love in the mail: the IKEA 2005 catalogue arrived today, an unanticipated treat. oh IKEA, how you do seduce the nesting instinct in me. i want to crawl into your clean white kitchens and fresh, grass-green living rooms filled with smooshy furniture and mysterious swedish storage possibilities.

not that we'll have time or money to buy anything from IKEA; i'm about to launch into another year of working 3 part-time jobs (two theatre, the third of the "day job" variety), and andy, besieged by a sudden flood acting and improv offers, has turned down the salaried promotion his cafe offered him. as we move into our late twenties, i admit that the specter of financial solvency, health insurance, IKEA furniture, grows stronger and those "what am i doing with my life?" doubts do come nagging around the edges.

still, we've gained something in our first year in chicago: momentum. a lucky few rocket to success in this biz, but most of us labor at it the hard way - one friendship, one job-well-done at a time. and it feels like a slow race between two possibilities: will we make it before we get so tired/poor that we give it up? it's the elusive definition of "making it" that's a slippery slope. when do we know we've made it? when we're making a living in the arts? then how do we define a living? in financial terms? when we're happy? when we finally think we can relax and let down our guard and occasionally pass on an offer because we have faith that another one will come along? when it all stops being so scary?

last weekend was new york, chez lauren and joe, who were marvelous hosts. as i was on vacation, i skipped out on my professional obligation to spend the whole weekend seeing plays, but i do confess to finding a unsuspecting harvard grad with theatrical leanings at a party and talking at him for a good solid hour about the financial problems facing theatre in america. he was very nice and asked just enough polite questions to keep me going ad nauseum. i think he finally escaped on the pretense of needing a cigarette.

the weekend was a blur of excellent thai food (duck curry, mmmm..., not to mention some pad thai that rivals my own), hip art venues (the owner of the future perfect offered to buy my MRI for a project entitled "Resident Evil"), flea markets and impromptu shopping trips, and lots of good conversation (joe claims that entire conversations between lauren & i can be boiled down to: "my cat goes mrrow." "and then my cat goes mrrow." "and then my cat goes mrrow." i'm not disputing his point, tho i fail to see anything wrong with that).

it's nice to have a girl friend to hang out with again.

some pictures:




the giant bamboo canopy that arched over the gravel courtyard of P.S.1, one of MOMA's satellite venues. the art was good, but the people-watching was better.



the view of the sky from battery park, where lauren and i were too late to get into the actual concert venue for the lyle lovett concert, but spent an idle afternoon lying in the grass behind the stage.



ms. liberty, from battery park.



the penguin tries to deal with the pressures of life in new york city.

explain this sign:

"vegetarian cookies available here!!!"

finally. i'm so sick of places that only have meat cookies. :)

someone tell me, please, why is it that the bag boys (or girls, or men or women) at the grocery store get so panicked whenever you bring your own canvas grocery sack? then, if they do consent to use said bag, they frantically pack every single item into the same bag (tomatoes on the bottom, naturally) as though the fact that i brought my own bag means that i shun the use of all other grocery sacks? what is so hard about this? and why won't you just get out of the way and let me bag my own groceries, if this causes so much consternation?

i recall buying groceries for the first time in england and patiently waiting while all the items were scanned, paying for them, and then discovering that my groceries were in a heap in everyone's way because i was suppose to have been bagging them myself, not to mention which, i was supposed to have brought my own or purchased grocery sacks. i think the clerk took pity on me and gave me a couple of bags to carry things home with, red-faced.