Snowtober

Yup, that's what some people are apparently calling the 10 inches of slushy snow that pummeled New York on Saturday. While yours truly was traipsing about the borough of Brooklyn hunting down housing. After my umbrella was sufficiently destroyed, my feet soaked through, and my jacket so wet that I was literally shaking with the cold, I called my housing hunt quits for the day after having only made it to 1 viewing out of 3 scheduled appointments. As I fumbled into the subway station, umbrella-less, and shaking snow out of my hair, dropping my credit card and my ID (they were still in my cell phone case from the night before, just general lack-of-togetherness on my part in the art of putting things back in their proper places, really) in the process, a rather hapless-looking older man asked if I could swipe him in. I gathered my belongings, and told him I'd see if I had enough on my card as I wasn't sure I had 2 more entrances available. Sure enough I didn't, as after I got myself in, a measly "$1.15 remaining" blinked on the screen. A full $1.10 too short. I apologized to the man and kept walking. What could I do? I was already in.

A few minutes later, as I chomped on some trail mix I'd bought, I saw him coming down the subway platform - someone else must have swiped him in. I  congratulated him on getting in, and asked if he wanted some trail mix. (Yes, I felt bad about having left him standing there by the turnstile.) He accepted my offer and we munched on trail mix in silence. Then he walked along his way. Until a few minutes later when he came walking back towards me, with a sheepish smile, and handed me his umbrella. "Thanks for the snack, but you're all wet, you need this." I protested, told him it was fine, I'd be home soon, didn't he need it? But he insisted. So I took his offering and thanked him profusely. And that umbrella kept me dry between my subway stop and my apartment.

It really is crazy how nice humans can be to each other for really no reason at all. And in other news, Happy Halloween all!

It happened again....

 {View from my office of a cold, bright winter sun cutting through the freezing 39 degree air}

...I had an entire post written and I hit backspace with my cursor in the wrong area of the page and now the whole effing thing is gone. But that's okay, it was a pretty whiny post complaining about the fact that its supposed to snow this weekend. And we're still in October. You really didn't miss much.

 I have forgotten - to be honest with you - that this is Halloween weekend. So I hope you all have a ghoulishly fabulous time gorging yourself on sweets! I'll see you on Monday!

ew!

 {Image via}

I forgot to set my alarm this morning so I slept in gloriously late - and I woke up refreshed for the first time in a week, so it was totally worth it. It's rainy and cold outside today - supposed to drop to the high 40's - but this image is most certainly going to propel me to take myself into the gym after work! It's been nice, these past few days of getting back into a gym routine - 30 minutes or so of weight training is most certainly doable, and I'm finally starting to see the benefits of the advice that one start slow when getting back into actively working towards a healthy lifestyle. Heretofore I was always a jump in head first kind of girl - an hour of cardio plus weights at least 5 days a week...no wonder burnout was such a standard. Slow and steady may indeed win the race, but I think the bigger gain here is that I am looking forward to doing this exercise again, and to trying to clean my body from the inside out. Happy Thursday all!

wishy washy

 Yesterday, as I returned mentally from my visit home and mused over the fact that, for the first time since I moved to Manhattan a year ago, I did not feel my usual rush of excitement upon stepping out into the New York air, I thought once again that I might be done here. Awoken by my alarm at 5 am, clinging to my gym-time as one of the only moments of selfishness I would get, stepping into the cold morning air, and then hitting a wall at work by 11 am of sheer exhaustion as I continued to doggedly email potential Brooklyn rooms, I wondered if it was worth it. At all.

Being home had been so easy and comfortable and familiar. I had been surrounded by so many friends who are family and family who are friends, I had returned to my cocoon of "the usual" and it had felt so nice, and so easy, and so carefree. And here I was back in the city that really is a beast, with its constant rushing, it's only-extreme weather, it's pulse, it's dogged understanding that no matter how hard you push and how hard you work you will always only be just making it. It just didn't seem anything other than exhausting and I wondered why I was fighting so hard to remain here.

