Today is going to be update day so let's get started with this video of Gracie Lou having some puppy play time. This just goes to show that despite her emo pictures she's not always depressed and dark.

Dean and Deluca?

I’ve spent 95% of my adult life on a college campus where relationships begin over heavy drinking and a random hook up that turns into a 3 year thing that sometimes goes somewhere but usually leads nowhere. So the world of dating is very new to me. Men planning things? Paying? Flirtation with strangers? Gwat??!!

So I went on my first date a few weeks ago. The guy worked in a school and I know I said I was only looking for ibankers but he seemed nice. He called me "adorable" in an email which I should have known was a warning sign. I'm an adult! not a child! And then before I knew what was happening I was being invited to a date at a Starbucks in a heavily populated part of the city. We’re in the most awesome city in the world and you want to go to a Starbucks?! I talked it over with a few people who said that maybe he was just wanting something very neutral. But really we were trying to make chicken out of chicken shit. Is that even a saying? I have no idea.

so there i was on a Wednesday night walking into the most bland looking, empty starbucks at 7pm. I was embarrassed to see myself there. I saw the guy and of course, classic online dating scenario...he was way shorter than he listed himself as being and was balding. But I could see how the pics he took of himself were from good angles and from those good angles he could almost be cute. But from real life angles he was just kind of sad. and i'm not even that into looks but as i soon found out, he really didn't have the personality to make up for his looks. If someone is REALLY hot and you just want to stare at them you can forgive them a terrible personality.

so that was problem number 1. then this little exchange happened

him: did you even know there was a starbucks here?!

me: (confused because there is a starbucks EVERYWHERE! In fact there was one literally around the corner) um....no?

him: yeah can you believe it! there is one right here!

me: um...yeah

He was genuinely surprised and excited about the starbucks in the middle of nyc. ??????????????? As you can imagine it all just went downhill from there. He was really awkward and just stood at the entrance staring at the part of the bar where they serve your finished drinks. I said to him "should we get in line?" His response was jarring "oh i didn't even see a line. I wasn't sure about how this worked." Now did that mean he didn't know how this particular starbucks worked or how any starbucks worked? because THEY ARE ALL THE SAME!! MY GOD!! they are designed to be like catholic mass, identical and easy to follow no matter where in the world you are!

He was a guidance counselor and said he related to the ADD children he worked with. hmmm. He'd gone to a local CUNY school, which i'm not judging, but he was also from manhattan and had never left. he said "i have everything i need here. i can go to the movies, get whatever i want 24/7 from the local corner store, anything else i can get online." oh like CULTURE and AN INTERESTING PERSONALITY!? and he came from a wealthy family so it's not like you can attribute his lack of world savy to being low income or something. he also said that he was sorry for acting so tired because Wednesday's were his longest days. Yet he suggested we get together on Wednesday...

other strange things he said. "do you go to the movies?" obvi i do but when i asked him to elaborate he said he liked "all movies." hmmm. "do you like to work out?" no, not terribly but i said i do specific things occasionally. When asked to elaborate he said he "works out all the time and does everything. that's the only other thing he does other than work or movies." and he didn't look like it, let me tell you. It's just very strange when a person has no sense of humor. strange. So of course i had my back up plans and met the slammers for falafal. And he even texted me a few days later saying he had a great time and wanted to get together again. unfortch before i could write him back to say thanks but no thanks i lost my phone and with it his number. point taken, world.

It was just really random and sad. And while most people would lose faith in humanity after such a date and say things like "i'll never find someone! wah wah wah" i had a different take on the situation. If the majority of the women that are in my dating pool are as boring and uninteresting as this guy then there is like NO competition. I don't want to bag the boring men. I want the interesting fun men because i sort of think that i am interesting and fun. And if the interesting and fun men are going out with women who are as boring as this guy then i'm going to KILL in the world of dating! I can seriously have a conversation with a wall so talking to strangers is not a problem. And lesson learned, i will stick to my plan of wealthy men. because let's be honest, i'm not looking for anything long term.

in the next entry...when "w's" become "v's": my date with an indian man, dot not feather.

"Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can change your life forever"

So at the ripe old age of 28 I have realized that although I am attracted to tall white men and Indian men the kind of people who share an attraction to me are neither of these groups. I have narrowed my type down to a very specific group of men: short, hairy, half italian half mexican men. yeah, it's that specific. I don’t know what it is about those Italian boys but they love me (sidebar: their mothers HATE me. Not sure why). So when I got on match I thought that things would pretty much mirror real life.

Oh how wrong I was. My first few day on match I listed myself as Hispanic/Latina. I didn’t say that I was Mexican, I just left it at that. In a curious case of events I started getting winks galore from black men and Indian men. Now hear me out, I would gladly date either of these groups and have tried but failed miserably. Let us not forget the Mexican/Punjabi Indian in college who I never met but was sure was my soul mate. Indian men, despite my very in depth knowledge of the culture have never actually pursued me in real life even when i throw myself at them. And black men have absolutely no interest in me. My assumption has always been that men of color feel like first they’d rather pick someone in their racial group and if they are going to date outside of it why not just go for a white girl or an asian girl. Men almost never say “I want me a nice, educated Latina woman with a phd! Yes yes that's the girl for me! i choose the short, mexican, smart girl!” Ask around. It NEVER happens. I assume it’s because it’s seen as dating down.

