Lucky in Love 08-16-2008

It’s a gorgeous summer Saturday in New York, so this will have to be a quick post, as my bicycle and I are yearning for the sunshine. But before I go out a-frolicking, I want to report back to all of you, loyal readers, who have undoubtedly been AT THE ABSOLUTE EDGES OF YOUR SEATS wondering how my love life is going. So here’s the report:

I am on a romantic sabbatical, meaning that I am taking some time off of my normal romantic misadventures to think and to study, and to possibly publish a tawdry expose about each of my exes. Since this is the first time that I’ve been actively and wholly single in about a decade, I’m having a really self-indulgent time going to yoga and reading and riding my bike and napping, while changing jobs and moving apartments on the side. Still, I’m a little bored. To fill the time, I’ve spent hours upon hours slogging around in the sordid details of every single one of my crumbled love affairs, reviewing each ghastly breakup, and agonizing over a long history of love gone awry.

I’ve realized in this excrutiating and exhilerating exercise just how much I’ve learned from all these gorgeous and disastrous lover affairs, and I feel admittedly lucky and, surprisingly, have very few regrets.

Here are the top ten things that I’ve learned from my lovers over the years:

10. How to blanch a tomato

9. How to build a fire

8. How to surf (kind of)

7. How to roll a joint

6. How to merengue

5. How to strip and re-finish wood furniture

4. How to play the banjo

3. How to change a tire

2. How to build a bike

1. How to escape when being chased by wild turkeys or other fowl

Not bad, huh? Makes me feel like quite the renaissance woman.

I hope that all the survivors on the other side of those crashed-and-burned loves have tread off as well with some kind of new skill, something that they learned along the way. Because every time I change a tire, I grin ruefully at the memory of a sweet roadside kiss with a jack in my hand. And every time I’m being chased by wild turkeys…well, that hasn’t happened again. But if it does, I’ll remember a romantic Thanksgiving spent in the mountains of Arizona. And every time I slip the skin off a tomato and am left holding its exposed flesh gently in my palm, I feel a distinct and wonderful stretch in my heart that is remembering what it felt like to be in love for the first time.

And if that’s not lucky, I don’t know what is.

iCovet 07.19.2008

iCovet the iPhone 3G.

I know that I shouldn’t want it so badly, and that Apple’s whole manipulation of the supply and demand of this magical mystical new device is a pretty slimy endeavor. And that their exclusive contract and weird subsidy arrangement with AT&T is crappy. I understand that the business plan around the iPhone is based in building hype and exploiting emotions through the media, and I agree that capitalism is an evil, evil system, and that consumerism is the non-renewable and highly polluting fuel that feeds that system.

And still, iWant.
I’ve tried three times now to get the iPhone, undaunted by the 4 million year service agreement, unshaken by the $300 price tag, undeterred by the ominous reports of software failure and activation problems. What gets me are the lines.

I’ve started the standing-in-line process three times now, and lacked the tenacity needed for success. The first time was the day it first came out, and I went to the Apple store and waited for about 30 minutes behind about 648,000,000 other people, and then thought, “This is ridiculous. I’m not that trendy.” And figured I could wait five days.

Five days later, I woke up at 5:30 am and headed back to the Apple store, feeling more confident this time. The air was fresh and cool, and New York City seemed peaceful, full of promise and hope. I looked in the windows of Henri Bendel’s and stood in the shade of the Tiffany’s awning and felt an odd tingle in the back of my skull, sort of a mix of shame and bliss and patriotism. Or something.

And then I rounded the corner to where the Apple Store rests, like a beautiful clear cubic spaceship in the middle of 5th Avenue.

iMothership

But instead of the wondrous, gorgeous, spaceship that I have come to know and love, the scene on 5th avenue at 6:45 am on July 16 was remniscent of the scene in ET where the scientists have moved in and installed their scary science lab all around ET.

There were police barricades set up, and a red carpet, behind which there was a frenzied pen of photojournalists frantically snapping pictures of nothing. There was a jumping castle, which I still don’t understand. And there were thousands upon thousands of iPod flanked yuppies and geeksters waiting in a line that snaked back and forth in front of the Apple store like a roller coaster ride, and then roped down six blocks past FAO Schwartz.

These people are crazy. I was one of them.

I waited this time for closer to an hour, and moved maybe 15 feet during that time. Eventually, the shame became too great. I imagined trying to explain to someone who didn’t know about the iPhone what it was I was doing. The conversation in my head went something like this:

Imaginary curious passerby: Excuse me, ma’am, what are you waiting in line for? Is it for food? Medicine? A religious ceremony?

Me: No, I’m waiting for the iPhone 3G.

Imaginary curious passerby: Well, you must really need to make a call!

Me: Oh, I have a phone. And really, I hate talking on the phone. I never answer it. And I never listen to voicemail. But this is also an iPod.

Imaginary curious passerby: Oh! Well, you must really like music.

Me: Well, I have an iPod. But with this, you can send and receive email.

Imaginary curious passerby: Oh! Well, this is the communication of the future. You must have email!

Me: Right. I mean, I actually have 2 computers. But this has a GPS device, so I will always know where I am.

Imaginary curious passerby (laughing): Well, lady, it looks like you’ve been standing in the same place for a long time! I don’t know how you would get lost if all you do is wait in line for free gadgets!

Me: Oh, it’s not free. When all is said and done, I’ll probably drop $600 today on this.

Imaginary curious passerby: You are a silly, strange, and sad woman.

