Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

 Here's the deal - the Swedes are really into moonshine. They're all down in their basements the whole long winter tinkering around with their witches' brews -- which they will unleash on guests and I can tell you from personal experience. You must drink the concoction. It is super rude to refuse.  It's all very complicated the whole what-do-you-call the-moonshine. The most known example is Aquavit but Aquavit is moonshine flavored with caraway or dill as the "dominant flavor." Then there is "brännvin." Best I can gather, if the spices are not caraway or dill, then it's not Aquavit, it's brännvin. Which brings us to snaps. Not schnapps, that's a whole other conversation, we're talking snaps. I'm pretty sure snaps can either be Aquavit or Brännvin. It's any varietal along these lines with one distinguishing feature-- it is potent enough that it must be served in very small glasses.  This is my understanding.  Which may be hilar...

 My dad left his sunglasses at our place. These are the shades that he just learned are  worn by celebrities and fashion fiends  so forgetting them here could definitely be a blow to his sartorial reputation. He'll need to keep a low profile until Christmas when he'll get them back.  In the meantime, let me bring you Tom: Tom in Pop's shades

  There are 100 pictures just like this in the dusty and slightly damp photo album I just found in the basement from when I was an exchange student in Stockholm.  I spent a lot of time in clubs that year surrounded by fantastic amounts of very stiff Swedish hair.  I scanned the whole photo album and sent the scanned pages to some of the individuals pictured. Then I spent half the day pretending I remembered way more than I actually do about the events depicted. For example, Annika texted, “OMG! That was Eva’s birthday party. She's not in any of the photos because she got really drunk and spent half the night throwing up in the bathroom!” Umm yeah, haha. So funny…, Not sure if it speaks more to the sad state of my memory, or, the metric ass ton of nights I was out at a club with Milla until 4am, thus rendering any and all individual goings-on fairly indistinguishable.  I remember Swedes passed out drunk on tables, like a lot. Some tall skinny blond kid lying on a tabl...

First of all, I got this new CO2 measurer thing. It tests the air quality so you can see how much of other people's breath you are probably sucking in directly. The C train uptown scored an orange, which is why I wear a mask on the subway and will continue to do so ad infinitum because why the hell not. We are adventurous, so at the Met, we decided to see if we could make it into the American Wing from European paintings upstairs. This involved a complicated journey through arms and armor. Then we went back upstairs to the Balcony Lounge through Asian art, just to really lock in the win. Balcony Lounge Air Quality Check. Not bad.... But waffled into the yellow periodically. Yech. Why do I always forget that the mixed drinks at the Met truly suck and I'm not even talking about the shitty little ice cubes. Wise words to my future self and anyone reading this: Do not be fooled by the interesting-sounding cocktail names on the menu. They pre-mix everything in vats downstairs in the...

  Every time I am walking across Central Park and happen to catch these roller skaters doing their discorama, I am inspired to find my roller skates and head on over there. I think they do the skate every week, so this could be my new thing. I think I'd have a little performance anxiety since, you know, I was a pretty spectacular roller skater back in my day and thus have high expectations of myself. I can skate backwards and do some very noteworthy spins.  The last time I roller skated, however, may have been at my 40th birthday party at the roller rink. Yes, my most amazing husband planned my 40th Birthday party at the roller rink. It was me and some 9 year old who also had a birthday party the same evening.  We shared our glow sticks with the kids if I recall correctly. It was kind of epic.

The Hydrow Rowing Machine Jack rowed on the Hydrow today under my username. I have the leaderboard set to compete against other women in my age range. Jack skirted with first place for awhile but then AnnaBT started pulling ahead. Then others started to catch up. It was a valiant effort but Jack finished in 11th place just after Skolsister. Which was about 100 places ahead of my typical showing.  Ella started teasing him about not winning and he squawked, “some of those old ladies are really fast dammit!” Made my Thanksgiving and also my lifetime Hydrow average just got a lot better.  

At Friendsgiving, Stacie asked what the name of my old band was and I told her: Fred's Been Shot.  Stacie asked if there's a Fred... I said, yeah, my Pop. Was he shot? she wondered. Well... I had to tell her the whole thing. Pop was a volunteer park ranger in Hawaii. He was out in the park picking up something on the ground and he stood up really fast. He scratched his head on a low-hanging tree branch. He didn't realize the cut was bleeding, especially because he was all sweaty. As Pop started back along the beach (he was in Hawaii so odds are there'd be a beach), he encountered one of the other park rangers leading a group of tourists.  The other park ranger shrieked, "Fred's been shot! Everybody get down!" And they all hit the deck. Meanwhile, Fred was very confused. I told this story I guess to my bandmates and they laughed as hard as Stacie and somehow that became the name of the band. 

 Tom saw this article in the NYT and I texted it to my pop: Pop's been wearing wrap around shades for, idk, 30 years? Instantly, I get a reply: My favorite part is the "trending" comment he included with the photo.

  Can never get enough of this town.

 Yesterday it was Friendsgiving in Queens and also the first time in 2022 that I met my step goal before I got up in the morning. Yes, there are certain advantages to galavanting around in an outer borough well after midnight. Such a pretty table ready for friends. Also, excitingly, we managed to get on an LIRR train from Monahan station, meaning the new side of Penn Station.  It has been disconcerting lately when in Penn, which I used to know like the back of my hand. Right now, it's all ripped up and turned around. While wandering around looking for my train, I spend the whole time muttering about what I think used to be where I currently am, and how exactly the new situation is possible unless they moved an escalator or something that you'd think they would not have moved. Anyway, it requires way more brain power than I am used to exerting in a station I have traversed, conservatively, 4 million times. But there's new very clean stairways down to the LIRR platforms with ...

