I just want you to know, though, that I probably won't get to make this exciting treat for you until February, because this month I am writing. Writing a teen novel. As part of a writing exercise that Andy and Adam and I are all doing together. Sentences structured like the ones in this paragraph can be found in my novel.

It's not the novel I want to write, but it's a novel I AM writing, and writing something that isn't good is incredibly freeing. I usually second guess and thus reject all of my ideas, which leads to not writing at all. This project -- essentially our own private NaNoWriMo (which Andy's mom successfully completed last November) -- doesn't allow for any second guesses. It's all about putting words -- any words, but 50,000 of them -- into a document. So I'm just getting it done. The product is turning out, unsurprisingly, to be very autobiographical, extremely boring, and pretty sloppy. Anyway, I'm hoping it will lead me to a future of more and better writing.

Also, my resolutions for 2007 are:
1. Wear more dresses
2. Go to more parties

So please invite me to some parties where dresses are required. Maybe a fancy luncheon or "garden party." Or a cocktail party.

You know what I hate? When magazines assume I have a super-busy life filled with cocktail parties. I think magazines want to make me feel bad if I'm not going to a cocktail party at least every other night. Guys, I have a confession: I don't think I've ever been to a cocktail party. I also was sort of disgusted by the recent piece in the New York Times about all of the famous-ish creative industry people who network over breakfast at restaurants in SoHo or wherever. Because I'm envious, I guess, that I don't get to spend two hours chatting every morning over breakfast in a restaurant with cool-looking Italian soccer players and then decide to put a Fiat tie-in in my next movie, because I'm not important enough to have an article written about where I eat, and because I'm not wealthy. After my novel gets published I won't have to feel this way anymore, thank goodness!

I did not send out any holiday greeting cards this year. In case you are feeling stung or slighted, I want you a) not to feel that way and b) to know it's not you, it's me. Usually I put on some Christmas records on a Sunday afternoon and make hot chocolate and happily write cards, but the perfect December Sunday never presented itself, and all the weeknights somehow filled up, too, and here you all are on Christmas, cardless and likely distraught. But you are not without my warm thoughts. Have a lovely holiday.

So I applied for and got a part-time job as a "web consultant." It's one day per week in the office of a medical research foundation. In theory this sounds perfect; I will get to interact with people in person, in what I hope is a more rewarding way than I do when I volunteer (I won't get into that, except to say that I'm hoping to volunteer elsewhere next school year), and yet I'll only have to do it once a week, so there will be enough time to focus on other work, too.

The problem now is that I have only about two appropriate "business casual" outfits and one pair of appropriate shoes. This is what happens when you exist in a land of designer jeans; you lose touch with business casual. When I was trying on clothes for my interview, I discovered that things I thought fit me actually don't. Apparently pants that are too short used to be okay with me. Absurd! Anyway, I think I'm going to take this as an opportunity to introduce more skirts into my wardrobe. And maybe some nice boots.

Okay, I will stop talking about myself now, for now.

Also there's a huge list of non-apartment stuff I want to do. I found an artist whose work really makes me want to paint. It also makes me think, "I wish I could afford to buy some of these for my apartment. My apartment could really use some nice art."

I also want to write an amazingly good novel and make all of my own clothes by hand, in case I haven't mentioned this before. I would also like to have a lot of money. Thank you.

At least some progress has been made on our new dwelling. We spent last weekend painting the living room, and the only thing left now is putting on a second coat and hoping that our taping job (okay, my taping job) was sufficient. And touching up all of the mistakes. Oh, and completely stripping, cleaning, and re-staining the fireplace. Some photos:

This is the closest thing I have to a "before" photo. You can see that the walls are a yellowy-white color, which doesn't look so bad here, but which actually is a bit ugly and sickening.

So, we decided to put plain old white above the molding and a color called "Berkshire Beige," which I've been describing to people as "grayish taupe," below.

This is my office, which acted as a test room for the main area. Our taping work in this room received an I for Improvement Needed, so I spent about four hours taping the living room very carefully. One problem is that previous painters did some appallingly sloppy work (which will now look like our own sloppy work). Another is that the top molding is coming off of the wall in numerous places. But it still looks pretty sharp. Isn't it just crying out for some nice big art, though? (And maybe a different chair? Hmm...)

And this is the fireplace in progress. It's going to take a whole lotta precious time to do it right, child, but we will, and then it will look lovely.

Most recently, I was thanked by Andy in the booklet for Andy's very talented ex-roommate and Broadway Idol winner Jac's show "You Don't Know Jac" (a title jokingly suggested by Andy). Andy is playing the piano for this show. I am not doing anything for it. So I just got a free credit for my thank bank (a lame term I just made up and honestly don't like very much). Next time someone doesn't thank me but should have, I can just deduct it and then everyone will be even.

Anyway, that was nice, but it wasn't as neat as being thanked for helping with a cover design in an actual book that people will actually keep in their homes. My former coworker Greg and his wife Jennifer recently published a recipe book based on Jennifer's great blog Vegan Lunchbox, in which she prepares tasty vegan creations for her school-aged son's lunch. I recommend that you buy this book for anyone interested in making healthy, delicious dishes for their children or themselves.

And because I think the design process is usually pretty interesting, I'll share my small piece of this one with you:

This is one of the covers (by Greg) the McCanns were considering when Greg contacted me to get my thoughts. The purple seemed a little heavy to me, so I played around with the design in Photoshop and ended up with...


... this, which incorporated a tiny scalloped edge into the bottom area and focused more on the blues and yellows used elsewhere in the design. I also recommended that the title font be used purely for the title so that it had more punch. I had a lot of fun playing with this, as I have secretly always wanted to design book covers.


Greg's finished product: friendly, bright, and appealing. The scalloped edge idea was developed and extended to the top bar as well. Nice work!

Thanks for thanking me, you guys! When my overwhelmingly popular book that I haven't yet written comes out, I'm going to thank everyone who's had to listen to me talk about how I really should write a book and I don't know why I just haven't done it yet, I guess I'm just afraid that it won't be good and I know I'm totally pathetic but I need to focus on making money right now because there's this chair I really love and it's like a thousand bucks.* So get ready to look for your name.

* I promise that the annoying run-on technique used here will only appear in my book once or twice.

I was hoping to find a website that would let us do this so that I wouldn't have to create some unwieldy, pencil-smeared thing on newsprint. And then, in the uncanny way that the web will sometimes lead you to the place you were meant to be, sort of like when you're driving and not really paying attention and then seem to arrive at your house by magic, the internet tonight dropped me off at CommunityWalk, a site that lets you mark up a Google map of your neighborhood with handy notes. You can also search other people's maps of your neighborhood and see what they're saying about stuff, if they've chosen to make their maps public.

So, it's cool and I think you should check it out if you're at all inclined to make a reference of things in your area.

our new living room in its current state

So, we of course found an apartment, eventually. It's nice, and it's in a nice neighborhood, and it's much less expensive than Candleshoe was going to be, and I like it a lot. I officially moved in just over a week ago, then left town the same day to attend my ten-year high school reunion. The reunion was nice; I only wish that more people from our class had been there. The people who weren't there should all submit little life summaries of themselves to the alumni website. I want to know what they're up to! And compare my life to theirs! And be able to e-mail them.

Anyway, since that weekend, I've:

• come down with and recovered from a bad cold and given the cold to Andy
  
• made numerous trips to my old apartment to retrieve the last of my stuff, an annoying task because I was fevery and because it involves an above-ground subway transfer, which means lots of steps, which is okay normally but bad when you're carrying heavy things and have a fever
  
• tried Dunkin Donuts coffee, which was fine but which didn't impress me as much as I'd expected, given how much everyone seems to love it
  
• washed a lot of dishes (boxes of dishes keep seeming to materialize)
  
• helped Andy move the last of his stuff out of his apartment
  
• helped Chris move most of his stuff out of his apartment and into my old one
  
• tried Hofbrau Oktoberfest beer, which has a nail-polishy taste to it and thus cannot be recommended
  
• ordered living room furniture that won't arrive until early December
  
• punctured my butt by sitting on a big staple
  
• gotten a huge splinter in my leg
  
• been pooped on by a bird
  

Today we're cleaning Andy's old apartment and turning over the keys. As Steve said last week, it's hard to believe we used to move in and out of dorms and apartments every year. It seemed less overwhelming, then -- maybe because we had fewer possessions and fewer external responsibilities. Or maybe because it just seemed normal to be moving all the time.

