City Wendy

Blue Skies, Please

I'm heading to Chicago tomorrow for a five day visit. I just checked the forecast and it's supposed to rain the whole fucking time I'm there. Time to break out a sun dance.

Apparently 31 is the new 8

Things my mother said to me on the phone the other day that make me wonder if she thinks I'm still 8:

Her: It's Mother's Day today so it'll be too crowded to go out to brunch. You'll want to cook something at home. Do you have anything to cook at home?

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Me: Allison called the other day — she wanted to know how to boil an egg.
Her: You know how to boil an egg?

•••••••••••••••••••••••
Me: Drew and I have pretty much decided on our China itinerary.
Her: You know they don't speak English there.

•••••••••••••••••••••••
Her: Have you gotten your visa for China yet?
Me: No, I told you — I called the Chinese embassy and they said that regular travel visas are only good for three months, so I have to wait until my trip is closer.
Her: You probably just misunderstood them.

•••••••••••••••••••••••

Changing

I sold my bike a couple of weeks ago, which, if I'm being honest, was one of the more painful parts of this whole move to New York. I've written about my bike plenty, especially in this post in which I closed saying I'd accidently left my bike in my old apartment when I moved, leaning against the wall in the foyer. Well, what I didn't say in that post — what happened afterwards was a series of calls and so forth which led to my friend katy picking up my bike and storing it at her place until she had time to drive it out to the storage unit in the suburbs where I was keeping all of my belongings until I decided for sure where to live in New York.

I have to admit, seeing my bike unloaded from the truck in Manhattan and carried up to my apartment in March was a joyous sight. I had grand plans for that bike and me. We were to ride all over the city together, through all five boroughs on all the routes already mapped out by bikes and cyclists before us. We would explore new paths and see things we hadn't yet imagined. It was two or three weeks after my bike was delivered before it was actually nice enough outside to take it for a spin. I dressed special for our first NYC ride, selecting clothes that would allow for both movement and a high cuteness factor. I ate a light lunch so I wouldn't feel too full on the journey and I packed an apple and a bottle of water in my bag for later. And then I was off! I picked up my bike, opened the front door and started down the two flights of stairs, with thoughts of the warm breeze through my hair propelling me forward. And then my whole world basically came crashing down around in me in one moment as I realized my bike was just to big, my staircase too narrow, and my arms too weak to carry the bike down the stairs. I knew if I mustered all my strength and really stretched myself into awkward positions, I could possibly get it down once, but how would i get it back up? And what about the next time I wanted to ride? Sadly, there's no storage place in our building, no foyer like I used to have in my apartment in Chicago, no rack on the street or anything to lock it to, and even if there were, the chances of a bike surviving on the streets of midtown for more than a day or two without being swiped by some ne'er-do-well or a tourist wanting a souvenir of the city were slim-to-none. So I brought my bike back inside and cried a bit and then I leaned it against the bedroom wall for about 2 or 3 weeks and tried not to think about it. Finally, I couldn't stand the silent taunting anymore — the physical representation of something I think is one of life's biggest cruelties: no matter how much you gain in a transition, no matter how much a move — whether figurative or literal — propels you forward, there's always a sacrifice — there's always something you have to give up and miss and long for.

So I sold my bike and the day the girl and her boyfriend from Craigslist came to pick it up, I wanted to tell her how much I loved it, how it changed the trajectory of my last year in Chicago and that she should care for and love it as much as I did and maybe she'd reap the same happiness. That's all bullshit, really. The bike didn't change anything for me any more than any other bike might have, and there's no reason I can't just get a different sort of bike — a fold-up one, perhaps, and continue with my grand plan of taking on New York City two wheels at a time. It's not so much the bike that was hard to let go of, of course, but what I imagined to be the last connection to my old way of life: the apartment with its foyer and closet space and girly paint colors. The friends who all lived nearby and the beach and the bars in waking distance where basically everyone knew my name. It was a final letting go of what I used to have and accepting that this, this growing up and moving on and changing isn't always easy.

