When I woke up this morning I knew I probably wouldn't end the day with the FiOS Internet service I had ordered.  I was originally supposed to have it installed last Saturday.  On Friday I received a call from a Verizon representative who sounded exactly like Bugs Bunny.

"Hi, this here's Mike in the field office of Verizon FiOS.  How yas doing today, sir?"

Did you expect him to ask, "what's up, Doc?"

"Yas got an appointment for Saturday, but unfortunately your building doesn't allow work on Saturdays."

He rescheduled my installation for the following Thursday, a day on which I sometimes work a later shift.  He gave me a four-hour window: 8-12.  This was an improvement on the web site scheduling system, where you're required to submit to house arrest in eight hour chunks.

He gave me his direct number, and told me he would call on Wednesday to confirm.  I ended the call happy that I had decided to switch to a company that's responsive and accessible.

But, having plenty of experience waiting around this apartment for work to be done, I woke up today with very little optimism.  Mike hadn't phoned to confirm, and calls to the field office went unanswered.

And, of course, I didn't actually take the day off work.  So by noon, I was jumping out of my skin, and running to the window like a lonely dog, looking for Verizon trucks and howling at police cars.

Calling their 1-800 phone maze ended with an hour on hold while listening to a infinitely-looping piece of synthesized music, composed by a man who later committed suicide by dragging his Moog into the bathtub.

Finally, I was told that the installer would be there "within the hour."  An hour passed, and I tried Mike's number again.  He actually answered.  Because I don't sound like a beloved cartoon character, he didn't remember me at all.

But he put me in touch with my installer.  Genuine ETA: Dinnertime.

"Uh," said Me, "I'll have to reschedule."

In the past, I probably would have been exasperated, muttered angry nothings to the call-center schlubs, and stormed out of my building wondering "why me?"

But, now that I'm over 30 and no longer have a pulse, I've come to accept that this is the new reality.  The guys on the phone are underpaid, and I'm sitting on hold because there are too few people doing too much work.  I have some perspective on that, actually.

But, for God's sake, it's the Tens.  As long as you're cutting manpower, why not employ a little technology and keep your customers informed?  Not to go all futuristic on ya, but I'm thinking GPS and a Google Map.  If I can clearly see my installer is "threading cable" in Chelsea, I know I have time to break free and get a sandwich here on the upper West Side.

Combine that with free-flowing SMS messages and direct access to an automated scheduling system, and nearly everybody wins:  Customers, rich phone company executives, and wage slaves who have grown accustomed to answering phones with both hands.

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Ah, July in New York, when stepping outside is like shimmying through a warm, wet washcloth.  This, combined with with the wafting stink of subway grime and hot garbage, can cause the average person to stop in his tracks and wonder, "wait, am I a hobo?"

Unfortunately, it doesn't take 90% humidity to make me perspire.  I've been sweating since at least March, and that's if you don't count the multiple times in January and February when I wore a wool cap, and had to face the difficult choice between earcicles and swamphead.

Yes, I'm blessed with the year-round ability to feel the sting of a hard day's work in my eyes without ever legitimately earning it.  I am, therefore I sweat.

I think I'd be happier if I could learn to accept my fate as a sweaty person, and use it to bolster my self-image.  I could re-envisage myself as a manly brute, rather than a poorly-wired, sickly monkey.

But for now, I don't like taking two showers a day, and I don't like doing laundry twice as often.  So, on these warm Summer nights when I should be roaming the streets and nodding my shiny forehead at girls in tank tops, I find myself making a beeline for all places air-conditioned.  Usually, that means apartment to work, and back again.

I could rattle off a list of horrible things about my new apartment, but one of its only redeeming qualities is that I'm able to keep it cool.  My dad, who is steadily transforming into the wise owl from those Tootsie Pop commercials, told me earlier this year that my South-facing abode would be warmer in the Winter and cooler in the Summer.  He was right, of course.

