This time of year is notoriously spent looking forward and making resolutions for the upcoming year. I have never really been a resolution kinda gal - I don’t wait until the New Year to make the important changes in my life – so I often spend the weeks leading up to New Year’s looking back.

Not so much on changes I’ve made or how far I’ve come; more at the ridiculous situations I have found myself in over the past 365 days.

My 2007 can probably be summed up as a year of dating. Not relationships. Dating. I made a lot of drastic changes this year – online dating, getting setup, handing out my phone number – and it definitely made for a lot of first dates, one quasi-good relationship, and some amazing stories.

Looking back on everything, there was one particularly amazing story that I think everyone can enjoy.

Right before moving home from New York last year, I met a boy online. He seemed really interesting and funny through IM’s so we started talking on the phone and eventually planned a date.

“I want to take you out for drinks and dinner,” he told me.

We decided to meet at a central location, grab a drink and then head downtown to a cute little hole in the wall Chinese restaurant he and his dad had been eating at for years. I am not usually a fan of multiple locations (or even dinner!) on the first date, but he seemed so excited that I really couldn’t resist. Read More »

“Good Morning Upper East Siders…It’s Gossip Girl here...”

Similar to the infamous and mysterious Gossip Girl, I too can wake up in the morning, open my curtains, and look out over a street that is located in the idealized glamorous neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. But, unlike Blair, Serena, and the other over-privileged characters, my window looks out over the street from my fourth floor tiny studio…in a walk up building (this means i climb four flights of stairs everytime I come home to my apt, no elevator).

You may be wondering how this is possible for a recent college graduate struggling to make it in the most expensive city in the world to be living in such close proximity to those who live the wealthiest and most luxurious lifestyle imaginable.

Well, contrary to what many people think, beyond the extravagant buildings and penthouses occupied by the rich, this area is actually one of the most affordable in the city for young adults. Why? Many prewar walk up buildings (like mine) that are older, lack an elevator and doorman, and are closer to the river (a farther walk to the subway) are in this area. Read More »

Sometimes the week goes by really f*cking slow.

Work, classes, friends, family…sometimes it gets a little too routine for my liking. So, I decided to make a change and really spice things up.

This week? I’m channeling Grandma. After 92 years, my grandma knows what’s up…I mean she better after almost a century, right?

Right.

So if you’re feeling like you’re in a bit of a slump, try out some of these suggestions or come up with your own takes on ways to make the week fly by!

Perfect Time-Waster: Crossword Puzzles

The internet is great and all, but this week I’m on a low-tech kick.

And for someone who majored in Journalism and minored in English, it would only make sense that I have been completely enamored with crossword puzzles.

It started out as a time-waster on the subway (thanks AM New York!) but has evolved into a true pleasure that I’m willing to spend a whopping $2.99 on. You know those puzzle books you see old ladies on the bus with? Yes, I’m totally into them.

Still addicted to the net? Check out some amazing crosswords here.

P.S. Try making it a couples thing…it worked for them. Read More »

I’m pretty sure microtrends were something we learned about in Sociology. That was also the class in college I had to force myself to sit through for at least 45 minutes.

Then I would just walk out.

Even though I know nothing about them (I got a C in Soc), I can understand them on a level I can see.

I see people knitting on the subway everyday. The rise of stitch and bitch groups is just as prevalent as getting tattooed during undergrad.

And apparently, tattoos and knitting among our age demographic are quite telling microtrends.

And Mark Penn, a “pollster” as this article calls him, says that mircrotrends “reveal the often baffling “under the radar” shifts that are reshaping American society—from one based on group identity and forces of circumstance such as race, religion and education to one based on personal choice.”

By the time everyone else has caught on to the microtrend “it is ready to spawn a hit movie, best-selling book or new political movement.”

But, why knitting and tattoos?

Grandma isn’t the only one knitting these days. Knitting is most popular for teens and twenty-somethings. Between 2004-2005, yarn sales rose 56%. And this rise in knitting shows that our generation is turning away from the virtual world and searching for something tangible to express ourselves. Read More »

“The first step to meeting men is eye contact. Just one little lingering look can start an entire adventure…”

Yes, well, sure. Eye contact is always the perfect way to let a guy know that you’re interested.

If you can do it.

Now, maybe this seemingly simple task is almost impossible for me because I don’t wear my glasses when I’m out, therefore making it sort of hard to tell if a guy over three feet away is actually looking back—but I think there’s more too it. I think eye contact is actually much scarier than those dating websites would have us believe.

Writing about doing it is easy. I can type about it till I’m blue in the face, advising everyone to totally lock eyes with a boy on the subway, in a bar, walking down the street…it let’s them know you’re interested! It’s a good way to flirt!

But for some reason, putting it into practice is hard. I’m not the shiest person you’ve ever met, but if I think a guy’s cute, it’s really difficult to look him square in the face and smile. I’d much rather look at whatever’s directly above and to the left of him; that way, I can take little peeks without him knowing. Read More »

I used to wear my iPod everywhere.

Walking to school, iPod. Sitting on the subway, iPod. Waiting for class to start, iPod. Grocery shopping, iPod. I never went anywhere without music.

There’s lots of reasons I chose music over realty, strange men telling me I should be their girlfriend at 8:30 AM certainly being one of them, but the easiest answer is that I didn’t really think there was much the world could offer me while I was alone. Walking by yourself can be a semi-lonely activity, especially if you’ve got a long way to go and don’t see many friendly faces on your way there.

So, I was plugged in. Walking quickly and keeping my face blank (looking too friendly in the city is sometimes an open invitation for crazy people to ask you to pet their plastic snake), I spent my days forging ahead and allowing The Police to soundtrack my life.

Until I overheard a conversation that changed everything. Read More »

So, I did it. I bit the bullet and posted a Missed Connection.

I couldn’t help myself. I had seen a cute boy on the subway. Adorable, actually. This kid was everything I had been hoping New York would have tucked away in one of its dirty, graffiti covered apartments. Everything I had dreamed I’d softly bump into one of these sultry nights on 2nd Avenue.

He wasn’t a skinny, nauseatingly dressed Hipster. He wasn’t a gelled Wallstreeter secretly hiding a yellowed wife-beater under a polished polo. He wasn’t a moody artist wearing eyeliner and hunching over a notebook covered in scrawling of his pain. He was adorably normal. Sweetly natural. Still un-New York-ified. Just like me.

I saw him on the R train heading uptown. The moment I sat down and spied him I became consumed with sneaking looks at his tired, boyish face. He was dressed like he worked in some kind of uptown office, black pants a little too short for his lanky legs, old school headphones perched atop endearingly tousled brown hair. For 15 minutes I looked at him whenever he looked somewhere else.

All too soon he got off. I tried to watch him leave, but my vision was blocked by a marvelously fat guy and his incredibly giant lunch bag. 15 minutes was hardly long enough. I wanted more time with this specimen of cuteness. Read More »

Jared Fogle, the man responsible for selling millions upon millions of delicious Subway sandwiches, is known for becoming spokesperson for the company while still attending college in the late ’90’s.

What we didn’t know, was that Jared Fogle was not only infamous at his college for eating nothing but Subway and losing over 200 pounds, but also for being the go-to-guy for whenever college students wanted some good ol’ porn.

Best Week Ever has uncovered Jared’s dirty little secrets. While attending Indiana University, he ran a pretty successful pornography business straight from his own bedroom, and apparently had a “wide” variety of porn videos, which he only charged a dollar to rent. Get it? Wide! Read More »