Life in NJ

After Christmas, I spent the week alternately hanging out with my old friends from high school, and spending some QT with my mom. One of the days, I went up to Manhattan with my friends Janet and Laura (she looks awfully bad-ass here) to visit our friend Zeynep who lives and works up there. It was the first time I'd been to Manhattan during the holidays in many years, and it was fun to see all the decorations, and hustle and bustle that is New York. We stayed pretty close to Penn Station -- grabbed some cuban food for lunch, did a little shopping at H&M (YAY!) and spent over an hour looking for a coffee shop that wasn't Starbucks. Apparently, either 1) Starbucks has completely flooded the coffee market, 2) NY entrepreneurs haven't caught on to the whole independent coffee shop/wireless internet/hang out scene or 3) we didn't really know where to look for said scene. After several failed attempts due to my insistence on having a mocha latte (its not that I'm a coffee snob, more of a coffee wuss so I need all that extra stuff), we ended up having coffee in the back of an Italian restaurant somewhere around 7th and 38th. Or was it 5th and 40th?

Back in NJ, there was just enough time to grab a bacon cheeseburger at what is perhaps my favorite eating establishment in the world, Hoagie Haven in Princeton. This is a total hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, but the sandwiches, burgers, gyros, cheesesteaks that are churned out by these folks are unbelievable. And its always packed, day or night. You'd better be ready with your order, as the guys on the griddle move at lightning speed and expect no hold-up from you. The meal I can never pass up: bacon cheeseburger, lettuce, tomato, black pepper and a little mayo -- $3.30 and made to order thank you very much. Inhaled outside on a bench, washed down with a Stewart's Root Beer... oh, the memories of high school drunken binge eating... there really is nothing better. I had the pleasure of TWO visits to this establishment on this vacation. Bonus!

We all got together again over the weekend in New Hope, PA, a little artsy town where ue sometimes used to spend the afternoon when cutting school (it was far enough away that we were sure we wouldn't get caught by the stray teacher out to lunch or something). Its still artsy and cute, and our friends Sara and Shanna, and their husbands and children joined us. Such a nice reunion!

For New Years, we ended up (rather last minute, decision made at 11PM) in downtown Philly at a party at this gallery/loft apt. At midnight, we all climbed up this terrifying ladder onto the roof to watch the fireworks. It was so cool to have a 360-degree view of the city -- there were several different fireworks displays going on all around. It started raining shortly after midnight, but it was a really cool 10 minutes up there on the roof, at the turn of the year. A cool sense of perspective, both on the city and on life, I guess.

I have to say, as good as it was to see a lot of friends and family back in NJ, being there, in many parts of it at least, made me realize that I don't feel at home in NJ anymore. Such a strange thing to feel about the place where you grew up. I think when I was living there, near Princeton, I didn't realize how different that little pocket is from the rest of NJ. All of a sudden, I understood the looks people give me when I say I'm from NJ and they say, "You don't sound like you're from NJ!" "You don't look like you're from NJ!" I used to think they were just making a stereotype based on the Sopranos and similar portrayals... but now I realize, actually the Sopranos is EXACTLY like the majority of NJ! The people, the clothes, the hair, the butcher shops, the accents... (eg: "the fuck ya tawkin about?!" and I got a lot of "how ya dooin?"s and "dohn wurry abaht it"s and even a "so I says ta him I says...") Anyway, its weird to feel like I don't belong. Maybe I've just gotten used to a more urban lifestyle, with a more heterogenous mix of people. I also never realized what a "small town" feeling there was where I grew up. This has its good and bad points, of course, but mostly I was just struck by how different life was there than my life here in ATL. OK, I'm really rambling now so perhaps I should actually do some work today... back later with more news, though!