Vickilicious

For once in my embarrassingly long history of blogging reticence, my reason for not posting wasn't some vague "I'm sooo busy watching marathons of New Girl and The Mindy Project on Hulu" or "I'm saaaaad, I don't want to talk about it," but an actual technological impediment to being able to get onto this site and write.

Back in March, I was home sick from work with pretty intense vertigo (long story, but I was at the point of taking Dramamine and wearing Sea-Bands around my apartment), and I had my beloved MacBook Pro on my table, trying to do some work (yes really, I had our CRM website open, it was nuts). I decided to microwave some Chinese leftovers for lunch (it was a sick day - don't look at me like that) and as I was carrying them to the table, I got overwhelmingly dizzy and felt myself swooning. Not wanting to knock out my teeth on the table or chair or otherwise damage my face or head, I tried to shove the plate I was carrying onto the table to get my hands free, and of course I upended an entire container of sweet and sour sauce directly onto the keyboard of my laptop.

As I hit the ground muttering a string of profanities, I distinctly remember thinking, "Seriously, Vicki? The stickiest substance known to mankind?!?!"

I won't belabor the rest of the saga now because I plan to write a triumphant "How I Recovered My Beloved MacBook" post, just as soon as I get around to recovering it. The relevant details for now are that it kept working long enough to back up all my files and to watch episodes of New Girl and The Mindy Project on Hulu while I angrily took apart all the keys and researched how to clean it (didn't work). Eventually I took it to the Apple store, and they wanted $800 to open it up because they assumed liquid damage would have reached the logic board. Furious and penniless, I took it back home and got brave, taking the whole thing apart myself (good God, all the teensy tiny screws!), discovered that the liquid damage had NOT reached the logic board or breached the glorified plastic sticker sealing the keyboard portion from the delicate stuff underneath (disheartening design flaw much?), and I separated it into about fifty thousand parts with the intent to clean it all and put it back together.

Which is where it still is because good Lord, sweet and sour sauce is SO sticky and it is such a daunting prospect to put all those tiny pieces back together and pray it works.

I started using the Lenovo X60s that I had from 2007, which had been banished to an armoire in my parents' house after the hard drive crashed completely and irrecoverably in the middle of my graduate thesis. I completely wiped and reformatted its hard drive, agonized over having to go back to a Windows machine (it's dreadful), and daily think how much I dislike its buzzing ineffective fans, tiny blurry screen, and utter unreliability (though I shouldn't say anything too cruel since it is, for now, my only functional computer).

(This is, admittedly, more of a saga than I intended, sorry.)

So while all of my files are presumably safely stored on an external hard drive, I was not able to back up any of my browser settings because bloody Chrome kept having Flash-induced hissy fits and crashing like mad. "Who cares about bookmarks?" I thought angrily, "that's what Google is for!"

But I had all of my passwords to all of my websites saved in my browser and evidently nowhere else. Or maybe somewhere, on a file that I can't access because I don't even have Excel on this Lenovo. That shouldn't seem like such a big deal, right? That's what password recovery links are for, right?

Hahaha, no. I had done a lot of whacky things when I was first installing MovableType, and it's been... an ordeal. I also let all of my web hosting expire for a little bit (whoops), then had to recover my domain, and on and on.

The happy conclusion is that after quite a bit of back end database reconfiguring and a healthy amount of cursing, I have regained access to my own blog. Hooray!

And I plan to actually post more than once every few months because I have also been fixing a lot of back end things in the rest of my life too.

When I first graduated from Trinity, I was stunned to discover I could actually enjoy reading again. With new found focus and enthusiasm, I started a list of "Books I've read since college" on my old website, but I eventually abandoned this list (and pursuit) when I reentered grad school, followed by my time at Pace (yep, I just kept going to college).

Having finally (I think) left college for the foreseeable future this spring, I thought it would behoove me to periodically (I'm thinking seasonally or annually) summarize the books I've read, enjoyed etc. I'm leaning heavily on Goodreads to refresh my memory here, and I encourage you to go be my friend on there if you aren't already.

Instrumental in what I hope to be a dramatic improvement in my reading habits is the lovely Kindle Paperwhite my brother gave me for my last birthday. I used to be emphatically opposed to e-readers, and I still have an absurd, delectable amount of books in my apartment, but for novels and straight text books, I've rapidly become a total Kindle convert. I'll possibly ramble on and on about it another time.

So.....

Books I've Read Since College, Spring 2012-present

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind, 255 pg., Complete.

