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.