holiday greetings.

since we can't offer you guys candy corn, a little homemade cyber-greeting will have to suffice! happy halloween - only eat the wrapped candies, and if trick-or-treating on staten island, please don't dress as a ninja.

note: while it looks like this scene was painstakingly set up for this meager little greeting card, don't worry - it wasn't. only the vegetables were added in for holiday spirit. the bears, their weapons, the skeletal remains and the scary tree all reside on our 'toy shelf' in our living room year round. although during the christmas season we do throw holiday baubles on the shelf to make it a tad less macabre.

back in the new york groove.

i have always been jealous of those people who don't eat when they're depressed. dieting? no, i just lost my cat. working out? me? never! but my fiancée did just leave me at the altar. these people amaze me. there is a definite difference between those who handle a tragedy with tight lipped poise and the rest of the world. i am, predictably, of the wallowing in self-pity with a bottle of kettle and a fistful of dark chocolate variety. ..and bread! and goat cheese! and put some butter on all of that and fry it, per favore.

this is neither here nor there, nor has high seas adventures been traded for self-help empowering women speeches of the oprahnian variety (never, we promise). this is just my little explanation of where i have been.

irregardless of the rumours posted here, missy has not been kidnapped by pirates, rendered computer illiterate by an unfortunate pedicab accident or tied to a chair by bear for the past year (but he HAS been hoarding a worrying amount of rope and twine). i have however noticed a pattern within myself. similar to my tendency to eat when sad, i also tend to create more. not to say that all posts on this blog have been a result of misery and sorrow, that is not the case at all. however in the past year i've settled into a pattern of work, a 9to5 routine which prior to 2007 was just the stuff nightmares and sissy's doldrum dinner stories were made of. but yes, here i am, a member of the corporate ranks --and it's not all glitter and hats like the village people made it seem.

in addition to my real life portrayal of the office (the british version, i'm sorry steve carell, you are a man of ben stiller-worthy repulsion) i have also had my first foray into the grown up world of monogamy. contrary to popular belief, i have not always considered monogamy to be a dirty word. rather, for a while, i just denied its existence. monogamy? isn't that a wood commonly used in furniture of the reddish-tinted variety?

but now here i am, a year into normalcy and it seems i've already obtained my membership to the stepford social club. not that i don't love and respect what i'm doing. and not that my life of anger and vodka and comedy was bad either. but why can't i have the puppies and the rainbows with a dirty martini straight up and some flippant remarks at the girl in the pink uggs (ed. note - really, still??) i'd like the house with the white picket fence, within which i can roll around in paint and hurl insults of Gangy-proportion at neighbors and blogosphere celebutantes alike.

i'm not really sure when i lost my edge, or if i just happened to fall over one, but i'm committed to righting that wrong. after all, no one likes a pants not paint.

xom

looking back...

i know this seems like it's just the lazy girl's method of posting, akin to me just plopping a video on a site to entertain your guys instead of using my brain to actually create new content, but i'm really just doing this to honor an amazing coincidence: in randomly clicking on my october 2006 link just before, the first item i spied was the post from October 29th, and, whoa, today is october 29th. so i just had to re-post what was happening last year at this time...


Sunday, October 29, 2006

you know.

you know you've become a nuisance to your coworkers when...

- your receptionist hands you a book on illnesses. tells you to "keep it for as long as you need it". slipped inside the book is a photocopied page of the index, with "cough - pgs. 25, 26,27,28" circled and starred.

you know you're a poor keeper of your own well-being when...

- trying to pay for items in CVS, the cashier cannot ring up the eye liner because there is no bar code. he asks you to get a new one. upon bringing him the new liner, which has a wrapper/bar code on it, the cashier scans the code while commenting "you know, you probably shouldn't buy makeup that isn't sealed. that's not really safe."

you know you've had a rough night when...

- you somehow convince yourself and the random boy buying you drinks that the bar is closing too early for new york city standards as its only 2am, when in all actuality its almost 4am and you were given an extra hour at the bar as daylight savings time ended sometime during your booze-a-thon.

and

- you also convince yourself during the cab ride home that the driver is incompetent and taking you and your friends in the wrong direction home. upon politely yet insistently shouting through the partition "excuse me sir, where are we going? we're supposed to be going downtown, and you're going uptown.", the driver points out that the street numbers are in fact going down, and inquires if you are ok.

but, you know deep down you're a good person which compensates for the rest of your nonsense when...

