I've been travelling for the past week and a half--I was in Charlottesville all of last week visiting Stef, and I got to New York City on Tuesday. Right now I'm in Natalia's apartment on Roosevelt Island, and she went to go pick up a friend. Her apartment is beautiful. It's got this black and white motif and there are mirrors everywhere. It's on the thirteenth floor and has a floor to ceiling window on the south wall that looks out at the East River and the Queensboro Bridge. Apparently it's in the building where they filmed that movie Dark Water, with Jennifer Connely, and some of the residents are upset because in the movie they made the building seem all rundown and haunted when it's actually a very nice place.

I've spent most of my time just walking around the city. The weather's been beautiful. Today I was walking around SoHo and saw one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, picking her nose. A couple days ago on the subway there was this young, tough-looking guy sitting across from me, crying. He was trying to hold it back, but he kept sniffing and tearing up. I found this great hole-in-the-wall place in SoHo where you can get a huge helping of rice and beans and fried platanos for $3 (if you get meat it's $6, and you have to get there before 3:00 or they run out of platanos I found out today). There's also this place in the East Village that sells nothing but all these different flavors of rice pudding (at first I typed "rice pussing" which sounds disgusting). One of the funniest things I've seen is this statue of Vladimir Lenin on top of some random building in I think the Lower East Side. Masha pointed it out. She told me after the fall of the Soviet Union the Russians got rid of all of the statues of Lenin, and they went all over the world and I guess one ended up on the roof of this building, next to a big silver clock.

Speaking of Vladimir, last night I hung out with a friend of Natalia's named Vladimir (Dominican, not Russian), and this kid is great. He's very laid-back looking, with glasses. We had a conversation about whether or not we would live in a nudist colony. I think in the end we agreed we wouldn't because it would take a lot of the arousal out of seeing someone naked. Vlad's real funny--I guess he does stand up at open mics around the city.

I'm writing on Natalia's mom's BEAUTIFUL iMac G5. On her desk there's also this staple remover that looks like an alligator head. It's actually pretty realistic, if you can imagine an eight-inch-long alligator.

Okay, we're going to take a walk and I have to meet Masha at the subway station.