I gave the dubious honor of being the first thing I read upon escaping from chemistry textbooks to this weird and yet sickly fascinating book. I spent most of my time reading it feeling queasy and mildly to completely disgusted, and I have to give credit to the forceful efficacy of Suskind's writing that despite my literal horror, I couldn't put it down. The details are fetishistically, meticulously layered to create a viscerally chilling and overwhelming experience that continued to shock even when I knew what was going to happen. The ending fell apart and felt forced to me. It seemed unnecessary and overwrought, and I kept thinking how much more satisfying I found the book before reading the final tacked-on pages that served neither as resolution or relief. Still, a pretty engaging and surprisingly enjoyable creepfest.

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon, 288 pg., Complete.

Ironically, I was so disturbed by Perfume that I sought refuge in a lighter murder story. But this was a playful murder mystery, read as a guilty pleasure because it is set in Venice and Commissario Guido Brunetti is such a loveable, reasonable character. I totally guessed the gist of the crime and the guilty parties partway through, but I enjoyed the way the story was put together and I loved the richness of Venetian detail. Donna Leon has written dozens of Brunetti mysteries, all set in Venice and nearby, and I have it in mind to read these as palette cleansers when I need a jaunt to La Serenissima.

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them, by Donovan Hohn, 416 pg., Complete.

This book was recommended to me by my mother and brother, both of whom said it was excellent and engaging and wonderful. I later learned that my mother heard about it on NPR, on the same broadcast that piqued my friend Hope's interest, and that no one I know had at the time read past the first chapter. It is their loss because this was by far one of the most fascinating, beautifully written nonfiction books I've read in a long time. I probably had more patience than most for the digressions into the science of plastics because the dream of pursuing a PhD in macromolecular chemistry and materials science was still fresh and forefront in my mind (sigh). I love reading about the sea despite the abject terror it typically incites in me, and this book really went at every subtopic of driftology and the story of these bath toys with exquisite, obsessive detail. I truly loved this book.

The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State by David Stradling, 58/277 pg., Incomplete.

I bought this book when I was taking a wonderful class on the History and Geography of New York at Pace. It reads very much like a reference book, but a solid, nicely written one. It fared unfavorably in comparison with Moby-Duck, but then again so does all nonfiction. I think you have to be as obsessed with the history of New York as I was when I started reading it, and admittedly I put it aside because I was craving a story and feeling exhausted with onslaughts of facts in the mornings. I definitely want to read the rest of it.

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 315 pg., Incomplete (about 150 pg.).

I wanted so badly to like this book. I wanted to love the characters and their idiosyncrasies, to drink in all the nuance and detail of the time and place, to lavish in Fitzgerald's language and style, and ugh, I just got so annoyed every time I picked it up. I Tweeted about my disappointment in myself, and I suspected the book wasn't getting a fair shake because I was so dreadfully sick and impatient in a codeine haze while I was reading it. I conveniently lost track of the book for a few months, giving myself what apparently was a much needed break from Dick Diver and the insipid Rosemary. I suppose I'll end up giving this one another chance sometime, but I can't say I'm looking forward to it yet.

Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, 209 pg., Complete.

In seeking the opposite of a sappy, meandering love story, I picked up DeLillo, and I actually really enjoyed this book. It was tightly-written, if slightly overindulgent in its structural conceit, and I loved how much I disliked the protagonist while simultaneously thirsting for every scrap of information about him. I keep thinking about the storytelling mechanisms that were in play, and more and more I have to admire the way DeLillo let things express themselves (that is a shamelessly stolen line from the book). I wish I hadn't chased it with another DeLillo because this book was a solid standalone.

White Noise by Don DeLillo, 326 pg., Complete.

Uff, I wish I hadn't read this book. I was on such a DeLillo high after Cosmopolis that I figured I should go straight for what most people called his masterpiece. I was expecting something biting, incisive, contemplative, and exciting, and instead I got a maddeningly slow and ultimately pointless story about characters I could barely stand, which felt like some sort of hazy fever dream. It's probably my fault - I was nearly finished and getting impatient, when I glanced at the blurb on the back that declared it DeLillo's "funniest" book. "Funny?" I thought, bewildered, "Oh God, this is supposed to be funny?!" I have always had a problem with satire (I will own that it is one of my weaknesses as a reader) that if it hits too close to a believable description and doesn't add up to anything profound, I get furious for having my time wasted. Whether I am reading a tediously written scene intended to illustrate a hopelessly bourgeois family's typical evening to poke fun at them or not, I'm still stuck reading it. I still have to get to know them, even if it's to deride them. My default mechanism is empathy for characters, no matter what role they play in the story, but I found myself positively loathing every single character in this book by the end, not caring what happened, and just wishing it would end. Maybe I was asking too much of it, or maybe I just didn't get it, but I found this book pretty terribly unsatisfying, with a handful of interesting details that stuck out.

Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, 270 pg., Complete

This book was actually the first I read entirely on my Kindle. I was such a fan of Freakonomics that I thought it would only get better. I was wrong. This book was okay, but not amazing. I started to suspect some academic laziness and cherry-picking of data, but not enough to care. As entertainment during a stressful time, it was fine, but I will admit that when I reached the end (having not yet figured out how to display the percentage completion on the Kindle), my first reaction was, "Oh, that's it?" I think that aptly summarizes my experience with the whole book.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, 636 pg., Complete.

This book was easily the best I've read in five years, and it may be one of my favorite books of all time. What a beautiful, wonderfully written, transcendent book. I read a pretty great profile on Chabon that described him as having a "surfeit of empathy," which caused him to develop affection and compassion for all of his characters. That deep and gentle understanding of the human condition was evident in every detail, every scene of this epic (and I mean that in the real way, not the internet way), sprawling story. I got completely lost in this book, falling head over heels in love along with the characters, tearing up unabashedly on the 4 train at their losses, thinking about them while I wasn't reading the book and worrying how things would turn out for them. I can't get over what an extraordinarily well-written, perfect book this was, and I've been enthusiastically recommending it to anyone who will listen. Including you.

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, 104 pg., Complete

My family and I went to see a pretty delightful production of A Christmas Carol at the Count Basie Theater, and I got all mushy and Christmas-minded. My reference (and still favorite) version of this story is the Muppet movie, so it was nice to give Dickens a proper read.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, 647 pg., Complete.

I have always loved Rushdie, and though I "read" this book my freshman year of college, I didn't actually read it past the first few chapters that I skimmed. In my defense, I got sick with scarlet fever and missed a lot of class - by the time I returned to that lit seminar, my professor said not to worry because no one had anything interesting to say about Rushdie and he suspected no one read it in full, so they were concentrating on the other books on the syllabus for the rest of the semester. I have had a weird guilt complex toward this book since then, feeling like I'd been lazy and half-assed and that my class collectively discouraged my professor from a book he seemed to love. Guilt assuaged, I truly adored this book. I wish I had taken some more time to read about the history of India because I imagine there are tons of allusions and clever details I missed, but I was so greedy and excited to keep moving through the story that I didn't want to stop. As with Kavalier and Clay, I loved the sprawling, literal transportation from Kashmir, all around India, Pakistan, and eventually back home to Bombay. My ignorant western impressions of India were confirmed, that it is every bit as complex, corrupt, extravagantly complicated, tangled, and beautiful as I imagined. For the past few years, I've vastly preferred magical realism to any other type of literature, and Rushdie is one of its true masters. This book is another true masterpiece, and I would highly recommend it.

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon, ~172/465 (37%), Currently Reading.

Since Kavalier and Clay, I have wanted to read every word Chabon has ever written, but I need to be careful not to constantly compare the two. So far, I love the richness of detail and tenderness of characterization just as much as I expected I would, although the story is not as immediately gripping yet. Still, I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to how it progresses.

So there we are. From last May to now, I've read somewhere around 3531 pages, almost exclusively on the subway and ferry and occasionally before falling asleep. 2787 fiction, 744 nonfiction.

Best book, hands down, was Kavalier and Clay, and the most regrettable is probably a toss-up between White Noise and Tender is the Night. I suspect the latter was a victim of circumstance and that I'll be back at some point extolling its virtues, so the ignominious title goes to DeLillo.

Somehow the Kindle makes me monogamous to books in a way I've never been before (I usually juggle 8 or 9 books at a time, finishing one rarely). I am still an agonizingly slow reader, but I'm enjoying it more and more, either through better choices or a slow progression into relaxation and allowing myself pleasure in words again. I deeply envy the friends who I see tearing through books at a comparatively breakneck pace, but my brain is only going to move at the pace it does.

The only hard part, I suppose, is the agonizing decision of what to read next.

(Except for once, that's not true. I know exactly what I want to read next this time, and I'm ridiculously excited to get my grabby little hands on it. We'll talk about it soon.)

Once upon a time I knew a guy who used to ask people he met, "So... Rolling Stones or Beatles?" Years before the This or That tendency, it was a surprisingly effective way to learn about people.

