Katie Barber | thesmartlyny.com

On living in sorority houses and with boyfriends

January 3, 2011 By Katie Barber 3 Comments

For two years of my life, I lived in a sorority house with almost seventy other girls. The upsides to this were that you were never at a loss for company and that the house was a veritable smorgasbord of clothing and beauty products. If you ran out of shampoo, couldn’t find the right shoe to match your outfit, wanted to test out a flatiron, or just hated all your clothes, all you had to do to solve your problem was walk down the hallway.

Our castle-like house was large, but it wasn’t particularly spacious, especially when filled with that many girls. We were squeezed into tiny rooms by twos and threes, and we all slept (or were supposed to sleep) in the cold dorms, two large rooms that could have easily been mistaken for orphanages with their rows of metal bunk beds. With seventy girls in close quarters, things were bound to get trying at times – particularly when everyone was already stressed because finals, or when everyone wanted to use the shower at the same time.

When my two years in the sorority house were finished, I was ready to move into a smaller space with decidedly fewer roommates. I downsized gradually, living first with three other girls, then one, and then finally alone. Certain aspects of living by myself delighted me (namely, that no one was around to witness – and judge – me watching The Bold and the Beautiful), but I found myself missing having a roommate. I wanted to share my morning coffee with someone other than Kiran Chetry, and disaster nearly struck when the zipper on the back of my dress jammed and I had no one to free me.

I moved in with my boyfriend a year and a half ago, and I’m finding this to be the best of both worlds. He’s not very helpful when it comes to helping me with my outfits – he can’t tell the difference between a pointy-toed black four-inch stiletto, a pointy-toed black two-and-a-half inch heel, an almond-toed four-inch pump, or an open-toed three inch heel – but he’s certainly easier to live with than a sorority house full of girls.

Filed Under: MISC

The six worst passengers

December 16, 2010 By Katie Barber 3 Comments

The holiday travel season is about to swing into full-force. I know it’s trendy to worry about the TSA and their body scanners, but I’m devoting my travel worry quota to worrying about who’s going to be sitting next to me. Ideally, he or she will keep his or her elbows out of my (limited) personal space, will not be restless, and will spend the flight reading quietly – or, even better, won’t show up, leaving me next to an empty seat. I know the chances of me getting my ideal seatmate are slim, so I’m just hoping that I don’t end up seated next to one of the following characters:

The screaming child. Nobody wants to sit next to a screaming child. Even the parents of the child in question want to be somewhere else.

The permissive parent. Although the permissive parent is sometimes found in tandem with the screaming child, it isn’t always. The permissive parent is much worse than the screaming child: the screaming child is often too young to understand that they are behaving poorly; the permissive parent cannot use that excuse. I was once on a flight with a child sitting directly behind me who kept yapping like a dog while his mother giggled and encouraged him. I turned around and politely asked the mother if she could ask her son to dial it down a notch. She shot me a dirty look, and, when her son (who was clearly too old to be behaving that way) asked what I had said, she told him, “Nothing, honey. That lady was just being a b*tch.” That’s the permissive parent at its worst.

The guy eating tuna salad. This should go without saying, but tuna salad has no place on an airplane. Airplanes are nothing more than enclosed metal tubes with recycled air. Your fellow travelers would greatly appreciate it if that air didn’t smell like tuna (or garlic, or special sauce, or anything with an overpowering scent) for the duration of the flight.

The non-bather. There are reasons someone might get on a plane smelling less than fresh: it’s the end of a long day of traveling, he or she didn’t want to wake up extra early to shower for an early flight, or there was a sprint during a too-tight connection down a too-long terminal. Just because there’s an excuse, however, doesn’t mean that it’s pleasant for the person in the next seat.

The chatterbox. I am not interested in having a conversation with the person next to me. The person in the next seat might be the most interesting person in the world, but they also might be a religious zealot wanting to spend the next three hours trying to convert me. (Unfortunately, that actually happened to me.) In addition to wanting to avoid that potential landmine, I find it incredibly awkward to have a conversation with a stranger when you are sitting as close to them as you are on an airplane.

The drunk. It’s happened to the best of us. There’s a long layover or a delayed flight, and the best place to spend it seems like the airport bar. Holiday travel brings overbooked airspace and inclement weather, making delayed flights more frequent and airport bars more packed. Keep an eye on yourself: no one wants to sit beside someone with whiskey emanating from the pores, particularly if you’re the sort who turns into a chatterbox (see above) with libations.