- you stop your car (and following traffic) in the middle of the street for a good minute or so, to allow a man to chase around the yarmulke that the wind has blown off his head.


and my, how times have changed! a new font, daylight savings time has yet to end, i stopped wearing eye liner, i don't let strange boys buy me alcohol, i pass out in cabs instead of trying to correct/confuse the driver, and i only cough in the evenings.

such progress. i can only imagine the amazing feats i will have accomplished by october 29, 2008.

why was the russian serial killer spending his trial in a glass cage, and other thursday questions...

seriously, why? that was the one part of the news story i couldn't get over. "In a glass cage to one side of the courtroom..." - like hannibal lecter? was this because he killed more than 40 people, or just generally how the russian court system works?

why do people point with their umbrellas? i almost lost an earring this morning - and i don't wear large earrings - as i passed by a man who decided to point the way downtown with his humongous golf umbrella. wasn't his finger enough?

how long do we think valentine candy can last? i came upon a laffy taffy from february in my desk drawer earlier, and am wondering if its still edible. as i'm in desperate need of sugar to lift me out of an afternoon slump, i'm thinking i will winding up consuming the candy before getting an answer.

and for goodness sakes, is this really necessary?!

dogs everywhere should revolt.

brief thoughts.

a tuesday is so, so much lovelier when you don't spend it in your office.

and my parents think i never listen to them...

if there is one thing i can count on just about every night of the week, its a phone call from my dad. generally he'll just call to say hello to his "dudes" - why a few years ago he started calling me "big dude" and missy "little dude" we will never understand - ask us what we're up to, how we're feeling, and make some small talk until one of us gets bored and rushes him off the phone or passes him off to the other one.

one of his favorite small talk topics is the news - typically a local SI story (he's a great source for ninja burglar updates) or a tale of something tragic that happened to a young woman, that way he can throw in a lesson or two about why i shouldn't get into cabs drunk or take the train alone past 9pm. i tend to tune him out during these preachy stories.

but the other night when he launched into the "did you see in the daily news..." portion of the phone conversation, he brought to my attention such a fascinating story that not only did i listen the entire time but i even found the article so i could read all about it myself.

and so we can all thank my dear old dad for this week's history lesson.

the durable mike malloy

making important discoveries for the tobacco industry.

if you eat a peanut butter cookie shortly after having a Halls cough drop ('ice blue' mint, i believe) it tastes like you've just smoked a cigarette.

which is both fascinating and a bit of a letdown, since generally i have a drink in hand when experiencing such a taste.

friday roundup: bitterness, literature, and pickup artists.

having just been condescended to in an email that went to our entire company by a dick (excuse me. but sometimes there are just no other words for a person.) manager who consistently condescends to everyone for absolutely no reason - he also spells 'cool' with a 'k', which should tell you something - i've decided i am exempt from doing work for the remainder of the day.

so here i am again. with so much to catch up on i figured it would be a good time for another installment of the good, the bad, and the ugly to sum it all up.


the good...

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - i know, everyone is heaping praise on this book - for goodness sakes, i even saw it in gourmet magazine - but i'm not just jumping on the bandwagon. i started reading it this week and it is damn good.

fall is finally here! - at least for today it is. how i've missed my jackets.

The Darjeeling Limited - i wasn't sure what to expect since although i really have enjoyed wes anderson's movies in the past, the most recent ones have gotten a bit too precious. but darjeeling had a lot more soul than i expected it to.

Showtime - currently responsible for about 85% of all the television we're watching.

the bad...

my computer
missy's computer
my foot
the internet situation in our apartment
the disk drive on my work computer
missy's brand new boots
the recording capability of our cable box

you know how sometimes everything breaks all at once? yup, we're in that cycle...

the ugly...

The Game:Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists - it wasn't so much that the book was ugly (although it was, bound in imitation leather to resemble a bible, making it impossible for me to covertly read it in public!) or that the content was ugly, but i just felt so incredibly sad after finishing it. not like i read the book with the goal of becoming a "master pickup artist", or that i thought i'd be able to relate to it, but i also never expected it to reveal to me such a dishearteningly scary/pathetic side to the male psyche. not all of you are like the guys featured in this book, i know, but enough of you to keep the book in the top 100 on amazon more than two years after it came out.

eek.

a puppet-filled, tofu-less bicentennial celebration...

its pouring out, i'm limping*, and i'm starving** so i decided to not post the snarky cranky post i've been working on for the past week (week!) and write about something a little more uplifting.

