Shopping, saving, and scarfing

Last week I was at a beautiful house just north of the city for a commercial shoot. Apparently, this house is occupied by the owner/manager of the space, but the first two floors are used exclusively for film production.

The house was huge, and there was plenty of room to roam outside as well since it sits on 5 acres of land. Typically with film or commercial shoots, there is a lot of waiting around for the actors, so your quality of life can really depend a lot on the holding area - where you can spend your time. Waiting.

The holding area they gave us that day at Douglas House was beautiful. It was in an area configured to be a large, formal living room. The decor was colonial, so there were thick oriental carpets, comfortable overstuffed chairs, and even a fireplace. The bay window behind the sofa-that-was-perfect-for-a-nap looked out onto a bubbling brook.

This whole setup was luxurious compared to some of the holding areas that I have experienced. Especially the ones where you were just wishing for a little heat…

I ended up waiting about 5 hours after I arrived on location before I even got into makeup and wardrobe. Luckily, I have learned by this point to pack plenty of work to do, and activities to keep me busy. And the other actors on the shoot were mature, quiet, and involved in their own busy activities. It was truly the best the situation could have been. Oh right, I guess it could have been better if we were shooting in the city and I could have escaped to the subway and home as soon as I was done, but maybe next time.

As the svelte, well-dressed woman reached across me for the chocolate chip cookie with pecans she laughed sheepishly and said “it’s my dinner.” I hadn’t said a word, and just backed up to allow her full access to the three tiered cookie platter.

It was a late afternoon corporate industry networking event. After an hour and a half of panel discussions and presentations, the group of 50 adjourned to an adjoining room with an open bar, tables of food, and roaming appetizer servers offering up spring rolls, satay, and sushi.

The sheepish cookie eater was not the first woman I had encountered at the event who felt the need to apologize for eating. As I was standing at the sushi table, another svelte well-dressed woman looked longingly at the platters of fish, stood there ruminating for what seemed like a very long time, and finally picked up one small California roll. She looked at me, shrugged her shoulders and said (you guessed it) “this is my dinner.”

Why do these women feel the need to apologize for eating food in public? Or to explain that this tiny little morsel of food is their entire evening meal?

Right after the sushi eater made her selection a man pushed his way in to the platter and piled 8 pieces on his plate. Then he headed for the satay platter. No apology made. No apology expected.

Hmm, just thinking about those appetizers has my appetite going now — I’ll need to grab something and I’ll tell you straight out — it’s my 5th between meal snack today.

Elvis gave me a red carnation. That’s right, apparently he isn’t actually dead, and he decided to put on his white lycra rhinestone jumpsuit and hand out red carnations at Chelsea Market today. It was a nice little gift, and now is sitting in a bud vase on my work table.

I was in Chelsea Market for my usual post-audition pick-me-up. Today’s audition was a call-back for a television commercial. A call-back is usually a second, or third audition, means that you made it past the first cut, and they would like to see you again. Often, there are different people present at the call-back than were at the original audition. For commercial auditions, sometimes the actual client is at the call-back as was the case today.

My ‘performance’ at the audition went well as far as I was concerned, however the other three actors present for the audition were of a similar physical type and appearance, and I was the ‘odd duck.’ Since casting for commercial work is based heavily on appearance, this was somewhat worrying to me since it didn’t appear that I represented the main type they were looking for - but you never know.

To reward myself after the audition and celebrate today’s holiday, I decided to get some cupcakes at Eleni’s. I bought one chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, one red velvet with white buttercream and one vanilla cake/vanilla buttercream combo. I’m saving them for dessert after dinner tonight which has kept me going while churning through all of the data I’ve had to process this afternoon for my current consulting job. Something to look forward to!

Three somewhat startling things happened to me the other night almost all at once:

1. A teenager wearing an iPod whizzed by my left side on a bicycle so closely that I could feel the wind as he brushed by

2. An NYPD officer grabbed the boy and the bike and threw them against a glass storefront screaming “What are you doing? Get off the sidewalk!”