Occasionally I add items to my mental list, and the other day when I was doing a really lot of highway driving, I realized I had developed a pretty decent temperament sorter from seemingly arbitrary but actually fairly telling preferences. Please feel encouraged to use these at parties, on dates etc.:

• Beatles / Rolling Stones
  
  
• James Joyce / William Faulkner
  
  
• Carly Simon / Carole King
  
  
• Steve McQueen / John Wayne
  
  
• Led Zeppelin / Pink Floyd
  
  
• Almonds / Pecans
  
  
• Black leather / Brown leather
  
  
• Football / Baseball
  
  
• Cats / Dogs
  
  
• Silver jewelry / Gold jewelry
  
  
• Green / Blue
  
  
• Running / Bicycling
  
  
• Jeans / Corduroys
  
  
• Stripes / Plaid
  
  
• Lager / IPA
  
  
• Whiskey / Rum
  
  
• Swiss cheese / Cheddar cheese
  
  
• Heidegger / Sartre
  
  
• Italy / France
  
  
• Flip-flops / Sneakers
  
  
• Olives / Pickles
  
  
• (For fans of 90s music) : Pearl Jam / Nirvana
  
  
• (ditto) Soundgarden / Smashing Pumpkins
  
  
• Chocolate chip cookie / Brownie
  
  
• Sweater / Hoodie
  
  

Some slightly New York-centric ones:

• Yankees / Mets
  
• Jets / Giants
  
• MoMA / Whitney (I amended this one - it used to be MoMA / Guggenheim)
  
• Williamsburg / LES
  
• Subway / Bus
  
• Starbucks / Dunkin Donuts
  
• Urban Outfitters / American Apparel (this one is for which is worse)

Useful favorites that tend to reveal fascinating things:

• Dinosaur
• Scientist
• Meal to cook v. Meal to eat
• Decade in the 20th century
• Time period in art history
• Song or band in high school
• Book as a child
• James Bond movie
• Concept or formula in math or physics
• Planet or star
• Month
• Holiday
• Sport to play v. Sport to watch
  
• Olympic event
• Musical instrument
  
• Chemical element
  
• Caffeinated beverage
  
• Superpower
  
• Breakfast item

I guess I have a tendency to quiz people, but the key is that there are no right or wrong answers (except sometimes "Neither" in the dichotomies). If you have a particularly good sorter, I'd love to keep expanding this list.

In a word? Challenging.

In three words? Really bloody challenging.

I didn't actually intend to stop posting in August, but some sort of haze or fog descended on my brain, which hasn't honestly fully lifted yet. A soft-around-the-edges sense of exhaustion and weariness and constant aching in my neck that attenuates in unexpected and startling moments when I'm wholly unprepared to deal with serious thoughts.

If I'm being honest, I'm not dealing with things well. And 2012 has been the Year of Things to Deal With.

In August I was watching my parents' pets and house while they were on a trip to Africa. I was commuting by SeaStreak and usually getting home to catch spectacular sunsets in the Atlantic Highlands Marina. Smoochie, Otto, and I were watching the Olympics and crying at sappy commercials. One night, I was sitting in an armchair, my half-assed dinner of cereal and Diet Coke feeling surprisingly satisfying, beginning to doze and thinking I should get up to iron my dress for work, when something hit me, hard. It was such a simple, stark, quiet thought that it was fully inescapable.

"I can't believe she's really gone."

The sentence repeated over and over, until some sort of floodgate opened in my heart. I had been bottling up all of my grief and frustration and confusion about my aunt's death, literally saying, "I can't think about that right now," as if some better time to mourn would come one day. Something about sitting in my parents' house, completely and totally alone on a summer night, crying my eyes out with no one to explain it to, made me feel so desolately alone and empty inside. I haven't really shaken that feeling, even though I've talked with my friends and family and Smokey at great length since then. I have had some disconnect, where words and gestures fail, and I've continued feeling broken and adrift, at baffling and paradoxical times. It's not just my aunt or the upsetting aftermath that threatens to wreck that entire side of the family (if it hasn't already); it's something deeper and scarier and more intensely uncomfortable that lurks around the fringes of my consciousness each morning and haunts me in my sleep.

I used to talk with friends about depression and say that sometimes, it makes the most sense to be depressed. In the strictly pragmatic sense, sometimes you need to feel incredibly sad and dissatisfied to make changes in life. If we were constantly content and comfortable, why make art? Why improve things, or solve problems? Why not just enjoy sunny afternoons in hammocks until our time winds out?

So in the beginning of 2012, I was pretty unhappy in school, but still content knowing that it was adding up to something. I resolved to stop whining or making things unnecessarily hard on myself, just suck it up and do my work and get on with life. As I finally got my train chugging on its new line, I got blindsided and completely derailed by a stupid and immensely frustrating financial situation, and I haven't gotten over that in the slightest. I know I am damn lucky to have found my job when I did, and I mostly really like it, but there are days when I feel like all my education and experience has been a complete waste.