***************************************
Drew came home for lunch today, like he normally does. I'd just run to the health food store up the street and picked up a couple bags of groceries for the week —  cereal and soup and stuff to make sandwiches. Drew heated up the chicken noodle soup and turned on some music. I finished a bit of writing I was working on and joined him at the table. It was grey and rainy outside, so I turned on our kitchen table light and flipped through the mail he'd brought in. Over lunch, we talked about a photography exhibition of public and private spaces in NYC that we'd seen at the library yesterday (highly recommended), Drew's short film he's working on and how he couldn't find an actress for a small scene he's shooting tonight and so I'll step in, and how the low-cal ice cream sandwiches I'd just bought were the same ones I always buy except half the size.

"What's your favorite part about me living here now?" I was suddenly moved to ask.
"You know," he replied, "it sounds corny, but it's this. The small things. The normal, everyday stuff."

********************************************

...And then sometimes change is the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

Gym Membership for Sale

Yesterday was a long day as most Tuesdays are. I worked from home from about 7:30 to 12:30, and then worked at the coffee shop for 6 hours before heading off to hula hoop class until 9 PM. The weekly hoop classes have become one of the highlights of my week and thought I've just this morning ordered my own hula hoop to practice in Central Park between classes, I've been making pretty good improvement. Last night I even had what my teacher called a "breakthrough."

"Could you feel it?" he asked after class.

Oh hell yeah, I could feel it. Our teacher is always talking about getting out of our heads and letting our bodies take over, and last night for the first time in class, I really did completely get out of my head and I let the music wash over me and my body took full control, seamlessly passing the hoop from one hand to the other, swinging it over my head and down to the ground, passing it around my hips, twirling it around my wrists,and for at least ten whole minutes I wasn't worried at all about the direction my life is headed, how long it'll take to get out of debt, what subway I need to catch where to get there by when, how I'll find time to get to everything on my to-do list, whether Drew picked up toilet paper on the way home or should I and on and on and on. It was ten minutes of bliss and when the spell was broken, I felt more invigorated and alive than I had in awhile.

"It was inspiring!" my teacher said to me after class.

And so I've decided to get my own hoop, practice every day, start going to class as often as I can, and join the circus.

Not really. But I am going to practice a lot because it's one of the best forms of exercise I've found for myself. I'm also selling my gym membership because the stairmaster and treadmill just don't do it for me. So if anyone in NYC is interested in a taking my NYSC Gold membership for 80 bucks a month and no initiation fee (I'll even pay the $40 transfer), please let me know! I'd love to unload it as soon as possible, so if you or someone you know might be interested, shoot me an email. Membership is good through October and you can renew it then if you want.

Two down

Today marks the second anniversary of the day I Drew and I met and had our first date, and we decided to celebrate all weekend long. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate on Friday and Saturday and so our plan to go check out the Cherry blossom festival in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden was thwarted. And though the weather was really great yesterday, we were suspicious enough of rain all day, that we still didn't make it out to Brooklyn, and opted, instead for an afternoon in Central Park, which wasn't a bad alternative, really.

The anniversary weekend was actually pretty tame considering we started it with a couple shots each of Absinthe. Drew surprised me with a bottle when he came home from work Friday evening and what can I say -- the man knows me. I mean, wine is fine, but Absinthe...absinthe is the thing dreams are made of, right? So, I took great pains to make sure we drank it exactly the right way, holding a sugar cube on a flat spoon over the perfumey liquid and dripping ice cold water over it until it dissolved into a cloudy billow inside the glass. The taste was pretty fowl and it was all I could do to keep from barfing it up all over myself, which you know, would have been so romantic! Anyhow, we waited a half hour or so for it to "kick in," but having no real idea what we were expecting, how we'd know it was "working," we decided just to head out to our favorite local family-style Italian joint. It was after our meal and a glass of wine each that we finally felt the effects of the Absinthe and on the walk home down ninth avenue, I felt downright giddy. So giddy, in fact, that passing the Chinese foot & back rub place that we've passed a million times, I pulled Drew inside and told him I was treating us to a foot rub. Because what spells romance like having some other woman rub your drunk boyfriend's dirty feet on the other side of a thin sheet?

Hey, have you ever gotten a Chinese foot rub after a couple shots of Absinthe? Highly recommended, five stars!! I sprung for the 40 minute affair, and afterwards, Drew and I felt so light, so carefree, that we promptly fell asleep on the couch a half an hour later after watching an old episode of This American Life on our newly acquired Showtime--which we got for less than 10 bucks what we were paying without it and what turned out to be highlight of the evening #2. These are the things that excite you after two years with the same person, I guess. We're not too far away from fighting over the remote and the TV dinner with the apple crisp. But is that such a bad thing, really?