(plus, i just realized i had let my 200th entry slip by, and therefore needed a most upbeat topic to commemorate such a momentous occasion. its our bicentennial! and at the rate i'm currently posting, i won't hit our next one until about 2012.)

so, i saw this recently - yes, die hard. as a musical. done with puppets! - and i highly suggest that everyone run out and see it whenever (if ever) it makes it to a theater near you. it was awesome, and i've never even seen die hard*** so i probably even missed out on some of the jokes/plot line.

but you'll love it - i promise.

*somewhere between the gym and a trip to staples last night, i managed to severely injure my foot. well, maybe not severely. but i couldn't walk on it last night and couldn't wear proper shoes today as it was still swollen. i have a sneaking suspicion that an overzealous treadmill workout is the cause, although i truly hate to think that my first day in a while of an actual intense work out put me in such a sad predicament.

**i couldn't eat most of my lunch as my healthy little organic corn + black bean mexican bowl also housed a hidden mass of tofu. (i hate, HATE, tofu!!! it reminds me of some non-food item from my childhood - i'm thinking it was the mattress for one of our barbie beds.)

***yea, yea, i know. but it came out in '88 and i was still totally in muppet family christmas mode back then since our mother had a more intense ratings system than the MPAA. but i did eventually see the third one, at least.

apologies, apologies.

i know. i post "breaking news" and then i don't bother to post the update until a week later. let's pretend i'm just a master of suspense.

so lets backtrack to last thursday.

around 3:30pm - note that the dead mouse situation was reported more than 3 hours earlier. why was this not a priority?? - two maintenance workers mosey into my office with a flashlight. after a few minutes of poking around in the corner, they decide they need to move my desk (this fact comes in to play a little later) to get a better look at the corner near the radiator. desk is shoved aside, a loud noise is heard, and a few moments later one of men ask me for a plastic bag. i hand him the bag, he stands there looking at me, and this conversation ensues:

maintenance guy: do you like mice?
chrissy: huh?
m.g.: do you like mice?
chrissy: umm, no. not really.
m.g.: ok.
chrissy: why? is there a live mouse?!
m.g.: no, its dead on a trap. so i wouldn't want you to see a dead mouse if you liked mice. but you don't...(bends to pick up mouse)
chrissy: i'm just going to go wait in the hall.

they bagged the mouse and bade me farewell. after securing a scented candle - a fire hazard in an office, i know, but after spending a morning smelling rodent rot i almost wanted to cause a fire - i discovered my computer had shut down.

not only did it shut down, but the jostling from the shifting of my desk knocked it so completely out of whack that soon after maintenance left with my mouse, the IT guy left with my computer.

i am happy to report that by now everything is finally back to normal.

breaking...

remember my stories about the stink in our office's lobby due to the dead mice in the ceiling/radiator/walls? well, in the past two weeks there have been random funky smells around the office, and a few dead mice have been found in radiators in private offices.

guess who's turn it is today?!

i knew something smelled amiss/gross when i walked into my office this morning. periodically i've been walking out into the hall and stepping back in, to see if i was just being crazy - or, horror, if it was perhaps me - but no, the air in the hall smelled different. still bad, but of a different magnitude.

so overhearing two coworkers discussing a smell in our area of the floor, i bounded out of my office, thrilled that others noticed this too, and joined them in a sniffing hunt. (for someone with allergies, i think i make an excellent bloodhound)

upon entering my office, one of my coworkers confirmed my suspicion announcing, "yes. there's something dead in here."

he could've been referring to my spirit.

but more to come when the undertakers get here. oh the excitement!

getting back on track.

before i mislead anyone, i'm only currently into ninjas because i think this 'ninja burglar' story is freaking hilarious. when it comes to that age-old debate, ninja vs. pirate, i am totally, 1 million percent, on the pirate team. ninjas, i assume, must have a commitment to fitness that i just can't handle. the carousing life of a pirate is entirely more my speed.

speaking of, i even missed Talk like a Pirate Day last week! a very happy belated one to all.

