Me, to myself last night, after ordering a couple of necessary household items to replace things that have broken/worn out: "and now no more spending money until we pay down some credit card debt!"

Me, to myself this afternoon, after trying to make an unwise third cup of coffee and listening to the Keurig break down: "I guess I'm buying a new Keurig."

Arrgh. I knew it was on its last legs, but I put off ordering a new one and now I will have to go without coffee until it arrives - hopefully tomorrow but 1-day delivery is always iffy. (I mean, technically I have other ways of making coffee, but I also invested in a metric fuckton of k-cups during the spring and summer when I was anxious about supply chain issues so...)

In better news, this weekend I baked these oatmeal cookies, and instead of raisins, I used the dried mixed berries from Sahadi's and they are really good! (I also left out the nuts, and used AP flour instead of white whole wheat.)

In other oatmeal news, steel cut oats were on sale so I bought some and I have tried them in a couple of different ways and...I don't like them. The texture is too chewy and the taste isn't that great. *hands* It's all the things I disliked about oatmeal previously. So I am going back to my plebeian rolled oats, which come out creamy and delicious when done overnight in the slow cooker.

I did manage to finally get all my laundry done last night - I put it off all weekend, but couldn't face letting it hang around any longer. It's even mostly all folded too - just sheets and towels left. Whew.

*

Today's January journal topic comes from callmesandyk: What you wish stories set in NYC right now would get right and rarely do!

In terms of professional stuff - movies and TV shows - I think we could do away with the unrealistically large apartments people live in on TV. At least in Manhattan. I realize they have to get some equipment etc. into the set, but it's just...unbelievable. Unless there are like eight people living there or they are rich people. Or they explicitly mention inheriting the rent-controlled apartment from their parents or something.

I also wish they did better in terms of showing how to get places/how long it takes etc. The subways and buses almost always look wrong, and when they substitute one part of the city for another, sometimes they don't handle it well and you're like, "but that's not how you get there?" Or "that building isn't on the way to that place?" In cities I'm not familiar with, it doesn't bother me, but it does jar me momentarily when I see a diner in Tribeca portraying a diner in Hell's Kitchen and it doesn't look right.

In terms of people writing fic - please stop having people drive everywhere. Unless they live out in the suburbs (on Long Island, in Westchester, in Jersey) or certain areas of Queens (eta: and Staten Island /eta), a large number of people do not drive - we take buses or subways or the LIRR. Or we walk or bike. Walking a lot is very common, especially on errands that are within walking distance (which is farther than you think), and Manhattan, and many outer borough neighborhoods, are set up to be walkable - the grocery store, the dry cleaner, the liquor store, the pizzeria - these are all probably on the way home from the subway. Subways are referred to by their letters or numbers (the 1, the 6, the E) - nobody uses color designations (the blue line, the green line). Crosstown/avenue blocks are longer than north-south number/name blocks (i.e., the one block between 2nd and 3rd Avenue is longer than the one block between 81st and 82nd).

If you're going to namecheck a place, please look at a map - I still recall someone telling me about a story where characters got lost in Bryant Park, which is a park that is one block square. You can't get lost in it - it's not big enough.

In terms of Spider-Man, MCU Peter lives in Forest Hills, so he likely takes the E train to get into Manhattan (when not, you know, webswinging). It's a nice neighborhood, lots of restaurants and shops, absolutely not enough parking. Which is the truth about most places in the city. Oh, speaking of parking - alternate side of the street parking is a thing! You have to get up early to move your car on certain days! This could be used to hilarious effect in fic, though I don't recall seeing it come up much, if at all.

I think that covers my current usual complaints. *g*

***