Anyway, I wish I could say Saturday we managed to stay awake past 11, but the truth is, I had cramps so bad, I spent most of the day in bed and fell asleep at about 10:30. I did manage to squeeze in 2 margaritas in the afternoon, though, so all was not a bust. PLUS, and this is a big plus, my celebrity sighting of the weekend? John Krasinski, AKA Jim from The Office! I almost missed him, too, since he was walking down the street with a woman who looked familiar but I couldn't quite place, and by the time I realized she was Maya Rudolph, they'd both almost passed us when it dawned on me: OH MY GOD, It's Jim! "Oh my God, it's Jim!" I whispered at Drew as soon as they passed. Drew swerved around and said, "It is! I bet they're going to see Breathless at the Film Forum -- they're heading that way. Maybe we should go. I mean, we were gonna go anyway, so why not just go to the showing they're going to?" Oh my god, does this man know me or what -- absinthe and now this?! So we did what any normal, self-respecting, non-stalker type people would do, and we started following them. To our credit, we only made it a block before humility and shame took over and we decided we were being sort of pathetic, so we turned back around and headed to the nearest Mr. Softee for an ice cream cone. But I tell you what, that John Krasinski is a tall, glass of something, he is. Forget the absinthe, I'd like to have a bottle of him for my next anniversary.

Anyway, today is the actual big day -- two years since Drew and I met (and also my Mom's birthday, so Happy Birthday, Mom), and the sushi restaurant where we had our blind date is closed on Mondays, so we're heading to a sushi place in our neighborhood we've been wanting to try. I have a feeling we'll reminisce about those early days when we made romantic trips across the country to see each other while wondering why the hell we couldn't just nab someone in our own respective cities. Maybe we'll continue planning our China itinerary -- which we made good headway with yesterday -- and if history is any indication, we'll be drunk by 8 and asleep by 10. Well, I'll be asleep, anyway. Drew will be catching up on the Yankees stats and watching the Colbert Report. Hey, here's to two great years.

Radiant: UPDATE with photo

I haven't told you about the Paul Simon concert yet, which was pretty great. He sang a few of my favorites and had some other artists — like Josh Groban of all people (my mom will be so jealous) — cover some of his other hits. I loved when he sang Graceland, a song that has a couple of my favorite lyrics of all time: "Losing love is like a window in your heart/ Everybody sees you're blown apart/ Everybody sees the wind blow."

There was a couple sitting behind us at the concert who had an interesting exchange before the show started:

Him: This is what real musicians do. This is what it's about — this is what being a real musician is all about.
Her: You're a real musician.
Him: No I'm not.
Her: Yeah, you are!
Him: No.
Her: You are! You were in the Jay Leno band!!
Him: Aw, that was nearly 20 years ago — I can't just keep using that...

beat

Her (quietly): I wish I'd known you 20 years ago...

And, scene.

Hey, I had another celeb sighting at the show. I saw Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy sitting not too far from us (in the cheap seats!). She looked like a prettier, sleeker version of normal and like someone I could be friends with. Actually, I sort of wish we were friends. She seems like the kind of person who'd remember your birthday and be game for a girl day of pedicures, sushi and shoe shopping.

You know who else I got to see this week? Jeremy Sisto, when he came into the coffee shop yesterday and ordered a latte. If you don't know who he is, he played Billy — Brenda's crazy brother — on Six Feet Under, and if you still don't know who he is, then I implore you to Netflix the entire series immediately, because holy crap, he's amazing in it, as is everyone else, and he also happens to be supah hot. Hotter in person, really. I think I blushed the color of sunburned baby thighs just looking at him. He's got that whole darkly disturbed and angry thing which made me want to reach over the counter, grab him by the collar, and lick his teeth. (He was nice, by the way, and probably not all that disturbed or angry, really. He also has the cutest dog).