Part of the Winter warmth was a radiator I could never quite shut off, but the sunlight was also blindingly direct.  Now the sun is mercifully high in the sky, thus sparing me the dual indignity of being sweaty and being awake before 9am.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean I'm using my air conditioner any less.  In my old apartment, I settled for 80 degrees, because that's the best job my AC could do.  Now, the overall temp is probably about 75, and I've placed the unit so that I can blast my head with icy air whenever I'm sitting at the computer, which is...always.

Every once in a while, I'll try to do my environmental duty and turn it off, but about three minutes later I'll feel a nascent bead of sweat, and jump faster than a girl who's just seen a half-mouse, half-spider.  The lights flicker, the compressor roars to life, and my inner hobo slinks away for another evening.

He'll be back in full force when I decide to panhandle to pay my electric bill.

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I have to admit, my pink-edged monitor is bumming me out.  I'm a textbook example of "buyer beware," or at least "buyer, pay more attention when you have money burning a hole in your pocket."

Based on the price, I'm pretty sure the seller knew it, too.  Oh, how I long for a time when libel laws were lax, and men regularly challenged each other to duels.  I'm not really angry, but sometimes I'd like to take my gut feelings about people and emblazon them in 90-point blinking font on my web page, or hire a skywriter.  But alas, we must be civil.

I'll probably end up selling the thing on Craigslist, at an even deeper discount, and with pictures demonstrating the exact problem.  The only religious vestige of my youth is my Catholic guilt, so I can't bring myself to be the guy who smugly lures nerds with shiny Apples, accepts their stacks of cash, then screams, "no givesies backsies!"

The funny thing is, almost every monitor with IPS technology has a handful complaints on the web about uneven colors.  Obviously, complainers drown out satisfied customers, and my friends rave about IPS, but there definitely seems to be a quality control issue--perhaps at LG Philips, who manufactures every panel I've considered (including the Apple).

But, there's a silly advantage to buying new, called a warranty.  Sure, I can't send it back to have them coat the ugly plastic bezel in pretty anodized aluminum, but I can send it back if it gives me the throbbing eye ache I'm nursing right now.

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Goddamn do I hate real estate brokers.*

Where was I?  Oh yeah:  Despite my visceral aversion to the site, lately I've been poking around the For Sale section, searching for things that I've often dreamt of buying, but only for really, really cheap.  Like, it'll be 2am--still early in the insomnia cycle--and I'll grab my laptop and search for "iPod shuffle," then sniff indignantly when I can't find one for a dollar.  "It's the size of a stick of gum," I loudly proclaim to no one, "and should be priced as such!"

And yes, 90% of the time it's Apple stuff.  I'm not one of those people who's blindly loyal to Apple, but I enjoy using many of their products.  And I often look for them used, because I totally agree with the contention that Apple products are overpriced for what they are.

One of these products is the Apple Cinema Display.  I use one at work occasionally, and after watching my China videos on it one day, I became convinced that I needed to get one.  It's one of the higher-quality displays out there, for technical mumbo-jumbo reasons, but there's nothing unique about the technology it uses.

What is unique, at least to pre-2008 models, is the low-profile aluminum housing.  I think Apple must have filed a patent on it, because from what I can tell, all other manufacturers kept churning out beautiful displays wrapped in fat, ugly, socially awkward molded plastic.  Yes, I'm kind of shallow like that. 

So is everyone else, apparently.  People regularly paid a 40% premium for aesthetics and branding.  And, in turn, the resale value was incredible.  Stupid-incredible.  5-year-old monitors were going for more than the price of new ones from other brands.

But today, on Craigslist, a gentleman put his 23-inch Cinema display on sale for a completely reasonable price:  About 100 bucks less than the lowest price I'd previously seen.  It was a great price for any IPS monitor, really.  (There's some of that tech talk.)

His reasoning:  "It's old, and I got a new iMac."

