The Daily Tannenbaum

I was only in California for four days, but my job gives me two (or maybe three now?) weeks of vacation. I’m not certain, because we’re a small company, and our HR department is a desk calendar next to the fax machine where the employees note their days off.

I decided it would be a good idea to take off some extra days upon my return to the east coast to do some spring cleaning and gardening. I’m going back to work on Friday so that I don’t have to deal with a week’s worth of missing stuff on a busy Monday.

But today, I’m free to do what I want, any old time.

Between cleaning, gardening, exploring the Hudson Valley, or just sitting around drinking wine from Sonoma, I can’t decide what to do. Sitting on the computer going through the 500 blog posts in my reader sounds like fun in theory, but I’m pretty sure if I go to every blog in a row, you’re all going to get the same comment. “Sounds great! Sorry I missed it!” Works for most stories, unless someone happened to write about the death of his or her grandmother or getting laid off or something.

I just got up to blow my nose, because while I was away, my cat took the liberty of leaving her hair and dander on every corner of the cottage in protest of my absence. Now I’m having a major allergy attack. It would seem that my choice has been made for me: I need to clean. But getting up from the chair made me feel dizzy, so I’m just going to go back to bed, lying on my hands to keep them from itching my eyes.

Nine times out of ten, when I have to make a choice, I choose “nap.”

UPDATE: I took the nap.  It was glorious.  I promised myself that if I clean out my closet, I’ll get to take Nap: Part II, and if I finish weeding under the lilac bush, I’ll get to take Nap: the Revenge.

I’m flying back to the East in the morning, and this lovely airport Holiday Inn Express has an internet connection, so what could be a more exciting thing than vacation photos?  I kind of forgot all about the internet while I was gone, so for those of you who saw my Tweet that said, “I’m sick of my parents” and then nothing else for a day, you should know that I sent that in a moment of crankiness, but after that, everything was fine.

It feels like we were gone for a week, but it’s only been four days.  The whole point of coming out here was for my Aunt Tibby’s 90th birthday, but we kind of forgot to take a single picture of that entire event.  So here’s some other stuff we did:

My dad has been a Giants Fan since they won the world series in 1954, and were based in New York.  Friday was free gaudy orange tee-shirt day.  We have pride, but it didn’t help.  They lost the game to the Phillies.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present San Francisco, as seen from the top of Telegraph Hill.  SisterAlyson was right, I’m not fooling anyone when I wear my sunglasses on top of my glasses.

(After that, we continued with the rest of our vacation in the Stanford/Palo Alto area.  No pictures from that day survive, because no pictures were taken by anyone in our party.)

But the next day we saw tall trees!

Our extended family and my immediate family hiked in the redwood forest.  Next stop: gulf stream waters.

This whole freaking state is in bloom!  Macro lens: activate!

Sonoma Valley can actually be a lot of fun for people who don’t drink.  For instance, this was the view from the tram car where we learned all about how grapes that get morning light make different wine than grapes that get southern light.  My parents took the tour guide’s word for it, whereas I decided to participate in the post-tour tasting to see for myself.  It also meant that I got out of driving for the rest of the trip.

Good times.  I feel like I’ve been here for over a week, and we’re heading back in a few hours.  Can’t wait to see what the internet’s been up to while I’ve been gone, and get back to exploring my home valley.

Last May 10, 2007, I wrote a post where I updated everyone on all those times that I said, “I’ll write more later” and never actually did. I’ve spent some time going through the posts from that date until today, to see if anything else needed some updating.  It did:

May 21, 2007: This is still the best damn clip compilation ever made. If you like movies, spend 9 minutes and 28 seconds watching it.

June 11, 2007: The baby has now been birthed, and he’s cute as anything. Also, I’m still forgetful.

June 18, 2007: I finally finished the extra beer sometime in October.

July 2, 2007: The Grey Boy finally forgave me for my ruthless Neil Sedaka teasing. Now that I’m bringing up that painful memory again, who knows if he’ll still feel that way.

July 17, 2007: The cottage has gone almost one year bat free!

August 14, 2007: My parents’ bookstore is closed, but Mom got a job at another bookstore, and Dad’s working as a lawyer again, like he did in the 80’s, when L.A. Law was a top-rated show.  The only difference is that the hair is smaller, and laywers use computers now.

(I used the phrase “let me interject” in three consecutive posts last summer. I’m pretty sure I didn’t that phrase correctly in any of those posts, and I hope I have broken that habit.)

September 6, 2007: I did not get a raise on April 1st. However, I was given “extra responsibilities” that came with “no extra pay.”

