Mandalay Beach

Originally uploaded by peechie.

Traveling for work is A-Okay.

Shoes

Originally uploaded by peechie.

Today was a banner day in terms of postal deliveries in my world.

My shoes arrived (and as you can see, I went with the Louboutins), and I’m typing this on my new xo laptop.

Shoes and gadgets both on the same day. I’m not sure which I’m more excited about!

Are you serious?

Originally uploaded by peechie.

I’m sortof in the eye of the storm here - just back from NY a couple days ago, and off again (to Vegas this time) on Saturday.

I’m too busy repaying my sleep debt in preparation for another gongshow week to bother with a costume or anything, and I’ll be in a meeting with my mortgage broker tonight around the time all the kiddies will be roaming around trick-or-treating. Such an exciting life, I know.

But I couldn’t let the day pass entirely unnoticed, so I figured I’d reminisce with a photo of Sasha in her Snow White costume from last year.

Pets in costumes. That’s all the treat I need.

Overall my first visit to the Big Apple was pretty fun. It’s the first place I’ve traveled where I’ve thought I could definitely live there for an extended period (5+ years) and be quite content. Most other places I get the feeling I’d be over them and longing for home within 6 months or so.

Anyhow, for those curious about what I got up to while I was there, here’s the rundown:

Touristy Things

Top of the Empire State Building - not unlike a ride at Disneyland, they hide the lineups. It took an excruciatingly long time to finally get to the top, and getting down was just as painful. But the views while up there were lovely!

Theatre on Broadway - We got half-price tickets at the TKTS booth in Times Square and went to see RENT. I laughed, I cried, I still don’t get rent-heads.

Times Square - This is where we stayed. Personally, I hate it. It’s just excess for its own sake, without any thought or theme, and full of annoying tourists.

Union Square - Shopping! I managed to bring home a few trinkets, and think I could quite happily live near DSW and Filene’s basement. Also, it’s right on the edge of Greenwich Village, an area of town I felt really comfortable in (mostly because the inhabitants and atmosphere reminds me of home).

World Trade Centre site - Underwhelming. It’s a big construction site. Mostly like what we see in Vancouver on an hourly basis, as we pass yet another condo going up. Also, like Times Square, swarming with annoying tourists. It just felt wrong to me that there are groups of people in their white sneakers and matching T-Shirts, smiling for the camera in front of the mesh construction fence. There was just no reverence for the significance of what happened there. I think I’d like to return after the building and memorial pond are done to see if the atomosphere changes. Sadly, I suspect it won’t.

The Food

Definitely the best part of my visit, and more for my record than yours (so I can find these places again when I go back):

Cafe Spice Indian Bistro. Awesome noodle dishes in a funky atmosphere.

Tuscan Steakhouse on Restaurant Row - conveniently just a few blocks from our hotel.

Bobby Van’s Steakhouse. Where the “petite fillet” was a whopping 16oz, and the South African Lobster Tail was bigger than my hand. My dining companion’s T-bone was the size of a smartcar. We were both bested by our dinners, and ended up in protein comas after that one.

Scarlotti Italian Bistro on 47th. Couldn’t find a link, but being close to our hotel, it was a good standby for tasty, easy pasta.

Tia Pol - we had an assortment of Tapas and a suckling pig. Oh. My. God. Best meal of the trip.

Blue Water Grill - located in Union Square, this place is supposed to be one of the best seafood restaurants in the city. Frankly, I was disappointed. My Swordfish was dry, the Broccoli Rabe was completely oversalted, and trust me when I say that if you come from a place with reputedly the best sushi in the world - just don’t bother ordering it anywhere else. But a lot of my dinner companions were thrilled, so it might’ve just been what I ordered.

Blue Fin Restaurant - this was the restaurant in our hotel. I didn’t have breakfast there, but those of us who did said it was exceedingly expensive for what they got. I had dessert and drinks. While my smores cake was forgettable, it was pretty cool sampling Madeira from 1966, 1907 and 1875 (the 1907 was the clear favourite).

The Digs

Just a quick note about where we stayed: the W Hotel Times Square. It was uber trendy and cool, and also frustratingly useless. Listed as one of the conference hotels (which is why we stayed) it was like living in a nightclub for a week, where the setting is ultra cool and getting anything done is the height of frustration.

The in-room internet didn’t work (despite paying for 6 days worth on the first day), the bathroom doesn’t have a fan, the bathroom walls are frosted glass (so when sharing 2 to a room, if someone has to get up in the middle of the night to pee, you can’t turn on the light or the whole corner of the room lights up like a lamp).

The business centre is more for show than actual use (they had a trendy jar of pencils, sharpened just so, but no pens! also, a funky stapler but no packing tape) and despite advertising it as a 24h full-service business centre, managed to lock the elevators to the 5th floor at about 9:00pm, trapping my colleague and I down there until we used our cell phones (nobody answered the house phone on the floor) to call up and beg them to unlock it.