As a Craigslist For Sale newbie, I was overly cautious, and Googled the heck out of him to make sure he was a real person, or at least an axe-murderer who was being up-front about his identity.  Turns out he's the CEO of an advertising agency and lives in a giant apartment with his hot, personality-free wife, and young son.  Actually, I didn't know the last three quarters of that statement until I showed up at his building earlier this evening.

And I swear, while I was there, I tested out the monitor in every conceivable way, minus licking it.  It wasn't until I got it home that I noticed that the top and bottom of the display have a discernibly pinkish hue.  Most colors look very uniform (especially compared to my cheap old HP monitor), but on web sites with boring white backgrounds (ahem), it's pretty apparent.  You can sort of see it in the picture above.

The pink has actually faded a bit now, or my feeble brain is compensating for it.

But I bought it for video, and in that capacity, it really shines.  For the price I paid, I can't really complain.  I'm a skinflint, pure and simple.  Not the best match for Steve Jobs and Co., but they've already got quite a bit of my dough.

And, as I've said, I'm not some mindless Apple-addict.  I can quit anytime I want.  There's lots of other technology companies who deserve my business.  Er, can you excuse me for a second?

Mmmmmmm...Apple-y.

*This is a New York thing.  If you are a real estate broker in Omaha, carry on.

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I know what you're thinking: He didn't change anything but the header image. Everything else looks the same.

Ah, but so much has changed. I've retired my Wordpress-powered blog, and am now using a completely free service called Posterous. I'm not sure what their business model is; as you can see, there are currently no ads of any sort, and they've yet to offer any "premium" services. But, by the time they become the Geocities of the 2010s, I'll likely have moved on to something else.

There are lots of glowing reviews of Posterous out there, but I can tell you it's not perfect. Customization is somewhat limited and difficult. For instance, on my old site, I hand-rolled my own video player. Now I'll have to embed YouTube's ugly player.

However, the downside of Wordpress is that it begs to be customized. Believe it or not, despite the boring vanilla look of the site, I spent countless hours tinkering under the hood.

And all I had to show for it was 20 measly blog entries.

Posterous, like Wordpress, allows you to post via email. Unlike Wordpress, Posterous is designed so that the most sensible way to post is via email. Attached media is posted as inline images, video and audio. Paste a YouTube link, and a player is automatically embedded.

Anyway, this behind the scenes stuff is probably not very interesting to most of you, and obviously there's no telling whether I'll actually be motivated to post more often. But I'm encouraged.

And, now that I've got this up and running, I vow to stop tinkering and just concentrate on content. I'll sit in Starbucks and dash off quick updates via email. That's what I'm doing right now, in fact.

That's my story. Let's hope it continues.

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I often talk about how much I hated driving in California, but sometimes traversing the streets of New York on foot can be similarly frustrating. While walking down Amsterdam Avenue yesterday evening, fresh off an embarrassingly short run in the park, I made note of some of the major impediments to getting from point A to point B:

1. Guys in flip-flops

When the weather's nice and you're in an area filled with bars and restaurants, the streets are littered with overgrown frat boys who are apparently unaware that their minimalist footwear causes them to shuffle down the sidewalk like elderly ducks. Because these guys are rarely without their "bro"s, there is often a cadre of these doofuses blocking the entire sidewalk, four or five abreast.

2. Nuzzling couples

Only the extremely talented can walk and chew their girlfriend's face at the same time.

3. Cell phone zombies

The ability to walk (or drive) with a cell phone varies dramatically from person to person. For instance, you might see a middle aged man in the midst of a screaming fit ("let me speak to your supervisor!") blasting down the avenue with no navigational impairment. Meanwhile, a lady jabbering about picking up Justin and Chloe from piano practice weaves lazily up and down the sidewalk like a gimpy turtle chewing on an ether-soaked rag.

4. The peripherally-challenged

These are the people who make me wonder if I've left the house wearing my invisibility cloak. It doesn't matter if it's a crowded sidewalk, or I'm the only one on the block, but there will always be someone who decides that the perfect time to move from the storefront to the curb is the very moment I'm passing them. I want to scream "I walking here!" but then I remember I'm shy.

