The SUMA Life: Finding Dim Sum in the Suburbs

January 28, 2010 by

The whole idea of building a “SUMA life” in the suburbs is to try to find ways to recreate and fashion an urban experience in the suburban environment, in what is probably ultimately a failed attempt to retain some semblance of the life you lived before you exiled yourself.  It’s not easy.  But it’s not supposed to be easy.  The whole point of living in the city is that you can have experiences that you simply can’t replicate when you live in the suburbs.  But as with many things, there is heroism in the attempt.

With that in mind, we wanted to try to find a place to get dim sum — the “Chinese brunch” experience that you can get in like a dozen places in Chinatown and, I would guess, in other urban Chinatowns, and, I would also guess, in, you know, China.  My wife is a Chinese-American, so dim sum became a pretty regular staple of our weekends. Most weeks, we’d just order dim sum-like appetizers from our local Chinese place, but that’s not the same.  Dim sum isn’t about the food, it’s about the experience, which requires certain atmospherics:

  • First, you need a huge warehouse-like space with a ton of people sitting, often community-style, about big tables.  You can’t get real dim sum in some fancy upscale Asian fusion restaurant.
  • Second, you need the carts, those metal monstrosities being wheeled around with all the little plates on them.  You can’t get real dim sum by ordering from a menu. Flagging down a cart, getting a plate, and then having the waitstaff stamp your “card” with some totally incomprehensible mark that eventually determines how much you’ll pay is part of the fun.
  • Third, you need a lot of food that the white people like me won’t ever eat. It’s not real dim sum if you don’t see stuff like bird’s feet or pig’s knuckles (or bird knuckles and pig’s feet, I can’t remember which) that isn’t, in my opinion, actual food, but which real Chinese people like.  (Indeed, one of the things I’ve learned about marrying into a Chinese-American family is that the greatest delicacies are precisely the foods that are most inedible, something I have learned at many Chinese wedding banquets where the only thing I could eat was the plain lo mein noodles served at the end like a palate cleanser).
  • Fourth, you need actual Chinese people eating there.  You go to Chinatown, you can tell that you’re getting authentic dim sum because there are a lot of Chinese people there. I’m not racially profiling, or whatever, I’m just pointing out that you can take certain comforts in knowing that you’re not in some tourist trap, and that the food must be good, or at least authentic, if you see them there.

All that said, I didn’t have high hopes for finding dim sum in the suburbs.  I can’t even get good everyday Chinese food like vegetable lo mein in the suburbs, much less a lip-smacking plate of bird feet.  It’s not like I’m going to eat the bird feet, but I like knowing that it’s there.

Against all odds, though, we found a place.  A simple Google search turned up an actual Chinese restaurant in Westchester called Central Seafood that’s about 20 minutes away and had some reviews mentioning the dim sum.   So we went, and it was perfect — big rooms, round tables, lots of Chinese people, food I wouldn’t possibly ever eat.  Not quite the Manhattan experience, but with some advantages like, you know, parking, and cleaner rest rooms (don’t ever go to the bathroom in Chinatown.  Ever).

So we found a small piece of SUMA, a place to get our dim sum fix  once a month, with the bonus that it’s very close to a great dog run where we can take the dog.  Although, obviously, we won’t bring the dog to the restaurant, both for the health code issue and, you know, (stipulate to a Chinese people eating dog joke).

UPDATE: We have since found another place called Aberdeen in White Plains that we haven’t tried yet.

Filed Under: Advice, Humor, My Life in the Suburbs, SUMA Lifestyle Tagged With: ,

The Unanticipated Politics of Getting a Dog

January 5, 2010 by

I wasn’t prepared for the politics of getting a dog.  Wow.

Since I got my new suburban accessory, a cute little half-Pomeranian, half-Shitsu ball of fur called Kozy the Dog, I’ve been asked by a lot of people where I got him.  I guess that because of my general liberal sensibilities, people assumed that OF COURSE I would go to a shelter rather than a pet store.  And when they found out that I actually did the horrible, awful, convenient thing of buying a dog at a store, I got this look like I’d just wrenched a baby seal from the protective comfort of her mother and clubbed her to death.

