Something told me you'd need it, and by something, I mean common sense.

Suits is over. For now.

Let us quench our thirst for the hottest-lawyer-best-closer-this-city-has-ever-seen yada-yada-yada.

Source.

Source.

Source.

Source.

Source.

I'm so so so sorry for the hotness overload. I just miss my regular Harvey Specter injections.

Harvey Specter is cocky, smart and HOT. And I am a sucker for a smart guy and for a hot guy, so those tributes alone would make my day regardless.

A few bits of Harvey's wisdom that make my sapiosexual self go completely nuts:

"Why don't you check out the corner of 81st and kiss my ass?"
"I refuse to answer on the grounds that I don't want to."
"We've been crossing lines long before we even met!"
"I'm against HAVING emotions, not USING them."
"Do I think I'm smarter than you? You're damn right I do!"
"I'm not interested in great. I want to know who it's daddy is."

But there's more to his appeal. He knows what he wants and has no issues going out and getting it. He likes his scotch neat and his jazz clean. There's his fantastic swagger, and he's kind of brilliant at his job. And he can wear the hell out of a sharp suit.

May I add that, to a heterosexual woman, a man in a well cut suit is pretty much the equivalent to what lingerie is to a heterosexual man.

By far, one of the most fuckable characters on TV. Ever. Vampire Eric and Don Draper end up totally mousy in comparison. And me loves me some Vampire Eric, mind you.

Yum, yum, yum.

Jules

P.S. Despite Harvey's all-around awesomeness and fuckability, my dear Z prefers Mike. So, for Z's eyes only:

Source.

P.P.S. It's going to be months before Harvey returns to my screen. When he does, the Phelps will keep him company. Boo-yeah! But still, it's MONTHS away.

Luckily, this will return soon to help with the withdrawals. Hello, Neal Caffrey. I love you, too.

Source.

P.P.S. The title of this post is actually one of Harvey's stellar quotes. Love me some Harvey wisdom. Goes well with the hotness.

P.P.P.S. Harvey Specter is portrayed by Gabriel Macht, Mike Ross is played by Patrick J. Adams and Matt Bomer is the actor who makes Neal Caffrey a bit less fictional. Boys, you are all delicious.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe. Magritte.

Magritte's exhibit opens at MoMA tomorrow, which means that yesterday was the last day of member previews, which means I went. Yesterday. 

I just needed a hefty dose of food for the soul, since I've been spending most of my days cooped up in the lab, missing out on the gorgeous september days in New York. Ouch.

Les Amants.
Source.

La Trahison des images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe).
Source.

Monsieur Magritte was one great, amazing, crazy son of a bitch. I love his work. Have loved him since that fantastic month-long trip to Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and Germany I took with a great friend back in 2004. We were young, extremely thrifty at milking our student status, and had surprising upper body strength - hello, enormous backpacks. 

It was during that trip that I discovered the pleasures of double-fried fries in Brugge, beer, Bao Bao (RIP), and how MoMA looked on vacation in Berlin (hint: it WAS crowded). Also, it was on that trip that I fell in love with modern art by visiting places like this, this, this and this. And, of course, braving the crowds to see the above-mentioned "Das MoMA in Berlin" and other goodies. 

Clairvoyance
Source.

This time around, I feel almost at home at MoMA, and I was more than happy to let Monsieur crazy-ass Magritte take me down his rabbit hole. There are a lot of works on display and the exhibit is beautifully curated. I expect it will be a hit, so I am quite happy I managed take part of the previews and share the view with a manageable crowd.

I'm no conoisseur, but in my opinion, Magritte's genious lays in his unusual juxtapositions. His personal brand of surrealism is less fantastic than for example Dali's. With Dali's work, you're immediately transported into a different world, where the ordinary is so very intertwined with the extraordianry, but the extraordinary wins by a hefty margin. Magritte is different. More subtle, if you will. At first glance, you notice something "off" with the (strikingly realistically depicted) objects in the painting, but it takes a second or two to actually see what is "off". 

Many of the works on display made me smile or even giggle, but quite a few were downright disturbing. 

Among my favourites were Clairvoyance, a self portrait from 1936, Les Amants, from 1928, and La Reproduction Interdite, from 1937. Rape (from 1934), on the other hand, completely freaked me out.

