my first and only car was a GM car. It was a cherry red 1990 pontiac sunbird, that my parents surprised me with after I got my drivers license. Of course, living in the public-transportation-less suburbs at the time, the car was as much a gift from my working full-time parents to themselves, seeing that it was a fucking pain in the ass to get me home from school on most days given my participation in multiple after-school activities. That car took me through high school in rockland county, college in buffalo and law school in philadelphia before I moved to NYC and didn’t need (nor want) the responsibility of a car anymore. Then it passed to my brother for some period of time (his “spirited” driving churned through a few cars in his time), and then a few years ago, my dad traded it to a guy in exchange for a paint job on our barn up in the berkshires. As far as we’re aware, that guy is still driving it around. other than the color, it wasn’t a particularly exciting car, but I loved it all the same. It broke down incredibly infrequently, and (mysteriously) only when I was home from school so that my dad was available to deal with the problem. And said breakdowns usually involved something as simple as the battery dying YEARS after it’s expected life had run out. It was the last year that GM made cars out of steel instead of fiberglass, so driving through the snow in buffalo was a snap. That thing was heavy. Of course, my heavy doors (it was a 2-door) would be frozen shut every morning, so I have some not so fond memories of hurling my entire body against the door in the morning in order to unstick them and get to school. I never did learn that it might be a good idea to keep the defrosting solution somewhere other than inside the car.

Of course, I know why they killed pontiac. in reality, they were the same cars as chevrolets, but with a little less brand cache (except for the classic firebirds and GTOs). In fact, in college, my friend Vic had a chevy cavalier, in the exact same color as my pontiac, and we used to park them next to each other as a joke. because they were identical.

Still. it made me a little sad. Here’s hoping that GM can pull out of this bankruptcy leaner and more efficient. and, of course, that they start making cars that people want to buy again.

Dr. Tiller was on of three (three!) doctors in the entire country who performed late-term abortions. These are a miniscule percentage of the abortions performed, and are almost exclusively done for medical/health reasons. Now we’re down to two. In the entire nation.

Of course, this event has me reflecting on my days many years ago as a clinic escort in Buffalo, which was (at one point) the epicenter of anti-choice nutcases in America:

Side note: when I was in college, I did volunteer work for the Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, spending my Saturday mornings working as an escort at one of the local women’s clinics in town. On a regular basis, we received physical threats from protesters, and my “job” pretty much consisted of using my body as a shield so that women could get inside the clinic relatively unscathed. Right before I graduated, we got a new doctor, and I remember that others were worried because he had appeared on one of those internet “hit lists”, meaning that the clinic was going to have an even bigger profile. A year after I graduated, that doctor was shot dead in his kitchen in front of his family. I think I didn’t realize until that point just how dangerous standing up for my constitutional rights could be.

Tomorrow, I’m going to sit down and figure out which worthy organization is going to get some of my money.

A few years ago, I thought it was incredibly fortuitous timing that they published a travel article on spending the weekend in Paris mere days before I went to Paris. crazy, convenient coincidence, right?

But now it’s just getting creepy. I’m going to Philly next weekend for my 10-year law school reunion, and what do they publish this morning? Yep…36 hours in Philadelphia.

In all seriousness though, I’m not sure why they thought it was a good idea to encourage people to visit philadelphia in mid-may, which is the height of graduation/reunion frenzy. The few remaining hotels that aren’t booked solid are probably either incredibly sketchy or have super-exorbitant prices. But I’ll probably print out the ideas on the off-chance that I’ve got some downtime somewhere in my reunion-weekend schedule.

My allergies are happy that it’s finally raining and washing away some of the pollen that’s invaded the city over the last week (when I left my apartment last saturday morning, the trees were still bare. By yesterday, they were in full bloom thanks to the heat wave earlier this week). The rest of me, however? not so much…

I’m doing the 5 boro bike tour tomorrow, and it’s looking like it’s going to be a rehash of the MS ride from last fall, without the possibility that the sun will come out at some point during the day. Could get ugly.

I was going to try to find some biking rain gear for tomorrow, but if I can’t find anything good, I remembered that I bought a waterproof windbreaker that’s not particularly aerodynamic when I was down in Roatan in January, because it rained every day while I was there. So that’s a backup plan (a backup plan that could result in disaster if it’s windy, but still…a plan). Unlike the MS ride, where I not only didn’t wear rain gear, but I wore cotton leggings under my bike shorts because it was cold out, and they didn’t get dry the entire day. That’s a mistake I won’t be making again!

