Until I get time for something good to say, please enjoy this topical pic which was shared by NPW via another blogger.

• I started volunteering at the Dutchess County SPCA as a dog walker.  It’s perfect for me because I like dogs, but I don’t want one of my own.  (That’s also how I feel about kids, but there’s no shelter around here that lets you take kids on a walk.)  I walked about half a dozen dogs, one at a time, along a route down to the pet cemetery on the property.  Almost all the dogs peed on a statue to the dead dog named Lady.  Those dogs have no respect, and I hope that doesn’t keep them from finding a good home.
• I keep gloves in my glove compartment, but only to make a point.  A few years ago, I was playing Trivial Pursuit, and I got one of the stupidest questions ever.  It was, “out of ten people how many keep gloves in their glove box?”  I gave it some good thought, trying to figure out the trick of the question.  It was obviously a low number, because otherwise why bother with the question?  But there’s a good chance that at least one of those ten people used the glove box for such a purpose, because I believe that at least some of the population of America puts gloves in a glove box, and I was trusting that those ten people were a reasonable sample of Americans (or even Canadians.)  With that in mind, I guessed “one person.”  The answer on the card was “zero people,” which is such bullshit, because that means that statistically no one ever, ever keeps gloves in their glove box.  But I do!  I do because I need to prove that ridiculous question wrong.  And I’m glad I do, because I realized I forgot to bring gloves with me when I went to the dog walking.  But for the fact that my “prove a point” gloves are too small, have a hole in three fingers, and were never really warm to begin with, they were better than nothing.
• When I moved, I got a card for 30 days of a free BJ’s membership, so I used that over the weekend.  Wow, is a warehouse club the opposite of everything I stand for, but I still bought more than I intended, because they gave me all these coupons!  While I was shopping, I was so out of my element, I almost ate a sample of the grilled chicken they were hawking.  But then I remembered I’m a shop local vegetarian freak.  Sometimes it’s fun to go against everything you stand for, in this case, because there is something cool about knowing I don’t have to buy deodorant again until Obama’s second term.
• I have this gray hair that grows near my forehead, and I’ve had it since high school.  I leave it alone, because I figure that way it will leave me alone, and it won’t bring friends.  I was wrong.  I found another yesterday.  I would really like to hightail it to Max right now for a cut and color, but I don’t have the money at the moment.  I hope I can scrounge up some savings before I start to resemble Birmingham.
• There is only one kind of pool that I’m good at, and that’s a swimming pool.  Billiards, not so much.  I played with friends over my extended weekend when we couldn’t get a bowling lane, and damn I’m bad.  I only sunk the balls I didn’t mean to, including the opponent’s balls a few times.  I guess playing once every three years does not a hustler make.  I’m still sad that there are plans to turn the local pool hall into a branch of the evil empire.
• I had a lot of down time over the past few days, and I used it to watch all of the first season of Mad Men.   What a damn fine show.  If anyone can tell me a way to watch season two without having to buy it on iTunes or wait for the DVD release, I’d be most grateful.
• This being my first year of not living on a Christmas tree farm, I decided that if I couldn’t cut down my own real tree for free, I would get the opposite of  a real tree.  So I dropped twenty bucks at a store that sells above-ground pools, fooseball tables, and billards tables in addition to a small holiday section.  I think I succeeded in finding the most festive tree ever, because for the price of one, I got three trees in one box.  What do you think?

Posted in Christmastide, It happened in the H.V., Once a New Yorker Tagged: seven things meme ]]> http://dailytannenbaum.com/2008/12/08/seven-things/feed/ 25 Noelle img_2088 http://dailytannenbaum.com/2008/10/10/friday-five/ http://dailytannenbaum.com/2008/10/10/friday-five/#comments Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:59:57 +0000 Noelle http://dailytannenbaum.wordpress.com/?p=1406 ]]> With apologies and thanks to Stefanie, for being so kind about letting me steal the Friday Five…

ONE: Went to Jersey yesterday to get the radio in my car fixed.  (Random buttons would stop working at random intervals.)  They gave me a refurbished one which is exactly like the old one, except that it only has 18 presets on the radio instead of 24.  Now, there are not even 24 radio stations in the Hudson Valley, let alone 24 I would want to preset, and I never used more than the first 6 presets at any time.  But man, I’m still pissed that I’ve been given an inferior replacement! I liked to keep presets 19-24 on New York City stations, just in case.

