The authorities are on to us. We're going to have to disappear for a while. We'll be back on Sept. 15th, just in time for The Sopranos' season premiere. Even the man can't keep the family down.
But don't fret! I'm leaving plenty of stuff for you to check out:
1. Some new weblogs I've been reading recently.
My friend Joe is always willing to put his ass on the line for a cause. He once called me his intellectual nemesis, so, you know, if you hate what I have to say, chances are you'll love him. Don't get too close, though. He sweats.
Marc's truth page, the weblog that eats itself for dinner. Go check it out, and then post a truth yourself. Remember, the people have the power. Or so I hear. This is not a guaranteed truth.
Mark and Marjorie are just looking for work somewhere other than here. Do you know someone in a foreign land that could hook them up, yo? Go let them know.
As always, I think everyone I link over there (<---) has something worth reading, so if the boredom is totally overcoming you, that's a good place to start.
2. Pictures aplenty! Karen gave us a huge memory card as a wedding gift, and lest she think it's been collecting dust, we've finally gotten around to posting a big ol' bunch of stuff on our brand new webpage, punkly.com. Check out our honeymoon! Or Erik's going-away party! Or our trip to Penn State! Or our big trip to New Mexico!
Truth be told, we're off to my parents' house for the weekend, and then Marc's got a couple of weeks' worth of work in Puerto Rico. I'll be accompanying him so I can snooze on the beach and catch up on some reading. I'm pretty sure there will be no internet access anywhere near us anytime soon, so I'm taking a mini-hiatus, self-imposed. When we return, this weblog will be relocating, and more pictures will surely follow. Happy Labor Day, everybody! See you in mid-September!
One of the reasons high school was so terrible for me (bear with me, this is not an acne story) was because I have a huge fucking mouth. In real life, I rarely keep my opinions to myself, as it absolutely pains me to do so. Life is too short to shut up; that's been my motto. In high school, there were very few people who appreciated my adolescent candor, and as such, I spent four very lonely years harboring a disdain for pretty much everyone around me, and voicing it to whomever was sucker enough to listen.
Once I grew up a little and formed some not-quite-so severe opinions, and moved to Manhattan, and surrounded myself with left-leaning hipster intellectuals, and discovered the internet, and stopped reading Catcher In the Rye, I realized that everybody loves me as long as I'm on their side. That's the way it goes, and that's perfectly acceptable. Still, even now as a grown-up, among people I believe have, like me, grown past the stage where they feel it is necessary to convey a hurtful story to someone despite the fact that it will be nothing but hurtful, sometimes my huge fucking mouth comes back to bite me in the ass.
And I really hate that, because it makes me feel like a horrible insensitive person, which I'm really not -- really, candor and insensitivity do not go automatically hand-in-hand -- and it makes me just want to start keeping my mouth shut, because sometimes when you call someone on what they truly are, it's just not worth the trouble. And so, here I am, with shitty memories of high school (which I thought were gone for good, you know, lesson learned, let's move on) rushing through my head, wondering if it's worth undoing some grown-up damage I unwittingly caused.
As much as I continue to appreciate the way Avril Lavigne is rocking the look I sported in high school (ten years ago isn't retro yet, is it?), isn't it time for a new song to hit the airwaves? I keep hearing that she's a phenom that's destined to be around for a while, and yet this same Summer hit is starting to drift into Fall...
We're trying to shape up 'round these parts. For me, that meant Ab Lab at the gym (ow), followed by yoga (om). Later, Marc joined me for a run in Pelham Bay Park, the park where the ladies on the track smoke cigarettes and tote cups of Pepsi. With ice.
The exhaust on my car is at just the right frequency to trigger the warning blip on some cars' alarms. I like to think, as I drive past, that the other cars are cheering my car on. Go! Whee! Wow! Or just, Hi!
I remember being disappointed when my front baby teeth fell out, since the right one was the perfect fit for slipping into a plastic straw.
There is a Limp Bizkit CD on the rack. I'm not sure how long it's been there.
Marc did a great job of recapping our weekend here, which is great, because now I don't have to write the snarky version that probably would have hurt some feelings in the long run. It was actually a great weekend, jam-packed with fun adventures, but we both wound up last night with a vague feeling of yuckiness. He did forget to mention that he bought some snazzy new shoes. It might have been the first time ever that we agreed on the snazziness of some shoes. They are old-manly, in a good, wallabee kinda way. Now that I have said this, he will probably hate them. That's the way it goes.
