Maybe it’s better to call them hamsters, but apparently in order to locate drop zones around NYC, some company (either Cingular or TMobile) have contracted Ericcson to place antennae in 50 cabs. They hope to find the drop zones by relying on these cabs traveling a wide range of NYC streets and finding holes that might have otherwise been missed.

I would think that all NYC cabs should be tracked through your cell phone and you would be then able to actually hail one easily. Kind of like the gaydar for empty cabs.

So I have no plans for tonight.

Yes, I know: I’m a big fat fucking loser.

Or am I? Who says I need to do something on this particular evening, Ryan Seacrest? Like I’m going to listen to someone who dyes his eyelashes. If this were the Sunday of President’s Day weekend, I wouldn’t be expected to go out and partay like it’s George Washington’s birthday, but like Valentine’s Day, there’s a societal pressure not just to have fun but to have the most fun ever on New Year’s Eve.
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Then usual city things that may scare an out of towner don’t scare me. I don’t walk around with the fear of being mugged. This doesn’t mean I don’t think I’ll get mugged, attacked, or harrassed, but at this point staying aware is second nature to me. I hate crowds but since living in China – you think people in Chinatown are rude? imagine an entire overpopulated country FULL of such individuals – I’m not timid about pushing my way through. And I definitely don’t hold back from speaking up when I think I’m getting shoddy service.

But there are still some things that, often inexplicably, freak me out. And let the countdown begin.
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A new group of guys attempt to break the subway riding record. SUBWAYblogger’s got a really comprehensive rundown of the subway riding record challenge. Dip on over there if you’re interested in the team or the requirements.

I’ve scooped up all my favorite meals of the year along with the places I had them at. I am not being paid by any of the restaurants or establishments mentioned in the following article.

BabyCakesNYC – Vanilla Frosting Cupcake

Their wheat, gluten, egg, and dairy free cupcake is moist, fragrant, and filling. The best part is that I forgot to throw the wrapper out and had it squished up in my car. Yesterday, I found it and started sniffing it and it was still as delicious. I wanted to devour the freaking wrapper. This babycake also inspired a track on the latest Juicy Show
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I’m not sure why some offices bother staying open the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Mine, for instance. Most of my coworkers are on vacation or “working from home.” The other offices we do business with are closed this week so there’s no one to bother with last minute, inane requests.

I guess the upside is that there’s also no one around to bother me with last minute, inane requests (not that anyone ever does that here – no!). I have time to do all the non-urgent grunt work – ie, organizing my office – that I’ve been putting off for ages. Oh yeah, and I can blog to my heart’s content.

Speaking of blogging, is anyone else from Metblogs NYC out there? Yoohoo? Hello?

[Photo courtesy of Best-Horror-Movies.Com, still from 28 Days Later. Have you seen this movie? It’s quite good. Not the Sandra Bullock vehicle, 28 Days, but 28 Days Later. It’s kind of the scary flip side to Shaun of the Dead, also very good. Okay, how did this post turn into a soliloquy about British zombie flicks?]

And finally, behind door number twenty-five… sleep!

I don’t know about you, but sleep is something I’ve gotten very little of this December (as usual). So come December 25, I will be sleeping the sleep of the righteous. Baby Jesus is finally born and asleep in his manger, the bright lights of Hanukkah have burned low, and I am curled up sound asleep in my bed, while visions of sugar plums dance in my head.

And so concludes our little holiday countdown–hope you’ve enjoyed it. We at Metblogs NYC wish you and yours the happiest of holidays.

Good night.

For all posts in this series, click here.

Whatever holiday you celebrate, happy, merry, bon, good whatever. But I suppose my posting on Christmas shows my bias.

I don’t have anything exciting to report today, aside from the fact that I’ll probably spend most of it watching the A Christmas Story marathon on TBS, so I’ll share with you a favorite Christmas childhood memory, which happens to take place in New York.

I was about 10 the one and only time we drove into the city for the holidays. We’d go into New York for other reasons, mostly to visit my aunt who lived in Flushing and to shop in the Queens Chinatown, which, to me as a suburban kid, seemed unbelievably weird and dirty. I still think it’s weird and dirty, at least the one in Manhattan, but in a charming way.

We did the routine tourist stuff. Saw the giant snowflake on 57th Street, saw the tree at Rockefeller, visited St. Patrick’s cathedral, where my father at 6’2″ spotted above the crowd’s heads former mayor Ed Koch. We ate cheesecake at Lindy’s, I tried a perfume sample at Sak’s, and my brother and I shared a hot pretzel off the street. (“Not that one!” my mother, the ever-picky shopper, scolded the vendor. “That one.” Why one pretzel was better than another, I still have no idea.)

It must have been horrendously crowded, but unlike now, being smushed in a large group of people didn’t bother me back then. I was just enthralled to be seeing the New York that I had only seen in the movies, so different from the fishy-smelling ethnic enclave I was familiar with.

Yesterday I was able to relive some of the childhood memory, minus the crowds. I saw the big snowflake and St Patrick’s cathedral and the Rockefeller Center tree. While I didn’t eat a pretzel, I saw the guys setting their carts up. I enjoyed Sak’s and other stores from the outside. Seeing Ed Koch would have completed the memory.

And behind the penultimate door of this virtual advent calendar… therapy!

It’s long been said that New York is a city where everyone’s in therapy. And although terms like “analyst” and “psychoanalysis” have been largely replaced with words like “therapist” and “talk therapy,” it’s still true that many many people here sit down on a couch once a week (or more) and indulge in a fifty-minute hour with someone who holds a degree in…something.

And while the debate as to whether New York causes people to need therapy or rather attracts people who would need it in the first place rages on, the fact is that any therapist will tell you that their busiest season is this, the holiday season–specifically the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

So when you sit down on that couch this week to unload, fear not–you’re not alone! And if you’re not yet a member of the club, you just might find that there’s no time like the holidays to join up.

For all posts in this series, click here.

For some time I’ve been wanting to check out the store windows decked out in holiday gear, but the idea of battling the crowds has been discouraging. One year a friend dragged me to the death trap that is Saks-and-Rockefeller-Center, and I almost got into about three fights. This year I decided to go at a time nobody would be there, ie, when the stores are closed, and since I’m a morning person, that meant as early as humanly possible.
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