3. I turned and almost walked straight into Mikhail Baryshnikov

At the time I was walking up 8th Avenue near the Joyce. I had just glanced at the marquis on the theater and thought “wow, Trisha Brown’s retirement performance, I should have gotten tickets.” After all, I love it that someone who is 71 can still take the stage. Right after that, the bike whizzed by. I hadn’t even had time to think my irritated thoughts about people with iPods , or kids on bicycles and ‘why doesn’t anyone ever do anything about them?’ when the policeman had already caught him and done just that.

As I was still recovering, I turned left onto 18th St and found myself face to face with Baryshnikov, who was walking and talking with two other people. When I was younger, Baryshnikov was one of my idols. I would pretend that I was dancing Giselle (instead of Gelsey Kirkland) to his prince. It kept me going through a lot of grueling ballet study, so now when I do happen to spot him here or there, I can’t help but gawk a little bit.

Then I had to collect myself and keep going all the way down 18th St until I hit the West End Highway and the IAC, where I was going to do a presentation in front of a few hundred people at the NY Tech Meetup. The presentation went well, but if I had been a more superstitious person, I would have been freaked out by the ‘omens’ on the way there. Though it seems as if I kind of had one bad omen, and then one good omen — so maybe they evened themselves out?

So many things have changed in Tribeca over the last few years. For example, my former office building at 99 Church — referred to as ‘The Rock’ after it survived 9-11 unscathed despite being catty corner from the World Trade Center — is now being demolished to make way for yet another luxury office/residence/hotel combination. Depressing. And the cross streets down there (Duane, Reade, etc.) are now full of cute boutiques and nice restaurants. A far cry from the grimness that used to be there.

But something that hasn’t changed much in the last few years is Anbar, a shoe store at 60 Reade St between Church and Broadway. They offer a no frills discount shoe experience on two levels. The shoes are stacked on tall shelves in their own boxes, by style, and one ‘example’ shoe of each style hangs off the outside of the box. The selection of designers is decent. I saw Prada, Via Spiga, Valentino, Charles Jourdan on my last visit. I’m assuming these are last season, discontinued, and overrun styles, and the prices aren’t bad ($149 for a Prada loafer I saw in Otto Tootsi Plouhound last year for $379.

What I don’t like about Anbar is the hostile evironment. The grim looking crew sport t-shirts that say “TAKE THE BOX” on the back, alluding to the store policy that if you take a pair of shoes to try on from the shelves, you must bring the shoebox with you. Signs with this message, as well as other aggressive signs such as “SHOPLIFTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED” and “ALL PACKAGES AND EXTRA BAGS MUST BE CHECKED.” Immediately after entering, I feel as if I have been shouted at multiple times. And honestly, I would love to change one of those signs to read “SHOPPERS WILL BE PERSECUTED.”

I can only imagine that the training manual for their employees reads something like this “If a customer is shopping in the store, follow them from aisle to aisle and glare at them menacingly. Do not blink. If they ask for help, grunt unintelligibly at them, point haphazardly in a random direction, and continue to glare. If a customer picks up a shoe to look at it, and puts it back down, immediately grab that shoe from where they placed it, and throw it down forcefully in the same spot. This will remind them that you are there, watching their every move.”

It’s an awful shopping experience, and every time I go, I swear I will never go again. But sometimes when I get desperate while shoe shopping, I find myself back there (and hating it). They used to call themselves “Anbar Shoe Steal” but now their shingle reads “Anbar, Designer Shoes at a Discount.” Pretty ironic, considering that ’stealing’ seems to be on the top of their mind.

My laptop computer may be the object which I use the most in my daily life. Since I do not have a ‘permanent’ job, or the real office that comes with it, I use it for both personal and business tasks, and need to carry it with me quite a bit around the city.

