rebecca and karl

tenpolaroids019, originally uploaded by tenpolaroids.

this is my kickass roommate rebecca (of the earlier floor cake post) and her kickass boyfriend karl. i like this picture because they're both making the same face about something cute the other said. karl spends a lot of time staring incredulously at us acting ridiculous. i think he and dan developed a strange bond in that way the other night.

view

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this is what it looks like out nick's living room window.

maura

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taken in the middle of her nightly "you-don't-need-me-upstairs-so-i'm-gonna-help-nikka-with-menus" whirlwind. i love when she does that.

good party, kids.

Last night was amazing, as nearly 120 people waltzed in and out of my parents' house last night, talking and laughing and eating and drinking. It's great to see people I never see, and to remember what unconditional love and family are really about, even if you don't share blood. The vibe in each room was familial and wonderful, watching people catch up and scream and laugh from my spot behind the bar, standing between my uncle and my cousin as we made drinks for people- i didn't even have time to get my digital camera out, let alone the polaroid.
so much love. it's too beautiful for words.

byron

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is sleepy.

taken on nick's moving day.

neb

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taken at his i-booked-a-cruise-ship-for-the-better-part-of-winter-so-haha party at dave&buster's times square. we won a LOT of tickets playing trivia. not so many playing skeeball.
he gets on the ship today. hope he's having fun.

gio

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his lazors are charged and ready.

he is the best.cat.ever.

jet lag

...is not too much fun. I'm exhausted for what feels like no apparent reason. My body is kind of killing me, but I shouldn't be complaining since I didn't have surgery the other morning. Again, I look around at how strange LA is during the holidays, considering there hasn't been any snow here since sometime in the 1940s....then again, being in LA as an adult is always pretty strange. I still have no idea how people move here and somehow manage to carve out lives for themselves- it's such an isolating place.
There is, however, something to be said for sitting at a crappy diner you've been going to your entire life with an old friend at three o'clock in the morning, rehashing and debating and debriefing.

you should be reading margot's blog.
i'll beat you up if you don't.

bawlz

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because mitzi's always bawlz.

I'd go into more about mitzi, but really...how can you describe your best girlfriend? she's more family than anything at this point- we love each other, we hate each other, we're too involved in each other's lives...but i know she'll be there always, as will i.
love.

boys on couch

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this is (L to R) Lorrel, Joe, James, and Mike. They are not short boys. they range from 5'9" to about 6'2" or so. The couch in my uncle's living room is just that big. It's a stellar couch. Giant. Leather. Good for sleeping and getting lost in. All four of them were organized pretty comfortably on it this past movie night, and adorably, none of their feet were touching the ground.

mike

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payback's a bitch, wang. i believe this was shortly before i handed your ass back to you by sinking the 8 ball.

also note: jim and andy d in the background, hamming it up.

but seriously, mike's pretty awesome. he doesn't laugh too much at me when i wander around his apartment looking confused at all hours.

many thanks to dan for help with the lighting.

the cave

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when i say i'm working in the cave, this is what i mean. this is a very small office. it lives behind the prep kitchen. there are no windows and a very large too-loud air conditioning unit that provides the only ventilation. it is either swelteringly hot in here or ridiculously freezing. there are any number of loud people screaming while i'm trying to be as polite as i can on the phone, telling mostly mean and crazy people that no, you may not come to the restaurant until 8pm. there is always too much work to do and there is never enough time to do any of it and never enough people to help. i'm constantly frustrated, but there are certainly worse things i could be doing.
i'm in the cave at the moment. it makes me want to scream.

glowing kittens

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071212210021.3u7d8gpx&show_article=1



omg. WANT.


pictures coming soon.

colin and nick

tenpolaroids003, originally uploaded by tenpolaroids.

Nick likes this picture because his arms look huge. Nick's arms always look huge. We once determined that Nick's arms are actually the size of my thighs. I'm a dancer (and clearly not a photographer), so that's a little scary. there will be more pictures of Nick in the future.

I like this picture because Colin is giving a very typical Colin smile, and he is gone in Vegas doing Mamma Mia for the next nine months or so and I will miss him a lot. I already miss him. Colin is one of my closest friends and one of the most together people I know, even though his energy is always up on a 10. The joy he brings to everything he does and the people around him is infectious and wonderful, and his demeanor is so caring and sweet and jumpy and fantastic. College would have been a very different experience had I not had this incredible person there with me. He's one of those people who you can't forget because he wiggles into your heart and just...stays there.

spiral staircase

tenpolaroids009, originally uploaded by tenpolaroids.