So back to all of these Indian men who were hitting on me online when i was Latina…They were kind of sad and tragic and had names like “lonelyboy” and stuff like that. But the black men were sending me messages calling me baby and asking me if I salsa danced. I took me a second but I realized that the meaning of the term Latina is quite different on the East Coast. On the West Coast it means taco trucks and cleaning ladies and spicy food and salma hayek. But on the east coast Latina means Puerto Rican or Dominican or loud or salsa or a curvy body or J Lo. Am I J Lo? I think not and my junk leaves much to be desired. So in the interest of not lying to these men I decided that perhaps I should change my status to White because culturally despite my hatred of the terminology I am indeed “whitewashed.” Is this lying to say that I’m white? Well if you believe like me that race is socially constructed than you can say whatever the hell you want.

Being a social scientist I decided to leave my profile exactly the same except for changing my race to white. All things being equal, what would people think….The results: I was still getting hits from the Indian men but his time they were more attractive less pathetic ones. Ibankers!! Consultants!! On top of that I was getting zero black men winking at me and more white men. In fact the education and income level of the men also rose. I was getting men in the 100K plus bracket who were lawyers or had gone to b-school. Very interesting indeed!

But then it felt a little bit like lying and for the sake of the experiment I took it a step further. I changed my race to “other” and left everything else the same. Well you will never guess what happened. No black men at all, the white men abandoned me and the only group that was pursuing me was Indian men. VERY INTERESTING!

So yeah, I’m not really sure what to assume about all of this because when it comes down to it have I ever actually been able to bag an Indian man? Absolutely not.

the next experiment i'm conducting will be changing my height from 5'0 to 5'2. I've noticed that men seem to list 5'2 as their cut off. Like 5'0 is dauntingly small or something. so we'll see what happens. just appreciate that i am sacrificing my dating life for the cause of science and your entertainment!

“Relationships are hard”

So since I’ve recently become single and am no longer in the middle of fucking nowhere in the middle of America I decided to try out the online dating thing. My goals here are very small.

1. I’m not looking for a boyfriend, I just want free drinks and fancy bars that I can’t afford to go to myself. I figure that despite the fact that i make almost no money my high brow education and worldliness has made me very able to mingle in the world of the wealthy so dating rich men could be fun.

2. Since in real life I’ve never actually dated wealthy ibanker/consultant type men I decided that in my online life this would be my goal. And since new york is kind of like a fake life in an of itself I thought this would be the perfect place to test out this type of man. Are ibankers assholes? Yes. Do I want to marry one? Probably not. Do they have lots of money and can take you in cab rides and pay for EVERYTHING? Absolutely.

And those friends, are my 2 goals. To get free drink from rich men. Lofty, I know. So join me on my adventure!!

What would Sally say?

so me and my man ended things because sometimes people don't know what they have and they take it for granted and a woman has to respect herself. I've been doing better than with other break ups. no tears, no overdramatic remarks of how "no one is ever going to love me again!" etc etc because come on. i'm awesome and will have many lovers. And New York is an awesome place to be single so i've been living it up but i have my moments and that's all i'll say on the topic.

BUT sometimes the world gives you signs and you just have to listen to them. So i lost my phone at thanksgiving dinner at my own house. It was next to me and then as everyone was leaving around midnight someone must have picked it up, thrown it in their bag, and is too careless to look for it now. At any rate, it's gone and i can't do anything about that. And whatever, it's just a phone but i lost all of my numbers and that is annoying as shit. And i guess i also lost any old text messages i've ever had not to mention all the photos i've taken the past year. This year includes what i thought was memories of a happy relationships. aaaaanyways i started feeling mopey about it wishing that it would just appear, and hoping that if i just visualized it the power of "the secret" would make it somehow magically reappear. And then i started remembering how when david and i broke up i was miserable and thought i was going to die (but in the immortal words of peggy lee, "but then i didn't, and i said to myself, is that all there is to love?"). I lost my phone then, and along with that phone i lost his number and any contact we had ever had. And i felt awful! but then i started thinking, you know this could be the push i needed to really force me to move on. And it really was a turning point and after that the healing started Well it's only been a month since this last love ended and the world has taken my phone from me again and i can't help but wonder if it's a sign that i need to move on or something. All photos of our impromptu roadtrips just gone. His number, gone, text messages he has sent me, gone. So i guess that's that.

