hard times, good times

New York is keeping me busy enough to not blog as often as I like.

Last Thursday was my office's holiday party. Very swanky compared to the past few years of Seattle parties. We were at Public, a restaurant and lounge not far from my place in NoLIta on Elizabeth street. Servers circulated with over-designed canapes that took mad skills to eat, and everyone got super drunk on the prosecco being circulated and open bar of chic specialty cocktails (who'd have thought to use lemongrass as a straw? people truly devoted to beverages, apparently.). It was a swell time and a great success. When everyone was ready to go home / too sloshed to remain at a company function, a bunch of us braved the torrential rain (someone took my umbrella so I knowingly took someone else's, and I am still feeling guilty) to trek a half-dozen blocks to a karaoke bar.

Though I can say I wasn't as drunk as many (and was blessed with a high alcohol tolerance... but is that truly a blessing?), I was loose enough with my coworkers of five weeks after a few drinks to do karaoke myself. Which is pretty impressive, as I tend to hold my bubbly temperament down a bit until I feel comfortable, and I'm not one to scramble to the stagelights. I sang "I Will Survive," accompanied on stage by every single female coworker. It's one of two songs you can get me to do in karaoke (along with "Brown-Eyed Girl"). The best part was my sloshed coworkers. The normally-stoic dude crumbling down on the floor to sing a power ballad, and the just-out-of-school blonde girl from the midwest doing a great version of "Baby Got Back?" Priceless. And I didn't even pay for a single thing that night.

Downside of that night was thinking that I was close to home and deciding to walk through lower Manhattan at 3 am. I had started somewhat near, but then the afterparty brought me twenty-plus blocks from my place in SoHo. I was wearing treacherous shoes and completely biffed it in an intersection walking along super-busy Houston Street. I thought I was generally okay, but had to pull chunks of skin out of my cable-knit tights when I got home and went to put on pajamas. I now have a painful, skinless knee. Gross!

Next day was a going-away party for a good friend moving back to our hometown near Seattle, and I was so pooped and sore that I couldn't make it past midnight (which, if you're not familiar, is early and not even really past dinnertime here). I did stay long enough however to turn the penises someone had defiled his going-away poster/card on the wall with into palm trees and was quite pleased with myself.

With my closest friend out of town last weekend, I was able to regroup a bit and tackle Christmas shopping. I went to Bust Magazine's Craftacular bazaar on 18th in Chelsea. Which ended up being totally awesome and overwhelming. Not only did I purchase a couple out of twenty-five or so things I reeeeealllly wanted (as gifts, too, alas my restraint!), I got to meet Amy Sedaris as she promoted her "I Like You" domestic advice parody book, and even bought one in which she fortuitously wrote "good times! hard times." But more on why that's fortuitous later. Maneuvering through the crowds five minutes later, I actually physically bumped into Chris Kattan eating a slice of cheese pizza while walking. It was funny because, even the huge Saturday Night Live fan that I am, I don't think I'd have recognized him if I hadn't actually been close enough to bump into him while he was speaking; the voice was what did it for me. I'm not sure what he was doing there, but he spent a good hour lingering around Amy Sedaris' table while seemingly not speaking to her at all. Strange times. To round out the celebrity-fest, I heard that a Project Runway designer was also selling wares there, but I know nothing of such things, so I'll have to trust on that one.

Things have been going well at work. It can be stressful at times due to different personalities, and the fact that I'm still settling in, and people generally take things a little more seriously than they did in Seattle, and do more work hours and less lunch hours. Having an office three times the size might contribute to the feeling of more busy-ness as well. However, I love my projects. I've been working on a city initiative to turn asphalt (really pathetic, encircled in tall chain link fence) schoolyards into better school and community playgrounds. It's very urban, and not a lot of actual planting, but with my interest in education, and here a direct involvement in designing for and with children, it makes me happy.

And then yesterday the bomb dropped. A dozen or so people were laid off. I happened to be at home sick that morning, and waltzed in at almost noon, totally oblivious to the fact that coworkers were dropping like flies. It was a mystery to me initially what the situation really was, though I overheard the general news, and then we had an ambiguous meeting, I didn't know who, or how things were affected. With a slow economy, construction and development is directly affected. Architects were hit much harder and earlier, but the effects are beginning to trickle down. We had a large project financed by Lehman, and that went away. Lots of people were light on work because less work is coming in. There are more firms competing for less work. I think I was safer because I am needed on my long-term, public sector project, and compared to over half of the people in the office who started in the past year, my almost four years give me comparitive seniority. I don't know...but I do feel awkward that I was hired just a month and a half ago; the last one in the door and just another hungry mouth to feed. I just started and am still easing into the office; I don't even really know anyone well yet. But everyone's pretty shaken up, and it will probably be a while before things feel at all normal. Everyone's afraid that it's going to happen again.

Also, no salary increases this year. Boo. Hard times. Enjoy what we have, folks. Don't take it for granted.

Happy Holidays.