October 27, 2008 – 1:30 pm
This is the first year that I’ve had an apartment in New York City, so this is the first year that I’ve been able to throw a Halloween party like the ones I used to have in Buffalo. With all of my parties, I have a tendency to get all Martha Stewart-y and go crazy with decorations and this time was no exception. I prepared a month in advance by bringing all of my accumulated Halloween decorations back from Buffalo with me. This meant carrying two massive bags onto the train with me, but I didn’t mind. Partly because having all of my Halloween decorations with me (finally) made me incredibly excited and partly because it meant I’d have an excuse to take a taxi back to my apartment. Seriously, taking the train immediately following another eight-hour train ride is pretty much Hell on Earth.
Anyhow, the party was this past weekend and it was pretty successful. Because I’m kind of a broke college student, I decided it might be wise to make the party a potluck. I’ve been adverse to potlucks in the past, mostly because I get really anal and controlling about my parties, but this year I decided to let go a little and give it a shot. The experiment turned out pretty well, despite the fact that like ninety percent of the people brought Apple Pie (it was all delicious). We did have some pretty amazing leftovers!
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October 15, 2008 – 1:32 am
…. I sometimes redesign album covers. Ever since iTunes 7 came out and you had the option to view all of your albums by cover art, I’ve been totally obsessed with making sure that each and every item has a cover. Usually this task is simple enough. Sometimes, though, the track is from some random mix that a friend made or it might not even be released yet. In those cases, there is no available cover art. That means that when I’m scrolling through all of my albums, every so often, I run into that blank one with the big music note on it. To me, that is kind of the electronic equivalent of nails raking along a chalkboard. Seriously, it’s a problem. The problem, however, is kind of fun to solve. It also gives me something to do. Click here to view a slideshow of some of the covers I’ve created. You can also see the kind of awful music I listen to (it’s basically all Britney Spears). On a different note, I’m kind of in love with the music video for the single shown above. I’ve been watching it non-stop all night.
October 12, 2008 – 6:39 pm
A few months ago, while I was walking home from the closing shift at work, I thought to myself about how totally awesome night photographs of my neighborhood would look. It’s kind of interesting how everything looks totally different at night. I love how the streetlights shine magically through the trees and how store signage beckons people almost like lighthouses from far away. Especially in the summer months, when all of the trees are jam-packed with leaves, nights have a great mysterious quality about them. I finally stopped just thinking about doing it and actually went out with my tripod (and Katrina) to take some long-exposure night photographs of Fort Greene. They turned out even better than I expected! I loved how the leaves on trees had an almost extraterrestrial quality about them because of the unusual lighting that streetlights provided.
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October 11, 2008 – 9:07 pm
When I first started at FIT, I was registered for eight classes. I was pretty much certain that the workload from these eight classes would be too much for me to function, so in order to clear some time in my schedule (and to maintain my sanity), I quit the job I had over the summer. Eventually, though, that list of classes was whittled down to six and now I only have school Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. On the four other days in which I have absolutely no school and nothing at all to do, I’ve been finding myself increasingly bored. On Mondays and Tuesdays, everybody I know is in classes and on the weekends, they’re all doing homework. While I’ve been trying to find myself some sort of employment, I’ve simultaneously tried to come up with ways to keep myself from getting bored.
This past Thursday (when there was no school because of Yom Kippur), I went for a walk with my camera. I didn’t really have a strict destination in mind, I kind of just wanted to get outside and take pictures. Usually, when I take photographs, it’s for some sort of project or photoshoot that I’m working on. I hardly ever go out and just walk and take pictures. Plus, it usually makes me feel really awkward and self conscious to pull my camera out when I’m by myself. I really should do it more often, though. The experience, walking slowly through my autumnal Brooklyn neighborhood, pausing to admire things that I usually don’t spare a second glance, was incredibly gratifying. I not only killed some time while being productive, but I got to spend some time with my own thoughts and really enjoy the beautiful weather.
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October 4, 2008 – 8:38 pm
So, yeah. My apartment was totally featured in The New York Times. And I feel a little bit awesome because of it. Mostly because what with me being Mr. Martha Stewart Homebody, having my home featured in the Home & Garden section of the New York Times is kind of a super fantastic dream come true. I was really afraid to blog about the whole article and the interview because I was afraid of jinxing it (the reporter said that nothing was definite).
A few weeks ago, I was sitting around in my living room one night with my roommate Kate. She was going through e-mails and casually mentioned one that was sent to all Pratt students concerning an article about student living spaces that the New York Times was putting together. My ears perked up and I knew that our apartment was perfect for the article. I wasted absolutely no time in responding to the e-mail with several photographs of the living room and my bedroom.
I got a response very quickly from somebody at Pratt who told me that the apartment was exactly what they were looking for and they were wondering if I could send any more pictures. Even though nothing was totally written in stone yet, this was still enough to make me ridiculously excited. Even more so when I got another e-mail from a reporter from The New York Times telling me that she was interested in interviewing me about the article. I gave her my phone number and she called me to set up a date for the interview.
I had no idea what to do in order to prepare for the interview. I wrote down a list of responses to questions the reporter might ask. I wanted to be a good host (I also wanted to impress the reporter), so I bought water bottles and arranged a plate of gourmet cookies on the coffee table for her to snack on in case she was hungry. For the remainder of the time before she arrived, I paced back and forth throughout the apartment, making sure everything was totally perfect, and ran over to the window every so often to see if she was coming. When she eventually did come, I welcomed her in, gave her a tour of the entire apartment and we sat down in the living room to chat about it. I didn’t really know what to expect, but the interview went pretty smoothly. The questions were pretty basic and brief (how much was this item? where did you buy that?) and then we were done. The photographer came about a week later.
All in all, it was a pretty breezy experience. So breezy that it still didn’t even feel real when I searched the New York Times website on Wednesday night to find a story with a picture of myself on it. Crazy.
