one of the most amazing things about blogging is the opportunity to meet some really great people through it. i believe will and i started commenting on each other's blogs many years ago and have been friends since. he travels a lot so it's always nice to be able to see him when he comes to nyc.

last night i had dinner with him and some friends at fish on bleecker in the west village. the food was so good and i ended up having the lobster with some good old melted butter, fucking yummmm. then we ended up at pieces and i got wasted on $4 drinks. life is great.

sometimes i think about it and realize that i am very happy with the chance encounters i am able to have with people in this city while working in the service industry.

too bad.

sometimes i feel like i just don't fit in.

i met Jay McInerney!

yes, the Jay McInerney. i was working at my restaurant job last night in the east village and he came in to eat. i recognized him immediately and freaked out for a little bit inside my head. celebrities and other noted people always come into my work place and i usually don't give two shits and would never ever approach them or say anything because this is nyc and really, who cares? but for him it was different---i had to say something. so as i was taking him to his table, i actually introduced myself and told him what an honor it was for me to even be in the same room as him. i think he was really surprised that i had recognized him, but he was so nice and gracious about it. then as he was leaving, he actually came up to me and shook my hand and said thank you for everything.

ahhhhh, i almost died from excitement. to have met the man who wrote Bright Lights, Big City is really inspiring and such an honor---i absolutely love that book.

thank you Jay McInerney for making my night!

sincerity seems to be a concept that people confuse with technological availability.

call me old fashioned but i still believe in picking up a phone and dialing a number to hear someone's voice on the other end to ask, "how the hell are you---how's life??"

i love the movie rosemary's baby and i just finished watching it on hbo. it always brings me back and makes me think of the first time i watched it as a kid in alaska. i remember they were playing it late at night on cable and even though there were commercial breaks and was a network friendly version, it was still scary as hell. watching it now is even better because i love appreciating new york city as the backdrop to the movie. i'm obsessed with seeing how different nyc looked in eras other than mine, it just fascinates me. and the movie is just such a great one. roman polansky really created a classic with this one and mia farrow is such a great actress and oh man she was stunning. one of my favorite scenes is when she has all her real friends that she hasn't seen in a while over to her house for a party. i watch that scene and wonder, if i lived during this period, is this what my house parties would have looked like?

i don't know what the reason is but i haven't felt like blogging in a while. i guess we all just go through periods like that.

anyway after working the lunch shift at my job today in the east village, i decided to go to the angelika and watch a movie by myself. i walked over there and on the way in front of the block with that awesome new copper union building on the bowery, i saw my weed dealers walking down the sidewalk, coming towards the direction i was coming from. neither parties stopped but instead we all quickly waved and sincerely smiled at each other. i think because it's the first time i've ever randomly run into them on the street, we were all a bit surprised for a second but thought it was funny. then after the movie, i'm waiting for the b train at the broadway-lafayette stop to come home uptown and i'm walking towards the back of the platform and sitting on one of the benches is the guy i hooked up with last night (trust me, it had been a very very long time since i got any anything). he was reading and thank god he didn't see me and i was able to just speed walk my ass on by. haha i love new york, it's funny like that.

a steaming hot shower and shave can make any day better.

one of the great things that come with age is getting wiser. yes, it actually does happen (at least i think it's happening to me).

with time i've come to realize so many things about my life, especially a lot of the core issues i have. understanding the problem is the easy half of the battle because you don't ask to know this, it just all kind of make sense after a while. the hard part is deciding to act upon these epiphanies and taking the first step is so fucking god damn hard. sometimes i wish i was dumb as the plastic ends on shoelaces so i could live my life without a care in the world. but i am not. now i need to focus on what i can control and how i can better my life.

...must...stop...doing mental eye-rolls.

dear friends,

please don't go into a restaurant and order a "peach snapple" before looking at the damn beverage menu. not everywhere has fucking diet coke or peach snapple or hot tea or any other beverage that's served in soda machines across the country. it's really not hard to think before you just act out of habit, shit.

thank you.

new york city is the only place i can be and feel like myself. this is home.

life is funny.

quality, NOT quantity.

happy new year.

for the first time in my life, i worked on new year's eve. i've always had some sort of job since i was sixteen but i have never worked on a new year's eve. i usually hate new year's eve because everything about the celebratory process is dumb and annoying. i tend to just stay at home and avoid the drunken crowds and chaos in nyc. and good luck on getting home because finding a cab home is impossible since everyone is out.

suffice it to say before i started my shift last night, i was really dreading it. i had to work last night at my second job, which is just one day a week at a bar in the east village. the night was pretty uneventful except for when i had to tell two people they couldn't come in because they were already wasted---i held down my ground and was scared shitless but made it happen. anyway working at a nyc bar on new year's eve really made me realize how much i appreciate the night. i usually never go out on nye but i'm adamant on making next year's the best one i've ever had---no pressure though.

as for other goals i have for the new year (i refuse to call them resolutions because then i won't stick to them), i would like to accomplish the following:

• for judy, stop leaving the toilet seat up
• know that i am living up to my potential 100%
• make better choices in life
• know that what i want is what i should focus on and no bullshit will be tolerated
• stop procrastinating on returning phone calls, emails, texts and any other correspondence
• take risks in my love life (which i already have more than once in the past week!)

i also will not compromise when it comes to dating. either two people have a mutual desire to pursue something further or they don't---problem solved. i won't waste my time focusing on something that could be when i have a feeling from the get-go that it's not going to work out. living with that rule just simplifies so many things and allows me to have a different outlook on it all, i love it.

one last thing i'll mention about the night is that i was able to find a cab pretty fast after i finished work around 3am. actually getting a cab on nye in the east village really made me think and it gave me the hope that perhaps this new year and decade is going to be okay...

i hope everyone else had a great nye.