But Call Me Betsy

Tomorrow will be our two week anniversary in this new apartment in Princeton proper. I feel weirdly self-conscious now when people ask me where I live, as if I'm bragging or being snotty. I have an impulse to apologize and add, "But we don't own there. We could never afford to buy in Princeton unless we lived in a shack." From now on, I will practice not saying sorry for living in a town I love. Our new apartment is beautiful, closer to the shops and restaurants and the library than anything we tried to buy, and it's only a $150 more per month than the condo in Princeton (or $75 each, as we split pretty much everything down the middle). And, I just changed over my car insurance to my new zip and it's $10 cheaper. Oh, and the cleaning ladies are charging us $15 less per month to clean the place, so that's another $17.50 less for me ($10 plus half of $7.50, if you're following), plus I use less gas going to and fro, and so when you get down to it, it...

Once a month, the Plainsboro Library has a book sale. On the days they don't have a book sale, they still have some crappy novels out on this one table (stuff like every Danielle Steele and Maeve Binchy novel ever written and other bodice rippers). But I happened to be out and about on Saturday, and so popped in and discovered that they have a basement where the books are stored, and it's around eight full shelves of books in all categories, and the books are in good shape, and written by authors with some literary merit. And they are cheaper than the one at the Princeton Library. I bought 9 books for $6.50. Here is photographic evidence. Some of the books are gifts, and some are for the beach. The full list is: Mystic River, Ooku (for Luke--this is a kid's anime book), Candace Bushnells's Lipstick Jungle (trash for the beach), Civilwarland in Bad Decline (short stories by  George Saunders for Adam at work), Walter Mosley's A Little Yellow Dog (my favorite titl...

I figured out why New Jersey drivers are on the whole so jerky and aggressive--it's because it sucks to drive in New Jersey. Everyone is impatient to get to wherever they're going, just to be able to get out of their cars and finished with the never not frustrating experience of  three lanes of traffic with cars going at various speeds from 45 to 75 miles and hour. Even when you're not on Route 1, driving is annoying.  On Scudder's Mill Road, it is pretty much impossible to go for longer than thirty seconds before hitting a red light.  So, the last three miles of my commute home can take ten minutes.  The worst is when you get stopped at any of the nonsense lights like the one at Bristol Meyers Squibb where two cars are waiting or the one at the Marriott Complex where again two cars are waiting. I did this thing yesterday where I attempted to take a new way home by getting off of at the Meadow Road exit that runs behind Market Fair. However, whatever I was suppos...

It dawned on me the other day that I live in New Jersey. You think this would be obvious, but for the last few months, I've been  thinking of it like an extended stay--like how, in high school, I went to Einbeck, Germany for two months. In fact, it's a lot like moving to Germany--everyone talks with an accent, seems somewhat indifferent to hardships (like driving) and takes it for granted that there will be breweries/strip malls to your left at all times. But I've done this before--started over from scratch in another city--a bunch of other times as a kid, and three other times as an adult. When I was twenty-three-ish, I moved to Chicago, where I knew exactly one person who was moving away at the end of the summer. I transferred from a TGIFridays in Dunedin to a  TGIFridays on Erie Street, and instead of leaving when I was supposed to at the end of August, I found a roommate in The Reader and stayed for five years. After that, I applied to grad school and moved to a ...

I want someone to design a way for you to tell the person behind you that her headlights aren't on. I almost ran into a snowbank yesterday, gesturing frantically to the woman in a tiny VW bug who was passing me on the right, to get her to see that she needed to turn on her lights. Couldn't there be a switch for your back window that you could throw on, and it would just read, It's getting dark. Turn on your headlights? I guess it's more symptomatic of my worry  and control issues--wanting to make sure everyone is okay and following the rules. I can't imagine what it would be like if I were in law enforcement. I'd be constantly irritated by people breaking the law and then lying about it (this is what happens on Cops all the time. The guilty parties even know they've been filmed, and they still deny whatever it is that was also just caught on camera. And then, when the cop pulls the crack pipe out from behind the guy's ear, he'll go, "Where ...

That's the name of the governor's house in New Jersey, currently the home of Chris Christie. Similar to my distrust of people who have two first names instead of a first and last name--see "Juan Pablo"--I'm a little unsure about people whose last name seems to be an extension of their first name. Rob Robertson, Lee Leighly, Sam Sammerton, Kris Kristoferson, and Chris Christie. I won't weigh in on the whole BridgeWaterGate scandal because (1). I don't know enough about it to offer an informed opinion; (2). I'm a little biased because I still like that Christie hugged Obama after Hurricane Sandy even though I'm certain it was a calculated show of warmth because of his desire to run for president in 2016; and (3). I live in New Jersey now and I don't want him to come after me. But I do find it interesting that when I go into work in the mornings if I drive down Route 206 (which I have been doing most mornings after deciding that my peace of mi...

Dan and I have been looking at apartments together around the Princeton area--mostly condos, and they're pretty much all the same. The only variable seems to be whether or not they have a basement. Otherwise, they have the same general kitchen, same tiny porch, same recessed lighting that I don't like all that much, same modern fireplace that's supposed to give it an air of sophistication, and same overpriced rent. For what we will be paying to live within a five minute drive to Princeton in a condo association, we could get an amazing row home with window boxes and a stone dog out front in Rittenhouse. But that's the way it is, so let's just accept it and be happy that most of the condos also have his and hers closets, both of which I need. Last week, we looked at a home in Princeton for a not unreasonable price (under $2,000), and I knew as soon as we walked in that it was a no. I loved the house itself--it was an old home with wainscoting and glass doorknobs an...

But I'm stuck in Jersey for a little while longer, in this coffee/ice cream/bakery shop in a strip mall; a place that plays non-stop fifties music just this side of too loud. It's okay though, because it's closer to Dan's yoga studio, and I got my 750 words done this morning. Am suddenly working on this story about an introvert named Hazel. Isn't that a great, under-used for good reason name? Anyway, it's strange how you can start writing about something and then, if your write like me and just want to get words on a page, you find that there are other pieces to the story that you didn't plan out. Like, for instance, I started with Hazel having this unrequited crush on an attractive guy from work, and she's a little strange, so instead of trying to talk to him, she follows him home to find out where he lives. The next day, she calls out sick and goes back to his house and rings the bell. An old man answers (her crush's grandpa). She pretends she need...

Before we get to the Springsteen concert, please examine the latest South Philly windows. Here is one jam-packed with Halloween spirit and joy. These decorations stretched almost to the end of the block and around the corner. Just thought this was interesting. The flowers in the vase that woman is clutching are real. Those in the flower box in the foreground are not. Ghosty -ghost. Okay, and here is an example of pretty much every picture I took at the concert on Saturday, held in the soon-to-be-a-parking-lot Giants stadium in Jersey. You'll notice that two out of the three heads in the photo have baseball caps. I would say the majority of the audience were white boys. We saw maybe three black people out of 900,000, even though the E. Street Band is almost half African-American. I guess Bruce's music is for a certain type of listener. You should've seen the flag head bandannas and heard the crowd singing, "Born in the U.S.A." at the top of their masculine lungs. ...