Musings on Subway Rides

You always hear the most random things on the subway. For the most part people keep to themselves but there are always those few, usually ethnic people, let’s keep it real, who just like to advertise their problems and their conversations. Case in point, today a woman who I garnered was named Erika and who I based on the conversation was either a cleaning lady in some sort of medical facility or a cleaning lady in a hotel was talking about her boss who she refered to as Miss Mary. Erica was black and had a slight Jamaican accent and wore ONE rasta colored giant peace sign as an earing on her right ear. Not 2 earings, just 1. And she was yelling to her friend who was sitting across the tube from her. Things that I learned:

1. Miss Mary is a real bitch and has it out for Erika

2. Erika got a tip from a patient/customer of 25 dollars in an envelope addressed to her because she talked to a sick elderly woman about Texas.

3. But Erika found out from Jose “who barely speaks no English” that Miss Mary had pocketed her tip instead of giving it to her and she was planning on figuring out a way to let Miss Mary know that she knew she had taken her money.

4. Jose’s was presented in the story as a comparison for how awful Miss Mary is. Because even Jose, who didn’t’ speak no English, which was supposed to be evidence of his inferiority, still had the morals to tell Erika about the stolen money.

4. Erika’s wore her one peace sign earring as a message to Miss Mary. “do you see this peace sign miss mary! Do you see it! It means peace! So stop being a bitch!”

5. Erika wanted to buy some smoked sausage with her 25 dollars, which was the only thing that she ever liked from Texas.

6. Cleaning people hate when they have to clean up our tissues from the bed or the hotel room.

And that is your lesson for the day from subway. Clean up after yourselves and peace!

Going Back to High School

So it turns out when you take a long sabbatical from writing it’s really hard to get back into it. Humph. Anyways I’ve been spending a lot of time at this high school in Brooklyn where I’ve been doing my research and so I’m trying to integrate myself into the community by doing things like going to basketball games, chaperoning high school dances (no joke!), going to after school events with the kids. It’s been really cool actually and i’m hoping that in the process I may finally heal the wounds of adolescence that have been gaping since I was 15. Here’s a rundown of my week there.

1. Basketball game: freshmen and sophomores are really tiny! They might technically be taller than me but they just look like kids. This actually makes me feel old.

2. I’m just going to come out and say this and I apologize if I offend anyone, but high school dances in the hood are WAY MORE AWESOME than high school dances dominated by white students. Imagine being in a real life Sean Paul Music video like this



mixed in with a little bit of this



yes, there was an actual vogue battle happening in the middle of the dance floor and it was AWESOME! I left before this happened but apparently during “I whip my hair” shit got real serious. Also instead of having a dj the kids just had a kick ass sound system and played music from their ipods so I got introduced to what is hot right now for instance have you ever heard of a song called “teach me how to dougie” cause I haven’t! And because most of them are Caribbean they were playing totally awesome music I had never heard from the islands like this




But someone who i guess is into "old school" music put in Shaggy "wasn't me" and it took me back to pimp and ho parties in college. it unfortunately did nothing for the kids so they quickly changed it. In addition "ignition remix" got NO response and was also quickly changed which was so shocking!! I thought that for sure R. Kelly would have withstood the test of time. S o yeah this is just my PSA to let you know that we are old.

Dear Sally,

As you can see I’ve changed the title of the blog. When I chose “the good times are killing me” I was at a different point in my life and the good times literally were killing me (note all of the drinking and physical alements which have all but left me now). So as I enter the middle of my 28^th year on this earth it seems that a shift has happened and a new title is necessary. “So what does new shoe leather mean?” you may ask. Well first of all, if you don’t know, I judge you. But let me drop some knowledge in the form of a song

I recently moved to New York in an attempt to briefly escape my old life, take a time out from all that nature and Midwesternness. Granted I was able to sell it to my department as a professional trip where I would be doing data collection. But really I just needed to get away from academia and figure out what I want to do with my life. Become a new version of me, if you will. Well it only seemed fitting that since I was moving to New York I should take the time to rewatch one of my most favorite shows of all time “Felicity.” Young girl from California moving to the new big city to follow a dream! Hello, this is my life! Except that I’m 28 not 18...wah wah wah

So I reconnected with my old coop friend Tory here in Brooklyn, Park Slope to be exact. She and I have emailed over the years since college mainly about cheese and sandwiches that we've eaten. But back in college one of our favorite things to do was to randomly belt out the revised Felicity theme song of season 3. It was our motto. It got us through most days. And occasionally when we wanted to say that we had moved on or needed to move on we’d just say “new show leather, whatevs” and we both knew what it meant. And so it only seemed appropriate that in this new journey to become a new version of myself I should change my title to reflect that journey. So join me friends! There will be lots of critiques about things I find silly about new york generally and park slope specifically. There will be lots of discussions about my day trips to soho and day drinking with my fellow “self employed” friend Ramit. There might even be some discussions of this "work" that I am so diligently completing here. But most likely it will just be gratuitious puppy shots like this one.

and this one
she really is, dare i say it, a strikingly handsome animal. So welcome back friends. Leave a comment if you still read or care.