5. Proto-peripherally-challenged

These are the Muppet Baby versions of number 4: uncoordinated tykes who have been encouraged to sprint down city streets with wobbly abandon, but haven't been taught how to avoid running into fire hydrants, dogs, and grown men who think children are complete idiots.

6. Hernán Cortés de stúpido

It pretty much goes without saying that when you're in any sort of traffic, whether you're on the Indy Car circuit or pulling a sled in Alaska (you dog), you can't come to a dead stop without getting rear-ended. For some reason, visitors to New York think there's an exception when it comes time to study the cartoon map/place mat they got for free at the hotel front desk (don't panic; the Statue of Liberty is not to scale!). Meanwhile, I have to move like Fred Astaire on a quadruple espresso to avoid doing a faceplant into some Midwestern fatso's sweaty back.

7. Uneven sidewalks

And finally, just to prove my beef isn't just with humanity (unless you count municipal government as such), I'm convinced New York's budget for sidewalk repair is somewhere between that for subway rat removal, and hobo urine deodorizer. Every time I leave the house, I'm using every last bit of my minuscule brainpower trying to avoid tripping over gnarly tree roots, crumbly curbs, and cracks that are essentially miniature cliffs. I'm not sure how little old ladies (not to mention frat boys in flip-flops) manage to survive on our third-world-style walkways-o-death.

Other than that, walking around New York is a lot of fun. Tell your friends!

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It's tough to maintain a blog. After all, I can't write about work. Not only did that get me in trouble once before, but at the orientation for my current job, I was told flat-out that the company has a strict no-blogging policy.

The DVD set that everybody who's anybody (who's my relative on one side of my family) has been talking about!

So, what's a schmo like me, who doesn't do much outside of work, supposed to write about? Hobbies, of course. My only consistent hobby is spacing out in front of other people's blogs, but lately I've added a new twist: wading through hours of home video and authoring DVDs for all my relatives. All right, so it's not very exciting to read about, but I figure you can only watch my San Gennaro video for 8 months before requiring something new. And I'm mostly bringing this up because I'm really excited about the next phase of the project. I'll get to that in a bit. Phase one started on a lark; in January, I was visiting California and suddenly got it in my head that I needed to transfer my Hi-8 videos to DV tapes, before my Hi-8 camera went kaput. This was stuff I'd taped between 1998 and 2001. Over the next two days, I played out about 10 hours of video into my Sony DV camera, converting it to the newer format.

Box o'tapes.

Between the newly-dubbed tapes and my DV tapes from 2001-2006, I had about 20 hours of family video. The shoebox o'tapes was filled out with other random material, such as weddings I had shot and bloopers from my days at the affiliate in Sacramento. My personal favorite is this massive typo from a local commercial (it's at the very end):

Now, even though DV tape is pretty ubiquitous, it's still tape, and you still have to work with it in real time. It's a little ridiculous, actually. If I remember a funny scene from the second season of Scrubs and I want to watch it, I just have to double-click the file on my hard drive and cue it up to the right spot. Takes three seconds. And even if I wasn't the kind of nerd with TV shows on his hard drive, I could still do pretty much the same thing on a DVD. But if I want to find a touching moment in the middle of a family video that's on tape, I have to find the right cassette, listen to the crunching of gears of the camera deck that could fail on me at any moment, and shuttle back and forth until I find it.