After this imaginary conversation, iCouldn’t stand it anymore. I left the line and went to work. And I’ve tried one more time since then, and still haven’t gotten within a half mile of the door of the store. But meanwhile, I keep seeing other people whip out their iPhones on the train and on the street and everywhere, and iAm seething with envy.

The iPhone 3G has been out for 7 full days now, and I am still texting away on my Samsung. Although I know that I will get the iPhone, I’m proud that I’ve set limits on what I am and am not willing to subject myself to in order to get one NOW. I am taking small steps away from the consumerist beast, and I am proud of those steps, tiny as they may be.

Besides, I’m going to Chicago for work this week, and I hear that you can get the iPhone there in only 2 hours. So if you get a call from me from a 312 area code, you can be pretty sure that:

This message was sent using my iPhone.

I am good at other things. 06.21.2008

I am a terrible driver. Those who know me well know this to be an inherently a part of who I am as my freckles or my metaphors or my double-edged exclamations of the word “Terrific!” I am a bad, bad, driver, and I should not drive. Period.

I think that it’s too bad that more bad drivers can’t own their deficiencies in this area. I mean, I’m good at other things; we all are. People are so comfortable confessing that they can’t cook, or that they have gruesome penmanship, or perhaps that they’ve never been very good at table tennis. But driving? For some reason, there’s a stigma. I’ve never met another self-proclaimed driving failure. In fact, it appears that the worse a driver is, the more he/she has to say about all the other motorists out there.

“People in this city just do not know how to drive.” Everyone in every city says that same thing. So I’m here to break down the shame and silence around poor motorism, and just own it. It’s true. I have driven in your city, and I do not know how to drive. I am a bad driver. I am worse in the rain. I am deadly in the snow. If you want to get somewhere with me in a car, let’s share a cab, or you can pick me up. Because I don’t want to be behind the wheel, and to be honest, no one else wants me there either. I AM GOOD AT OTHER THINGS.

Needless to say, I have to drive all the time for work. It’s part of the travel package: long flight, nice hotel, rental car, near death driving experience. Once again, I want to remind you: I AM GOOD AT OTHER THINGS.

My most recent trip to DC was a great example of why I shouldn’t drive. Although the trip was otherwise a great success, the driving part was a disaster from start to finish. I picked up the rental car at the train station, and they didn’t have the one I’d reserved. So, they offered me (with no other options) the “Free upgrade” into a much bigger car with a much bigger blind spot that I was guaranteed to be able to park absolutely nowhere. Because in addition to being a bad driver, I am a VERY BAD parker. But, I was tired and late and needed to get places, so I agreed.

The giant town car itself smelled like gym socks or jock straps or something else vaguely reminiscent of the boys’ cabin at summer camp, and it made me feel a little bit nauseous. Luckily, it was about 90 degrees and 150 percent humidity, so as soon as I started to drive, the smell just cooked right into my nostrils, as it had already baked into the upholstery, and the gross-smelling Sweatmobile and I became one and the same.

Sweatmobile and I started driving through the streets of DC, where, for some reason, all roads lead to the White House. Always. I don’t know how I always end up so lost and then found at good ol’ 1600 Pennsylvania, but I can tell you that there are very few places where I am unwilling to make an illegal u-turn, and that smack in front of the White House is one of them. I think that it could be construed as an act of terrorism or something else, and I can only fend of the Secret Service with my secret powers of jock-strap olfactory weapons for so long. So, I looped all the way around the White House not one, not two, but SEVEN TIMES over the course of my 24-hour stay in our nation’s fair capitol. (I did manage to pull off the illegal u-turns in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the EPA, and the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters. And aside from almost mowing over a few VERY old DARs in pearls and pantssuits, I did just fine).

After cutting off a few taxis and careening through a crosswalk full of senators, Sweatmobile and I finally seemed to be headed in the right direction. Of course, it took me an extra half hour to get to my hotel because every time I got in one of those roundabouts, I had to drive around and around it in circles for 10 minutes before summing up the courage to swerve Sweatmobile’s not-quite-nimble tank-like trunk across three lanes and out of the roundabout. Finally, I arrived at my hotel, shaken and white-knuckled and wishing for a Metropass, and I only had a few minutes to pull myself together before I had to head back out to my event that night.

Of course, I got lost, but it wasn’t quite as bad this time, the ruckus of rush hour having ended, and the tree-lined streets of Maryland feeling quite idyllic, in moments, as I rolled through stop signs and stopped vaguely to think in the middle of the intersections. Since I drive pretty much 40 miles an hour everywhere, all the time, I had some awkwardly profane interactions with the cars behind me on the highway, and maybe got a fist-shake or two as I careened through the school zones, but overall, it was a pretty uneventful trip. I arrived at my destination, and parked deftly in as few as 30 moves, leaving my Sweatmobile propped up on someone’s lawn and lurched awkwardly out into the residential street. Later that night, I offered a ride home to my organization’s president, who commented cheerfully that my car smelled like a locker room, and was gracious enough to ignore the red lights I ran and the near bus-collision in Dupont Circle.

“You’ll probably want to go ahead and turn out of the roundabout here,” he suggested carefully, after a few laps around, and I did one or two more circles for good measure and then screeched to the right and landed us in front of his hotel.

In the morning, I took the Metro. And I had a great work meeting, and then I put together a stellar outfit and wrote a really nice letter to a friend. Proving, as I said, that I am GOOD AT OTHER THINGS.