Photo Blog - Week Two

Tuesday, January 8

These shoes are totally falling apart. They're my little commuting flats when I have to be dressed nicely. I leave all of my fancy shoes wherever it is that I'm going, and then I just change there. In fact, I don't know a suit-wearing woman in this city who doesn't have a big set of dress shoes in her office, now that I think about it... Anyway, these shoes are going to have to be thrown away soon. I really, really burn through shoes here. I mostly wear athletic shoes, but even those have to be replaced much more frequently than when I lived in Utah. I just walk so much here, and always on concrete, so my shoes just wear right out. I actually have another pair of shoes that I need to take in to be re-soled because I'm not ready to part with them, but these were inexpensive flats that are falling apart all over, so I'll just have to get some new ones.

Wednesday, January 9

Here's something you don't think about if you don't live here: what happens when you buy something big? Every now and then on the subway, you see someone carrying home something huge. I loved this big floor lamp making its way uptown...

Today, I also noticed the tree had a new look. Somehow, someone thought that taking the dead leaves and branches off would make it look better, I guess. And while that might usually be true, if they're all dead, it ends up looking like this:

A little over a week later, the plant just disappeared. I guess someone finally decided it was dead. I kind of miss it, weirdly.

Thursday, January 10

Today I only have pictures that have my face in them, and since I have a "no pictures of me" policy on this blog, you'll have to just get by with this other picture--it's my food delivery confirmation. There's a website (or an app) where you can order food from basically any restaurant that delivers in your area. You can pay with credit card, put the tip on the card if you want, and then food just arrives. I was missing Utah a bit this day and was hoping to get a little Mexican food. It wasn't that great, but I did have a little burrito.

Friday, January 11

There are a bunch of ads in the subways, and in some cars, it's a big collection of small ads instead of one big ad buy out. There's a series of ads by this doctor that are all pretty random about how he can fix your skin, hair, eyes, cellulite, whatever. So someone apparently took out a series of ads that looks EXACTLY like that guy's random ads, but they're this hilarious parody. Click on the picture to blow it up so you can read and laugh about it. I laughed and laughed the whole way home. Some time, I'll see one of his real ads and take a picture of it so you can see just how hilarious the parody is.

Saturday, January 12

New York City is filled with flowers. There are flower shops EVERYWHERE and I love it. I took a picture of a particularly pretty shop I walked past today. It smelled fantastic and was very big--you can kind of see in the picture that there's an inside to it as well, which is unusual. They're usually just big stands out in front of little bodegas. I love them. I try to plan my walking to go past as many flowers as possible so I can smell them all on my way to and from school.

Sunday, January 13

Another thing you might not think about if you didn't live here is package delivery. Like most buildings in New York, my apartment building doesn't have a doorman. So if I'm not home when a package comes, it goes back to the shipping place. Fed Ex will then deliver it to a Fed Ex store, which for me is about half a mile away, but UPS will only let me pick it up from a really questionable warehouse in the Bronx. So I have a couple of options. I often ship things to a friend who lives in a doorman building, and she's great to let me do that. If I order from Amazon though, I can choose to ship to an Amazon locker. They are awesome. Amazon has big banks of lockers all over the place. They're in all kinds of shops and stores. So you pick the location of the locker you want, purchase your item, and then you get an email once it's been delivered. The email has a little code, and you type that code into this screen. Your locker pops open, and there is your package! I use it every time I buy something from Amazon. This purchase is actually a textbook. My textbooks were incredibly expensive this semester, and I was very unhappy about it, but at least I was able to get them all!

Monday, January 14

This is one of the staircases I walk up to get to my apartment. I live up two flights of these. It's a very narrow staircase, and when I moved in, my dad and baby brother and I wrangled my heavy love seat up this tiny staircase and had to pivot it around the corners. It was crazy. So crazy, in fact, that when I move again some day, I will have to hire movers because I'm never moving this couch again.

I guess a random fact to note here is that yes, I've lived in the same building, in the same apartment, since I moved here. I hate moving, and I love my apartment.