This Is What Exhaustion Looks Like

Here's Nate, after a night of playing at Brandy's on the Upper East Side, an awesome gig that is slowly making him nocturnal. Sometimes he doesn't get home until 6 or 7 AM. This photo was taken this morning at about 8. It's really typical of what I see through his doorway after a Brandy's night--exhaustion so complete that he doesn't even care he's hanging off the bed.

Back In The Swing

School started again on Wednesday and it's pretty clear that this semester is going to be a pretty intense time. It's great to see everyone and hang out in the newsroom again--it really feels like home. I'm still interning a couple days a week and I will be working on a couple other projects unrelated to school over the next few months as well. So I will blog intermittently, but it's gonna be a busy few months. By the way, here's a photo of Hearst Tower, for those who don't know it. This is where I've been working (on the 34th floor) since the end of May.

Things That Make You Go Hmm

This guy sat across from me from 14th Street to Church Ave in Brooklyn, a Q-tip sticking out of his ear the entire way. Toward the end of the trip, he rummaged through his bag, shook a couple pills out of a few different bottles, and gulped them all at once with a swig of water. I have come to no conclusions about this guy other than he must have had quite a headache.

Reporting in the Bronx

Erin: i am going to be in the bronx all day tomorrow, from 4 to like 9

Me: oh my god, what? are you serious?

Erin: kill me!

Erin: oh wait I'm a young, white girl in the Bronx - someone else will probably take care of that.

Mitch and Kathy Come to Visit

So my brother Mitch and his girlfriend Kathy came to visit me for the weekend. I was thrilled to see them, and thrilled for an excuse to have some fun.

Here are some of the things we did:

• walked through Central Park
• went to the Museum of Natural History to see the butterflies and the H2O exhibit
• had lunch in the Upper West Side
• went to Union Square, where a hungry squirrel ate peanuts out of Mitchell's hand
• toured my school
• went to the Build-A-Bear store on 5th where Mitch and Kathy added two to their collection
• took a pedi-cab ride down 5th
• ate BBQ in Times Square
• went to see Horton Hears a Who at the AMC on 42nd Street
• on Sunday, spent the morning at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, where we bought cactuses

Looking at some of the awesome plants at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

A Random Synopsis of the Last Few Weeks

I've been super busy lately and therefore I am not maintaining my personal blog (i.e. this one) nearly as often as I'd like. Here are a few updates in bullet-point fashion if any of my loyal readership is at all interested:

• I covered Super Tuesday by speaking with like, 30 Obama supporters, when all I needed was ONE Hillary supporter. (Read story here.)
  
• Last Saturday I went to New Jersey to spend the afternoon with my Gram. That was good. Sometimes it feels really good to get out of the city. Though the suburbs do scare me. A lot.
• Mitch moved into a new apartment over the weekend and out of the rathole he got stuck with after the fire. Thank goodness.
• My internship at ABC rocks. And I can't say anything more about it or Disney will sue the pants off me.
• I registered a Web site. . . . Soon, you'll be able to check out this blog, and everything else on earth I have any control over, on www.kathrynlurie.com. But not yet. I have to make it first. Funny how that works.
• Leonard Nimoy was at school on Thursday to observe the Journalistic Judgment class, which I am not in. I did see him wandering around the school a bit afterward though. He's one of the founding benefactors of my school. Which makes him super cool in my book.
• Just in time for the Oscars next weekend, I have finally completed the viewing of the last of the films that are nominated for Best Picture (a personal tradition going back years and years). I will write my own little one-line predictions in another post.
• I have been pretty ill all weekend and I'm currently trying to will myself into writing my Craft piece for tomorrow. I can't exactly talk because my throat is raw from this crazy severe coughing and near-retching for the past 48 hours. Fun times.

Swiss Invasion

My Swiss friends Mario and Martin came to New York to celebrate the beginning of the new year. When they weren't busy shopping (and oh how they shopped), here are some of the things we did..

We spent New Year's Eve on the Brooklyn Bridge with champagne.

The Swiss guys ate like Americans..

Cecilli and Mario had a very intense arm wrestling session.

The guys' first NYC cab ride.

On Fifth--heading toward the Apple store--AGAIN.

Went to see the tree at Rockefeller Plaza, of course..

And we spent some time in Central Park.

YES!

I just got offered the internship at ABC News. As a few of you know, I have been keeping my fingers crossed for this for weeks. Sweeeeeeet.

These Papers and Their Web Sites

Here's the latest article I wrote for Chelsea Now, if anyone's interested.

