The Visa Diaries

I don’t know about you folks, but I have an iPhone. I’m guessing a good number of you do too – Apple didn’t recently beat out Microsoft in market cap for its computers (crazy as that is, and not that the computers aren’t great), ok?? Looove the iPhone.

However, if you don’t have an iPhone, this is not some kind of insider, iPhone-crazy post designed to make you feel bad. Because the iPhone has an weak spot, as I have discovered, and its name is Liquid.

my third iPhone

I first had an iPhone 3g. It served me wonderfully, and I loved it dearly, until about 2 months ago when I went to get Mongolian barbecue for lunch. Looove the Mongolian barbecue. I eat it regularly, as its one of the few good lunch options near my work. However, on this particular day, I must have been making a call, must have picked up my Mongolian barbecue, and tossed the phone into the smiley-faced lunch bag when I was done… Well, when I removed the phone back at my desk, my own face was not so smiley. iPhone did not seem to be working properly. Sure, Mongolian BBQ juice had goozled onto it a bit, but hey, like, what’s the big deal?

Turns out it is a BIG deal. When Mr. Genius at the iPhone bar the next day opened up the phone, he drew for me with his finger the outline of the Mongolian BBQ juice inside the phone… Big goozle. iPhone no work-y. Darn.

Luckily however, I was due for an upgrade. It still cost me $200, but I walked away with a brand new iPhone 3gs. Happy-ish camper.

Until the other weekend. It has been incredibly hot on the East Coast for the past several weeks, and Saturday afternoon there was a glorious downpour. I happened to be caught out in it on my bike and was thinking, oh how wonderful, oh how glorious, the big, deep, raging summer rain. I peddled fast through the drops till I got home. And when I got home… big deep summer drops had permeated my purse, and apparently, permeated my new iPhone. This time my reaction was a lot more than “darn.” Two iPhones in two months is a bit much.

Let me just stop here and say that if this ever happens to you, drop that baby in a bag of rice as fast as you can say “Uncle Ben.” Apparently the rice helps dry it out. I didn’t know that, so I just propped it up, hoping the rain would drip out of it. No such luck. Over the next day it progressed from dying to dead.

I took it to the Genius Bar again. I got a very nice genius, at the VERY crowded Fifth Avenue store (I think the Apple store must be one of New York’s biggest tourist destinations.) I told him what had happened, and he said, “You know that liquid voids the warranty?” I had suspected as much. He peered into its orifices with a bright light. He tried to restart it with mega-voltages. It remained in the next world. He peered into its orifices with the bright light again, and then looked at me furtively. Apparently the iPhone has built in liquid detectors – two of them. On my phone, one was tripped and the other one wasn’t. Company policy he told me, is that if one is tripped, they ask the customer, “has this phone gotten wet?” If the customer says yes, warranty is voided. If the customer says no, it is covered by warranty. He kindly suggested I take that info with me, and make another appointment, at another Genius Bar. I skedaddled away, carefully holding my phone upright, lest the water drip around inside and trip the second sensor.

Next morning, I had an appointment at the Soho Genius Bar, bright and early. I got a kindly looking genius, and was somewhat encouraged that perhaps he’d “work with me”. He took the phone into the back for what seemed a very long time. Finally when he reappeared, he said, “This phone has been wet.” No ifs, ands or buts. No one-sensor-has-been-wet-but-the-other-hasn’t. I tried to prompt him. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Is that really the case, that if one sensor is wet, the warranty is voided?” He wasn’t budging. I could try AT&T he told me. I could make another appointment with another Genius, he told me. But he wasn’t budging. I left disheartened, cradling my dead phone.

One way or another, I needed a working phone. After trying AT&T, who fobbed me off on the Cellphone Exchange re-sellers down the street, where sketchy guys were selling “extra” Blackberries and iPhones, and they wanted $345 for a used iPhone anyway, I realized that Apple’s $200 replacement fee was the best deal I was going to get.