Best of luck in all holiday travels, and please, I’m begging you, try to avoid being one of these passengers.

Filed Under: Humor, MISC, Opinion

Thanksgiving with the penguins

December 9, 2010 By Katie Barber 4 Comments

The holidays – and Thanksgiving in particular – are rife with tradition. Everything from the location of the fest to seating arrangements to who brings the pumpkin pie can be dictated by tradition. Such holiday traditions can help create family memories, but sometimes those memories can be overwhelming, particularly when not everyone is around to share them.

My grandfather, a wonderful, intelligent, and humorous man, passed away in June 2009. Thanksgiving that year was painful with his seat empty. Christmas was no better, despite our attempts to break from tradition by serving steak instead of ham and eating off the good china instead of festive paper plates. This Thanksgiving, we decided a change of scenery was in order. My parents live in Illinois, and I live in New York, so we split the difference and gathered in Cincinnati, Ohio, where my brother currently lives.

While most families spent Thanksgiving Day watching sports and roasting turkeys, my family spent it at the Newport Aquarium. We – along with a few other families – learned about strange little creatures called mudskippers, reached into water to pet swimming sharks, and sat mesmerized in front of the penguin enclosure. We had a late lunch – so late partially because we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the waddling penguins, but primarily because we couldn’t find anywhere open on Thanksgiving Day. We finally found a Steak ‘n Shake, which, if you’re not familiar, is a Midwestern diner-style chain restaurant. I haven’t eaten in a Steak ‘n Shake in at least seven years, and lunch proved to be a perfect reminder of my past and home without miring us in tradition.

While other Americans sat down to a turkey dinner with stuffing and green bean casserole, we had reservations at a nice seafood restaurant overlooking the water. Prosciutto-wrapped salmon with miso-maple glaze might not be say “Thanksgiving” to most, but no one could argue that it wasn’t delicious. And who needs pumpkin pie when there’s chocolate lava cake?

Our celebration might not have fit the holiday mold, but it was exactly what we needed. We spent time together as a family, and we gave thanks for each other instead of turkey. Our Thanksgiving was not traditional, but it certainly was memorable – and wonderful.

Filed Under: Nostalgia

What not to wear … to the gym

November 16, 2010 By Katie Barber 12 Comments

I am not someone that cares too much about exercise clothing. I’m not an elite athlete, so I don’t need anything to wick away moisture or stabilize my joints. I’m a girl who uses the elliptical while playing Klondike on her iPod, so I’m more than sufficiently outfitted in the same pair of gym pants that I boughtfrom Target in the ‘90s and a t-shirt from my collection of inappropriately sloganed shirts from sorority functions. The combination work just fine for me, and I imagine that no one notices what I’m wearing because I generally don’t notice what anyone else is wearing.

The exception to that rule is, of course, when someone is dressed wholly inappropriately for the gym. It happens more often than you might think that someone has dressed in a manner that actually impedes their exercise efforts.

Here are a few real-life examples of problematic exercise wear I have seen at they gym:

Jeans. I will never understand why people wear jeans to the gym. I remember wearing jeans while running around during recess in elementary school, and it was so uncomfortable. Denim is heavy and stiff, which is not a great combination for activewear. I feel uncomfortable for people when I see them running on the treadmill in jeans, and I saw the frustration of the jeans-wearing girl in yoga when she couldn’t get into Warrior 2.

Skirts. Skirts are fine to wear when playing tennis (they were, after all, the main reason I decided to play tennis in high school), but they have no place in the gym, especially in a yoga class. Downward dog can get a little sketchy in a skirt, and inversions are definitely out. A pair of girls wearing skirts abandoned my yoga class the other week after the first five minutes of Sun Salutations.

High-heeled sneakers. Just because they look like sneakers doesn’t mean that they have the same effect as sneakers. I really wish I was kidding about this one.

Bare feet. Ick. At the gym I used to frequent, there was this kooky woman with obscenely long hair who, every single day, would lift weights while wearing a pink velour sweatsuit and bare feet. I know that there’s a movement pushing barefoot running, but I think we can all agree that you should keep your shoes on at the gym. If you’re unconcerned about catching foot fungus (which you should be), at the very least worry about having a ten-pound dumbbell dropped on an unprotected toe.

My “we may lose, but we still booze” t-shirt and stained and faded gym pants may be an eyesore, but at least they are gym-appropriate attire.

Filed Under: Humor, MISC, Opinion, Style

The dangers of spinning

November 1, 2010 By Katie Barber 5 Comments

I have a big bruise developing on my knee right now. It’s a testament to the fact that I am not coordinated enough for spinning.

In theory, spinning doesn’t sound that complicated. I mean, I learned how to ride a bike when I was five. A spinning cycle, however, is definitely not the same thing as a pink princess bike with a banana seat and streamers on the handlebars. A spinning cycle is a much more intense machine.

I tried spinning a couple of years ago at the urging of a friend. We were staying at a resort in Mexico, and there were free spinning classes. She needed a companion, so I gave spinning a try. I hated the instructor passionately. He was far too energetic (and this is coming from a girl whose personal blog is titled Perky to a Fault), and kept encouraging us to shout “whoo!” during the class. I interpreted shouting “whoo!” as a choice, and, as I was not feeling particularly “whoo!”-like while sweating through the class, I kept my mouth shut. He repeatedly called me out in an annoying cheerful (and free of panting) voice while I silently seethed. I suspected my bad attitude toward the class might have had something to do with the resort’s all-you-can-drink policy (and the fact that I had taken full advantage of that the previous evening), but I still stayed away from spinning.

Until today. Looking for a change in my routine, I tried a new class at the gym. The class combines spinning, toning, and stretching, and it starts with thirty minutes of spinning. Ten minutes into the class, I wanted to die. We kept hopping up to stand on our bikes and then sitting back down, and I couldn’t figure out how to do it as smoothly as the rest of the people in the room. My movements were always jerky and threatened to throw me off the bike. The pedals felt as though they were going to cut my feet in half. Something was clearly wrong. I was glad that the lights were off and that I was in the back row. I didn’t need any witnesses.

At some point, while I was struggling to keep up with the class and on the bike, I whacked my knee into the handlebars. I’m still unsure how that happened; I don’t know what my knee was doing in the vicinity of the handlebars, but, oh man. It was a hard hit and prompted me to remain seated for the remainder of the tortuous spinning session.

I now have a relatively scary bruise on my knee. Next week, in case I have forgotten my humiliation and am tempted to try the class again, I’ll have this bruise as a reminder that I should unequivocally not. There are plenty of other classes at the gym, most requiring much less coordination than this one.

Filed Under: MISC

Tourists melt in the rain

October 15, 2010 By Katie Barber 2 Comments

I suspect that tourists melt in the rain. I have no other explanation for the fact that, as soon as precipitation threatens, they all whip out their oversized umbrellas in unison. They become so preoccupied with shielding every square centimeter of their exposed skin from rain that they lose whatever sense of self-awareness that might have had.

Let’s be honest, most tourists doesn’t possess that much self-awareness to begin with. They usually can’t be trusted to walk down the sidewalk without making an impediment of themselves, and umbrellas just complicate the situation. (Note to all tourists: we’re glad that you love our fair city and that you want to take pictures of it … we just wish you’d take your pictures while standing out of the thoroughfare.)

In the wrong hands, umbrellas can become weapons. They have sharp edges and they’re typically swung around at eye level. It’s a wonder to me that more New Yorkers don’t lose an eye (or two) each year in umbrella accidents. And God help you if you happen to be in a touristy neighborhood when the rain starts. Once I had the misfortune to be leaving the Times Square AMC (before the Great Bedbug Infestation of 2010, of course) as it began to drizzle. Within seconds, I was pummeled from every direction with umbrellas of all shapes and sizes. I kept my head down and hurried to the subway and thankfully avoided major injury.

Although I’ve never seen what happens when rain touches a tourist, I can only imagine that they melt, Wicked-Witch-of-the-West-style, in the rain.

Filed Under: Humor, MISC, Opinion

Phobias in the crown of the statue

October 11, 2010 By Katie Barber 3 Comments

On paper, a visit to the Statue of Liberty’s crown has a lot going for it: the thrill of being inside one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, the unobstructed views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline, and even the exclusivity factor, as a relatively small number of people get to climb into the crown. Only 240 tickets are available each day – compared to the thousands of people who visit the island each day – and those tickets sell out months in advance.

When my boyfriend and I began to plan our visit to the crown in late July, the first time that two tickets were available on the weekend was November. In the midst of our debate over whether to select morning or afternoon tickets, we happened to click back to the July calendar and saw, much to our surprise, that two tickets were suddenly available for that afternoon. We snapped them up and hurried out the door.