So, in order to have random access to all of the video, my next step was the tedious process of digitizing it onto a 500gb hard drive. Because it's the size of a passport (but about the thickness of a deck of cards), Western Digital calls it the Passport, and after about a week, the contents of my shoebox could be slipped into my front pocket. I think in bits and bytes, so from there on out, the process was easy. Off and on, over the next few months, I did some light editing on all the clips. Trust me, you'll never know what's missing. (The camera being left running accidentally, mostly. And great swaths of present-opening.) I compressed the video to DVD format using Apple's aptly-named Compressor, authored the discs using DVD Studio Pro, and made 18 copies of each disc (3 total, plus my sister's wedding, which I edited and copied after the rest of the project was complete.) If I needed any confirmation that the effort was worth it, it arrived in the form of raucous laughter at the fancy dance moves in the New Year's 2000 episode, which we watched at Nana and Tata's the night before I headed back to New York. But I left some of my relatives wanting more. A couple of them asked, "what about the older stuff, like Little Mike being chased by the chicken?"

Well, don't you worry, because that's what I've got cooked up next. If all goes according to plan, within the next couple of weeks, I'll have all of my dad's original film material from the 1970s scanned, frame by frame, by a company in the Midwest. They'll send me a hard drive that contains all of the footage in a high-definition file, which I'll edit, clean up (major problems like scratches and dust), and color correct. So, if you're related to me, which anyone reading this probably is, clear another spot on your DVD shelf. And watch this blog, because I'm going to try to walk you step-by-step through my very first--and I love saying this--film restoration.

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The Brooklyn Bridge a few hours before it was vaguely lit by fireworks.

Yesterday I remembered why I usually just stay home and watch local events on TV: it keeps me from ending the day reeking of other people's B.O.

Let me back up; at about four in the afternoon on July 4th, I was sitting in a Thai restaurant on Ninth Avenue, all alone, save for the eager-to-please staff of five. I stared outside at the gray pavement under a gray sky, and wondered if I ought to bother finding a Fourth of July event. The forecast was rain, and I figured I would probably end up sopping wet and surrounded by drunk shmoes.

But, what the hell; I had my umbrella, and I didn't feel like going back to my stuffy apartment. So I hopped a subway train down to South Street Seaport (near the Brooklyn Bridge) to check out a street festival. I had it in the back of my mind that I might wait around for the Macy's-sponsored fireworks, but they were a long way off, and I get bored quick.

The subway was actually pretty empty, which I found encouraging. The Seaport, though crowded, wasn't ridiculously packed. On a whim, I went into the mall and up the stairs, and found myself on a balcony overlooking the East River. I whipped out my video camera and rolled off a few shots. I came to the conclusion that I was in a prime spot for the big show, which was still a few hours away.

So, I parked. I'd neglected to pack any paper reading material, but I got by with the Internet on my iPhone, and a steady stream of music from the same. The balcony filled up quickly, as did the dock below. I determined, from the Macy's web site, that the fireworks would be set off from three barges near the Williamsburg Bridge (a couple miles north of where I was standing), and one barge right next to the Seaport.

As the show approached, I realized the nearest barge might not be visible from my vantage point. But I didn't want to give up my spot, and I figured the northerly show would be close enough. And, after all, the thousands of people who willfully camped out on my side of the Seaport couldn't be wrong. Right?

Well, the show began, and as you can see in my video, two miles, three bridges, and the bend of a river is enough to make a fireworks show seem kind of distant. And because the big explosions were happening just around the corner, a horde of rain-soaked patriots embarked en masse to get a better view, and created the logjam I had originally feared.

Of course, I was part of the horde, but I had the initial advantage of being able to cut through the empty mall to get to the other side. My swiftness diminished, however, when I arrived at the exit doors. Not only were people trying to squeeze out into the open to catch an unfettered look at the show, but a few people were pushing their way in the opposite direction, presumably to escape from the suffocating crowd. People in both streams were attempting to defy physics, and getting surprisingly angry about it.

It had the makings of one of those European soccer-stadium incidents where fans get crushed to death. So, I pushed when I could, and otherwise let myself get tossed around like a rag doll. At one point, I actually said aloud, "hey, I have an idea, let's all just stand in one spot for a while," but I don't think anyone heard me, because screamers from the Bronx tend to drown out mumblers from Citrus Heights.