October 4, 2007: I still don’t have cable, and my neighbor is moving out in June, so no more free wifi, either.

October 17, 2007: The Butterfly is a stroke that is still mysterious to me. But coach gave me a 90 minute DVD on mastering technique, and I just can’t wait to watch it!

October 24, 2007: As far as I can tell, the landlesbian still hasn’t found out about my blog, as the first thing she asked me when she moved back up here for the summer was if I want to renew the lease.

November 8, 2007: Remember that harrowing experience I had with my jackass surgeon? I stopped going to see him, I’ve got a new one now. He’s great, he’s going to take my pins out in November.

November 24, 2007: My dad still loves the foxes. It turns out the foxes liked the foxes, too. There is now a baby fox.

December 4, 2007: I didn’t get the bones socks for Christmas, or my birthday, so I made them my Twitter icon.

(It’s hard to read the December posts knowing that Birmingham and I were in the process of breaking up, but I didn’t want to write about it on my blog until something definitive happened.  Those posts hide it well, I think.)

December 11, 2007: I’ve decided not to tell the rest of the story of the night I broke my ankle. You were all so horrified when I told you I heard the “crack,” I don’t think you want to know how it felt to have it set…

January 7, 2008: My car now has over 25,000 miles. At least 100 were gratuitous “just because I can” miles.

February 1, 2008: I used Turbo Tax. It was great. Got my rebate, still waiting for my refund thanks to the other {Noelle Tannenbaum, April 3, 2008}.

February 19, 2008: Forgot to tell you about Radioman! He’s a scraggly dude who wears a boom box and rides his bike to film & TV shoots in the city (and even some in New Jersey!) and gets work as an extra. He always knows what’s filming where, and if you look hard enough, you can spot him in almost any movie shot in New York. He gets his paychecks sent to “Radioman: General Delivery (some post office in the city.)”

February 24, 2008: Firefox spellcheck still doesn’t vote Obama.

March 5, 2008: I whistled along to “Patience” last night, while scratching my arm and farting. I love spring!

March 18, 2008: The Dippin’ Dots kiosk is back, but now it’s called MiniMelts, and there’s no mention of the future. I’m not sure what that means for us as a civilization.

April 7, 2008: Nike + iPod gizmo still working!

April 14, 2008: The infamous post got 137 comments. I let them all through because I didn’t want to deny that it happened, but I turned on a comment moderation system where new commenters have to be approved. I’d prefer it if the hostiles stay away. I’d like to say it hasn’t changed the way I think about my blog, but it has.  A little bit of the fun of blogging went away, and I’m struggling to get back into my stride again. It was a reminder not to let my guard down, I guess.

Reading through the archives was great fun.  I actually liked some of the stuff I wrote, and good to remember some of the stuff I did last year.  I’m on my way to San Francisco now.  I’m bringing my computer, but that’s not a guarantee that I’ll actually get to use it while I’m there.  So if not, have a great week!

Lest there be any doubt that I’m a Jersey girl, yesterday’s activity was a trip to the mall. Sadly, the indoor shopping options in this region are not great. Poughkeepsie has the Galleria, which is shiny and full of the basics, but not big enough to compare to my Paramus darlings. Kingston has the Hudson Valley Mall, which is also disappointingly small, and can only be reached after you negotiate some killer traffic. Newburgh has the aptly named Newburgh Mall, but that place is not nearly clean enough to justify crossing the river to get there.

Since I can’t extol the virtues of truly great consumerism, I made a pilgrimage to a monument of what used to be: a dead mall.

The mall, like Rhoda, debuted in 1974. It was at that time, The Hudson Valley’s second enclosed shopping center (Fishkill’s Dutchess Mall being the first.) Sears and KMart anchored the mall, and the rest was filled with small local and chain stores. In the 80’s the pink and blue neon-lit food court was the place to be seen with your headband and leg warmers.

(That photo (from Wikipedia) makes me want to tease my hair, put on some roller skates, and listen to Flashdance.)

But as the decade came to a close, a new mall opened two lots north of the South Hills. Attached by interior roads, the Galleria became a more attractive place to shop for Poughkeepsians. It had a Lechmere, a Jordan Marsh, and a Filene’s, which were evidently better than Sears and KMart, or at least they were in 1990.

