The makings of a lovely weekend
-1 part pizza and a silly movie with a friend you haven't seen in a while
-1 part watching basketball (although it would have been lovelier if the Illini won)
-1 part early morning surprise phone call from an old friend with good stories
-1 part ice skating in Central Park with your cousin
-1 part dinner party with yummy tapas
-1 part random coincidence of running into the college roommate of someone you went to high school with
-1 part going out to celebrate because a friend got a fabulous new job
-1 part sleeping in
-1 part curling up with totally fluffy novel set in Ireland

Notes on ice skating outside when it's 60 degrees
Yes, the ice is melting, so there are a lot of large puddles to skate through. In a futile attempt to solve the problem, a rink employee is skating about half-heartedly with a squeege. If you fall, you get pretty wet, as my cousin discovered. I didn't fall, but I had a lot more trouble than I expected. I guess it had been quite a few years, but the fourth-grader in me was very disappointed. "Remember how you used to take lessons? You should be able to do better than this, girl. OK, you can still at least do a lunge, so I might forgive you."

Flashback to Elementary School
For lunch today I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sour cream and chedder potato chips. Something about the combination reminded me of fourth grade. Then I looked down and realized that I'd eaten all the crust off the sandwich first. I just needed a fruit roll-up and a paper carton of milk to complete the meal. And maybe a lunch box.

Huh.
It's supposed to be in the 60s here tomorrow, and I'm going ice skating outside. Wacky.

Goal
To blog more regularly. (I swear, Chrissy.)

Spring? Ha!
It was 25 degrees on my way to work this morning.

That's not how reality TV works
I think Adam forgot to read the reality TV rulebook. He sent the bikini models home straight away. I was impressed. But that lowered the trashiness factor of the show. I guess he's going to make out with every single girl there to make up for it.

How to make St. Patrick's Day last all weekend
Wednesday: Celebrate the actual day by dining in an Irish pub and visiting several others with friends. Drink Irish beverages (Magner's and Guinness). Befriend a group of Irishmen. Not Irish Americans. Real Irishmen. Stay out late.
Thursday: Take the day off from work. You're not hung over, but you've been planning to take the day off just in case. And you did stay out late, so sleep in. Telephone someone with a brogue. Receive festive St. Patrick's Day card featuring a green empire state building and leprechaun driving a green sports car. Listen to a lot of Saw Doctors music and disc one of 30 Best Irish Hits.
Friday: Stay in to make up for the money you spent on St. Patrick's Day. Watch The Matchmaker for the umpteenth time. Listen to more Saw Doctors music.
Saturday: Meet friend for Saw Doctors concert. Dine in Irish pub. Attend Saw Doctors concert. Jump about and sing along to catchy Irish rock music.
Sunday: It's a day of rest, remember?

I'm dreaming of a white St. Patrick's Day
Wait. That's not how that song goes. And I wasn't dreaming. Grr. Ah well, it was still nice and cozy inside the pubs.

Misery MTA-style
In the past week, the good ol' folks of the MTA have tortured me in the following manner:
-Sunday night, transfering from the R to 6 on my way back from Queens, I had to walk through a cloud of foul-smelling smoke/haze. There was one MTA employee standing at the top of the stairs and covering her nose, but other than that no one seemed concerned.
-Tuesday night, I had to wait on the 4 train because some guys decided they wanted to get into a fight or at least yell a lot about "throwing down." I think some one took their shirt off. Does that help you fight better? The conductor had to break it up. While this was going on, one of New York's finest walked by and pretended he didn't notice anything. The conductor had got on the PA: "Officer. Please report to the conductor's position. Officer, please report to the conductor's position, NOW."
-That same night, I had to wait 40 minutes for a 6 local train. At least four local trains stopped by headed downtown during the same period. Grand total it took me an hour and a half to travel back from some where just 50 blocks staight south of my apartment.

Sorry, MTA, it does not make up for it that on two of these occassions a crosstown bus was waiting just steps away when I got out of the subway.

Manhattan-size it
Remember how annoying waiting in line at the DMV can be. Just imagine how what it's like at one of Manhattan's two DMVs. I was there about two hours, walked through two corral-esque lines, got a number and waited for it to flash on the giant screen. It felt like playing Bingo. Come on, B398. No not F615 or H945. B335? This is going to take a while.

Confessions of a former mathlete
I saw another Lindsay Lohan movie last night. And I liked this one, too. This time it was a press screening ofMean Girls. My friend Tina works at a teen magazine, and I was her plus one. I felt pretty important. The screening was in a tiny theater in the Viacom offices. We watched an early print of the movie with a test audience of teenage girls. The best part is that the math team is an important of plot. I was a mathlete (seriously, that's what they called it) in both junior high and high school. Our matches were much less glamourous and game-show-esque than the one in the movie. And we didn't have letter jackets. We had painters caps.

Malcolm in the middle of Times Square
After the movie last night, I was walking through Times Square on my way to meet a friend for dinner. I was waiting to cross Broadway when I noticed that the person standing next to me looked like that kid from Malcolm in the Middle. I did a double take and realized that it really was Frankie Muniz. You know how he's starting to look sort of like an awkward teen-ager on TV instead of the 'tween star he's supposed to be? (Maybe because he's really 18.) In person, he looks about 11 and is shorter than me. It was just bizarre. I sort of laughed to myself. I felt like I should start singing "You're not the boss of me now." I didn't. He got tired of waiting and crossed in the opposite direction. Maybe my poorly suppressed laughter scared him away.

Random thoughts from my commute home tonight
-Hey, buddy, a crowded train is not the place to eat a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone. You better not get any on me.
-Actually, a chocolate dip cone sounds really good right now.
-Why does the man in front of me smell like creamed corn?
-I wish I wasn't standing so close to the man who smells like creamed corn.
-Remember when you saw Malcolm in Times Square? That was funny.
-I'm glad the creamed corn guy got off the train.
-Is that woman eating string cheese? Yes, that woman is eating string cheese.

The plunger: continued
Well, I survived last week. But Monday will mark the beginning of Anne versus the plunger, round two. Sigh.

Now that's what I call a bartender
Friday night, I went to an Irish bar in Woodside, Queens to hear a band. The bartender played a mean set of spoons. (I also hear he's quite the dancer.) He could ring some one up at the cash register and keeping playing, not missing a beat. Impressive.

Neighborhoods
At some point, Bob, the guy who's always sitting out on someone else's stoop, stopped being creepy. It's a pleasant part of the morning when he says hello and I wave back and agree that it is a beautiful day. Maybe it's because he learned to vary the conversation and stopped telling me I looked nice (or at least most of the time). Maybe it's just that he's usually on the other side of the street.

In Queens, there are neighborhoods with lawns (postage-stamp-sized) complete with tacky lawn ornaments. It made me miss the Midwest a little.

A moment of American Beauty
Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in my favorite chair next to the fire escape. I looked out the window and saw a multi-colored bunch of balloons float past the roof of a near-by high-rise. The sun hit them just right, and they seemed to glow. An air current caught the cluster, and I watched them dip and swirl until I couldn't see them from my window any more. For some reason this made me incredibly happy.

Apologies
Sorry for neglecting my blog for the past week.

Trivia
Which professor said this to me at Thursday's alumni function?
"You look just my high school girlfriend at the point right before she broke up with me."

Girls suck
I was disappointed in the final decisions on both The Bachelorette and Average Joe 2. Those women are stupid. But really it was funny that the big secret on Average Joe was that she dated Fabio.

Irish boys
Mmm...

I've been plunged
I'll let you know when it's over.