12 May 07

Time:

?

Money:

?

More interesting things:

Waited, impatiently and overheated, for the airport shuttle. It was just too hot to stand in the hallway as I usually do, so I compromised and stood in the doorway - with the door to the street open - instead, which was much more pleasant except for the part where I was looking not just for the van but also for seriously drunk guys who might think I was holding the door open for them: yecch. The neat thing was that the doorman across the street saw me and waved animatedly, so he could be sure I'd seen him; I didn't know whether his demonstration that he was watching me was meant to be a reassurance or a warning until he next pantomimed an offer for me to walk over there and wait for my ride with him. Pretty freakin' cool, for this "hard" city of "anonymity" etc.!

Rode up to - eh - Columbia to pick up a kid waiting outside one of the little dorm compounds and blazed (the driver was a bit of a maniac) past TC. And to think I almost ended up there... it gives me the shakes.

Crossed town at 125th Street, passing the train station, the supermarket, and the rumble. Give me a fucking break, people. If you're going to run when the cops show up or - more pansyish yet - brass knuckles start flying, here's a tip for you: don't drag your happy ass out at 4:00 in the morning to start with! You think they're having a street fair down there, for chrissake? I mean, don't get me wrong - it was quite interesting, in a watching-animals-fight-at-the-zoo kind of way, but really. Come on.

Sat near a group of five headed out on vacation - it was a mom, a dad, a son, and a daughter and maybe another son, although it seemed like it could have been a future son-in-law sitting there at the end. Anyway, I saw a good kindergarten-related trick: with the announcement that if anyone had printed out their tickets on big paper, it would be helpful to tear off just the important part, an airline worker turned this family into a bunch of five-year-olds studiously creating origami. I almost laughed out loud, but that would have looked kind of funny.

Saw - and I have it written in after the ticket-tearing business, which would seem to imply that somehow I did my seeing at the airport - the Hell Gate bridge... and it looked just like my favorite rabbit picture!