I made another appointment at the Genius Bar, back at Fifth Ave again. When I got there after work, it was crowded again. “We’re running 20 minutes late,” the greeter told me. I sat down dejected and nervous, carrying my dead phone, feeling tired of this whole pursuit of a free replacement. Half an hour went by, and I tried to distract myself, unsure of my communications strategy should be. To maintain the pretense that it hadn’t gotten wet, it had just dies, I reasoned I should act clueless as to what the problem could be, indignant that this new phone had broken, and confident that they they would replace it. However, I finally got called by a very no-nonsense-looking female Genius. “Oh great,” I thought, “She’s never going to give me a break.” All of my will for this issue gone, I communicated the my phone had stopped working in as nervous and guilty a tone as could be.

But she was busy. She didn’t even ask me what happened. She peered quickly in the phone’s orifices. Then she did something amazing: she walked to a drawer, pulled out a replacement phone box, opened it, scanned it, replaced my SIM card, printed out some paperwork, and handed me a new phone. “Your phone got wet,” she said. “I’m giving you a replacement one for free today. Be very careful with it – these phones are very sensitive to water.”

I don’t know why she did it – maybe just to get me out of there? – but I was grateful. And I am now going to travel with a ziplock baggie for my iPhone.

Sometimes when I write about things I buy, I am painfully aware of how trite they are in the larger scheme of things. Especially when preparing to write about something like eyeliner.  I do realize, for example, that the plugging the cap on BP’s busted oil well on the gulf is a much bigger deal in every way. But then I remind myself that the small scheme counts too, and that it is generally what we feel most on a day to day basis. So, with that in mind, in the small scheme of things, I was extremely excited to find an amazing eye pencil!

Sephora eye liner

How it happened was this: I was sitting in Union Square one fine warm evening this week, enjoying a delicious fallafel salad bowl from the oh-so-fun and oh-so-Amsterdammy Maoz, when I got chased away by a trio of crack-ed out street folks. Perhaps “inspired to leave” is a better way to phrase it. However, I should really thank them, because I then felt inspired to go look in Sephora, which I had originally passed by with the very strange thought, “I don’t really need anything from Sephora right now.” However, my slightly raving street friends encouraged me to reconsider, and I realized “Well, don’t I *always* need something from Sephora?” So I passed through the stripey facade in search of what it was that I needed without knowing it.

It didn’t take long for the fog in my head to clear, and for me to realize – duh! – exactly what I needed: a new blue-green eyeliner. I have a peacock blue liquid liner from Mac that always gets rave reviews, but it is a bit much for every day. I also have a greenish blue pencil liner from NARS, but I am saddened to report that it doesn’t work very well. For one thing, it seems like the sharp woody bits of the pencil start sticking up and practically tearing my eyelids off almost the day after I sharpen it. And for another, it is a pretty hard, dry consistency, and I basically have to stretch my eyelids to my ear, and/or press super heard to get it to mark at all. Ouch! I feel like I get a new wrinkle every time I use it. Which I am surprised about, frankly, form NARS, who is generally my favorite cosmetics company.

Anyway, this time I was looking for cheap and cheerful. I wanted a quick, summery make-up fix, not the heavy-duty image investment that so much of make-up, and most certainly anything that could be called skincare or a ‘cosmaceutical’, requires these days. I headed back to the Sephora house brand section, where I have had good luck with the occassional party color before. There is was, a perfect green amidst the broken testers and smeared pigments. I bought it untested, and my gamble was rewarded. The color is perfect for everyday – a a gray-ish green that mellows into a amazonian smokey seduction. The best part, however, is the texture – creamy and effortless as it glides on, it is also waterproof, which means it sticks there a bit longer than average. Often I believe you get what you pay for, but some lucky times, you just get more. Between Sephora and the crackheads, the stars were in alignment.

What is the deal with businesses that produce things in cheaper countries turning around and hawking them here for premium prices? There are tons of examples I could think of, but I am referring specifically right now to John Robshaw textiles. My annoyance is heightened by the fact that I really like his things, I’d love to have more of them around my home, but they are too expensive! I am annoyed because they are traditional – for the most part Indian and Central Asian – designs, made in traditional ways, in those countries. We all know that he is probably paying about $.50 for a pillowcase that he turns around a retails for $100. His wares are beautiful, but its not because he has personally innovated or designed anything wonderful – he is selecting, appropriating, and refreshing from designs and production methods that craftspeople there have developed over centuries. (This funny article from NYMag points out the same for Madeline Weintraub, who is suing Pottery Barn for supposedly copying design from her that she copied from the Moors and Taksim people). Why does he get that mark-up? I mean, I understand a business making a profit, but couldn’t it be a reasonable one?

