soup.

Recently, our friend Aubrey moved in with us for a bit. He sleeps on the luxurious couch. And judging from the food he brought from his old house, Aubrey loves soup. A lot.

Aubrey loves soup.

He likes all kinds of soup, but mostly chicken noodle soup. Also, tomato soup and canned tomatoes. And Natty Light, the classiest of beers. Don't get me wrong, soup is great. I eat it every weekday. At work, my office is right below this big cafeteria that has lots of places to get food, like Subway, Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts (the most intimidating of coffee shops), this little stir fry place, and a little store that has fast things, like soup. 


Miriam, my coworker, and I eat soup every day, and here is why: 
1) It is the cheapest lunch available. You can get a big bowl of soup for only $2.50. The best. 
2) You get as many free crackers as you want! 
3) The soups are from Au Bon Pain, which makes us feel fancier.
4) We're basically best friends with the soup lady. At least on the days she is happy. Some days she is not happy, and it's scary.


The best soup is the broccoli cheddar. Miriam and I used to get that one and eat it together in our office, until Miriam read the ingredients and she discovered she can't eat it because she is Jewish and it is not kosher. That was one of the saddest days of the semester. Now, she just stares at me from her desk while I eat it. She also can't eat the Chicken Florentine, Beef and Barley, Italian Wedding, White Bean and Ham or Chicken Noodle. Oddly, she cannot eat the Vegetarian Minestrone either because we found chunks of bacon in it. She said she kept wondering why the soup tasted so good, but then we realized it was because she has never eaten bacon before and bacon is amazing. One would think that "vegetarian" means "consisting solely of vegetables," but not according to the soups at the little store at St. John's. Luckily, it's not one of the best soups anyway, so we don't care.


Miriam can't eat a lot of things, like pepperoni pizza, fish without scales and fins, and Sour Patch Kids. I'm not sure if she can eat reptiles. Wait, does anyone eat reptiles? People eat snakes, don't they? I remember watching an Indiana Jones movie or something adventury like that and they ate a huge anaconda. There might be a rule that you can't eat something without feet, though. The other day I was at preschool watching one of my teams, and they were singing a song called Down By the Bay in Circle Time. One little boy got up and went to the bathroom, but when the Team Leader got to the line "Have you ever seen a snake baking a cake?" the little boy ran out of the bathroom, pants around his ankles, and yelled "Snakes don't have feet!" and then ran back in. So, if you only eat kosher foods, you probably shouldn't eat anacondas. They don't have feet.

brunners take manhattan.

Something big happened this year. Something epic. Something loud. The Brunners came to NYC. The Brunners did a lot of normal things, and some weird, Brunnery things.


The Brunners went to see them blow up the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons! The Brunners also made a human train and sang Christmas songs at the top of their lungs amongst the crowd.

It's a monster Smurf!

The Brunners went to see the windows at Macy's. Then the Brunners hung out in Macy's for 3 hours and ate mall pizza and ice cream for dinner. Logan wishes we could have gone to Macy's every day. He just loved it!


The Brunners ate amazing bagels and drank hazelnut coffee from Brooklyn Bagel Shop. Then the Brunners went back every morning and ate more bagels. Mom went back a few times a day to get their hazelnut coffee, which, in her defense, is the best. All Brunners love carbs and two Brunners love coffee.


The Brunners cooked a 22 pound turkey that Julie Brunner had to carry 4 short blocks and a long block from the butcher at 7 in the morning. Julie is really strong now. And there were only five of us on actual Thanksgiving day. Scott and I have a lot of leftover Thanksgiving dinners. 


The Brunners looked through their newspaper and saw that Best Buy was selling huge TV's for only $200, so they decided to go to the Black Friday sale at midnight. This is a big step for Brunners. We generally don't like shopping. We got there at 10:30pm, and apparently should have gotten there at 2pm because the line was 4 long blocks long. So we came home and ate pie.

Little Logan loves pie.

The Brunners went to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. It was incredible! Mary looked just like the real Mary. The set was amazing. I'm still in love with Bert. And we got to take flying pictures. It's a jolly holiday with Mary.

I believe in the magic!

The Brunners decided they just couldn't get enough acting, so they went to see Relatively Speaking right after Mary Poppins. And Rachel got us really cheap student rush tickets. 'Twas the best.


The Brunners multiplied on Saturday because Andy and his fiance Katy arrived. The Brunner's ate soup and then went to see "nature," aka Central Park. Then the Brunners went to the Guggenheim and saw the Maurizio Cattelan exhibit with Katy's dad. It was well worth seeing. We recommend it.

My mom always makes us order the Happy Family dish at Chinese restaurants. Because that's what we are. The dish is kind of gross, but we are not.

The Brunners did some things on Sunday, too. Logan had to leave us in the morning, so we ate waffles to drown our tears. Then the Brunners went to Astoria Park to look at the Manhattan Skyline. We came back and ate tapas and paninis. Then Andy and Katy had to leave us, so the remaining Brunners did laundry and crosswords.

Hello parents! Hello Manhattan!

