I just wrote a special Sunday post for Bring it on!

That other blog has the quotes and the good stuff. Briefly, Newsweek not Timeconfirmed what most people suspected. Karl Rove was the person who outed Valerie Plame.

She was an undercover CIA agent. He put her and her entire family in jeopardy. Here’s a link to the article. Continue Reading »

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I need someone from 9pm-6am
I am a stripper and i have 2 kids, i need a sitter to babysit from the times listed above.
Need to know cpr, i want references. I make lots of$ so i can pay well.

This was an ad I came across. Obviously I was left with many questions.
Male or female stripper?
Why list job?
To entice?
So that nobody would answer who is morally repulsed by stripping?
Is he/she really soliciting business?
Does he/she work in a club?
Work for a service such as stripagram?
Work for him/herself?
Lap dance type stripper?
Pole dance stripper?
Strip on the bar, in a club, next to people’s drinks?
Is stripping the only service provided?
Why are some capital letters small?
Why isn’t there a price range for babysitting?
Is it because stripping and perhaps more comes along with it?
Why aren’t the kids ages and sex(es) listed?
Most importantly:
Do the kids choke often? Continue Reading »

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I had been feeling strange since last week. Couldn’t explain why; it wasn’t anxiety as in ‘anxiety attacks.” Just a feeling that something wasn’t right. Then I came home Thursday night to my 600 square feet of prime Manhattan real estate. Like most New Yorkers I have many locks on my apartment door. I only lock two of them; one is a decoy.

My super used to feel that he could walk into my apartment whenever he felt like without calling in advance or leaving me a note explaining the reason for his visits. When I would try to explain to him that this is highly illegal, except in an emergency, when he is always welcome, he would pretend to be deaf. I finally complained to the Board of Directors, and building management. Hated to do that, but hated having my rights violated even more.

At the time I didn’t have a decoy lock, but something would always look a little different when I came home. A window shade would be askew; a candle wouldn’t be in the place I left it. As I live alone, and like keeping things in the places I decide that they look best, I would always know.

But I decided that having a decoy lock would ensure that I knew. Having just gotten off the subway Thursday night I wasn’t in the greatest of moods to begin with. Finding this lock, locked, made my mood worse. Nothing was out of order; I couldn’t understand why he had been in here.

I decided not to ask him nor bring it up with building management or the Board of Directors as I might want to rent my apartment out next year and people who sublet are subject to the same strict rules that people who are trying to buy are subject to. Continue Reading »

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It’s raining big time today. My brain is in rare mold farm form. To be allergic to mold is to be allergic to rain, unless it’s over 80 something degrees, and the humidity is tropical. Then I thrive.

Almost did the ultimate New York thing this morning and called a coffee shop just for coffee as my Cuisinart combined grinder/coffee maker (thermal carafe) revolted, and didn’t want to be taken apart and cleaned. Every section of that machine has to be thoroughly cleaned after each use. In high humidity that includes the grinder, and it didn’t want to be seperated from the mother ship. However….

Went down to The Village yesterday to meet fave sis for an early dinner. Po’s is a very popular Italian restaurant; we could only get a 5:30 reservation. However the restaurant was almost empty at first. Fave sis didn’t understand as they accept only X amount of reservations, and only save your table for ten minutes. Usually there are lines out the door, and it was a summer Thursday when everybody is out.

Fave sis lived in The Village for years, then she was a pioneer (sort of) in The Far West Village (meat market district), then when married and planning on making a baby, they moved to Battery Park City, where they lived in the building closest to The World Financial Center until fave niece was two, and they moved back to Long Island five years before 9/11. Continue Reading »

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Have many friends in London. We’re glad our blogging buddy (and everybody else’s) Mrs. M is fine. Didn’t really mean to continue in the royal we today, but we’re a bit unnerved, and trying to distance ourselves from ourself.

Things like the transit bombing in London, bring 9/11 back to the forefront of our mind(s). It’s not what we want to be thinking about.

Can’t really concentrate today. Fave sis is coming in from the Island later this afternoon as summer is a great time to get reservations at good restaurants; fave niece is at sleep-away camp.

Can’t even think of the right things to say. One thing we do know is that the New York City police department is the best trained in the country, maybe the world to deal with things like this. We trust them very very much.

When the going gets tough; we go for a manicure/pedicure.

So do many other women. Tragedies fill up the nail salons; and women who normally wouldn’t talk to each other, do. Just an observation borne from too many tragic events.

We hope and pray that terrorist attacks stop. Nobody should have to go through them. Nobody!!!!!!!!!!!!

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We at Courting would love to thank Library Lady for the really intoxicating shout out she gave us. It was a great ego boost.