John Robshaw sheets from Anthropologie

I am realizing two things as I write this. One, there must be some extra level that he is adding in terms of curatorial eye and production quality, because even though you see other Indian-produced or Indian-inspired things around, they are generally not done as well. Either the quality isn’t as good, or the line isn’t as extensive and consistent. Or, they are even *more* expensive, like this precious little boutique not far from my house. As obvious as it seems it should be, doing a good job at any business is not all that common. Maybe its not actually necessary to be innovative, its only necessary to be competent.

Two, the fact that his products *look* Indian is probably contributing to my annoyance by making me think they should be cheaper. The fact is, just about everything I buy is probably produced for pennies in a country like India or China, and then marked up as far as the company can possibly manage before they sell it to me. But when a design looks more ‘Western’ or modern, it doesn’t remind me that it was produced somewhere else, and thus doesn’t remind me how much extra I am paying.

Three, maybe I’m just jealous. Maybe I should be traveling around the world and sourcing lovely home products. Yup, that’s probably it. His fey, self-satisfied product notes don’t help. For example “Crisp and graphic blocks still remind me of mountains and fruit orchards of Uzbekistan and my last trip spent working with the weavers. – John Robshaw” sort of makes me want to barf. Its like he wants to be a BBC correspondent or something.

Anyway, I recently acquired a set of his sheets from Anthropologie, for about half what they would go for direct from him. I also have 2 pillowcases, bought off Gilt.com at a similar mark-down. Every them I look at them I have mixed feelings. I love the colors, patterns, and warm, hand-made feel. And I am still annoyed at John.

Early on when Matt and I first started dating, apropos of very little, he announced to me that he had a great blender. He really emphatically wanted me to know what good quality his blender was, and went on about it at some length. This did not exactly make my knees go weak. “I’ve got a good blender, too” I said, referring to a cobalt-blue KitchenAid that had been my first grown-up home appliance purchase when I graduated from college. He looked at it, and was a bit dismissive, “Yeah, that looks ok. But I’ve got a really great blender.” I think the conversation must have ended about there, because I could not muster any more interest for the topic.

From that exchange until last weekend, I maintained the impression that my sweetie was a little weird and overzealous on the topic of blenders (actually kitchen stuff in general, but I can leave that for another post). It didn’t stop me from loving him or agreeing to marry him, but it did get filed away in that mental drawer where we all keep of secret judgements about the strange little quirks of others.

His error in strategy, I now realize, was announcing his blender asset in the middle of winter, when there wasn’t so much of interest to blend. Last weekend however, when he suggested that we could make frozen strawberry margaritas in his excellent blender, all of a sudden my attention for his appliance skyrocketed. “Frozen strawberry magaritas!!!” I thought, “I’ve never heard of such a genius idea!”

We went to the supermarket and got the ingredients: a big bag of frozen strawberries, a can of Limeaid, and a bottle of Jose Cuervo’s medecino. (We discovered while enjoying his elixir, that Jose Cuervo’s name in English would translate to “Joe Crow”… somehow not as flattering). That’s it: toss these things in the blender with some ice, and fire that baby up. This, then, is where the great blender becomes relevant. If you have one, such as Matt’s Hamilton Beach, after a few minutes all those icy ingredients will smooth out into one fine, slushy, slurpy, heavenly strawberry slurry. If your blender is not quite so great, well, after a few minutes you may have nothing more than some pathetically chipped frozen chunks and that unmistakable eau de motor burn-out. I’m sure you’ll agree that chunky, unblended summer drinks are just about as much of a buzz-kill as sunburn and sand in the bikini.

So that’s it – my purchase this week was summertime joy in a glass. All it took was three simple ingredients, and a guy with a great blender.