I faltered in my resolve to stop falling in love with guys who were all wrong for me or get carried away in escapist fantasies. I ignored countless flashing red signs of BAD IDEA and went with my feelings, then I broke both of our hearts when I called it off. A little later I gave in to his pleading, tried it again, and soon after called it off for good. A few weeks ago, I ran into him on the 4 train, when we were both running late for work, and it was genuinely pleasant to see one another and talk. He wasn't bitter or mean or cold - he was just himself, which is what I always loved about him.

He's going to be fine, and I have no doubt he'll find someone who wants the same things in life as he does, and he'll be immensely happy. When I broke up with him for good, he wished that I find a good man with a kind heart, and I awkwardly stammered, "You mean another one, right?" Every day I walk around knowing that I gave up on someone who loved me, who sincerely wanted to marry me and have children and make a life together. I know there were lots of intellectual and pragmatic reasons why it was a terrible idea to be with him, and I still know breaking up was the right thing to do, but that doesn't soften the sting of it.

Naturally, I imagine myself alone forever now, and I think about things I'll do with my time instead of being in love or having children. Healthy coping mechanisms have always been my strong suit.

Even I am tired of rehashing sadness and loss, but 2012 was unrelenting on that front. I spent a lot of time sick, like a ridiculous amount, either with the same bronchitis that kept coming back or a coincidental series of colds and flus that kept putting me back on antibiotics and codeine for the months of September, October, and November, with a milder dalliance with convalescence and fainting in the beginning of December (who ever could have predicted low blood pressure and anemia after three months of soup and cold pizza?).

Being constantly sick was pocket change compared to the crushing blow dealt by Hurricane Sandy, which deadbeat my parents' house, flooding their yard and basement with chest-deep water. They lost the furnace, water heater, and electrical panel, and my brother was champion of the storm, rewiring the house and putting in countless hours removing all of our ruined stuff. I stayed in Staten Island, contending poorly with commuting by bus from my freezing cold and dark apartment just to have a few hours at work, where it was warm and I could charge my phone. My brother and I both celebrated our birthdays without power, taking the coldest showers of our lives, and my sweet parents kept apologizing, as if they had anything to do with something so much bigger than all of us. On my actual birthday, in the hour I waited between express and local bus transfers at the side of a road, I decided to get a cheeseburger and fries so I'd have something warm to eat. Standing shivering in the insufficient lee of a bus shelter, I was feeling pretty dreadfully sorry for myself and my family, when I noticed just how crisp and flavorful the fries were. Everything was that way - this was really exceptional for fast food - and I started laughing that absurd, hysterical laughter that comes in the wake of awful things.

My hysterics grew as I chanted the litany of things I'd lost to myself. Pigments and paints I'd hand-carried back from Venice. Every film negative of every photograph I've ever taken. Every fresco or mosaic I've made, illuminated manuscripts, thousands of dollars' worth of art supplies, countless hours of sketchbooks, paintings, dyeing projects, books, love letters, softball gloves, handbags, ticket stubs, and all the nonsensical ephemera that seems important enough to pack in boxes and keep. Laughing harder than could possibly seem sane to an outside observer, I said out loud, "I didn't lose my family!" and I danced in relief that we may have lost a really lot of stuff, but we didn't lose each other. What else actually matters?

That night, I decided that the only thing that would make me happy was a hot bath. I spent a ridiculous amount of time boiling water by candlelight, banking on still tenuous ideas about physics and heat transfer through water, willing my stupid drafty bathroom not to ruin my plan. I drank an entire bottle of wine and took the greatest bath of my life by candlelight. Two days later, I was in New Jersey with my family, mucking out the rest of the basement and eating chili that my father and I prepared on the wood stove. I kept thinking that if all I wanted in the world was a hot bath and to be with my family, I was damn lucky that I had literally gotten everything I wanted.

In spite of - or perhaps because of - so many challenges this year, there were some really great things too. The soul thrives in contrast, and the lower the valleys, the more soaring and transcendent the peaks seemed.

Art and culture became vital and essential to my survival, instead of just happy ways to spend a day. I had some of my favorite days and nights ever in New York, and I finally started to feel that this city is my home. So here is the year according to my calendar (of course not including little dinners and drinks, which are seriously the sustenance of my soul lately):

January

• helped my brother move into a new apartment, which was one of the more amusing days I've spent with him and marked our introduction to Spooky Ghost
• Faust and The Enchanted Island at the Met
• War Horse at the Lincoln Center Theater, the best night of theater of my life
• NYC Ballet : The Steadfast Tin Soldier / Le Tombeau de Couperin / Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux / Who Cares?; Donizetti Variations / Polyphonia / Ocean's Kingdom
• met and started dating Mustafa

