Curiouser and Curiouser

The woman I live with is a piece of work.

When I decided to live with her, people said "Chrystina, if there's anyone who can live with someone so different, it's you." Which I took with a fairly large grain of salt because I knew I was getting myself into some crazy shit. As it turns out, Lady X has managed to find someone perhaps even better suited to it than I am to live with her. When I told Lady X that I was leaving, she found my replacement in a day and he moved in the next day (to the guest room). Luckily, we get along and we'll now be singing together in a choir. More on that later...

Here are some clips from my life in the last two months:

• She's lived here for over 30 years--and you can tell. I don't know how many roommates she's had, but I've heard of at least 10 of them. However, the doormen tell me that no one really lives here for more than 3-4 months. I'm not setting any records with 2 months. She apparently kicked a guy out after a month because he opened the door and he was stark naked.
  

• She smoked for 40 years--up to as many as 5 packs a day. And the yellow ceiling in the kitchen can attest to that.

• I know you're wondering if there are any cats involved. I can thankfully tell you no on that one. However, if there had been a cat, that might have been the straw that broke this camel's back before I got into it. Oh well. Live and learn. Write blog posts.

• She likes to teach Asians. The reasons she lists are: They worship the ground the teacher walks on. They work themselves to the bone. And I think they "like me because I'm short". (So.... smart, hard working people like short teachers. Right.)

• She's constantly dropping the names of people who were famous in her world, but are entirely unknown to me. The only one I've ever recognized from her stories of her fancy friends is Aaron Copland--and he was admittedly just an acquaintance.

• She gets psychotically angry and sullen when I don't put my keys in the tray by the door.

• Once, when I mentioned something about if I change my Boston cell phone number, she corrected me with "when". I then made the mistake of explaining that I might not change it and she went ballistic telling me that I was "cutting off half the world" by not changing it.
  

• One time, I was walking in the door and I said hello, mentioned something about the paper she was reading, and then my phone rang. Since it was the girl who I am now going to live with and I didn't want to miss it, I excused myself and took the call in the other room. Then, graciously, I went back to talk to Lady X. By that point she was enraged that I had ignored her to take a call. I let her know that the call was important and I didn't mean to be so rude. She was not convinced and acted like I was the world's biggest bitch for taking a phone call. She topped it off with "so she's more important than me?"
  

• She refuses to call my new neighborhood anything other than in the Lower East Side when it's squarely in the East Village because she thinks I'll take it as an insult. She also constantly reminds me how very far away it is from the subway--it's 0.25 mi from the subway, which is .05 mi longer than her walk to the express stop.

• Lately, she's been clearing out her summer wardrobe to make room for the next season. With that task, she's decided to give away several shirts and other clothes. Since, strangely, we wear approximately the same shirt size, she's given me several of them. I knew better than to just say no, but as it turns out, I actually like them, and she loves it when I wear them. They're funny, but I kind of like funny.
  

• She (even though she was mad about the keys and such) just came over to offer me a box for the move.
  

And then she's nice. It's just so weird. She really is a nice person, but I don't think she's been treated very nicely all her life. She's a little out there and definitely had eccentric parents, so who knows which is the chicken or the egg, but she's more than I can handle and I'm glad to be out of it as of next Monday.

Environmentally Friendly

Socially Responsible, Ethical, Natural, Sustainable

Ah the buzz words abound, but what do they really mean?

I hate the part of my work that sounds like I exist in a fairy tale version of reality. The socially responsible investing crowd is generally pretty in touch with the financial realities of the stock (and bond) market, but people certainly aren't immune to the idealism that can accompany such lofty goals. On the other hand, it's a business, and it must be run like one--and businesses, when sustainable, are self-serving to a degree. As people at my company like to say: There are no responsible companies, just responsible investors.

The opposite feeling is also true however. Do you believe a label that says "natural" or "environmentally friendly"? What is that? Companies have realized that this is appealing to consumers and they have pasted the phrases and labels meant for truly innovative products on anything they can get away with. Luckily, there are some regulations on words like this. For example, there are USDA guidelines for Organic foods, but some would say these are not strong enough. In addition, the USDA will soon be under pressure from Wal-mart and other companies to relax those standards in order to more easily mass produce this type of agriculture. Unfortunately, mass production is one of the problems. It is a double-edged sword that Wal-mart now wants to make itself the most "green" company in the world. Their record shows that they water down and cheapen everything they come into contact with. Organics are riddled with problems including the idea that it is necessarily local agriculture, when it's not, and the problem with packaging things in tons of plastic in order to avoid using preservatives. This post was not meant to wax on about organics in particular. If you're interested, you can learn more about it here.

This sort of weakening of the words we use to indicate a low-impact product on resources is probably the reason for my distaste for what my industry appears to be on the surface, my hesitation to use such classifications, and my distrust for the labels. So I guess we can just blame it all on Wal-mart after all. Now we're happy.

