-state area

faced the evil

DERECHO.

It's simply a hurricane

that comes from the land

vs. the water.

So the things to fear were:

heavy rain

hail

high winds

lightning

I had only heard of the term "derecho"

as I was walking home.

At around 6 p.m.

it was supersunny

and there was hardly threat of any rain.

What actually happened

about an hour later

was just a midsummer evening's rain storm.

It was as anticlimatic as Irene,

which is always a good thing.

Lots of people got cool pics of it.

At the time, Twitter had millions of Instagram photos.

Jon's account of the derecho:

He fell down the stairs of his office building

with his bike.

Then realized he forgot our food to make dinner,

so he walked back up to retrieve it.

He securely fastened the groceries to his bike.

He raced the derecho home,

but since his bike fell

the gears weren't correct,

so he wasn't moving very fast.

He saw a cool opportunity for a photo,

but he wisely decided against stopping to take it.

(It started pouring as he got to the apartment.

His ankle was extremely swollen for the weekend.)

Friday the 13th: Watching the New York Philharmonic at Central Park's Great Lawn

View from the very south of the Great Lawn

Jon and I walked up 

from 53rd Street to 84th Street

to get sushi

before heading to the concert.

It was as hot as a balls.

Jon and his cell phone

We ate our sushi

while listening to the NY Philharmonic.

We sat while it drizzled.

The humidity broke slightly.

Around 9 p.m. there was an intermission.

Masses left.

At about 84th Street

when we entered the Great Lawn we're about

parallel to the bandstand.

I wanted to get a good seat for the fireworks,

lots of open sky,

so we walked down to the edge of the Great Lawn,

at about 75th Street.

I have no idea who goes

to a classical concert to look at the musicians,

but we heard well enough from the back.

My motive for going

And luckily, that was THE BEST spot

to see the fireworks.

Fireworks are hard to take photos of
with a cell phone

The fireworks started at ten and lasted for thirteen minutes.

They were huge and pretty.

One had a star inside a circle.

Fancy!

There's another concert on Monday.

Hopefully, it won't be rained out!

Mitsuwa Gourmet Fair!

Tonight we went with Joy,

Wee, and Chris

to Mitsuwa to try the special ramen

from Hokkaido

and check out their gourmet fair.

It took about an hour and a half to get there

after work, leaving around 6 p.m.

Traffic getting out of the city from the north side

was a mess.

It took about an hour to move two blocks,

to then be sidetracked by a stupid cop car.

So we went down to get the tunnel from the south side.

That took only twenty minutes to get

to Mitsuwa.

My bad.

The above are little waffles with 

green tea and cream filling.

And a cream puff.

Mmm!

The ramen was pretty good.

Not as good as last year's gourmet fair, 

but still pretty awesome.

The above is a pastry filled with pumpkin.

Yum, pumpkin!

We're going back for the shoyu ramen on Saturday.

They only serve 150 per day.

It's what they're famous for though.

The above are fried tofu skins

filled with rice

and pieces of crab.

Food.

Mmm.

Coma.

Totto Ramen

A few Thursdays ago, 

it was warm and sunny, 

and it was 5:15 p.m., 

and I was starving.

So I went by myself to Totto Ramen.

I pass by this restaurant almost every day, 

twice a day, 

to commute to work, 

and there's always a line. 

ALWAYS, unless it's closed.

In the rain, snow, at midnight, there's a line.

But at 5:25, I just walked in and was seated immediately 

at the counter and given a tall glass of water.

Their menu isn't huge, 

and if you're not there for ramen, 

you should really reevaluate your priorities

since you probably waited on a line to get in.

So I went for their signature ramen, 

and since the original Totto (and the former Torys) 

is known for its chicken, 

I got ordered my ramen with chicken.

And I got it pretty fast. 

The broth was very chickeny delicious. 

It's like the best chicken noodle soup broth ever, 

concentrated, but light on the sodium

that usually gives chicken soup its flavor.

But then I felt the fat on my tongue 

and around my mouth, 

and I was confused about where that aftermath of fat came from, 

because the lightness of the broth 

makes it so that you can just eat it forever.

The straight noodles were perfectly chewy and tasty.

The greens were not very cut up, 

so they were a little stringy. 

I choked on one a little as gracefully as I could 

before being able to swallow it.

The chicken though. 

Oh, when I saw the pork, I regretted ordering my chicken. 

It was pretty dry despite swimming in a really great, chickeny broth! 

What's up with that?

Is it worth the hour plus waiting times that I've seen? 

Not really.

There are many good ramen joints in NYC,

though I wouldn't count Momofuku Noodle Bar as one of them

because the last time I went

the noodles tasted like cardboard,

and I still love the one at Mitsuwa best of all.

Totto Ramen did have some excellent tunes playing though.

Is it worth going there without the hassle of the line? 

Definitely.

Note: Bring a take-out bucket to enjoy the broth later in the evening 

if you don't get a chance to really savor it all there 

because you're full or too warm 

from sitting in front of the huge vats of boiling noodles and broths.

I have no idea if they'll protest this,

but c'mon, you'd be clearing a seat a lot faster

if you weren't mulling over how to fit a cup more of liquid

into your overfilled sweaty gut.