2: Anyone else scared shitless that our country and economy is FUCKED?  I’ve got nothing else to say about that.

III: There’s an item on the local news today that for the first time in history, Democratic voter registration has outnumbered Republican registration in Dutchess County.  (Fun fact: in the four times he ran for President, Roosevelt never carried his home county!  And they even made his mug the mascot of Hyde Park.)  The radio report says that the influx of Democrats has a lot to do with former New York City moving up here.  I love being a small part of an important and heartwarming news item.

Cuatro: A friend of mine from kickball shares the same name as a friend of mine from high school.  The kickball friend and his girlfriend had a bit of a break-up on Wednesday.  Yesterday I saw my parents in New Jersay and I was telling my mom that I had gone dancing Wednesday night with the kickball friend to try and cheer him up.  She seemed really upset as I was telling her some of the details of what happened.  Then she made a joke that she was the most upset that he wouldn’t be able to fix her computer, at which point I said, “Mom, do you think I’m talking about The Man of Action?  Becuase I’m talking about Pantsless.”  To that she said, “Oh, THANK GOODNESS!  I was just so upset about that.  I feel much better now. …  I mean, I’m sorry for your kickball friend.  I’m sorry for any pain in the world. But I’m so relieved that nothing bad happened to The Man of Action.”

Fin: Two of my kickball friends are getting married later today!  So I took the day off work to celebrate their love.  I’m going to the wedding stag, and I’m stoked about that, because I’m going to dance off my pants off.  Except I’ll be wearing a dress.

• It turns out that I’m actually kind of good at skee-ball. I was a bit nervous, going all the way to New Hampshire for Beej’s birthday, where I would meet Aaron for the first time, after this long, arduous internet flirtation we’ve had.  I knew that skee-ball was going to be involved, and the last I remember, my skee-skills were equivalent to my mini golf skills, which is to say not skillful.  But NPW, Chris and I got some practice in while we were waiting, and I scored 300 points not once, but twice!  So when Aaron and Mara finally came back from their trip to Massachusetts to put money in their car meter (how did that take such a long time?), we were all on a level playing field.  Sadly, I had to leave after only a couple of hours, but when you have that much awesomeness in one arcade (me, NPW, Chris, Aaron, Mara, Beej, Beej’s gal, Beej’s offspring, and Ted, who I didn’t realize was an actual person until I saw him in person) it’s hard to contain it.  Because they’re such great hosts, I gave my skee-ball ticket winnings to NPW and Chris so they can put it towards their dream of winning the lobster salt and pepper shakers.  You can see photo evidence of the skee ball on NPW’s blog.
• I’m still pretty great at driving cross-town. On the way back from the beach, we picked up SisterAlyson, and the two of us went to Queens via the LIE and the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen over Manhattan.  I was Jersey-bound after dropping her off, and instead of taking the FDR uptown, I decided I had enough time to drive across 57th St and take the West Side Highway to the GWB, just for old time’s sake.  I love driving cross-town (espeically in someone else’s car,) because there’s a trick to changing lanes quickly so you never get stuck behind someone who’s trying to turn uptown or downtown.  It makes for a thrilling ride, and it was good to see the city at the street level, however briefly.
• Babies are cute, and they don’t all hate me. My friends and their 6-month old son just bought a new house in Jersey, and they put out an APB for friends to help them paint and get the place ready for their move-in at the end of the month.  So I went over on Sunday to help them out.  In between edging the doorways, I went upstairs to chat with my friend and play with the baby.  That’s when I got put on babysitting duty for a few minutes, with the instructions to pick him up if he fussed.  I did it, and he even stopped fussing!  I even enjoyed it and his little baby smell, but I was totally happy to give him back and continue my edging after a short period of time.  Verdict: not ready for motherhood, not by a long shot.
• It’s very easy to hook up a Mac to my parents’wireless router. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get my new computer or my old computer, which is now my mom’s computer, hooked up to their wireless connection.  The only success I had was when I was able to hook up their PC laptop to the wireless network, which is pointless because that computer does not having working “shift” key, and makes a scary whirring noise when it does anything.  I called The Man of Action for help, but he was MIA until I was driving home, when he was totally available, but I was exactly half way between both places of computer trouble.  By the time I got home, he was already on his way to Scotland, as always happens when I need technical help.
• My cats really, really do not get along. The Dutchess of Kickball was brave enough to potentially encounter the landlesbian in order to feed my cats for me while I was away.  But being well-fed did not stop them from fighting, as evidenced by big tufts of Lucy hair all over the bathroom and living room, adjacent to the piles of cat puke, and best of all, the big old puddle of cat pee on the loveseat where Lucy likes to hang out cower.  It took me about an hour of clean-up last night, and Lucy is not smelling so great at the moment.  I fear that there is not enough pheromone spray in the world to keep Micki from being a nut job, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I go away for a full week in September.

