If I've been bad at replying to all of my messages in the past, then I am absolutely hideous at it now, and I apologize for it. I could tell you of all the hundreds of things piled up in all of my inboxes from people I love dearly, but it would annoy you and make me feel guilty, so we shall leave it at that.

Life is very exciting right now. I am in New York, visiting colleges and feeling exhausted even though it is only about 7:00pm.

If you follow the work of or have extra money burning a hole in your pocket, or are shopping for someone who likes this sort of thing, she has a very cool toy that she made and is trying very hard to sell to lots of people so that she can keep her car. She lives in california, last time I checked my journal inbox, so if she doesn't have a car then she's pretty screwed.

New York is absolutely beautiful, I don't understand how people can possibly live in the little boxes that we call apartment complexes back home. Maybe I'm wrong, but even the mostly residential areas (as residential as NYC can get, I guess) have beautifully built houses. Even the smelly parts of town with all the cranes, scaffolding, bags of trash, rats, etc are very pretty. The trees have really vibrant, yellow leaves that are dropping all over the place in huge piles. I knew that this was supposed to happen with deciduous trees in theory, but I had never seen it in practice until recently. Pretty amazing. I had the impression that the city was a concrete fortress devoid of all life because it is absolutely freezing all of the time, but the weather is unseasonably warm and there are actually far more trees here then there are back home, where there is supposedly more room for trees because people aren't living on top of one another. Apparantely the summers are warm. Very odd.

We rode on the subway during rush hour and didn't die.

We rode on the subway on a saturday, from Times Square, and didn't die.

We ate bagels from a bagel store that claimed to have the best bagels in the world, and then we ate cupcakes from a bakery that my cousin says makes the best cupcakes in the world, and I've had two cups of iced tea so far and both have been absolutely amazing.

They've put up scaffolding around the Rockefeller Christmas Tree because they need to hang all of the lights, and we watched that. The tree topper is this ridiculous star covered with crystals from that company with the swan as a logo that sells their wares at Michaels a lot of the time.

Also, apparantely it is mandated that every freaking building in Times Square has to have lights on their signs, even if it was a police station or an Ann Taylor or whatever, so that was filled with ridiculous gaudy lights all over the place and things that moved and shimmered and all sorts of things. There was a small carousel in the Toys R Us building. My goodness. I haven't bought any shiny chachkis because I haven't had the time and I am terrible at that sort of thing. But that is the joy of vacation, to be extremely stingy until you realize that you need to bring something home for so and so who is so nice to you all of the time, whereupon you buy some piece of crap or another that costs about five dollars only to find out that they are selling it bigger and better made in a less touristy place for about three dollars.

But that's how people make a living.
Trust me, I force my shitty piece of crap souvenier to be WORTH the money that I spent on it.

Ug, I am having a disgustingly good time here though. We looked at colleges on friday, but have been spending the rest of the time being towed around by my cousin, who's lived here for several years and is amazing. Even when we aren't playing tourist, I love her grocery store, I love her creaky wooden floors, I love the strange convoluted elevator machine that she needs to use to get to her apartment, I love all of the narrow handicap slaughtering stairs in every single building, I love that there are no public restrooms anywhere except for Starbucks and Barnes and Nobles (Hasn't been a problem yet), I love how the taxis threaten to run you over, I love how people walk into the middle of the street into speeding traffic and the "walk" sign flashes on and saves them from being squished like bugs (we won't talk about the one time I felt brave enough to try to anticipate the traffic patterns), I love how everyone is stomping around in stylish boots and coats and crap, I love how it is frigid outdoors and sweltering indoors, I love the musicians on the subways...
...my list is getting too long.

There's definitely a grim side to it. I don't want to give off the impression that I think everything about this city is wonderful and that I am infatuated beyond my better judgement.

My camera isn't working too well, so I haven't been taking a lot of pictures.

There's a Tim Burton exhibit, a Jane Austen exhibit, and the Statue of Liberty to look at tomorrow.
There are so many things to look at that I really haven't been able to tell people where I want to go. All I have in my head are names of places from songs and pop culture that I know are huge tourist spots but never really understood why people came from all over to oogle at them. But I really like being led from place to place by the person I'm staying with, because she knows what she's doing and can give insightful commentary on everything.

Oh! And I am getting my fill of Christmas decorations, which is nice, because I always associate the big city with ridiculously gaudy holiday celebrations and I was afraid I would miss it because it is barely even Thanksgiving week. But I am seeing everything being set up and it is all very nice.

Anyways, I love you all. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?