Archive for March, 2009

I made a friend in the wine store. By made a friend I mean I browbeat a customer into giving me her phone number and email address so we could hang out. Since moving back here, I’ve been hanging out with mostly dudes. The lack of estrogen is going to my head and making me do crazy things. She had to leave, though, so she could ride her broken cruiser up to her house with her basket full of groceries before it started snowing again. This would be somewhat normal if she was my age, but she’s a recent MBA-grad in her 30’s.

When asked what her boyfriend does, my roommate replied, “Well in the summer, he owns a landscaping business.” And in the winter? “He skis.”

At the wine shop, dogs regularly tear through the store, barking, and jump the counter to get at the treats we keep for them. This is completely acceptable adorable behavior. Even when they knock things (ie bottles of wine) down and they break.

When I accepted my new job at Frasca, the fact that it was unacceptable to take a sick day for a powder day was dropped into the rules conversation no less than 6 times.

This town is too small to date multiple people at once. Twice now I’ve been on a date and run into another recent date during the course of the event. Once was in a bar, so that’s fair. The other was while hiking a mountain. Now every time I’m on a date I find myself looking over my shoulder instead of enjoying it.

In Brooklyn I used to get holla’ed at in the form of: “Damn, girl, you fine! You a snowflake!” In Boulder, holla-ing translates to: “How are you today? You are very pretty. I hope you have a lovely day. Perhaps sometime I’ll see you at the Mountain Sun and buy you a pint.” I’m not sure which is more off-putting.

Last week all the college kids left on Spring Break. I’ve never been more excited for summer.

Many Boulderites are like this: If it’s not organic, sustainable, and biodynamic, they probably won’t want to buy it for consumption. But assuming they can find this magical combination, they’ll ask for a bag so it doesn’t break in their SUV on the way home.

Opening weekend at the farmers’ market is a major event.  I can’t walk down the block without hearing people talk about it.

I’ve met a cosmologist, astrophysicist, baker, bike shop owner, mathematician, fashion designer turned photographer, ski instructor, wood worker, cabinet designer, novelist, non-profit head, Slow Foods board member, geologist, and about 9 million professors/PhD students. I have yet to meet someone who works in finance.

According to articles in women’s lifestyle magazines/men’s health magazines/dating blogs/match.com advice center/any place you get self help dating advice, the best way to really connect on a first date is to do something physical. I think the official rhetoric for this one is that your adrenaline is up, so you tend to see your partner as more attractive (and vice versa). Actually, I think this is because when you’re doing something physical, you don’t really have to talk, so you don’t have time to evaluate whether that person is a total moron. Sweat’s flying and all you have to focus on is whether you’d hook up with that person later, which you probably would, since you’re all riled up.

I am here to debunk this advice. That whole “physical” date thing is a recipe for total disaster. This is mostly because physical dates spell competition. Note that with the exception of a touchy feely ropes course, there is absolutely no way to avoid competition in a physical activity. We’re all human. We all want to be the best, even if it kills us. However, collaboration, not competition, builds a healthy relationship. Better to collaborate over a few drinks on a first date so that eventually you can join the same dodgeball or softball team and not want to kill each other for blowing the play that lost you the game.

Take my recent Frisbee golf first date. I like to play outside. There are a myriad of activities that qualify for this: skiing, running, biking, hiking, walking, having a picnic, etc. There is no reason that we should have to forgo this extensive list for an activity that, to me, has never been so much an activity as an excuse for daytime drinking. If we were going to use Frisbee golf as an excuse for daytime drinking, that would be fine. But actually PLAYING Frisbee golf, sans alcohol aid, means unnecessary competition in an activity at which I suck. I am competitive. I don’t like to suck. Be advised, nothing kills the romance faster than a good healthy temper tantrum because you’re getting your ass kicked by your date. Adding insult to injury when your date starts letting you win drives a final nail in the coffin. On, like, date 5, this may be grounds for make up sex. On date 1, it’s grounds for not returning phone calls.

Due to this competition, you may also find yourself in situations for which you’re not exactly athletically equipped. For instance, you may find yourself climbing a giant mountain when just last week you realized that after living at sea level for four years, you can’t even run a mile at your new home elevation. How are you going to be cute and engaging when you’re trying not to throw up for 5 hours? How is it going to look when you fall off a cliff due to exhaustion? I can tell you what will go through your mind during that fall: “I’m going to die on this stupid date, and I deserve it.” I know, it’s happened to me. Dragging my swollen ankle down the mountain while blood gushed out of my wrists was enough to convince me that sometimes it’s okay to just accept the dinner invite.

