I have a love-hate relationship with hipster-ness. In my neighborhood there are two Mexican restaurants a few blocks from each other. One is owned, run, and populated by hipsters. The food is a healthy-ish hip-ish take on Mexican food. The walls are covered in obscure and obscene cult movie posters. The lights and ceilings look like they were decorated by one of my artist friends. The other is owned and operated by middle-aged people who are actually Mexican. The food is greasy and, well, Mexican. The decorations look like only someone with an utter lack of style could have chosen them. My point is that I absolutely love the hipster Mexican place and rarely frequent the actual Mexican place, even though I am fully aware of the fact that the actually Mexican place is authentic, important, and cheaper too. Yet there is something about being among the hipsters, served by hipsters, served hipster food, in hip looking surroundings that I find so comforting. But I don't want to be one of those people who are ruining my neighborhood by driving the working class out. I hate gentrification, yet I actively participate in it.

I take a perverse pleasure in paying high rent to live in my own apartment in Manhattan only to travel into the heart of Brooklyn for no really compelling reason. My friend lives in Bensonhurst Brooklyn, which is a very funny neighborhood. Everyone is either Italian or Asian, and if you want food that's not Italian or Chinese, you are plum out of luck. Also, there are no bars. I didn't believe it was possible for this to be the case, so a few weekends ago I rode out there on a Saturday night and we walked around for hours. Nothing. No bars, that is, and very few people out and about late at night. The neighborhood is full of old houses, and everyone has stone gargoyles and lions all over their yards and steps. Also every other house has a Jesus or Mary statue in the yard. Some of them were lit up. It got creepier and creepier the later it got and the longer we walked. I remember at one point my friend saying something like "I think this was a mistake. Maybe we should have gone home." We were terrified--of what, I don't know. Nothing tangible. Not violence, mugging, or even the bogeyman. There was something much more insidious that threatened to swallow us up.

This week I went to a mortgage broker conference in Atlantic City for a day. My company had a booth there. Mortgage brokers came by and we told them to use us for their credit reports. They would ask us how we were different from the company they were currently using, and the only answer we could give was "we're cheaper." That's a bad answer to give, because then our company ends up getting more clients but not making any money. The wonders of the business world. After the exhibitor time was over I was planning on going home because I had to work the next day, but the sales guy Darren had reserved an extra room in the fancy hotel where the conference was and forgotten to cancel it so he said I should stay. After a few glasses of wine at the open bar cocktail hour, I agreed to stay. After the cocktail hour we went to the hotel bar where Darren was buying us drinks on the company's tab. After a few glasses of beer and a double shot of tequila, I realized that I was drunk and exhausted and wandered off to go to bed without telling Darren or the other sales guy Doug where I was going. (I've been doing that a lot lately and I don't know why. The other weekend there were people hanging out in my apartment and I just went to bed without saying anything). The next morning I woke up with a ridiculously bad hangover and badly navigated the bus system to get to work an hour late. The perks of being a manager is that no one noticed or cared about my being late. I put enough damn hours in anyway.

I'm thinking fairly seriously about moving to Tucson in December. I have friends moving there in November. I am very uncertain as to what I want to do. On the face of things I have everything right now--a high paying impressive job and amazing apartment in the greatest city in America. But I don't feel great about it. The money's nice but it's not everything. My job drives me crazy--I work too many hours and get really stressed. A lot of the time I am too exhausted to go out and have a good time. But I still do something, and I love this city, and I've very committed to certain aspects of my job. I don't know if I'd be any happier in Tucson. I go back and forth on it every week. hell, every day and every hour.

I went shopping on St Marks last weekend with my ex-boyfriend and bought high-top red converse and an Eddie Cochran shirt. I feel so cool now. We got into an argument because I wanted to buy the same L.A.M.F. shirt that he was buying and he said I couldn't have the same shirt as him because we weren't dating any more and that if I hadn't broken up with him then I could have gotten the same shirt. It was a stupid argument and the clerk behind the counter was embarrassed for both of us.

The cold weather is here and I've started really cooking again for the first time in months. Last weekend I made chili and corn muffins, and this weekend I'm making eggplant parmesan and Italian Bread Roll. Over the summer when I was dating the "communist" who was loaded he took me out to eat all the time and I stopped grocery shopping and cooking. It's amazing to me that he lives like that all the time, that people live like that all the time.

Time has been going by so fast. Soon I'll be a boring old lady. The people in the apartment building across from mine have been randomly setting off crazy fireworks lately. I thought one was going to go through my window the other day. I sit all the time in this big orange armchair by the window and there is always a girl sitting on the fire escape across the street smoking a cigarette. I know she sees me. I am going to start making signs asking her if she wants to be my friend.