Back in March, I went to a beautiful, fancy spa with my mother. It is hard to imagine that anybody anywhere could have stuffed more loveliness and good feeling into one week than the folks at the Rancho La Puerta. The weather was sunny and dry; the grounds were fragrant and beautiful; the fitness classes were fun and toning. The morning walks were magical; the people were friendly; the spa treatments were decadent. And to top it all off, the food was simply amazing – fresh and beautiful and delicious. At every meal I wanted to oggle the gorgeousness of the vegetables and marvel over the succulence of the fruits almost as much as I wanted to eat them. And when I did eat the food, not only was it delicious, but with every bite I could feel its vitaminy-goodness entering into my cells and its phyto-wonder sweeping out my toxins. But there was something even more: it was as if all the essence of the food’s simple, organic life – short but well-lived, grounded in the earth, reaching for the sky, kissed by the sun and stars – was entering my soul. I somehow felt more *moral* with every bite that I ate.

Yes, the week at the spa was divine. And then it drew to a close. I found myself in the San Diego airport, a little peckish. The options, as I looked around at the vinyl airport chairs and the gray utility carpet, seemed to be old tortilla chips with fake orange cheese, and the plastic baggied, slightly soggy sandwiches they now peddle at Starbucks. I felt sad. And the thought of returning to my life in New York made me sad too. Of course good fresh food and produce exists in New York, but it didn’t exist so very consistently in my life. I used to go to Whole Paycheck pretty regularly, but then I changed jobs and no longer work or live near one. I could go to the Farmers’ Market at Prospect Park on Saturdays, it is true, but I never seem to make it. The fast food options near my work tend more toward street meat than biodynamic. As I mentally surveyed the state of my food life in New York City, I could feel my cells shriveling, the energy depleting, and the chemicals pooling. My color fell and my skin sagged thinking about it.

Never one to resign myself without a fight, I looked into my options first thing when I arrived back on the Right Coast. Being the bobo place that it is, CSAs are quite popular in Brooklyn, and at first I thought this was the thing to do. I came close to signing up for one, but then I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to go pick it up during the 6-10pm window on Thursdays when it has to be fetched, and thus would waste my bounty. In the end I settled on Urban Organic. Unlike a CSA, they are not tied to one farm. They buy a selections of things that are in season (all organic) put ‘em in a box and – here is the key – deliver it to you. I was sold.

I get a box every two weeks. It is usually waiting outside my door when I get home from work on Mondays, filled with a friendly crew of things like chard, cabbage, tangellos, potatoes, etc. Some are more exotic than others, some I like more than others, but all of them provide that vital nutrient I was craving: the goodness for body and soul of well raised food.

I wrote a while back about buying a carpet in a Souk in Marrakech. I haven’t been to Marrakech recently, and sadly no upcoming plans to go, but yet I need a new carpet. So I am trying carpet-buying American-style this time, which is quite a different process. No tea is involved. Nor such beautiful, unique carpets for such good prices. Nor the high-pressure, mind-messing sales tactics. Alas.

I need the carpet for my living room, and it has to go with a very specific color: my couch is a surprisingly difficult to replicate eggplant-y, gray-ish brown. Or perhaps its more purple-y, brown-ish gray. Or if I were J. Crew, I might call it something like “Polluted Midnight” or – I know – “Oilspill.”

Finding a color that compliments that couch, as well as the light gray floor, and my bright pink chairs, is the order. It also needs to be neutral – there’s a lot of other action in the space. And it must be cool. I’m over shag rugs, I think most modern carpets with designs are trying too hard, and then there is just a whole world of “classic” designs that really should be called “tacky” and not even allowed through Homeland Security.

I started out not thinking much of this carpet-buying task, but this turned out to be a serious underestimation. I have come to long for a local souk to ply me with tea and apply minor torture until I have purchased several carpets. I will spare you the painful details of all the websites searched and the samples ordered, but I will tell you what I now know: stores have plenty of browns, and grays, and a few aubergines, but they do not have brown-y, grayish purple.

I finally did find one with the right colors, but it was way too expensive – $1500. Really? For a girl who is just graduating from Ikea that’s a bit much. So I kept on looking. And kept on, and nothing showed up.

After a few years (ok, it couldn’t have been years, I realize, but it felt like it) I decided to bite the bullet and buy the expensive carpet. I didn’t tell Matt the pricetag, since he was dubious about the look of it anyway. I put it on my credit card and eagerly awaited to carpet that was so dear, yet so perfectly colored.