February

• This Will Destroy You with A Far Cry and Slow Six at Merkin Concert Hall (amazing concert with my dear friend John)
• NYC Ballet : Allegro Brillante / Russian Seasons / Zakouski / Stravinsky Violin Concerto; Romeo and Juliet
• Ernani at the Met
• an Arabic poetry reading at the other Met with Penelope
• a visit to the Staten Island Museum and Historic Richmond Town, obsessing over the history of Staten Island for my History and Geography of New York class (one of the best I've ever taken)
• my first "real" date with Mustafa at Enoteca Maria, followed by many other perfect dates

March

• Don Giovanni and Macbeth at the Met
• lunch and a visit to see the Renoirs at the Frick with my awesome cousin Desirée

  

• a lovely visit with my dear friend Kelly (how did we not take any pictures??)
• Shake Shack and the Black Keys at Madison Square Garden on an unseasonably warm, perfect night with Penelope:

  

• Miike Snow at the Music Hall of Williamsburg (amazing)
• my family's St. Patrick's Day party, one of the best yet
• SPRING BREAAAAAK (during which I worried enormously about Biochemistry)

April

• Manon and La Traviata at the Met
• SBTRKT at Terminal 5, where I danced my face off (much needed)
• Alabama Shakes at the Bowery Ballroom, with my whole family :

  

• presentation of our semester-long Biochemistry research project on Glutamate dehydrogenase in T. vaginalis, which my lovely partner and I crushed (if I'm being completely immodest but factually accurate)
• celebration of my Grandma Jean's 80th birthday with my mom's family

May

• Neon Indian at Terminal 5 (more face-dancing-off, again much-needed)
• NYC Ballet : In the Night / The Cage / Andantino / In G Major; Serenade / Firebird / Symphony in C
• American Ballet Theater: Giselle, La Bayedere
• the crushing realization that I would not be able to continue in school and the subsequent panic and flailing about to get my resume up to date and submitted for jobs; the solidification of my resolve over way too many coconut margaritas, where I declared to my mother that I would definitely, without question, get a job that week and then our HR person called me for my first interview

June

• ABT : Onegin, Swan Lake
• NYC Ballet : A Midsummer Night's Dream
• at the Count Basie, Buddy Guy & Jonny Lang; Crosby, Stills & Nash
• second interview, third in-person interview, and job offer a half hour after I left (booyah); started my lovely job
• lost my Aunt Elise in the second week of my new job, tried really hard not to fall apart and (as you can see above) have been mostly unsuccessful with that whole repressing-emotions bit

July

• saw no fireworks for Independence Day because WTF, Red Bank
• Concerts : Guided by Voices / The Pains of Being Pure at Heart / The War on Drugs / Cloud Nothings in Central Park, Beach House in Central Park, The Wallflowers at the Stone Pony

  

• Tchaikovsky Festival and the New York Philharmonic Concert in the Park, which thoroughly ignited by obsession for the symphony
• summer break from work (I know!)
• taking care of the pets and house in New Jersey while my parents were in Africa

August

• one of the best exhibits I've seen in years, if not ever, Wu Guanzhong at the Asia Society
• summer Fridays, which quickly became Prosecco Fridays
• Jason Mraz at the PNC (yeah right, Garden State) Arts Center
• the day that started with the most exciting text I think I've ever gotten, when my dear friend Hope said she had a very strong feeling she was going to have a baby that day and the beautiful Lilian Jane was born!

(Has thoroughly mastered side-eye already.)

September

• the beginning of my failure to fully move back to Staten Island after so much of the summer in Jersey (I still haven't technically unpacked my last suitcase yet)
• my friends Dan and Emily welcomed the adorable Megan Elizabeth into the world
• NYC Ballet : Scherzo à la Russe, Divertimento from "Le Baiser de la Fée," Danses Concertantes, Firebird
• my first gooey, disgusting sickness that took me out of commission for most of the month

October

• James Iha and Milagres at the Mercury Lounge
• NY Philharmonic : Tchaikovsky's Little Russian Symphony and Nielsen's Flute and Violin Concertos; Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducting Symphonie fantastique
• Otello at the Met
• NYC Ballet: Two Hearts, Les Carillons
• The Walkmen at Terminal 5 for my birthday (thank you, Penelope!)
• I got to see Hope and Kristian and meet the little LJ in Brooklyn!
• my second gooey, disgusting sickness
• Hurricane Sandy, ugh.