Listen, I get it.  I tried very hard to get a shelter dog, did all my research online looking for the kind of dog I wanted, put out feelers in all the local shelters, but it just didn’t happen in time.  I wanted a dog for my wife for a Christmas gift, and I guess that’s when demand is high and supply is low, because the shelters just didn’t have the types of dogs I wanted available in the time I needed. Yes, my deadline was arbitrary, but, well, I wanted a stupid dog to give to my wife for Christmas.  So sue me.

So I went to pet store, run by some very nice people in the area. Took my wife there, we looked at the dogs, fell in love with the Kozy dog.  He was maybe, probably the result of a puppy mill, which I think is terrible.  But nothing I could do about that.  He was already alive, already there, nothing I could do about that.  Again, go ahead and sue me.  I found a dog I liked, and I got him.

The backlash literally started the same day.  All excited to have our new puppy, and committed as usual to supporting small local businesses, we went into a local store to buy some doggy stuff — food, some bedding, etc.  So the guy behind the counter, old guy, not the friendliest of local proprietors, asked me where I got the dog.  And when I tell him, he sneers at me, “Oh, I just don’t get it — people who sell dogs,” in the kind of tone that someone might say “Oh, people who sell human body parts.”  And he points to some dogs that I guess his store shelters part-time, two dogs that God-Bless-Their-Poor-Hearts-I-Hope-Someone-Adopts-Them look like the kind of beasts that should be applying to guard Hades, and tells me that i could have gotten those dogs instead of buying one at a store.  Given that I just wanted a small dog, and that I don’t own a junk yard that I’m trying to guard, it wasn’t really an option.  Strike one.

So then he asks me what breed it is. I tell him what the sign said when I got him, that it was a “Pomshu,” which is this cute little name that people have come up with for half-Poms, half-Shitsus, sort of that whole “designer dog” idea.  Another sneer: “Oh, so he’s a mutt.”  Okay, fine, I probably did sound a little like a jackass, but that is, in my defense, what the stupid sign said.  Fine, he’s a mutt, I have no problem with that, but it bothered me that he thought I did.  Strike two.

And then to add to my cavalcade of consumer happiness, he asks how old he is.  My wife tells him that the dog is about three months old, and he shoots back, “well, I guess he was there for a while, that no one wanted him.”  That would be strike three.

So, basically, we didn’t buy anything.  One local business that I don’t need to support.

Again, I get it.  I love dogs. I love animals. I don’t like people to exploit them.  I’m not about to throw blood at people, or forswear eating meat or wearing leather, but I’m in that squishy middle ground that most people are in.  So if I could have gotten a shelter dog, I would have.  But I couldn’t, at least not the type of dog in the time I wanted.

You want to revoke my “good liberal” card, then go ahead.  But I just wanted a dog for my wife, I wasn’t trying to save the world.  I gave a chunk of money to my local shelter in Kozy’s name, I’ll give another chunk next year, and that’s my contribution.

In the meantime, excuse me, I’m going to go clean up some poop.

Filed Under: Having a Dog in the Suburbs, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, Suburban Rites of Passage Tagged With: ,

Our First Suburban New Year’s Eve: Home with Hives

January 3, 2010 by

I used to hate New Year’s Eve in the city.  So do most people who actually live in the city, because it’s like the worst night of the year to go out.  The big cliche, of course, is that it’s “Amateur Night,” precisely because everyone who doesn’t normally go out decides that it’s their night to hit the city’s bars, clubs, and restaurants. (Of course, to the true urban sophisticates, a group that never included me, every weekend night is sort of an “Amateur Night,” because professional partying urbanites go out on weeknights to do things like see a particular DJ, a taste I never actually acquired).

