Life in Early 21st Century, New York

If you don't get your bag of laundry to the laundromat by noon on Sunday, you will not have clean clothes in time for Monday morning. Unless you actually sit in the laundromat and do the laundry yourself. I have never once taken that second option.

Commercials on TV about washer/dryer sales and products are increasingly meaningless to me. I wish I had a washer/dryer and it produces the very same emotion as wishing to win the lottery. And I'm not even kidding.

You can live in 250 square feet and not lose your mind. In fact, there is a kind of serenity to it.

It's nicer to walk a couple of blocks in the subway than street-side, sometimes. Like when it's raining.

I don't understand why people still use umbrellas when it's barely raining. If your hair can't survive a scarf-wrap, then you need a new style. Also: people who use golf umbrellas in New York should really be asked to leave. Especially when they insist on keeping the damn thing open walking down the subway stairs.

If you don't order your FreshDirect groceries by Saturday morning, you will not have fresh fruit on Sunday unless you venture out to the local bodega/market and overpay for citrus.

People think nothing of paying $1 per pound of laundry but will NOT pay more than $5 for a bunch of bodega roses. But they WILL pay $10 for a pack of smokes.

Bodega flowers are the hardiest flowers ever. They last 2 weeks. And they are CHEAP.

You know you've arrived when the cashier at your local bodega treats you like a regular.

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Streets are quieter than ever before. That doesn't mean people aren't still yakking on their cell phones - it just means that everyone else is wearing ear buds or noise-canceling headphones so they don't hear anything any more. When I leave my apartment every morning, I do two things: I lock my door and throw my keys in my purse, and than I put on my iPod. Except one day I didn't put in my ear buds. It took me nearly twice as long to walk to the 42nd street stop because I kept looking around wondering who was making all that noise?

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Every city has an associated industry. Washington is a government town. LA is entertainment. New York, for all of its diversity in industry, is mostly a business town. Fashion is here but it's really more about marketing fashion than creation fashion. Same thing with media. Wall Street is the company for this company town.

Chicago has always been a writing town for me. It's been about journalism and reporting and writing - storytelling. It's a communication town. The only other image that comes to mind is that of fire fighters, policemen, street cleaners, garbage men, snow removers, etc. It's a town's town. It's meta.

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Nashville is a music town.
St. Louis is a beer town.
Atlanta is a Coke town. (ha ha)
San Fransisco is an artistic town.
Boston is a lunch town.
Orlando is a Mickey Mouse town.
Houston is an oil town. It could have been a space town, but...

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I'm confused by Reebok's Reetone commercial. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMc2hBxzLvg)
The faceless women in this commercial are doing things like busing tables (waitress), making copies (secretary) and vacuuming the rug or taking the dog for a walk.
You've come a long way, baby.

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Alternatively, I don't care what John Mayer said or didn't say about women - I still love his music.

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"Eating in" for me means heating up leftovers or thawing Carnegie Deli matzoh ball soup. I haven't actually made a meal for myself in years.

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I haven't driven a car in about two years, either. Recently, I had to move someone's car and was surprised at how foreign the driver's seat was to me.

Which reminds me... I really need to get a driver's license.