Who knew there could be a Web site worse than Metroland's?

J-School Holiday Party

Steve, Dana, Ari, AbiTyler, Carl, Erin, FritzieFritzie throwing a hissy fit as we dragged her to Queens.

Kate's NYC Weekend

I am a little late in blogging this, but Kate came to visit for the weekend of Nov. 16, and we packed the two days full of stuff. Here, proof in pics.

She's going to kill me for posting two pics of her eating, but that's ok. We went to a Malaysian restaurant for dinner in Chinatown. . .

We ate at the nothing-but-peanut-butter-sandwiches restaurant in the West Village for lunch--Kate had the Elvis, of course--a sandwich that consisted of peanut butter, bananas, honey, and bacon. Mmmmm. . .

We went to the Museum of Natural History to check out the always-amazing butterfly exhibit. . .

Kate buys a souvenir for Matt from the museum gift shop. . .

And we saw a jovial Bob Saget in Times Square in front of the Drowsy Chaperone (in which he's starring right now) theater, supporting the striking stagehands.

A good was time had by all. :-)

The New Faces of J-School, Oh Yeah!

An ad in the New York Post yesterday.

This Guy is a Genius

There is no better way to get me to donate a WHOLE DOLLAR than by having a kitten as your mascot. It helped that when I bent to pet her, she climbed into my lap and purred. SO sweet.

The Apartment

Sorry it took me so long to get photos up. Here are some views of our place. . . Click on them for a closer look.

Studio:

Bathroom:

Nate's Room:

Guest Room:

Hallway Leading to (clockwise from bottom left) Linen Closet, Bathroom, Studio, Nate's Room, and Guest Room: Living Room looking toward the hallway to the front door:

Living Room looking toward the back of the apartment (and brick wall out the window):

Front Hallway looking toward door:

Kitchen:My Room:

Shmutzy

This made me giggle.

Today's Assignment

Abi, Erin and I are about to walk the half-block to Port Authority to profile it for our afternoon drill. Upon hearing about our assignment, Dana says, "Ew.. You guys have to go inhale dried piss??"

Port Authority, here we come.

Our Humble Abode

Nate's selling a keyboard on Craigslist and a girl came to look at it this evening. She was pleasant and took her time playing the keyboard in the foyer while Nate and I chatted in the kitchen. She talked to Nate for a minute about the instrument and then proceeded to gush about our apartment. Among other things, she said, "I've never seen an apartment this put together in New York." We thought that was cute, and it made us feel even more proud of our very cool apartment.

City Livin' 2

I just figured it out. The kids are rollerskating up there. I am so serious. Rollerskating! Or rollerblading, whatever it is they do these days. You've GOT to be kidding me.

City Livin'

A very nice family moved into the apartment directly above us about three weeks ago. Until then the apartment had been blissfully empty, and we enjoyed the uninterrupted silence for a good month and a half. The new family has three very cute, very bouncy children. They bounce a lot. Like, all evening long sometimes. And apparently the family rearranges their furniture almost every evening as well. At least, that's what it sounds like. All of a sudden something will roll from one side of my ceiling to the other. I don't know quite what to do about it. All I know is that I'm on deadline. And they're moving furniture. Again.

Post-script: By the way--though really annoying, mostly because I have to write right now--this isn't as bad as it was in my bedroom in Albany. I'm sure some of you remember me telling you about the morning when the guy who lived upstairs from me there threw a chair through the window, which was located directly above my bed, at about 4:30 AM. That was fun.

Week in Review

The week, in highlights:

--Wednesday, I went on a ride-along with a couple of NYPD cops to check out what they do every day (hence the bulletproof vest a couple posts down). I went to Precinct 107, which is in Queens, where apparently they don't have cabs. I had a mile-and-a-half walk (run) from the subway stop. Other then that, it was fun--I got paired with a couple of young cops who were very sweet and chatted openly about the force and about public perception of policepeeps. Very informational.
--Wednesday night I attended Stephen Colbert's reading/signing of his book, I Am America (and So Can You) at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. The guy is good.
--Yesterday, I attended a study session for the Legal & Ethics midterm that's looming in my immediate future. AKA Monday. I am, in a word, terrified. Also Monday: Research Methods midterm. Here's hoping I survive the day.
--This morning in Interactive, we made our first audio slideshows public, and got our first video assignments. We made mini-docs about making PB sandwiches as practice. I have to say--so far, video is seeming like a lot more fun than straight audio. We'll see.