Hey, how do you feel about seeing girls kiss each other? Yes, that's just what I expected. Here's a great directory of girls kissing in film. Enjoy! (via saltyt.)
The webcam has moved here. More astute readers will appreciate the (as yet still in progress) implication of this statement.
-joe.
The way I see it, you never get the chance to be excited about it. Right now in New York, we are in the midst of a breaking heat wave. And when it's 11 o'clock at night, and the temperature has dropped below 80°F for the first time in more than ten days, and you feel an honest-to-goodness breeze for the first time in god-knows-how-long, you've just got to take a moment and appreciate that the best is yet to come. Because it always is. Foggy morning, huh? I feel Fall coming, here.
Sleep tight, kids, and rest assured that I'll continue to write about the weather. The difference between daily highs of 91 and 88 is enough to keep me going for months, at least. And otherwise, things here are pretty much same-old.
K Mart's new ad strategy is apparently to get a few hot guys together and have them dance around in their underwear. Which, I gotta say, is okay by me.
I happen to think it's pretty cool that I don't have to dial the 1-718- to get, in this case, Brooklyn, but also Queens and Staten Island.
Gather round, girlies, and let Auntie Katie tell you a story.
Late November, while relaxing after Thanksgiving dinner, I was overwhelmed with the sudden urge to go find a dress. I don't know what brought on this urge, since I'd actually been really dreading the girly fluffy lacey white aspects of the wedding for all of the three days since the engagement. My mother, sensing a rare bonding opportunity, offered to take me browsing the following day. The idea was to see what I liked, try on a few options, gauge prices, inquire about the cost and leadtime required for alterations, and to return home, full of knowledge and ready for a battle that was sure to last many, many months.
Early the next day we headed out to the local bridal shop, where I tried on four gowns in my own personal mirrorspace, my mother wept, the shopkeeper spoke quietly with a thick Italian accent, and I was told that I was a size 16. Apparently, bridal gowns run a little small. The fourth gown was what they call it. I called Marc, told him I was standing in a bridal shop, looking at myself in a mirror wearing the dress I would be wearing when I married him, and he gulped, (I'd like to think that he, too, shed a little tear at this point) and told me to go ahead and buy it. I was already one step ahead of him, since the shop had informed me that my dress wouldn't actually arrive for 6-8 weeks. We hadn't set a date for the wedding yet, but we were thinking February(!) or so. By the way, the sample dresses I had actually tried on were something like a size 6, and were each held closed in back with a carefully pinned white washcloth. Very tasteful. (Oh yeah, here's the dress.)
I should mention that most of our wedding was planned like this: you like it? yup, you like it? yup. great, we'll take it. Fortunately, we have relatively affordable taste.
Now, the next obstacle was my mother's dress. Here we shed tears of a different sort. The following day (we were really beat from the first whirlwind gown experience and rewarded ourselves with hours of Trading Spaces and a good night's sleep before venturing back out) we enlisted my mother's friend, Barb, and headed to her favorite source for middle-aged formalwear, David's Bridal. When we walked in, I was overwhelmed. I could barely hear the receptionist as she asked if we needed help. Fortunately, Barb was quick on her feet and told her we wouldn't be buying anything that day. Thereafter we were ignored.
Oh dear, sweet, Jesus. I am a big fan of Target. And I frequent Joann's Fabric as much as the next home-crafter. But a bridal superstore? That was too much. It was brides on parade, my friends, as float after float of layers and layers of satinesque, tulline, silkette, and pearlish sashayed past whimpering mothers, checkbooks in hand. I watched as "Bridal Consultants" perched tangles of veil atop cherry red faces and fluffed their cascading wares over fat backs crammed into sausage-casing gowns. "You look gorgeous." "This is the one." "You look like a dream." David's wasn't selling gowns, they were selling beauty. Well actually, it was more like they were selling beautiescent, or beautiesque. Closer examination revealed pulled threads, loose beads, splitting seams and ragged hemlines. Again, these were just sample gowns, but I was beginning to grow suspicious.
My mother, while I ogled the bridal three-ring of mirrors, had chosen three tastefully understated gowns for herself from the Mother of the Bride section. We proceeded to the "fitting corral," where we helped ourselves to a dressing room. I went in to assist my mother, and Barb held the (broken) door. My mother stripped, and then we heard a commotion outside. I heard Barb say, in her teacher voice, "But there's someone in there!" The door opened. My mother screamed. A store attendant reached in, grabbed the two dresses that were still on their hangers, and announced, "THIS room is reserved for a BRIDE." There were about fifteen people milling around outside, and they all turned to look into the small room, where my mother stood in her undies, with me, holding her dress up for her to slip into.
I'd like to say that at this point I dug deep down within myself and stood up for my mother, shouting back at the woman, or perhaps grabbing the dresses back or clawing the woman's eyes out. But instead, I meekly asked, "Can she at least get dressed first?" and closed the door. My mother quickly threw her clothes back on, growing angrier and angrier... We left the fitting room and the attendant greeted us with this: "You can't just go into a fitting room on your own!" I turned and watched my mother slowly inhale, adjust the way her purse strap sat on her shoulder, straighten her back and lean forward menacingly: "I will never buy anything here!" She grabbed a brochure from my hand and tore it in half, dropping it on the floor. She stormed past me and Barb, and quickly headed for the door, announcing the entire way for anyone who cared to listen, "I don't know why anyone would shop here. What a miserable experience. What a bitch. I hate this kind of place. This is insane." At the door, she gave one last loud sigh and pushed her way outside. Barb and I were a few steps behind, and I made sure to throw the remaining brochures at the receptionist's desk on the way out.
I don't know if it's the worst thing they could have done, but it felt terrible at the time. I would encourage any bride-to-be to avoid the place like the plague, unless you're looking for a funny place to watch ugly dresses parade past on bodies they don't fit.
on the "recently updated" list on Blogger: We Sail Tonight For Singapore. No, not us. Them. Yesterday Marc told me about this article about a delicacy in Singapore: snakefish! Just look at that face. So cute I just want to eat it up?
When I lived in New Jersey, I kept a running list of what was keeping me there, as well as what was driving me away. The list of fair attributes was usually short, but convincing: Erik, rowing, cheap gas, tax-free clothing, and tomato pie. The other list was longer, and updated frequently: idiotic drivers, expensive real estate, my former boss, the cost of auto insurance, jughandle left-turns, shore traffic, and the lack of parking at the train station. Sometimes I like to revisit that list just to make absolutely certain that nothing would ever take me back there. Today I added a new item to the list of reasons to stay away: Anthrax detected in preliminary mailbox test. I've probably dropped mail in that box myself, having once lived "on a street adjoining the Princeton University campus". I know that this kind of risk exists everywhere, but I can't help but breathe a sigh of relief and notice the big smile on my new NY State driver's license.
I'm going out to play tonight, making my probationary debut, co-writing with Tony Hightower for the fifth Spontaneous Combustion show at Manhattan Theatre Source. Tony's agreed to let me latch on to his comedic genius for just two days, as we whip out a script by tomorrow. The show premieres Sunday, and closes Tuesday. If you're in town, and interested in a wacky and unpredictable evening of "theater," I suggest stopping by. Tony says the tickets are somewhat difficult to come by, so it probably wouldn't hurt to call first.
Turns out we have two circuits in this apartment. One that seems kitchen-based, including three kitchen outlets, the refrigerator, and, oddly, the outlet in the bedroom where we have plugged in the air conditioner. The other circuit includes everything else... everything. On Sunday night, we blew the everything-else outlet when Marc decided to vacuum the clippings from his haircut with the living-room air conditioner running. There was a click, and then darkness, but not silence, since the air conditioner in the bedroom and the refrigerator were still running... lucky us, since it was late and a convenient time for going to sleep anyway. We tried to rouse the homeowners downstairs so I could get some work done on the novel (I've pretty much written-off this week, incidentally. No pun intended.) but the sound of their own air conditioners had already lulled them off to sleep, I suppose. The next morning we woke them up and remedied the situation immediately.
This morning I decided to have some toast and coffee. Guess what? Goodbye kitchen power. The owners are on their way home from New Hampshire, so it's not like I'll be stuck forever, but I am a little worried about the refrigerator. Memo to self: deny the urge to operate efficiently when it comes to appliances. I got used to this mentality living in my parents' house, where they mainly occupy the space constructed (and wired) by my grandfather, who was not quite as handy as he thought. And lucky me, the toast was just dry enough to be palatable and the coffee had finished brewing. The only problem was the refrigerator, which I imagine to be quickly sucking in the returning humidity and heat, was holding the milk captive. I'm mainly worried about the five or six bottles of wine and champagne (gifts and memories from Marc's last birthday trip... there is, in particular, a bottle of peach champagne I'm sure I've built up beyond its potential) that I'd rather not cycle from cold to hot and back again, but my trepidation wasn't strong enough to keep me from liberating the milk.