Finally it arrived. We unwrapped it, unrolled it, adjusted the placement just so, and stood back to survey it. And it was… ok. It was fine. Nice even. Just not the perfect wow I was hoping for. Eh.

What to do? I lived with it for a week or two. Matt actually liked it. A two-year old narrowly missed dousing with o.j. Then my credit card bill came. The $1500 extra dollars sat rather heavily on that bottom line. I took a gulp, wrapped it up, and trundled it back to UPS. Maybe one day it won’t have to be perfect for $1500, but today it does.

The old Ikea shag that was acting as a placeholder is back on duty. I was dispirited for a while, but now I am back on the horse. There is a carpet out there that will be just right, I have faith. I am considering felt. I will let you know how it goes.

I was at a wedding a few months ago, and at the rehearsal dinner my friend Gillian complimented my dress. “Oh, its from GILT,” I replied, forgetting that Gillian lives in London, where GILT might not be a household name. She looked at me blankly, until I explained the concept: a recession business, good designer collections at big discounts, like who shops anywhere else these days? Her eyebrow shot up with interest.

The next evening, the scenario repeated itself. Different dress, but Gillian liked it also (she’s very kind), and lo-and-behold, that one came from GILT too. I felt a little sheepish for some reason – actually, the same guilt I feel at work each time the mail guys come in with a new personal package for me… from GILT. Thank goodness the boxes are not overtly marked (like exterminator vans and porno magazines) but really the trained eye knows a GILT box when they see one, and I think my colleagues and the mail guys are starting to catch on.

But anyway, back to our story: by Sunday of the wedding weekend, Gillian assumed that my entire wardrobe was from GILT. At the beach, she looked at my bathing suit and said, “GILT?”  (It was not, actually).

GILT is not news at this point, but it is interesting for me to realize that, over a year into my association with GILT, it has truly transformed the way I shop. I pass brick and mortar boutiques these days and think, “Oh god, who would ever buy something at full price??” and also, “Well, that looks cute, but I don’t have any money left b/c I already bought two things on GILT this month…” I do feel sorry for the demise of local fashion retailers… and yet GILT is just an unbeatable combination for me. It my guilty habit.

Here are the reasons its got me hooked:
1. Discounts. Here I have to say that I don’t actually spend less money by shopping on GILT, I just buy things that had a higher price to begin with. Are they better? Are the prices listed actually prices, or were they just inflated to be discounted? I can’t say for sure… but it does make me feel like I’m getting a bargain. (Which means that I’m actually being frugal… right??)

2. Timing. It pops into my inbox every day at approximately 11:50 a.m. I am almost invariably feeling slightly bored and disenchanted with work (the nature of the beast), and welcome the escape. It is a small diversion, a bit of effervescence. Shopping is the opportunity to imagine myself and my life transformed into the fantasy of the person who would wear that thing. Work turns out to be the place where that fantasy is direly needed.

3. Variety. J.Crew and Urban Outfitters regularly pop into my inbox announcing sales also, but I almost never even open those messages. Part of the appeal of GILT is that its got different designers everyday. No annoying self-promotion, no flogging of the same tired pony.

That’s it, the 1-2-3 killer combination. The product itself is almost secondary. It is exciting when a box arrives, but in most cases I’ve practically forgotten about it by that point. The joy is mainly in the envisioning.

What are the results of my association with GILT? For one, my wardrobe has gotten better. For two, I spend almost no time shopping anymore (umm, at least not outside of my lunch hour…) But for three, I have an increased level of shopping anxiety. Or should we say guilt. I live with a faint but perceptible worry that I will be tempted by something in the day’s email.

However, this anxiety has not proven enough to make me cancel my membership. For now at least, the thrill of the occasional jewel/ bargain is worth the demon of constant temptation.

Gillian emailed me a few days later to report that GILT does indeed ship to London. Her first purchase was on its way.