For the last three years it has served me well. It is an Apple PowerBook G4 1.5 Ghz Aluminum, is reasonably lightweight (5 lbs), and the design still looks modern. Replacements haven’t been too bad:

• Battery twice, at no cost to me, through Apple’s battery recall program
• Power cord twice - my cat broke the original one during an overzealous play period, then the aftermarket one I purchased ($36) exploded — with a little bit of fire — and then stopped working very well so I had to buy a second aftermarket one ($53)
• Motherboard- one day, while using a graphics intensive program, I heard a zapping noise and everything went black. I replaced the main board through a flat rate repair ($300), sent out from The Apple Store.

Even though I still like this machine, at three years old it has entered its Laptop Golden Years. It doesn’t close tightly anymore, and a lot of the keys on the keyboard are so worn that you cannot see the letters. Then there are the inevitable technical obsoletion factors - a new version of the Mac Operating System was released in December 2007, and my laptop won’t run that system well unless I upgrade the RAM ($149).

Do I upgrade the RAM, buy the new OS ($129), and hope that the laptop lasts another 6 months to a year, or do I bite the bullet and buy a new machine now?

Benefits to a new machine:

• It would be faster and provide a better user experience than my current machine
• It would be nice to have a new machine
• I could install and run Windows on that machine, which would make it much easier for me to do my consulting work since I would be able to run a wider variety of applications
• I would be ’set’ with my computer equipment for at least another 3 years

Drawbacks to a new machine:

• Since they do not make a 13″ MacBook Pro (which is the updated version of my computer), I would need to buy a 15″ one. While this would probably be more ergonomically pleasing to use, it will not be as easy to carry around the city in a backpack as I do with my current machine.
• Because of my recent tax woes, it gives me anxiety to think of spending $2000-2500 on anything right now

I’m on the fence with this decision. My personal philosophy is to spend my money on things which I 1) use frequently 2) make my life easier and 3) that I really really love. The computer meets all of this criteria, but the hefty price point is making me stop. There is another thing - I try to use earth’s resources efficiently, and there is something about not wanting to get rid of my current computer if it is still working — at least well enough for my needs at the moment.

I was running errands in Soho the other day, and decided to take the ‘long way’ around and window shop my way up Broadway. Suddenly, there it was - Muji! I believe this is Muji’s first store in the U.S. They are a Japanese company, and specialize in minimalist design and what I would call personal organization — items such as notebooks, card holders, organization boxes, and things like that. They also have housewares and clothing. I’ve been a fan of theirs since I discovered them in Asia a few years ago. Until now I’ve had to satisfy my Muji shopping cravings with the occasional visit while in Europe or Asia. They opened this store in Soho in November, 2007.

The Soho store is nice, of a decent size, and has a very friendly sales staff. This time I purchased only one item - a small plastic box which they are selling as a ‘makeup organizer’, but which turned out to be the perfect container for the scattered business and loyalty cards I had in my junk drawer. At $3.75, I couldn’t go too far wrong. I’ll be back for more though as several things caught my eye on this trip. Plus, the way my mind works, I can spend hours mulling over finding the perfect item to make me even more organized than I am.

Muji Soho - 455 Broadway, New York, NY 212.334.2002 www.muji.com

I don’t normally go to Flushing, Queens, but I found myself there this week to do some research at a Chinese library there. The hour long subway ride took me from my home in Brooklyn, to the end of the 7 train line, where on Main Street I emerged in the middle of the largest Chinese population east of the Rocky Mountains. That’s right, Flushing is a bigger “Chinatown” than the Chinatown in Manhattan.

Having been to Flushing previously, and being a fan of Chinese food, I added time for lunch to my trip. I’m always up for dim sum, and an acting workshop classmate who has lived in Flushing for 11 years recommended Gala Manor.

Gala Manor is right on Main Street, a short two block walk from the 7 train stop. It is one of those big banquet-sized restaurants with many large round tables. These places are, in fact, used for Chinese wedding and other banquets. During dim sum, you are often sharing one of these large tables with one to four other parties.

On a weekday at 2pm the atmosphere was much more subdued than it is during dim sum hours on the weekend. There were plenty of empty tables, and I was seated at my own large table. I was surprised that the staff spoke to me only in Chinese (Mandarin), since most Chinese people don’t usually assume that I am Chinese, or at least not 100%. I can understand Mandarin fairly well, but speak it haltingly, and still they persisted in using only Chinese. I found that interesting.