November

• my 31st birthday (see above) and my brother's 33rd
• the tremendous and wonderful reelection of Barack Obama!
• Le Nozze di Figaro and Un Ballo in Maschera at the Met
• David Bazan at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, Aerosmith at MSG
• that awesome day when Toledo Edison restored power to my parents' house and we had a Diana Ross dance party to celebrate
• Thanksgiving at my Aunt Jeannine's, where we were all truly, deeply, intensely thankful to be together
• my third gooey, disgusting sickness, this time much less severe but no less annoying than the previous two

December

• La Clemenza di Tito at the Met (and Les Troyens will be on the 29th)
• a benefit concert for Sandy relief at Terminal 5 featuring Cults, The Antlers, Grizzly Bear, and Sleigh Bells
• delivery and assembly of my beloved new elliptical machine!
• a lovely and thought-provoking visit with my friend Andrew from Florida
• A Christmas Carol at the Count Basie, followed by a day of cookie baking and tree-trimming, which put us all thoroughly in the Christmas spirit
• NY Philharmonic : André Watts and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2; Handel's "Messiah"

I realize there is still a little bit of December left, and it would be cynical to throw the towel in on the year already. I can see that there were a lot of really great things that happened this year while I was preoccupied with the handful of very heavy ones. I can also see that at some point I got overwhelmed and stopped taking pictures, which is as frustrating as it is out of character. I need to either fix my good camera or sort out my issues with my current roster.

I learned a lot of friends were pregnant by pictures of occupied uteruses on Facebook, which is honestly never going to stop being weird to me. I learned other friends were getting engaged by Instagram photos of their rings, which don't benefit from nostalgia filters if it's shiny new news. All snark aside, I've seen family and friends find the loves of their lives and pair up in ways that restore my faith in the universe. And some people in my life have had years about as difficult, or shall we say challenging as mine.

Every year I say I'm going to be better about keeping track of things, organizing my time and space better, paying attention to small moments, connecting with people. I'm always sincere when I say it, but I usually know in the back of my mind that my resolve will peter out and I'll end up drinking too much and sleeping in front of the fire mulling over regrets.

So I make no promises except that I'm going to try harder to find the beauty in everyday experiences. To find some glimmer of joy and fascination in every day, and to try to figure out what's going on in my heart that it keeps feeling choked and closed.

All things considered, that's a pretty big challenge for 2013.

Lately I feel like this blog could be accurately subtitled "Fun Things I Did with Penelope," as our schedules and inclinations have synched perfectly for the first time in months (years?). When we used to work together, we celebrated the end of the week (which was paradoxically our busiest, most demanding day) with Bitchin' Fridays, consistently my favorite part of the week.

Now it turns out my job has summer hours on Fridays from break until Labor Day, where instead of getting out at 5:30, we get out at 3. I know, right?? Pretty freaking sweet. Determined to take advantage of these days, especially when they've coincided with P having afternoons off, I've had some pretty spectacular Fridays lately.

Our first was one of the all-time best. We grabbed a bottle of prosecco and Shake Shack to go, then picnicked in Central Park for the free New York Philharmonic concert. I was recently obsessed with the philharmonic, having attended an all-Tchaikovsky performance that Monday. The music was incredible, and I couldn't have imagined a more perfect way to enjoy a summer evening, surrounded by thousands of other New Yorkers, sipping prosecco, startling to see fireflies come out. Oh, and then there were fireworks too.

There was something so magical about seeing the fireworks over the lit-up skyline at the southern border of the park. I felt this sense of connectedness and home in this city, where hearing Alec Baldwin in real life made perfect sense (he gave the welcome address) and knowing that everyone else around us, thousands and thousands of people, read or heard the same thing I did and thought, "Yeah, that sounds like a nice thing to do on Friday." It made me fall in love with this city and its people all over again.

Our next bitchin' Friday included celebration of some super exciting news (it's not my news, so I can't spill it here yet). We met at the Asia Society, to catch the last day of the phenomenal Wu Guanzhong exhibit, "Revolutionary Ink." I have much, much more to say about that exhibit, but it should suffice to say it was one of the best I've ever seen and inspiring in countless ways.

(If you know the city, this photograph is a huge hint.)

I had a bottle of prosecco tucked in my bag (look, we really like prosecco), so we took to the park to drink outside. Foolishly, because I was in a big rush and just asked the liquor store guy for "the driest one you have," I didn't notice that the bottle I'd gotten had a spago closure (that annoying cork and string situation), and we needed a bottle opener. Penelope laughingly pointed out that they serve wine at Shake Shack, and we talked ourselves into walking across the park and getting dinner. I mean, twist my arm, right.

We happened upon Strawberry Fields, which for all the years I've lived in the city, I don't think I'd ever gotten around to visiting in person. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect, flowers arranged in a peace sign over the "Imagine" mosaic, hippies surreptitiously smoking pot and strumming acoustic guitars, people queuing up to take photos, occasionally of themselves making peace signs.

