The city falls

This whole "moving to a new place" thing sure is tricky. In many ways, I feel like it's been easier than I thought it would be. I don't really have much time to be lonely, although it does sneak its way in there sometimes. Mostly I just work, think about work, and occasionally avoid doing my work. But I don't really feel like I'm making a life here. I have aquaintances, some of whom I like very much, but forming real friendships seems difficult, if not impossible. I like my job, but I don't feel like I'm building a career. I like my apartment and neighborhood, but I don't plan on staying here past my allotted time. I like the city, but I'm not really sure where I fit in here. But the leaves sure are pretty.
-caroline

bridges from the future

Well, this blog is dangerously teetering on the edge of becoming a place for Sarah and I to talk to ourselves. Good thing that's one of my specialties! I'm in Cincinatti for a work thing. I've always liked it here, it's almost as if an improbable force threw a New England town from the East Coast and it landed in the Ohio plains. The prodominant effect is homey and tattered around the edges, ramshakle yet refined. Anyway, the highlite of this trip is that it's getting me the out of Greensboro for a bit. . . and the bridges, I love cities with rivers - they are instant entertainment for me. Where will I walk? I'll walk to the river. Where will I go to be alone without feeling compeled to catch up on cable television in my hotel? Those crazy old staircases that frame the banks of the Ohio river, you drove right by them on your way into town. I'm so ready to live in Portland again. Rivers, rivers, rivers. CAN'T. WAIT.
--Emily--

of course you can have another toaster struedel as long as i can have another bourbon

Sometimes Friday nights involve staying home even though you live in a glitzy new city. Sure, there's eye-opening cultural events to feel smart at, hip art openings to skim the last of some free wine from, or some fringe improv troupe debuting something terrible that you have to pretend to like even though you don't like theater. Ah, but the times when you are lonely and over/under-worked are short. Text freely and savor these precious moments with whatever food or drink you deem appropriate.





--sarah

Bisected

So, it's like noon on Sunday, and I'm at the University of Chicago gym on an elliptical trainer with a tv attached. I'm watching a football game and listening to my ipod which is spinning a mix that goes something like Townes Van Zandt, Spoon, Girl Talk, Erykah Badu, and Bread (sometimes my ipod shuffle makes me feel so cool with my eclectic and oh so good musical selections bumping together). I'm thinking about how I'm going to go home and make last night's spinach-artichoke-sans-artichoke dip into a faux chicken, real rice, cheesey spinach casserole for lunch. AND, I've already finished my reading for Monday on the evolution of welfare policy in America. Basically, I'm feeling like The Best Sarah.

I walk home and it's a little cloudy. I talk to Marcus on the phone and he tells me about how they hung out on the Bessemer Court porches til the breaka-breaka. And then I talk to Eryn on the phone about a three-mimosa brunch after a night of hanging out til the breaka-break and I get real sad.

Another Best Sarah lives on porches in the summer-turned-fall. Drinking and smoking and contributing to conversation that gets more ridiculous as the night goes on while she grows more fervently attached to the musical selections that pump. I love the morning-after recovery, the haphazard yet delicate selection of brunchery or lunchery, and fondling the hair of the dog.

So it goes. I have no tidy wrap-up. My moods are somewhat sinusoidal.

--sarah

The passing on of wisdom

I have now seen two fathers teaching their sons how to urinate in the street. Once was in Harlem, once in my own beloved Bronx. Overheard in the Bronx: "OK son, now you've gotta shake it."
-Caroline

Stoned in Vegas

I love how my job requires me to jump down the maw of Las Vegas. But sometimes that can be a little dangerous, like last Tuesday, when I approached a woman deep in the ghetto for a story. Turns out she was crazy. She flipped, started screaming every epithet in the book at me, then followed me around the corner and grabbed a handful of rocks from her yard, making as if to throw them at me.

I scurried away. The whole episode has become a running joke between my editor and me. I don't think we've had an exchange since that didn't include the mention of pith helmets. Oh well. Got the story anyway.

Norwood! Norwood! Rah! Rah! Rah!

The NY Times recently profiled my new neighborhood: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/realestate/31livi.html
-Caroline