Back in April, I got an email from my lovely neighbor Nick, asking what did I want to do with our common planters? Growing season was upon us, he pointed out, and the dead sea grass in there just wasn’t coming back. Simple and kindly as it was, this email made me want to curl up into the fetal position. I had been clinging to the idea that the sea grass would come back, and his note shattered my delusion. I liked the sea grass – it gave me a sort of Hampton-on-Brooklyn feel – but that wasn’t the real reason for my distress. The real reason for the little knot of panic was that I knew as little about gardening as I do about Arabic, and it seemed about as complicated. On top of a to-do list that was already on code red, adding on the project of learning about what to plant and how to care for it seemed too daunting to contemplate. I went outside, hoping in vain to see little green shoots in the straw brown mass of (clearly) dead grass. Alas there were none. The breath became quick and shallow in my throat.

My seed packets

Fast forward 2 months, and sappy as it sounds, it turns out that sometimes when you face your fears and take ownership of a situation, life really does spring up to meet you (literally in this case) in wonderful ways. Left with no choice, I decided that I would indeed take on the garden task, and a whole new world opened up to me. Problem No. 1 of the urban gardener, no car, was temporarily fixed the following weekend, when Matt and I had a car rented for another purpose. A Home Depot magically sprung up on our route, and I discovered to my delight a whole section not only full of plants of wondrous variety, but also big bags of dirt and even pots. Who knew?! One hour and $130 later, we had the beginnings of a respectable patio garden: a reddish tree that we thought was a Japanese Maple, but have since discovered is not, and still remains unidentified; several creeping Phlox fillers for the planter with bright purple flowers; and a spunky Persian Lilac. As we pulled the old grass and filled the box with rich new soil and blooming plants, I felt terribly earthy and rooted to Life, and I understood for the first time the appeal of dirt under my fingertips.

This exercise would have been enough to stave off garden guilt – my planters were full of living vegetable matter. However, a funny thing happened: I kept going. I got some Clymatis vines for the roof; the Brooklyn Botanic Garden had their annual plant sale, and I came home with a Violet, and a Jasmine, and an happy light green plant with little purple flowers, and an evergreen with pink flowers; my brother came to visit, and gave me hanging plant with bright pink flowers; while at the local hardware store, I picked up some seeds for Cosmos and Morning Glory, and I planted those; another time I got a Dahlia bulb, and put that in a pot too (upside down, I believe). I turned pots (so expensive!!) into an arts and crafts projects and now have an lovely, eclectic collection of multi-color spray-painted pots.

Each evening when I come home, I check in and water the plants. The slow steady progress is incredibly soothing and fulfilling. The plants that have come up from seed are especially thrilling, but even coaxing a bloom out of a pre-grown plant is pride-inducing. Hell, just keeping them alive makes me feel good. This all probably sounds like ‘duh’ to people who’ve been gardening for years, but hey, now I get it. Better late than never to the garden party?

This article caught my eye in the NYTimes the other day. It is about how New York City’s Village is becoming a theme park to its former self. In the Old Days (whenever that was – any time from the 1800s to about 1980 it seems, depending on the revivalist), the Village was a really a bohemian village. Inhabited by all sorts of artistic and/ or gay people who did not fit into mainstream society, they found a community together in downtown New York, and later went on to become famous. Accounts claim it really was a village – things were smaller, cheaper, and less hectic, people knew their neighbors. Actors and writers without trust finds could afford to live there.

The world has obviously changed significantly since then, and one of the ways is that businesses and individuals have become more and more savvy about creating images that can be marketed. Simultaneously, consumers have become more skeptical of those images, and ravenous for something “authentic”. Like other neighborhoods that were the sites of iconic cultural happenings (Haight Ashbury, for example, or a much closer neighbor, Soho) the Village finds itself sought out by people looking for the magic for which it became famous – outsiders finding a home together and having a grand old time, unconscious of how cool they would later be seen to be.

The inevitable truth of course is that the genie is long gone from the bottle – magic exists only as long as it doesn’t quite realize it is magic. As soon as it has self-consciousness of its it-ness, well then, hello tourists and fashion boutiques, hello high rent. Good-bye to that faint, ineffable, je ne sais quoi. Good-bye to the innocence that, by definition, cannot be tried for.