I don’t hate New Year’s Eve because it’s Amateur Night, I hate it because it’s an artificial experience:

  • Restaurants Suck.  None of the good restaurants put out their normal menu, instead offering a “Special New Year’s Eve Prefixe!” that has like three dishes, is twice the normal price, and requires you to either eat early and skeedaddle for the late service or eat late and be sitting in a stupid restaurant when the ball drops, so you can’t see Dick Clark, bless his heart, mumble through the countdown.
  • Clubs Suck.  All the clubs ratchet up their cover charge, require you to buy multiple bottles if you actually want to sit down, and justify the increased costs because they give you a noisemaker they got for 10 cents at Ricky’s.
  • Cabs Suck.  Forget trying to get a cab on New Year’s Eve anytime after 8PM and before 4AM. Not only is the demand too high, but it seems like a whole lot of them go “off duty” all night in an attempt to get desperate women in torturous heels to pay a blackmail off-meter price.
  • Traffic Sucks.  Even if you do get a cab, or have your own car, good luck getting around the city with the bottleneck created by the monstrous Times Square celebration, where people inexplicably line up for hours so they can stand in the cold and not drink so that they can witness a big ball drop for about 60 seconds.

The whole thing is a disaster.  That’s why virtually every New Year’s Eve for the past five years or so, we had our own party, usually a nice dinner party for close friends where we’d opt out of the whole city experience, have a great meal, talk to each other in ways that you can’t if you go to any ear-blistering club, watch Dick Clark at midnight, and go to bed by 2AM or so.  Always a great night, made better for me at least by the fact that I could spend the whole night without venturing outside my front door.

That said, of course, now that we’re suburanites, we had every intention of going into the city for New Year’s Eve, because, well, we’re now EXACTLY THE SORT OF PEOPLE WHO RUIN NEW YEAR’S EVE FOR THE CITY PEOPLE!  We were looking forward to being outer-borough amateurs running around the city and making asses of ourselves.  We were going to meet up with our city friends at some swank club, overpay for drinks all night, and collapse in a ridiculously expensive hotel room for the night. Essentially, we were eager to ruin it for the rest of you.

Sadly, the Gods punished us for our heresy.  New Year’s Eve day (is that the right way to say it?), my wife comes down with some sort of allergic reaction, gets these weird hives that she never had before, and can’t go out.  We tell our friends to take our hotel room, which may be the nicest thing we’ve ever done for anyone ever, and hang out on the couch all night.

So that was our first New Year’s Eve in the suburbs: home, alone, watching TV and in bed by 12:30.  Yeeeesh.  We’re becoming suburbanites faster than I thought…….

Filed Under: Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , , , ,

Suburban Rite of Passage: Getting a Dog — The End of My Poop-Free Life

December 28, 2009 by

My wife always wanted us to get a dog.  She’s allergic to like every kind of hair except dog hair, oddly enough, so I think that part of her just wants a dog so she can curl up next to something hairy without getting all itchy.

But she bugged me for years about getting one, to the point that one year she asked if I wanted a hint for what to get her for Christmas.  I said, “sure,” and she responded by going like this: “Ruff Ruff.”  Which I think is unfair, insofar as barking like a dog is not really so much of a hint as it is a command.  So no dog for her that year.

It’s not that I don’t like dogs. I love dogs.  But I didn’t want to have a dog in the city.  It’s just too tough.  You can’t take the dog anywhere you go, you can’t even take a dog off leash in Central Park, and walking the dog seems like it would horrible to both human and dog.  Walking city streets is great, walking a dog is great, walking a dog on city streets is horrible: hard pavement, constant fear of passing cars, etc.  And if you don’t have outdoor space, you either train the dog really, really well to hold it in while you’re at work, or your apartment slowly becomes a poop zone.

On top of all that, it was the stairs. I’ve mentioned the stairs before. Four flights.  The idea of schlepping that stupid dog up and down all those stairs every time he had to take a poop was just unfathomable.