I realize these situations suggest that your date is better than you at athletic activities. Surely it would be fun if you were the stronger athlete, right? I invite you to think about this the next time you’re waiting at the bottom of a ski run while your date traverses slowly back and forth across the hill even though they said they could ski anything on the mountain. Check your thoughts on the subject when that special person refuses to finish your easy hike citing a migraine or bum knee. Really examine your emotions on your next running date when the object of your affection is dying after mile 3, begging you to slow down.

Sure, there’s potential for serious chemistry on an athletically oriented date. If you’re evenly matched at an activity, able to laugh at yourself, and ready to throw off all pretense, there’s no way to get to know someone faster. But are you ready to roll the dice? Wouldn’t you rather leave the air of mystery? I think the physical activity test is just that, a test: best left until you think you might want to marry that person. In the meantime, leave the physical for the after-dinner walks and the bedroom. You’re less likely to get injured and more likely to have a second date.

“Yeah, so where EXACTLY are you?” I’d been reduced to this: demanding to know my mover’s whereabouts, down to the I-25 mile marker, in order to deduce whether, 5 weeks after my exodus from New York, I’d actually be receiving my stuff that night. It was a fair question. I had a date with a cute dude, and I was not about to cut it short to be disappointed, yet again, by some eastern European-accented smooth talker who kept promising me “2 more days and the truck will come.”

The moving industry is, like, the one industry in America that has really taken that whole we’re-never-going-to-see-you-again-so-we’re-going-to-give-you-terrible-service thing to it’s furthest extension. From my standpoint, the joke’s on them. I move all the time. I love to move. I really get a kick out of it. If I found a moving company that showed me a little love, I’d be a lifelong customer. I recognize that I’m an anomaly.

At least this time around, I knew more or less what to expect. When I moved to New York 8 months ago, it was like constantly waiting on pins and needles to see if the company was actually going to pick up my stuff and then whether they were actually going to deliver it. You learn to just roll with it and trust the universe to make sure it all works out. Plus, it gives moments of unexpected joy when you roll the dice and come up on top. Like, I’d never been so happy to see a couple of lip-ringed tattooed guys in my life as I was on that blistering hot day in August. Who cares that they smoked in my apartment? I was too busy kissing all of my worldly possessions hello and welcoming them into New York existence, feeling as if I’d been given a second chance at life, pulling through when fate was uncertain.

Perhaps this is why I took such a nonchalant attitude toward my movers the second time around. And why I was irritated but not actually nervous when 3 gruff dudes who didn’t even really speak English showed up to haul away my furniture. I was swindled, to be sure, but that’s how they get you. What are you going to do, call another mover the day before your flight? After refusing to pay them a “little something out of the kindness of my heart,” I went on my merry way to Colorado, confident that my stuff would follow me in 7-14 days.

13 days later, I began the series of phone calls that likely made everyone at Expedient movers dread their morning. At first I was nice. “Just checking on the status on my move.” “It’s coming, the driver will call you.” 7 days later and no call from the driver, I began to get a little irritated.

“It’s been 3 weeks. You said 7-14 days.”

“Monday or Tuesday.”

(Tuesday) “So where’s my stuff?”

“Thursday or Friday.”

Panic crept up on me during week 4, and I threatened to have my lawyer give them a call. “The truck will be there Wednesday.”

On Wednesday, I get a call from the dispatcher. “There’s been an accident.” Sure, I thought, aka, you accidentally sold all my stuff on EBay. “You’re stuff’s ok, but we have to bring out another truck.” Great. So it’ll be AT LEAST another week.

I started calling the dispatcher every day. “Morning, sunshine, just checking on the status of my move. Hope you like a little bitchiness with your morning coffee.” And if he didn’t answer, I was like the annoying girlfriend who just keeps calling. Without leaving a message. Over and over. Until he would pick up out of sheer frustration.

Finally, the day arrived when a driver actually did give me a call. “We’ll deliver Friday evening.” So what did I do? On Friday, I called him every hour on the hour for a status update. Mile marker style. Hey, at this point I was doubting my stuff would come at all. I was willing to pay the price for OCD medication later if I was proved wrong.

At 10 pm, a couple of sketchy dudes pulled up with a huge truck and started unloading my stuff. Relief set in, but not enough that I didn’t hang out right next to the truck until everything was unloaded into my house. I gave them a bottle of wine for putting up with me (see, I do have a kind heart… and a lot of free wine) and then began to open the boxes.

The irony of the situation? I’ve been living without this stuff for 5 weeks and with the exception of my bed, haven’t really missed anything. So as I go through it all, I realize I kind of wish they had sold it on EBay. Besides the endless drama and fun such a situation would have created, I also wouldn’t have to unpack.

Sales, in many ways, is all about being the confident friend. You know, the friend that you go to for advice and assurance. I love being the confident friend so, therefore, I should be really into sales. Which I am. Except that I’m really good at the whole friend thing and really not that good at the whole sales thing.

