Moving On Up

I should finish my packing. Instead I'm fooling around online. I was just thinking about the things I will and will not miss about my Lower East Side apartment. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to write about what neighborhood I am moving to, not that anyone really cares. Meanwhile, I'm in the listing mood so here it goes:

Things I will miss:

1. The guys who work at the front desk. Especially you Daniel! Your smiling face has been a great way to start my day for the past year!


2. The gym. I hope I can still force myself to go to the gym when it isn't in my building!


3. My stainless steel stove;


4. Dry cleaning in the building;


5. My local wine store, September Wines. Somehow I think they'll miss me too...or at least my credit card;


6. The statue of Vladimir Lenin on top of the Red Square building. I can see him from my bed so I wake up to him with his right arm in the air every single morning. See it here.


7. Inoteca

Things I will not miss:

1. The girls who scream, "Where's my boyfriend!?" at 4 a.m. while leaving the Lower East Side bars on any given day;


2. The symphony of honking on Houston Street that forces me to sleep with earplugs;


3. The fresh vomit that I sometimes step over while leaving for the Early Show at 4:30 a.m. on any given day;


4. The music that my neighbors blast in the middle of the day. Look, I love Duran Duran too but enough is enough!


5. The loud obnoxious sounds my neighbors make when they are enjoying one another's company in the middle of the day;


6. The smell of pickles from Katz Deli that I am forced to inhale when walking home every day;


7. The people who do not clean the lint filters in the laundry room because they think they are too good to clear out their own dead skin cells from shared appliances;


8. The fact that there is not a close enough Starbucks;


9. The mural of Kiss on the brick wall on the bar across from my apartment.

See, the bad outweigh the good. It was time to move on.

Happy Anniversary, New York

This week marked the 1 year anniversary of my move to New York from San Francisco. I am moving into a new apartment at the end of the week so I spent my Saturday packing boxes and trying to watch everything on my DVR before I send it back to Verizon. While I packed, I couldn't help revisit this last year in my head and I'll admit that it made me wax just a little nostalgic.

I learned a lot about myself in this apartment. I faced a very big city with nothing more than a few (thousand) online friends and a great job and it didn't kill me. There were many times when I thought it would.

It took me a long time to be able to say this but I think I'm finally ready: I'm so glad I came here! It actually seems to have been the right thing. Funny how life makes you step to the edge of what you think you can handle before you realize that you may just be heading in the right direction.

It is so great to communicate with all of you who read my blog, Facebook page, and Twitters but at the end of the day, it is still just me and a glass of wine in this small studio apartment. It has been scary. I hit many speed bumps and made some decisions that I wish I had approached differently. But if I am feeling sad or alone, I always know that I can reach out online and find someone somewhere who is willing to be supportive in one way or another. If you are reading this, you are one of those people. So thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Who knew that something with such a stupid name as Twitter could be so sustaining?

Now back to my packing. To add some levity to this post, here is a working list of things I cannot for the life of me remember why I packed from San Francisco to New York. These things will not be moving into my new apartment:

1. A burka I bought in Dubai. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why I bought it in the first place. A friend pointed out that I might want to keep it in case we lose the war on terror. I think I'll chance it. It goes.


2. The first season of Nip/Tuck. I used to watch this terrible show. I'm embarrassed to admit that.


3. A Rachael Ray cookbook. It was a gift from an ex-boyfriend, four boyfriends removed.


4. Stretch mark cream. I swear I didn't buy this. It was in a gift bag at a sample sale I went to 2 years ago.


5. A three-ring binder punch. I don't see myself needing a three-ring binder any time soon.

I'm sure there will be more.

My Festivus Grievances

So what if Festivus is a silly cultish joke? I'm trying to be an equal opportunity holiday celebrant. My apologies for not wishing you a Happy Hanukkah sooner.

I will not get to spend time with my family this season. I regret that but my family doesn't make a big to-do about the holidays so I'm not missing much other than watching really bad comedies with my mom (like the travesty that was Boat Trip), making Ranger cookies for my brother-in-law, and gossiping with my sister about our crazy relatives.