Lately we have been getting many shout outs, and while we would like to be all humble and bashful about it, we’re not!!!!!!!!!! We have also become addicted to the exclamation point and are seriously thinking about finding an A group for excessive use of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have been finding that Technorati doesn’t always pick up the links, and have been wondering if other people are having the same problem.

We do use the royal “we’ when we are trying to seperate ourselves from our work. Then there is Toto our imaginary dog who does begin barking if not given credit, and Savannah Falls Too, our computer, who refuses to operate properly unless mentioned often. When somebody is named Savannah Falls Too, you tend to listen to her.

We love writing in the second person as it too lets us be distanced from what we are saying. Yes, we know, Lorrie Moore is the only person who can write in the second person well.

Actually and more honestly we don’t know that. The same person who said “good writers borrow, great writers steal,” told us that. We don’t agree with that. Stealing is never acceptable. We have never been sure if the person who said that just really liked the line, and tried to work it into as many conversations as possible because it was her one great line.

At a party, this weekend, where few people knew each other we noticed an editor for a newspaper we read every day asking each group of people the same question. We noticed this because it’s a great technique for talking to strangers. Unless there’s somebody like me around who notices everything. We discretely followed this person, and listened to the different answers. The question itself was simple: “I’ve recently moved to the neighborhood. What’s your favorite restaurant?” As there are many restaurants on the Upper West Side, and everybody has a different favorite, it’s a great conversation starter. In the interest of full disclosure, it’s a question we have asked when we weren’t able to think of anything to say.

Then somebody approached us and asked the question he knew would make us begin talking, and not shut up for the rest of the night. It was a political question; not a question about blogging. People in New York tend to think less of blogging than people other places, though we have empirical proof that is changing. We are including links to articles on blogging that were in this past Monday’s New York Times.

As the mold farm is back and we have to walk around our 600 square feet of prime New York real estate in our exercise sandals, because the humidity is 100 percent and oppressive, we will stop while slightly ahead.

If anybody knows why technorati doesn’t pick up all links or knows a good alternative to it, please let us know.

One last thing. We hated Live 8. Hated it. Live Aid was so perfect, and Live 8 was so commercial and not worth it. We found that very sad.

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Riverside Park is my backyard.

I was reading a book when a group of bike readers practically ran down a girl and then cursed her. It’s clearly marked (yield to ped), but as they had been riding in a pack of five bikes, the herd mentality takes over,

This happened several times, and I have to admit that my first instinct was to think “oh good, it doesn’t happen just to me.”

Then I became angry. Why do people feel superior when bike riding in packs? Why do they stay in pedestrian areas, and don’t think that they have to give advance warning to walkers?

Riverside Park used to be a great walkers park. There’s a section that’s blocked off to bike riders but during the week the bike riding ban isn’t always enforced.

While New York is being lauded for the Disneyfaction of Times Square, and much more, it’s becoming increasingly hard to be a walker in a city that has always been known for being one of the greatest walking cities. Now San Diego beats it in walking polls; and I love San Diego.

Oh I sound so disgruntled, and I’m not really. Just tired of being a walker in a city that lauds itself for having something for everybody. Don’t really like having to take the subway up to Riverdale where there are hills and walker friendly places, or the subway anywhere to walk. That sort of defeats the purpose.

Why do so many bike riders feel so superior?

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We’re celebrating having won a revolution this weekend.

Blogging is a revolution in communication.

Sometimes (and this scares me) I have to remind myself that I have a real life with real friends in a real world. Not that the friends I have made aren’t real. I just haven’t met them yet. Trine and I have been having an ongoing conversation about this subject; and I wondered onto Annush’s site. She was talking about feeling like a voyaeur sometimes and I knew exactly what she meant.

We might all be remembered as being in the vanguard of a movement that’s bigger than any I can think of since the invention of the printing press. That’s my bias; I like words better than images. I go for good writing in TV, films and plays; great acting helps much, so does music. then there’s animation, old school and anime, great graphics–I love poster art, and things I can’t yet conceive of.

Blogging can combine all components. I love the thought of reading a book in print, plugging it into my computer and have links of all types come up. Think I’m being silly? Narcissitic? (Seer into the future is the correct answer)

I would love to know what you think about blogging; where you see it going; and maybe what it and publishing will be like in the future. Complete essays only. Whatever. I’m just interested in your thoughts.

For something really scary, watch the video included in Trine’s comment. Warning: don’t watch it before going to sleep. The video is scary; Trine’s comment is great!

Will be keeping this post first up for comments as I find them fascinating, and worthy of much exploration.

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