the procrastinating girl

The Domino Effect

I read only a handful of periodicals with regularity (Vanity Fair, Dwell) and subscribe to, well, none.  That all changed a few months ago.  I saw a promo deal for Domino magazine and actually mailed in that flimsy postcard thingy.  Did I affix postage?  That seems unlikely.  But, like magic, I began receiving this wonderful shelter pub right to my door.  God, America is wonderful.  Then, the bill came.  It was tiny, mind you.  Equal to the cost of about eight organic squeezable yogurts.  Or enough oil to heat my house for 27 minutes.  But I had to pay it.  And we know how that goes.  The bill sat.  Waiting.  For attention it never received.  I even felt a minor pang of guilt as I brushed past it to dive onto the couch and delve into the latest copy moments after it arrived.  But, as I found out yesterday, Domino will arrive no longer.  It is shutting down.  I am very, very sad.  Curling up in bed with my laptop to read design blogs just doesn't work quite as well.  But, at the same time, I've found myself in another situation where my laziness has been rewarded.  Not only did I get a free ride for a few months, but those who have pre-paid for a year or (gasp!) two will likely be pawned off on another 'similar' magazine like Architectural Digest.  Similar?  I think not.  I would never have tartan walls.  So, I'm glad to be kept out of that mess.  But I'd still rather have my Domino.

Gross Positioning System

I am definitely an Oringel.  And it's not just because I kept my name.  Many of my qualities point to my father's side.  One of our hallmarks is that we have zero sense of direction.  My grandfather, who lived to be a very coherent 87, famously drove around Long Island in a twelve-foot Cadillac with a compass adhered to the dashboard.  I don't think he could even find the compass inside that ginormous boat.  Of course now there's more advanced instrumentation to help those of us further down the Oringel foodchain.  I selected the GPS package for my car, in part because it included the back-up camera.  My husband and rear bumper would agree this was a non-negotiable.  But life with a GPS?  I could see!  I could hear!  I could make it to New Jersey without paying tolls!  The problem is, my GPS sucks.  Actually, it majorly sucks.  Like yesterday, we got in the car to drive to the nearby Berkshire mountains.  According to the GPS, we had almost 400 miles and seven hours ahead of us.  A fair assessment.  If we felt like skiing in Quebec.  Frustrated yet again, we ignored the GPS and followed our, yikes, instincts.  And also, in a way, took a lesson from my grandfather.  He would sit way back on that wide leather bench of a seat and arrive whenever he happened to find his destination.  That's what we did.  Just two hours after we left home.

Genetics

I had the rare opportunity to dine last night with my original immediate family.  Seeing all of us gathered around the table, it would take a nanosecond (or an earthworm) to realize that we all share the same DNA.  There are a couple of give-aways.  The first is that we are wee people.  And there is a whole lot of dark and curly going on.  Less obvious is our shared passion for left-ist politics, the natural world and Mel Brooks.  So as I listened to my brother, a man from whom I actually differ in many ways (let's start with the cats), tell how he and his lovely girlfriend Libby made it to the van Gogh exhibit on the very last day it was showing at MOMA, I wondered whether we had something else in common.  He waited on line to enter the museum for 45 minutes with all the other slackers, I mean, reallybusyimportantpeople who made it just under the wire.  If you remember, my family went down a couple months ago and caught the van Gogh mid-stream.  Chalk one for TPG.  But if Ethan is similarly afflicted, maybe this procrastination thing is just in my blood.  Why fight it? 

Down to the Wire

There are specific times when I am surprisingly diligent about research.  Certain people get excited that I am effective and conscientious, and then I forget to buy stamps for like a year and all is right with the world.  Amazingly, I don't always focus on things in which I have a vested interest.  I don't remember showing an early fascination with interior waterproofing systems.  But, yes, that's more the exception.  Travel is the one area where I am a real planner.  I can spend hours pouring over how to perfectly map out a morning, noon or night spent anywhere.  But lately I have been slacking.  Last week we visited Boston.  And the Hilton sisters will sleep easily knowing our girls considered it "a very fancy hotel."  The overnight's success aside, I was disappointed not to have paid with our bagazillion untouched air miles.  Two days before our departure, I had called the American Advantage labyrinthian phone system and, upon human contact, was told that in order to use miles I had to book the hotel 72 hours in advance.  I waited a day too long.  TPG at its finest.  So Boston came out of our own pocket and we had a great time.  This weekend, we have a family function in New York City for which a hotel room would make our lives much easier.  Will we make the same mistake again?  Or, rather, seeing as it's past the 72-hour deadline, have we already?

New Year, Nothing New

Happy New Year to everyone.  I realize that some of you may have been expecting a kind of year-end round-up here at TPG.  You'd want to look back on the great, intoxicating highs:  How I located that missing safety deposit box key.  Or how those Cascade bottles finally got out from under the kitchen sink.  And of course the terrible lows:  How I let my family and my constituents down by soliciting a ring of high-class call girls.  But after about three minutes of thought, I decided I would just go blogging on as usual.  Oh, resolutions?  I'm sorry, my brain just exploded.  No.  Instead, my first order of business for the new year was to hang my totally brilliant Stendig calendar, the one that has been waiting for such attention for months, rolled up in its long skinny box in the corner of my dining room (um, yes).  But even 'the first order of business' in my universe can be a relative term.  So on the third day of the new year, I am happy to say that the calendar has made it out of the box and is now lying unfurled on my dining room table beneath heavy books to flatten its shape.  But sadly for me, THIS position has a real shelf-life.  We're having a dinner party two weeks from tonight.