When I moved up here in 2006, The South Hills was already in decline. A Target was opening at the Galleria, superior to KMart in all ways. The South Hills’ other anchor stores, Media Play, OfficeMax, Bob’s Stores, and Discovery Zone were going out of business and closing. The mall’s movie theater was a second-run house, which is still in business, but serves as a perfect icon for the mall compared to the Galleria’s beautiful new stadium-seating multiplex where I saw “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” with the girls* last night.

As the 90’s came to a close, the mall was losing stores on a monthly basis. Some went to greener pastures, like the Galleria or the strip malls further north on route 9. Some just closed for good, making the halls of the South Hills emptier than the promises of a politician running for office. Last year, one could walk through the corridors, past all the shuttered businesses to get to the interior entrances of the three remaining businesses. (KMart, Burlington Coat Factory, the $2 theater.) As of the beginning of 2008, you can’t even do that anymore:

This is what it would look like if you could go inside:

The part of me that used to be a location scout just itches looking at this, and thinking of what a great filming location it would make: no crowds to quiet, no business owners to pay off, no planes overhead, plenty of room for actors and actresses to each have their own 2″ of table space that the actor’s union requires… but no! You want to shoot this effing scene on Grove Street which is beautiful and tree-lined, but has been Burned by the inconsiderate Sex and the City crews, who annoyed the residents so much that no one gets to shoot there now, and I’m not making another trip to the Mayor’s office to beg for a permit to open up the fire hydrants so you can have a wet-down of the street. (I’m sorry, that repressed memory came out of nowhere…)

Anyway, back to the mall. It’s dead. If we had tumbleweeds in New York, they’d flock to this place. It’s even listed on Deadmalls.com, a great website idea if there ever was one. But hope is on the horizon. There’s talk of something new opening. Some suggested a Wal-mart (ed. note: boo!), but that’s not likely. The name “Costco” has also been bounced around, but Hudson Valley residents are already serviced by BJ’s price club. (ed. note: why didn’t the owners of said business do a Google search before applying for a trade mark just to make certain the great name they came up with wasn’t also slang for a sex act? That goes for you too, Fuddruckers.) Anyhoo, it looks like what’s happening next is a proposal for a bunch of connected box stores called “The Shoppes at South Hills” (The extra “P” and “E” for “Phony Elitism”), including a Christmas Tree Shop. The three hangers-on get to stay, and the rest of the mall is going to be razed to make way for something pretty. And how do I know all this? Because it a streak of awesome, someone has created a MySpace page for the mall, including a blog. This is my favorite entry to date:

Saturday, April 5
The Rumors Are true

I do have a bit of abestos in me, and demolition is on hiatus until they clean it up.
But, this situation is much more like the movie 28 Days (the alcoholic comedy with Sandra Bullock), than the movie 28 Days Later (the apocolyptic zombie thriller).
So, I’m getting put on the straight and narrow, as opposed to total evacuation (::sniffles:: before my demise).
There is still some life left in me though! Shop Rite, Silver Cinemas, K-Mart, and Burlington Coat factory are still open and will remain open.

If only I was as good of a blogger as my local dead mall, I could probably retire on this hobby.

*”The Girls” includes Tucker and the Dutchess of Kickball’s new boy who’s a friend, who are honorary girls because they’re cool like that.

This is the Poughkeepsie Train Station, which I think of as “The Train Stain” since the time Birmingham accidentally called it that in front of his friends. We all had a good laugh at his expense, and now it’s stuck. This particular station is the last stop on the Metro North Hudson Line, unless you live in the Hudson Valley and you consider our region’s biggest metropolis the first stop on the way to Grand Central Terminal.

The station was opened in February of 1918, designed by the firm Warren & Wetmore, who were given the task to build a station that would prove to the world that the city of Poughkeepsie was a cosmopolitan place worthy to play with the big boys. Inside the station it looks like this:

Chestnut benches, chandeliers, extensive natural light from the five bay windows, restrooms (more on those later,) a ticket booth, and vending machines (which I believe came post-1918.) It’s a great place to relax while you wait for your train with your hula monkey. The city of Poughkeepsie was happy with their train station, and the local paper reviewed it thusly:

Poughkeepsie woke up Sunday and rubbed its eyes when it visited the new station of the New York Central Railroad, and gasped. Was this Poughkeepsie or a station in the Bronx? The new building certainly surpassed anything dreamed of by the present generation of Poughkeepsians and no more will travelers get a poor impression of the place by what they see when they alight from the railroad trains.

I believe the title of the article was “Poughkeepsie, finally as good as the Bronx!”
Little known fact: the train station was modeled after some church in Italy and Grand Central Terminal. Can’t you see the resemblance?

