Day 6

Woke early and unhappily to the sound of the buzzer blaring this morning. At first I thought it was the apartment phone - then I remembered that we don't have one. It was the USPS man, delivering the last of my boxes - at 7:30 am! Oh yes, he told me as I half-blindly signed the slip (didn't have my contacts in yet) - we start delivery at 7 am. Egads.

Spent the morning making my room into some semblance of a home. I realized it's about the size of the single room I had briefly senior year in college, so surely I can make it work. But no standard-issue college furniture to work around. No furniture at all in fact. Makes me kind of wish I had the college-issue stuff... Now I have a comfy bed, a closet full of clothes and the rest of the square inchery is boxes. But I know where things are. Kind of.

It was a pretty, sunny day but I stayed inside fretting over my room and over job applications, and finally I got fed up and escaped to Central Park. It was the first time I had been there and it's only a block-and-half away! And that block-and-a-half makes all the difference. Baby-faced drug dealers on our street give way to doorman buildings the tree-shaded parkside avenue that is Central Park West. I'm saving hundreds of dollars living that one block over.

Jen and I were supposed to go get mani/pedis but Lisa B. from Austin invited me downtown to a bar where she was meeting friends, so I convinced Jen to go to that instead, even though she'd just come from downtown. I hadn't been able to tell her not to come Uptown, since she was on the subway and didn't get my call. That's one of the few inconvenient things about New York, communication-wise: zero phone service on the subway. When will they install cellular towers underground?

We met up with the crew at a bar called Heathers, which loops the movie Heathers over and over and is self-consciously unpretentious. I liked it. They have happy hour during the week until 9, and it's two for one drinks - Austin prices in New York!
Then Lisa had to go and Jen and I followed the bartender's recommdation to a little Thai spot a few blocks down Avenue A, which must have been in the guidebooks because it was full of foreigners. But yummy! And Austin prices again. I think I love the East Village (it's where I can afford to eat and drink, but not to live).
Then it was home on the train as usual.