I finally found a pocket of air and immediately continued shooting video of the fireworks. Moments later, the show ended. Feeling lucky to have survived the earlier melee, I hopped up on a bench and spent about twenty minutes watching people shuffle away from the docks like herded cattle, until I was sure I could steal away with some personal space attached.

I can officially say I've been to the famous Fourth of July fireworks show in New York. I can't say I found it terribly majestic, but then again, I squandered the opportunity through my usual charming brand of miscalculation. Ain't I a stinker?

Which reminds me, it's definitely time to do some laundry.

(Video originally attached to this post has been removed as I transition to a new web host.  It may be restored if I feel like it.)

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One of many the many thunderstorms to hit New York this month.

I know, I know; four months, and all you get is another post about the weather? Is that all that's changed? Well, yes...on this side of the country, anyway.

Here on the East Coast, we've had some consistently recurrent thunderstorms, the kind that mostly hold out for weekend afternoons, when you're in the park without an umbrella. They're novelty storms; they start with a clap of thunder followed by thousands of idiots running for cover with the Times tented over their heads.

For all I know, New York is like this every June. Like most people here, I have a very short memory about the weather. Young people are freaked out by it. They give you a smug look and say "global warming, see?" They then punctuate this by widening their eyes, to silently but emphatically imply, we're doomed.

The oldsters are more reasonable. A few weeks ago I was one of those umbrella-less maroons being pelted by pet-sized precipitation, and I sprinted into a coffee shop on Madison Avenue, soaked from head to toe. The place was almost empty; a young couple sat in the back while an old man reading a mystery novel was parked at the counter.

"Kinda wet out there," I said, because I rarely have any words prepared that aren't completely obvious.

"It'll be over in a few minutes," said the old man, "then I'll go to the movies."

"This novel is extremely graphic," he continued, not to me, but to the proprietor, who was probably named Al. "It goes into great detail about the murder scene: bullet wounds, spilled brains, that kind of thing."

"It's good, though."

I looked drippily at Al and ordered a side of fries and a cup of coffee.

The old man was right, of course; halfway through my overpriced Ore-Idas, the plops slowed to drips, then to nothing, then the sun appeared. The old man placed his bookmark and said goodbye to Al. I paid my tab and made my way Westward across Central Park, where approximately a million people were congregated, just like any other sunny day.

Today it was pouring again, but I was feeling cooped-up, so I grabbed my umbrella and headed over to my own local diner. I looked out the window and snickered at all the scurrying pedestrians somehow caught off-guard by the seventeenth storm of the season.

Of course, I didn't know the waiter, and I don't think I pulled off a blasé, seen-it-all look while reading not-particularly-gory stories on my iPhone.

So, if you want to know why my life moves like molasses and I don't have anything to blog about, it's because I'm deliberately plotting to become that old coot without a care in the world. Someday!

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It’s great being a guy. Last night, for instance, I ventured to use the restroom at about two in the morning. No dice. My toilet was stopped up. After trying in vain to remedy the situation without any of the proper tools, I gave up, putzed around a little on the Internet, then hit the hay.

Today I rolled out of bed a little before noon. I went out, had lunch (and a cup of coffee), then bought a plunger. Problem solved; I was finally able to answer nature’s call about eleven hours after putting it on hold. You women have us beat in every other department, but I defy you to accomplish that!

Just in case you’re wondering, my apartment does have a maintenance guy, or “super.” But from what I understand, supers expect a tip for coming up and fixing minor things. I really didn’t want to hand the guy my last five dollar bill just for tracking muddy boots into my apartment and depriving me of the fun of solving a problem on my own.

Speaking of fun, I’ve been trying to get out more. It’s tricky, however. First, I have no friends, so I usually find myself taking long walks and sightseeing. I’m not particularly comfortable sauntering into bars, clubs or sit-down restaurants on my own.

Bethesda Terrace in Central Park.

