Electricity, snooping

First, the lights came back on. Last night, just over four full days since they'd gone out. It was unreal. Then, a few hours later, the wireless returned. Heat and hot water must have happened overnight, so this morning was one of those post-camping-trip-type showers. Wonderful.

So, on a more traditional WWPD note, on the theme of parents sharing their kids' dirty laundry, the NYT (sorry, Sigivald) is quite literally inviting parents to do this. In what universe is it socially acceptable to go into a teenager's bedroom, photograph it, and send said photo to a national newspaper?

They really are Geniuses

Moments after making an appointment with the Genius Bar - my trillionth for this computer - the screen stopped flickering.

Umlauts, humidity, and the subway

Internet has, I believe definitively, arrived in my apartment, but not without the usual last-minute surprise-maybe-you-won't-be-getting-Internet-after-all-because-your-apartment-is-in-fact-cursed near-misses. But so far, so good. I went fashion-blog crazy for surprisingly not that long (although I remain star-struck from having glimpsed one of my favorite fashion bloggers in, of all places, the basement of Uniqlo - I of course was too much of a coward/blasé New Yorker to say anything), before I tired of my old-new toy and went back to Madame de Staël and her umlaut, Simone de Beauvoir and her particule. Ça continue...

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The first day of the new haircut has proven that even the best of haircuts do not stand up to the tests of unseasonably warm and humid weather. What had yesterday resembled the style Natalie Portman had in the ads for "Closer" looked, after a trip to the by-then picked-over Tribeca Greenmarket, more like a particularly windswept Christiane Amanpour.

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Alert the presses: I have come up with yet another complaint about New York life:

People who take the subway with a friend/relative/co-worker but refuse to sit next to that person, even when two seats next to each other are available. Such individuals insist upon chit-chat with their companions, but seem to fear that if their thighs were adjacent, they would somehow be overcome with a sexual-orientation-, incest-taboo-, or office-romance-policy-violating case of lust. Their phobias translate to a lack of adjacent empty seats for those lacking that particular neurosis, who indeed do want to sit with the person they're traveling with. But they also make it so that solo travelers have to sit in the middle of a conversation that will, like all conversations on the subway, be either in a language no one else in the car understands; about something of no possible interest to someone who does not work in that particular office/attend that particular high school; or both. Obviously the fact that these anti-socials do not refuse to sit next to strangers suggests that their fear is not touching somebody - and, say, contracting a cold or flu - but touching somebody they know. They will often even sit especially close to the stranger sitting next to them, so as to better hear what their companion is saying. Basically, this behavior has to stop.

$85 and well worth it

My only grievance is with my own hair. Every haircut I've ever had, ever, has been 10% cutting of hair and 90% devolumization. In cold weather, my hair is straight-ish, especially when blown dry quickly, with or without a brush, but straight as in straight in all directions, not as in falling flat. Forming this into anything akin to a hairstyle requires magic with scissors that I don't understand, along with magic with a hair iron that I do. One can 'celebrate' curly and straight hair, Afros and ringlets, but poufy, to my knowledge, has not been celebrated, at least not in the region where I live, since approximately 1993. Hipsters have revived every look but The 'Nanny Fine.' I'm waiting...

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All is well in the world, because the book the library claimed I'd lost, that I knew but of course could not prove I'd returned (apparently 'I haven't even thought about the French-Algerian War for two years' wasn't good enough), was, at long last, found. I thought this day would never come! I am taking this as a good omen for the Internet we're getting (fingers crossed) tomorrow.

A girl can dream

There are hopes that my apartment will be equipped for something called "the Internet" starting this Saturday. This might push my love-hate relationship with it over towards pure adoration. After all, we've already got a dishwasher.

There are pros and cons to living on Mars. The pros are the waterfront, the proximity to Tribeca, and the fact that to compensate for the Mars-like quality, buildings put laundry machines practically at your doorstep. The latest con, meanwhile, was the fact that a couple nights ago Jo and I arrived nearly home, late, with groceries, including frozen goods, but could not actually get to our apartment for quite some time because the entire city's police force and what looked to be the national guard was preventing everyone from crossing the West Side Highway. Reason given: "the President." As suspected, where I go, Obama goes too. For some reason, his passing through had to make it impossible for the population of these towers - equivalent to that of a medium-sized town - to start cooking dinner before 9pm. We kept getting shepherded to various locales that were not our apartment or close, before I started announcing plans to vote Republican. I've been unable to get home due to visiting dignitaries before - once in high school, the Pope blocked off the Upper East Side - but living on what is essentially the wrong side of a highway (although again, the waterfront's lovely) has its downside.