I'm housesitting for my uncle this week so i don't have to go up and down these stairs seventeen times a day...but normally I do, since my bedroom is down that staircase. I've only fallen a couple times, and only sober. of course. just another slice of life in the heaven that is new york city. There's a spiral staircase in my parents' house too, but it goes down to the basement and nobody ever really goes there. I took a similar photo to this one in the ninth grade or so in a stupid black-and-white film phase that every ninth grader has to go through. that photo is long gone at this point, but i like this one better anyway, since this is a spiral staircase i found on my own.
there's a cat sitting in front of the keyboard making it very difficult to type...so i think i'll run off now.

tree branch

tenpolaroids002
Originally uploaded by tenpolaroids

Reminds me of the overgrown tree branches from the run-down weird house next door that used to hit my bedroom window at night. The Santa Ana winds would blow like crazy in the winter ("winter" by LA standards) and make those skinny branches whistle and whip my window like they were out to get me- it terrified me as a little girl. Now it's sort of comforting, a homey change from hearing the workers yelling outside my window at the crack of dawn or listening to my neighbors blast terrible music and scream at all hours of the night. I go home now and lie awake in bed, hoping the wind will blow and the branches will whistle me to sleep.

awkward

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totally awkward requisite blurry washed-out self portrait. i'd say i was cuter than this, i just don't think it's all that true.

menorah

tenpolaroids004, originally uploaded by tenpolaroids.

i lit candles the other night, pretty much for the express purpose of taking a silly picture. although there is some kind of comfort in lighting them for at least one night, feeling like i'm part of something bigger than me. not in a god kind of way, since god and i aren't really too down with each other...but just knowing that my aunts and uncles are doing it too, and hoping they're well and happy even if i don't talk to them as often as i should.
the holidays are fast approaching, and i'm excited about going home for more than two days this time.

i hate brunch.

I'm not necessarily a huge fan of children as a concept. They're occasionally cute and sometimes fun to be with... sometimes.  I know that children can be quite annoying, especially at brunch. Brunch brings out a side of children that makes me want to tear my hair out. The children at brunch today weren't too terrible, most of them were just really excited to go see the Nutcracker- little ballerina girls in their fancy dresses giggling excitedly about seeing the sugar plum fairy.

Children being the size they are, they move a little more slowly- what with the short legs and all. It's not really fun to follow behind them, especially when you have to be somewhere ten seconds ago to deal with yet another in a long line of unsatisfied people. However, it takes a special kind of miserable person to put her hands on and then shove other people's children out of the way, yelling "URCHINS!" at them- to then breeze through to a table which is so unsatisfactory they come running back to scream at me? 

You never understand the true nature of people until you've had to work in the service industry. The behavior I've seen by many patrons who dine at my restaurant is appalling and quite the double standard for the amount of money some of these people have and the kind of organizations they are a part of, the boards they sit on, the money they donate. Most people's true colors are muddled in the almost cruel way they treat the "invisible" people who bring them a meal. Tipping a delivery guy two dollars on a $60 order after he's run twelve blocks in 30 degree weather or just not at all- insane demanding customers on the phone who don't understand what I mean when I say "I'm sorry, we're fully committed at that time" and want to fight with me about it because don't I KNOW WHO THEY ARE? People who make me run a marathon and show them six or seven tables before they grudgingly agree to one?

no. i don't know who you are. and frankly, the more rude you are to me, the less i care. and i didn't really care all that much to begin with. all i ask is that you treat me and my coworkers with the respect and decency we deserve. 

and one more thing- i am not your server. i cannot get your check. i cannot fetch you a drink. my card does not allow me to do such things. pay attention to who serves you and find them when they come back around, but do NOT snap at me. that is not my job, and they sure as hell don't pay me enough to deal with it.

floor cake.

tenpolaroids005, originally uploaded by tenpolaroids.