What I found most interesting though, was that I grew up in this community. I attended most of elementary school in East Ramapo, and moved in the middle of the 6th grade. Reading the article, I kept wondering which school was being closed, but the article never mentions it (which is a bit odd, no?).

So I did a little internet digging, and discovered that…yep, my elementary school, Colton, is the one on the chopping block. I’d say that this was sad news, but at the same time…I had a horrible time in elementary school (at the hands of certain other students, who picked on me mercilessly, and one particular teacher, who…picked on me mercilessly for the two years I was stuck with her), and generally consider moving to a different school district to be one of the best things that ever happened to me…so there’s that.

It also reminded me of something that played out when I was really young. For kindergarten, i was actually in another elementary school (I can’t remember the name right now), but the school was “closed” and I was moved to colton for the first grade. I put “closed” in quotes, because, as I recall, that school was actually “given” to the orthodox community for a number of years and functioned as a yeshiva school for many years. I don’t remember too much detail (obviously), but I do remember walking the picket line with my mom. I think it got converted back to a public school when I was in college, but I always found it incredibly odd that a public school building was given over to a religious institution. Obviously I don’t know the details, and there was probably rent involved, but I also wonder if the reopening of that school lessened the need for colton.

A few weeks back, I twittered something about cycling in NY. Someone who was looking for other NY cyclists found me and started following me. So I followed her back (hey, she posted good bike tips). So then…she organized a bike ride to coney island. Which I, at the very last minute, decided to participate in. I had a blast, met some great people, and made some new friends. who then proceeded to follow me (and vice versa) on twitter so that we could keep in touch easily. Today, we met up for another (yes, real life) bike ride out to red hook, and it was another blast (and heck, when a few people got stuck with a flat tire, we actually used twitter to try to find each other). So rather than the alienation that people seem to think is inevitable from each new social networking site, I spent the beautiful day today out of doors, on my bike, with 20 other like-minded people who I would have never in a million years met in any other way.

Each of these things is a tool. How one chooses to use them is really dependent on the individual. People who trend towards loneliness and alienation may continue down that path, but it’s because they already had that propensity. twitter didn’t make them that way.

I’m a loner by nature. When I was a kid, I was often much happier in my room with my nose buried in a book. And many of my closest friends (who I do see as often as we are able to make plans) have kids and stuff going on which makes it a bit harder to drop everything and go get a drink (and they’re certainly not bike fanatics like me). A lot of the “burying in a book” mentality has perhaps transferred to electronic media, but at the same time, if that media didn’t exist, I would have most likely spent my day today by myself. Maybe I would have gone for a bike ride, by myself, but knowing myself better than that, I would have spent half the day vegging out on my couch before I thought to go outside and enjoy the sunny 77-degree day.

I’m sorry, but the catastrophic “[insert latest technology] is destroying all of our social skills and making us all [narcissists/nihilists/sociopaths]” has just got to stop.

UPDATE: new soundtrack added via youtube’s audioscan service. all legal and everything!

and, if anyone’s interested, here’s a map of my trip from the upper west side to coney island. I skipped mapping the trip back to prospect park, since we followed the same route down (having trouble embedding from google maps at the moment, so a static image will have to suffice). Red line was my solo ride to brooklyn, orange is the group ride down to the beach. And I would totally do this again!

So I get into the office at about 12:30, to discover that there’s a giant flood. some sort of water tank cracked on the 27th floor, and caused hundreds of gallons of water to flood all the way down to 21. I’m on 25. So the first hour I was in was spent avoiding the leaky ceiling and putting out trash bins to keep the carpet outside my office from getting (more) wet.

Then, of course, I discovered that, due to the flooding, our internet node was completely trashed, so I (and my secretary) had no internet/email/network access. So…I went to lunch. When I got back an hour later, there was still no network access, so I went home for the day (stopping off for groceries on the way home).

All in all, that may have been the most unproductive 4 hours of my life. and I spent $4 on the bus there and back. According to a message I just got, the network is now back up, so we’ll try this again tomorrow…

Like I said though, at least it forced me to shower and leave the house. Plus, the schadenfreude. that was pretty enjoyable.