so what have i been up to that i've been so neglectful of my little patch of the web? tons. missy and i threw an amazing (if we say so ourselves) apartment-warming party, managing to squeeze a record 30+ people into our new place. i discovered the power of WD-40 and eradicated the vexing three-year-old issue of having a super-squeaky bed. i celebrated my one-year anniversary at my 'new' job. i learned how not to mop a wood floor and how to infuse my own vodka. i finished watching every eddie izzard comedy special that exists on dvd. i got my bangs back. i received a bossy bear**!

and, most importantly, i had my faith in the dry cleaning industry restored, when they lost a pair of my pants - my very favorite work pants - but then found them for me a few days later, with just about every employee at the cleaners leaving me voicemails to announce that my pants were safe and sound. (and no, i'm not just copying that recent episode of curb your enthusiasm - i actually lost my pants the day before it aired. i always knew i felt a special kinship with larry david.)


**missy calls me "bossy bear". but i'm not actually bossy. i'm just doing my job as the older, wiser, sibling. really.

does the second amendment apply to nunchucks?

a ninja burglar bill! oh this story just keeps getting better and better...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/09/24/2007-09-24_ninja_burglar_strikes_fear_in_staten_isl.html


(i know. its been ages and the first thing i come back with is a mere link?? how rotten! but i needed to report the very latest on the n.burglar, plus i'm working on a post of substance recapping the whirlwind of the past two weeks. we'll be up and running again soon, i promise, dear handful of wonderful, loyal readers.)

they say you are what you eat.

we apologize for our absence, but its been an insanely busy week over here - the highlight? an awesomely fun night of irish music in philadelphia last night. the lowlight? loveandcyanide's first trip to the gastroenterologist.

i shall spare everyone the details of the trip, but i would just like to say that i've never filled out a more invasive pre-doctor visit questionnaire in my entire life. the highlight of this lowlight, however, was hearing a fellow waiting roomer comment that his answer to the question "what color?" was "like a benjamin moore chart". i am still torturing missy with that line two days later. you know how she hates bathroom humour.

--------

so while at wendy's today - figured this was the only logical segue after talking about my visit to a stomach doctor - i realized that they have changed the look of their menu boards, and have upgraded to a faux wood finish around the menus. snazzy! i always felt wendy's was the BMW of the fast food world, and this just seals it.

does your hometown have a ninja burglar?

coming across this bit of news about our darling home borough has made my entire week.


http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2007/09/his_fight_with_the_ninja_burgl.html

morning observations.

i hate carrying food onto the subway - in this particular case, a foil pan full of brownies that i made for today's office party. oh, chrissy, you domestic goddess, you! - because everyone just sits there staring at whatever wrapped item you're holding. clearly its not a suspicious package people, settle down. i decided that if anyone actually asked what was in the pan, since it seemed like it might come to that as a short man in a plaid cap sidled up into me/my brownies, i'd tell them it was my pet turtle.

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another thing i hate - clear bra straps. i have dear friends who swear by them, so i won't go completely off on how dumb/disgusting i think the straps are/look, but i will comment that clear does not equal invisible, ladies!! when you wear them with a tube top we can SEE THEM!! really, a tube top. holy cow, some people are stupid.

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a less hateful observation - a woman got onto the train this morning and when she turned around, i noticed that the back of her shirt read, 2007 US OPEN. HAIRSTYLIST TO THE PLAYERS. i found this curious. do the players have their hair coiffed before their games? do the stylists come around after the match to arrange their sweaty locks for post-game interviews? do all professional sports events have the luxury of hair stylists for the participants?

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and a final one - there was another, less curious but more entertaining, shirt of note spied during today's commute. the back of it featured two cartoon clams smiling at each other, with the line "let's shuck" printed above their shells. juvenile, sure, but i got a good chuckle out of it.

thursday shot of vitamin C.

as everyone around me has fallen ill throughout the course of the past 24 hours - friends, siblings, coworkers, friends' coworkers...i'm really not exaggerating, is there something in the air that i'm unaware of? - i think its a good time to talk about something healthy.

like fruit.

thanks to reader PH, i was introduced to a most interesting new fruit today - the plumpricot** - which is, you guessed it, the offspring of a plum + apricot. i'm a big fan of the plum, and not so much a fan of the apricot, so i figured my feelings on this new fruit would be mixed. but no - its absolutely delicious. great texture, great coloring, and great taste. nothing could ever knock the mango out of my top fruit spot, but this tasty little hybrid could possibly make my top 5 after having only one. i will be stalking the supermarkets for these little gems until they go out of season.

