- Note that Brasserie 8 1/2 has concocted from a certain cereal a “fritteresque” dessert they’re calling Special K Holes, but refrain from explaining why that’s funny. [via Gawker]

- Do savage violence upon anyone seen wearing NYC Bloggers merchandise; while the site has its many and various uses (the reviews are generally quite good), there’s no excuse for a baseball jersey advertising the wearer as a Brooklyn Blogger.

- Thank the rest of the world (apart from the Australians and New Zealanders, who were covered yesterday), for the birthday wishes and whatnot.

- Thank the grandparents for understanding the whole college student winter break thing and waiting until 10am to call with birthday wishes (even though they’re up by 7am).

- Cast dire aspersions upon the character and indeed the very soul of each professor who has yet to submit his or her textbook list to the bookstore, placing heavy emphasis on the fact that classes start tomorrow morning, you ill-mannered heathens, and wondering aloud when, exactly, the unfortunate students of such professors might be expected to acquire their books.

- Agree with Dooce, re: a woman’s right to use as much god damned toilet paper as she so desires, but express dissatisfaction with the floofy squishy quilted kinds that leave weird toilet paper fuzz in their wake.

- Celebrate the long-awaited arrival of the Common Reader catalog with a shamelessly gleeful dance of orgiastic dorkery; compound this with little squealy noises upon discovering that the new Granta was delivered on the very same day. No more trying to learn Russian on the train in the morning so as to at least be able to read a newspaper over someone else’s shoulder; between them, the Common Reader catalog and an unsullied Granta make for a good couple days’ worth of commutes taken care of.

- Partake of some leftover Skyy and tonic from NYE to wash down that excellent Thai lunch because, dammit, it may be a school night but it’s also my birthday.

Although my birthday isn’t until tomorrow, Crispy decided we should do birthdayful things today since I have classes starting Tuesday morning (!). The main event was an excursion to the New Jersey Ikea via their cute little shuttle bus thing, which leaves from the Port Authority in Manhattan. We valiantly braved the Sunday afternoon crowds and I left with a bunch of fantastic kitchen stuff for fantastically cheap and tummies full of unpronounceable but mightily tasty Swedish food.

Tonight we’re staying in with Vice City and Masterpiece Theatre, because I am, after all, getting old; tomorrow’s plans include lunch at my favorite Thai place and home early enough to get some sleep before class. I haven’t had to get up before 7 in over a month now, and I don’t relish trying it on Tuesday on two hours’ sleep (or whatever).

Thanks to all you crazy Australians and New Zealanders who’ve sent birthday cards (what with it already being tomorrow there, today), to my folks for the gift certificate, to Crispy for the Ikea Adventure and this gorgeous Poe collection, and of course my Mothman plushie.

1. While exiting a blissfully warm shower to stand dripping in a Januaried apartment with remarkably sporadic heating ranks high on the list of unpleasant ways to exit a blissfully warm shower, the experience can be immensely improved if you leave your clothes on your sporadically functioning heater while you’re in the shower, because while it’s this huge crushing disappointment if you find them still cold when you’re done (because of the sporadic functioning of the heater), the risk of suffering the huge crushing disappointment is more than outweighed by the absolute heaven that is putting on freshly heater-toasted clothes after your shower.

2. Yes, that was all one sentence.

3. The absolute heaven of freshly heater-toasted clothes and the relative difficulty in obtaining it has led me to contemplate what would happen if I were to try microwaving my clothes. On the one hand, I’m picturing a firey inferno in what used to be my microwave, consisting of, like, my favorite pajama bottoms and my Clockwork Orange hoodie that I like to sleep in. On the other hand, I’m picturing my clothes being seriously warm after maybe eight seconds on medium, although I guess defrost might be wiser for the pajama bottoms.