Part of this is because I’m selling wine. I like wine. A lot. I’ll pretty much jabber on about it to anyone I meet. But the people who buy wine are often sommeliers. Or certified sommeliers. Or Master Sommeliers. Meaning I am like the sophomore that just declared my major, and they are the PhDs teaching my seminars. So, you know, when I’m going on and on about a wine producer for the wine I’m schlepping, all the PhD really has to say to shut me up is, “It’s a little light in the mid-palate for that price.” I know what the mid-palate is. I theoretically know what light in the mid-palate means (except that really, I don’t). And for that price? Yeah, guess when you’re buying wine to guzzle with your friends during a dinner party, you don’t really think about the mid-palate as it relates to the price. You just think, “This is good,” or “This will be good after 3 other bottles of wine,” and choose accordingly.

The second problem is that I don’t really care if these people buy from me, which makes it surprisingly hard to close the sale. Really, I just want them to like me. They work in restaurants (see post on the restaurant industry for further explanation of my attachment to them due to this fact), so I have this thing that happens where I pretty much just want to beg them to be my friend. Not try to sell them wine. Or anything else, for that matter. As a result, I end up doing really well at the cultivating relationship part. I go hang out for hours with my prospective clients, preferably over a bottle of wine, and chit chat with that slightly aggressive look in my eyes. They take it as sales, I mean it as friendship pursuit.

I’m sure I’ll work out the angles. At some point, I’ll probably spend enough in these places in an attempt to get the wine buyers/bartenders/managers/waiters/dishwashers to be my friends that they’ll feel sorry for me and buy some of my wine. Some of them may actually even be my friends at that point, which is really my goal, anyway. Then I can work on the confidence part, maybe with their help. And if not, well, I guess I’ll drink my losses.

My first day back in Boulder, a random stranger biked up behind me on the street and said, “You know, you’re very beautiful,” and then biked away. I was reminded of my first day in New York and another encounter with a random stranger in which some crazy dude in the West Village give me the finger. I think my Boulder welcome was more charming.

There are other parallels to the move. In New York, I celebrated life in finance and food culture by dropping $800 at per se. Here in Boulder, I also spent one of my first weekends in a top notch restaurant, but this time, I was working, for free, having begged the owner for a job and offering to “intern” until something opened up. And as with New York, my furniture is delayed in transit, so I’m stuck sleeping on the couch.

In the 3 weeks that I’ve been in the Peoples’ Republic, I’ve fully realized why the crazy Boulder people are such snobs about their hometown: it’s impossible to not be happy here. Granted, it’s a microcosm of everything I like: I can walk 2 blocks and have my choice of several of the best restaurants in Colorado, there are more sommeliers per capita than any other city in the country, there are more PhD’s per capita than any other city in the country (which theoretically means people here are smart), I drive 8 blocks to hike up a mountain, I drive 20 minutes to go skiing. My yoga class is always packed with friendly people, the farmers’ market here is probably my favorite anywhere, and business casual is actually just casual. Whatever the reason, every time I crest the hill and drop into Boulder County from Denver, I can’t help but grin from ear to ear and wonder what took me so long to get here.

And so I feel it, I’m going to become one of them: an annoying diehard local that refuses to make the trek to Denver and who feels secretly (or not-so-secretly) a little superior for living in the best community on earth. Pretty soon I’ll have to buy a Volvo wagon and mount a ski rack on it, and then I’ll get a golden retriever to take with me everywhere I go. I’ll work 3 jobs to pay someone else’s mortgage, but I’ll still somehow manage to make it to happy hour almost daily, ski the powder days, and hang out in fair trade coffee shops for hours. And I’ll become part of that club of locals around town that just knows each other.

To be sure, I’m in the honeymoon phase. As with any relationship, I’m sure we’ll have our fights and problems. But, Boulder, I’m in it for the long haul. For the first time in my life, I’m living in a place that I’m in no hurry to leave.

Ok.  I’m back in Boulder and eating everywhere.  So my lack of blogging is completely unrelated to lack of material, I just haven’t had time.

HOWEVER, I had to break my post-New York silence because I heard recently that bacon is going out of style. Excuse me?  Bacon is a classic.  It’s like the white tee shirt and jeans.  It’s the freaking Gap basics of food.  Always a solid choice.

In celebration of bacon’s staying power, here is something that will make you laugh.  And for the record, rainbows do come out of bacon, and foodie or no, I doubt I’d know what a water chestnut is without that wonderful fatty meat.

bacon, duh

Shout out for the link:  Thanks, Rusty, good one.

Vote with your dollar.  Keep bacon fashionable.