lornagrl

Hana Sushi

This place is going to put me in the poor house.  Hana Sushi, on Neptune Avenue opened a little over a year ago and the food is excellent!  I eat here at least once a week.  A la carte is about $1.50 a piece.  I usually order the seafood salad (pictured) and a duck and crab meat roll. 

I know I eat there a lot because the sushi chef always makes me a little extra dish.

They are just steps away from the Neptune Avenue stop on the F-Line.

New York, New York!!

So I was on my way home on the Q train.  Somewhere downtown, I noticed this well dressed man step on the train and sit down across from me.  I didn't think much of it.  A few minutes later I noticed a small empty vodka (cheap vodka) bottle rolling down the train.  But I didn't see where it had come from.

Then at Newkirk, the B train pulled in across the platform, and I decided to grab it, as did a few other passengers including the well dressed man.  A few stops  minutes later,  I heard a loud retch and a spitting sound.  The well dressed man was spewing chunks all over the B train and everyone was running away from him like he was on fire.  Suddenly the train reeked of alcohol.

The well dressed man didn't seem fazed at all.  Another passenger handed him a packet of tissues which he used to mop up the vomit.

He got off at King's Highway.

No time....

One thing about my new job is that I am working an extra hour each day.  Really I'm working more than that, because I often come in at least a half hour early, work through lunch and stay an extra half hour.  I knew when accepting the job this would probably be the case and I'm more than willing to work the extra hours because I'm being paid more, like 20% more.

But this means that I often leave my apartment at 7am and often don't get home till at least 8pm and sometimes even later.   This leaves me just enough time for some very basic personal maintenance, and then sleep, and almost no time to clean my apartment. 

During the "recent event" my brother generously hired a maid service to come in every other week. Now I'll admit I got a little spoiled.  It was very nice to have a clean apartment.  I'm not incredibly messy but I'm not an expert house-cleaner either.  What takes a professional housekeeper two hours to do would take me an entire weekend, and it still wouldn't be as clean.

But the crisis ended and so did the gifted cleaning service.  I continued to use this service on my own dime but about three months ago decided to cancel it.   I have huge debts to pay now and I shouldn't be spending my money on something as frivolous as a maid service. 

But there is nothing frivolous about a clean house and my apartment was (I'm not ashamed to say)  getting down right gross.  I could do spot maintenance here and there to keep the health department at bay, such as washing the dishes and vacuuming the cat hair off of the futon.  But when my toilet walked over to me one morning and told me "you really need to clean me" and I was noticing dust-bunnies the size of boulders.  I knew it was time for an intervention.  

So I scheduled the service at 8am this  Saturday which I knew was cutting it close because I had a wedding to go to at noon.  I have a small studio apartment and it usually takes them about two hours to clean. But the housekeeper was an hour late. First she got lost and evidently my door-bell isn't working so it took a little while before I knew she was here. 

...and she was slow....

After 2 1/2 hours she only had the apartment half way done.  By that time it was 11 o'clock and I had to go.  I thought about telling her to just leave the apartment unlocked but I thought that was too risky.  I don't know any of my neighbors well enough to hold keys for me.  This was turning into a dilemma.  I had a wedding in Park Slope at noon and was still in jeans and a sweatshirt.

I decided to just make a copy of the key and let the housekeeper take it back to the service so they would have it for the future.  Next time, I would just arrange for the service to come while I"m at work.  I did manage to get to the wedding on time, just barely, and I'm so glad I did the ceremony was beautiful. 

But time management is becoming and issue.  Things like cleaning my house, going to the gym are going to become very challenging. I suppose I could arrange for the service to come, once a month maybe (??) but I really need to save my money.

I may have to sacrifice sleep. 

Pinch Me...

I still can't believe it!

I dare you to watch this video without crying.  It was taken at 2am in the West Village...

Voting in Brighton Beach

Well the polls opened at 6am.  I showed up at at 6:30 and I think I was the third one to vote.  I can't really be sure because there was no line. 

It took a few minutes for the poll workers to find my name. My polling place is in a condo, which I find very strange.  I thought polling places were suppose to be in public places?  At any rate, they had a separate table for the residents of the building, and I approached this table first.  It took them a few minutes to establish that I didn't live in the building and when they did they directed me to another table where a very angry man was looking for my name while screaming at another poll worker in Russian.  After a few minutes, my name was found and I was directed to a booth. 

I took a photo, which I will post later.

It's over!

I feel we I have reached the end of a very bad dream.

I know that the president has nothing to do with this but ever since Bush got elected selected, some pretty bad things have happened.  To summarize:

• My Father Died
• 9/11
• Lost an apartment..
• I was Burglarized....
• Twice
• Heart Broken
• Financial Troubles
• Catastrophic Illness (thought I was going to die)

Some good things have been happening to me lately, and I now know, I'm not going to die.  Things are going to get better.

Thank God.

Obama 08

In general I don't like to post about politics and religion but today I'm breaking that rule: 

In about thirty minutes I am walking out the door and up the block to cast my vote for Obama.

...and I'm feeling real good about this election.

Please, please go out and vote. (No matter who you are voting for.)

VW Bug/Sponge Bob

Survivor...

If you are a regular peep, you may have noticed that some posts are missing.  There is a reason for this, but I'm not going to get into it.  I decided to un-publish some posts for now.  I will most-likely re-publish them later as they are some of my best posts but for now I'm keeping them suppressed.  So some posts are going to be a little cryptic, in that I'm not just going to come out and say what I went through last year.  But if you are just tuning in and your real smart (which if you are real smart why are you reading my blog?) you will probably get the gist of what I went through the summer of 2007, early 2008. 

My reason to vaguely refer to this past year is that the alternative is not posting at all.  And if I don't post than I might as well close this blog, which I don't want to do.  

Oh screw it!  I'm just going to come right out and say it.  I started a new job in August and I don't want my new co-workers to know about a certain event that happened to me last year. 

Now if you are a co-worker, (why are you Googling me? you stalker.) and you want to know, just come up to my desk and ask me.  I'll probably tell you.   If you don't want to know, then get back to work.

That felt better.

In the meantime and going forward  let's just refer to this past year as "in light of recent events."

That said, I thought it was time to post a new photo of myself.  I don't like how I've been looking these days.  My head is not ideal for a short hair cut, and it's growing in curly, curly, curly which makes it appear shorter than it actually is.  

You can't really see in this photo but there are actual ringlets in the back.

The irony is that I actually used to spend hundreds and hundred of dollars perming my hair so that it would look this way.  I heard this can happen but I keep hearing different stories as to weather or not it's going to stay this way.  Some say yes, others tell me it will last about a year.  Well, it's been a little over a year now and it's showing no signs of straightening out. 

I can't wait until it gets longer. 

Right before all this happened, I had a dream that I was looking at myself in the mirror and I had very long and very curly hair.  After the "recent event" I thought this might have been a wig, and I actually went out and looked for this wig but could never find it.   

Now I realize that it wasn't a wig, it was my own hair and this dream was a prediction that I was going to survive.