So no dog while we were in the city.  It was one of the few arguments I ever won with my wife.  My life was a complete poop-free zone.  No kids. No dog.  The only poop I had to deal with was my own, which was frankly all I could handle.

But then, of course, we moved to the suburbs — otherwise known as “Doggie Heaven”.  Big back yards, lots of dog-friendly parks, dog runs, people with dogs, kids with dogs, dog stores, everything a dog could want. And although we didn’t have a yard, we had an elevator, so walking the dog would be a lot easier.

I held out for as long as I could.  I really enjoyed that poop-free life of mine.  We’re going to have a kid at some point (the next great Suburban Rite of Passage), at which time my life will become heavily invested with OPP (“other people’s poop”), so my hope was to hold off on getting a dog until I had no other choice.

That said, I didn’t really hold out for long. I made it until Christmas, the first gift-giving holiday following our move to the suburbs.  So really, I didn’t hold out at all.  First holiday, new dog. A cute little half-Pomeranian, half-Shitsu puppy that we named “Kozy,” after a little stuffed animal called “Kozy Bear” that I’d gotten my wife a few years ago.  He’s a really great dog, and my wife is committed to teaching him how to poop in specially designated poop areas.  So I have some guarded optimism.

Move to the suburbs, then get a dog.  One of the great Suburban Rites of Passage.

Filed Under: Best of, Having a Dog in the Suburbs, Humor, My Life in the Suburbs, Suburban Rites of Passage Tagged With: ,

Three Suburban Rites of Passage in One Day: Costco Membership, Getting an SUV, and Our First Suburban Party

December 16, 2009 by

The Suburan Rites of Passage.  Those changes, both big and small, where you start losing your urban identity and start adopting the customs of your new home. When you start evolving from urban hipster to suburban fuddy-duddy.

I’ve been noticing those Rites of Passage over the past few months, most of them little changes in perspective that sneak up on you where you realize that you’re becoming a true suburban.  You become exasperated when there isn’t a close parking spot in the mall, forgetting the 25 minute drive-arounds you used to do to find a spot anywhere in the city.  You go to the movies for a first-weekend blockbuster and get there only 20 minutes in advance, secure that you’ll still be able to get a seat.  You eat at Cheesecake Factory.

But it’s the big Suburban Rites of Passage that slap you in the head and make you confront your reality.  We had three of them today.

1.  Joining Costco

We got our Costco card today.  Now, I’m not going to belabor the experience, because the whole “marvel at all the giant boxes of things you buy at Costco” is a pretty tired cliche at this point.  But it really is amazing — huge warehouse full of all these oversized bottles and boxes, where you end up getting way more stuff than you really need.  And joining Costco is almost a suburban requirement, particularly if you’re new to the suburbs and you’re not used to needing, say, toilet paper in more than just one bathroom.  So instead you get the 800 roll pack, or whatever, so you’re well-stocked for the next 100 years.

2.  Getting an SUV

You know how in the city, if you look at traffic stopped at a light, about half the cars are taxicabs?  In the suburbs, half the cars are SUVs.  Every family has one.  So we had to have one, even though it’s going to be my wife’s car and we don’t even have a kid yet.  But we are desperate, you know, to fit in.  Seriously, it just wouldn’t look right if my thirtysomething suburban wife was driving around in some sort of convertible or sports car.  More importantly, she’s a terrible, terrible, driver, so I wanted her to be able to ride high in the saddle and, moreover, have a lot of car between her and whatever it is that she’s going to hit.  So an SUV it is!

3.  Our First Suburban Party

We’ve been in the suburbs for almost five months, but we hadn’t yet been to a proper suburban party.  Part of that is we don’t have a lot of friends in the area, and haven’t been particularly good about meeting new people. And part of it is, frankly, that I’m a crotchety person that people don’t like having around.  Despite all that, we were invited to her friend Noelle’s house for a Christmas party.  She lives in Northern New Jersey, and we actually know her through a group of friends we made in the Apollo Circle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of my wife’s recent desperate attempts to inject some cultural significance our lives.

