Strip It Down

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The few, the proud, no, not the Marines — my blog followers!  I am sorry I have been so derelict as of late, but I am back and I have some amazing adventures in the pipeline.  I have been exploring lots of options that would allow me to dip my toes into the world of interior design. But then I decided to go big or go home: instead of just dipping my toes, I am rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty – or more accurately gluey.
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I have enrolled in an upholstery class at the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts.  For the sake of progress — not to mention my crafty bravado — I chose a simple item as my first project: a piano bench with an upholstered top.  It had been my grandmother and my great aunt needlepointed the cushion.  I marched it into the Eliot School one a snowy night and three hours later my wee bench was in traction – literally.

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After applying the glue to the bench (and myself) I secured the bench from every angle with large, heavy clamps, which is how I left it until next week when I will sand and stain my little bench.  

With my first class behind me, I can already say that I really enjoy this.  It’s active (you really have to use some muscle) and creative (I have picked out the most gorgeous blue ikat fabric for the top and I am toying with the idea of hot pink piping).  If not my passion, this could certainly turn out to be a new hobby! 

I will have another update after next week’s class.  Today a piano bench – tomorrow the world!

Hey Bartender

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Searching for direction in the dark corners of a bar may seem like a depressing scene from a movie featuring a down-and-out, alcoholic protagonist, but it was actually the way this blogger spent a giddy Thursday night.  As the name implies, The Corner Tavern is very much a neighborhood bar where everyone knows your name.  Literally.  When I walked in, Aldo (the Corner Tavern’s manager, and a great and patient teacher) introduced me to one of his regulars, Rocky.  I extended my hand and started to explain why exactly I was there…looking for my passion…I have spent a lot of time in bars…yada, yada, yada, but Rocky cut me off with a nod that simply and quickly informed me that he already knew why I was there.

I had done some research before arriving that night.  I was concerned that I may not know how to make a given drink if the ingredients didn’t double as its name.  But when I got behind the bar I realized that the ingredients are just half the battle.  Knowing how much of each mixer to include was another challenge.  I watched Adam, another bartender, easily flip a bottle of vodka until it was completely upside down, the alcohol seeped into the mountain of ice that filled the highball glass and then in one swift movement Adam flipped the bottle back right side up .  How did he know how long to pour?  Was he counting?  Was there a magical cut-off line in the glass?  Well, thankfully for me there were both.  But at first I started out even more remedially than that: I measured the alcohol in a shot glass then poured it into the highball glass. 
Some Last Minute Instruction

As the bar started to fill up Aldo armed me with a large bottle opener which I dutifully put in my back pocket as instructed by my Jager Bomb yoda then I got to work.  As the eyes of waiting customers met mine from across the bar I felt a wave of anxiety.  In my other adventures I never had to perform so directly and immediately.  But there I was, standing before these thirsty folks shaking in my boots (actually I was wearing Tory Burch Reva flats, I thought they would be most comfortable for a night spent on my feet).  Some rattled off their orders of up to five drinks so fast I couldn’t catch them all.  I will admit I pretended to be hard of hearing a few times; I needed the repetition in order to quickly memorize complete orders.

Both Aldo and I are Really Concentrating

The beers on tap were particularly popular, and that made me realize that — despite my experience with kegs on golf courses and in college dorms — I didn’t really know how to pour a good beer.  There were so many things to remember at one time: hold the glass at a 45 degree angle, pull the tap hard, stop the flow at the right time as not to spill beer everywhere.  I was getting it, but it wasn’t pretty.  It took a lot of concentration on my part.  Then Adam offered me the key, a manta: there is nothing worse than a tentative bartender.  As soon as he said that it clicked for me.  I started pulling hard on the tap, if there was too much foam; I just topped it off until the perfect amount remained.  I then managed to master the Guinness pour.  Black and Tan: check.  Dark and Stormy: easy-peasy. I was on a roll and loving every minute of it.  Bar tending is so social and the customers at the Corner Tavern that night (many of whom were friends who cam out to support/heckle me) were great. 