4. Speaking of showers and getting back to this whole discovery theme here for just a minute, it turns out that these people make a Banana Nut three-in-one shampoo, conditioner, and body wash that functions more effectively as a shave gel than any shave gel I’ve ever used in my life. I ran out of my usual shave gel a few days ago, you see, and of course I haven’t remembered to write down on the little Chococat notepad on my fridge that I’m out of shave gel and so I haven’t remembered to buy any; this has led to drastic mid-shower measures as it never occurs to me until I’m sopping wet and in need of shave gel that I’ve forgotten, yet again, to buy some. But so this Banana Nut stuff - not only does it work really, really well with regard to shaving but it smells really wonderful in a making-me-hungry kind of way. Although crazy people who don’t like bananas probably wouldn’t agree.

5. It turns out, too, that it’s really more difficult than I would have thought to get a sock on over an Ace bandage, especially when it’s one of those newfangled sticky Ace bandages that’s supposed to obviate the need for the little clippy things that fasten Ace bandages but really just make it so that when you’re trying to get the sock on, the fucking bandage just sticks to the sock instead of itself.

It’s provoking some minor and rather predictable incomprehension that I’m actually heading back to classes on Tuesday; even more so than the start of 2003, the arrival of beginning of this semester has made me realize that it’s now been a full year since I went back to school. This time last year I was wondering if I remembered how to write an academic paper and whether it was really such a good idea to spend another three years finishing a philosophy degree, of all things.

The three years has been compressed to a remaining one and a half after some leftover credits got transferred (thank you, AP exams and thank you, Harvard Summer School) and I suppose I do still know how to write a paper, but I’m still having trouble getting my head around the fact that it’s already been a year. I’m sure I’ll be saying the exact same thing come next January. Anyhow, after a rousing bout of textbook shopping this morning and plans to use my remaining days of freedom to their utmost capacity for lethargy, I suppose I’m looking forward to classes starting again. More or less.

I’ve been seeing those FreshDirect ads around Manhattan for a while now. I have fond, fond memories of Kozmo my first year in New York, so I decided I’d give FreshDirect a whirl since it seems to be of approximately the same ilk, although the emphasis is on groceries rather than movie rentals and a weird selection of other products. FreshDirect probably doesn’t let you rent Dirty Dancing with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a bottle of conditioner at 2am, but I figured it might be worth it nonetheless. My grocery shopping here is limited to what I can carry, reasonably enough, since I don’t own a car, so a web-based grocery delivery service has a certain appeal.

I tested my own zip code and wasn’t surprised to see FD doesn’t serve my part of Brooklyn - I’m about as far from Manhattan as you can get and still be in one of the boroughs. What really amused me, though, was the same error message when I tried the zip for my old apartment in Manhattan (10003): apparently, Greenwich Village is not included in “metro New York”. Thank goodness I have FreshDirect to give me an urban geography lesson - otherwise, how would I have known?

Although not the first tidbit of news recently regarding NYC Transit, the plan to eliminating subway tokens actually piqued my interest rather than frustration. Since the advent of the single ride MetroCard, I’ve actually kind of wondered why tokens are still around. Single ride cards are paper and valid for only two hours, so they aren’t the kind of thing you’d want to carry around with you all the time - but that’s what regular MetroCards are for. Cards are easier to keep in your pocket or wallet than a handful of metal pieces, and the 10% discount for card purchases over $15 (which amounts to one free ride per ten purchased) doesn’t apply to tokens.

I’m curious about what will happen to all the tokens. I’ve still got a few sitting in my change jar, I think; I can just see myself ten years from now showing them off to the younguns and explaining how in my day, the walk to the Q station was uphill both ways.

Less appealing than contemplating the future of obsolete tokens is contemplating how I’ll afford to pay subway fare at all if (or rather when, as it’s starting to appear inevitable now) the proposed fare hike to $2.00 per ride takes effect. When I first moved here, the current $1.50 ride seemed a bit steep after Boston’s 85 cents - which I hear has also increased - but that changed pretty quickly to amazement once I understood exactly the scale of the subway system. In terms of distance, a commute like mine, from the depths of Brooklyn, would in Boston merit a ride on the Commuter Rail train rather than the subway itself, but New York is just on an entirely different scale, and so is its subway. $2.00 a ride, though - that’s going to take even more getting used to.

