Don’t Hog the Pole

This past weekend, I had the privilege of celebrating many birthdays. There were the 2 Motzash parties-where I got to come up with some new moves that I had been working on for quite some time now. And then Sunday there was a make your own pizza party! One would think the weekend can’t get any better than that-but wait….after the party I got sleep in apt #B55, a cherry on top of a lovely weekend.
This morning I rode on the A train. It’s a slushy day outside but not too cold, so no complaints. I don’t really mind standing on the train, sometimes I enjoy it, especially because Monday I have back to back classes from 8-2, so I will be sitting for a couple hours. Now there are 3 kinds of subway people that bother me.
1) Door Blockers-The people that insist on standing in front of the door, and make it their Makom (spot) for the duration of the trip. That means every time new people come on, they either move to the side forcing incoming straphangers to walk in single-file formation.
2) Impatient Pushers-These are the people who get on the train before letting the people in the train get off. Aren’t they listening when the conductor yells “let ‘em off”? I mean it’s only gonna make it more annoying on the pusher. And when the pushers and the doorblockers get together it cause utter chaos.
3) Pole Hogger- I find this to be the worst and most common of the 3. This is the person that thinks they are a good samaritan by letting others sit, or simply don’t have a seat. At this point in the trip, the train is not quite packed, but it’s getting there, and this person is leaning on the pole with their back. This prevents other standers from holding on and in rare cases can lead to a domino effect.
After pondering this while standing and switching from all of these locations on the train, I get off and walk in the slush to school. I was running 10 minutes late but I felt entitles to a 15 minute cushion because it a Monday, at 8 am and a snow day. On my way, I bump into this girl from my class who informed me that class was canceled. Guess I could have sat on the subway after all.

Let's Wok n' Roll

That's right fans-2 notes in 2 days, read em while they're hot. Sorry bout the cheese factor, just I’m procrastinating while writing a paper-which gets me to the topic of today. My paper is actually related to one of my favorite jobs, Anthropologie. I continue to call myself an employee simply because I still get the discount, but who am I kidding-I haven’t worked there since New Year’s Day. As for my paper, the idea is for me to find a private label at Anthro that makes 3 kinds of knit tops; the basic knit top, the fashion knit top and of course, the pattern or print knit top (which I will make reference to by the end of this note). This may sound like an easy task, but at Anthro it is actually quite difficult to find the basic knit, everything is too fun and unique to be basic. As a result I had to walk around the store for about 35 minutes looking inside each knit top too see the brand. Now this is something that would cause concern to the employees, when we see people looking through every single shirt we find it a little suspicious, which is why 20 minutes into my observing, I realized that some guy in the store was following me around. I just wanted to tell him it was a project and that he should lay off, so I asked him if he worked there and perhaps can tell me more about the private labels. When I approached the super muscular man he denied working in the store. My tuchus! What kinda man walks around Anthro alone if he doesn’t work there?
Well onto my next job. Again not a job, an unpaid internship-or, if you will, a job where course credit and the learning experience is my pay. For those of you who don’t know my internship is in wardrobe at The Rachael Ray show. I haven’t really been writing much about it because I’m trying to keep it professional, but to sum up, Triple Ray + Big Al (that’s what she calls me)=BFF. Bottom line. So my job is to do inventory on merchandise that comes in, to buy Ray Ray Ray (Triple Ray) clothing, and to go on set and make sure she looks well put together when we are taping. For example, last week she was wearing a necklace that got tangled-Big Al to the rescue, or this week, there was a thread hanging from her shirt- Big Al saved the day, that’s what I do. This morning I was standing by Rachael’s dressing room accounting some merchandise and Rachael comes out to say hi to Big Al. Now the top I was wearing today(my printed Anthro knit top) has a bow that ties in the front that is made out of some kind of silk and as a result the bow doesn’t always stay in place. Rachael, along with her good eye, picked up on this and said “Big Al, you like bows, right?” of course I like bows! She went ahead and tied it for me, and the bow stayed in place the rest of the day. In my head I interpret it as a version of the Chanukah miracle-call it what you want, but a bow that normally lasts for 2 hours and somehow lasts for a whole day? What’s her secret?
And my last thought of the day, having absolutely nothing to do with the 2 previous ones, let’s take a minute to discuss my thoughts on an all you can eat buffet. Last night I had the privilege of having dinner at Eden Wok with some of the finest people one can ever meet. Here you get a buffet of Chinese and sushi at the low price of $20. Normally, one roll of sushi is around $7 and a serving of Chinese is about $14. So you are really getting a hot deal here because you have a wide range of options here, which is why I can’t understand why someone wouldn’t opt for the buffet. I mean even if he went to a birthday party earlier in the day and ate a lot of good food, I still can’t find a reason why someone would do such a thing.

