The Statue of Liberty!

I got to see the Statue of Liberty w/ two awesome friends who were in town and it was a blast. I was suprised to see that Ellis Island was a lot larger than I'd expected -- the building, not the island.

You'll notice that I'm including a view of the statue from another angle, because you just don't get to see the side of her arm in photos.

Chinese Take Out

I love it. It's something I should have mentioned long ago. In Manhattan, it's amazing, but they actually deliver just about everything. The delivery is usually free, so no guilt. And it arrives in usually 15-30 minutes. Sometimes it's taken me much longer to wait at a take out place to get food to go (or to "take away" as they say), than it does to order from home. whenever I induldge in Chinese take out, I always feel like this is too good to be true.

They all all kinds of food too. Indian, Italian, Mediteranian, and so on. You could quite easily gain 300 pounds with this system, if there weren't so many amazing things to wander outside and see. Flowers! There are flowers out now. They are very, very pretty! That's an image of Central Park right now. It has grass and tree leaves again! :)

good stuff

So despite the horrid computer problems, getting a cold, etc. I had a lot of fun this weekend.

My good friend had her b-day party at a fun club we've been to. She invited a bunch of people with another friend and got bottle service in a VIP booth. It was nice to start seeing some familiar faces among her friends. Somehow, I didn't end up arriving until midnight, which conviced me that my mindset has changed a bit. I mean, that still gave me a good four hours of hanging out.

We danced and it was super fun. One of my friends that salsa dances said that I flowed well and it looked like I was Latin when I danced -- and this is probably the best compliment I've ever gotten as far as salsa goes. I think I've finally gotten better.

I split the cab back (in between our apartments) and thought walking a few blocks wouldn't be a problem -- I walk like 10 to 40 blocks most days so 3 is nothing. Then my shoe fell off twice as I was walking by sketchy guys at 4am who were offering to "be my body guard." At that point I hailed the next cab and told him "yeah, I'm just going three blocks. My shoe keeps falling off." Prob more info than the cab driver needed. Funny how sometimes you feel the need to explain such things to total strangers.

Yesterday, I went shopping down at the giant Macys and then shoe shopping at Union Square all day and then my friend and I happened upon a very tasty Italian place with the most amazing service. I've forgotten the name of the place but wil have to look it up. Delicious complexly flavored food, and this was probably the best service I've had here for a not super expensive place. We also looked at some of the pets at the pets store.

Then it was gorgeous weather today, probably the best I've seen here. Was around 70 and sunny. I sat outside at brunch with sunglasses on and finally felt like a New Yorker. There was a beautiful little black girl on a scooter with this cute little outfit on and she sped by right as a tiny poofy little dog appeared from an apartment right next to the restaurant, and as the owners feet hurried down the stairs, happy girls in dresses and pasty white untanned skin hurried by, seemingly excited to be able to wear something strappy for the first time in months. It was all so pretty, next to the bright green building sitting on the patio of the restaurant, with my french toast and memosa. Lovely!

Wandering by the soccer fields I play at, I realized they are actually turf. This shocked me, as I fell on the "grass" twice and didn't notice it wasn't real. I thought astro turf looked like bright green. But this looked really natural.

Then I checked out a tasty wine bar. Was a fun weekend.

Scammy tech guy

The tech guy was interesting. Walking into my bedroom, he throws his big black disgusting bag onto the center of my pink, pretty bed. This is NYC so everyone's bags are as disgusting as the pavement outside. Ewwww.

Then he complains about his headache, looks at my desktop and instead of asking questions or telling me what he's doing, he opens several files on the C drive and then tells me how "weird" they are and he stares at them for a long time. I get the same vibe I get when the cabbies tell me how "the whole city is crowded" so it'll take an extra few minutes as they drive around the block running up the meter.

I ask, "so...can you restore my files."

He looks surprised. "Oh no. I can't do that. That's fancy stuff, that file restoration. You'd have to pay a lot for that."

"Well, can you restore my software?"

"Ah, no way," he says as he continues to play around with the C drive.

"So can you tell me what you are trying to accomplish with whatever it is that you are doing?" I said something to that effect.

"I'm going to download a free trial of an antivirus thing I like," he says.

I'm thinking, duh, I can do that myself for free, but he insists. He then wants to look for the virus in this free software anti-virus thing.

"You'd better sit down," he says. "This could take a while."

"Will this take more than an hour?" I ask. "Because I don't want you to work longer than that."

"Oh no way!" he says. "This could take, 2, 3 hours!"

I look at him in disbelief. He hasn't even gone into DOS or done any of those impressive things I've seen the techies do at past jobs. He's just starred blankly at the desktop and looked at text files. And now, he's downloaded a virus checker I cold easily have gotten myself. And now he's going to go through the user-friendly menus to check for a virus? Give me a break.

"I can handle the virus checker myself," I say.

"Oh but I have other tools. Such as a special disk."

Oooh! Now, as impressed as I am with this special disk and all, I've had it.