And then this morning, as I walked from the gym to work in my new shoes, as I mused over how quiet the gym had been in its near-emptiness this morning, as I traipsed up the street which was still fairly empty (for Manhattan, anyway) and as I thought on how my weekends would be just as delightfully sparsely populated once this move to Brooklyn comes to fruition, and I remembered why I came to New York. I didn't come to find comfort, that's for sure, I came to find me, and to find something different, and to see what it is that makes me tick. And even if this is my last span here, and my original three-year tentative plan downgrades to just a two-year plan, I certainly have to try living in the one borough which I can't help but feel will combine the proximity to the greatest city in the world with the smaller-neighborhood feel that holds so much comfort from San Diego. So, if I just keep at it, something will work out with housing, and maybe once all the moving stress and renting stress and money stress starts to be alleviated, New York won't seem like such a beast after all. Maybe. I almost forget how I felt when I first got here and was only in awe of the potential of the city.

I'm baaack!

 {Image via}

My weekend home was truly incredible, very relaxing, and very heartwarming. I was able to see the vast majority of my family and several very close friends, I got to reconnect with a dear, nearly life-long friend and see her new baby, I got to spend time with the people who matter. I ate too much, laughed a lot, and was able to really get rid of my cares and just be for three days. I now feel refreshed and contemplative and able to continue on in the daily goings-on of life in New York. I even got up and gymmed it again today - in the new pair of fabulous gym shoes I was spoiled enough to have purchased for me while home. Yup, I'm a lucky girl, nothing is truer than that. I hope this weekend treated all of you well!

If anyone needs me this weekend...

 {Image via}

I'll be here.

I'm taking a quick sojourn home this weekend, to see family, catch up briefly with as many friends all at once on one night as is humanly possible, and walk along the ocean with my feet in the sand as the city I briefly leave behind will grow ever-cooler as fall progresses. I won't be back until Tuesday so I hope this weekend, and Monday, treats all of you wonderfully!

raining 'n' pouring

 {Image via}

The rain has NOT let up for going on three days it feels - and while that is lovely in theory, it really is the pits when you walk everywhere (except for the times when you are dripping wet in the damp mugginess of a subway car). Even moreso when you forget your tennis shoes at the office and thus are walking home in slip-on flats, with pants that are immediately soaked to the knees and all sorts of pebbles and grossness from the NYC streets miraculously finding their way into said slip-on flats. There is little that refreshes me as much as removing my wet clothes and shoes did last night. And? Even though when my alarm went off this morning I, for the first time, debated just turning it off and turning back over, I made it to my final gym session for the week. For which I am SO proud. And for which I also reiterate my previous statement that the "force yourself for 3 days and it will stick" rule obviously does not apply to yours truly. Still, we are one day closer to Friday so good luck on this Thursday everyone!!

slow n steady...

 {Image via}

Well kids, today is Day 3 of my getting back into the gym. The fiercely fit Rachel Mac has said that it takes 3 days of forcing yourself to get back into the habit of gymming it. I think I'm still riding the wave of excitement of getting back in to working out, so I think I shall follow another recommendation that it takes 22 days to form a habit. Hopefully in 3 weeks, my body and brain will look at daily workouts as just as much a part of my daily routine as showing up for work on time. In the meantime, today I followed the above mantra and got myself into the gym before work because I have obligations after work today, that I know would have prevented me from actually following through and going - I just love a good excuse. And so, while I don't intend this blog to become a chronicle of my excercising journey, with any luck it will pop up here and there, proving how much a part of my self-definition exercise will (hopefully) become. I hope this Wednesday finds you all well!

SO important to remember...

I stumbled across this image recently - I can't for the life of me remember where, now - and it is something that is so, so key for me to remember as I go through life, trending towards harshness on myself and as a by-product, on others. No one is amazing at everything. But we're all amazing at something.

tsk!

 {Image via}

I had a whole post written, apparently didn't save the draft appropriately and now it's gone. And I wouldn't do it justice trying to re-write it from memory. So I'm going to have to try again tomorrow. Well-played Tuesday, not even 8 am and this day is starting out less-than-ideal...grumble, grumble, grumble...

back to it!

 {Image via}

Hello Gang! Today is a Monday, and today is the day that  I brought with me my gear, and my dedication to getting back to working out. After a youth of being advised to try this sport, try that sport, I completely and wholly despised the idea of being fit - sports were always presented as a means to keep one healthy and my parents - who presumably enjoyed competitive sports in their youths - considered them to be a fun way to bond with your peers and maintain a healthy lifestyle. I hate competition (why yes I did move to New York City, not for school but to work, does that not jive with your image of a non-competitive person?), and when someone is watching me - even over my shoulder in a workplace - everything comes slower and I second-guess my every move and I become a nervous, twitching disaster. So you can imagine the sort of participant I was in any number of those team sports. I didn't even like tennis because I was always fairly sure my opponent was constantly annoyed by how our games would start-stop, start-stop as I missed ball after ball. I did enjoy swimming growing up.... (Wonderfully solo. I didn't even mind that everyone outside of a pool could see that I swim how I walk - which is to say in diagonals. I'm a veer-er.) When all I have to focus on is me, I can excel to great heights. The trouble is that life is not lived in a vacuum. ;)

