We just returned from a party (which was preceded by a book reading) for David Gilbert celebrating the release of his new book The Normals. The reading went well (funny and interesting) and then we walked a few blocks to the party. It was a lively crowd (all Kerry supporters) of architects, designers, and book people. Unlike parties in LA there was not a single discussion of diets, grosses, or celebrities. Jenn said that when everyone broke from the party to watch the debate in the back bedroom she knew she was home. This crowd was 100% Kerry. Maybe these are the French wine drinking New York intellectuals Bush is always talking about.

Trials and travails of getting phone, cable, & DSL in this house. This is uninteresting, but I want it recorded if only to refer back to it.

Day 1:

We set up phone service.

Day 10:

We move in, there is no dial tone. We call via cell phone to get Verizon to fix the problem. I order Directv. directv says the guy will arrive in 2 days to do the install.

Day 11:

The phone people come, do their thing, leave. Only one jack out of 20 in the house works. It's in the most inconvenient corner of the house on the top floor. DSL works. Voicemail works. I call about the other jacks. Apparently the townhouse is listed by floor. They suggest canceling the phone or floor 4and moving it to floor 3. They say DSL will continue to work, voicemail and everything else will just be transferred. It will happen by morning.

Day 12: In the morning the other jacks do not work. We start getting our neighbor Kate's calls. Kates calls are also ringing in her house. This is confusing. Voicemail has been canceled. DSL has been canceled. The directv people never show up. I call Verizon, but it's too late to place a new repair order.

Day 13: I call directv and tell them their guys never showed up. They claim I never put in an order. I make a new order. They tell me the guys will show up in 3 days. I place a repair order with Verizon.

Day 14: Verizon shows up and physically wires all the lines from upstairs and downstairs together in a box. We have phones that ring to our number! Voicemail does not work. DSL does not work. We are told DSL will be available in 10 days. No way to expedite the order.

Day 15: We call about voicemail and are told it will work in the morning.

Day 16: Voicemail still does not work. We call again and are told it was shut off, but it would work in the morning.

Day 17: Voicemail still does not work. The directv guys show up. Install everything. But it doesn't work. Directv claims I have a bad card and that it will take 2-7 days to get a new one (what kind of spread is 2 to 7 days?). We call Verizon again and are told in will work in 2 hours. I am told to "hold my horses".

Day 17 (two hours later): The voicemail still doesn't work. I call again and a nice woman named Mrs. Petroski says she will personally fix my voicemail. She says she'll call back at 2:00.

Day 17: 2:30, Mrs. Petroski calls, the voicemail is fixed!

Status: waiting on DSL, waiting for directv

At the Film Festival we saw Danielle Arbid's In the Battlefields. This film exemplifies what the NY Film festival is all about--a showcase of brutal honest filmmaking by a first time director from a country most people in the US know little about. The movie is an autobiographical coming of age tale of a young girl struggling with her disintegrating family in wartime Beirut. The story is told almost without sentiment from a completely interior/personal point of view. While it will probably not get distribution in the US, if you see it listed at upcoming festivals, try to catch it.

Ms. Arbid spoke afterwards. Jenn and I both noted she seemed super cool. The type of person you'd like to meet for dinner, drinks, and a long discussion about life...

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We like riding in empty subway cars at night:

I'm hanging our retablo/ex-voto collection in the bedroom. After years of flack for mixing antlers and retablos, I take it as a minor victory that Jenn walked in, studied the wall and said, "Needs horns."

Roger Ebert called Undertow (by David Gordon Green) a masterpiece. Ebert's getting soft I think. We just saw the film at the New York Film Festival. I found it badly miscast (is Dermot Mulroney always the kiss of death?), but watchable with a few nice moments. Despite being muddled, it feels original with a deep sense of place an a feel for a region rarely seen except as parody or caricature on screen.

