Month: February 2008

I usually try to edit down to the best shot, but I can’t decide which shot really conveys what it was like for me yesterday, watching people watch the parade, because as I said, I couldn’t see a thing. Sometimes I tried to watch the parade from the tiny screens of the cameras they were holding up.

Loved the confetti, especially when it was pink or red.

Is this a better shot of the confetti? I don’t know.

Here’s confetti that almost looks like snow on the window ledges.

Here’s Jon Oliver again, because he’s so cute and funny.

And here’s the aftermath, on a side street, not even Broadway, the actual parade route. I love New York.

… along with thousands of others. I was looking for the least popular spot to watch the ticker tape for the Giants, and I decided to go with a small alley called Exchange Alley. It was still packed, but nothing like other blocks which were freaking mind-blowingly insane. I can’t see a thing, I can only hear when someone goes by, but I turned around and spotted Jon Oliver from The Daily Show! I took pictures of him instead. More pictures later, and also my traumatic experience voting.

The world exploded outside my window last night. Apparently there was some sort of sporting event, maybe a competition of some sort and New York won? I think? Or lost and decided to lose graciously? Yay other guys! We’re just happy to be alive!

It was fun hearing all that noise. I was tempted to go out and join them. I had a mostly quiet weekend. On Echo we have something called “yo’s.” They’re like Instant Messages. People can say something to you and it pops up on your screen. When I can’t (or don’t want to respond) I have a list of reasons I YO back, like:

On phone!
Cat on me!
On deadline!
Bones is on!

This weekend I added:

Meditating!

Because I do that now. I’m loving reading Eat, Pray, Love because she writes a lot about meditating (in the middle, India section anyway) and she’s both funny and moving at the same time. Although her descriptions about having a connection to God terrify me. It reminded me of when I was researching ghosts and people who record voices which they believe are the voices of the dead. I got so scared listening to these recordings that I looked around my apartment and said out loud, “If you’re here, please don’t talk to me.” That said, I wouldn’t mind having my prayers answered occasionally. Except maybe they are. I am still alive.

I was uptown yesterday for a New York Cares volunteer thing. All I had to do was sit and talk to people learning English, but it felt awkward because they don’t give you any training and I couldn’t tell how much was being understood. Maybe it helped.

I was extremely curious about the lives of the two women from Nicaragua I was with, but the other volunteer seemed impatient with my questions, and he was actually very prepared. He bought stories and vocabularies, and I didn’t want to get in the way of him actually helping them.

Anyway, I loved being in Washington Heights. It feels like the Manhattan of my youth up there. Not as pretty, but more alive and exciting, and more normal people on the streets (by normal, I mean not wealthy). And I’m sure there’s pretty areas. Washington Heights is way northern Manhattan, where I never go. Inwood is above that, almost in imaginary territory, and Marble Hill is the most northern spot in Manhattan, although I think it’s not really attached. I have to google it. I’m dying to explore these places now, except I know through researching my last book that there are a lot of unsolved murders in Inwood, so, there’s that. Not good.

(The picture is of the George Washington Bridge, which was near where I was volunteering. I started to walk over it, but I’m afraid of heights and I got a little nervous and there were other places to explore so … I bolted!)

But being at Lincoln Center brought up a nice memory from my twenties. My friend Shelley had told me that from time to time she put dish washing liquid in public fountains. A simple, tried and true prank that I couldn’t wait to do myself. The first time I did it was at the fountain at Lincoln Center. I was SO scared. I used the Shelley method, which was to buy a bunch of liquid detergent, empty it into a plastic bag, then while sitting at the fountain, poke a hole in the bag and let it slowly drain into the fountain.

I did this one afternoon, trembling the whole time. After a few minutes the bubbles started growing and growing, mountains of bubbles. Guards from Lincoln Center came out, discussing what to do about it, and I’m still sitting there with the bag, empty now, still shaking and trying not to look guilty, but loving the bubbles which were growing up and over the fountain. It was the middle of the afternoon and there were a ton of people around, who started reaching into the fountain, playing with the bubbles, throwing handfuls at each other, and I just got happier and happier, the whole thing was just so much fun, and everyone was enjoying it, even the guards who were still discussing what to do.

For the next few years, whenever I needed a lift, I’d pour some sort of bubble making substance into a fountain.

(The picture below is the fountain at Lincoln Center. A perfectly designed bubble-churning device is how I see it now. After doing this for a while you learn which fountains will work better.)