  A Blueberry in the bottom of my coffee cup What are the odds I'd find a blueberry in the bottom of my coffee cup?! Pretty high actually since I was eating blueberries with my breakfast. Day 19, in the can.

Yeah, Elon's back on the block, probably building and coding the internet with his bare calloused hands. He's gone from the office already in this photo. That's a news crew over there doing a little after hours reporting.  When we came home after the play at 59E59 we got a full reckoning of the goings on over there. The doorman has been Eyes On all day. First of all, like a squadron of police are on call to escort Elon from Twitter's office door to his waiting Escalade. The doorman counted how many there were so that he could estimate the cost to the city. He complained that Elon, a billionaire, is not paying for all this security and WTF really.   Also Elon's Escalade sits there idling the entire day emitting combustion engine fumes. So weird the dude owns an electric car company and he rolls around in a giant Escalade. I suggested to Tom he do that thing where you take a video of an idling vehicle and submit it to the city and they pay you $50 and the vehicle'...

 Never had I ever had a phone stand of any kind until I got one as a thank you for speaking at a conference over the summer. Wow, what a revelation! You can prop up the phone and it stays in that position! It doesn’t slide over or tip backwards like it does if you just lean it on a pile of socks or a water glass or something.  Who knew?!

From a NYT article about bikes in the city with huge speaker systems I guess it's unsafe to ride bike wearing headphones in the city. Safety concerns must be why there's many bikes cruising up and down the bike lanes in the city with boomboxes. The boomboxes might be bungee corded to the back or strapped to the handlebars in the front. Or both. You might think I meant to say "bluetooth speaker" and be picturing something petite and aerodynamic. But no. It's a boombox at a minimum. Sometimes I think they're carting around an entire stereo system. They are loud AF. Sometimes, the rider also has a microphone is sings karaoke, but this usually only happens in the park. Because safety concerns most likely. Yesterday someone rode by on volume 11 and I was like, huh, this song might be good for the gym. It definitely was an older song, I remembered it. Couldn't place it. At some point I slapped my forehead in recognition. It was a Nickelback song. I'm getting...

Sometimes when playing the 'bee, like Tom and I do every evening over dinner, you get a little desperate.  I mean, there's sirloin and many other loins. Why not dogloin? idk about this game. It also didn't take dogfood. And it didn't take beachball yesterday.

I was talking to somebody the other day and the topic of gross kitchen floors came up because, you know, I am a scintillating conversationalist. Obviously, I had to relate the whole incident when I went to visit my brother in college. This was years ago now because we are old.  I parked the car and gingerly teetered up the rickety wooden outdoor stairs leading to his apartment. Every step could have easily been my last. These things were held together with rusty nails and way too much duct tape for my comfort level when three stories above solid earth. I opened the screen door to his place, probably with a handkerchief, and stepped onto the linoleum floor in the kitchen. That first step went ok, but the second one did not. Because my sandal stuck to the floor and suddenly I only had on half a shoe on one foot. I had the balance of goddamn ballerina in that moment let me tell you because my life probably depended on it. 

 It felt auspicious when I went to renew my membership at MoMA. A lovely gentleman in the member services booth noticed that we both have the same hometown and he gave me a discount. I don't think museums often realize the loyalty that is generated by random acts of kindness such as this. I often let my MoMA membership lapse. Maybe I won't next year.  MoMA- All new with no member lounge. However: MoMA needs a member lounge. Super bizarre that they rebuilt their whole joint and didn't include a member lounge. I never let my Met membership lapse because damn I love a lounge that not everybody can get into. And when I say "not everybody" I mostly mean the tourists.  Don't get me wrong, in general, I have nothing against tourists. It's just that they mostly have no idea what they are doing or where they are at any given moment. Sometimes, you just don't want to get bodyslammed *again* by someone abruptly spinning around in the middle of a crowd and chargin...

 Bruce really wanted to go to see this Wolfgang Tillman show at MoMA and of course I was up for it. Our first attempt to see the exhibition was a total fail. Somehow we just circled one small corner of the show and then we left, heading for the escalator. Luckily, someone got on the ball at that point... someone besides me I mean. It occurred to Bruce that there must be more to the show than what we had just seen, given all the hoopla. So we went back in and, like a revelation, discovered the 90% of the exhibition that we had completely missed. I could not have loved the show more.  This Wolfgang Tillman exhibit is amazing. The exhibit itself is part of the exhibit, which I'm not sure I've seen before. Wolfgang and his team selected exactly the images and the sizes of the images and the placement of the images so that the whole thing functions on a micro-level (ie each individual work) but also at a macro level (ie you can step back and just take in the whole thing.)  Eve...

Elon got rid of the verified Twitter accounts with the blue check marks. Now anyone who pays $8/month can register for whatever name they want and get a blue “verified” (except not verified) checkmark account. I first realized this whole thing was going in an amazing direction when I saw three George W Bush verified accounts casually chatting.  Then there’s tweets like these: I will be up all night I fear.

I was telling someone the other day about how my grandpa was a dancer at the Savoy Club in Harlem. He had a Savoy Club jacket and one time he danced with Ella Fitzgerald.  It reminded me about how at our wedding, the two of them, Grammy & Gramps, got out on the dance floor and cut a major rug. They were stunning. Hit all the notes, remembered all the steps, were perfectly in sync.  I was so proud of them.