Home sweet home

Well it’s been a while. A long while. A long long long while. More than 10 months, to be exact. But I’m back. Back in Gainesville (which some fondly refer to as Gainesvegas, The Ville, Gville or other such nonsensical names). Whatever you prefer to call it, I call it home away from home – where all my friends live and play and parents are not allowed (only for move in and move out, of course).

Normally the start of every year is filled with happiness and “It’s so good to be backs,” but this year it’s different because we all know what atrocity is about to occur. This is the year we graduate. When purchasing Gator tickets will require Bull Gator status, hanging around the sorority house isn’t cool anymore and going out to bars and clubs until 2 a.m. simply won’t be acceptable.

To ease the pain just a tad, my girl friends and I moved in to the most adorable cottage you have ever seen. Ever. It’s a two-story, three bed/three bath abode with real wood floors, stainless-steal appliances and granite countertops. Not quite your typical beer-pong-playing, crazy-dirty, college-kid-type apartment. But it will have to suffice. It's is brand new and all.

Perhaps you’d like a tour, no? Downstairs is my roommate Steph’s bedroom, the kitchen with our center island that doubles as our table and the family room. Upstairs proudly houses my other roommate Rachel’s room and our makeshift workout area fully equipped with an elliptical machine (Now I have no excuse for not working out, huh?) But la crème de la crème is my bedroom down the hall from Rach’s.

One 16-foot Budget truck, two “moving men” (aka Andrew and my cousin, Stormy), and one cranky mother were what it took to furnish my living space. And getting this entire place set up was quite a feat. Somehow the guys lifted all my heavy pieces up the narrow stairs and then were subject to my mom’s and my finger pointing as to where everything should go. After a few sweaty hours, my room was looking pretty in gold, pink and blue. I decided to go simple and clean instead of overly crowded with childish pictures hung on every wall. A mere bed, dresser, end table, desk and television set fill my four walls and everything in between.

Unlike my straightforward room, my closet is a totally different story. My walk-in closet also consists of a makeup vanity, which I so craftily (and economically) put together. My purses hang from the wall and my pairs upon pairs of shoes practically devour the floor. Love it.

Know what I love more? For the first time ever in my life, I have my very own bathroom! Exciting, I know. I lined it with candles and flowers and girly bathroom pictures, just the way I like.

[Welcome home, KP, welcome home. Now if only your roommates were here….]

You see, Steph won’t be home until Sunday, and Rach doesn’t arrive until Friday. Bummer. Gainesville is oh so boring when not so many people are around. Plus, there’s no one to sneak out with to get late-night dessert.

Right about now, as I sit here craving chocolate, I am stuck resorting to eating apple-cinnamon-flavored mini rice cakes to do the trick (not like I’m gonna go to D’Lites by my lonesome). Oh well. Guess me and my comfy-cozy cottage will just have some catch up time.

...More like KP in Heaven

Somebody pinch me.

No really…pinch me. I am sitting at my desk in my chic flat for four - well I don’t know that you’d call “old and rusty” chic, but it’s certainly feeling fabulous.

Just to set the mood, I am overlooking Union Square and peering into about 20 other apartments whose tenants seem to have forgotten to shut their shades to keep my wandering eyes from escaping my 8th floor milieu. It doesn’t get better than this. OK, maybe if I were eating a chocolate-covered apple it’d be better. But I am eating left over pad thai and I’m hoping that you’ll keep me company.

Cue lights.

Well, don’t cue lights because my room seems to be lacking many of those. Instead, cue Pandora and a little Jack Johnson. Heck, grab a bottle of white zin and come on in. Get cozy ‘cause I have been without a computer for five days and lord knows I love to chit-chat. Welcome to my humble abode…aka my little piece of heaven.

Let me give you the grand tour. First door on your left is the bathroom. Two of my roommates, the random ones, who actually turned out to be not that random, have taken it upon themselves to decorate. I am now proud to announce that they replaced the molded shower curtain with a cute blue one, purchased a matching floor mat and put out some blue candles for show. But enough of the bathroom. The rust and mildew can wait ‘til tomorrow when I shower in my ever-so-stylish shower shoes.

Next stop – the kitchen. Also old and rusty, but hey, the stove is gas. Makes my eggs cook quickly. Pretty cool if I do say so myself, despite that fact that I single-handedly broke the pilot light (whatever that is) within two days of living here and needed to have it fixed. And what’s that you see from the window over the kitchen counter? That’s right. The kitchen table and….ah yes, my room. I take that back. My and Jessica’s room. I know what you’re thinking and it’s just as you suspected, the dining table is located at the head of our room. Way to be innovative NYU. Thanks for making our room even smaller.

Jess (remember that name – she is a staple in my life) is one of my best friends from college who is my partner in crime this summer. Not only did we plan to live together, but we also work together some of the time (more on that later). We share a closet, sleep in beds that are fit for dwarfs and our bedroom doubles as the living room as well, but we still love it whole-heartedly.

So now the only places in our apartment you have missed are the balcony and my roommates’ room. Though you’d probably love to see the balcony, you can’t. NYU has taken it upon themselves to nail the sliding glass door shut (once again, thanks NYU). And I like to respect the privacy of my new roommates so let me just tell you their room looks just like Jess’s and mine…except there is closed off like a normal room.
Anyway, it’s the four of us. And we love it. It’s slowly coming along and we hope to somehow decorate the stark white walls in good time. Plus I have to remember, though my make-shift house is great, it’s only a small portion of my NY experience. No need to obsess over where I live. It’s only the stem of the big apple out there waiting for me.

