Oh Dail (Doyle) my sweet little baby. You were with me through some of the best and some of the worst times of my life. You moved with me from Oregon to Seattle and that’s where you stayed - preferring the comfort of Lisa and her home to the competitiveness of my boyfriend’s cats. Little did you know Chad would bring his babies along, but I heard you managed them quite well. You were like me in so many ways, beautiful and a little prickly, always a scrapper but also loyal and loving. I’ll miss you my sweet cat - I love you and hope you’re chasing mice and birds and sunning yourself in a warm, green field up in the sky.

I just emerged from my apartment into the 22 degree frigidity of today’s New York in order to walk to the post office and mail an internship application.

I walked into the post office, which I loath, and was pleasantly surprised to see only two other people in line and two desk clerks working. I figured my odds were good - I mean, how long could it take with only two other people in line?

Answer - a long-ass time. One guy in line had a stack of DVDs he was mailing and no envelopes which necessitated a long and involved discussion with the desk clerk about the various attributes of envelopes over boxes and then what kind of shipping he wanted and then the question that seemed to vex him the greatest - to insure or not to insure. He pondered this question while the line grew. And grew. And grew. Evidently the torment of spending that extra .75 cents was almost overwhelming.

By the time this unfortunate excuse for a human being decided (to insure - big spender!) the line behind me had grown to more than 15 people and I’d stood at the head of it for 15 minutes.

But wait - there’s more!

When I finally thought it was my turn I realized someone who’d been filling out paperwork and putting things in a box was actually ahead of me. See - at the post office if you come unprepared you’re allowed to purchase envelopes and stamps and things, put them all together and then go to the head of the line because you’ve already stood in line. This is a policy I agree with because I always buy large envelopes at the post office and then need to address them - but it was still disappointing to find out I had an additional wait.

What was the other clerk doing? Working with some old bag who had a transaction which took more than 20 minutes and involved filling out a lengthy piece of paper. What do people need to do at the post office which requires 20 minutes, besides wait in line?

As I left I felt pity for the people standing in line because if it moved as slowly for me as it did for them they were each looking at a 45 minutes wait before they reached one of the two cashiers.

I live in the West Village of New York City. My neighborhood is filled with beautiful row houses which cost on average around $10 million each. There are also lots of glamorous apartment buildings of historic character - one of which I live in. The shops are filled with expensive baubles and imported items and some are owned by the most famous names in industry - Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren and James Perse to name just a few. Restaurants abound in the West Village, including Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter’s celebrity hangout - The Waverly Inn. Our neighborhood is a peaceful one, a neighborhood which reeks of quiet sophistication and understated wealth and glamor.

So why is it that everyone who works in my gym, at least the sales guys, are scuzzballs from Long Island, New Jersey or Staten Island who smell like cheap cologne, wear their clothes much too tight and cultivate that chin-strap beard made popular by those mafia guido kids from The Growing Up Gotti Show?

I go out of my way to create a sort-of fantasy life for myself in New York by limiting my exposure to these kinds of people. Everywhere I go - the clubs, restaurants, bars and hangouts I frequent are frequented by people like me. It’s not that I don’t like these sorts of people - I just don’t have anything in common with them and when I am exposed to their shiny shirts and gold chains I become depressed - I realize the world really isn’t like my little part of New York - that the majority of people don’t live in the West Village and attend glamorous fashions shows and then meet friends for dinner at quaint undiscovered restaurants on cobblestone-lined streets before waltzing into the latest hottest club.

Most people work an awful 9-5 job which they hate and put-up with only for the paycheck. They ride the subway or train into the city and they can’t wait to get back out again. Their dinners consist of something thrown in the microwave and gobbled down in front of a DVR’d edition of “Desperate Housewives” and their nights consist of one thing - sleep or a quick-and-unsatisfying sexual act performed before they and their partner fall asleep. The next day they chose an outfit consisting of man-made fibers which they squeeze into after applying over-the-counter skin and hair products to their blotchy complexions and over-processed hair. Then they start the day all over again.

Their weekends are much the same but differ only in a trip to the local mall from which they chose a badly-made and low-priced item in an attempt to salve their unhappiness. Maybe they go out to eat at The Olive Garden but only “for a treat.” Occasionally they venture into my part of the city and wander around, gaping at the “over-priced” clothes and “fancy” restaurants. They also get drunk at tourist-trap bars and then wander the streets late at night screaming and fighting amongst each other and hurrying to catch that last train back to Long Island or New Jersey.

We’re locked into a relationship of mutual loathing, these people and I. I try to forget the class differences so apparent in New York but when I’m brought face-to-face with them it’s always a shock to realize just how different my life is from theirs.

And you know what? I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Applying for all these internships is exhausting.

I’m over 60% of the way to reaching my fund raising goal on behalf of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. If you can please contribute here and make reaching my goal a reality! Here is my personal page.

There’s been an electrical fire in one of the Con-Ed transformers under the street on W. 4th today. NYU has canceled all class in the student services building - which is where 2 out of 3 of my classes are held.

Boy when it rains it pours!

The cat I left with my old roomie in Seattle, Dail (prounounced Doyle) has lymphoma and won’t live for much longer. Today is turning out to be just peachy - I can’t wait to hear the next bit of horrible news.

After finishing my practice LSAT today (162) I turned on my phone and had several voice-mails - which is never a good sign. One was from my mom - which is almost always a harbinger of bad news.  I called her and she told me my dad died - of lung cancer -  which I didn’t even know he had.

I’ve not seem my father for almost 25 years, since I was really just a little kid. I don’t remember anything about him other than he liked to salt his beer and my mom was still in love with him. I really don’t know how I feel about this - it’s like one-half of me is dead but now I guess I’ll never know that half. I also feel like that chapter of my life is over before it even began - which is a cliche but true. I’ll never have a relationship with my father and of my brothers and sisters, all of whom have different fathers, I’m the first to now have only one parent.