a lil bit o' good news.

I'm not Irish...but today I'm lucky. My company just voted to NOT do lay-offs. Just as I'd figured out how to make the most of being dirt poor in NYC while struggling to pay rent on an overpriced, tiny (err--cozy) apartment--I can now resolve to continue making the most of living as usual--and perhaps saving for what may come down the road.

In honor of no lay-offs, I'm grabbing a couple of my dearest girlfriends for an all-night dance-(and flirt)-a-thon.

Have a lovely weekend all!

p.s. And Nichole...if you're listening "CONGRATS" to you.

where is my automobile?

happy birthday john hughes. and thank you. the world would be a much sadder place for unpopular, acned, rejected, sweaty-palmed, geeky, fat, skinny, big-haired, flat-chested, gangly, acid-washed, metal-mouthed teenage boys and girls without you. (and thank you most of all for jake ryan.) xo.

thirty-one.

i had no real plans to celebrate..."I just wanna do something low key." well, it was anything but...*smiles* (thanks hans)

♥ din-din at Sticky Rice (I must have that giant blue chandelier!!)

♥ beers under the red lights of motor city (no, no doorguy yet. my long-lost brother, apparently, was there)

♥ delicious orange-flavored shots and Jimmy James at the magician (tom, what did u put in those shots???),

♥ impromptu lychee martinis, bourbon & ginger ales, and chit-chat at verlaine (stan, thanks for fixing my rosary)

♥ more beers at motor city. (uh oh)

♥ braided the doorguy's beard TWICE--added a little lip gloss and spit to help the braids stay put

♥ chatted with iraqi heavy metal band. told one I was a man. he believed me. asshole.

♥ chatted with New School students. lied about their ages (they're sooo much younger than we are). one is the spitting image of Carey Elwes.

♥ doorman wrestled a douchebag to the floor, and said douchebag was thrown out. trash talking ensued.

♥ tried to get a 20-year-old girl into bars, in vain. ahh youth.

♥ went to Iggys with New Schoolers. (i really want to break their camera)

♥ "[doorman], are you okay?"

♥ hannah won the scavenger hunt (damn you): a cigarette, a cough drop, change for a dollar. but i got the piece of gum.

♥ we didn't see a bulldog we could obnoxiously mistake for a collie nor a guy with a sports cap we could yell "go team" to...but we had a wonderful night!! (let's not even ruin it with talk of the hangover)

here are some silly pre- and post-birthday mac-pics.

good things really shouldn't have to end.

but they do. and by good things, I'm of course talking about the very long, lovely thanksgiving weekend. it's over...I'm home, back in NY...rainy, cold, gray NY. But, not to worry, the thankful residue has yet to wear off. I'm thankful, post thanksgiving thankful, for Michael Jackson--songs like Beat It and Never Can Say Goodbye made today's 2-hour gridlock so much more enjoyable (yes, i said "enjoyable)"). And I'm thankful that I've inherited a teensy cooking gene. I somehow dug into the culinary lobe of my brain and concocted a pretty decent mac n' cheese casserole, and candied mashed yams. go me! I'm also thankful that the mumbai attacks are over...though saddened by so many lost lives. i'm thankful, that i wrote my novel's outline and "finished" an entire chapter. And while it's true that it's not quite what I dreamed it would be, i filled some pages with a part of me, and with some work, it can only get better.

p.s. i am also thankful that some fairly-awesome person introduced me to THIS BALLAD. (you can check out the video here--it takes a long time to load--10 minutes or so--but it's worth it...i promise.)

i got my laptop back.

yes, this deserves it's own YAY post. The only thing is, the post has to be short, since i left my charger at work. But i've got stuff to say, I promise. So...until tomorrow...

kitty in the window.

last night, while walking to dinner with my good friend Pak--we saw a kitten in a pet shop window. All alone. Shit in the corner. Upon seeing us peering in at him, he started to jump and play with his bedding, behaving a lot like a wind-up puppy. I felt really a sense of emptiness walking way from him. Even if it was only my perception, he seemed to want to please us...and to say, "Look at me. I'd be a great pet. Please pick me and get me out of this dreadful, lonely glass container." *sigh*

Anyway, thanks to the zealous kitty-in-the-window, I started another chapter of "the book." I live for long walks.

so, i'm back in NY (i say that often, don't i?).

