21 Questions

NYMag.com has a regular feature on their Daily Intel blog called "21 Questions." They ask various people the same set of questions, but most of the people they ask are, shall we say, not of the underclass. (Every now and then they interview someone who more recently was "normal". Whenever I read it I think, "Hey, NYMag.com. How about you ask me those 21 questions and see what someone who's not a member of the glitterati has to say?" They'll never ask, but I have a blog of my own, and can therefore take their 21 questions and ask them of myself. So here we go.

Name: Adia
Job: Actor/Cater Waiter/Wannabe novelist and photographer
Age: 195
Neighborhood: BK

Who's your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional? Kermit.

What's the best meal you've eaten in New York? "Free" tastes better than anything else.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job? Wait for the phone to ring or an email to pop up that says, "Here's some work."

Would you still live here on a $35,000 salary? Wow. $35,000 sounds like incredible wealth to me.

What's the last thing you saw on Broadway? Hairspray. My sister was in town.

Do you give money to panhandlers? See question 4.

What's your drink? Coffee. Always coffee.

How often do you prepare your own meals? Every day. Eating out is RARE.

What's your favorite medication? Aleve. Two of 'em, even though the box says one.

What's hanging above your sofa? I have a collage and a piece of newsprint paper with sayings from my "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" daily calendar hanging above my desk. There's no room for a sofa in here.

How much is too much to spend on a haircut? I have a pair of scissors specifically crafted for cutting hair.

When's bedtime? Whenever I fall asleep with the lights on and an unwashed face.

Which do you prefer, the old Times Square or the new Times Square? I wish Times Square would fall into a wormhole and appear elsewhere as some other dimension's urban headache.

What do you think of Donald Trump? When I meet him and he's signing a million dollar check over to me, I'll let you know.

What do you hate most about living in New York? The list is long. I hate: how expensive it is to live here, how people who make significantly more money than I do gripe about not having any money when I'd kill for their "poverty line" $40,000/year, roaches, ignorant fools who drop garbage everywhere when they're two feet from a trash can, how self-centered everyone is, the lack of indoor spaces that are open past 5pm that don't pressure you to spend money, and how easy it is to let weeks go by without seeing your friends.

Who is your mortal enemy? Gainful employment, apparently.

When's the last time you drove a car? July. I went to a wedding in California. I got a Mustang as a rental car. That was fun.

Who should be the next president? Senator Barack Obama.

Times, Post, or Daily News? I read the NY Times when I can stand to read the news.

Where do you go to be alone? No one's ever alone. There's always some kind of critter nearby.

What makes someone a New Yorker? Tunnel vision.

Skinny Mama Kitty

Skinny Mama Kitty
Originally uploaded by AdiaMichelle

I do get a day off!

But Day Off has become Laundry Day. I don't like Laundry Day. But I'm running out of clean clothes, so Laundry Day must commence.

I'm feeling the desire to withdraw again. I've come to realize that any time I'm faced with a tough decision, all I want to do is curl up in bed with a book and a package of cookies.

I've been wanting to do a lot of curled-up cookie-eating these days.

One-Person Wrecking Crew

I REALLY can't have nice things.

I love getting gifts. I love getting the kinds of gifts I could never pay for on my own. But when those lovely, expensive gifts are electronics, I seem to become a one-person wrecking crew. My subconscious M.O. seems to be: "How quickly can I trash this?"

I'd barely had my Razr phone for a week before I dropped it multiple times. The battery cover no longer snaps perfectly into place and the flip lip wobbles back and forth.

I'd barely had this computer for a month when I somehow caused a dent in the lid on the outside (which I think is why I have two dark spots on my screen, but shhhh, don't tell the Apple people that).

And JUST NOW, I picked up the power cord and brick to plug it in. Because I do not think sometimes, I grabbed it by the end of the cord, which began to rapidly unwind, more rapidly than I could get a hold of the brick, which subsequently bounced off my laptop speaker and then off the table. My poor computer now sports a VERY noticeable dent and a shiny new scratch on one of the speakers. *sob*

I know it's just a thing and not a person, and that I shouldn't get so upset over an inanimate object. But my family has this habit of making me feel really bad every time I damage something they paid a lot of money for. They seem to think it's because I don't care, but sometimes I'm just clumsy. And it doesn't make me any less clumsy to know that the pressure is on to keep everything in factory condition. I try to brush the incident off as no big deal, but as you can see from my distress over the new bruise on my compy, I've internalized the fact that "I can't have nice things because all I'll do is break them."

I really want an iPhone, but I'm not sure I want anyone else to give me one. I don't want any one to give me a guilt trip if something bad happens to it.