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

its ironic that as i finish this post about fruit someone near my office is eating either fried chicken or fast food, and i'm seriously thisclose to drooling due to the deep-fried scent wafting through the air. sigh. i sit so precariously close to the edge of the healthy food wagon.



**after searching online, i've found this hybrid called a plumcot, pluot, aprium, plumpricot and plumicot. i personally think that plumpricot is the most fun to say, so even if its not the most agriculturally-correct version of the word, it'll be the one i use.

update.

since my last posting elicited such a response about pennies - pennies! what will happen if i write about nickels? - on the comments page, i wanted to follow-up and let everyone know that after 3 days of lurking at the base of the porcelain bowl, my toilet penny is now gone.

so either pennies require about 95 flushes before they make it down the pipe, or someone was in desperate need of change.

bathroom talk.

when missy and i were going over our criteria for a new apt, one of my top priorities was the quality of the bathroom - more specifically, i preferred for the tub to have shower doors. why would i care? well, since the age of 10, with the exception of the college years (and i blocked those gross showers out of my memory, so they really don't count) and various stays at friend's places and hotels, i've always lived in a place with shower doors. and once you get used to shower doors - the plethora of light they allow in to the tub, the fact that they don't billow about and ensnare you in their plastic grip like curtains do - its hard to downgrade back to a curtain.

as we could barely find a apartment that had a bathroom that looked like it had been remodeled anytime in the past 50 years, "shower doors" was quickly crossed off my wish list. and although in the end we wound up in a brand spanking new place, the tub was still doorless and required a curtain.

i quickly saw the good in the situation as i spent an entire workday perusing for curtains - who knew there were so many fun ones out there?! - and when missy and i hung up our awesomely clever new one and it totally made the room, i couldn't help but think that i might actually be swayed out of the door camp.

but i haven't been.

although my adjustment to showering with a curtain is going pretty smoothly thus far, there's still one major, major bother - what i refer to as the "psycho factor". i never had to worry about someone sneaking into the bathroom and attacking me when i had clear doors to look out of. now, its all i can think about. i actually obsess over it the entire time i'm in the shower, tacking on a good minute or two to my bath time as i constantly need to peep my head around the curtain, to make sure the door is still closed and no intruder is lurking near the toilet with a machete.

i know this sounds nuts, but its not just me -- missy is having this issue as well. we discussed our dilemma the other day, and it seems like our next curtain might have to be a see-thru one.

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

in further bathroom news, there has been a penny in one of our work toilets for the past two days. this doesn't necessarily bother me, as i kind of like the wishing well effect it lends to our otherwise disgusting women's bathroom, but my question is - why won't it flush down the toilet? is it a chemical thing? or did some creep glue it there?

full circle.

forgive me for being a slacker this week, its been an exceptionally busy one. its ironic that i manage to find an awesome new apartment that i just want to sit in, all the time, and then fall into an especially busy social period, so i wind up spending no time in it at all.

so, in a rather amazing coincidence, not one, but THREE things i've mentioned in recent months came back to haunt me today (and its only the early afternoon) :

1. as i walked to the train this morning, there idled a small commercial van. outside the back of the van was a cardboard box containing ice...and fish heads.

really. i couldn't make this stuff up. while wondering about the usage of cardboard and, again, conditions that i believe the USDA would not consider sanitary, i also prayed that maybe a horror movie is filming in a nearby building and that would explain all the miscellaneous early morning animal parts. if not, i might rethink all the dinnering we do in our local establishments.

2. my office mate, the mutant fly, has returned. and this time he's brought an equally monstrous friend.

i've resorted to playing music to drown out the racket they are making as they buzz through my blinds. i will also be adding "purchase massive fly swatter" to my weekend to-do list, as i just had to use Kleenex as weaponry when throwing my tissue box at the blinds. which made an even louder racket. i really am thankful for the fact that no one was passing by my office to witness my (slight) freak-out. but the flies are actually making me nuts - another hour and i see myself tearing the blinds off the windows, wildly waving files, and flinging office supplies in attempted insect murder.

3. the kicker - about an hour ago, the back of my chair fell off. the comedy gods must be off today, as i happened to be leaning forward when it happened and thereby escaped a tumble to the floor.

on a positive note, i finally figured out where that "extra" knob goes.