On Saturday I went to a baseball game with a friend of mine from Sunday School days (who we call “Macy” around these parts). Her parents and her boyfriend and my sister also joined us. I don’t want to say too much about it, though, for the fears that I might incite a riot of jealousy and hatred among you lovely blog readers. That’s because 1) it was a Mets / Yankees game, 2) it was at Shea, which is not long for this world, 3) we sat EIGHT SEATS BEHIND HOME PLATE and 4) the tickets were free. Sister Alyson kept looking around with these big eyes smiling at the fact that her die-hard baseball loving boyfriend was stuck at home and we were sitting where we could see the tiny details on the players’faces.

Anyway, thanks so much to Macy and her folks, especially her dad who works for a company that sponsors Major League Baseball and her mom who provided me with breakfast, dinner and organic cheese. (We took a trip to a dairy farm before the game, because why not?)

Speaking of cheese, as you may know, I’ve been doing the month-to-month elimination diet. March was a all-vegan month, April was no-pasta, no-Ramen, May was an attempt to be no-high fructose corn syrup, but when that proved to be too hard, turned into no-soda May. Today marks the last day of no-fried food June. It’s gone pretty well. There was one slip-up where I made stir fry (and then I wasn’t sure if that counted as fried food) and one day where I ate about 50 Doritos before I realized that they were fried and overeating on Doritios at the end of May was the reason I thought to do this month in the first place.

But other than that is wasn’t that hard. The biggest challenge was the night the swim team went to Denny’s after the meet. But thanks to the many Americans who are trying to eat healthy, they now offer a veggie burger with fruit on the side, buried among the rest of the golden fried menu. It wasn’t even that bad.

In July, I think I want to give myself more of a challenge than just not eating french fries. I’m not ready for a full-on Oprah (copied by Dooce and then scads of other women) detox. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to cut out all sugar, dairy, wheat, caffeine and alcohol, mostly because I don’t want to always be “that girl” abstaining from the birthday cake.

But I’ve decided that my challenge for July is to cut out sugar. I know this means ice cream. It also means cranapple juice, the aforementioned birthday cake, and chocolate bars. But July seems like a good time for cutting out sugar, because so many delicious fruits are in season, and they can stand in for dessert. I’m making an exception for the 4th of July, because I already bought the ingredients to make a cake. Also, I have one half-eaten pint of ice cream in the freezer that will go bad if I wait until August. But when that’s gone, it’s on!

Anyone want to join me? Anyone know (keeping in mind that I’m counting artificial sugar as sugar) any good sugar-free dessert recipes?  Also, I’ll be playing along with RA’s Whip it Up challenge, so they’ll be some new recipes around here this summer.

I’ve got nothing new to say about the movie that hasn’t already been said. I enjoyed it, although it did make me cry, not so much for what was happening on screen, but for how I related it to my life. Back in the day when I was living with in Manhattan, I all the DVD’s of the show. Seeing the film version made me miss living in the city. Not to compare myself or my actions to those four extremely unrealistic women, but even with all the flittiness of the movie, the emotions about broken relationships, friendships, and the happiness that love brings rang true.

I probably shouldn’t have seen the movie at a time when I’m sad about being single. This is also known as “PMS,” the three days of the month when any single thing suddenly becomes the saddest thing in the world. I hate that it happens that way, I do not like ceding control of my thoughts to my hormones, feeling that somehow my emotions aren’t real because they’re being controlled by an external force. And I get sad about the most ridiculous things. For instance:

Being sad that I have to drop $7.50 for 40 tampons? Acceptable. Being sad to the point of tears that the first security question on Flickr is “Where did you meet your spouse?” Unacceptable. Irrational.