Undressed

Yesterday was a pretty big shopping day for me. At the height of holiday shopping, I hit up all my favorite joints. I went to the Barney’s Warehouse Sale-I usually go at the beginning, check out the hock and then go back at the end because it all gets marked down. When you walk into the sale, they check your bag, it’s not unusual and I’m totally cool with it. Although yesterday, I didn’t have any bags, I had a purse. Yes, my purse is slightly bigger than other purses, but I did not think they would check that too. The nice bag check lady/man asked me for my purse, and I didn’t really want to give it to her/him simply because I saw other shoppers carrying theirs. So I said “you want my purse?” and some woman that was giving in her bags answers “yes, they take purses”. Who was she? Does she work there? No! Just mind your own business lady! But whatever, I checked my bag, and you know what-it was for the best, one less thing for me to carry.
A few stops later, I was in Daffy’s. I was desperately in search of a photo album. As I was browsing, I passed by the dressing room. Instead of saying “fitting room” or “dressing room” on top, it said “undressing room”. All I could think was how clever these Daffy’s folks are! I mean they’re totally right, you go into the room and get undressed, yeah, you get dressed again, but calling it an undressing room just seems to make much more sense! We can all learn a few tips from Daffy’s-and there they don’t check your purse!

Shooting the Breeze

The first time I heard the phrase "shooting the breeze" was in the note of a fellow blogger whom I truly admire. He is famous for writing notes revolving around cute phrases, however "shooting the breeze" was not one of the phrases he was talking about, rather he used that line in a sentence. I admit, at first I didn't really know what he meant by it, I had never heard such a phrase-how can one possibly shoot a breeze? Either way, I read that sentence and went on reading the remainder of the note. About a week or so later I was greeted by this line again, only this time it was coming from Dean Allen Kane, the dean of the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business at the Fashion Institute of Technology (i.e. FIT). Anyway, it was the first day of school at around 1:10, I was checking my fan mail-I mean emails, and saw one from the dean (no, I'm not that special, the entire school received the same email). He basically said that since it was the first week of school, he was having open walk-ins in his office from 1-2 everyday the first week, and that we should feel free to stop on by, introduce ourselves and shoot the breeze. Now, just for a little background on Dean Kane-he has been with the college for a year and a half, is a very spiffy dresser, and is quite a dashing gentleman. And what a coincidence, it was between 1 and 2. I headed toward his office. His secretary told me to sit down because he was on the phone-that was my chance to help myself to an "FIT:Where Fashion Gets Down to Business" pin. Within a few minutes, the secretary went in and I heard the Dean exclaim: "A student actually came!!!!" All I'm gonna say is, we shot the breeze-I made him fully aware of the staircase in building A that locks from the inside.
On a different note, not literally(ha ha ha) as we all know, yesterday was super bowl Sunday. Until yesterday, I couldn't follow football, but after having it explained to me in very simple terms, I am now a football fan and can't wait til next season! Usually, there is a lot of hype about the commercials. Back in the day when I didn't understand how the game was played, I too could only look forward to the commercials. Now that I've matured from that stage, I can say that the game is way better than the commercials were this year. The only one that is still stuck in my head is the one on "Connectile Dysfunction"-it was a commercial about slow Internet or something.
This gets me to my third and final thought of the evening. On the Subway they were making fun of the Gieco Gecko with the phrase "Reptile Dysfunction"-it's safe to say that rhyme is getting overdone. But there were some other pretty funny ads on the Subway. So just thought I would share this with those of you who don't use underground mass transit-"Before Bahamavention, I was so white I couldn't wear myself after Labor Day"-featured next to this quite is a photo of some fat, bald pale guy in a short sleeve button down shirt. Gets me every time.