Anyway, in college, I discovered the gym. And I loved it. I discovered weight training classes and kickboxing classes and aerobics classes and classes focused on ab work and lunges and I actually became quite dedicated. I discovered weight lifting in a sweaty room populated almost entirely by guys, though always with one dedicated gal lunging her away across the floor. And I loved watching my body transform and gain strength and feel capable. Physically capable to lift a weight I couldn't have lifted previously, to do the harder oblique work, to do the extra push up. I loved feeling my body grow and gain abilities. I would have competitions with real athletes in my dorm to see who could hold a plank longer, and the competition felt fun, not forced. The endorphins didn't hurt either, I'll admit. But my gym enjoyment fell away after college. A lot of it was my social circle, after college my friends in the working world didn't find going to the gym together to be a fun way to spend an hour or two. Plus, once the gym wasn't covered in tuition, most couldn't scrape up the cash to join one.

Still, all the past aside, today I am happy to say that I am excited to find that familiar rush of doing, that familiar soreness of muscles that will surely come tomorrow. I'm excited to march out to the weight room populated with dudes, nod to my fellow sweaty-weight-room gal who will surely be lunging around back there, trip on over to the smallest side of the weights rack, and start toning up. While my fellow sisters slog away on treadmills I will work on building back up the lean muscle mass I know is still lurking down there...someplace. I have faith it's been waiting all these years to return my body to its most capable state, and I'm excited to help it emerge. Happy Monday all!

Awesome

A coworker sent me this. I had to share it. Hilarity.

swirly

 {Image via}

This morning I was walking to work on rain-slicked streets - the air claustrophobic, heavy with humidity - when I happened to look down and see the dirty sheen of the city. Under my feet, iridescent in its twists and turns and swirls, was a layer of oil, slicked out over the cement, and visible in its reflection on the dampened sidewalks. As I am a magpie in human form I found the images beautiful, breathtaking almost in their hidden colors and glitter, visible only when the skies and city are all damp, gloomy and gray. But, in reality, that's a pretty disgusting thing to exist - when the actual facts are examined. Yet its funny - even with visible oil, grime, garbage, excrement, with air so thick with pollutants and smog that I may have literally developed a skin condition, and with so many people constantly fighting, pulsing, pushing and rushing - this city exists within its own pulse, with its own level of better-than-you importance, and its almost an otherworldly experience to be a part of it. Because some weeks its nearly impossible to take a breath and remember where you are. But once you do, you're pretty impressed you've come this far. Happy Friday!

for no reason at all....

 {Image via}

this image just struck me this morning. Maybe it's the grey skies and soggy air, but for some reason the peachy color with black overlay randomly reminds me of the browns, golds and oranges of the living room in my grandfather's house - all burnt colors of 70's chic - but coupled oh-so-glamourously with her lacquered hair and painted on face. And in the baby doll cut of the gown I see little figurines perched just so along the mantlepiece of little-child pharmacists and mothers in the sort of ceramic styling that surely was popular in the 60's. In sum, just a little something my eye found pretty this morning. Hope you enjoy!

childhood revisited....

 As all my childhood friends, and family members, can tell you - I was obsessed with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I will forever love Sarah Michelle Gellar as a direct relation to my dedication to the show. As someone who also read the first of the "Twilight" series a few years ago for a book club and found the insipid "forbidden love" story irritating beyond words (although please bear in mind I am also a very single girl in her late-twenties who seemingly daily teeters ever-nearer the brink of cynical bitterness regarding the lore of successful relationships. I openly admit this), I was tickled pink when I saw this image. With which I whole-heartedly agree.Happy Wednesday all!

Day After Columbus Day

I love New York's love of parades. I still love, one year in, that in a city as compact and congested as Manhattan, there are parades for every single holiday. Streets are cleared, staging areas blocked off, police stationed, and people march and sing and spectators applaud and cheer and there is so much happiness for an afternoon. For every. single. holiday. Including Columbus Day which was yesterday and which brought out Italian pride in full-force - green, white and red flags as far as the eye could see, celebrating the man who so many years ago "walked into someones house and told them he lived there now" as the joke goes. Despite this particular holidays less-than-stellar origins, I do love that New York takes any excuse to celebrate most everything, and yesterday's parade was no exception.