Hope you’re comfy. Day one on the job was brutal. Monday. 6 a.m. I wake up to get ready for my first day at Us Weekly. Yep folks, Monday was Memorial Day but yours truly still had to work. By 8 a.m., I am out of the house heading to the subway, just like I practiced with Jess the day before. I have to admit I probably looked goofy pretending to a “true New Yorker,” walking quickly and leaving my sunglasses on in the metro. So while I was silently chuckling at myself on my 10-minute ride, I realized that everyone in NY is pretending. Or rather, acting. They are all acting like they are New Yorkers, pretending to be reading or pretending to be interested in the ground or their shoes. They act like they don’t care so no one bothers them. With this novel insight, I zip back to my high school instincts and do what I did best then – perform. New York is my stage. The subway is my scene. I act like I don’t care, and suddenly, I am comforted.

I get to work 30 minutes early because we all know the early bird catches the worm, or at least, a good first impression with the intern coordinator, right? I get to work by checking celebrity gossip blogs, checking the Internet Movie Database and checked old issues of the weekly magazine for the past two years. I guess you could say I am a checker. And it literally takes me hours to “check.” Hopefully, I’ll become an expert checker at some point, but only time will tell. Guess I gotta dream big so hopefully they can king me soon.

Because it’s a holiday, the company serves everyone breakfast, lunch and dinner for free, which most people would see as generous. However, this “generosity” meant that I couldn’t leave the building. And everyone in the office eats at their desk while they work, scarfing down food like vultures who haven’t eaten in a year, only to get back to doing more work, just at double the speed then they could while eating. And practically no one talks at all throughout the day. This is a foreign concept to me. As if eating at my desk and being in silent, solitary confinement isn’t enough, the air conditioning in the building is off for the holiday and I am wearing jeans and jacket I can’t take off because the shell underneath is way to skimpy. To reiterate: I am Alone, Silent and Sweaty. I’m pretty much an ASS, which is only accentuated by my next task of the day, or rather the night.

At about 8 p.m., Sarah, my supervisor, sends me on the office coffee run. I trek three blocks in my heels to pick up two “travelers” – one regular and one decaf – which I swear are 10lbs. each. I then trek back to the office and set it up for all the editors, artists and production staff of the magazine. In case you didn’t catch on, I work until 9 p.m. on Mondays. From 9 to 9. 12 long hours on deadline. By the time I take my line home, I am dead and apparently, so is my computer.

My not-so-faithful lap top caught a virus and wouldn’t even get past the startup screen. Thank God my dad had a spare and over-nighted it to me. Even though I really wanted to update the blog, my computer had crashed. So did I.

Time for a refill. Hopefully Pinot works. My next internship finally puts NY on my top 100 Billboard list.

Day two and three. Tuesday and Wednesday. Universal Republic Records. Jack Johnson, Colby Caillet, Flobots, Hinder, India Arie – just a few of my clients. Maybe not mine, but my company’s.

It is with great honor that I introduce you to Sam Brenner, my totally cool, yet even cuter than she is cool, boss. Though I would love to tell you exactly what I do for her, I do so much that I can’t even remember every task in between stuffing CD mailings, shipping packages, organizing the office, running errands and redoing bulletin boards that serve as shrines to the artists on our label. All I know is my days from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. pass like seconds, especially because Jess is also interning with me. And that I have to wear flats every day because I couldn’t even last in my heels for an hour.

The highlight of the experience, thus far, was meeting with the president of the company. He invited the eight interns in my department to this music lounge with plush couches and a performance stage that serves as the heart of our office. He talked to each of us about how our seemingly measly tasks are a part of the bigger picture of the radio promotions department. A genuine guy, nice enough to take time out of his ridiculously busy day to meet with “lowly interns” definitely took the number one spot on my ratings. Plus, the living-esque room is where our entire office can watch private concerts given by the artists on our label when they stop by the office…it’ll be unreal.

The rest of the office folk are young and wear casual clothing. The atmosphere is completely lax. And honestly, there is no where else I would want to intern. Jess agrees. We both enjoy going to work early together and we don’t even care if we stay at the office an hour later than we need to, as we have on both days so far.

We have, however, learned to understand the city’s obsession with coffee. We start each day with at least a medium-sized cup of Dunkin’ Donuts and walk briskly so that we get some exercise (obviously, there is hardly any time for the gym!).

My secret desire to be a restaurant critic can really flourish in this city. If there is one thing there is not a shortage of in Manhattan, it’s food. Every other door is an entrance to a restaurant. I have indulged in sushi at a chic, upscale sushi joint, Thai food at a cafeteria-style Asian-Fusion restaurant, a pound-worth of salad at my beloved Whole Foods, a hole-in-the-wall sandwich and salad eatery, “sinless” ice-cream and yogurt at the praised Tasti D Lite and Pinkberry and, of course, famous New York bagels. I even found a chocolate-covered apple from a vender at a farmer’s market on the street. Pinch me please. This is all too good to be true.

Yep…It’s official. I am in heaven. And, actually, do me a favor - don’t pinch me too hard because I’m not ready to snap back to reality any time soon.