At the end of the night Aldo asked me if I had ever worked in the bar or restaurant industry before.  Aside from one summer in high school spent as a waitress I was a novice.  Then I got the biggest, most unexpected compliment:  “You’re good at this,” Aldo said.  I am not sure who was more surprised, him or me.  I was on cloud nine.  Had I not been so nervous I would not have felt as triumphant as I marched out of the bar at the end of the night.  This was the first experience since I started this blog (and I hope not the last) when I felt totally out of my element and had to just suck it up and get to work…fast.  It was terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time.  And despite feeling like a failure in the first half hour, in the end I did a good job! 
Now, am I going to quite my job to become a bartender?  No.  But I will happily guest bar tend if the Corner Tavern — or another spot — will have me.

Many thanks to Aldo, Adam, Luke and all the regulars at The Corner Tavern who took such good care of me. 

DJ E-M

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 Those who know me know that I cry at weddings.  And not a delicate tear slowly rolling down my perfectly blushed cheek the way people cry in movies.  No, my nuptials waterworks are more of the whimpering, blubbering variety.  And at Raquel and Tyreak’s wedding I realized that I don’t even need to have a personal relationship with the bride and groom to induce my wedding weeping.  I realized that this innate part of my nature makes the chances of me being a good wedding DJ pretty slim.

DJ Tommy was kind enough to let me help him as he spun the tunes for the happy couple’s ceremony and reception.  I had imagined us scratching old vynls as wedding guests chanted “Hey Miss DJ.”  Ok, that did not happen.  These days the world of DJ’ing is a digital one.  We were armed with a laptop instead of boxed of records.  But don’t think that the ability to create a play list made this experience an easy one.  There was a curve ball: the bride and groom are Cape Verdean (Cape Verde is an archipelago off the coast of West Africa) and wanted to include some traditional tunes.  We had to work very unique Cape Verdean songs — with their thumping beats and perfectly complementary melodies — in with Justin Bieber and Jay-Z?

We did manage to master the mix, but this was not a dancing bunch.  When I am a guest at a wedding, you can’t drag me from the dance floor.  But this group couldn’t be lured out there.  There was more dancing going on behind the DJ booth than on the dance floor.  We played all the requests we received including a few new(to me) dances I had never heard of including the Cha Cha Slide and the Cupid Shuffle (watch these videos to learn the steps) which are the modern day versions of the Electric Slide — where have I been?  Those did get a good number of people out on to the dance floor, but it was a fleeting moment.  These people just didn’t want to dance.  DJ Tommy has the experience to know that every crowd is different, and as long as the bride is happy the night should be considered a success (and at the end of the reception the bride did gushed about what a good job we did) but it was hard for me not to view the night as a failure.  I had envisioned my DJ debut as looking more like late-night at the hottest club, not a middle school dance with only a brave few cutting a rug.  

But I had to remind myself that this night was not about me and my potential future as a DJ.  It was about Raquel and Tyreak, and the first night of their life together, and if the night is measured by the smiles on their faces than it was a huge success!  DJ Tommy and I had every foot in that place tapping, every head bobbing…even if we couldn’t get their entire bodies into it.  So, tears and all, it was a pretty good night for DJ E-M.

Many thanks to DJ Tommy who was so great to let a DJ wanna-be hang out with him.  And to Raquel and Tyreak for letting me share their special day with them. 

Flower Power

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If you asked me one hour into my day at Twig if I was destined to be a floral designer I would have said no…because I would kill all the flowers! All morning I was rinsing vases and putting flowers in them, but I kept forgetting to fill the vases with water. But as the day went on I saw how soothing, creative and fun being a floral designer is.

Twig gets two big orders of flowers direct from Europe each week. The flowers are picked, packed, flown to New York and arrive in Boston the next day. When I arrived at 7:30am boxes filled with hundreds of flowers covered the floor of Twig’s South End shop. My first job was to unpack and count the stems to make sure that all the flowers that were ordered were delivered. Then the “processing” began.