We soon found ourselves beginning the climb in the base of the monument. I was so excited and nervous that I almost felt sick. I knew that we were lucky to have the tickets, but a part of me worried that I would freak out. The website had warned that the climb was not for the acrophobic or claustrophobic; I am both. I am also, however, determined, and I wanted to get to the top.

The first sets of stairs were unremarkable; it wasn’t until we reached a landing and were ushered behind a literal velvet rope that my heart dropped. The next set of stairs was a narrow spiral staircase that shot straight up through the body of the statue. It was the stuff my nightmares are made of. It was steep and it was narrow, and it took every single last modicum of my energy to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. That was the only way that I was going to make it up those stairs. If I let my mind stray from concentrating on my footsteps, it began shrieking incoherently, Danger! Danger! Danger! Stop! Danger! Obviously, that was chatter that I needed to keep out of my head.

The situation wasn’t improved when I had to step over a pregnant woman and her husband resting on the stairs. I turned back to tell the boyfriend I couldn’t go any further, but the sight of the stairs behind him made my stomach flip. I hurried up the stairs as quickly as possible, keeping my eyes only on the stairs in front of me.
The crown has a tiny deck where you can admire the view from the windows in the crown. The view was, as expected, amazing, but I had trouble enjoying it as I was clinging to the interior beams in unbridled terror.

When it was time to descend, I requested that the boyfriend to go first, thinking his body would block the dizzying view downward. This worked until he ducked into a rest point to take photographs of the belly of the statue. Unwilling to spend one additional second on those stairs, I blazed on, not stopping until I was on the monument base again. My heart was pounding, and my legs were wobbling, but I was off those stairs and I was still in one piece.

The moral of the story is this: the trip to the Statue of Liberty’s crown might sound great, but it is assuredly not for the faint of heart.

Filed Under: MISC, Nostalgia

The land border crossing birthdays

October 4, 2010 By Katie Barber 3 Comments

I don’t travel on my birthday. I spent two birthdays in a row at land border crossings, and that has forever ruined me from traveling on my birthday.

The first of the Land Border Crossing Birthdays was my twenty-sixth birthday. My boyfriend and I were leaving mainland China and heading to Macau. Because Macau is a special administrative district, one must go through customs when leaving or entering mainland China. The queue to cross on foot was enormous, and we stood in line for hours. I was hungry, I had a screaming kid in line behind me, and I had to use the restroom. (I had been desperately trying to avoid visiting the Chinese toilets, which were little more than holes in the ground.) Just to make the queue that much more unbearable, no one seemed to be respecting my personal space.

It was finally, finally our turn. I gave the agent my passport and most winning smile; he only paid attention to the passport. He stamped it and motioned for me to move along. My boyfriend was next, and he handed his passport to the agent. The agent looked at it, looked at my boyfriend, and frowned. He squinted, and he frowned some more. He looked from the passport to my boyfriend twice more before gruffly asking for another form of identification. My boyfriend handed over his drivers license, which, unfortunately was even older than the passport and seemed to actually hurt his case. The border agent frowned some more, sighed, and looked unconvinced. My boyfriend dug through his backpack and produced his law school ID, which had been issued just two years earlier. Thankfully, that satisfied the border agent, and he ushered us on our way into Macau. I had not wanted to spend my birthday in the world’s longest queue, but I certainly was glad not to have to spend it trying to spring my boyfriend from Chinese border jail.

The second (and final, if I have anything to say about it) Land Border Crossing Birthday was my twenty-seventh birthday. My boyfriend and I were a couple of weeks into a backpacking trip around Southeast Asia. We had crossed from Thailand to Myanmar the day before my birthday, but we had been told upon entry that we had to wait until the next day before we could continue north as we had planned. We spent one weird night in the border town, having dinner and Burmese beer in a dark backyard and sleeping in a creepy old hostel with Felix the Cat sheets on the beds. I had nightmares all night, alternately about being murdered in our sleep or our passports – which had been held at the border – being lost.

We decided that one night in Myanmar was more than enough, and we walked back over to Thailand as soon as we woke up on my birthday. After the land border crossing, there was a multi-hour bus ride to Chiang Mai, but the birthday dramatically improved from there and included a mooncake with a candle.

I turned twenty-nine recently, and I was in Chicago for a close friend’s bachelorette party the day before my birthday. There are no land border crossings to contend with between Chicago and New York, but the rule has been established: I don’t travel on my birthday.