I guess if GCT was made of wood and only serviced 1,633 people a day, the similarity would be more distinct. If you’re dying to read more about this fine train station, let me direct you to the Wikipedia article from which I lifted all the above facts. I love in depth research!

But what about the restrooms?  They are (or at least the women’s room is) extremely clean and modern, with some throwbacks to an earlier era. That being the era before liquid soap:

Ever since my Mom and I both had the same problem with The DaVinci Code’s bar soap in the Louvre scene, I get a little thrill the few times I see it in a public restroom. I’m weird, I guess.

Since I was already at the train station, I went ahead and bought a ticket and took the train to the city. (That’s our kickball bar viewed through the train window, there, by the way.)

And why did I go to the city last night? Because awesome SisterAlyson had free tickets to Crybaby: the Musical! As I texted to my friend Chachi later, if the theatre-going me of the early 2000’s knew that the me of 2008 would only see one Broadway play a year and that Broadway play was a bad musical adaptation of a bad movie, she’d be sad. But, really, the me of 2008 is a less harsh critic than the girl who ran follow-spot for the original production of “Urinetown” and was the wardrobe supervisor of a critically acclaimed off-Broadway theater. That girl would have been all, “The follow spot operator kept missing the actress’ face. I’ve seen Johnny Depp play this role, and this dude is no Johnny Depp. Really? Is that set change the best you can do? The colors of these costumes don’t do a good enough job differentiating the two groups of characters. The wacky, campy ending was not earned by the beginning or middle of the show, which were way too earnest.”

But the current, non-theatregoing me was all, “Wow! How did they memorize all those lines? What a spectacle!”

As we walked to the train after the show, SisterAlyson agreed to pose for a picture, like so many tourists, to prove that the Hula Monkey was there.

We parted ways at Grand Central, where she got her subway home, and caught the 10:12 back to Poughkeepsie.  Before saying goodbye, she expressed some concern that our parents and I are going fly to California together on Friday and that if we crash, she’ll have no one left except her boyfriend and Lola. I told her that if that happens, she can have Micki the cat.

“Do you promise?”

“Yeah, take her.”

“Okay, before you get on the plane, write it on your body!”

She’s a little bit nervous. But she shouldn’t be. Nobody else in the world wants to take care of Micki.

I don’t want to make a big deal of this, but you may have noticed that I’m trying to re-instate the 30 activities-Hudson Valley project. The reason I don’t want to make a big deal is two-fold. One is that I’m leaving for San Francisco on Friday, so I won’t be here to report on the happenings of the H.V. for a week. The other is that the last time I made a big announcement about my project, I spent days 1, 2, and 3 in the hospital. Not that I’m one to believe in superstition, but I’m keeping this one low-key just in case.

On Saturday, my second employer and I came to a mutual decision that they no longer needed me because they were over-staffed and I was tired. Now that I have all my weekends free again, it seems like an appropriate time to dig back in to the project. So here goes nothing, and just for good measure, I’m not playing kickball this season.

Every once and a while, I see this sign up when I pass the diner near me:

Birmingham and I stopped once last year, but then I was invalid and then it was winter, and there was no more car cruise, until tonight. On the way home from free pizza night at the gym, I stopped and took a gander at the classic cars that were on display.

(In case you’re wondering, the hula monkey hasn’t had much work since “The Ruins Post,” so now he hangs out on my dashboard, and will be standing in for Mr. Met (the plush keychain) who is enjoying his retirement.)

The owner of the diner is a car enthusiast, so once or twice a month he opens up the lawn adjacent to his establishment so that other car enthusiasts can park, pop their hoods, listen to music, and show off their babies. I was hoping to talk to some of the car owners to ask them some questions about their cars, but there was one big problem.

I’m shy, ya’ll.

I know, you may be thinking, “weren’t you just telling us and all the world about your soy-based flatulence problem?” Yes. I was. But no, I wasn’t. I was typing it. That is much easier than talking. Talking to new people is a real problem for me. It’s almost uncanny in its irrationality, but whenever I talk to strangers I get an awful hot feeling in my chest and face. I lose all control of my ability to speak normally until I’ve had at least one conversation with a person in the past. But I know that if I’m going to do this project, I’m eventually going to have to meet some new people and talk to them. So I tried, determined to talk to one car owner before going home to many shots of whiskey I chose my favorite car:

I procrastinated by circling all the other cars twice and pretending to be interested in the raffle at the main table. Finally I braced myself and walked up to the group sitting in front of the purple 1941 Ford Coupe.

“Hi. Who’s car is this?”