Processing involves cleaning the flowers and putting them in vases so that one stem can be plucked out easily. Twig’s Rob Galeski talked me through processing a variety of flowers and foliage. We started off easy…with leaves. Yes, I started by cleaning leaves. Rob is smart: don’t have a novice begin her first day as a florist butchering expensive roses. We did move on to roses…eventually…I learned how to use a de-thorner and managed not to spill any blood (mine or others)

Then we moved on to arranging. I learned some rules about creating a floral arrangement including the first commandment: thou shall not arrange symmetrically. I also learned that sometimes customers and florists don’t speak the same language. Words like “colorful,” “texture,” and themes like “Tuscan” can mean very different things to different people. We created one arrangement for a customer to bring to a man’s birthday party, which turned out beautifully despite the unusual color palate request of orange and purple. We also created a bouquet using a flower that honestly looks like human brain matter, but among hydrangeas, tulips and thistle it looks lovely.

The highlight of my day was the wedding consultation. Courtney, a sweet, very non-bridezilla bride-to-be, came into Twig armed with pictures and ideas. She is also a strawberry blond with more freckles than you can count so I knew we would get along wonderfully. We — and by we I mean Courtney and Rob (I was afraid to open my mouth out of fear that I would suggest something that she hated and therefore reflect badly on Twig) — went over the floor plan for her December wedding. We talked about colors and flowers. After seeing all the plans and hearing her ideas I am hoping I can snag an invitation to her and Randy’s big day. Hint, hint.

As I walked home after my time at Twig, I was stuck by the fact that my day of free labor didn’t seem like work. Compared to the daily grind of sitting in my office, unpacking, preparing and arranging flowers seemed like heaven – a very colorful, fragrant heaven. It was cathartic to create the perfect spiral of stems so that when placed in a vase each bloom could be easily plucked out one at a time. It was fun to take a request, like the odd orange and purple order, and try different combinations until a lovely little arrangement developed organically. Best of all, there was no wrong answer. Sure, Rob filled me in on the rules of arranging (i.e. no symmetry) but floral design is not a practice of absolutes. It is an art of expression. Sure if the customer hates what you’ve created, you have a problem…but you can’t really get something wrong. Coming from the world of journalism where one wrong fact negates (as it should) the rest of the good reporting you spent days doing, that was liberating. Now I know this is only by first adventure, but I think I could get used to this!

Many thanks to my fine friends at Twig for being so patient and kind and allowing me to spend a day with them. They are creative professionals with a lot of knowledge to share. And most importantly, they are fun!

View all the pictures from my day at Twig.

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

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I grew up with an eccentric mother.  She loves animals and the outdoors.  She prefers forests to fashion; insects to interior design.  So when she told me she wanted to give my childhood home a new look, I thought YURIKA!  My first adventure will be redesigning my parent’s house.  Maybe there is an interior designer hidden inside this former journalist.  I politely offered my services, and my mom bluntly declined my kind offer, “I don’t think your father and I can handle that much pastel.”  So I helped her find an interior designer with a more mundane color pallet, and I got to thinking: she was right.  I do love color, lots of it.  I started to explore what I could try out that included some Roy G. Biv (come on, you remember that from second grade!).  That’s when my fine friends at Twig, the fantastic South End flower shop (there is also a location on Charles Street), answered my prayers.  This weekend I will be a member of the Twig team.  On Saturdays they receive deliveries direct from Europe and those flowers have to be sorted (hopefully by hue), prepared (ie. dethorning roses), arranged and delivered (I may look good behind the wheel of a truck). I love flowers, especially hydrangeas, calla lilies and peonies so I am hoping there will be some of my favorite varieties to work with.  If I can manage not to loose too much blood on those roses, then this may be the job for me!  Check back in on Sunday to hear, and see, how my day as a floral designer goes, or stop into Twig on Saturday and see for yourself!

