Potatoes in the Mist

So today I got together with a friend I hadn't seen in 10 years. She helped me move to New York. I remember I moved on Memorial Day weekend in 1999...so I got one of the last U-Haul trucks available. We had to take a train to a remote field to pick it up, and it seemed to be hanging together on a spit and a prayer. And then I drove that thing over the Triborough Bridge through the Bronx and into Manhattan. The beginning of an era. My friend was refreshingly the same...though in some respects, we are both older and wiser. We've been in contact for a while, and during some of those lost years, she lived in Colombia and China. We went to Veselka, everyone's favorite Ukrainian diner (apparently not Polish, as I had thought) where I noshed on a veggie burger with sweet potato fries and avocado-wasabi mayonnaise and she got a turkey Cobb salad. (I am still adjusting to the fact that she is no longer vegetarian.) She met E for the first time, and I think it was safe to say she was...

A great song: I have 3 books in my pile: Last Night at Chateau Marmont by Lauren Weisberger; The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard; and Up from the Blue by Susan Henderson. They all look enjoyable in different ways. I have a couple more advance reviewer copies coming my way, including Juliet by Anne Fortier. I sampled it in the bookstore and it looks like fun. And this weekend, an old friend from college is coming to visit. *happy dance*

I'm reading The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. For a book with such a dry title, it's excellent. It's also different from any other book I've read. For some reason, his writing style makes me think he is British, but nope, he lives in Maine. A friend of mine put up a link to a song on Facebook - "Take This Job and Shove It." I played it out of idle curiosity. I thought it would be a bit punk, like The Police's early song, "Dead End Job." But no, it's kind of a laid-back country twang of a song. E loved it. Every time it ended, he chirped, "Again," and he actually fell asleep to it, a bit early because he had no nap today. As I was carrying him to his crib, he started crying and said, "Again!" so I grabbed my laptop, pressed Play, and stationed it in front of his crib. He dozed off in no time.

Grr. I just read a book I really didn't like. Ever read a book you want to erase? This one was called You Lost Me There, by Rosecrans Baldwin. A while back I had been thinking of getting a tarot reading. Finally, I went. I actually did think the reading was accurate and I got a lot out of it. I doubt she was psychic or anything, I think she was just good at reading people and able to give common-sense advice. So it was helpful. Among other things, she advised me to get back into writing. So I've been doing some, and enjoying it. I've been thinking a bit about various Internet time-wasters. I don't count this blog among them. But I think, other than blogging, I'll be cutting back on my Internet time.

So I just saw Eat Pray Love with my friend T. First we had a delicious lunch. They bring you a basket of small corn muffins, which were the nice crumbly yet moist kind, and then I had a salad with apples, walnuts, gorgonzola melted on little toasts, and honey-Dijon dressing. It was as good as it sounds. In the movie, Julia Roberts first goes to Indonesia to see Ketut (a "wise man"), then back to New York, then to Italy, India and finally Bali. I thought Bali was fantastically beautiful. I kind of want to go there, but it is probably a 14-hour flight.

Hello! I just wanted to let you know that I am reading Slow Love by Dominique Browning. She's a former editor of House & Garden who lost her job and then wrote this memoir. I'm really enjoying it. She's sly and witty and has interesting observations about eavesdropping (e.g., that at a restaurant, someone is always listening to your conversation, just as you're listening to theirs). I may have to monitor myself :) Also, there are little snippets in this book that I love, including this one: "I get to the point where I am looking for muffin recipes in obscure corners of the web late at night, and forgetting to take note of where I've been, so that by morning, the muffins are gone, like a dream, eloquent about my desires, but never to be recovered." On Saturday, I'm going to see Eat Pray Love with a friend. I'm hoping it will be good.

So I went out on my customary after-dinner walk and two amusing things happened. First, I spotted Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was eating at an outdoor cafe right near Hudson and Gansevoort, and I believe he was eating with two children. He smirked when I recognized him. I've noticed this is a pattern among celebrities - the men are flattered, while the women run away (including Susan Sarandon, my very first celebrity in 1999, and Patricia Clarkson, who was terrified when I recognized her in B&N once. But of course I followed the New York code of not saying anything). The one exception to the running-away rule was Tyra Banks, who smiled and said, "Hi!" when I recognized her at a restaurant. She was eating at the table next to ours, in fact. (This was long before E...it was not a restaurant where you would bring your kids.) The second amusing thing was that I went to a liquor store to buy a bottle of Riesling. The cashier gave me a suspicious look and I knew what was com...

So I'm usually not into TV...we haven't even had TV service since E was born. We just weren't watching. Our TV isn't even hooked up. (I watch DVDs on my computer.) Then I saw Thomas Jane on the side of a bus and decided to rent Hung from Netflix. I am well and truly addicted...but the bad news is, I just finished watching Season 1. Season 2 is still in progress, on HBO, and not available from Netflix yet. I went to hbo.com/hung, believing I could watch the episodes there...but no. They just have recaps. No luck at hulu.com, either. (Someone solved the problem for me. Thanks!)

I wrote a post earlier, asking for book suggestions, but E and I went to the library and took care of it:

So I just got back from Connecticut. All kinds of traveling snafu, and Connecticut is confirmed as my least favorite New England state, but it was a fun time all the same. I enjoyed seeing my friend - an old friend from work who now lives in Maine. He also brought his sister, whom I hadn't met before, and his ex, whom I met 14 years ago. They were both very excited to gamble. I held back - I'm always afraid I'll lose money - but my friend's sister won $71.75! His ex was very excited and insisted on using that machine the rest of the night. I went to bed after the concert, so I don't know yet if the machine brought them more luck. The concert itself was good. They played a lot of their 70s music, but did play "Alone" and "Never," two of my 80s favorites, as well as "These Dreams." I can't help but remember when I was 12, in 1987, and "Alone" was at the top of the charts - and now their concert tickets cost less than the tax...