Fellow New Yorkers, have you taken a close look at this subway ad? The photo appears to be from around 1982. No wonder that guy doesn't know his HIV status.

Was this really the only crowd shot the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation could afford? Or did the person making the ad just pull something from their library, not realizing that the current '80s fashion revival is pretty much limited to people in their early twenties and doesn't extend to businessmen?

But you know, last week I treated myself to some high-waisted, wide-legged jeans, and I'll admit I'm kind of in love with them. And I'm 28! But they're much more '70s than '80s, and I have periodically been trying to dress like Rhoda Morgenstern since I was 15. So I am absolved of fashion slavery.

Disappointed that the "office" doesn't have any windows.

We (Andy, Adam, and I) looked at apartments for a stressful week and applied for the first one that felt right: a two-story space in a brownstone with a high charm factor and a close proximity to seven subway lines. (The photo above is of a different place.) Andy nicknamed our chosen apartment Candleshoe; it had two fireplaces, huge windows, thick-planked floors, cavernous rooms, and an aura of playful mystery. I daydreamed about descending the curved staircase each morning, about working in my sun-drenched office.

You already know where this is going. I spent hours compiling over eighty pages of paperwork for the application and submitted it before noon the next day, only to learn at 6 p.m. that the broker hadn't realized that each of the PDFs I sent him contained more than one page of information. We found out today that our application was rejected; the landlord "wasn't comfortable" with us, no further explanation given. We're gearing up to repeat the process, but there are only so many times we can do this before we actually have to move (and/or before I have a breakdown).

Trying to find an apartment in New York is simply dreadful. Brokers want to sell you on a place and be done with you so they can move on to the next sale; they push you to make a decision before you've had a chance to think about it and scold you when you don't immediately like the problematic, overpriced places they're showing you. As someone who often needs to go home and think about a $50 sweater before buying it, I feel uneasy about making a quick decision about a place in which I'm going to live and work (and on which I'm going to spend upwards of $10,000) for the next year or more. But the market here requires speed; if you don't act right away, someone else might, and you'll lose your chance. And even fast action, as we learned, doesn't necessarily guarantee you a new home.

Worse than any real or imagined pressure is that most apartments just aren't very desirable. As far as Brooklyn goes, affordable* apartments in good neighborhoods are usually not as nice as those in more questionable ones; owners don't need to make them appealing in and of themselves if the location is right. For me, an apartment is immediately out of the running if it doesn't have hardwood floors, if the windows are too small, if the ceilings are too low, if it has no personality, if it looks in any way worse than where I'm currently living. I feel both guilty about being so picky and entitled to live in a place I deem nice enough. And then a little guilty about feeling entitled.

I'd like to write a letter to the owner of Candleshoe and tell her that we're responsible, respectful, wholly undramatic people. I understand, though, that her process is very similar to ours; she's as entitled as I am to wait until she finds a situation that feels right. (Of course, she hasn't actually met us, whereas we've "met" each of our potential apartments, so it seems a little unfair.)

I'm holding out hope, though I'm not sure I believe, that we'll find something else that we like. But I'm also worrying that if we do, we'll just get rejected again. Am I being dramatic?

* By "affordable," I mean apartments that cost around $1,000 per month per person. Of course, this is actually quite expensive, especially for people who don't have steady incomes.

But here is a rainbow in the Scottish Highlands.

It's inexpressibly great to be home, and in time, when my mixed feelings have worn off and the songs from Andy's show are out of my head, I'll only remember the good parts, probably.

Enough wistfulness, though. My goals for our time in London are:

1. See all the free stuff, plus a few famous things we have to pay for, like the Tower of London.
2. Buy a lot of clothes from places they don't have back home so that I can at least think that I look cooler than everyone.
3. Possibly get a haircut. There is a place across the street from where we're staying seeking hair models, and I have done the hair model thing before with success, but Andy thinks it's a bad idea.

