april showers bring nyc flowers

so many great visitors from new york city for me!!!
this is a picture of me and my sweet friend jin, who was in town for a bunch of ascap events last week. jin has worked in their marketing department for the last four years and recently gave her notice so she could concentrate on a band she manages, dirty on purpose, and her business on the moon music. she also has a rocking blog, jinners, about all things music. i met her when she interned at ew.com YEARS ago and we have been friends and sisters ever since. on this night we drank a lot at the roosevelt hotel and ended up back in her hotel room listening to a techno song with barbara streisand cussing in it over and over and over and over again. good times!!!

right after she left, her boyfriend mike showed up!! he was in town for a couple of days before heading out to coachella to get the party started, seriously. he works for filter magazine and they had an opening night soiree that he and his buddies had to set up! i kept meeting up with everyone in dark places. we're in the derby here and he is holding a candle and his cell phone up to help me get this shot!! thanks mike!

this is just an old picture i love of jin from our brooklyn days when she lived next door and we would spend days on end together, eating, talking, watching back to back episodes of the chapelle show, drinking makers and stella, walking strange dogs and cat hugging!! here she is hugging prudie!! now she has her own cat ziggy who i'm sure she hugs a bunch! thanks for the visit friends!! miss you already!

brian's song

my good friend brian, seen here in my new place by my tulips, is visiting from new york city for a week and a half to do some research for a book he is writing on karaoke. brian is an amazingly smart and funny writer, having penned stories for such rags as ew, gq, spin and now as the head honcho over at idolator. he also has a blog about, you guessed it, karaoke. last night we met at a place called guy's bar in west hollywood for their tuesday night karaoke party (hosted by a nice girl named bowie, who we thought looked like kirsten dunst in 10 years with a 2 pack a day habit) and following are the blurry masterpieces of what we witnessed (you can click on each image for even bigger blurry goodness!):


this guys would do anything for love (but he won't do that).


these sassy pals got up and sang 'lady marmalade' and then joined this white rapper for a rendition of that song that goes 'i like BIG butts and i can not lie!'


these boys performed the who's 'teenage wasteland' ooops, i mean 'baba o'riley' (remember that great scene from 'freaks and geeks?'). they hammed it up for me when they were done, not realizing my camera-phone was capable of NOTHING detail-wise!! sorry boys, but thanks for the sexy posturing (speaking of sexy, i don't mean to be crude but when you click on this image and look at the boy to the left, do you see what i see?)!


this motley crew sang 'freedom' by george michael and included none other than former ew employee caroline kepnes who moved out to los angeles three years ago. what a surprise running into her! even though she said she wasn't going to sing anywhere but on the couch, by the time i took this picture she was on stage belting out her third pop hit.

the whole reason i was taking bad pictures was in anticipation of seeing brian in action and capturing it for this here blog, but brian was busy taking notes like a karaoke super-sleuth in probably the tiniest notebook ever. sadly he noted that he had lost his will to sing that night. but brian, karaoke is what you do best in your world of doing things very well!! please get your song back. PLEASE! i guess we'll see what happens this friday at 'the world famous' caffe brass monkey...


FOLLOW UP: brian did a kick ass version of flagpole sitta by harvey danger (why can't you buy this song on itunes?? grrr!) that brought the house down! it even brought him a piece of cake from the birthday party going on beside us! amazing! oh god... oh no... now i hazily remember another karaoke venue that night where i believe i sang 'heart of glass' by myself (pictures don't lie) and then forced brian to duet on 'scrubs' by tlc followed by anything hall and oates, so i could be hall (because i'm blonde and taller) and he could be oates (because he's brunette and a sliver shorter). oh yikes, so sorry brian, but i do remember you got sweet revenge by joking me for ordering a chardonnay at a koreatown karaoke venue and then we boldy 'karaoked and dashed' after 20 minutes because the venue wasn't up to par (i'm still afraid to look at my online checking balance in case they overcharged me for the offense!). wrapping up (i totally 'borrowed' this picture from his site), thanks for the visit buddy and for all of the karaoke exposure. according to b-raf i'm what is known in karaoke circles as a 'flipper' because i like to see what is available to sing even though i'm not planning on singing. can't wait to see you again in august at your wedding in vermont to the equally amazing jenny!

sara the cat: the lamp sessions

sara the cat and a black lamp sitting in a tree...

so sara had a crush on this black lamp before we moved to our new home. it was on an end table to the left of the couch. here she is playing hard to get with it.


whenever i turned my back she would go over to it, jam her head into the shade and purr...


and everytime i tried to get a good shot of it, she'd move her head...

finally, i caught her doing what she liked to do to her lamp most: look like she was making out with it by resting her chin on one of it's 'jewels'. she could do this for hours! it got to the point where i was afraid to keep the lamp turned on because i didn't want their love to go up in flames. but then again sometimes love burns (i'll stop).

in our new place i moved the lamp onto a desk and it seems the fickle beast has lost interest. yes, it appears their love has indeed lost it's spark, flickered / burned out (i'll stop). now she is 'into' my bed (in particular the pillow behind my head) and will actually let prudence stay on it with her, which has never happened EVER. as most of you know, i could not have the two around each other at all because sara would attack prudence and it would spiral downward from there. so if this is a sign that the end is nigh, don't say i didn't warn you!!


p.s. don't the tulips just get prettier as the days go by??!!

