I've been having a very fun and magical and decadent time these last few weeks of being in New York (for now, tho I will most likely move back after my year of hunkering down and kicking ass in Pennsylvania): staying with my sister in her gleaming financial district apartment, going to tin-ceilinged old-timey glamorous places like Chez Josephine (complete with fake-accented waiters and feather palm trees) and the Bourgeois Pig (white chocolate and butterscotch fondue! tiers of fruits and cake!), seeing wondrous magic and burlesque shows at the Fortune Cookie Cabaret, having a beautiful trapeze filled reading at the Bowery Poetry Club (me, Marie Carter, and two astonishing girls hanging right above the crowd, reminding me of why I wrote a novel about a trapeze girl in the first place), talking about writing over piles of paella and sangria, shopping for weird and wonderful little things (I bought Tink's baby Aoife a bright pink tutu and leopard shoes at Bombalulu's; yesterday I got trays that make your ice cubes into jewels), getting massages and taking cabs everywhere, having filet mignon and cabernet in the middle of the day at Keens, and just spending lots and lots and lots of time with friends. I always appreciate living in New York and when I lived in Los Angeles, too, I would drive around and just look at the bougainvillea dangling off the buildings and all the crazy rich ladies gliding along in their Rolls Royces and feel like I had the biggest crush on the city. But I am really very madly in love with New York. Yesterday I had lunch with my coworker Alan, who said he did not see the charm of the garment district even as we passed store after store full of zippers and sequins, all of them looking about 5000 years old, so in order to prove him wrong I dragged him to 38th street just west of Eighth Avenue and pulled him into this crazy long shop that from the outside looks like nothing but inside is so chock full of antique sewing machines and mannequins you can barely move, and there's this giant bear fur hanging from the ceiling, and Alan walked around dumbfounded and in love and admitted that I WAS RIGHT.

Of course. Because this is the coolest city.

So anyway. tomorrow is my last day of work, and hopefully, if things go right, my last day of having a full time job EVER, and I feel heartbroken and exhilarated at the same time. Afterwards, my coworkers are having drinks with me at the DISTINGUISHED WAKAMBA COCKTAIL LOUNGE, which Anthony Bourdain describes like this: "Tiki decor and ultra-cheese kitsch with an element of danger. I believe people have died there."

I believe this is only fitting.

The end.