I just looked back on my links over the past month and realized that this is my worst performing month ever – only three posts for the entire October! That is just dismal, but between dropping airconditioning units, traveling with John to Vermont (I promise to post some pictures over the weekend.), shopping for a Halloween outfit and uninstalling the showhouse I was managing at work, I’ve been busy launching this, my boss’ new blog. Please have a look around and let me know what you think!

I’ve also managed to get myself sick – nothing too serious, just a sore throat and a blocked nose…enough to annoy the daylights out of me, unfortunately. So at the moment I’m focusing on getting some winter shopping done (strange how you never have enough wear-able things when the seasons change), keeping warm and gorging myself on orange and black candy – all in the name of scary halloween!

It has all of a sudden become really chilly in New York and you just don’t dare leave home without a scarf and jacket anymore. In our previous apartment we had built-in/central airconditioning units, but in the new place, we had to buy window units. I hadn’t really ever thought too much about owning or installing these units before moving to New York, but here you spot them all over the show, hanging with their metallic butts out countless windows all over the show. The problem with these units are that during winter you tend to get a nippy draft that blows through their vents, so people traditionally remove them during winter and store them until the heat of summer is back.

We have a unit each in the bedroom and living room and they fill up quite a substantial portion of the window, so I figured it was just about time to remove ours – particularly in the living room. John had to meet a friend this morning so I thought I’d spruce up the place a bit while he was out and figured that it really couldn’t be that hard to remove the aircon unit. After all – if you unscrew the bits that hold it in place and remove the silicon around it, it should just lift off the window ledge and onto the floor, right? Well, I also thought so.

I used the electric drill to unscrew everything and ruined a nail or two in the silicon-removal process. After about 40 minutes of careful unscrewing and silicon-picking, I was ready to hoist the unit off the window, but the damn window keeping it in place just wouldn’t budge. (Just to clarify, my idea was to lift the window up about one inch – just enough to wiggle the unit towards me and then lift it onto the floor inside our apartment.) I pushed and nudged and pulled and pushed some more, but this window was so stuck that I really had to get my weight into it and as I gave it one hard puuuuuush, it came lose and opened all the way.

Oops.

The aircon unit’s heavy metal butt followed the law of gravity and went the only way a heavy-bound metal object can go – down. In slow motion I saw it all happening – the plug pulling out of the wall, my hair flying in the cold breeze coming in through the wide open window, my hand grasping-grasping for something, anything, to hold on to, my eyes wide in shock and surprise! And the next second…BAM. It landed 5 meters down below with a thump – pieces flying everywhere. Eish. After checking that no one got hurt (or our downstairs neighbor’s dog killed!) my next immediate concern was the fact that I was hardly dressed to meet anyone to talk about my big blonde moment. I ran into our bedroom, pulled of my polka dot Marimekko PJs and pulled on last night’s jeans and t-shirt while people started yelling outside – ‘Is everyone okay?’ / ‘What happened?’ / ‘Is she okay?’. I crept back to the open window, stuck my head out and said in my smallest voice, ‘It’s me…I did it!’ Long story short, we are one airconditioning unit short and I am lucky to have six cold months ahead of me in which to save some $’s to buy a new unit with. That damn unit was noisy anyways!

*(Photo provided by one of my hiking buddies via email.)

It’s interesting how quickly the seasons change over here – you literally can go from HOT to uncomfortable-without-a-jersey in one week flat. We’re slap-bang in the middle of Fall at the moment and the best part about this season is the changing of leaves. Yellows, oranges, pinks, reds and browns mix with all the different greens to create an autumn palette that is breathtakingly gorgeous.

My friend Rose and I went hiking yesterday in a nature reserve about an hour’s drive north of Manhattan. It was so good to get out of the city and experience the colorful Fall palette in full force. Many of the leaves have dropped already, so at times it was like walking on a brightly colored carpet made of leaves. (Of course Rose and I had to break the silence with talks (and the odd performance) of air-guitar championships and who we’d pick to be our air-guitar roadies for when we go on tour…)

We hiked over almost 10 miles of mountainous terrain and I’m so sorry I didn’t pack my camera to capture some of the beauty. John and I are going to Vermont next weekend where I’m sure the leaves will be in full show and I’ll be sure to take plenty of pics and post them here for you to enjoy as well.

Today is Columbus Day in the US and I’m lucky enough to have the day off work. Planning a little housework (ugh!) and then I might settle down with Suze Orman’s book on ‘Women & Money’ I bought on Saturday. In these times where the economy is so unstable I reckon I need all the help I can get… Because, after all, looking at pretty leaves might be enough for the soul, but unfortunately there is that pesky bank balance to worry about too.

It’s interesting to know that, opposite from what I’d originally thought, summers in New York are pretty much dead socially. Sure there are a lot of outdoor concerts and summer restaurants to go to, but on the New York social calendar there’s not much going on. Of course all the social New Yorkers are in the Hamptons over the summer (commuting into the city to work, but opting to spend their long hazy summer days near the cool beach) and that’s where all the action is between May to September.

Now with the onset of Fall, however, things are a-changing! And my desk is piling up with invitations to cocktails at Christie’s, drinks at Saks and more. The one event is more creative than the next (Fashion shows inside model apartments to try and get the social New Yorkers who love couture to buy property…) and it’s fun to be a part of it. Exhausting, but fun.

The highlight of the Fall social scene for me thus far was not meeting Jeremy Piven two weeks ago, but rather going to a party last week where it truly felt like I was on a television set with the amount of celebrities that were to be seen everywhere! The event was hosted by Showtime TV Networks (Weeds, Dexter, The L Word, Californication, etc) so the list of celebs I ran into shouldn’t surprise:

* Mary-Louis Parker (Nancy Botwin from Weeds)
* Dexter himself! (Michael C. Hall)
* Evan Handler (Harry from SATC)
* Mario Cantone (who is just as loud in real life as he is as Charlotte’s BFF in SATC)
* Madelaine Martin who plays Becca in Californication and whom we also saw onstage at August: Osage County

I’m trying to think who else was there…oh, Jamie Lee Curtis! And it’s so weird, because I’m truly not a ‘groupie’ or too impressed by fame, but this was such a surreal experience – at one point I almost ran over to ‘Anthony’ from SATC to say hello before I realized (just in time) that we DIDN’T actually know each other and that he WASN’T actually my best gay friend. He was Charlotte’s. And Charlotte isn’t real either.

That made me feel just a little sad.