Monday!

 {Image via}

And now we're back to it! On the proper day. And we are taking this day to wish a

Very, Very, Very Happy Birthday Boppie!

to my grandpa who turns 90 years old today! No, he doesn't read my blog as religiously as the rest of you do. Psh, if you can't trust family who can you trust? But I want the rest of you out there in the blogosphere to know that my dear Boppie has reached a true milestone in life, and that I'm proud as anything to be lucky enough to be his granddaughter. His oldest granddaughter. The First. Number One. I win!

friday...

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I know, I totally forgot to post on Friday! And I even had a great picture (that I took!) of the memorial to Steve Jobs that had popped up overnight at the 5th Avenue Apple store. But, then the day got away from me and before I knew it, it was Saturday morning and I realized I'd left my 3 loyal followers with no Friday post! So now I'm back-posting - so sneaky, I know. But I'm admitting it so I get points for that, eh? Anyway, since now my usual photo email address is completely ruining my life, I still have to take-and-credit someone else's pictures to get my point across. Which simply was to say that I was shocked by the amount of adoration Steve Jobs' work with Apple and Pixar developed in New Yorkers. It was a pretty impressive sight to behold.

Rock Your Body

 {All images via}

It's ironic that I spent the entire summer NOT working out, it's just so blazing hot and humid on the east coast that the thought of going inside to sweat just seemed silly, to be honest. However, due to this lack of motivation for the past four or so months, and fairly consistent consumption of sweet iced treats as a means to beat the heat, I am becoming increasingly nervous about what this habit will do come winter - when the bundling up in large coats conveniently hides stomach bulges. This is something which must be remedied sooner rather than later - on the plus side, I did rather find myself enjoying the warm camaraderie of the gym last winter, and as things are looking more and more towards my moving into an apartment with roommates rather than remaining in my own break-the-bank-with-rent-every-month studio, the gym time will once again give me some me-time after a day at work and before a night with housemate(s). Fingers crossed I actually get my tuckus into gear and back into a gym-space, though, because ever since I discovered Jamie Eason I've been salivating over the challenge to work my unwilling physique into something slightly closer to her amazing body. I much more appreciate the look of sleek, toned females versus just skinny women and Jamie has exactly the look of feminine strength and power I would love to possess. I will never look that cut - I cannot and will not give up carbs, I am a quarter Sicilian after all - but hopefully starting next week I will at least get myself back into the habit of getting my heart rate up at least 4x a week! Cross fingers for me guys! And Happy Thursday - we're almost there!

PS - Plus, isn't she just the cutest?!? Every picture I see makes me a little more smitten and motivated. I love her little bob. Makes me want to go back to short hair. See?! HOW FICKLE AM I?? In debt due in part to my need for fake hair extensions and now I'd willingly put myself right back into the position of dying for long hair. Although, I'll never sink that kind of money into fake hair again, just wasn't my style. So maybe, it was a worthwhile mistake after all, to at least now know for sure. Sorry, tangent. Still, she's adorbs, right? And to have abs like that?! Might be worth a few less cookies everyday...

facts are facts

 Another Facebook find - my friends are posting such fabulousity lately! - that I simply had to share here as well. We've made it to Wednesday! It's all downhill from here!

fact.

 {Image via a friend's facebook}

Today, this makes me smile. Happy Tuesday all!

October!

 The month of Halloween is here and New York is already starting its celebrations! By which I mean, I saw my first decorated stoop en route to work today, and it sort of made me realize that we are indeed into October. The air was a crisp 50 degrees - I had to throw on my coat as I ran out the door - and then whilst walking I passed a beautifully wrought-iron fence with ghosts and ghouls perched just so beyond it. Made me smile, as I assumed there may be children living in the abode, although it could just as easily be an excited adult. I'm not sure I want to go all out this year - I've gotten dolled up and done the Parade the past 2 years, and to be honest I think this year I sort of want a Halloween weekend filled with scary movies and sweet treats but I don't know if I want to brave all the crowds again. And I really don't know if I want to dress up. Maybe a mask if someone throws a legitimate party, but I don't want to go crawling the bar scenes, crammed in out of the cold night air with far, far too many people. I'm enjoying this easing into the Halloween scene, though, so we'll see if I get more excitable as the month goes on. In the meantime, Happy  Monday!