But this too will pass. Beyond the hormonal roller-coaster, I often feel torn in two by loving living up here in the Hudson Valley, and the love I had for living in the city. It’s only 90 miles away, but when I can’t be both places at once, it might as well be 900 miles away. The city of the movie is a place that no one’s ever really inhabited, but underneath those pretty pictures, you can see the real place poke through, the lover I rejected, the relationship that I just can’t quit.

The station was opened in February of 1918, designed by the firm Warren & Wetmore, who were given the task to build a station that would prove to the world that the city of Poughkeepsie was a cosmopolitan place worthy to play with the big boys. Inside the station it looks like this:

Chestnut benches, chandeliers, extensive natural light from the five bay windows, restrooms (more on those later,) a ticket booth, and vending machines (which I believe came post-1918.) It’s a great place to relax while you wait for your train with your hula monkey. The city of Poughkeepsie was happy with their train station, and the local paper reviewed it thusly:

Poughkeepsie woke up Sunday and rubbed its eyes when it visited the new station of the New York Central Railroad, and gasped. Was this Poughkeepsie or a station in the Bronx? The new building certainly surpassed anything dreamed of by the present generation of Poughkeepsians and no more will travelers get a poor impression of the place by what they see when they alight from the railroad trains.

I believe the title of the article was “Poughkeepsie, finally as good as the Bronx!”
Little known fact: the train station was modeled after some church in Italy and Grand Central Terminal. Can’t you see the resemblance?

I guess if GCT was made of wood and only serviced 1,633 people a day, the similarity would be more distinct. If you’re dying to read more about this fine train station, let me direct you to the Wikipedia article from which I lifted all the above facts. I love in depth research!

But what about the restrooms?  They are (or at least the women’s room is) extremely clean and modern, with some throwbacks to an earlier era. That being the era before liquid soap:

Ever since my Mom and I both had the same problem with The DaVinci Code’s bar soap in the Louvre scene, I get a little thrill the few times I see it in a public restroom. I’m weird, I guess.

Since I was already at the train station, I went ahead and bought a ticket and took the train to the city. (That’s our kickball bar viewed through the train window, there, by the way.)

And why did I go to the city last night? Because awesome SisterAlyson had free tickets to Crybaby: the Musical! As I texted to my friend Chachi later, if the theatre-going me of the early 2000′s knew that the me of 2008 would only see one Broadway play a year and that Broadway play was a bad musical adaptation of a bad movie, she’d be sad. But, really, the me of 2008 is a less harsh critic than the girl who ran follow-spot for the original production of “Urinetown” and was the wardrobe supervisor of a critically acclaimed off-Broadway theater. That girl would have been all, “The follow spot operator kept missing the actress’face. I’ve seen Johnny Depp play this role, and this dude is no Johnny Depp. Really? Is that set change the best you can do? The colors of these costumes don’t do a good enough job differentiating the two groups of characters. The wacky, campy ending was not earned by the beginning or middle of the show, which were way too earnest.”

But the current, non-theatregoing me was all, “Wow! How did they memorize all those lines? What a spectacle!”

As we walked to the train after the show, SisterAlyson agreed to pose for a picture, like so many tourists, to prove that the Hula Monkey was there.

We parted ways at Grand Central, where she got her subway home, and caught the 10:12 back to Poughkeepsie.  Before saying goodbye, she expressed some concern that our parents and I are going fly to California together on Friday and that if we crash, she’ll have no one left except her boyfriend and Lola. I told her that if that happens, she can have Micki the cat.

“Do you promise?”

“Yeah, take her.”

“Okay, before you get on the plane, write it on your body!”

She’s a little bit nervous. But she shouldn’t be. Nobody else in the world wants to take care of Micki.

• Riverbank State Park makes me regret moving to the Hudson Valley.
• Whole Foods @ Columbus Circle makes me regret moving to the Hudson Valley.
• The A Train makes me regret moving to the Hudson Valley.
• The Pope is ruining my day. (I was going to say that shopping at Century 21 makes me regret moving to the Hudson Valley, but the pope had to bless Ground Zero, and all of the streets were closed and I couldn’t get there. I hope he at least stopped to get a deal on new shoes to go with that jaunty hat he wears.)
• Pearl River Mart makes me regret moving to the Hudson Valley.
• Starbucks makes me… Nevermind, we have one of those in town.
• Paragon Sports makes me regret moving to the Hudson Valley. (The store sells every conceivable sporting good known to woman.)
• Giving directions to foreign tourists in the 42nd St. Subway makes me regret moving to the Hudson Valley.
• Max the hairdresser is one of the best things about New York City.

