Thanks for Popping by, but We've Moved:

to HERE

it's better than ever, if we do say so ourselves.

The Underemployed

One of my best friends from high school and I are co-class secretaries. We were very honored when selected before graduation, but truthfully, we were the only ones who wanted the job.

Our main charge is to keep up with the 61 other ladies who graduated with us, to touch base ever so occasionally, to find out who is getting married, who has been promoted, who is attending yet another Ivy League program, etc. and then writing a synopsis for the biannual alumnae update.

Easy right? It is relatively facile to essentially ask for gossip and then repurpose it in a more palatable length of 500 words. But if no one responds? Well, well, well.

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting...and SNL

I have this ever-growing New York Bucket List, a rapidly accumulating catalog of things I want to do in the city before I leave. Which I have NO PLANS to at the moment, but if you don't plan to hit up This Restaurant or That Show, you'll forget. And you certainly have to itemize your priorities here, with so many culturally diverse and interesting things to do.

One of the items on my NYBL was to attend a taping of Saturday Night Live. Tickets are DIFFICULT to come by; you can send one email to the lottery system in August, which I and several friends have done, only to never hear anything more. But! You can wake up with the birds on a Saturday morning of a taping to wait in the stand-by line outside of 30 Rock.

I've had my share of late nights in the city, a few evenings when the hour necessitated a cab ride back to my apartment, but I didn't hail a taxi so I had to walk the distance. Which is definitely frightening depending on the time and the location, but so far, no severed limbs, compromised virtue, or gang initiation has occurred. Well, yes, maybe, but not because of my cheap refusal to take cabs.

But walking the streets at 4:30am? Along 2nd Avenue? Particularly when a gentleman, someone my father would refer to as an 'unsavory character,' stopped to eye me as I walked a couple of blocks away from his locale? I was certainly ill at ease, even on the surprisingly populated subway to midtown. Cars are sparse, the only people out are usually the staggering drunks who look like they are coming right for you, only to upchuck the booze at your feet (a great fear of mine), so I rushed to get to Rockefeller Center to meet up with my friends.

But I turned onto 5th Avenue from 50th and heard a familiar tune piping through what seemed to be the window display at Saks: Frank Sinatra was crooning a comfortable melody.

"I want to wake up in the city
that doesn't sleep
and find I'm king of the hill,
top of the heap."

And just like that, I felt okay. My stomach unknotted, and I wasn't worried about getting shivved on Madison anymore. The line for tickets was in sight, and although we didn't think we had a good chance (word to those considering doing the same: the people at the front of the line had been there since 7 the evening before, sleeping on the hard sidewalk, curled up in fleece blankets. Obviously tourists- they're oblivious to how dirty the streets are), this was going to be a good day after all.

And it was: we got tickets to the dress rehearsal! And how appropriate that this was one of the skits?

How often are you in the same room as Oprah and Liz Lemon?

Rarely, if ever.

Except I WAS, on Monday, when I attended the New York Women in Communications' Matrix Awards honoring outstanding women in obviously, the field of communications.

There were loads of interesting folks there, even some men, and I have to say: I left completely rejuvenated and excited about living and working in New York.

It's not secret- is it?- that I vaguely, or sometimes more specifically amongst my friends, threaten to move, but I'm still here. Obviously, I can't give up the city if I haven't yet shipped my boxes yet and had my last Levain's cookie.

Which, speaking of, I indulged in today. SWEET PEACHES. If there is a ever a cookie worth $4, this is it. And I don't make such proclamations lightly, by any means. I'm cheap to a fault but GOOD LORD, we could all use a dark chocolate chocolate chip cookie every now and then.

And now, I still have chocolate on my wrist, and I did everything but lick the inside of the paper bag about 6 hours ago. It should have been demoralizing and was borderline criminally vulgar how much I was enjoying that cookie, sauntering down Broadway. It fell apart in my hand, completely soft and warm, and I had no shame about making a complete mess.

I had to duck into Sabon for a complementary handwash. The saleswoman was helping someone else and briefly acknowledged my walking over the large sink in the middle of the store and offered me some new jasmine soap, completely understanding when I showed her my hand, and said: "Sorry. I just came from Levain's."

Truthfully, I looked a bit like this. In honor of two great New York days, full of inspirational and hilarious women and decadent chocolate cookies, I give you something unfortunately too close to home.

"You about to get fired up?" "Just a little."

Like a lot of folks this past week, I was saddened to hear about Dixie Carter's, or rather, Designing Women's Julia Sugarbaker, passing.

I remember watching it, growing up, probably in reruns, and it was a part of so many girls' childhoods like my own. I assumed it was a Southern Thing like I once thought "Walking in Memphis" was only a popular song in Memphis; I had no idea really that it's popularity extended reached beyond the Mason-Dixon line.

But then I got to college and was asked by some Northern friends if I wear blue suede shoes on the plane home, and I understood that other people, even those raised outside of Tennessee, like the song. And just this past week, while looking up scads of YouTube videos of the Sugarbaker sisters and their design firm and reading internet tributes, I understand that Ms. Julia Sugarbaker's feminist and outspoken tendencies but of course, Classiness-capital-C, endeared her to loads of tv viewers, regardless of geography.

I remember this particular clip from the original in the 80s: (It's lengthy but don't let that deter you)



It's one that has been making the rounds on blogs, etc. and with good reason. Who would have thought Julia Sugarbaker and Lady Gaga would have something in common? When Southern women have the reputation for passive sweet-as-pie-ness, Dixie Carter's character has done wonders in dispelling the mythology. Forget Auntie Mame- I aspire to be Julia Sugarbaker. Hear hear.

Zing Zing Zing Went My Heartstrings

I was watching an episode of Law & Order at the gym- YES, THE GYM (thanks, Groupon)- last month. The Stairmaster seems to go faster alongside stories of women being terrorized on the subway by a serial rapist. Such an episode- in which a repeat offender was striking at random and others on the subway ignored the crimes while happening- just perpetuates the idea of NYC as a horrifically violent place, with its inhabitants always in violation of the Samaritan law.

My experience? Sure, I've encountered some kooks, held my bag a bit closer in some moments, and maneuvered to the opposite end of the car, just in case said creeper felt the need to give me a Wet Willy or anything comparably as uncomfortable.

For the most part, my biggest issue is germs. I'm hypochondriacal by nature and whenever I have to -yeesshhh- hold onto the handrails, my reflexes call for Purell IMMEDIATELY. But that is the most of my worries.

Regardless, sometimes I listen to this on my iPod, a reminder of a childhood favorite, and I wish my daily modes of transportation were like so:

WWJD?

As in, what would Joan do?

Yes, I passed Joan Didion on Madison Avenue last week. Just a brief moment in passing, nothing notable, but I was THRILLED. I wanted to be able to unearth a life-shattering sign about my life from witnessing a literary titan shuffling across the sidewalk, and if I were a braver girl, I would have asked her to join me for iced coffee at Sant Ambroeus just up the street, gathering my courage up to inquire:

"Shoot me straight. Do you think I should stay here? Because, really, every single day, I am of two minds, just like this,

AND I'M TIRED OF HASHING IT OUT."

But really, nothing even remotely of the sort came to pass, and I went on my way, still trying to glean some sort of meaning from it. I don't gather that she would have taken me up on my offer anyway, but I wonder if she gets that a lot, being the poster child for leaving Manhattan and all.