The Brunners also came to see Julie at work. They ate in the cafeteria. Just like real college students. Then the Brunners had to go home. 


Thanksgiving was the greatest!

alone time.

Sometimes I do weird things when I'm by myself for too long. Sometimes I listen to Cher Pandora and sit on my couch drinking cheap wine and singing at the top of my lungs. Other times I look at food porn for hours upon end. One time I created a dance to the song "Who's Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" by Shania Twain. Sometimes I also practice my street fighter moves. They're real. My friend Laura took me to a street fighter class and we learned how to dominate, Brooklyn style. Don't act like you're not impressed.

Tonight, however, I decided to cut my own hair, because that's always a good idea. So I listened to the song "Man or Muppet" from the new Muppet Movie on repeat and gave myself bangs.

Try and tell me this song doesn't inspire you to turn over a new leaf, become a better person, and cut your hair. Just try. I know my siblings would never deny this. So now I'm Julie with bangs. I like to think that it makes me look more mature. I mean, I am an adult. And I look like this:

This is what I look like now.

gus gus.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of this thrilling blog post, take a look at this picture and tell me what you think it is:

Murky mystery liquid in cup.

Milk was my first guess, too. And it is also the wrong answer. Because this, my friends, is good old quality New York City tap water. Yum. The first time I saw this come out of our tap was alarming. Here I was, all grown up and living in my big girl New York City apartment with no air conditioning in the 100 degree heat, laying on the hardwood floors eating cherries and dehydrating, when I crawled to the kitchen to fill the only cup I had (a disposable plastic water cup I got at some cafe in the city) with water. And it comes out like this. Fortunately, it eventually clears up, but not very quickly. Especially when you come back from a run and you're about fall over because you work too much to exercise regularly and all you want is some instant hydration.

My roomie says that it is carbon dioxide, or something chemical-ish like that, and it happens because I turn the water on too fast and our faucet needs a filter. Apparently, it might be unhealthy to drink it when it is this bubbly/cloudy because you don't want too much carbon dioxide in your body. He might be right. Oh, by the way, this is my roomie, Scott. He works with dead people. And he breaks bones. Yeah, it's exactly as gross as it sounds. But he also knows some things about science so I'm leaning toward believing him on the murky carbon dioxide bubble water.

I dunno know why you always have to be judging me because I only believe in science.

From this picture, it looks like NYC is a beautiful place where the sun is always shining and the water always shimmers. And in our case, the water does shimmer. It leaves little carbon dioxide bubbles all over the inside of your glass after you drink. It's special. I kind of like it a lot. Just like I like the subway rats. Both of those statements sounded sarcastic because you can't hear me actually talking, but I'm not joking. I honestly like the shimmery bubbles and the subway rats. Today I told my students that I love the subway rats and they now officially think I'm the craziest person on the planet. I mean, sure, they accepted the fact that I sing to Cher Pandora in my office at the top of my lungs and I wear socks with my flats (which is apparently not trendy) and I get insanely lost everywhere I go and I'm terrified to go to Dunkin' Donuts, but I think my love for subway rats finally pushed me over the edge. But I'm okay with that. Today, I saw one scurrying from a hole in the wall by the tracks. He was little and brown and super fast. And I named him Gus Gus.

coffee.

I love coffee. I drink a lot of it, which could be because I love it or because I never sleep anymore. But I have some issues with NYC coffee that desperately need to be addressed. 

If you're from Missouri, you know that coffee is insanely hot. Like it will burn your mouth and your hands. And your legs when you accidentally spill it all over yourself in the car. But people from NYC are either much more tough than us Missouri-folk or else they don't realize that they're getting 3rd degree burns, because no one gives you cup koozies when you order coffee. I really don't understand it! The coffee is so hot I literally cannot touch the cup without fear of injury, but people just walk around drinking their coffee like it's no big deal. No, a napkin is not the same as a cup koozie. They're too slippery and don't provide a good grip and sometimes make me drop my coffee right outside the subway entrance. To make things worse, when I was telling my coworker, Miriam, about my koozie issues, she just laughed and told me that koozie is not a word. Apparently, people in NYC call it a "cozy" or a "sleeve."  Maybe that's why people never give me koozies; because they don't know what word I'm saying or what I'm talking about. 

Look what I just found when I Googled "koozy." A Ben & Jerry's ice cream koozy! I need this.

So, instead of giving me a koozie, they put my coffee in a bag. Yeah, a paper bag. I'm confused. Maybe it makes for easier transportation, but I don't like it. I guess they use special paper bags, because they have a little cardboard square at the bottom to keep the coffee flat, but that still doesn't answer my confusion about why they put my coffee in a bag. Which leads me to the issue of the terrible lids. Sure, maybe putting coffee in a bag is a good idea if the coffee lids don't spill, but they do.  And then the bag gets wet and threatens ripping and spilling it's contents all over the hallway at work. Everyone uses those flimsy flat lids that you have to basically rip a hole in to drink out of and then they never re-close.

It is also really intimidating to order coffee in NYC. It could be because there are always thousands of people in line behind you and the cashiers are always rushing you so that they can get all the thousands of customers in and out, but it's scary.  We just got a Dunkin' Donuts in my building at work and I went there with some of my students and it was terrifying. Everyone from the East coast already knows exactly what they like from Dunkin' Donuts, so I was just standing there wide-eyed and confused until I finally just said something intelligent like, "Coffee. How do I do that?" Then, I have to always remember to tell them that I want my coffee black, and then they look at me like I'm crazy because everyone here likes their coffee with tons of sugar and whole milk. Ew. I always thought whole milk was just for children. Learn something new every day.

best friend weekend.

This weekend was best friend weekend. What? You didn't know that? That means your best friends didn't fly across the country to see you and have the greatest times of your lives. That's too bad, because my best friends did. 

My best friends are named Abby and Andrea and we just dominated this city. And here is how we did it, in no particular order. On Friday, I heard the doorbell and ran down the hall screaming, in a normal way, not in a psycho way. Then, since we've all been dieting in preparation for this weekend, we decided to go shove food in our face pretty much continually for 4 days. Burgers, the most amazing Thai food in the world, omelets, french toast, pizza, pickles, brats, fries, ribs, sauerkraut, popcorn, and obviously, an unhealthy number of bagels. It was basically Girls vs. Food. Our diet starts tomorrow.

Our diet starts tomorrow.

We did other things besides eat, too. We took the subway into Manhattan, got lost, grabbed a cab and then went down to the 9/11 memorial. Though we couldn't get tickets to see the pool, there is something amazing about being with hundreds of people in one area for one reason. And it can all be wrapped up in the old woman who was walking in front of us wearing an American flag hat and thanking the police for all they do.


We hit up Central Park, watched some people play soccer, ate more bagels, and went shopping at H&M, the store that seems amazing but always ends up being terrible because they never have enough people working the check-out. We also went dancing at Gleason's, which we have now renamed Bones2 (if you are from Jeff City, you will understand that, because it was just that classy). Then I fell on the ground and sprained my ankle because my chair fell off a step and we watched our friend Aubrey and 8 other guys dance and sing naked on a stage. Then we went to a bar and hung out with the cast and became best friends with the bartender who was wearing a candy necklace and the transvestite with amazing legs and hot pink lipstick who was singing karaoke. And then Aubrey took us to a bar where he used to work and we created our own dance floor. Because that's what we do.

Then it was Sunday. So we walked to the beer garden in our neighborhood and made friends with the Czech waitress who decided to teach us profanities in her language while Andrea tried to convince us to be friends with some vampires and instead opted for befriending some normal people, which was definitely a better decision. So we took a cab ride with the greatest cabbie ever to my roomie's and my favorite pub and played darts and made friends with the only other Cardinals fan in the bar.  We also spent some time staring out my back window and watching the crazy cat lady with the tin foil windows feed the cats that live in our backyard, which is actually just a concrete slab with two tiki torches.

See those windows that are kind of shiny? That's aluminum foil. That's where the cat lady peeks out and whistles for the cats. That's where she lives.

Abby and Andrea are my BFF's and that means best friends forever.

eight and counting.

Our cockroach total has increased, and I'm not happy about it. Last night was generally terrible for me. I went to bed at 11pm and then laid there not asleep for approximately seven hours. At one point I got up to go to the bathroom and drink some tea in hopes that it would make me tired, but as I walked into the bathroom and flicked on the light, five cockroaches started running underneath the bathtub. Some of them were little and some of them were not little and were extremely fast and terrifying. This is worse than that time I lived with my grandparents and a mouse ran across my foot in the basement bathroom. At least mice are cute.


Apparently, everyone has cockroaches up here and we're supposed to buy this magical little container with cockroach poison that kills them. I don't like this. This is not normal.

It looks like this. Maybe it even makes the roaches glow like in the picture.

I was just becoming comfortable in destroying the Missouri spiders that used to live in our apartment (but only because I had to. My old roomie, Danielle, was even more terrified of spiders. We kept spider spray at our front door so that we could attack any bug that dared enter our premises). Actually, I think I might be lying and I think I'm actually still terrified of spiders. Once I saw a spider the size of a baseball in my driveway. No, I'm not exaggerating. It was monstrous and I could tell it wanted to attack me. And I bet it was poisonous. So, yes, I'm still scared of spiders. But I'm also scared of cockroaches. Because they scuttle and they're disgusting and Scott says you can hear their little gross cockroach feet when they run across the hardwood floors. What if one touches me? What if they crawl on me while I'm sleeping? What if I have to go to the bathroom at night again?

It was possibly one of the most terrifying things I've experienced in New York City. That and learning about bed bugs. My coworker, Miriam, always tells me these terrifying stories about bed bugs and how they live in all your clothes and your mattress and you can never get rid of them and they come out at night to suck your blood like little vampires and you can get them practically anywhere and how she once saw some crawling on a person in the subway and how they can jump and she could have gotten bed bugs from that person. They look like this:

I found this bed bug picture on the internet. That means it's real.

So here's hoping that I never get bed bugs and that I can sleep all the way through the night so that I don't have to risk entering the cockroach bathroom. I really don't like this.