it's official: i'm a home-o!!

ok, i 'borrowed' that phrase from my very funny friend margaret...


my new home's kitchen (i may have mentioned it...)
so here is the new kitchen (blurrier than i'd like), or one side of it (note my forehead's reflection in the microwave). the opposite side contains the sink, the dishwasher and more cabinets. i think i've done about 8 loads of dishes since i moved in on saturday. it is so nice to be able to unpack dishes, load them in the dishwasher and have them squeaky clean and ready to put away. i think i've done 2 loads of laundry a day since i moved in too! don't worry, i'm using all of this water at night, like a responsible homeowner!


this doesn't do the cuteness justice.
when you wander up the walkway to my front door this white picket fence and amazing green and purple foliage is to your left. doesn't it look like a pathway to a french country farmhouse? i keep waiting for a chicken or a duck to run past me every day when i get home. that is my old school, classic, white mailbox right there. wait a minute, what is that gross black thing on it??? gotta fix that tomorrow...


first project: redo this crap
my closets i think contained the original shelves and garment rods from the 70's. both closets looked so warped and brittle that i was afraid to really hang anything substantial in them. so my first big project was to run to home depot for new closet interiors. the ones i bought seemed like they were top of the line (but still reasonable) and appeared easy to install (even the guy in the checkout line with me said so). but i was in way over my head!! you can put these together by yourself but you really shouldn't. one of the shelves buckled on me and almost ripped the nails out, i had to redo each of the rods twice and i sprained my index finger!! i did a lot of screaming and cussing (sorry kids playing next door who could probably hear me). i have officially become a pro with my power drill though and my new favorite tool/toy is my mallet!! works twice as hard and is 1,000 times quieter than a hammer.


new closet!!!
can you tell that the closet has a shelved middle with three separate garment rods extending from it? i couldn't take a picture of the whole unit because the sliding doors were in the way. these images exhibit my 'talented' photoshop inset skills, a photo feature i put to use on a regular basis at work but am premiering on the blog tonight!! i strategically placed the oval over a pair of shoes i'm embarrassed i own.


view from the driveway.
i leave you with my view of downtown. again, this image doesn't do it justice. mostly because all of those wires (lots of wires) and that ugly apartment building are in the way. at night you can't see them. just lights. pretty, pretty lights.

happy easter!: the baby duck sessions

from the marc jacobs (i love you) store on bleeker street in beautiful n.y.c.
ok, so the photographer took this and said he didn't like it, so we had to go back...

he liked this one, but then he wanted one more...

of jeanie's backside!!

the funny thing about these pictures is that jeanie and i never dress alike. in these pictures it looks like i made the good-old high school 'what are you wearing today?' call. well ok i must confess that there was nothing on the back of my jeans other than pockets...

the pictures look so crappy (crappy pictures are becoming a recurring theme here) because i have already packed up my scanner for the move and there isn't a scanner at the office, so i had to take a digital picture of the picture (if you look closely you can see the reflection of my hand to the left of each picture). enjoy the crappiness and happy, happy easter!

FOLLOW UP: turns out we were wrong! the baby duck is indeed a SPRING CHICKEN according to my beloved marc jacob's website (click on the 'featured windows' link). sorry my dear marc for the unintentional slur on your baby bird! xo

the great new york city slumber party

this is my favorite picture from my trip to new york city last week. it's of my friend jeanie's (you'll remember her as my talented friend #1) infamous english bulldog, little bit. while i stayed at her place over the weekend (thank you!!) we spent some quality time on this daybed with the sunshine pouring from east 14th street over us. it was a beautiful week in the city and this area of jeanie's apartment is what bitty and i like to think of as the 'sweet spot'! in the odd chance that we were in the apartment, this is where the katy and bitty magic happened. woot!


prior to sharing a bed with bitty, i shared a bed with marc, my little mouse. we decided to share a room while we were both in the city because time warner, our parent company, is really crunching down on us expense-wise just as we are both going to be working in new york more and more. we (ok, ok I) just kind of forgot to mention that while sharing a room we would like separate beds. i have to say i could barely even tell the little mouse was in the massive king size bed with me except for the millions of times he got up to use the bathroom and play with the thermostat and that was only because i noticed the bathroom light was on. this was the phone camera image we sent to our favorite coworker and blogger annie barrett to prove we were 'sleeping together' at the warwick hotel!

TRUE CONFESSION TIME: whenever i stay in a hotel, i tend to see what i can 'take' that won't be noticed (aka charged). this time, on my way to the ice machine upstairs. i found the commodities closet and helped myself to bar soap (a lot of bar soap) and pens (a lot of pens).


this is another great picture from my nyc week that now resides on my kitchen mirror. i know it is blurry (the picture of the picture) and although the title of this entry is about a slumber party, i did not, i repeat, i did NOT slumber with this baby duck. but i was all over him at the marc jacobs store on bleeker street (because marc jacobs you know i have and will always love you and yes it has taken me years to fully accept that you are a gay man and we will never have a slumber party together, even though i know DUH! but i'm ok with it and i will always be a patron of your stores, mostly just to get free samples of your perfume, my signature gardenia scent, but if i could afford it i would marc jacobs because, maybe i mentioned this before, i LOOOOHOOOOVE YOU, oh sorry, digression. back to the baby duck in his retail window). naturally he was into jeanie (pic of baby duck checking out jeanie's backside tk), isn't that always the way??