Out In The Great Wide Open
I think about Johnny Depp a lot these days.
No, it's not some adolescent crush. It's everything else.
In the last five years, my life has rapidly evolved into a fairly stable, even boring one. Where an average Tuesday night once found me hailing cabs in remote corners of Brooklyn as the sun rose over Manhattan (damn you, Smith Family!), I am now typically sitting on the couch with Abbi, eating sushi, watching Frontline, and checking Omniture (the "Web Analytics and Online Business Optimization Platform").
Make no mistake: I am ...
Learning To Fly, Part III
My brother, Christofer, willed me two things when he went off to college: a periodically empty house with an immediately unsuspicious mother (and, ergo, the license to throw frequent though reasonably-sized parties; there were no pizzas on the turntable at my house), and a handmade wooden lock box.
Chris built the simple, stained-pine rectangle in wood shop. It was roughly the size of a shoe box, had a single shelf, a simple brass closure, and a small Master lock. The mechanism was easily jimmied, and the box itself would likely have ...
MegaFest!
When it comes to inspired festivity, Chris and Megan Abad don't mess around.
Chris' thirtieth birthday celebration, AbadFest '08, put me in the hospital (well, kinda').
A casual afternoon football game at Chris and Meg's Hell's Kitchen apartment once turned to a wildly-competitive beer pong tournament in a heartbeat. They've even make presidential debates fun.
So it was with equal parts exhilaration and trepidation that I RSVP'd in the affirmative for Meg's big birthday bash, MegaFest.
And so it was that -- at the end of a ...
The Road Leads Back To You
In May of 1992, I drove my red Nissan Sentra from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to Telluride, Colorado.
I was a twenty-year-old child philosopher, whiling away the summer between my junior and senior year on highways and mountain tops of The Great American West in search of answers for love and life and everything else.
The Sentra's trunk was sparsely packed; a tent, sleeping bag, primitive Apple laptop, and two guitars: my brand-new Takamine, and my slightly-worn Ibanez.
My final stop was at my Aunt and Uncle's home in Englewood, ...
Andover, Vermont (Winter 2009)
February 16th, 2009
The Magic Mountain
What's the best part about riding an innertube down a mountain with a bunch of giggling eight-year-olds? Feeling twenty-nine years younger. Better yet? Momentarily forgetting those twenty-nine years altogether.
Truth is, I didn't have much business even considering spending the weekend in Vermont. My colleagues were crashing a half-hour Chris Brown and Rihanna special at the office. What's more, we're taping "Spoilers" Episode 2 (Watchmen, Star Trek, Transformers 2, Harry Potter) in Los Angeles next week, so I'm heading west first ...
I’m Just Thirsty
It was 2:44 p.m., just shy of an hour before USAir flight 1549 slid into the Hudson River a few blocks west of my office.
I was sitting at my desk, celebrating the few minutes I had between meetings by blowing email out of my inbox like Missile Command.
"Attached are the last eight days of metrics," I typed. "I've pasted highlights below."
Behind me to the east, the cold, winter light was fading over Midtown.
"Premium's fine with us," I wrote. "Seems to me to be dependent on Tech."
I was barely half-way through the day, and ...
Planned Parenthood
On the street, Edward refused to take my hand, issuing a long, withdrawn, "Nooooooooooo!" So I carried him.
On the subway platform, the roar of the trains scared him. So I held him, whispering, "I won't let anything happen to you, I promise."
Abbi and I took Ethan and Edward for a few, long hours this afternoon. Eighty blocks, four subways, three historic buildings, two carousel rides and one gift shop were more than enough. The boys were mostly adorable, to be sure. But the pressure was immense. Everything was a ...
Bray’s Island, South Carolina (Winter 2008)
December 31st, 2008
Low Country Christmas
Cashmere and wool were the first casualties of our arrival in Charleston.
The air was warm and wet. The sky wide and blue. Even with the wreaths that adorn the white picket gates of Bray's Island, I wasn't sure it was Christmas.
My memories of the season are whited-out and frozen-over, not laid low with mist. But who am I to complain? When Christmas morning came in at 67° and hazy, I lit out for a quick run around the ponds. The grass was wet with dew. The water was kissed with fog. Egrets and herons stirred from with each ...
