Pain in the neck

On Wednesday, I woke up and couldn't move my head.

It was mildly scary and really pretty painful. I had no chance of making it to work: even holding my head up without support was excruciating. I felt like a baby who's head bobs down because it's not strong enough to hold it up. But for me, when my head bobbed down, it hurt like crazy.

I spent the day in bed with about 10 pillows strategically placed under my head and my roommates running back and forth waiting on me. (I couldn't even pick up a glass of water...) I was going crazy by the end of the day from not moving or doing anything or being able to use the swivel function of my head. If you think about it, that's really quite a handy function.

Amazing

This weekend, I filmraced.

I've done it once before, and it was crazy then and it was crazy now. 24 hours to write, shoot, edit, and deliver (in person) a short film. My team consisted of some friends from work and a friend from college. I think we came out with a halfway decent film, given the time constraints. I'll post a link once we put it online.

I only slept an hour and a half during the 24 hour period, and our team took the term filmrace to heart when, 21 minutes before the deadline, we decided to sprint the 15 blocks to the drop-off location instead of taking a taxi. (It seemed logical at the time, but so did a lot of things... Sleep depravation will do that to you). We made it there with a minute or two to spare, sweating and dryheaving. Turning in the film was all that much sweeter, though.

Trader Joe's, how much do I love you? Let me count the ways...

When I first moved to New York, I almost started crying because of the price of food in this city. I remember that, after my first trip to my local Gristedes, I considered (for a few brief seconsds) moving away from the city because I couldn't imagine myself getting by on those prices.

It was a few days after that that I made my first trip (or should I say journey) to Trader Joe's in the city. Trader Joe's is a grocery store chain that sells only its own brand of food. The fresh produce is always great quality, the prepared (frozen, canned, dried) food is always made from solid ingredients (none of that processed stuff), a lot of the food is organic, the staff there is always friendly, and on top of all of this, the prices are great. I used to do almost all my shopping at Trader Joe's when I lived in Boston, but there's only one of them in Manhattan, in Union Square, which isn't exactly right down the block.

Chairs

We moved into a new apartment about two and a half months ago, but it's happened gradually since my roommates and I were all away for a period of time after we took over the place. We didn't come with a lot of furniture since my roommates moved from Norway and I've always lived with other people who have furniture up until this point.

We spent hours pouring over craigslist for cheap, but nice furniture. By the end of February, we had pretty much everything we needed to make the place livable and homey. Except dining room chairs.

Baby Torso

On Tuesday, a friend of mine and I showed up at a party in Brooklyn with a plastic baby, some dough rising in a bowl, some sprinkles, and a walnut-cinnamony-brown sugar sauce.

Have you ever heard of King Cake?



I hadn't until this Tuesday, which was Fat Tuesday, and the party was in honor of Mardi Gras.

Ew, jerky.

I usually wrinkle my nose when I think of jerky. It's so vulgar to me to be popping dried meat in your mouth like potato chips. Meat, especially dried, is NOT for snacks on the go.

But! I am capable of seeing things in a new light given the correct circumstances.

We were in Kentucky, the sky was blue, the geese were flying (south?), and we had just made it through some rough days of filming. 12 hour days, down to 2 degrees fahreinheit, and the only thing that had kept us going through it were the Toasti Toes foot and hand warmers you could hide in your mittens and boots. (Plus the 5 layers of wool. Oh, and of course the deadline of getting all the footage shot on schedule. But that's secondary.)

Everything Happened at Once

I haven’t written for a while because all of a sudden, everything happened at once.

As promised, my two Norwegian friends arrived in the States about two weeks ago. They’re going to be in the US for a year, living out the dream. They’ve spent a long time planning, contacting Norwegian newspapers and magazines, who they’ll be freelance-writing for while they’re here. They basically just up and left their day jobs to experience and write about New York for a year, much to my happiness, cause now I’ll have two amazing roommates.

We found an apartment pretty quickly, and we just moved into a beautiful (affordable and large by NYC standards, but expensive and small by any other) apartment on the Upper East Side, just a few blocks from Central Park. Or, that is, my friends and my stuff moved in, I haven’t actually had a chance to live in our new apartment yet.

Mischief Managed

The day before yesterday, I drove out to the airport with my half-brother and his nephew to pick up my other brother who was coming back to the States after the holidays in Norway.

In the car ride back into Manhattan from the airport, my jet-lagged brother asked my six year old nephew how things were going at school. He answered that things were going well at school and that he often got stickers for his good work. "What do you do with the stickers you get at school?" my brother wondered. He answered that he usually puts them on his shirt. My brother thought it'd be funny if my nephew would put the stickers on the teacher's butt instead. My nephew thought this was a hilarious, but odd thing to do. But he's 6.

I am... a very thrifty broad

I've been back in New York for exactly a week after the holidays, which were passed in Norway, and I've spent most of that time answering phones for Corporate America.

"Thank you for calling [insert Company Name here]!"

I say that sentence a lot. I'm really glad I went to college.

A Sporkife!

I've always thought of the name of this blog as three separate important eating utensils.

My friend Andreas (who you'll be hearing a lot more about since he and another friend, Lasse, are moving to New York in 15 days), found a slightly different interpretation when he was in a sporting store a while ago. He bought it for me, and presented me with it, .blogspot.com and all.

I give you, in A SINGLE utensil, a Spoon, a Fork, and a Knife: