After taking almost a year off of work to travel all over the world (and/or goof off in NYC) on Monday, September 12th I returned to the working world and started my brand new job as a Product Manager for Community Connect; an internet company that owns a bunch of niche social networking sites! (BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com, AsianAve.com, GLEE.com, etc).

First day at the new office!

This is the lady I sat next to, but I don't even remember her name because she ended up leaving just a few days after I started!

The view from my desk.

I wrapped up my first official day of work by grabbing a falafel dinner with the Grizz.

On Tuesday after work I headed over to Sarah's apartment to finish packing up the stuff I'd left in the room I'd been subletting in her apartment. I put it all into her little grocery handcart and pushed it over to the our apartment I 5 short blocks away.

I went into Sarah's room to say hi and found my new roommate Niki in there! Hahaha. Our internet access wasn't working yet so she was at Sarah's borrowing some bandwidth (which, as a former roommate of Sarah's apartment, she's allowed to do!).

Five short blocks later, I was dropping off the last of my stuff to our new (totally pimped out) pad!

Later that night I went to see Brandon's band, Nightmare of You, play!

Afterwards, I met up with Grant and he...

...well, it's pretty obvious what he did. (This photo still makes me LOL).

Friday night my sexy-ass girlfriend got all sexied up and we headed over to Orchard Bar for Karen and Sarah's Friday night party there.

Meredith gets a sexy chin-nuzzling from Sarah.

Andrew stood around and looked sulkxy (that's when sexy meets sulky!).

Eric George was there dropping science!

This was also the night that I got to meet the very wonderful David Caggiari! David was in town from the UK with his even prettier (if you can believe that) girlfriend Kim and the rest of the guys from his band, Apartment! David and Kim were going to be staying with Niki and I and the rest of the band would all be crashing over at Sarah's apartment (in my old room there!). Here's David and I pulling our best sexy faces, because, in case you hadn't yet noticed, the theme of this night was "sexy." (I put that word in italics with the hopes that you'd read it in a whispery voice).

Blue Steel x 2!

Here's our two sexy girlfriends making their best we're innocent but still totally sexy faces.

Here's a slightly less-sexy outtake that I'm including because the fact that you can see Kim's blue bra is sexily awesome!

On Saturday morning, we all got up bright and early and hit the Odessa Dinner for some brunch. Clockwise from left: Tom and David from Apartment, Kim, Meredith, Niki and the Fatty. (By the way, check out the brains on the Fatty reading Richard Dawkins a full two years before he became a household name!).

Later that night Meredith got all hussied up (again! who's luckier than me) and we decided to head to Misshapes!

Mer has had this (crushed velvet!) dress since middle school! Hahaha.

So Mer and I are walking down the street on the way to Luke and Leroy's and from like 1 block away I spot this girl walking down the street and I nudged Meredith and I was like "Omigod, check out that blonde coming down the street in a mini-skirt and rainbow socks!" We were totally checking her out and then she got closer and we realized that we'd been checking out Ellen Stagg! Hahaha. (But seriously, can you blame us?)

Here's Misshapes photographer Scott Merriam giving me his best "Misshapes face." Hahah.

David and Kim met us there and we danced up a storm.

David and I retired Blue Steel and decided to spend the night taking pictures pretending that we'd both just caught a whiff of fresh dogshit.

And speaking of dogshit...the most exciting news of the night was that Ellen (seen here with John) had brought her new puppy, Piper, to Misshapes! Hahaha. Look at her lil' bat ears!

Piper has expressive eyebrows and a tongue that's too long for her mouth so the tip is always peeking out.

Big guuuuuuuy with a little dooooooooog.

While we were all standing outside playing with Piper, I noticed that there was a really, really drunk girl sitting up against the building and teetering back and forth. Sensing something magical was about to happen, I made sure to keep my finger on the shutter button. Sure enough, a few minutes later....wait for it....wait for it....

...BAAAAAAAAARF! I managed to catch the impact but was a few seconds too late to catch the actual vom-stream coming out of her mouth. (I guess I'm slipping!).

Then Leigh came out to say hi to Piper and kept saying "You're head is so cute and tiny I want to bite it off!" (Look at Piper's expression all like "Yo! WTF?").

Hahahahaha. When I'm having a bad day, this is the go-to photo to cheer me up.

And this one's even better! Leigh opened her mouth again to pretend that she was going to eat Piper's head and Piper put her tiny little puppy-paws right in Leigh's mouth. (Go ahead and say "Awwwww!" out loud. You know you want to).

The next morning a whole buncha us went to brunch (again!) this time at Clinton Street Bakery. Here's Meredith with Niki looking thrilled about the obligatory "stand around on the street for an entire hour" wait before being seated.

Luckily enough, someone (I can't remember who!) had this Urinelle paper cup to entertain us with. Can you guess what this is for? If you guessed that it's "The Urination Funnel for Women" (which is their actual trademarked slogan!!!), then you guessed correctly! (And if you guessed correctly, remind me to use Purell immediately after the next time we shake hands).

Here's some more actual copy taken directly from their site: "All women have, at certain moments, wished that they could pee standing up, like men. Now they can! With the URINELLE, a disposable cone through which women can urinate without having to sit down."