So Noelle threw our first suburban party, which is different from city parties in one big way: I couldn’t drink, because I had to drive home, and I don’t like dying or getting arrested.  I can’t begin to tell you how much of a difference not drinking made. I’d like to say that it was like one of those movies where a guy who’s a borderline alcoholic learns that he doesn’t need to drink to have a good time.  But it wasn’t.  It was like one of those movies where a guy who isn’t a borderline alcoholic learns that not drinking all night at a party is a real fucking bummer.

So that was our day: joining Costco, getting an SUV, and going to a selectively-dry suburban party.  Three Suburban Rites of Passage in one day.  Awesome!

Filed Under: Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, Suburban Rites of Passage Tagged With: , , , ,

Another street fair?

October 10, 2009 by

I will say this about Nyack. These people love their street fairs. We’ve been here two months, and this weekend is literally the third or fourth street fair since we got here, not including the relatively lackluster parade I wrote about a few months ago. And that’s not counting the big Halloween parade coming up. (If you’re curious, my company puts out a list of suburban events here.)

These are fun. Indeed, the street fairs in Nyack are like a million times better than the ubiquitous street fairs in the city. It seems like every weekend from April through September, some area of Manhattan is enduring a street fair that’s really an excuse for half-assed vendors to sell bonsai trees, sausage and peppers, corn arepas, and socks. When you first come to Manhattan, you love them because of the novelty of walking down the middle of an avenue without dodging cars. But eventually you realize that (a) the merchandise stinks, (b) the merchandise is the same at EVERY street fair, and (c) you have to walk four blocks out of your way to get a cab, because all the blocks are closed off. It’s annoying.

The Nyack street fairs are a lot more integrated into the merchant community. There are a few generic vendors, but a lot of booths are localized, including the food. Much more fun.

This weekend is antiques. Since we’ve moved from 2000 square feet to 4,000 square feet, we have a lot of empty space. Off to check it out.

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Filed Under: Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, SUMA Lifestyle Tagged With: , ,

Sorry, Harry….

September 28, 2009 by

One of the great discoveries of my new suburban neighborhood was Harry’s Burritos, a Nyack branch of the Manhattan-based chain of yummy, cheap Mexican food. I’ve been eating Harry’s Burritos, particularly the chicken Bay Burrito, for about 15 years.

Indeed, one of my first Manhattan memories is getting together with my friend the Schloem-dog on a beautiful Friday early evening after work for Bay Burritos back when (a) it was all we could afford, and (b) we actually had jobs where we could get out of work at 5PM on a Friday and have an early dinner, back before we both exercised the poor judgment of getting jobs that require more of our time and he exercised the appalling judgment of moving to California.

So I was excited to have a taste of Manhattan here in the suburbs, particularly since Harry’s is one of the few Nyack restaurants that delivers. Even with the delivery, though, I got into the habit of calling ahead on the way home and picking it up. Takes a little less time, and avoids one of the problems in the new apartment — namely, that my buzzer doesn’t work and I have to go down to the street to pick stuff up anyway.

But I kept having a problem with Harry’s. I’d call them up, place an order, and get there to find that they had no record of the order. It happened like three times. I call in, make the order, pull up, park, go inside, and then have to wait while they make a new burrito because they didn’t get the order. And I was getting a little sick of it. Bad enough people keep stealing my paper, but now I have to deal with incompetent Harry’s staff that can’t even take a phone in order.

So the third time it happens, I was completely getting fed up. I’d been understanding the first two times, but this was nuts. And I was about to go off on the person at the counter, and it occurred to me that I should check my phone. So I pull out the blackberry, check the address book, and find that this whole time I’ve been calling my OLD Harry’s on the upper west side. I thought I’d put the new number in, but apparently I either had a false memory of doing so, or didn’t save the new number, or something.