Despite missing out on those beloved festivities, I am still feeling the holiday spirit. New York is beautiful (although soooooooo insanely cold) this time of year. It is my first Christmas in a proper winter. Plus, I'm excited for 2009 and heading to Las Vegas for CES in just a few weeks. Thank you to everyone who wrote me with encouraging words about 2008. In my last blog post, I mentioned that 2008 was hard. I moved away from my family and friends and had a rough time adjusting to New York. But as I look back, I have very few regrets. I'm glad I came here and I'm glad it was hard. Hard doesn't mean bad. It just means hard. I quote General David Petraeus on this one: "Hard is not hopeless."

Okay, enough optimism. It is Festivus after all. So here is my 2008 airing of grievances. I may add to this throughout the day. Feel free to add yours in the comment section.

• There is no native landscape keyboard, video capture, or MMS for my iPhone;


• There is no Mac version of Chrome;


• The person who found my iPhone in a cab and never returned it is hereby cursed to bad technology karma for the rest of his/her days;


• MobileMe never really does exactly what I want it to;


• Any and all browsers on my Curve behave like an absolute puta;


• The BlackBerry Storm was a big fat letdown;


• Nokia phones are too darn expensive;


• HP's press representative won't let me keep this Vivienne Tam netbook for one second longer than I need it for my TV segments;


• Every single pair of headphones or earbuds that come into my possession break within a fortnight - even the high-end ones;


• I never have a jump drive on my person when I need one but have about a dozen when I don't;


• Google's speech recognition search engine still can't understand me;


• Loaded takes so darn long to encode and upload to CNET TV;


• The Teleprompter software we use on the Loaded set was developed by demons;


• Growl likes to freeze my OS;


• Microsoft Entourage, I hate you more than I've ever hated anything in my entire life. You make my life miserable every single day. Whoever developed you, wrote the program as a big fat "Screw you!" to Mac users. Message communicated. Screw you too!


• New: Cab drivers who lecture me about paying with credit card.

Yes, they are all mostly tech related. I don't usually carry grievances for people. Except maybe for those responsible for the dismal performance of the San Francisco Giants this year! They know who they are!

Blooper Reel Time

Every year CNET TV publishes blooper reels of all of our on-air personalities. While I am certainly not opposed to airing my foibles, as evidenced here and here, I am a little reluctant. I am always so afraid of being inappropriate but more often that not, I err on the side of authenticity. For better or for worse.

The CNET TV blooper reels started rolling in last week. First came Tom Merritt's, then Molly Wood's, Brian Cooley's, and finally Brian Tong's. I was afraid to see mine. You should be too. There is some really bad singing going down here. See for yourself:



While I am laid bare, I might as well admit that this blooper reel came at a time when I really needed to smile. I have made no secret of the fact that this has been a rough year. That is why I am grateful for this uncensored look at myself where I realize how much fun I've had this year. So what if I spent my Saturday night reading, doing my taxes, and watching You've Got Mail on Oxygen? That is probably how I'll spend my Christmas given that I have to work on the Early Show and therefore won't be going home to San Francisco for the holidays. I will ask Santa for a more social life in 2009. That and maybe a hairdresser in New York. My hair is really quite ridiculous.

I Loathe Celebrity Gossip

Please allow me to point out this excerpt from today's episode of Loaded:



I really loathe the celebrity gossip culture. I read an article recently that suggested that celebrity obsession was a healthy outlet for most people. I can't find the link at the moment but no matter because I disagree with the article. Celebrity obsession is not good for most people. It distracts us from real issues. Al Gore said it best in his book The Assault On Reason:

"At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess—an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.

While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness. For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that the choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake. Yet, incredibly, all of the evidence and arguments necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious."

I hate to lose faith in our society just because we are searching for Britney Spears but it is hard not to. Thus the rant. I'm sorry to be negative. It is not my usual M.O. but sometimes belligerence is necessary.

Oh, and Happy Holidays!