very simple

So, the NY Times travel section regularly does this little feature called "36 hours", where they visit a city for a weekend, and then essentially publish the itinerary, which consists of reviews as well as advice on what to see and what to skip when you’ve got limited time in a city. So earlier this week, I figured I’d see what they had listed for Paris. I’ll be there for more than 36 hours, but not much more when you discount Christmas Day, when I assume everything will be closed. But when I went searching on Monday, they hadn’t done one for Paris. Which kind of surprised me, but I set about printing out some of their other articles just to get myself oriented.

So then, I click on the Times this morning, and yup, 36 Hours: Paris was posted. It’s like they knew. At least now I’ve got my itinerary for the weekend (I’ll probably jumble things up a bit, and I’ve been to certain places before, so they get de-prioritized (not that I won’t fit them in if I’ve got time, but the Louvre can be a four day trip in itself).

I’m off to go finish packing, and to figure out how I’m getting to the damn airport. Again.

Five years.

It feels like a million years.

And it feels like yesterday.

I live in a different place now. I work in a different place now.

But when I go back to that place, to the place where I could see the buildings on fire, I can still picture it clear as day. I was a “safe” distance away, certainly, but who knew what was safe that day.

I remember…

It was such a beautiful day. One of those perfect weather days. mid-70s, sunny, no humidity. The kind of day where people just have an extra spring in their step. Where we, even jaded New Yorkers, smile more at our neighbors on the street, because weather like this is so unusual and precious.

Leaving for work early that day. I had to go vote in the primary. Which meant that I had to walk over to 6th avenue.

Hearing a loud bang/crash/explosion as I walked from Park to 5th. Not realizing what it was. I kept walking.

I approached 5th avenue and wondered why people had stopped in their tracks. About 20 people at this point. Not a crowd. Just random people, stopped. staring. Of course I thought they were crazy. Of course I turned and looked.

I saw the smoke first. So much smoke that it was like an optical illusion. I thought it was the church at the corner of 5th avenue and 12th street on fire. Certainly terrible but nothing to miss work for.

Then the smoke cleared and I saw the hole. With flaming edges. A hole right in the middle of one of those towers. Not understanding what was going on. Not knowing that it was a plane.
Just thinking that it was a horrible accident.

I still had to go vote.

I think my mind was so unable to wrap itself around what was happening that I was on a bit of autopilot. I had tasks to do. vote. go to work. vote. go to work.

Continued walking.

The second plane hit while I was voting. They stopped the primary about 20 minutes later.

Walked out to 6th avenue. Now there were hundreds. thousands of people. All lined up on the west side of the street to see what was going on.

Random people leaving their car radios on. Tuned to the news. So that everyone could hear what was going on.

I still had to go to work.

At that point, I certainly knew that I wouldn’t actually be working that day. But there were no people in my apartment, and there were people who I knew at work. I needed to be near people I knew.

My cellphone certainly didn’t work. kept trying to call my dad. my brother had moved to London 5 days earlier. He couldn’t get through to the US.

Got on the bus going north.

The bus made it 10 blocks before it was taken over by the police.

Helped a blind lady find the next bus.

Took 3 buses to make it to work. All those police who were trying to get downtown. There were buses in the debris.

Someone on the bus had a walkman. Told us that the pentagon had been hit too. That’s when we really started freaking out. We became a “we” instead of a collection of “I’s”.

Got to the office. Got off the elevator on the 25th floor. Could hear a radio blaring through the halls. Blasting the news.

It was my radio. Someone had gone into my office and turned it on to hear what was happening.

We all just stood there around the radio.

Then someone found out that they were dragging TVs into the conference rooms.

Went to the conference room. More people. Saw the towers collapse. People around me were screaming. I was screaming. One woman was screaming about her son (he survived. barely. the firefighters who carried him out on a gurney, because of his asthma, did not).

Attempted to donate blood. The line wrapped around the block. They didn’t have the capacity to handle that many people. They were only taking type-O people. They didn’t need any of the blood.

Met up with some co-workers. King Cole Bar. St. Regis Hotel. It was a central enough location. A good place to wait for others.

Stayed there until 3 or 4. Decided to try to go home. Instead of south being demarcated by two tall buildings, it was just a giant cloud of smoke. It was still a really clear day.

Finally got through to people on my cellphone. Dad was OK. Got stuck at the train station upstate because they shut down the trains. The car radio was broken and there’s always spotty cell reception, so he didn’t know what was happening until he found someone else. Got through to my friends. My best friend’s husband, who worked downtown, was fine. A picture he took ended up in one of the many photo retrospectives.

Everyone I knew was fine. Lawyers don’t get to work that early. they were all still on their way. Didn’t see any sense in going into their offices.

Found out later than a colleague’s roommate died. The roommate worked in New Jersey. He had a meeting.

My brother finally got through that night. I was home. I could smell the smoke (no, it wasn’t smoke. I don’t want to think about what I was smelling).

Spent the next week going to work. Not working. Just being with other people.

That’s what I remember.

I feel a hole in my heart for people that I never met.

Saw Sleater-Kinney last night at Webster Hall (with the same group of folks from work who went last year), and it was, again, pretty awesome.

This is, as they’ve announced, their final tour ever, as they are breaking up after the conclusion. The final concert is tomorrow night (although there are some rumors that they’re going to do one more “final” final sendoff in portland). I will say though, that concert venues originally constructed in 1886 are not the ideal place to be when it’s been well over 100 degrees without the humidity all day for at least two days. It was hot. and stanky. and I thought, at more than one point in the evening, that I was literally going to melt in a puddle onto the floor. Still, I’m glad I went (my head may have not been so happy this morning when I woke up, but, eh, what the hell).

