Radio silence

It's been a week since I posted last and I know you've been wandering around lost and helpless without this blog as your beacon. I do apologize but honestly, I just haven't had anything new to say. But since I know you're desperate for a new blog post, I will concede. Plus, if I go too long without writing, this will become one of the 10 other blogs I've started then unceremoniously abandoned. You might say I have some commitment issues. Thus, I'm determined to make this one stick.

So here we go...

Life updates:

I'm still not drinking beer. It's been almost a month and no one is more surprised than me that I've made it this far. Well maybe this lil guy is.

I'm still using the lose-it app to track my calories. However my cell phone died this weekend and without my moral compass I had a junk food relapse. I don't care if you're Richard Simmons, you don't turn down a homemade milk shake. Okay 3.

Once I get back to New York City I think I'll be back on track.

Oh also, Jill is back. She returned to our lives casually as if no time had passed by sending a mass email linking to one of Tyra Banks' countless moments of lunacy.

She followed this up with a text message inquiring about our trip timeline. Yes, OUR trip timeline. So apparently she's still going. I'm glad to know she wasn't made into pâté by her cats. However, she is now on probation. Any further disappearances would make her subject to dismissal from any and all life plans. This would make the trip substantially less interesting so I will be stalking the bejesus out of her. I do these things for you, beloved reader.

Well that's about it for me. I'll be sure to keep you posted on the nugatory* details of our quest out west.

*I would be nothing without thesaurus.com

Bar None

By the time I left work yesterday I'd chalked it up to be a bad day. One of those days that just goes all wrong. I woke up exhausted. It rained so the trains were slow. The trains were slow so I was late to work. I was late to work so I was irritable. I was irritable so everything anyone did just further irritated me. All I wanted to do was go home and be enveloped by silence. Of course, when I arrived home I realized I'd forgotten my house key and my roommates wouldn't be home for 3 more hours.

Arghhh

I wanted to drink beer. Lots and lots of beer. Instead I wandered off in search of sustenance and landed at a cheap Mexican restaurant inhaling a tostada. Sitting alone in silence at the counter can only last so long however before it becomes awkward for the eater and the hipster waiter. So I began to contemplate my next move.

For the last two weeks I've wondered what exactly to do without drinking. Museums? Boring. Galleries? No thank you. Plays? Musicals? I'd rather watch beer dry. I enjoy drinking because it's a social activity. Alcohol is a unifying agent for people of every age, race, sexual preference, fetish etc. Where else would I have met a dwarf former child star?

So off I went in search of a bar-like refuge for the sober. It was then I discovered the wonders of the coffee shop. You can just sit there. For hours. No awkwardness, no judgment, they just keep stopping by every now and then to ask if you'd like a refill of your green tea. Granted, it's not all that social. People mostly keep to themselves and their shiny Macbook Pros. Computerless, I read a Men's Health magazine from cover to cover. I'm now well-versed in how to get "monster forearms" by lifting an empty keg. It's knowledge I'll carry with me forever.

My overall assessment is that coffee shops are a decent bar substitute. I'll most likely go back soon. Except I always felt comfortable going to my local bar a few times a week. There are only so many times you can hang out at a coffee shop in one week before you just start seeming pretentious.

The quest continues...

Just one of them days

"It's just one of them days
That a girl goes through
When i'm angry inside
Don't wanna take it out on you" Monica


Today is the kind of day that I want to curl up in bed with a down comforter, a cup of green tea, and no human interaction. Instead I am at work, surrounded by people that I am forced to interact with about things that I could not possibly care less about.

It could be hormones, Monday blues or sobriety but I am growing more perturbed by the second. Thus, to calm my nerves I've begun my escape countdown. Deep breaths. We can do this.

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

Fear.

It's why we don't pet a growling dog, or swim in shark infested waters.

It's why we activate our burglar alarms at night.

A little bit of fear keeps us safer.

But it's also why George W Bush was in office for 8 terrible years.

And why the news media is still in business.

Today the headline on the free newspaper they hand out at the subway was "Is there a terrorist among us?"

Talk about fear. Or should I say, fear mongering.

By now, most of you heard about the car-bomb that was found in Times Square this weekend. Thanks to a quick thinking street vendor who alerted a police officer of the smoking SUV, lives were saved.

It could have really, really bad.

But while the thought of an attack on the city is scary, it's also not surprising. NYC is a target. It always has been and always will be. Mayor Bloomberg said it well: "Terrorists around the world, who feel threatened by the freedoms that we have, always focus on those symbols of freedoms – and that is New York city,"

But I want to get back to that cover and that headline. The picture of your average New Yorkers going about their day combined with that headline:

"Is there a terrorist amongst us?"

Yes, there is. Likely more than one. Remember the failed subway bombing plot?

But why frighten people more than they already are? Is that really the first thing our bleary eyes need to read as we begin our morning commutes?

I'm planning to leave New York City in three months. Not because I'm afraid of the big bad wolf. Not because the news media has scared me away. Because I'm ready for something new. But I will always love this city and it saddens me that there are people out there who would try to harm it and the people in it. We didn't start the war. We didn't steal the oil. We're just human beings trying to make it through the day. Just like everyone else on the planet.

We can't let the fear win. And we can't let the media exploit the fear.

We must continue riding the subway. We must continue to visit Times Square. (Not me, I hate Midtown)

We must feel the fear and we must do it anyway.

That's how we send the message that we won't be bullied or scared into silence

That's how we win.