In other news, I'm getting my hair colored today, which may not sound like such a big deal, but this will be my first real foray into the NY salon scene. Until now, I've just been getting my hair done with my old stylist and colorist on my return visits to Chicago. I'll actally be there again in just two weeks and could hold out for familiar hands if I really wanted to, but I decided it was time for me to branch out. It's a big step in cementing this whole move, actually, and feeling more at home here. I'm going to see a girl who comes into the coffee shop a couple times a day, who's also new to the city and who works at a trendy salon a couple doors down from the shop. Honestly, the salon is way trendier than I'm used to (think Leopard print chairs and crystal chandeliers), and I already have anxiety that I'm going to seem so out of place there, but what the fuck, the girl I'm going to is super sweet and I'm sure she'll make me feel comfortable and it will all be fine. It just so happens that People magazine this week has a section called Radiant Redheads, so I'm going to tear out the photos of Julianne Moore, Marcia Cross, and Lauren Ambrose (who dated Jeremy Sisto's character on Six Feet Under), bring them to the salon and say to the stylist, "Here, make me radiant. I have some teeth I need to lick."

Update: Someone asked if I would post a picture of my hair after I got it colored, so here it is. I'm not sure the intensity shows as well in the photo, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out and the girl who did my hair was so sweet and really listened to me that I'm even going to put my hair in her hands again next week when I go in for a trim (which I desperately need). She promised she won'y take any much length off since I'm growing it out and will just a clean it up a bit. If anyone in NY needs a colorist/stylist recommendation, let me know and I'll pass along her info.

Passing Time

The theme in my life lately is this general feeling that time is moving at such a rapid speed I don't know how to just slow things down enough to relax and enjoy the moment. Weeks seem to fly by and it seems like New Year's was last month but here it is almost May and I'm left wondering what happened to the last 4 months of my life. Monday will mark two years since Drew and I met. And it will also be my mom's 57th birthday, which boggles my mind even more than my imminent 32nd quickly approaching. When, I wonder, did we all get so old??

Over the weekend, I started cleaning out an antique desk I inherited from my paternal grandparents. There's really no room for it in our apartment and beautiful though it is, it doesn't really fit our design aesthetic and I doubt it ever will. I hate to sell it, but without a place to store it, I'm not really sure what my alternative is. Anyway, I was cleaning it out over the weekend, getting it ready for a potential sale, when I found a little secret drawer full of old cards and letters my grandparents had saved from years ago. Most of them were Father's Day cards I'd sent my grandfather back in the early 80's when I was still a wee child with buck-teeth and well-worn ballet slippers. Some of the letters were from my parents and covered family updates from about the time I was six, right before the birth of my sister, until I turned 12 or so. Reading them was really like finding some buried treasure, but more interesting that re-discovering what my life was like 25 years ago, was imagining my mother writing those letters, the age I am now, all of 31 years old, married and living in Japan, with one kid already and another on the way. What different paths we've taken, what a different life she's lived from her own mother who never left the midwest. And yet, there it is, I can read it in between the lines of those old letters: the similarity between us, the desire for adventure, the excitement in living a life so different from our childhoods.

Included in the bundle of letters was my grandparents' wedding photo. I'd seen it before, but it'd been years and years. I'd forgotten how strong the resemblance is/was between my father and his father, how my sister takes after them in a way that's maybe not obvious at first glance. I'd forgotten the similarities between my grandmother and me, how our eyes are nearly identical, how we have the same round face. I thought of them last night when Drew and I watched A Streetcar Named Desire at the MoMA. I wondered if they watched it in the theater when it first came out. I wondered if my grandmother ever wore hats like the  women in the movie, like Vivien Leigh. I wondered if I'll have grandkids someday who'll wonder about me. I wondered when I'll stop being a thought in someone's mind.

Passover ended over the weekend and Drew went to temple to say a prayer for his mother who passed away when he was young. I like that tradition in Judaism of remembering lost loved ones, I like the idea of keeping people alive in our thoughts and stories. It doesn't make time seem any less fast-moving, but it helps to think I can write the stories down, make them last forever, even when the people in them are long gone.

Me in the Corner

I don't know if it's the extended daylight we've been enjoying lately, the morning workouts on the rooftop, the iron and B complex supplements I've been taking, or just finally starting to hit a bit of a stride here in NY, but I've felt more myself in recent weeks than I have since I moved here. I guess I like having a bit of a routine and for someone who works mostly from home, it can be a challenge to create that, but I think I'm getting there. I suppose the weekly gig at the coffee shop helps, though I'm not always sure it's the best place for me. The money isn't great — imagine that! — but it does provide some interesting fodder, and maybe that's worth more than a few dollars extra an hour I could find in another job?