"Thanks for taking a look," I say. "I appreciate your time here. How much do I owe you?"

"70 dollars," he says.

"70 dollars? You have been here for exactly 30 minutes, not a full hour."

"Well, like I said it's $70 for a 'full hour'," he says.

"Okay," I say. "I mean, there's nothing I can do about it if that's what you're charging, but it doesn't seem like a very good way to run a business if you ask me."

He's now pissed.

"Forget it! Forget it. Just don't charge me anything at all." He's throwing a hissy fit now and about to just storm out.

"No, no," I said, "I said I would pay for the time you 'worked' so I will give you the amount for half an hour."

I pay him. He leaves. I'm back where I started.

Luckily my Mom mailed me my Microsoft Office disk so I can reinstall it. I'm going to not bother with the file restoration, as it was mostly personal stuff anyway, and put the money towards a new lap top. So all in all, it's worked out fine.

If only the mysteriously attractive James Bond type NYC guys were as attracted to me as computer problems are, j/k. :)

It can take losing everything, to find everything

And then I realized, as I stood with my world, my life crushed and broken at my feet, that thing I'd learned months before but forgotten. I have a body, a heart, soul and mind and this is the place on which I need to rely. Not on the shaking, shifting superficial realities, but the deep core in which I've been afraid to look. Deep in that place where I am not perfect, not necessarily beautiful in any way or successful, but a collection of human, raw, real unshakable strength, ordinary like the sky.

Whatever governs this earth and the laws of gravity also governs me, and so with this adversity I understand that deep below the beautiful blue oceans lies a fiery lava, violent and unstable, and the perception that the universe is calm is a fragile myth. And I am a particle of all of this, a fragment of something large, violent, colliding, spectacular and much larger than my own limited thoughts.

As I shook, my earth shook, and exploding, destroying is not necessarily always a bad thing, as I watched all the things dear to me crumble to my feet, I was left standing. Clearly alone, which was both sad and powerful, like stepping out from behind the curtain to see I was my own Wizard of Oz.

And as sad as it was, my feet are strong enough to carry me across any sand, or rock or earth across which i need to travel, and so long as I can breathe and think and feel, I will do everything in my power to make my life and dreams real. I will not allow any illusions to steal that fuel from me. And I will not settle in temporary comforts, as inviting as those warm yellow windows look from a cold black night street, I will not trade.

No, Beneath my fears of losing it all, I always was the one standing underneath myself, holding it all up. And the foundations I believed were firmly under me, were really great dead weights balanced on thin porcelain arms, plaster dangerously close to cracking. So, I let go of the world and watched it all tumble to the ground and crumble off of my strained arms, my tight muscles and I finally relax. Just stand. Look around at what I still have, however little it is and I take one step barefoot in the dirt. In the sun. Perhaps without everything I need, but with myself, which is the strongest foundation. And from here,I build.

Hot day and pick-up soccer

Check out my snazzy new shin guards. When I was a kid they were ugly white plastic. Or if you were lucky, blue cloth with a sponge thing stuck in there. Now I sound like I'm 80...when I was a kid, we used pieces of brick for shin guards, etc.

Today was the first day in five months where I've shown my arms! My roomate shrieked that I HAD to go one the room because she'd just gotten sun burned up there! So I grabbed magazines and my phone. I sat up there and looked at the empire state building and watched my skin turn from albino to pasty shade #1. A good thing.

The city is alive now. It's waking up. The parks are full. I was warm today! I actually was relieved to go in a store and feel AC. It was great! Flowers in the parks. Kids running everywhre. Everyone sitting at outdoor cafes wearing big sunglasses. AWESOME.

I went to a meet up pick-up soccer game. The weather was GORGEOUS! At first the field was full w/ what looked like pro players. I asked if they were the meet up group. "the what?" "um...meet up group?" "I dunno. you can play though" the guy said in broken english. It was a violent game. One goal post got tipped over. Soon after, the cops came to break up a fight with one guy running away bloody. Hmm...Was this the meet up group? I was waling away pissed when a girl waved. The meet up group was sitting outside the fence moping. I didn't buy those shin guards for nothing.

"Wasn't there another field down there?" I said. There was talk it might be locked, fence-jumping may be involved, etc.

Still, they agreed to go. Fence was open. Field was too!

So we had about 12 people. I hadn't played soccer in 9 years. At first one of the guys asked if I played in grade school because I seemed at that "level." As I warmed up, I got better though. I eventually scored 5 goals, despite the bastards that didn't pass to me and would kick wild shots way too far from the goal. I hate guys like that. You can tell a LOT about someone from how they play soccer. I got knocked down once by the girl and again by a guy, but not badly.

One guy on the opposite team even complimented one of my goals, and he was a very good player.

WAS FUN!! :)

and last night we went salsa dancing for 5 HOURS straight at two places. It ROCKEd.

Good Video

I think this music video does a good job of showing what the city really looks like.