DEAR DIARY: R.I.P. NYC

What changes when you leave NYC? A helluva lot!

I can't get over how surreal my day was today people! A few weeks ago I was like a dykey NYC hipster with my skinny jeans, Nikes, and bed-head haircut, the next I'm literally in some snow pants and moon boots, sweating over scraping some iced on snow off the front of my car windshield. The snow here is no joke! Then I get into the car and I’m getting ready to pull out my latest novel from my messenger bag like I always do on the train, but wait I’m driving a car, I have to merge and conquer traffic. I can't even describe how weird this feels people! –Ruby

This week was spent shoveling and clearing snow in an endless and maddening Sisyphean challenge. I suppose that if this was NY, the snow would already be black, sooty, muddy and sprayed all over my coat as taxis jet past me on my walk home from the train. -miya

Yeah, I’ve literally been having a week long anxiety attack. One minute I’m like, “oh local coffee shops and bookstores on every corner- how cool is that!” The next minute, it’s hard to describe...I get all nauseous and teary-eyed thinking about how much I actually miss riding the subway, getting out at Christopher St. in The Village and walking to my favorite café. Always surrounded by amazing-looking people, sitting down next to the writer Malcolm Gladwell, overhearing some outrageous conversation tidbit. I know NYC like the back of my hand and now I’m finding myself stuck in a cul-de-sac trying to remember that one street, I forgot the name of over the years, that takes us back to my mom's house. -Ruby

It is really nice to get a table at a coffee shop. Any coffee shop. I don't miss those days (and there were countless) when I would be hovering over some poor guy, giving him the stink-eye and hoping that he would vacate his busted up seat by the broken table before I finish my $5 latte. Here in Mpls there are dozens of non-Starbucks coffee shops with dozens of seats at dozens of tables. Working lights, pretty awesome local Peace Coffee, surly (in their own Midwestern way) servers and local loafers and loiterers. I guess if I close my eyes, I can pretend we are still on the East Coast, even for a minute. -miya