“This is mine.” says a nice looking middle-aged man.

This is where I want to say things like, “How long have you had this car? Did you paint it? Do you own other classic cars? Where do you drive it? ” and so on. But he’s sitting with a group of 5 other Strangers, and all I can think to say is “this is my favorite.” And I can’t even say it like a real person. My nerves cause me to talk in my high-pitched nervous voice. I’ve prepared some audio so you can understand:

My Favorite car

BTW, this was my first foray into creating my own audio. It took me about an hour of opening all the programs that came with my new Mac and then signing up for every podcasting service I could find. That’s why you have it in two formats there, I’m playing around to see what works. (I even figured out how to use sound effects!) Please let me know how it comes out on your computer, or if it doesn’t at all. (If you’re like me and can’t listen to sound on your computer at work, that’s cool, you have something to look forward to when you get home.)

In the coming days, I’m going to muster the courage to meet new people so I can explore the Hudson Valley’s best and brightest. If that doesn’t work, oh well. It’s my blog, and I’ll be shy if I want to. With that in mind, I’d like to leave you some words of wisdom from the purple car’s yellow sticker:

There may be bugs,
There may be chips,
But one thing sure
I drive this Bitch!

UPDATE: I figured out how to make the audio file an MP3. This should work on your computer if the other one didn’t:

The Mid-Hudson Bridge is a 3,000 foot long suspension bridge the Hudson Valley that soars 135 feet above the Hudson River and connects Highland to Poughkeepsie. It was conceived in 1923, construction started in 1925, and it was finished in 1930. I think it’s one of the prettiest bridges in the world. Even hula monkeys agree:

The bridge was opened in a ceremony that was attended by former Governor Alfred E. Smith, Poughkeepsie Mayor Lovelace, and a very special lady who loved lace: Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1994, the government respectfully renamed the bridge after Mrs. Roosevelt’s husband, but 5 of out 5 Hudson Valley residents still call it “The Mid-Hudson Bridge” even though it spans the whole width of the river and then some. If you want to know more, please enjoy this super website.

Back when I lived a stone’s throw from the GWB, I thought it to be the greatest bridge ever, and therefore I considered the Mid-Hudson bridge’s energy-efficient colored lights as gaudy. But that’s because secretly I was insecure about the fact that the Mid-Hudson is the more beautiful of the two bridges. It’s been over two years I’ve lived here now, and I’m ready to accept the Mid-Hudson as my personal bridge and river crossing. I even like the lights now, and I love that it costs only $1 to cross, as opposed to the GWB’s exorbitant $8. EIGHT DOLLARS! (Although both are free if you do them on foot.)

Twenty-seven years ago, someone at the YMCA thought it would be a good idea to have a race across said bridge that would start at the toll plaza, cross the Hudson, circle around downtown Poughkeepsie for a while, and end 3.1 miles later at the YMCA. Three years ago, I discovered the race and ran/walked it alone in a slooooow 45 minutes. Last year, I ran it with a friend who was in much better shape than I was, and we did it in 30 minutes. This year, I took Birmingham, who’s just getting into the running thing, and we finished in 35 minutes!  Saturday was a cool, misty day, perfect for a road race. This is us before the big event:

Thirty five minutes later, we were all:

(photo not found… Traditionally Birmingham was the official photographer / spectator for the run so this year, there’s no evidence of us actually finishing.)

The run itself was great. As we approached the bridge from the toll plaza, we played slalom with traffic cones, and while going over the bridge, we concentrated on staying in the middle of the road, because that’s something you only get to do when the bridge has been closed to traffic. We got water handed to us by helpful volunteers, but it tasted like ass, so we spit it out and threw the cups on the ground all willy-nilly. We paced ourselves so that we could beat two eight-year-old girls, an especially weight-challenged man, a dude with one foot on the bridge and one in the grave, and most importantly, a young boy that we liked to call “Ginger” because of his Weasley-esque visage and gentle not-made-for-running-distances demeanor. Having obtainable goals was the important thing.

But of course, the best part about this or any race was the race packet:

You get all this stuff just for signing up! (and paying) A tee shirt, a number that advertises fig newtons for some reason, a calendar, a listing of MORE RACES, a YMCA pen, and best of all, a trial size container of Axe body wash. Finally, I can smell just like an 8th grade boy!

After the race was over, Birmingham and I ate breakfast and parted ways. He had work to do, and I had to go shopping on the other side of the river. That was when I got a view of the bridge the way it was meant to be seen: from my car, open to traffic, at 45 MPH and in under two minutes.