Marry me, Julian Barnes! Or something.

I'm currently reading three or four books, see. 

I simply do not possess the resilience to have just one book open and read it in one go. I guess I am a book glutton. Of course, that means that I am capable of "reading" a book for six months. Maybe because that particular one is my "lunchtime" book, or my current "serious" read, or my "trashy secret guilty pleasure of the moment that can only be consumed in absolute privacy". Meh... 

Maybe I just suck at being consistent.

Well, by far my favourite "unwind with a glass of pinot in the evening" of the bunch is Pulse, Julian Barnes' collection of short stories.

Lovely cover. And this book is made of paper. And ink.
And has pages and the lovely book smell!
Kindle is a little jealous, I think.

And here's the reason why - ok, one of MANY reasons:  

----

"The chocolates?"

"No, the drawings."

"I used to love a cigar. It didn't have to be a whole one. Half would do."

"They gave you different cancers, didn't they?"

"What did?"

"Cigarettes, pipes, cigars. Didn't pipes give you lip cancer?"

"What did cigars give you?"

"Oh, the poshest kind."

"What's a posh cancer? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?"

"Bum cancer's got to be the bottom of the pile."

J. Barnes, Pulse - At Phil and Joanna's 1

----

That's a dinner conversation a group of friends are having during dinner. I'm still chuckling. A few minutes ago, I was laughing hard. 

I love you, Barnes.

Jules

Textless thursday (19)

So New York. As seen in Washington Square Park.

Swans can bite. Please do not feed them.

Yeah, it's Wednesday, which means that the weekend is close. 

On the other hand, last weekend (which feels like a million years ago) was really fun, so I'd like to share it with you. 

Of course, there was tons of lazying around, laying in my bed until noon with a triple dose of turkish coffee and Polish nutella on toast. But hey, I live alone so nobody really knows I have an extraordinary ability of doing nothing. Wink, wink. 

There were episodes of activity in between the laziness, mind you.

Here they are (for some, there even is photographic evidence!)

 - 2 trips to the lab to do a little bit of work. Common law in postdoc-land. The lab was packed, both on Saturday in the late afternoon and Sunday mid-morning. Common law.

One does not simply walk by the snow monkeys.

- A super fun afternoon at Central Park Zoo. Yepp, The Penguins rock.

Hello, handbag. Also known as some kind of boa.
Or python. I don't really remember.

- A dim sum lunch with a group of coworkers. Delicious AND filling. 

- An afternoon spotting spelling errors in Italian signs around the San Gennaro festival in Little Italy. And a big box of cannoli. Because a cannolo can save your day. Unfortunately, same does not apply to your hips. A cannolo (or four) can not save your hips.

- Taking in the September golden hour in Central Park. Gorgeous light, crisp air, first glimpses of colour change in the trees and good company. And Alice in Wonderland. 

A change of seasons. Central Park.

- Jazz at the Kerbs Boathouse at the Conservatory Water - in Central Park, while the sun was setting. 

Also at the Central Park Zoo. Ginormous hissing roaches.
New York ones are SO last year, they're just ginormous.
And they have no connection with the jazz concert in the Park.

Oh, and I managed to perfect my pumpkin spice latte order. Now I love it and I make the trip to Starbucks WAAAAAAAY to often. 

My own little PSL in the shade of the Berlin wall.
In New York in the fall.

Stay fall-tastic*,

Jules

* ughhhh, awful!

"It sucks to be me"

For the first half of this month, I had two sweet visitors from home taking over my apartment. 

Although it sometimes felt crowded, it was lovely having them around. 

The lobby at New World Stages.

We didn't hang out much, but it was very fun having somebody to boss around the kitchen or fill their heads with info about New York. My favourite part was listening to their daily impressions of the city, their awe and excitement. I was only a couple of years older than they are now when I first visited New York and I still remember how I felt walking the streets, completely smitten by everything around me.

Bonus: they brought over half of my winter wardrobe, for which I am extremely grateful. An one more bonus: they treated me to another Broadway show. They chose Avenue Q, a Broadway veteran that  has moved off-Broadway a couple of years ago and audiences still don't seem to get enough of.

It was AWE-SOME.