I borrowed this picture from apartmenttherepy.com,imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Storage Unit as a Metaphor for (My) Life

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If I am going to take an honest look at myself (and what is a blog for if not self-indulgent introspection) I have to admit that I am a newly recovered commitment-phob.  I have always liked having an escape hatch whether it’s from a date, a party or in this case a big move that had me shaking in my boots.  I claim that I was so ready to move to Boston nearly a year ago, but in fact I have been keeping a little secret…in Quincy…a storage unit with all my earthly belongings from my past life in New York City.  I sold most of my furniture when I left Manhattan, but there were some things that I didn’t want to part with or unpack into my Beantown apartment (which is owned and co-inhabited by a dear friend from growing up), just in case this whole Boston thing didn’t work out.  I have spent a good deal of money keeping these things somewhere, anywhere — just in case I had to high-tail it to who-knows-where. At first I told myself that it was smart to keep them, in case living with Erin hurt our friendship (which is far more important to me than a place to sleep), or if at some point a globe that has the U.S.S.R. on it became essential to my existence.  I have a massive tripod and a didgeridoo, board games and lamps.  I have probably 100 books in that storage unit, most I have read, some I have no desire to.

But last night walked down the dark, narrow hall to the storage unit, opened it up and took pictures of nearly everything (I’m actually going to keep the globe and didgeridoo) and put them on craigslist.  I am happy and looking towards the future, and don’t need that escape hatch anymore.

Anyone want to buy a microwave?

I’m Crossing Supermodel off the List

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That is exactly what I thought when I saw my doppelganger, Maggie Rizer, in the pages of Town & Country, “Well, I don’t have to see if being a supermodel is the career for me because the fair-skinned, strawberry blond market is saturated.”  Of course that is not the only thing holding me back from becoming the next Gisele.  I’m simply not built like a supermodel.  Ms. Rizer — who I have been mistaken for on the streets of New York (the truth, I swear) – is two inches taller than me and two sizes smaller (I am referring to shoe size of course).  But this got me thinking about the parameters of my adventures to come.  I may look good with a stethoscope around my neck, but starting medical school isn’t a realistic option at this point in my life.  So I have decided that whatever the future holds for me, it will not include any additional (formal) education.  Whatever knowledge or skill required for my next career I must already possess.   In addition, I will experiment with experiences regardless of the salary attached, but if I realize I was made to be a mime, I may have to cast it aside if donations on the street corner won’t pay the bills.  A girl — even as she explores the great wide open — has to be practical after all.

All images courtesy of Town & Country

Where to begin…well, maybe at the beginning

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Behind the wheel of a Uhaul leaving Manhattan

My entire life I have been a planner: A hard-working, goal-oriented, type A planner. Once I set my mind to something (and I set my mind to a lot of things) I did not stop until finished it. When I was about 11 I drew a picture of myself as an adult. I was wearing a mini skirt with a low cut blazer (with a startling amount of cleavage), running in high heels with a microphone in my hand. I wanted to work in TV and that was it. Fast forward to age 30 and I was living in New York, working as a writer and producer for WNBC-TV, a Frontline documentary I associate produced was nominated for an Emmy (we lost to an HBO doc about sex trade…tough to beat), but as I walked into 30 Rock each day (which at one time never failed to give me goose bumps) I kept thinking “this is it?” At 30 I had accomplished all the goals I had set forth for myself and I was unhappy: unhappy with my job, unhappy in New York…just unhappy. One day I explained how I was feeling to my dear friend Genevieve as we sat on Gooseberry beach in Newport, and she said “Just move! Get up and move!” She made it sound so simple. Then it hit me that it actually was that simple. If journalism wasn’t making me happy anymore — do something else. If I didn’t love New York any longer — go someplace new. While abandoning what most would consider a successful career was terrifying at first, I soon saw it as a necessity. I swore I would move on October 1st, job or no job (thankfully there ended up being a job). I packed up what had once been my dream apartment in SoHo with all its beautiful exposed brick — well, ok I paid others to pack it up– but I did drive the Uhaul out of Manhattan (I have a flair for dramatics and a scene with me physically driving away from that chapter of my life will be great when this blog is turned into a Lifetime movie of the week). I am now settled in Boston with a job that is challenging and engaging, but I need a passion…or at the very least a hobby!  I gave myself several months to get used to all the change I gobbled up all at once, and now I’m setting out to explore the possibilities out there. For the first time in my life I am not doing what I think I should do, or what I think others want me to do. I am just going to see what makes me happy. Let the adventure begin!