Also, the entirety of the staff are trendy gay men (which, I don’t care, just do your job already), who are far more concerned with how they look to eachother and the club crowd coming and going than actually showing up at the front desk, answering the phone, or opening a door when I’m laden with bags (does a *doorman* even have another duty?).

But, their claim to super comfy beds and luxurious sheets was bang on. Damn. I want a set for myself!

I missed…

Running in central park. Between work and the rain, it just wasn’t happening.

Exploring more around SoHo. I tried, but I got a little lost at my attempts to navigate the subway, plus I was already exhausted from the week and laden with packages from earlier shopping.

All told though - I’m looking forward to getting back to the city to explore some more, and am seriously entertaining notions of living there some day. As long as I’m not living at the W.

Post gone.

Perhaps if I wish hard enough, this will go away

Originally uploaded by peechie.

Welcome, all, to day one of NaBloPoMo.

For your reading/viewing pleasure, I’ve dressed my dog in a demeaning Snow-White costume. She hated it appropriately and tried to chew it off as soon as I finished taking pictures.

I felt bad enough that I took today off to console her.

Ok, that’s a bit of a lie - today is supposed to bring Wine Fridge: The Resurrection, and I still can’t get the delivery times Home Depot promised me (and have lost the will and energy to continue fighting for it), so instead of interrupting my day halfway through to wait hours hours for the delivery guy, I decided to work from home instead.

I know, it’s such an exciting life I lead. And just think, only 29 more days of this for you!

to me

You know you don’t clean your desk often enough when you go to clean it, and find your business cards from two jobs ago.

Answers coming soon…

New Category: goofy things my roommate says/asks that make me think he really HAS been living under a rock for a very long time.

Today’s Ray-ism:

Jen? If I want to make eggs, like, sunny side up, how do you do that?

My uncle’s beloved weiner dog Merlin ended up with a ruptured disc in his back.

Thankfully it looks like he’ll be ok, so I don’t feel bad about giggling at how he looks like frankendog with all the metal staples.

For a better look, open it up in flickr and check out the full-size version.

June Haircut

Originally uploaded by peechie.

I did it. I cheated on Olga. With Lisa.

It’s not my fault! Olga wasn’t available. I was tired of her technique. Things just weren’t fresh ane exciting anymore. I could hardly see her, and when I did, I didn’t feel loved anymore. We were in a rut.

And along came Lisa. With her perky personality and edgy style - how could I say no?

I’m gonna have to dump Olga. I don’t know how to tell her… There’s no way I can keep it from her. Maybe if I don’t call she’ll think I moved?

I feel so dirty inside.

If loving this hair is wrong - I DON’T WANNA BE RIGHT!

I’ve been tagged with the 3 things meme. Check the extended entry for the answers.

(more…)

This particular Ridiculously High Standard has been just waiting to be written about. I figured it was about damn time I put it down on… uh… paper? website? Whatever.

This one is about the GEEK WALK. I can not bear to be with someone who walks the geek walk. The first time I encountered it was in high school. A guy friend of mine (who will remain nameless in case he should google himself some day) was a full-on geek walker. Since then I’ve noticed it a multitude of times - and it never fails to simultaneously amuse and appal me.

You may have seen the geek walk and not even be aware that it had a name. It usually looks a little like this: Guy walking down the street, leaning forward like he’s fighting a headwind, and his hip, knee, and ankle joints seem to be having trouble functioning in unison. May or may not be accompanied by a firmly clenched posterior. If you’ve ever seen the movie Hitch, Kevin James give a stunning performance of Geek Walk.

The bottom line on this one is that if a guy looks like he’s walking into a hurricane with a prosthetic leg and a large stick up his ass, he’s really got zero chance with me. I can’t help it.

Why is it socially “okay” for guys to be into Jack Johnson, but they’re pussies for admitting to liking John Mayer?

Is it only okay for a guy to be a sappy singer/songwriter if he’s also a surfer?

That’s it - I’m firing bloglines as my feed reader. I hope the rest of my readers will follow suit, at least until the bloglines people fix whatever is buggering up their service. Of course, by the time any bloglines subscribers actually get this post of mine, it’ll likely be 2012 and blogs will be so 2005 and it won’t matter anymore. Bloglines hasn’t grabbed my feed since 10:51 last night. I posted at around 11:30 this morning. I think nearly 5 hours is MORE than enough time to acknowledge an updated feed.

And it’s not just my feed. Most of the sites I read take the better part of an hour (and it’s only been getting worse!) before they show as updated on bloglines. There are also feeds it refuses to acknowledge, even though they’re perfectly valid in other readers (my.yahoo.com for example).

So I’m currently taking recommendations for other free, web-based feed readers. Does anyone have any suggestions? Because bloglines isn’t cutting it for me anymore. I may as well just go back to gasp plain old Blogrolling!

(edit: just FYI this was posted at 4:26pm. about 2.25 hours before it registered as being updated on bloglines, and another hour+ before any readers found it and bothered to comment)