O Sole Mio

One windy Friday afternoon, I had finished dropping off my friends at the Port Authority, and headed down to the Subway to go back home to the Upper West Side. Then I remembered I wanted to call my mom, so I decided to take the above ground route and came back up from the subway in order to take the bus. I walked over to the bus stop while calling mom, but she was busy, so I was waiting for the bus without a phone pressed to my ear. Before I get a chance to see this bus, along comes a horse-drawn carriage. (Yes, everything in my New York world is hyphenated). I look at the white carriage with red faux velvet interior and wonder what it is doing on 42nd and 10th, but otherwise pay it little attention until the guy in the passenger section turns around and calls for me to get in. I think he's teasing or just wants me to pay $50 for a $2 ride home, which no matter how comfortable the seats are, I'm not willing to pay. However, this persists and he insists on taking me at least a block. Mind you, there are other people waiting for this bus, but this guy's picking on me. So I run over and jump in because why not? It's New York, I'm considering it a free ride, and who doesn't want to ride in a horse-drawn carriage? Not even a vegetarian who doesn't eat vegetables, I would imagine.

Once in the carriage, Giovanni, the man in the back, and I start talking. As it turns out, he is also a carriage driver, but they're headed up to Central Park to meet up with the other carriages (58th and 7th). From the name, you can guess that he's Italian (actually from Italy). I always think I can speak Italian and then realize that when I try to speak I actually have no words except for music, so I tell him this (after all, if he's anything like my massage therapist, the longer you keep him talking, the longer the ride). So I say something like "quando m'en vo soletta per la via la gente sosta e mira, e la belleza mia tutta ricerca in me da capo a pie", which was actually appropriate considering it was Musetta's Waltz and they had stopped because "you are so beautiful, are you sure you're not Italian?". (The song is about a woman who can't help but to attract attention due to her beauty). However, considering that it isn't even close to modern Italian and my accent probably needs work, he didn't understand. So I sang it.

And then it started. Giovanni began his entire Italian repertoire. I didn't really know the songs, so I had to go mainstream on him to participate, since he insisted that I sing. In fact, he told me to make up Italian songs. I'm sorry, but I'm no Grant Damron. I can't just do that. So we settled for Andrea Bocelli, which we sang at the top of our lungs all the way to 58th and 8th, where I decided I had to get out. People noticed. It was hilarious.

Vegetarian Who Doesn't Eat Vegetables

My mom used to call me names when I was in highschool because I apparently didn't eat vegetables--and I called myself a vegetarian (but still managed to stay away from meat). Well, I am living with a variation on a theme. My 55-year-old Bronx-born, Italian Catholic, 5-foot-tall roommate (soon to be former roommate), is the English as a Second Language teacher who doesn't like foreigners.

It doesn't matter how often I tell her that it's offensive to me that she makes such blanket statements about what she perceives as a well-defined ethnic group (generally the HiPANics--she likes to draw out the middle syllable in a way only a native New Yorker can). It doesn't matter that I remind her from time to time that she lives with a Mexican. In fact, she corrected me and told me that my family was actually from Spain. Um, well, yeah...kinda like your family is from Italy. None of this matters. She doesn't stop.

And just today, she's telling me about her friend's class of "Nasty Rusky's" that think ESL is their conversation hour and they don't want to learn English Grammar.

When you can keep her off the subject of people from other cultures (not often), she really is a fine person. A little talkative, and completely self-absorbed, but generally ok. However, on the topic of people she thinks she doesn't like, she can be downright nasty.

Buying Beer in New York

Contrary to what you might think in a city that allegedly doesn't sleep, it is quite a task to buy beer here. Perhaps the sedative tendency is counter-productive to the whole not sleeping thing. This theory is much easier to believe when you see that there are liquor stores all over the place and none of them sell beer. Several other theories come to mind however. In New York, space comes at a premium. To illustrate, keep in mind that nearly everyone in Manhattan (who didn't move here 100 years ago) is paying rent with a comma in it (i.e. $1,000+) no matter what size the room is or how many roommates there are. Often stores have multiple levels--even McDonald's has an upstairs (for the fit clientele), so store front space is even more important. So it comes as less of a surprise that beer, given its individual, bulky packaging, is harder to find than wine and hard liquor. I guess it should also not be a surprise that it is damn expensive when you do find it, but it comes as quite a shock the first few times.

I've run into this problem by accident a couple times recently--the second time being more egregious than the first. On Saturday, I bought a 6 pack of Sam Adams and a 6 pack of Negra Modelo for a grand total of $25 (without tax--which would have been added if I'd used my card). Yes, 12 mass-produced beers cost me twenty five dollars and that was without tax! Then, last night, I saw Dogfish Head's Raison D'Etre and had to have some. I swear it said 6 for $8.99. On second glance--at my receipt--I realized it actually said $2.99/bottle. It's still cheaper than the bar, but wow. There's got to be a cheaper place to buy decent beer.