The downside of going to dim sum by yourself is that you can’t choose a variety of dishes. Based on my appetite, I selected two dishes. I chose siu mai (steamed pork dumplings) and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf. With that, I got a pot of tea of my choice, and once the dim sum cart staff realized they weren’t going to be able to sell me any more items, I got peace and calm. I sat there and took my time with my dishes and my tea and had a very relaxing lunch. When the bill came, it was $5.56.

Gala Manor’s dim sum was good — I tried only two dishes, and I was there at the end of the day on a weekday, so I am going to have to go back and try it during a busier time to get a better idea of its quality against my New York favorites Pings and Golden Unicorn.

Gala Manor, 37-02 Main Street (at 37th Ave), Flushing, NY (718) 888-9232

Happy New Year everyone, and hope you all had a great holiday. Starting a fresh new year can be so inspiring - wiping the slate clean, resolving to do better, and be better. Something that always comes up for me at this time of year is resolving to do better with my body work for fitness, health, and performance reasons. It has never been more important for me than this year, while I am still doing my slow and steady recovery after hip surgery.

After the surgery, I spent a lot of time in the gym since I was limited to riding a stationary bike or the ellipitical trainer. During this time, my $92 monthly gym membership seemed like a bargain. I would go approximately 5-6 times per week, which averaged the cost of my visits to less than $5 per visit.

Now I am back to unrestricted activity, and want to add yoga and dance classes back to the mix. Dance classes cost about $15-20 on the average, depending on whether or not you buy a class card (multiple classes to be used within a set time period, for a cheaper per class cost). I also like taking flamenco, and these classes are more costly — averaging about $20 per class. Yoga classes in a yoga studio are about the same as dance classes $15-20.

It’s tough because now that I am taking more yoga and dance classes, it leaves me less time - and I am less willing to go to the gym. There are yoga classes offered there, but I generally prefer the ones I can take in a yoga studio. Sometimes I get into the mindset of going to the gym more often to ’save’ money since I am paying for the membership anyway and spending time there is ‘free.’ But overall, I think this works against my goals to not spend my precious time doing the absolute best thing that I can think of to do with my time and energy. I mean, if I really like dance and yoga classes in the studio better, that is what I should be doing.

I go back and forth between wanting to cancel my gym membership and then spend the money I save monthly on more dance and yoga. But at $92, that only buys me about 5 dance or yoga classes, and 4 flamenco classes. But if I keep my gym membership, I risk cheating myself out of the classes I prefer, in order to ’save’ money. I haven’t made a decision about this yet, because I see the advantage of both sides. Staying fit can certainly be a challenge on a limited budget.

I wanted the organic, free-range wild turkey to cook for Christmas dinner, I really did. But the price per pound at our local organic supermarket was $3.79. Since the smallest one they had was 15 pounds, I had to find another option. On my budget, almost $60 for a turkey just seemed too out of line.

Instead I went to the local regular supermarket and picked up a turkey for $1.39/pound. I was able to get a 12 pounder for about $16. The label promised that it was raised ‘naturally with no antibiotics.’ Do I think that the organic free range turkey would have been better for my health? Probably, but I just couldn’t justify the expense.

It got me to thinking about people who are on an even lower budget than I am, and the food choices they have. Many moons ago when I worked as a grocery store checkout clerk in a somewhat depressed area, I used to see the choices that people made when they used food stamps. Mostly, they would use their stamps to buy large quantities of cheap starches from generic brands, packaged in large quantities. Usually their grocery orders contained many processed foods, but few fresh fruits and vegetables.

Some people would use their food stamps to buy food for their kids, but would cash their paychecks to buy cigarettes and alcohol. I know its all a matter of personal choice, but it was disturbing anyway. I think that one of my New Year’s resolutions this year will be to find out more about the hunger and nutrition issues in this country, and think about ways that I can help.