Second, I owe about two grand in taxes, so I couldn’t afford those places anyway. On the plus side, these limitations have caused me to become a more avid photographer. It’s kind of a fun hobby to go out, take dozens of pictures, come home and tweak them in Photoshop. The more I’ve done it, the better my shots have become.

On the minus side, I’m spending way too much time inside my little apartment. When I venture out to someplace besides work, I’m usually glad I did. As with everything else in my life, it’s mustering up that initial motivation that’s the hard part.

Today a clogged toilet got me out of the house. Tomorrow, can it be just ‘cuz?

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What most snow around the city looks like.

I’m glad I bothered to go to the park today. Six days after a snowstorm, it didn’t occur to me that it would still be covered in a pristine blanket of snow. Okay, maybe it’s been trodden upon just a bit, but compared to the filthy piles of ice that have been kicked up by cars and snowplows, Central Park’s wintry landscape is blindingly white.

One thing I’ve been surprised by in the last few weeks is that I fare better in cold weather than most native New Yorkers. Every day, guaranteed, someone will comment on my lack of winter clothing.

I’m not going out in shorts and a t-shirt, of course. Aside from the obligatory khakis, I’m usually wearing a sweater and a jacket when I emerge each afternoon in the lobby of my building. I greet my doorman, and he comments on my lack of a hat. I laugh and head out the door. Sure enough, every other person on the street is bundled up as if it were the coldest day in Fargo. Buried among their puffy coats, knit caps, and tightly wrapped scarves, I can only discern their eyes, which seem to be screaming, “it’s freaking cold!”

I’m not saying I’m superhuman. It really does get cold. But on an average day, I can get away with spending less than fifteen minutes outside. My question is, are all these other people making hour-long treks across town, or did they put on fifty layers to run to the corner for some milk? If it’s the latter, they’re insane. Suck it up, walk briskly, and enjoy the natural jolt a little cold air can provide.

And if you’re like me, amuse yourself endlessly by watching your breath hang in the air. You can’t do that through ten pounds of scarf.

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As I may have mentioned, my apartment is not perfect. It's only one room, the fixtures are old, and the kitchen and bathroom weren't designed for use by full-grown humans. But it has a few good qualities as well.

So, there you go. My apartment is well-insulated and has a good radiator.

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Just an average night in New York City. Standing on the third floor of Barnes and Noble, when who should appear but Lauren Bacall?

Okay, so she was there for a book signing, and I was in a crowd waiting for her to show up. I was at the back of a long line, but I was also right by the escalator, so as soon as she appeared at the top of it, I was able to check her off my list of celebrities I should see before they're dead and mosey elsewhere. Moments later, hopefully out of Ms. Bacall's earshot, two men got into a knock-down fight on the same escalator. It was the second fight the instigator had tried to pick with members of the somewhat dense crowd, and apparently he met his match.

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I should have known. It turns out if you’re a sourpuss in one city, you”ll be a sourpuss in any city, even the one in which you always thought you wanted to live.

I’ll admit the problem lies completely within me. I don’t know how to make the best of things, and the worst of things is always amplified. When looking at my apartment, I don’t see the nice-looking wood floor, or the wonderful location in the heart of Manhattan. I see the shoddy kitchen cabinetry, the broken window latch, and the cramped bathroom.

When I think of my job, I don’t think of it as an okay way to pay the bills while I live out my dream in the offtime. I merely see it as less rewarding than my old job, and chalk it up as yet another reason I shouldn’t be here.

None of this is logical, of course, and it has a lot to do with the fact that the moving process, three weeks in, still is not complete. Ikea hasn’t yet scheduled the delivery of the rest of my furniture. I don’t have a monitor for my computer, and even if I did, my Internet won’t be connected until Saturday.

And that raises another question; if my happiness is so dependent on a cozy apartment and an Internet connection, why did I need to move to New York? I HAD a cozy apartment and an Internet connection.

I also had a savings account, family, and friends.