The show deals with a lot of issues linked to "real life", adulthood and the quarter-life crisis. With puppets. Of course, the Bad Idea Bears will be my favourite kind of bears forever and ever.
And this:

"The internet is for porn. Why you think it was born? For porn, for porn, for porn. Grab your dick and doubleclick..."

Thank you, N and G for the treat.
Jules

Textless Thursday (18)

More often than not, New York IS Wonderland. And I'm Alice.
Or the Cheshire cat.

3!

Today is September 18th. 

I left Slovenia on June 18th, which means that today marks 3 (!!!) months since I moved to New York.

I still have to pinch myself from time to time, because sometimes this whole shenanigan simply fails to feel real. Dude, I live in freaking New York!!!

The past three months have been a rollercoaster to say the least. Ups, downs, side turns, flips. You name it, I got it. All of it. I went from crazy-bordering excitement to deep sadness and everything in between. There's been frustration, joy, laughter, disappointment, worry, anger, hopefulness, awe. With no order whatsoever, no transitions, no small changes before the big ones. And a couple of briuses, both physical and emotional. But no tears. 

Yepp, I've had it all.

SOTD: The National - Hard to find. 

One thing that has NEVER popped into my crazy brain? Regrets. 

There are none. At all.

No matter how hard it sometimes is, how many times I get mocked for being "unadjusted" or an "uneducated foreigner" or "obnoxiously stubborn in my foreign ways", or how fun and exciting everything back home seems*, I LOVE MY CHOICE and would re-do it a million times over.

IstraTiMaterna view towards the Adriatic from Lipnik near Rakitovec,
Slovenian Istria (aka home turf), Slovenia 

Of course, I miss my friends horribly. Not a day goes by when I see, hear or do something and think how much more fun/awesome/meaningful that thing would be if I could share it with the people close to my heart. I still text them those random things, but a transatlantic text is never as powerful as one that only needs to cover a few kilometers. And more often than not, I hate the 6-hour time difference between Koper and New York and the 5-hour difference between Dublin and New York. It makes catching up more complicated than necessary, because, em, all of us, no matter which side of the Atlantic we occupy, sort of have, em, lives et cetera.

Well. I've met some pretty cool people since moving here, but haven't gotten really close with anyone. It is not easy for me to truly connect with somebody and my friends (I put that one in italics, because my definition of "friend" is quite different from what a typical American's would be.) from home still find me interesting enough to keep in touch regularly. So I don't feel like there is any necessity for new friends. Unfortunately though, it does not exactly work both ways and keeping in touch does not significantly reduce my withdrawals. Plus, my social life over here mostly sucks, as it is basically non-existent. I don't really go to glamourous clubs or cool beautiful-people-clad bars. There is the occasional coffee, stroll, drink or chat, but nothing more.

Non-IstraTiMaterna view from 30, Rockefeller Plaza (aka Top of the Rock),
Manhattan, NYC.

And that is perfectly fine, actually. 

Although a superfun night out with mojitos wouldn't hurt... But darn, it would ONLY be as superfun as expected if M and Z were there, too. 

Oh well, I guess sometimes a girl can't have it all at the same time. 

Cheers.

Jules

* I kind of know from experience that things back at home are NOT all that exciting. Nevertheless, I  do have 30+ years of experience with life in Slovenia :)

A scent of sense

I've always deemed the sense of scent a very important one. 

I associate the scents I smell with memories, dreams and beauty. 

And nastiness, too - especially on a humid garbage day in the streets of Manhattan, but that's a totally different story and we shall not speak of it here and now.

Source.

Back to the romantic notions.

Scent.

Yes. Right.

I'm the kind of person who needs scented candles and who filled her closet with satchels of lavender before filling it with clothes. The kind of person that boils orange peels and cinnamon sticks for hours. I'm someone who realizes she's getting over the boy she loved the minute she starts forgetting how he smells. The kind of person who does not leave the house without a spritz of perfume. To be honest, I wear perfume even when I don't leave the house. 

Because I associate the scents I smell with beauty. Even on myself. And because a very nice fragrance is one of those luxuries that I can actually afford to splurge on. 