So, okay. I mentioned briefly my dabbling with iCal, and how I wet my pants over the whole subscription thing, right? And one of the calendars I subscribed to was naturally enough the one published by my friendly neighborhood Apple store, right? So then this morning I’m looking at the events listed and I happen to notice that there’s an advanced Jaguar workshop this very afternoon, and I happen to notice that I also have to return videos this afternoon which means I’m going to be in the neighborhood anyway, so that’s how I ended up going to an advanced Jaguar workshop at the SoHo Apple store.

And, see, I can’t really complain all that much because it was free and the long-suffering Apple employee teaching it did maintain an admirable patience and good humor despite being subjected to unbelievably vapid questions and painful attempts at sarcasm from iBook-toting soul-patch-sporting OS 9 users who figured they should just skip the beginner level workshops since they’re, like, totally beyond that - but at the same time I do have to complain a little bit because there wasn’t anything even a little bit advanced about it, and I walked out an hour and a half later with two new tidbits of information (one of which turned out to be wrong when I looked it up from home). When I think “advanced Jaguar workshop”, I don’t think I’ll be learning what a contextual menu is, or how to customize icons, or why PDFs are cool. That’s all stuff you need to know, definitely, but if that’s advanced then I shudder to think what the beginner session was like.

But on the other hand, I did get to molest the iPods.

1. The Powerpuff Girls Movie might just be the cutest thing in the entire world at all ever. I meant to see it in the theatre but never got around to it; I sort of suspect that watching the DVD in the privacy and relative quiet of my cozy little apartment was an experience infinitely preferable to watching it in a theatre full of little girls and their parents. Either way, I adore it, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

2. Chris recommended Monsters, Inc which I wasn’t expecting to like but which I did, actually, like. It was entertaining without being entirely vapid and any movie that includes a friendly yeti gets bonus points. Even unfriendly yetis get bonus points, though. I approve of yetis; you could fairly say that I am pro-yeti.

3. Pokemon: The First Movie was really, really dumb. I have no excuse for watching it; I deserve whatever I get, especially if what I get has anything to do with Pikachu because god dammit I can’t help it that Pikachu might be the cutest thing in the world if not for the Powerpuff Girls.

4. Rosemary’s Baby isn’t for children, but there’s a child in it! Chris and I caught it on cable last night; I hadn’t seen it in years and now the fucking lullaby will be stuck in my head for all eternity but it’s worth it. What have you done to his eyes?

What I love about academia, what really makes me revel in this whole blissful college kid thing despite the fact that I’m going to be twenty two in a week and I’m really ready to graduate any time now, what really bakes my cake as far as university is concerned: the vacations. Seriously, I dig the whole full time employment thing (the really phenomenal dearth of positions available for web developers being the deciding factor in my return to NYU about a year ago), and I’m sure I’ll continue to dig it when I’ve done the cap and gown thing once and for all, but casual Fridays have nothing on college vacations. I can fully enjoy drinking a pot of coffee after midnight and playing Silent Hill 2 until the sun comes up (and I do fully enjoy it) for an entire month. No piddling allocation of “personal days” when exams are over and MLK day is still a week away. Hooray for education!

- When discussing the impending start of the spring semester, manage to casually mention getting a 3.9 overall for the fall term but avoid bitching about still being on the waiting list for History of Modern Philosophy

- Harass the Philosophy department about still being on the waiting list for History of Modern Philosophy as a junior major, fer chrissakes

- Write up a To Do list consisting of vast epic projects to be completed before the impending start of the spring semester, ignoring the fact that there’s like a week left of winter break and that even though writing up a to do list of vast epic projects to be completed in that time might feel like actually accomplishing something, it isn’t really accomplishing anything at all, really

- Acknowledge tendency to use run on sentences and passive constructions when forming To Do lists

- Thank everyone who wrote in with various ways to circumvent that ugly brushed aluminum thing but get distracted before implementing any of them and end up downloading iCal instead, finally

- Admit to girlish squeals of joy upon seeing stash of calendar subscriptions available at iCalShare