I was perhaps excessively amused when a little kid started tipping over the framed photographs of John Lennon and grabbing at the various things people left at the memorial.

Let me be the one to tell you, if you don't already know, that prosecco and Shake Shack are a match made in heaven. We already knew this from our picnic in the park, but man, it really is just perfect. We talked and laughed for hours and I still got back to the southern tip of Manhattan in time to take the last ferry back to New Jersey. We were both blown away by the art we saw, the loveliness of the park in the late afternoon / early evening, and of course we were delighted to have the time to spend excitedly talking about the future and giggling over the past.

This past Friday, we had plans to sip prosecco on the rooftop of the Met (Have you spotted a theme in our plans? We really like prosecco.) but the sky fell out while I was still at work, and neither of us wanted to chance the forecast for continued thunderstorms. The decadence of rooftop cocktails comes in part from an abundance of time and an absence of demands, the ability to just enjoy being, without glancing constantly at the clouds to see if they're turning.

Instead we met on the Lower East Side, beginning with gelato outside. I've been obsessed with half chocolate half raspberry all summer, and Gelato Ti Amo was pretty near perfect. If you use Scoutmob, by the way (which you really, really should), they currently have a free cone deal, which I only discovered after we'd purchased ours. I've filed that one away for future reference, though.

The weather held up (argh), and while we felt like chumps for forgoing the Met, we both enjoyed relaxing and chatting as the afternoon settled into the evening. When it turned toward dinner time, we discovered a terrific restaurant a few blocks away. It happened they had a 50% off deal on Scoutmob (do I sound like a shill yet? I don't get anything out of mentioning this, I just think it was really cool), so we thought it would be good to try a new place. And what a terrific decision that turned out to be!

I seriously love places where you can sit outside on the sidewalk, probably because it reminds me so much of Italy. The Lower East Side has no shortage of such places, but it can be tough to find one that's tucked away enough from traffic, doesn't get mobbed with pedestrians, and actually has really good food. Three of Cups ticked all the boxes, and it was such a pleasure to sip wine, laugh hysterically, and over-indulge in crazy delicious food.

When I first met Penelope, I asked if she thought it was weird that I liked taking pictures of food. Not only did she not think it was weird, but she admitted that she did it too, and we've both unabashedly done so all the time since. So of course, you get to see just how much we overdid it (yes, after eating gelato. I had a tough week).

We shared extraordinary, massive arancini, with fresh ricotta and delectable marinara.

We both got papardelle in a mushroom ragu with prosciutto and truffle oil. It was as extraordinary as it sounds. I've long believed truffle oil is Nature's MSG, and they were quite generous with it. I have to appreciate the very Italianness of a place that serves perfect rosemary focaccia with white truffle infused olive oil right out of the gates and keeps pushing truffles throughout the meal. One of the first times we were in Italy together, Penelope and I both commented on how abundant truffles were in the Tuscan dishes we were eating, even though the peak of the Piedmont season is the fall (how delighted was I to meet someone who knows those facts off the top of her head??). We joked that the chefs of Volterra were cleaning out their pantries in anticipation of the next harvest, and I've associated super rich truffle dishes with summer since then.

You'd think after such a rich meal, there'd be no room for dessert, but you'd be completely wrong. I was hypnotized by the description of a special blackberry panna cotta from the moment we sat down, and I was going to find a way to suffer through it.

It was positively heavenly. Panna cotta is one of those desserts that's so easy to make, but also so easy to mess up. Americans tend to overdo the gelatin content, so they come out bouncier, more solid, without that cloudy, delicate texture of supple cream. This panna cotta was on par with the best I ever had in Italy, and the blackberries mixed in instead of sprinkled on top made an arresting difference.

It was pretty much the most perfect meal I've had lately, and I couldn't have asked for a lovelier companion. Once again, I had to rush to catch the last ferry back to Jersey, but I rode the subway with a couple about to get married, who had met at the 8th Ave subway stop 5 years ago. Their friends were taking them for a late-night champagne sail around the city, and they all talked about what an extraordinary twist of fate it was to find each other in the middle of the night, standing on a subway platform. I kept thinking about them on the ferry, and as we docked in Atlantic Highlands, I looked at the perfect stillness of the bay and sighed, thinking "Damn, I really truly love New York."

Pel and I have resolved to do more in the city, to visit the places we've always meant to, do the things that sound like fun, take advantage of all the amazing cultural and artistic things this wonderful place has to offer. It's hard to convey these evenings spent talking about everything in the world with such a great friend in photographs (especially when they're all of food) or even words, but I know that for all of my life, I will think of these days as some of the most magical and lovely. Bitchin' Friday, a perfect state of mind.

(Many more photos here.)