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Well, what’s changed in the last week? Still technically homeless. Still don’t know exactly when I get to move in to my apartment. Still not sure whether or not this move was a huge freakin’ mistake.

Actually, my knawing self-doubt is sort of waning. After all, what’s the worst that could come of this? Even if I only spend a year in New York, it’s an experience I’ll always remember, I’ll have network television on my resume, and I can get back on my feet in California a lot more easily than I settled in here.

Right now it’s simply impossible to judge how this might turn out for me. As transient as I am currently, I can’t imagine being ingrained in New York the way I was ingrained in Northern California. The first step in feeling like I belong will be moving into my apartment, of course. The second step will be feeling like my skills are being put to use. A few freelance contacts, the kind that wonder aloud what they would do without me, would go a long way toward making me feel like I’m “home.”

But who knows? In a year, I may have adapted so well that it will be tough for me to imagine returning to the land of freeways and short buildings and good weather.

It could go either way. Did I mention I hate uncertainty?

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I estimate that the apartment-hunting process has taken 3.7 years off my life. My hair is now entirely gray, and my worry lines have become so prominent they might as well be infused with neon.

Most New Yorkers subscribe to the wisdom that apartment brokers are evil, and I am now inclined to agree. Actually, some are pure evil, and others go with the hellacious flow, because it’s surely the only way to compete.

Here’s what I’ve been able to gather about the basic process: Landlords don’t deal directly with the public, because they can get a kickback from an apartment broker. So they send their listings to their preferred cadre of weasels. The broker then makes money by charging their clients hefty fees.

The other predominant characteristic of a broker is that they’re good at prodding you mercilessly to plunge into a deal, as if it’s the last ramshackle shoebox on Earth. When you’re fresh off a redeye and deprived of sleep, this sort of manipulation works extremely well.

Such is my story. I paid a king’s ransom to apply for a horrible apartment, and I’ve now changed my mind. Deal’s off; my money, a fond memory. Thirteen hours of sleep and a search of Craigslist later, I put in my application for a much better apartment. Broker number two, slightly less greasy, is due for another fat wad of Mark’s not-yet-earned cash.

And that’s the one problem I may run into with this apartment; it costs a little more, and the landlord, historically, has been hesitant to rent to people with brand new jobs. So we’ll see. Fingers crossed and all that.

It really shouldn’t be this hard.

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Well, here it is. In a little more than twenty-four hours, my plane will touch down at JFK, and I will disembark not as a wide-eyed vacationer, but a wide-eyed local resident. I’ll have to dust myself off, walk in double-time, and replace the slacked jaw and googly eyes with a cool stare that tells people, “yeah, I’m a New Yorker. You got a problem wit dat?”

I will confidently make my way to the cab stand outside the JetBlue terminal, somehow teach myself on the spot how to do that two-fingers-in-the-mouth obnoxious whistle, and brusquely order an oddly-named taxi driver to whisk me to the heart of Manhattan.

The only problem: I have no idea where he should drop me off. Yes, my friends, I am homeless. La da dee, la dee da.

I have already put the apartment-hunting wheels in motion, of course, but nothing will be crystallized until I’ve spent at least a day taking my heavy luggage for long walks around the Park, feeding the ducks and whispering sweet nothings into my Samsonite.

I know you’re worried about your old pal Mark, but worst-case-scenario, each day I fail to find the midget-sized efficiency of my dreams, I can plunk down my shiny credit card and stay in an overpriced hotel. If I tip the bellhop well, my room may in fact be bedbug-free.

But I can’t stay in hotels forever, and I am resolved to find an apartment within the week. It may end up being a magnificent steal, with marble countertops and doorwomen dressed like Deal or No Deal models. It may be a festering hovel with remnants of crime scene tape and soot-caked 1830s appliances. Either way, I’ll be relieved, because to me, there is no greater comfort than certainty.

Of course, if sleeping on a park bench becomes a certainty, then certainty will become my second-greatest comfort, slightly trailing a can of Sterno.

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