And that is it.

See, there used to be a television channel in Philadelphia by the name of Prism. It was a premium channel for people who wanted to be able to watch local sports broadcasts. Naturally, my family needed this channel so that no Phillies games could be missed. (My dad will tell you that at the time he signed up for it, local channels had stopped putting Phillies games on TV for some reason, so Prism was the only way he could watch any of their games at all. Short of going to the stadium, of course.) What the Wikipedia entry fails to mention is that Prism had a slim lineup of very unusual (i.e., inexpensive) movies that it would play regularly in the daytime. So, during high school I became obsessed with the following movies, and possibly may have decided to study film, thanks to this particular station: Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972), Little Murders (1971), and Denial (1990).

I would recommend all of the above except Denial, which seems to me now like the writer/director's unskillful working through of a hard break-up and extreme self-image issues. For the sixteen-year-old me, it was so weird and fractured as to be moving, and I could relate with the self-image stuff. I knew it was a very bad film, but it was also strangely compelling and lyrical, and so I loved it with some shame. The rest of the list are somewhat bizarre documents from the early 1970's, and they all did a great job feeding my hunger for anything 70's-related. These I also found strange and moving and magical; they were unlike any films I'd seen before in both story and presentation.

Back on track: We're trying to figure out how to spend the five free days Andy has between the end of the Edinburgh run and the beginning of the London performances (August 29-September 3). We're thinking of maybe touring northern Scotland... which I think would involve renting a car, which would involve me driving on the wrong side of the road. (I think I'd fare well enough; last night during the movie, cars were on the proper American side and I thought it looked wrong. But of course watching something and doing it are very disparate activities.) We could also just go to England early. Suggestions are welcome.

In other news, I just finished To the Lighthouse and am still feeling depressed about how good it is.

Here we are at the top of Arthur's Seat. (I made it, Steve, but the weather was definitely on my side.)

I took the picture above, but I've been a lazy photographer so far this trip, and I will probably regret it later. Since Andy has been more diligent about documentation, I invite you to get a partial sense of our Scotland experience by checking out his photos.

Now we're off to see some sculptures of giant people by Ron Mueck.

We have a nice little flat here. It's very bright, with large windows and high ceilings.

Food is expensive. Books are particularly expensive. But book covers, on the whole, have much nicer designs than the ones in America. I was disappointed, however, that the cover for A.S. Byatt's Possession here is possibly even uglier than the one back home. I have not yet read that book mostly due to its unappealing cover.

People here don't walk around talking on their cell phones in public. I actually don't know why this would be, unless they simply don't use phones as often. Anyway, when I've done this -- particularly when I've done it in a grocery store -- I've felt very rude and American. The locals also don't walk and eat at the same time, which is polite of them, and which I've also done here already.

Almost all restaurants stop serving food at 10 p.m., which has been inconvenient. People start drinking at noon here, and pubs are full from then until closing time. I would like to have a beer in a new pub every night, but traveling with a large group makes for a lot of compromising.

I'm not sure how accurate my impressions are, because they're based on observing people who may be tourists. Since it's festival season, the city's population has, I think, tripled, but most of the outsiders seem to be from England.

One tourist, though, was from Vienna. Andy and I were walking to the park Saturday evening when I spotted someone familiar sitting on a bench, apparently looking at me. She didn't say anything, and so I stared back, trying to figure out if it was really who I thought it was. I almost had convinced myself it wasn't her, but then I decided to risk it: "NICOLE?!" (Nicole and I went to high school together, and she's been living in Vienna since she graduated from college.) By the look on her face, it seemed, amusingly, like she wasn't very happy to see me, but she responded, and I sat down to chat. (I think that she had written me off after I didn't spend time with her when she visited New York a couple of years ago.) She was, I found out, on a short tour through Belfast, Edinburgh, and London. We ended up seeing a stand-up comedy show later that night after catching up over a drink. I felt a little bad about interrupting her solitary excursion; I can imagine how it might have thrown me off, at least at first, if I'd been traveling alone and had been obligated to spend time with an old friend unexpectedly. But she seemed to enjoy herself enough.