My visit to Max was the purpose of the trip, but I got there wickedly early so I could swim in the Olympic-size swimming pool that rests atop a sanitation facility off of the West Side Highway. I used to swim there quite often when I was living in Manhattan, and going back to my old pool got me nostalgic to visit all my old haunts in the hours before my appointment, and nostalgic it was.

But then I came home to the Hudson Valley where I have friends who check up on me when I break my ankle, and are there for me when I break my heart, and actually return my phone calls when I want to talk (and sometimes I don’t even have to call them first!) I have a crappy home on a beautiful piece of land (there may be a swarm of bees in my mudroom, but there are fish jumping in the pond!) I can park my car without worrying about circling the block 5 times to find a spot, and when I turn out the lights at night, it is so dark that I can’t see my hand in front of my face. Also, my commute to work is less than 8 minutes, and I pass a drive-in movie theater on the way. I think the only solution to my where I belong conundrum is to split myself exactly in two and live both places at once. And once I master that, I’ll create even more horcruxes so I can live in England, Virginia, Colorado, Los Angeles and Australia as well, but I won’t do it in the evil way that Tom Riddle did in Harry Potter.

BTW, the delay of this post is due to the nature that I’m waiting for Max to send me the picture he took after blowing out my hair, which explains the title. It still hasn’t come through, so I’ll have to add that later. in the meantime, please enjoy this picture that I took with my camera in Chinatown:

But then I got a letter from the IRS this week telling me that I won’t see any of the money until I pay them the $800.00 plus $127.50 interest that I owe them from my 2005 taxes, which has gone unpaid from the income I earned working at the {Idiot} Studio Theatre in 2005. However, I didn’t work there in 2005. I worked there in 2000. It turns out that another girl, who has the same first and last name as me, worked there in 2004 and 2005, and the accountants at the {Idiot} Studio Theatre didn’t realize that she was a different person, and used my social security number for her paychecks. Identity Theft by stupidity.

This same problem happened to me last year, and after much resistance and a trip to the city to talk to the accountant in person, I got the 2004 taxes problem resolved, and got my refund sometime in May. When I first got the notice that the other {Noelle Tannenbaum} also used my Social Security number in 2005, I called the theatre because if they fixed it once, I figured they could fix it again. However, in the ensuing year, there was much upheaval at the {Idiot} Studio Theatre, and they had an entirely new staff, including an accountant who only works from 5:00-6:00 on Wednesday evenings, and was slightly familiar with my case but still told me that I had to get it resolved on my own, because he didn’t think he could do anything. However, he could have either done one of two things. He could have wrote a two sentence letter on company letterhead stating that the company made a mistake, and give the IRS the correct Social Security number, or he could have downloaded a corrected W-2 and sent that in. I can’t do either of these, even though I’m the one who’s not getting my refund. I admit that I wasn’t hasty enough in fixing this situation, and today I had to call the IRS. Because the call was so full of holding and dead time, I decided to type while waiting:

“Liveblogging” my call with the IRS

- I call the number on my CP22A form, which is the bill saying I better pay them the money or I get no money back.

-Listen to 5 minutes of hold music, which is The Nutcracker Suite, and really, really loud.

-Tchaikovsky is interrupted by the sound of telephone keys, and Mr. Russo picks up and I explain my case after telling him my Social, name, address, and birthday. Because my case is more than 90 days old, he tells me I need to call the number on my CP2000 form.

-I do so.

-I need to listen to 3 minutes of explanations of the $600 rebate coming in May, which is the verbatim text of the Economic Stimulus Payment Notice that the government spent millions of dollars to send to us.

-Pressing “0″, “#”, “8″, “*” or “1″ do not make her stop. Pressing all the buttons at once does not make her stop and get me to a menu.

-Finally, she stops.

-I get to a menu where my options are to hear information about making extentions, payments, and petitions. There are no options to “speak to a person.” I try a couple of the options, but all of them give me lengthy explanations of forms.

-I get back to a menu, and I just don’t press anything. I listen to a two minute long explanation about how to write a check to the IRS.

- I hear the Nutcracker Suite again.

- I hear a noise like someone pressing a button on a telephone, and someone says, “IRS, this is…”

-Then there’s dead air. The bitch disconnected the phone when she answered.