Jenn gave it a 3 out of 10 (I think she was overly negative because of the cheesy Philip Glass score and the looking-back-to-the-70's freeze frames which she didn't get). The problem I think is that David Gordon Green was overpraised for George Washington (which was a beautiful little film), was quickly a declared genius, and was allowed to run free without adult supervision. Now everyone expects each of his films to be some sort of revelation. A tall order for anyone. The result in this case is a minor southern gothic mess that most audiences won't put up with, but that critics will praise because because of it dares to aspire to that great tradition of auteur filmmaking almost gone from the American scene.

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We walked over the bridge today... I got Jenn to do one of the silly jumping pictures we like to do. This is Jenn landing:

In the great pantheon of annoyance, lathering up to shave with a 3 week beard and not having a razor is certainly just a minor cubbyhole. But lathering up, not having a razor, unlathering, discovering you actually do have a razor, relathering, and accidentally knocking your one razor in the toilet... that has to merit a broom closet at least.

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I hung about 50 paintings today. The house is starting to feel like home.

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We are 2 months from the expected due date and have lots of baby stuff already. Stroller. Crib. Too many clothes. I was looking at the stroller sitting empty in the hall this morning and was haunted by Hemingway's shortest story: "Baby shoes. Never worn. For sale."

My friend Julien turned me on to this website by The Hound. It features radio show highlights from one of WFMU's most interesting DJs. The mp3s are literally recorded from the radio show (often with lead ins) so most are not worth saving for your ipod, but there are some top notch tracks here...

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Example of how pregnant ladies use their condition like a mallet:

Jenn: Let's go into town and get a laundry hamper.

me: Let's order online so we don't have to carry it on the subway.

Jenn: No we need it.

me: But I don't want to carry it all the way here in the rain... if we order now, it will be here by Monday.

Jenn: I want to get one today. I'll carry it if you don't want to... but then everyone who sees us together will start booing you. "Boo on the husband making his wife carry the heavy package. Fie, fie on the husband. Boo. Bad man." (pause) So let's go.

Today was a complete turnaround from yesterday. The weather has turned autumnal. Workmen showed up on time. Things got fixed. We now have sisal stairs and phones that work. DSL is still down, but happily I have several neighbors wireless connections with easily guessed default passwords. Note to everyone out there. If you don't want people using your bandwidth, don't use the password, "password" or "secret" or "1234".

We are discovering a good collection of local restaurants. Today we had lunch at Teresa's a Polish place at 80 Montague. The cabbage soup and kielbasa as was the pumpernickel. I've eaten more good bread in the last week than I did in my last year in LA.

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I've been taking tons of photos but haven't imported or scanned anything yet.

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Question: My lovely wife wants to have a baby shower for the both of us. I have no problem attending a shower for her but I think it's weird to officially have the shower for both husband and wife. I also think it's weird to invite couples. Baby showers seem like a ladies only thing. Am I crazy old fashioned or is Jenn trying to bully me into something odd.

Today has been an exercise in frustration. Verizon has managed to completely screw up our phones/DSL (our number was changed without our permission, Only one jack out of 20 works and our DSL is just dead).

It's steamy. And the mugginess is made worse by the smell of cleaning solution throughout the house.

Our ibook drive will cost $380! to replace.

The subways are screwed up because of the Penn Station fire.

Our furniture doesn't fit.

&

I saw a mail truck run over a dog.

Right now I'm sitting at Tekserve, the computer place. I have ticket #88. They are on #54.

We discovered this groovy fragment of wallpaper behind the toilet:

Our handyman, Dave, says that he often discovers odd anachronisms in the neighborhood, like the 90 year old woman who still uses gas lights a few blocks away on Boerum Hill.

Our stairway awaits sisal carpet. Over the years the stairway has been covered in wood, linoleum and a spectrum of carpet colors...