This whole time, then, I’ve been calling the Upper West Side Harry’s placing an order, and then going into the Nyack Harry’s to pick it up, only to get annoyed at the staff for not having my order. Meanwhile, there’s some counter person at the Harry’s in Manhattan wondering why this “Joe” jackass keeps ordering bay burritos and not picking them up.

I felt a little — what’s the word — stupid.

So I apologized profusely to the Nyack Harry’s staff for blaming them. And I now hereby apologize to the nice people over on Columbus Avenue for leaving them hanging. I hope they’re not still holding my order.

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Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , , ,

The Joys of Elevators, Garbage Edition

September 19, 2009 by

I wrote recently about the joys of elevators, particularly coupled with the nifty-if-battered-and-stolen shopping cart that I use to take groceries or other bags from my car to my condo unit.

But the joy doesn’t stop there. The elevator not only goes up, it goes down. Which means I can use it to take out the garbage.

I hate garbage. I particularly hate modern garbage. Old timey traditional garbage was nice and simple. You take anything you want to throw out, you put it in a bag, and three or four times a week you take the garbage to the curb and nice men take it away for you.

Modern garbage is different. Now, you have to separate out certain types of garbage from other types of garbage, with the delineation between garbage types often seemingly arbitrary. Some paper goes into the clear garbage bags, other paper into the black garbage bags. And if you get it wrong, the mean people from some sort of enforcement division give you a ticket.

Not only that, but in my old apartment on the UWS, garbage was even worse.
First of all, my apartment was a walkup, three flights to the street. So I’d come home at night, climb those stairs, and have to pick up garbage to walk down the stairs, only to have to walk back up if I wanted to sleep in my apartment. I hated climbing those stairs.

Second, they only picked up the clear garbage once a week, so you had to live with the clutter and stink of old cans and bottles for days and days until you could get rid of it. And if you forgot to drop them off Tuesday night, as I often did, you lived with them another week.

(Which reminds me of the time that I forgot, despite much nagging reminding from the wife, to bring the regular garbage down. And this wasn’t regular garbage, but three or four days worth of stinky garbage. So I oversleep a little the next morning, realize I forgot to put out the garbage, look out the window, and realize that the nice men have already come, and I’ve got two more days of stinky garbage and unhappy wife in front of me. Without telling her, I took the garbage down to the street, and nonchalantly (as nonchalantly as you can be carrying two bags of stinky garbage) carried it to the street, where I blatantly and illegally dumped them in the garbage can on the corner. I then slinked (slunk?) away, hoping no one saw me, and then cheerily went to work with the airy feeling of a man who has gotten away with something. That night, my wife sees me, and says, “was that OUR garbage in the can on the corner?” I still don’t know how she caught me).

And third, I hated the tying. I don’t know why this in particular bothered me, but I hated collecting all the newspapers — and I read a lot of newspapers — and tying them with twine. I hated doing that.

So one of the GREAT things about living in the suburbs is the joy of putting out the garbage. I still have the clear and the opaque, but here are the differences:

1. The elevator
Instead of walking up and down stairs, I take the garbage down in the elevator. I may not have mentioned this, but I hate stairs.

2. The shopping cart
My stolen shopping cart — stolen not by me, mind you — means I don’t even have to carry the garbage. I load it in the cart, and just roll it. Whoever invented wheels, I salute you.

3. The garbage room
I’ve never had a garbage room before. It’s a room, a very very very stinky room, in which we put the garbage. And we can put it there anytime we want, any day of the week. No more forgetting when the pickups are.

4. No twine
This is the best. No more twine. The nice guys who pick up the recycleables just want you to dump the newspapers into one of the bins — no bags, no twine. By itself, this change in my life has improved my daily mood by 8.5%.

So although I miss certain things about living in the city, my suburban garbage experience kicks ass.