Perhaps the magic of the Village really existed as storied, or perhaps it is only a post-fabricated nostalgic revision – most of us will never know. At the very least, it has been amplified post-facto, like all myths, and the restaurants described in the article are are reinforcing that myth so as to cash in on it. They are more sophisticated and upscale than the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney Land, or even a place like New Orleans Latin Quarter, but the function is the same: create an exotic experience that people will pay to feel a part of.

The Wonder Wheel at Coney Island

All of this came back to me when I went to Coney Island last weekend for the first time. My brother and his family, including Mr. Ben (age 7) and Miss Rowan (age 5) were visiting, and I thought Coney Island would be fun. It did end up being fun, but only after I got over how run-down it is, how trashy are the clientele and the food, how I was afraid to walk barefoot on the beach for fear of what might be in the sand. After I got over all of that, we had a good old time, and I was struck that Coney Island, which is actually supposed to be a theme park, is not. It is authentically, non-self-consciously what it is, and what it always has been.

This may not always be the case – there are various development plans underway for Coney Island. I say run over there as fast as you can, and live the magic… before it is revived as Magic!(TM).

Well hello again, wonderful wide web!
So, I know a few things in life, and one of them is that when somebody says they’ll do something, and then they don’t, its not a good thing. Like, for example, when I say I’m going to be back online with Visa Diaries (as I said almost a year ago) and then I don’t… well, you all go, “yeah, we’ll see.” And then my credibility is shot, and I have to really prove my intention in order to win you back. So yes, I know all that, and I also know that probably nobody is coming by here much anymore. But nevertheless, I am going to open the windows, dust off the cobwebs, put on a new lick of paint, and start having people over again. If not parties, because Visa Diaries never was a raging party type of place, well then salons, brunches, dinner parties, afternoon tea… Time and place to connect and think about the joy, sorrow, and perversity of a modern life in our modern world. All through shopping of course, because that’s how we do it.

Before we get down to business, I want to say a word about why I stopped VD, and why I am back, and to that end, the purchase of this post is: godaddy domain registry and economy web hosting! Between GoDaddy and WordPress, anybody can have a soapbox with almost universal reach virtually overnight. And each website owner gets to set up their little home on the network in whatever way feels like home. It is truly amazing.

GoDaddy and Wordpress

When I first bought this domain and set up my Wordpress blog on my very own Visadiaries.com URL, it was July of 2006, almost 4 years ago. I was living in London between the first and second years of doing my MFA at Yale. Visa Diaries was the online extension of my undergraduate thesis, in which I had logged and decoded 5 years worth of my credit card purchases, to understand the ‘fantasies’ that I was buying into whenever I plopped down the plastic for a new purchase. At that time, blogging was still kind of new, but gaining steam, and definitely a cool thing to be doing – maybe like Tweeting was a year ago. I was psyched to “have a blog,” and I think also psyched to have a platform in a way. Even though it was before Julie&Julia or this (even closer to home, though conceived completely independently) happened, I think I had an idea about being discovered through my blog… ok that’s an embarrassing thing to admit! However, I believe the lesson in that regard is that “being discovered” actually takes a lot of hard work, discipline, and putting yourself out there again and again, and I didn’t have the drive and focus for that. Poor Julie, as we saw in the movie, sacrificed her health and her marriage for her blog. Anyway, I had a lot going on personally and emotionally as I tried to keep it together in grad school, was confused about ending my relationship and life in London, and then moved to New York and trying to start a new life there. The Visa Diaries fell by the wayside.

Now the dust has settled a bit and the air in my head feels much clearer. I’ve been calling Brooklyn, which I love, home for almost 3 years; I have a good job doing graphic design for the City of New York; and, most excitingly, am engaged to be married this coming September to a truly wonderful man. And I’ve found myself missing the Visa Diaries quite a lot. As unlikely as it seemed, examining my purchases was a very profound road to self-discovery. Every time I wrote a post, a new insight would reveal itself to me, and it was incredibly satisfying. Plus, some people read it and seemd to like it, and that was really cool too. Even my dad read it, and that was super-cool . So those are the reasons I’m back – I believe both in living an examined life, and also in starting where you are, and somehow the things I buy turned out to be a very real entry point into making some meaning out of this crazy life. So, if anybody is out there, hello and thank you for reading, and I promise I will be back regularly.

here’s to peace, love, and a new day-
Kate