On keys, and why I shouldn't leave the house without them

5.36 pm

You would think that after the incident in The Hague where I locked myself out of the building at 1 am and had to wake up my next door neighbor to actually get in, I would be absolutely fanatical about making sure I had my keys with me whenever I left my apartment. You would be wrong.

In my defense, when I left the apartment I was with my roommate who did have keys. We were going downstairs to put my suitcase in the storage unit. I failed to realize, however, that the fact that she was leaving to go to the gym right away meant she would not be coming upstairs with me. So I asked the doorman if she could let me in, at which point she told me she didn't have keys, and in any case the super couldn't open the apartment without permission from Christine. Whose phone number I did not have.

I shrugged and went upstairs, figuring that at worst I would be waiting in the hall for about two hours and maybe that would teach me to bring my keys everywhere. Then I realized I had pasta cooking in the oven and that if I waited two or more hours for Christine to come home it would burn to a crisp, possibly taking the apartment with it. I jiggled the door handle for a bit, and when that didn't work I went back downstairs and explained to the doorman that even if the super couldn't let me in maybe he could go in himself and turn off the oven and that really would be better than things burning and setting off smoke alarms and so forth.

The moral of the story, therefore, is not "don't leave home without your keys" but rather, "if you do leave home without your keys, leave the oven on."

5.51 pm

Right. I've survived the first two weeks in New York. I have not yet been mugged, nor threatened, nor even looked at in a hostile manner. My apartment might be in East Harlem, but it is definitely not the worst neighborhood I've lived in. Nobody seems to believe me though, when I tell them that it's really ok for me to walk from the subway to my building in the evening. Don't get me wrong - if it's midnight, I'll be taking a cab home. But there are a ton of people still out and walking around, and regular patrols of both the actual police and the church brothers up the block. Oddly enough, I feel safer around the church guys.

You probably want to know if the law firm is wining and dining us extensively. Not so much. That's not to say that they haven't taken care of us. We went to Cirque d'Soleil the first week (it was totally fabulous) and had cocktails and hors d'hourves at the SoHo Grand this week. Plus there was a wine tasting at a partner's house and lunch with our office mates. But that's pretty much it for the official events. The theme around the office seems to be that if associates want to take summers out for lunch, they should. But I'm rather glad to find that I can bring food into the office or grab a quick bit to eat at one of the restaurants downstairs.

Everyone at the office is super friendly so far. A bunch of us went out for drinks and then dinner last night to say goodbye to two of the summers who will be in the Hong Kong office the next ten weeks. The associates got word that we were all going to be hanging out after work and invited us to Papillion. Papillion, so far as I can tell, is a French restaurant run by a couple Irish guys. They've got Leffe beer on tap, along with a ton of other imports, but there's a full wine list as well. It was packed Friday night, mostly with the law firm/midtown types.

6.10 pm
I'm trying to motivate myself to do a few hours of reading. I don't know that I really have to - certainly nobody will be giving me a pop quiz on Monday morning. If I get through it all, however, that will make my life the rest of next week that much easier, since I'll be able to go straight into the research. And while I suspect this case will take up most of my week, I'd really like to get time in on the two pro bono cases I have, both of which are absolutely great cases.

3.02 pm

New York! Strangely enough, it seems like any other major American city. Worlds away from The Hague, of course. For one thing, the streets here are paved, not cobblestone or brick. For another, as I walk around the city I hear English and Spanish, not Dutch and English. My new apartment is 30-40 minutes from work. Probably closer to the 30 side once I actually know where I'm going and have the subway route down. The room I'm in has a desk and a pull-out sofa to sleep on, and once the sofa is pulled out it becomes rather small. Still, I've got full access to the kitchen and living room, and really, I'd be plain silly to expect a large room in this city.

3.18 pm

Done arranging furniture for the nonce. The couch is now turned 90 degrees so that I can pull the bed out all the way and still sit down at the desk to type. Because I think that making the bed into a couch every day and/or having to scramble over the bed to get to the other side of the room would get old rather quickly.

Work starts tomorrow at 9:30 am with breakfast, followed by orientation-type stuff I think, lunch with my new office mate, and then afternoon "meet the firm" drinks. I'm rather excited to be starting work again. I spend much too much money when I have days off. Besides, you can only sit around doing nothing for so many afternoons before it starts to get old.

9.47 am

We went out for breakfast this morning, to one of our favorite little places in town. We call it the "pirate place" because the old menus had something vaguely pirate-like about them. Not the best food in town, but friendly service, and quick, and the hot chocolate always comes with a mountain of whipped cream and chocolate syrup on top. We got there around 7:15ish - well ahead of the Mother's Day rush - found a table, and then sat and watched the two waitresses make eye contact with us multiple times as they washed their hands, brought a coffee pot around for refills, and chatted with the manager. In short, they did just a about everything they could to kill time without actually taking our order.

We were so frustrated that we walked out. I'm not sure if it even registered to the waitstaff that we were leaving because they hadn't even bothered to say hello. It's one thing if the restaurant is busy. We both understand how that goes, and we've got a ton more patience than most diners, I'd imagine. But to sit at a table, while the waitresses are finding things to do because they're not busy, while they seem to be deliberately ignoring us was a bit much. So we went over to Doug's, which is fantastic, where our favorite waiter was over in less than a minute.

9.53 am

The task for the day: to make a cake with an oven that tends to shut off in the middle of the bake cycle and refuses to turn back on. It will be a yellow cake, with slices of strawberries in it, with vanilla butter cream frosting with chocolate covered strawberries on top. If I can get it to cook, it should be a great cake.

1.55 pm

Cake baked. In a friend's oven. Strawberries simmering on the stove with a bit of Madeira and sugar, to make a strawberry-jammy-type filling. Butter on the counter getting soft for use in butter cream frosting. Strawberries dipped in chocolate and cooling. I'd forgotten how much fun baking is.

If it's Saturday, I must be in SF

5.30 am

After four months in the Netherlands and two weeks of city-hopping through France and Spain, I finally get the "If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" thing. We had a most wonderful trip - I'll be posting pictures on facebook once I get them downloaded from the cameras. Not too jet lagged (although I am up at 5 am, but that's mostly because I fell asleep around 5 pm last night)

A few highlights from the trip:

-- The catacombs in Paris, where the bones are stacked to make patterns in the wall - thigh bones resting on each other make the basic background, and skulls are used to make hearts, crosses, and other interesting shapes.

-- Opera in Lyon - Lulu - a story in which, if I understood correctly, everyone ends up dead except the lesbian, who vows to study the law so that she can work for women's rights.

-- Watching the Arsenal/Manchester United soccer match at the only British pub in Alocossebre, a little tourist/retirement town about 2 and a half hours south of Barcelona.