NY, NY

I don't know if any of you are going to be as excited about this as I am but I was going through my iCal and realized that, come August 19th- ten days from now- I will have been in New York for exactly three years.

How time flies.

NY has become such a part of me that to live elsewhere now would feel like I was living without a vital organ.
There's really nothing I don't like about this city.
Even when I bitch and moan about how cold, or hot, or draining, or exhausting, or intoxicating it is, I still love it.

I'm going to have to do something incredible on the 19th.
It could be as simple as sitting in a quiet church somewhere, mentally reviewing the fantastic adventure these last few years have been.

I've gone from wildly promiscuous party girl; to hectic, pavement pounding actress; to corporate employee; to studious and happy single girl, all of which is detailed in my calendar:

August 19th, 2003: Move to New York. Get a room in a small, cockroach infested apartment with crumbling walls on 7th Street and Avenue A, shared with a very nice and perpetually stoned 28 year old guy who sells Grateful Dead posters for a living.

August 22nd, 2003: Hit the ground running and have my first NY one-night stand in what turned out to be a year-long string of them. I'd just come out of an engagement prior to moving here.

September 5th, 2003: Shamelessly accost- for the first time in my life, I might add- a cute English boy playing darts at the Fat Black Pussycat. He became my first NY boyfriend- a relationship that lasted four months. Still one of the loveliest boyfriends I've ever had.

September 6th, 2003: Start my first job at an East Village dive-bar called Nice Guy Eddies.

October 7th, 2003: Waitress at the famed Coffee Shop restaurant in Union Square for five days and quit. I figured I'd make a lot more money as a cocktail waitress, and I was right.

November 1st, 2003: Get evicted from my apartment for illegally subletting and move into my current apartment after a brief pitstop in another apartment on 7th Street and Avenue A.

November 20th, 2003: Start cocktail waitressing at a club/lounge called Canal Room. I made $750 my first night, after which I became a loyal employee and core staff member. I lasted a year before tiring of the lifestyle (work until 4am, party until 9am, sleep, wake up at 6pm, go to work, repeat) and moving on.

April-August, 2004: Work part-time in production at Red Sky Pictures, a start-up company in SoHo, while continuing to cocktail and audition/book roles in small films.

November 30th, 2004: Leave cocktailing and Red Sky altogether to start my job at BBDO, where I am currently.

September 5th, 2005: Go back to school for a degree in creative writing after my acting gigs became a very overt conflict with work; my way of discovering you can only be one place at a time.

May 13th, 2006: Finish my first year back at school with a 4.0 GPA, a proud moment for this highschool dropout. Take the summer off.

Mid-May, 2006: Break-up with my last boyfriend to warmly embrace my first legitimate period of singledom and celibacy in five years.

September 5th, 2006: Start the new school year.

Some would say my life is boring now, but I don't think I've ever had it so good.

Wait until you see what's in store for year four.
It's going to be a big one.