I hope someone somewhere is a millionaire because of this product.

Here's Karen demonstrating Urinelles lesser-known secondary functionality: Aide for Imitation of a Parrot.

Niki, Meredith and Kim tearing into brunch. (Man, if I walked into a diner to have brunch and saw myself dining with these three, I would fucking hate me.)

After brunch, Niki found my one of my "secret" books (check out the book's title and Niki's school-teacher expression and try to not laugh) and read excerpts of it out loud to Karen and Kim...

...who rolled around on my bed laughing hysterically. ("What's so funny? Those moves all totally work! I swear!")

Later that night I went over to Sarah's to help her make a few of the 500 Nightmare of You singles she was handmaking and decorating with real rose petals for the one of the earlier releases she did on her Stolen Transmission label (this is well before Island / Def Jam agreed to be her distributor!)

She wanted all the album covers to be decorated with rose petals so she bought hundreds of roses, plucked all the petals off by hand, dried the pedals out one little tray at a time using a goddamned toaster oven!!

Then later on that evening Ryan from Nightmare of You came over and we all watched his band's first appearance on TV that Sarah had recorded. Here's Ryan next to himself.

And here's us pausing the show to laugh about how Brandon looked like someone asked Jim Henson to make a human version of a Kermit the Frog Muppet. ("It's not easy....wearing this vest!")

Monday marked the beginning of week two of my return to the working world. Here's a sneaky photo I took during a Monday morning "software development status" meeting while I was thinking to myself "Am I really here listening to this crazy-talk instead of being somewhere awesome?" Hahah.

At lunch I met up with Leigh and we went to the magazine store on Spring and Lafayette so she could show me her picture in a magazine. (I can't remember which mag this was...maybe Teen Vogue?). Well, needless to say, this was one of the first times she'd appeard in a mag and she was totally excited...since then, Leigh appearing in magazines has pretty much become a weekly thing! Why you gotta be so fashionable?

Then later that night I went to go see Apartment play! Here's David cupping an invisble boobie...

and here's Tom on the bass.

On Tuesday, a whole bunch people came to Kate's and had a belated 29th birthday party dinner for me (because I was in Korea for my 29th birthday).

Meredith showing off her turkey club.

Not sure what Josh is doing here, but it's awesome so this pic stays.

Then, after we'd finished eating, they surprised me with a homemade (thanks, Leigh!) belated birthday cake!

Old man = tons of candle smoke! Thanks for surprising me so nice, everyone!

Thursday evening I went out to dinner with magic-mag David Kreitman.

If you live in NYC and you like pizza, go to L'asso right now. Seriously, check out these fucking pies. Unbelievable. It's one of my favorite restaurants in New York (and the prices are awesomely reasonable).

Then afterwards we went out and meet up with Grant for a beer at Lucy's.

Then after that I went and met up with Niki and David.

On Friday night I went to see another Apartment show! (They were in town to play a bunch of label showcases).

I like this picture of Sarah because she looks like a baby alien in it.

I got up early on Saturday morning and while strolling through Chinatown was suprised to learn that one of The Twins (I'm not sure if that's Jenny or Lauren) is a spiritual healer that goes by the pseudonym Supreme Master Ching Hai! You learn something new every day!

Uncanny, right? (Image stolen from Nikola. Thanks!)

Then a few blocks later, I came across something even stranger: this tiny, bright yellow dead bird. (Which some Googling later I've managed to identify as a Lesser Goldfinch.) I wonder if it was an escaped pet or something...

Later that night I went to Misshapes. Here's Gina (aka "Smellsgood BonJersey") and Brother Lawrence.

I was upstairs and I spotted a David lookalike (why he was dressed up as a character from Star Trek, I'm not sure). Anyway, we asked him to kiss Leigh and then I sent this picture to Kim (David's GF who had gone back to the UK a few days ahead of David) and was like "David's totally out of control! He came to Misshapes dressed up as a guy from Star Trek and was trying to make out with all the girls there!" Hahaha. She almost believed me.

Thomas taking a break from the door.

Leigh and Geordon started DJing (while maintaining their "sexy faces" the entire time) and the next thing you know the dancefloor turned into a...

...makeout party!

Everywhere I looked people were making out!

These two even took a dancefloor time-out so they could up the ante and make out on the couch! Ooooh, illicit!

Your pointy little elf nose is poking my eye.

Wait, who's number one?

Oh, right. Thanks, for clearing that up!

Sexytime!

Woodland creature!

Late-night even Thomas made it out to the dance floor to cut some rug with Sophia!

Not many people know this, but late at night Geordon freestyles. Rock the mic like a vandal, indeed!

On Sunday night the boys from Apartment took us all out to a fancy Italian dinner to thank us all for putting them up in our aparments. Here's David, Sarah and Tom getting ready to chow down.

Tom and Davide.

Meredith and Niki.

David and a buddy of his that he hadn't seen in a while (I think!).

Fast-forward five days later, and here's me at work on Friday after having just returned to NYC from a business trip out to San Francisco celebrating at my new company's monthly party. On the last Friday of every month, my work has a big party with food and booze to celebrate all the birthday's and work-anniversaries that happened that month. (Who says the working world is all bad?)