-I call again. Go back to step 4, repeat.

-Nutcracker Suite.

-They appreciate my patience. My call is important to them. To them? It’s important to freaking me! You’re telling me that I’m not getting my refund!

-Someone picks up again. She’s pretty nice. Twelve minutes later, she’s explained to me that she has to pass the case on to an examiner because it’s been closed. If I get a nice one, the taxes will be resolved based on 2004. If I get a mean one, I’ll have to show paperwork proving that I spent 2005 not working at The {Idiot} Studio Theatre, and I will have to get the theatre to write something on letterhead proving that there were two people with the same name and that they made a mistake. I can follow up on my case by calling the number above, and speaking to the next available operator.

So that’s where it’s at now. I’m thinking good thoughts for getting a nice examiner who will resolve my case in time for me to get my refund and my stimulus so I can stick it in the bank and stick it to the government. In the meantime, I’m going to try and get in touch with the theatre so they can get their act together, and maybe look up the other {Noelle Tannenbaum} who lives in Queens and is the one who’s going to get a $927.50 IRS bill once this is all resolved. She knew about the 2004 problem, and she could have paid the 2005 taxes before it came to me, but she didn’t. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to meet other women with the same name as me, but if I see this one, I might just kick some artificial Christmas Tree ass.

I gave her the steamer, she gave me a curt nod, plugged it in, and all the lights went out. As we searched for the fuse box, the hotel manager was in our faces, blaming us for knocking out power in the entire hotel. Five minutes we spent trying to calm him down, when one of the crew guys came in from smoking a cigarette and was like, “dude, power’s out on the whole block.” A couple of us who decided that this outage was not our fault wandered over to the sidewalk and started getting reports from people walking by that power was out in the whole neighborhood, the whole East Side, all of Midtown, all of New York City. After fifteen minutes of wishing we had a portable radio, we finally realized that our production cars were equipped with them, and we learned that the blackout spread across the entire Northeast. It probably wasn’t our steamer’s fault.

It turns out that it was the fault of a tree. Somewhere in Ohio or some other place that isn’t as important as New York City, an electrical charge leaped from a power line to a tree, and the whole grid died. At least, that’s the official line from the power people, who conveniently blame Nature, the enemy of the grid. Now that they’ve done that investigative research, they’ve decided that all trees near all power lines are to be cut down. You might not know this, but part of the Christmas Tree farm sits right under power lines. It all goes with the “do what feels good, screw safety, including plant trees under power lines” attitude that prevails on this crazy commune. Over the past few months, the power company has been coming over to the farm and they’ve been pulling out the trees in and around the lines. This is a picture I got in the late fall: (after the jump)

It’s kind of sad, all that dirt used to be Blue Spruces. For anyone who’s ever been even a part-time treehugger, seeing all those trees turned to dirt is slightly upsetting. I also wonder if I could have sold them over the holidays. And, yeah, the environment. Last night I came home, and the whole farm smelled like trees, meaning the power company was back to their cutting and mulching ways. There’s now a new swath of downed trees that were deemed too close to the power lines. It’s kind of sad, especially considering how much fun I had on the night of the blackout.

I lived in Washington Heights at the time, about 140 blocks north of the hotel. Since all the subways were closed, walking home seemed pretty unpleasant. I was able to get a hold of the Man of Action, and he invited me to his place on the West Side. The location manager (I didn’t like Birmingham in that way yet…) and I trekked over there, grabbing some beer along the way, because everyone wanted to drink it before it got warm. We met up with the Man of Action, and walked towards the river, openly drinking and carousing like everyone else in the city that night. We were even stopped by cops at one point who only wanted to tell us that they were jealous of us because they were on duty for many more hours, and everyone was behaving really well so they had nothing to do. The only food available that night was pizza because all the ovens are run off of gas heat. That didn’t stop them from doing some major price gouging, and I tried my best to enjoy my $5 slice for the novelty of it. We stayed up late, and the next morning walked back to the hotel to find that no one else from the crew was there, even though the lights were coming back on. We had a nice brunch at an Irish pub that got power early, the subways started running, and I went home to feed my cat right as the lights returned to Washington Heights.

I’m sorry that the trees have to die for this cause, but I bet it’s better than tearing them down to build McMansions, which is the fate of about the 80 acres in my backyard, which have been sold to developers..