is shoe-free the way to be?

so i know i was bitching last week about the barefoot old woman on the bus, and we all basically decided that she was just a crazy old bird that i shouldn't concern myself with, as it wasn't my feet touching the dirty bus floor.

well, now its more than that. its no longer just one batty old woman...its a whole epidemic of shoeless people running around NYC.

yesterday i was on the circle line for our office's "summer outing" and i spied a young woman walking around barefoot. ok, so we were on a boat. but it wasn't a private yacht, it was a tourist mecca that i am certain has seen the soles of thousands of passengers tramp across its floors.

then just before as i was walking to the deli to pick up lunch i passed a boy wheeling his scooter down the block while wearing only white socks. i did a full examination of his entire person and there wasn't a pair of sneakers in sight.

seriously, did i miss some memo that the streets of new york are suddenly super clean?

the great ______ caper.

the _____ in our headline is for our last name, which, to protect the innocent, we don't use here at loveandcyanide. if you do happen to know it - i believe 3 of our approx. 7 readers do - feel free to insert it in the blank when reading it throughout this post. if you don't know it, just use some other two-syllable word. we suggest muppet since "the great muppet caper" is a fantastic movie (and our favorite charles grodin film).

the great _____ caper occurred last night around 9:30pm. slightly delirious from a long day of work and packing, missy decided to clean out the pantry and discard any and all old food items (the winner of the Ms. Expired pageant, a rather close race between a bag of rice, boxed mashed potatoes and a few packages of jello, went to the packet of pistachio jello, dated 6/05). in retrospect, this was entirely too arduous of a task for this time of the evening, being in our current state of affairs.

so i had a bad feeling when missy squealed with excitement over discovering an unopened - and still edible - jar of capers in the pantry, and i therefore wasn't all too surprised when a few minutes later i heard the melodious tinkle of glass hitting the kitchen floor. ordered to put on shoes, i arrived in the kitchen to a salty stink, and saw the little green guys rolling all over our floor amongst shards of glass. shoeless missy stood in the midst of it looking forlorn, and it took a good two minutes for us to decide exactly what our plan our action would be. i believe someone suggested just leaving it on the floor for the new people.

a short while later the mess was (mostly) taken care of, the kitchen only smelled slightly briny, and as we skated back and forth on paper towels drying the floor, we had a good chuckle over our tuesday evening 'caper'.

which was slightly messier but certainly less serious than our monday evening caper, which involved the unplugging of our nintendo and the subsequent destruction of our satellite tv service. we have no idea what missy did with the wires, but it is now impossible to hook everything back up. and so we're tv-less.

lesson learned this week: do not turn back on sister during packing.

revisiting first crushes.

i try not to get suckered into reality series, but a new one started up that i'm finding impossible to resist -- scott baio is 45...and single.

scott baio was my very first celebrity crush. according to various family members, i was completely obsessed with the show joanie loves chachi - well, i guess as obsessed as a 2-3 year old could be with something she clearly could not at all understand - and when people used to ask me who my boyfriend was, i used to answer, "chachi!". i wonder if my parents found this adorably precocious or just plain frightening.

so they nicknamed me 'joanie' for awhile, and although i don't completely remember watching the show or the feelings of chachi love i apparently held in my itty-bitty heart, i can vividly recall the old ladies who used to frequent my family's grocery store calling me joanie whenever they came shopping. so apparently most of brooklyn was aware of my crush.

but regardless of these nostalgic reasons, it's actually a pretty compelling show and mr. baio makes for a rather sympathetic almost ex-womanizer as his life-coach helps him along. AND, and, the kicker is one of his best buds and the producer of the show is...jason hervey! older brother from the wonder years and another former celeb crush of mine. i know, i know - why did i like the chubby asshole brother while everyone else liked adorable little kevin arnold?

perhaps scott baio isn't the only one in need of a life-coach.

moving is tough.

last week's excitement over discovering an awesome new apartment has waned the past few days. while the packing part of the process is a little less stressful than the initial hunting part, i wouldn't call wrangling three year's worth of stuff into bags and boxes easy. or fun.

so while we declined plans with friends all week in favor of packing, there is nary a filled box in site. instead we've managed to:

• update Bear's myspace page
• get drunk
• make ice cream sandwiches
• watch Beerfest
  

we will clearly do anything to avoid packing.

---------------

so in an earlier post i mentioned about the plethora of shady real estate agents we dealt with. seriously, i had no idea what i was in for as my last apt was by owner. not like he was a prize - more like a pervert and racist - but at least we didn't have to fork over 1 month's rent to him.

but in the past few weeks we've come to meet a variety of evil agents - liars, cheats, scoundrels. how do these people sleep at night? (with the exception of the kindly greek santa claus-like broker who we would've been happy to give business to. we're sorry we just didn't like anything you showed us, manny!) i understand they're just trying to make a buck, but really, there has to be more ethical ways to go about it. missy and i came home practically in tears some nights.

thankfully the broker attached to our dream apartment turned out to be a reputable guy. he also knew the right things to say, as after showing us the apartment and giving us an application he said, "and thank you girls for the entertainment".

we're thinking that's what catapulted our application above the rest. thank goodness for our shtick.

ick.

dear older woman in yellow sundress on the bus this morning,

i understand it was raining - no, POURING - earlier today and that wet shoes can feel really really really gross on one's feet. trust me, it's over an hour after i came in from the rain and i am still completely regretting wearing open-toe flats...

but did you have to take the city bus BAREFOOT????? the sight of your bare feet squishing on the presumably filthy bus floor almost made me lose my breakfast.

please invest in galoshes.

your concerned fellow commuter,
chrissy

movin' on up.

it's been a crazy/awesome week for us, mainly because loveandcyanide has found new headquarters! after a grueling hunt for a new apartment - more on the search and the plethora of shady real estate agents that exist in astoria to come - we found a new place. a new and improved place that completely fulfilled our #1 new apartment request, which was to move closer to the train.

never ones to settle for half-asseyness, we will now be living in spitting distance from the train. seriously. Bear can sit on our balcony and heckle commuters as they pass. if you took a running leap out of our windows you would actually land on train tracks. we may have taken our wish to the extreme.

but while we do realize we might need to invest in earplugs and probably wear more than underwear when prancing about the apartment near the windows, we're still excited as hell.

hot. hot. hot.

we're back, and in high spirits over here at loveandcyanide. having spent the past 8 days in basically perfect summer weather doing nothing more than sunning on the beach and having fun with friends, how can we not be?

the massive fly is also gone from my office.

so being on vacation high myself, i've taken notice of those who are vacationing in my hot humid disgusting fair city today. they all look miserable -- i didn't see one happy vacation face roasting atop the big red bus. and as i passed one guy i heard him sorrowfully comment to his companion "it stinks like urine here".

my question is, what would possess someone to come to new york in the middle of the summer? i'm curious to see if guidebooks suggest against it and mobs of people just don't heed the suggestion, or if maybe the guidebook industry is in a conspiracy against summer tourists and therefore encourage them to come here when its gross.