For me, running into Nicole was invigorating. I'd had a pretty lousy week up until the weekend; I was essentially living my Brooklyn existence in a beautiful castled city, sitting in front of a computer and managing clients. I wasn't able to dial up what I consider to be the best part of being on this type of trip: the ability to envision myself as living another life in an exciting new place. I wasn't able to let myself be overcome with wonder or charm. Everything was frustratingly normal. So when I met Nicole out of the blue, I felt that at last something had actually happened, that being here would end up being memorable.

Also, I now have a walk-on spot in Andy's show, at least temporarily. I am the "house manager," and I bring a meowing bag back from offstage and place it on the floor. Though this character doesn't have any lines, I feel like my interpretation of the role is strong. In my portrayal, the house manager is annoyed that she has to deal with the bag. Everyone told me I did a great job. Hopefully at some point the actual staff backstage (a rotating crew of teenage girls) will be able to do this. One of them messed it up before, which is why I've been called to the rescue. I also sell CD's and scripts after each show. I have sold one CD and zero scripts.

We've seen a few shows so far, but nothing exceptional. Well, Harry Shearer's show with his wife was exceptionally embarrassing, unfortunately. But there are plenty more live acts to see ($$$, ugh) and there's a film festival coming (Becca, they're showing Little Murders!), and there's also an art festival going on, and there are some cool-sounding ghost tours of the city, and there's that castle, and so, hopefully, my workload will dry up and I'll be able to be a true tourist for a good bulk of the time. I can make up the money later, probably.

Pictures to come.

I've been busy getting ready to go to Edinburgh and London. To me, "busy getting ready to go" means making lists of things I need to do, things mainly accomplished through buying something on the internet and then waiting around for UPS to come and give me the stuff. Actually, last week I was at the beach to use the air conditioning, boardwalk, and porch, and Steve received a number of UPS deliveries for me with gusto. I assume with gusto.

But the time to prepare is running out. Yesterday I had a small crisis moment when, after dying my hair, I noticed that it looked great except for my roots, which were still white and blonde and which had been, of course, the point. At the time of this discovery, Andy and I were supposed to be leaving to see A Scanner Darkly at Cobble Hill Cinemas because it's only $6 on Tuesdays and because he really wanted to see it and because it was our last chance to see a movie in America for a while because he has rehearsals every night starting today. At the same time -- just after seven in the evening -- UPS had still not yet delivered my awesome new wallet by randL, aka Andy's cool friend Chika from high school. (I went for the white and green one.) So, naturally, I had a mini breakdown, tears included. Andy said it was okay if I tried to redye my roots and that we could see the movie later at BAM. So I redyed successfully, and then my wallet came, and then we had a nice dinner at Cafe Lafayette in Fort Greene, and then we saw the movie, which was, unfortunately, disappointing, and then we stopped back at Andy's place, where Adam, our future roommate, is currently staying. But let's see if I can name-drop some more Brooklyn locations in this paragraph. McCarren Park! That gold-capped tower where all the dentists used to be!

I have only the vaguest of ideas of what Scotland will be like. In London I'll probably, though not surely, be staying at a hostel (don't worry, Chris, I've made reservations), and I know what hostels are like, even if they're all a bit different. And I guess I have an image of London in my mind from movies and books. People say it's like New York except for the cars and architecture, and I believe them. I can feel London. But I think I'm imagining a sort of French version of Edinburgh, a gauzed-over, old-fashionedly romantic European place. I suspect this is inaccurate, and that it's harder, heartier, beer-ier, than my imagined city. I don't know what our apartment there will be like, or the restaurants, or the streets, or the wireless internet connections. So I haven't actually given the trip that much thought, beyond wanting to buy a whole new wardrobe specifically for it. I have not done so, figuring it'll be more fun/exotic to do this while I'm there. But I'll probably feel too guilty spending money on anything other than food and beer and will just buy a sweatshirt that says EDINBURGH. Or maybe one that says WILLIAMSBURG! Or BROOKLYN BRIDGE! Sorry.

Anyway, I will post some photos and tell you what Edinburgh is REALLY like once I'm there. Keep it cool in the states, yo.