...after a lovely time in DC (thanx G, A, Y, A, and A)--and thrilled that I won't have face the nauseating clutter that is Midtown for at least a month. It was extra ugly down there today.

in happier news, two things to report: 1) Hannah is coming on Wednesday! yay! That means lots of Popeyes and coffee...and quite possibly some debauchery--and hopefully lots of therapy. 2) You know the apartment in the LES that I can't afford? Well, I'm moving there on September 1--and it's more like Chinatown-on-the-border-of-the-LES. I did some budget shuffling, and I figure, I deserve to live in a neighborhood I love. Besides, I spend a whole huge chunk of my NY life in the LES--so at least I'll be saving a bit on subway fare. Brooklyn will have to wait until later next year. I'm so excited!!! The packing begins (eeek!)..and gotta find a cheap moving company (feel free to send suggestions).

xoxo

p.s. on the bus ride home, i watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Unless you enjoy torture--do NOT netflix this movie. Well, really it was an incredible story--but sad, sad, dark, and sad.

one year old.

this post seems oh so obligatory. my blog is one year old, oh happy birthday papier-mache, blah blah blah. I said SEEMS. If I'd only written about life and not lived it, I'd say, "this is a post for a sake of a post." But I've done stuff, and damnit I'm proud of myself.

I've lived life.

I returned to NY--my sometimes home/sometimes hell (jury's still out).

I got a new job--nearly six months in and i still love it. really.

I've got so much love in my life, and I figure me nurturing it had a little something to do with it. A friend said to me last week, "You're easy to love." An awfully sweet thing to say--but I dunno--sometimes I dunno...but I do love and cherish friends like her.

I decided, "this will be the year I pay off some of my debt," and by the end of this year, I'll have one less college loan against my good name.

I've started the book I sat out to write. nearly a year ago, I said these words right here in front of you: "I'm 29 and a half, and my goal is to write a book by 35, but I don't know where I want to begin. Maybe writing here will be a start." It's very early, I'll call it my first trimester...you know, when you know it's not so wise to tell people, because who knows what could happen, but you just can't help it. And so far, it's exhilirating to pull out all this stuff I didn't think I had inside me. Some type of emotional colonic..

See, I guess this whole one-year-blog-post really is just about tooting my own horn. *toot*

p.s. thanks to the ever loyal and lovely readers of papier-mache. you put up with my sap, sarcasm, sadness, and silliness. for god's sake, don't leave me!!!

i found a smile.

he asked me for a smile. and normally i'd ignore it, roll my eyes, bite my lip. But today, I gave it easily to a kind stranger. and then I cried again, but this time, tears of relief.

p.s. many thanks to a dear dear friend for the gift of good gab, and to shamones for sushi and laughs.

one of my favorite bloggers is moving away.

No, we don't live near eachother nor does she know me...I doubt she even knows I exist (oh, how high-school of me!). But I enjoy--no, I love her blog. And she's leaving a city that I love--San Fran--to embark on a new life in Germany with her boyfriend.

This post is just to wish her well--and to thank her for her many whimsical posts (like this favorite that I printed out and taped next to my wall mirror)...and for Ebay-ing her deliciousy glam wardrobe. As I begin to weed through the horrible muddle that is my bedroom and pack my own boxes, it's exciting and encouraging to know that people I look up to are landing on--sometimes tumbling onto--their "next step" as well.

P.S. ugh...jenine wears a size 7 shoe, but I'm crossing my fingers **fingers crossed** that there are some size 38's I can squeeze my fat piggy toes into.

Cheers Jennine!

thank you. i love it...

...and you. photo by Richard Chapman

more on WM.

I mentioned Walter Mosley earlier in the week...here's the continuation. I'm not gonna talk in length about him or the book he was reading from. If you care, it was Blonde Faith.

WM gave some candid, three dimensional answers to your generic-style booksigning questions...the kind I call "questions for the sake of asking questions." Aside from being a great storyteller, he's also a bit of a charmer; he reminds me of gray-haired gentlemen I've encountered in Harlem dressed in brown Sunday suits, talking old-fashioned dirty-sweet talk. "You sho make an ol' man smile." Well, he's not that old, and he wasn't that sweet, but still, he reminded me of those gentlemen. Maybe it's just because he wears a cool hat.

I sometimes look to successful, published authors for some kind of secret. An ANSWER. Perhaps a formula for writing a book and getting it published. Whatever it is, I was hoping WM would've let me in on it. He didn't. Not really.

He told us, with writing, it's either in you or it's not. It's not something that you call yourself because you wake up one day and want to quit your IT job and decide "Hey, I think I'll be a writer now." There's no magic to it, you can't fake it. Not very comforting...but sooo true. Oh, and he said something I really liked...I can't quote him but I'll try -- "Being a writer is about your relationship with books that you develop early in childhood, and the way you share that relationship with your audience." And one more. This is simple...but it speaks to the heart of my problem/ambition--"Writing the truth is difficult." As simple as his words were...I needed to hear them from an accomplished author. Without knowing it, he gave me a little "answer"...an affirmation.

This is out of context and all over the place. I just wanted to get this out before the week ended, and now I'm done.
******
Image from cover of Fortunate Son

In search of a new body...

...cream.

(random "thank you" note)

Until last night, I thought my body cream smelled like the ocean. But then you told me it smelled like glue. I sniffed and sniffed, putting away my thoughts of what the ocean should smell like, and it turns out, you were right. I reek of glue. But come to think of it, smelling like the ocean would have been pretty stank anyways.