Full, uncensored interview clips of Part 1 (and please enjoy the schadenfreude of these clips being sponsored by Bank of America). Part 2 and Part 3 can be viewed at the Daily Show’s website (had problems with embedding).

The only thing that actually bothers me is that they literally just opened up a store in the old tower records location near lincoln center less than one year ago. Here’s hoping the space can find another (decent) tenant soon.

In addition, the guys who put together these shows have a podcast that airs three days a week and a companion blog, planet money.

If you want a clearer understanding of what’s going on, I highly recommend all of these. Heck, the podcast guys got an interview with Geithner last week that’s been cited all over the interweb.

Not according to my body.  Which is why it’s 5 am, I’ve already attempted to go back to sleep twice, and now I’m blogging because I’ve already cleared out my rss reader from new entries.

And it’s not even like I fell asleep early last night.  I stayed up to watch the Obama speech (which I thought was awesome) and even the speech by that Kenneth the Page guy…oh wait, I mean Governor Jindal.  But seriously - I couldn’t even focus on what the guy was saying because I was so distracted by the manner in which he was speaking.  And can someone explain to me how he thought using Katrina as an example of where private enterprise would be better than the federal government was a good idea?  I mean, did we see tons of private companies rushing to fill the void that was left by the mismanagement of FEMA?  And does he even realize who was in charge in 2005?  because it wasn’t the democrats.

I’ve actually never understood the point of the response, whether it’s by republicans or democrats - it’s not actually a response, because it’s (obviously) written before the actual state of the union, and it’s not in front of an audience, so you end up with some weird, deer-in-headlights posture while staring into the camera (which might not be terrible by itself, but when it follows Obama (or anyone, really) speaking in front of a crowded room getting standing ovations every 20 seconds, it’s just…awkward).  I get why people think it needs to be done - that a major speech by the president must be responded to - but at this point (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) I think either minority party would be better served by just having surrogates go on the talking heads shows.

OK.  15 minutes down…now it’s all of 5:15 in the morning.  Maybe I’ll try falling asleep again.

I’m getting severance, and I’ve got a nest egg, so I’m ok from that perspective for a while, and I’m confident (hopeful) that I’ll get another job sooner rather than later (hopefully before my severance is up), so I’m going to try to look at this as a blessing in disguise.  This is the first time in 10 years that I’m not going to have a client deadline or stress about a deal.  So that’s something.  

In the meantime, people keep wanting to buy me alcohol, so that’s a plus!

I’ve got one hour and 35 minutes until, well, I turn 35. It doesn’t bother me very much, but at the moment I’m feeling a bit of a twinge. I had to fill out a survey a couple of weeks ago, and the age group category cutoff for my group was 34. The next age group up was something like 35-50. And that made me feel a little bit old.

On the flip side, it’s a holiday weekend, I have plans every night, and a bunch of people have said they’re actually going to show up to my get together on Sunday night (it’s not a party per se - I basically told a bunch of friends to show up at a bar at 9pm). I have smaller plans for my actual birthday tomorrow with my best friend and possibly my brother, but if I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s to try to studiously ignore my birthday when it falls on friday the 13th. The last time this happened, which was my 30th birthday? I ended up working until midnight.

I was trying to figure out which of these ecards was the better one to illustrate this post but, quite frankly, they both pretty much capture how I’m feeling one full day after Barack Obama took the oath of office (however muddled) and became the 44th President of the United States of America.  Sitting in the conference room my firm had set up yesterday watching the inauguration, I felt like a giant weight had lifted off the collective shoulders of everyone in the room.  I was happy, but it wasn’t really “happiness” that was the overriding emotion.  The closest thing I can liken it to is, when I’ve worked on a really big deal, that involves severe lack of sleep overwhelming stress, and then it closes and I spend the rest of the day walking around in a daze from the fact that every part of my body, including my brain, unclenches.  and then I collapse into bed that night and sleep for about 12 hours.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t have to go to work the next day and start some new work, but for that moment, I’m perfectly able to relax.  

That’s what I felt yesterday.  It doesn’t mean Obama won’t make mistakes, or that his tenure will be filled with puppies and flowers, or that the economy or the environment or the military situation are all of a sudden hunky-dory, but for just this moment, I feel overwhelmingly…good.

Nothing quite like the George Bush airport in Houston. Seriously. Nothing.