I am once again mobile:

I'm trying to take it easy today and have, so far at least, not left the bed (happily today's Sunday Times--especially the magazine--is full of good reading). Hard not to get up and deal with the chaos all around though. Boxes everywhere. We have yet to unearth even our sheets. Jenn has been working double duty getting the kitchen in order. She has forbidden me from doing anything today, so here I will remain.

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When we were in Chicago a month or so ago I woke up with an inelegant scream, in a cold sweat, and all discombobulated. Jenn now unphased my my noctural distress calmly asked what was wrong. Apparently I looked at her with frightened eyes, shuddered, and whispered "sea snakes". Afterwards I fell promptly back to sleep.

Today I realized I might have been having one of my fish dreams. I have had these aquatic dreams all my life. In them I am a fish, not a human who thinks he's a fish, but an acutal fish. I think simple thoughts, wiggle through the water, and admire the concave world around. Normally I wake up feeling pleasantly refreshed by my osteichthyesian adventures... But if I were a fish, what would be more frightening than sea snakes? See where I'm going with this...

I went in for another round of acupuncture and I came out feeling like a new man. Dr. Zhuang can't speak a word of English, but the guy seems to know exactly how to fix me. He even fixed my big toe which has been numb and pins/needlesy for weeks. Today's treatment involved pins both in my back and my legs. The latter had a very slight sting... Amazing how quickly you feel better. I wonder if the pins stimulate adrenaline production which numbs pain? Whatever...it works.

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Weird day out there.

We kept breaking things in the house (including Jenn's ibook which we dropped).

There were cops in random places for no apparent reason (these guys were on Baxter):

And the encounters I had with people were kind of out there.

Example: This is a conversation I had with a young Korean deli guy (with a SF/Bay area accent):

deli guy (apropos of nothing): Do you believe in ghosts?

me: It depends.

deli guy: What do you mean by that?

me: I think I believe in ghosts in Mexico, but not so much in New York City.

deli guy: Mexican ghosts. Oooh. Very interesting. What kind?

me: Well for starters there would be the ghosts of the dead, and the ghosts of those not yet born.

deli guy: So many souls.... (picks up a guitar) Do you play guitar? Mexicans are musical people.

me: no

deli guy: Is it ok if I write a song about Mexican ghosts?

me: Knock yourself out.

I managed to throw my back again yesterday... probably while hauling 20 or so boxes up the steep attic steps. Today I'll be in the prone position all day. It's days like today that I'm happy my work requires only healthy fingers and mind.

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There are 8 Dominican guys in the house replacing the hall/stairway rugs. These guys work super fast. It has taken then less than 30 minutes to remove 4 floors of heavy carpet.

We attended our first lamaze class tonight. It was pretty much what you would expect... a bunch of crunchy couples sitting on tumbling mats asking sincere questions. All the various types were there... the couple that wants a super scientific birth, the couple that wants a totally natural childbirth at home, the geeky couple (where the woman kept worrying her husband would pass out) and the good looking dumb couple (who kept calling each other "sugar baby" during the break). I kept thinking if we were in an episode of Fear Factor with these people we would clean up.

We've read too many books so most of the info seemed sort of basic to us. Jenn asked a couple of questions about exact physiological processes which seemed to throw the teacher a bit...

We'll see how it goes, but my sense is that these classes are good if for no other reason to remind you of all the steps involved and to help you ask informed questions when the baby is ready to make it's appearance.

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Unpacking is going to take at least a week... it's been s l o w going.

The 18 wheeler arrived in Brooklyn Heights this morning just as Wednesday alternate side of the street parking rules went into effect. This did not please the local commuters who gave my truck driver a big New York welcome (it almost came to blows). But after about a half hour of dramatics the driver managed to park in a fire zone and the move was on.

The crew here consisted of 4 preternaturally happy Ecuadorians who didn't seem to mind hauling almost 9 tons of stuff up 2 to 5 flights of stairs. We tipped them well. The job was done by 6. Tomorrow the unpacking begins.

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My dad stopped by.