Why won't anyone see xXx with me? Vin Diesel is also a sceenwriter and director, you know. He's had films at both Cannes and Sundance. Plus, well, you know. Other reasons.
Here's some up-to-date info on me.
I'm no longer Kate Mac... As of April 6th, I'm Kate C.
I'm married to a super man.
I'm 26 years old (some would say I act like I'm 50, but most people tell me I look younger).
I started blogging in March, 2001, just two days after being dumped on my birthday, while I was working my ass off as a mechanical engineer, feeling fat and lazy, discovering that I had GERD, and trying to find something new that would make me feel... something. Well, something other than a dull ache in the pit of my stomach. I didn't write about any of that.
I'm a self-absorbed emotional exhibitionist, but you won't find too much of that here. Well, okay, aside from weblogs being mainly designed for navel-gazing and the fact that the webcam is pointed at ME! ME! ME! The truth is, I save my best material for real life. Deal with it.
I was born in upstate New York, near Albany, and lived there until 1993, when I moved to Manhattan to attend Cooper Union. I studied homework evasion, disastrous relationships, drama (both sanctioned, as in, I acted with others in an organized fashion, and unsanctioned, as in, "oh, woe is me..."), garbage picking, NYC tourism, oh, and Mechanical Engineering.
After college I moved to Plainsboro, NJ, otherwise known as Plainsboring, to work for a medical device company in their Engineering group, doing product design and general troubleshooting. It was truly an enriching and rewarding job, but I can't say I'm sorry I jumped ship as the waters were beginning to flood the gunwhales. I left some good friends behind, but it was truly time to progress.
So, I'm a transplanted child of the suburbs, currently living in The Bronx, after finally having escaped the vicious grasp of New Jersey. I love it here (or should I say HEE-uh), but Marc is a consultant and so far we have always been "about two months away" from moving somewhere else so he can continue working to support my lifestyle of domestic engineering:
a) computing
b) clothes-shopping
c) crafty endeavors
d) yoga
e) all of the above, and sometimes some errands, housework, and plotting ways to make money from home so that I'll never have to go back to work.
I'm also trying to write a novel, so far not very effectively.
If you know me in the live-action, hugging/smacking/drooling world, and you stumbled upon me here, feel free to poke around. If you don't know me, feel free to poke around anyway. Maybe even drop me a line to say hi sometime. It's a solitary lifestyle... I live for e-mail.
A couple of weeks ago, someone mentioned to me that residents of all five boroughs of New York City who had suffered from "bad air quality" as a result of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center were eligible to be reimbursed for the cost of a new air conditioner, HEPA vacuum, and/or air purifier. This is not true. It is true that if a resident of New York City had an air conditioner or air purifier that was damaged by dust or debris from the collapse, the resident may be eligible for reimbursement of the cost to repair or replace the unit.
So if you, like I, heard from someone, or saw a flyer, or heard an advertisement claiming that FEMA was giving away free air conditioners, sorry, but it's not true. The official statement on the rumor can be found here, on the FEMA website.
Luckily, the weather has cooled down significantly.
For anyone searching for the movie "Signs" and finding my post on "sighns," you're spelling it wrong. Try this.
And speaking of signs, I've been toying with this Big Idea, sort of overmeditating on it to the point of paranoia, where, just when I get ready to say I'm doing it, or to actually begin doing it, something questionable happens. As in, I was ready to annouce it yesterday at brunch and a little piece of my huevos oaxaca lodged in my trachea and I started coughing and reconsidering. Or, as in, I was ready to actually sit down last night and get going, and a certain circuit breaker decided to give out on us thanks to a new air conditioner used in conjuction with a post-haircut vacuum cleaner (by the way, did you catch the hot married couple haircut action on the cam last night? hot hot hot!) and so I sat in the dark reconsidering. So, you can see that I'm clearly either cosmically doomed or irrationally suspicious.
I'm about to spit in the face of fate here, to lower my thumbs a little closer to the diamond grinder, to, I don't know, stick my post-nasal tongue toward the sparking live wire, whatever, I'm just going to say it, and if they find me here, poised over the keyboard, webcam marking the slow cooling of my lifeless body in neat 30-second intervals, well, then you'll know that it really wasn't meant to be, that the cosmos just had it out for me, that, well, you get the picture. And if you haven't already guessed from my sudden urge to embellish way beyond practicality, well, (here it is, wait for it!) I'm starting up with the novel again.
The new (free with DSL!) webcam lives here, at least temporarily.
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