Lately when I go in, I've been paying attention to the way people engage with me. Since I'm terribly self-conscious and always think everyone I meet either hates me or loathes me, and since I feel like a total fish out of water in impossibly trendy soho anyway, I'm always convinced every word uttered by a customer, from please to thank you, is a direct mocking of who I am as a person. Yesterday some guy even said to me after some idle chit-chat about hard-boiled eggs that he knew I was from the country. Having spent a total of about 5 nights of my entire life in the country, I really wasn't sure how to respond. His friend jumped in and said, "What if she's not? Maybe you just offended her." To which he replied, looking me in the eye, "Oh, I know she is." What the fuck! It's stuff like that that gets me all frazzled. Obviously this guy didn't know what he was talking about and was just talking to hear himself talk, but I couldn't help getting all wrapped up in this idea of me projecting the image that I'm Corn Cob Country Girl. Is it the way I talk? My attire? The way I pour the coffee? What? And why do I care so much what some random stranger in a coffee shop thinks after two minutes of talking to me?

"He was just trying to pick you up," Drew said after I told him the story.
"Really?" I asked, "Am I so naive I can't pick up on when someone's trying to pick me up? And when is calling someone a country girl a pick-up line?"

And was it a pick-up line when someone asked me how much I spent on my necklace? Who does that? Who walks up to strangers and asks how much they paid for things? It's so strange to me.

And then there are the Beautiful People, who aren't always necessarily beautiful, but either recognizably famous (yesterday I even waited on Michael Stipe), or insanely, other-wordly gorgeous I imagine their lives to be filled with glamorous photo shoots for magazine covers, globe-trotting vacations in Fiji and St. Barts, and weekly massages, which, in my mind, is the height of luxury. In a weekly 6-hour shift, I see at least 4 or 5 of these people and each time, they have the same effect on me: I feel simultaneously awestruck and utterly inferior. It's those times when I'm painfully aware of how bold the line is between them (the Beautiful People) and me. It's not that I want to be them per se, or even have their lives or looks or whatever, but I can't help feeling in those moments that all I am is a 31-year-old coffee shop girl. Even if that's just what I do 6 hours of the week.

So, of course, being the neurotic, over-thinker that I am, all this brings me to larger, more existential thoughts about what I'm doing with my life and how I define personal success and achievement and what my goals and ambitions are. Living in New York and rubbing shoulders with such successful people has definitely made me evaluate my own desires to "make it"...whatever that means. I know I want to do creative work I'm proud of, I know I want to support myself as a writer, I know at the end of my life, I'd like to be able to point to at least one thing I did that had an impact — made people cry or laugh or think or whatever. But I'm also evaluating my life outside all that and asking myself, "What if that doesn't happen? Where else am I going to find success and achievement and joy?"

Okay, wow, this post went off in an entirely different direction than I'd planned. But anyhow, I guess these are the things on my mind. Also on my mind? Dudes, I'm gonna see Paul Simon tomorrow night — something I've been dying to do for years and years now. I may not be one of the Beautiful People, life's pretty good just the same.

Greener Grass

It's no secret that I'm not exactly crazy about our neighborhood. I don't mind Hell's Kitchen too much, but we're less than half a block inside Hell's Kitchen, which means our neighbors to the east are theaters, hotels, and crap stores that sell pink I Heart NY hats, Statue of Liberty snow globes, and 2 inch plastic taxi cabs. Aside from the awesome restaurants on 9th Avenue, the convenience of the subway and the proximity to Central Park (5 minute walk!), there's not much charm at all in where we live and I end up spending a lot of time fantasizing about where we might go when we're ready to move up in the world.

Sometimes I think I'm sold on Brooklyn. Certain neighborhoods there have the same comfort and familiarity as my favorite neighborhoods in Chicago. I imagine finding a local watering hole and making friends with the bartender. I imagine riding my bike to the store and to Prospect Park, and I imagine engaging a little more with the immediate world outside my front door rather than arming myself against it with big sunglasses, an iPod and a fast gait.

