Five Days In Three Parts

I. Saturday

A. I took a magical trip to Staten Island on Saturday. It is unbelievably close to my house-- maybe 20 minutes tops from my block to the end of the Verrazano. It is a really interesting place. The neighborhoods change rapidly so it keeps you interested. Overall it reminded me of the Midwest (definitely Iowa, maybe Michigan, Ohio or Minnesota, not Indiana). The main imperative of the trip was to thrift shop and that we did. We went to a bunch of places including Everything Goes. It's owned by some weirdo commune freaks which we found out only after being creepily followed around the entire time. They also had a 'costume' section which was basically what anyone of our persuasion (i.e. frequent thrifters, 20somethings, from big cities, etc) would consider to be totally standard vintage fair. It was funny that they put it in its own 'wacky!' section located in the basement. Here's another place we went:


Seriously, it looks like I got that off an ironic signage photoblog, but it's totally legit. Funny, right? I scored a killer golf-themed ice bucket there. They also had a decent record selection, including a sealed copy of Rick Springfield's Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet.


Here's Lindsay perusing their collection:


The Island is rumored to have good Sri Lankan cuisine, but we couldn't find the restaurant we planned to patronize, so we settled for a totally empty Indian restaurant in a strip mall instead. It was pretty good and the lunch special was very reasonable. With Haley's help, I finished all my tandoori chicken.


Here's a pretty thing I saw:


In all, I'd definitely recommend going to SI for thriftin' or just plain hangin'.

B. Later that night we finally did THE GREAT CHAIN SECRET SANTA GIFT EXCHANGE. This has been many months in the making. We didn't have everyone in attendance, but 3/4 was our quorum, so we proceeded. People did a great job! Here's Matt, excited and red-eyed after Jess revealed that she will buy him new sheets when he gets his new bed:


I have to say that Erin's gift to me was the best of all. She got me a Cuisinart Heart-Shaped Waffle Iron Thanks Erin!! Matt got Erin some Rachael Ray literature.


We ate at Number 1 Chinese, which is like The Max or The Peach Pit for The Chain. Matt loooooves the chips they serve. They give you tons with an awesome dipping sauce!


Zack made a cool chopstick riffle.


Paul likes to suck the flavor out of the chopsticks. See?


For some reason the whole weekend was full of Jenga. I didn't play, but it was all around me all the time.




II. Eye Donors


Has anyone seen the subway advertisements for The Eye Bank of New York? They feature Jerry Orbach, who apparently gave his eyes away when he died. I wouldn't say these ads are successful necessarily, though they do make me think about the fact that two people are walking around with one of Jerry Orbach's eyes. They also makes me picture Jerry Orbach lying in the grave without eyes. They also make me think about Jerry Orbach's 'viewing.' I don't know if he had one, but if he did, did they give him fake eyes? It'd be pretty nasty if they didn't. Also were the eye recipients present? Matt thought it'd be dope if the recipients were ungauzed at the viewing, so the first thing they saw with one of Jerry Orbach's eyes was Jerry Orbach's dead body/face with exposed ocular cavities. Lastly, the ads make me wonder if eyes live forever. Can those who inherit eyes also donate?

III. Pipe Burst

I tried to fix my heater last night. I called the plumber who told me to turn the valve all the way to the left until I couldn't turn it anymore. I said, 'But water comes out when I do that.' He said, "Keep turning it. It'll stop.' I did. Apparently I turned the wrong thing and the entire valve came off and water went everywhere. For 45 minutes. It looked like this, but horizontal and narrower.



I flipped out. I was crying and hyperventilating. Thank god Cody was home. He has been in so many emergency situations (including, but not limited to: a hotel fire, a whirlpool overflow, and a car-through-wall-at-the-fudge-factory) that this didn't even phase him. Luckily because of the extreme slant in my apartment (a feature I had always considered the apartment's greatest shortcoming), almost none of my stuff was damaged. Morris the landlord came over and helped us out. He was extremely nice, despite some annoyance that he was 'about to sit down to watch American Idol.' I think being a girl worked in my favor because Morris is somewhat sexist. It was easy for him to chalk this incident up to girls being stupider than boys, a fact which he relayed to our lesbian neighbors saying, 'Never send a woman to do a man's job.' Hmmm.