This is what happens when your roommate decides it's a really good idea for you two to bake a cake at three in the morning and you screw it up...by dropping it frosting-side-down on the kitchen floor. I like this picture because it's all washed out and looks like it's from the 70s, between the color of the picture and the color of my kitchen floor.
My roommate Rebecca and I occasionally bake cake from a box. I make the cake part, she frosts it. It works out nicely, for the most part...because, well, there's cake at the end of it all.
The cake was already frought with humorous disaster, since the eggs we used in it had a sell-by date of October 25th (and it was well past Thanksgiving at this point) and we cracked them outside, shivering in our socks on the stoop in case any of them were rotten (since we didn't want to stink up the apartment). Reality show cameras should have been following these two crazy girls as they tossed eggshells off the stoop and sniffed the blue ceramic bowl for any telltale sulphur smells. Either way, the eggs weren't rotten and the cake was eventually baked, although I didn't put enough butter in and I don't own a whisk or an electric mixer, so it was a little weird-looking. Leave it to me to screw up cake from a box. And then drop it on the floor after my roommate frosted it so nicely.
Gravity sucks. however, that night was the first night that floor had been cleaned in an awfully long time, so some good came out of it.
poor poor floor cake.

dan

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this is dan. and that's all i can say about that.

christmas trees

tenpolaroids008, originally uploaded by tenpolaroids.

It's the holiday season on the upper west side, and that means that the christmas trees are out in full force. These guys stand with them every single day for many many hours at a time in the bitter cold. they smoke cigarettes and try to keep warm by the van they've got running behind them.. They're out there 24/7.
I love walking by them and smelling the trees- great piney smell permeating broadway, making the first snow the other day feel really special. I know this photo is too dark to really see anything, but it is what it is. i never claimed to be a good photographer.

tenpolaroids001

tenpolaroids001, originally uploaded by tenpolaroids.

This photo was a complete screwup. I was playing around with the polaroid and accidentally pressed the flash bypass button while the cover was closed. clearly since there was nothing to take a photograph of, the polaroid came out blank. and black. so i found an old silver gel pen and, rather than waste a picture, doodled the blog title. I'm either resourceful or incredibly foolish. I'm more inclined to go with incredibly foolish with a layer of trying to look cool.

hard drive woes

My poor hard drive is on its last legs and making it abundantly clear to me that it no longer wants to be an active member of my computer. I, however, continually force it to go on by taking it on field trips to the Apple store and making them disk repair it with the triage drive, since I wasn't smart enough to partition my external and install Leopard on it. I just need this baby to hold out for another month or so before i get another computer...once i see what kind of cool stuff gets announced at macworld (yes yes, i know, i'm a really big nerd.). That's why i've been sort of absent lately.

picture post will come soon. very soon.

yes.

Other than coughing up a horrible storm as of late, something that's still actively not thrilling me in the slightest (quite the opposite in fact, but we'll get to that later), things are moving around. My dear friend Colin is going to leave me for many mnay months to go to vegas and do Mamma Mia, and i'm very happy for him but quite sad that he'll be gone for so long.

I haven't been to work in a week and i've been totally fine with that. i'm over work. i, of course, have to be there in an hour. and then for the next four days in a row (HORRIBLE). i think i'm just over the restaurant. i either want to go back to retail or seriously try and do something else that involves a lot less insanity. going in for Chicago for the seventh time yesterday kind of revitalized my over-the-day-job thing.

not too many other good things to say. started Paul Auster's book The Brooklyn Follies the other day...i just adore the way that man creates a world and the people who inhabit it.

god damn, i wish i weren't coughing so much. everything hurts. maybe they'll relegate me to reservationist duty the rest of the week (yeah right, i should be so lucky). time to get things done and change and go.

cold and rainy monday

this first batch of film isn't turning out brilliantly. but i figure i can let the first one be a mess and figure it out as i go, right?

think i'm starting a new music kick...my uncle gave me Oliver Future's album Pax Futura while i was in LA for thanksgiving. it's pretty wonderful. need to give it another few listens, but of course this is inspiring me to buy a whole bunch of new albums. most of them old news, but whatever.

new york just feels better in my skin. more alive, more present. just correct. although, not having a fever and chills anymore also feels pretty good on my skin. maybe the only time it's good to wake up in a pool of sweat. well...maybe one of the only times.

welcome to the blog. i'm not even sure what i want to do with it yet, though i know that there are ten pictures in a roll of polaroid film. and i just found old polaroid cameras in my parents' house when i was home for thanksgiving. so the idea is maybe once a week to post the ten polaroids that have defined the week. other than that, i will just...blog. how does that sound?