A change of seasons (I am quite ready for the fall at the moment) also means a change of fragrance. And since I finished my previous colder-months staple, Lola, a perfume shopping trip was in order. Lola EdP is one of my all-time favourites and I am pretty convinced a fresh bottle will be gracing my apartment very soon. It is a heavy, but graceful, sort of vampy, and ladylike. I love it. I got my first bottle in Paris a few years ago and, yes, the scent will always remind me of Paris. Nevermind the fact that Marc Jacobs is quintessentially New York, my Lola is a Parisienne.

Another perk is that it kind of drives a few people I know crazy. In a good way.

Source.

But I was craving something new and different - since my life is all new and different at this point.

I had my eyes on this baby for a while now.    

I hadn't tried it before, but the whole "pheromone-emulating" idea was just too intriguing not to give it a shot. When Molecule 01, the first of the range, was first launched, it caused serious buzz. Now, there's a whole range of these concoctions, all of them based on one single aromatic chemical. 

A non-scent scent that is supposed to smell like you, but better? Seriously?

Yeah, yeah, sounds halfway too good to actually work, and halfway creepy as in Patrick Suskind's sort of creepy. 

So I looked it up online and checked where in New York it is sold. Yay Bergdorf Goodman!

I finally went there last Monday, when the weather was lovely and autumnly crisp enough to make my summer perfume smell out of place. It took me a while to navigate the HUGE beauty department at BG, but it was worth it. 

Of the three I tried, I fell in love with Escentric 01 immediately. There are a few others in the line, but 01 was my favourite. To me, it smelled like september rain, fresh grass, burja, and fruit. Lots of fruit. Nothing annoying or edible or whatever association fruity scents usually give me. Just good. 

Source.

On the way home I couldn't stop sniffing my wrist. And it just kept getting better and better. 

Honestly, the crisp notes it produces on me are a huge departure from what I would usually wear this time of year, but boy do I love this scent.

I've been wearing it for the past few days and still haven't gotten my nose saturated with it. It is weird. The scent itself comes and goes... It's half past seven pm now, I've worn this dose of Escentric for about 12 hours now, and it's still there. And it smells exactly as it did in the first hour.

It makes me smell so hot even I would do me. Or something.

Wow.

Jules

Textless Thursday (17)

Lipko!
Eurobasket 2013!
#junaki kicking ass!

A wise hot beverage

Oh, the smell of coffee in the morning.

Nothing beats that. NOTHING.

As someone who grew up right next to the European capital of coffee, loving it is no brainer for me, really. In my world, coffee is the sweet smelling, dense concoction that comes bubbling out of a caffettiera or slowly flows out of a big-ass espresso machine. Well at times, if made by someone highly competent, I also love a cup of turkish, but that's the trickiest. 

At home, I still make it like I did back in Slovenia, in my great-grandmother's Zanzibar caffettiera that is more than 50 years old and looks all battered and bruised. When away from said legendary caffettiera, coffee still remains a ritual. It might be 3 minutes or hours, but you are supposed to stop whatever you're doing and you enjoy your coffee. 

SOTD: Amy Winehouse - Back to Black. Although I rarely take my coffee black.

The American way of doing coffee on the go took a lot of getting used to. Travel coffee mugs are still an unacceptable concept to me and whenever I go out for coffee (here or here, both are actually good), I sigh silently because I'd give anything for an ACTUAL CUP and I do sit down at the coffee shop and stop for a minute or two. Or 120. Also, it took me a while to perfect the way of tailoring the classic american watery yuckiness they try to pass for coffee to my VERY mediterranean personal preferences. 

Now I know my coffee, both at home and when I'm out and about the UES. 

I do, however, own a travel mug. But coffee has never touched it. I use it for tea. Because a morning dose of hot smooth caffeine is not enough and there's nothing better than sipping a hot beverage while going through emails and experiment plans for the day.

This little thing surprised me today*:

  *I know, I know, you can hardly read the quote. Blame the crappy camera phone and the fact that I STILL haven't bothered with buying an actual camera. 

The quote actually reads: 

"Live for something higher, bigger and better than you."

Well, let's break it down:

• Higher I can do, especially in these babies (arrived today - and I am a woman in love). Or in these (dream, dream, dream, dreeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaammmm).
• Bigger I will definitely do if I contnue living off of crunchy french toast and almond - sea salt chocolate. 
• Better than me?

Modified just slightly from here.

Stay wise.

Jules

Textless thursday (16)

Home pool in Žusterna, Slovenia. Summersick much?