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Filed Under: Humor, Living in Manhattan, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: ,

The Joys of Elevators

September 7, 2009 by

The Joys of Elevators

I haven’t had an elevator in about 17 years. When I first moved to Manhattan, lived in a 20-story prewar on 34th street and 9th avenue. It was a lousy neighborhood back then, and is a lot better now, but I needed to be within walking distance of the LIRR to get to work every morning. That was the first of many homes I had in urban neighborhoods, since I always loved living in the city (NYC, SF) even though my work career later confounded me with a long line of suburban jobs (Long Island, Palo Alto, Brooklyn, Hudson Valley).

But I had an elevator, which was glorious. And a doorman, which was less necessary for a strapping 25 year old who had tip-ophobia and would have traded a simply keyed entry for the anxiety of figuring out the complex holiday gratuity ettiquette. (I’m apparently not alone in that.)

For the last 15 years, though, I had a walk up. I loved the apartment, hated the walkup. For the first ten years, it was four full flights. After we bought the apartment below us and did a combination, we lowered the entrance by one flight, which seemed like heaven.

But still, every trip to the grocery carried with it the dread of three or four trips up the stairs with heavy bags straining my increasingly weak and out-of-shape arms and shoulders. (My wife, who is otherwise pretty liberated, draws the line on carrying bags, having explained that it is one of the perks of the ring). And every holiday getaway was wonderful, except that toward the end of the trip I’d start thinking about carrying those bags back up the stairs.

So now, finally, I have an elevator in my new condo in the suburbs. And now just any elevator. We have the whole top floor of the building, so we’re the only ones who use the elevator for that floor, and have that cool keyed access — no one can take the elevator to our floor but us, and the elevator opens up into a private hallway leading to our unit. Pretty neat. Impressive when people come to visit. Not that anyone has visited, but theoretically impressive.

And on top of that, the prior owner left us with a simple but magical gift — an old shopping cart that she apparently stole from a supermarket. You wouldn’t think this was a big deal, but it’s like manna from heaven to me. I come home from the market, pull into one of my parking spaces in the basement garage, roll the shopping cart over (it sits unmolested in one of our parking spaces), fill it up with groceries, roll it into the elevator, take out my nifty key, take the elevator upstairs, roll the car into my hallway, unlock my front door, and just roll it into right into my kitchen. It’s like my favorite part of the condo, being able to roll groceries into my kitchen.

It’s the simple things.

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Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With:

Someone is STILL Stealing My Newspaper

August 24, 2009 by

Someone is STILL stealing my newspaper.

I’m starting to wonder if I’ve moved into a scary netherworld, whether all the stories you hear about how wonderful the suburbs are because of their safety and security is just a lie, a scam. That really the suburbs are filled with cheap people who steal your newspaper.

So no New York Times again this morning, second time this week. We seemed to be doing well the last few weeks, but now my paper thief has returned. Maybe, like in all those Law and Order episodes, what’s happened is that he was in jail for the past few weeks, and has been thereby unable to steal my paper. But now he’s been released, and he needs his Frank Rich fix. I wonder if I can get my local police department to do a search of people who’ve been in jail for just the past month or so, and were recently released, and live in my building. That’s probably a lot of bother.

What’s worse is that they keep stealing the SUNDAY paper, not the weekday. Maybe they’re a big (and deeply ironic) fan of the “Ethicist” in the Sunday magazine. But as much as I hate someone stealing my weekday paper, it’s worse on the weekend because you have to go buy the replacement paper at retail and get all the Sunday sections, even those sections that came in the Saturday paper the day before. So I have to go pay $4 for a paper that I’ve already half-read. And on top of that, the Times will only reimburse me for like $2, which is the prorated value of the Sunday paper.

You would think that this wouldn’t bother me so much, but, well, things apparently bother me a lot. I should talk to someone about that. But, man, there’s nothing worse than throwing on some shorts, getting your coffee, and walking downstairs to get your paper only to find an empty table.

I’ll keep you updated, because I know this is just as important to you.

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Filed Under: Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: ,
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