Friday night, Drew and I went to a rooftop BBQ at our friends' condo in Prospect Heights. The walk from the subway to their place was filled with ethnic grocery stores, tree-lined streets, people on bikes, and kids out playing on the front stoops of their apartments before the sun set. Later, up on the rooftop, we had an amazing view of Manhattan, the lights of the city illuminating the whole horizon like one big beam of energy. I tried to pinpoint our apartment somewhere in the mass, but the closest I got was World Wide Plaza.

After the BBQ, on the way back to the subway, we walked 4 blocks without passing anyone on the street. I told Drew the neighborhood was way more dead than Andersonville, my old neighborhood in Chicago, on a Saturday night. "Remember how you used to think it was so quiet there?" I said to him.

I never thought it was too quiet there. Quiet enough, sure, but never too quiet. But then I moved to the middle of Manhattan and now I can understand what Drew meant. Still, I feel torn. I go back and forth. Is quiet good? Do I miss it? Is it what I really want?

Getting off the subway in Manhattan, we're swept into a frenzy I've never known anywhere else — it's immediate and it's kinetic and it has a gravitational pull that tugs on you until you're in the center of it. It's fun and entertaining and stimulating and there's always something to see and watch and do and hear.

Friday night, when we got back to our building and climbed the stairs to our apartment, we heard a saxophone from our open window. Thinking it might be from next door, Drew went up to the roof to get a better listen. Two minutes later, he came running down the stairs and said, "Our neighbors are having a party. They've got a jazz band playing!" So we grabbed a couple of beers, went up in the roof, sat in our chaise lounges and listened to the jazz band 5 feet away from us on the other side of a tall fence.

I may be sacrificing stars and crickets, but I had a sax player serenade me to sleep on a roof several stories above Manhattan, and I guess that's pretty good, too.

Rooftop Workouts

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but we have terrible upstairs neighbors. They're loud and they're rude. Every other weekend one or both of them (both twenty-something boys) have friends in from our of town (I'm guessing from Jersey, Drew guesses Boston). When the friends are in, they have noisy all-night parties and traipse super loudly up and down the stairwell on frequent trips to the liquor store. One one such trip during a party a couple months ago, they even stuck a few cigarettes underneath our door to, I don't know, prove some point about how rockstar they are? When they aren't having parties, they like to play their video games really loudly. They must have their speakers right on the floor because when they get going, my god, it's like our apartment sounds like some sort of war zone. We've asked them several times to keep it down, but they just ignore us. Drew even beats the ceiling with a broomstick when it gets really loud which quiets things down for about five minutes, but then they just turn their noise back up again, even louder.

Now I'm sure I've mentioned that I've gained some weight recently — about 5-10 pounds in the last six months or so — and I haven't been able to take it off quite as easily as I might have 7 years ago. I get lazy about going to the gym, I'm over running, and it turns out my bike is impossible to carry up and down the stairs and there's no safe place to store it or lock it up, which is another story, really, and one I'm pretty fucking depressed about. At any rate, I've been watching my calorie intake and trying to incorporate as much exercise as I can stand into my daily life, but it hasn't been easy.

So, two weeks ago, I ventured up to the roof of our building for the first time (this is all connected, just wait). I don't know what took me so long to go explore except that I thought I'd have to climb a rickety ladder to get up there and then I was worried my fear of heights would cause a problem once I got up. But actually, i just take the stairs directly to a door that opens to the roof and its fenced on two sides, so I don't even have to see how high off the ground I am if I don't want to. And as it turns out, I really enjoy being up there. It's like a little bit of peace above midtown. I even moved the dinette set I couldn't get rid of on Craigslist up to the roof and last week when I had friends in town, we shared a bottle of champagne up there. I'd like to pimp it all out with plants and and an outdoor rug and a radio and whatnot and make it a little urban oasis. Drew says no one else in the building ever even goes up there, so what the fuck, I might just turn it into an outdoor office, too, since I'm pretty sure I can get internet up there. Anyway, this morning I had a brilliant idea that connects this whole post.

I had the brilliant idea to bring my yoga mat, my weights and my jump rope up there and have morning work-outs on the roof every day! I have all this space to myself with no one bugging me or getting in my face, the sun and air feel so good and invigorating, AND with every jump I make on our neighbors' ceiling, I feel just a little bit more vindicated.  And if that's not motivation to get in shape, I don't know what is (you know, other than looking and feeling good...). So, upstairs neighbors, who's the rockstar now, hmm?