Anyway, here’s what photos looked like when I took them:

Here’s what photos looked like when my friend Steve, who’s approximately an entire foot taller than me took them:

And for those of you who are interested in hearing what it sounded like…

I’ve been sitting here for about 20 minutes staring at my computer screen, thinking about how I really want to write something, but I can’t think of a subject. So I pull up a copy of the NY Times…

This article about the image problems the Cornell students have made me laugh. Because in a 2-page article about how these students sometimes feel like they’re attending a state university and not an Ivy, nowhere is it mentioned that several schools at Cornell are essentially public (Ezra Cornell convinced some folks back when he built Cornell that it was deserving of the federal land-grant school money that was being handed out to form state university systems, which is why New York didn’t get a “real” state university system until the 1960s – because of this, about a third of the “colleges” at Cornell are priced at significantly lower rates for New Yorkers). Not to mention that everyone has college envy. I went to an Ivy law school, where students walked around in t-shirts with the Penn logo and “Not Penn State” written where the university’s name would ordinarily be. The joke around the law school (at least in the first few weeks), was that the number one reason students gave for attending Penn was “because I didn’t get in to NYU” (no joke, however, was a member of my first year class who made it off the NYU wait list a week into classes and actually withdrew from Penn and moved from Philly to NY to take them up on the offer).

May be this will work on short shuttle flights, but the idea of standing on airplane flights is just a bit screwy. As if your legs don’t get stiff enough sitting down. As bad as my feet swell from flying normally, I just have visions of walking around with balloon-shaped feet for days if I ever have to resort to one of these things. Imagine having to pay a premium to actually sit in one of those awful coach seats.

Jane Jacobs died today. She was a New York legend, facing down the likes of no less than Robert Moses in his attempts to destroy her neighborhood with his cross-manhattan expressways, and advocating for urban density as a net positive in city life. The best urban critic around, she eventually moved from Greenwich Village to Toronto.

That’s all that piqued my interest today. I did have a rough morning. Got home last night to a building notice that, due to some necessary boiler repairs, the heat and hot water would be turned off from 11 p.m. last night to 4 p.m. today. Then, I woke up for no reason at 4 this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. Because it was too cold. I ended up not having to take a cold shower though, because I was up so early that I managed to get the last of the warm water that was still in the tanks. So that was something. I don’t even know why I’m still awake at this point, except out of habit.

I love when the New York Times thinks it’s discovered a new trend or phenomenon.

This time, it’s the overwhelming tidiness of The Container Store and the obsessions that it can provoke, coinciding with the opening of a new store at 58th and Lex.

Nevermind that these same “phenomena” have existing at least as long as the other container store has been open (you know, the one downtown?). Or, um, since the advent of Hold Everything, which was a bit more upscale (and which my mother was somewhat obsessed with), and is now being run over by its cheaper competitors (as in, the competitors have been around long enough to drive another store out of business)?

As for the author’s fascination with Go Shop, the “scan the bar codes and let someone else deal with the heavy lifting” service? I was using it a year ago when I was making daily trips to the downtown store for packing supplies.

And this made me laugh:

At 6:30 a pleasant-sounding man called to tell me that not all of my items were in stock. Would I like to wait two weeks until my entire order could be completed? Despite an extra charge for a second delivery, I told him to send my order that evening.

This woman’s entire job is to write about shopping and trends for the “most important” newspaper in the country! She’s not smart enough to get free delivery when they can’t complete her order as promised? I actually had this problem once when I used GoShop, and the store didn’t even suggest that I pay a second delivery fee. Heh. I guess she’s such a sucker that they could read it over the phone.

My absolutely favorite part, though?

The name of the column is “critical shopper“.

No excuse.

• I can’t believe CNN couldn’t get these guys a table or something… (tue jul 26 2005 6:16 pm)
• It was just my luck that I managed to be outside when the record-setting rainfall hit last night. As I mentioned to someone last night, I managed to feel refreshed, yet gross, all at the same time. (mon aug 15 2005 3:51 pm)
• Heh. and I’m still wondering how they miniaturize all those actors to fit inside my TV. (mon aug 22 2005 8:08 am)
• I wish I had read about the ultimate guide to color charts before I redid my entire apartment… (thu sep 8 2005 1:17 pm)
• OK, how cool is this-Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War – New York Times (tue mar 21 2006 5:51 pm)

OK, fine, the snowstorm turned out to be worse than expected, and it’s not even over yet. But it’s still not the worst I’ve seen, and it’s certainly not the worst I’ve seen in new york city. The one thing I actually forgot about a big snowdump? That when you don’t have to go to work, it can be quite fun. I dragged myself out of my apartment today, even though I didn’t have to, just to take some pictures. And it was enjoyable. cold, yes, but still fun – It’s the first time that I’ve taken pictures of my new ‘hood too – went into Central Park and caught all the sledding and cross-country skiing and general silliness that snow brings out in people.

By Tuesday, it’ll be miserable, with the sooty, dirty snow and the slush piles at every corner, but for today, I remembered how much fun snow can be.

[Update 2015] In an effort to reduce the number of holdover pages on the blog, I am slowly (very slowly) integrating these albums into the appropriate historical posts on the blog itself. As such, the photos referenced in this post now appear directly below.

OK. Not quite. Not that you’d know that from all of the crazy weather warnings we’re getting around here.

I don’t think it’s a big secret that I’m not exactly a fan of the cold weather, or the snow, but I live in New York. And until the global warming gets even worse, This is a snow zone. Do you know why they’re called nor’easters? because they hit the northeast. And while in some ways pleasant, it’s actually been a bit disconcerting for the weather to have been as mild as it’s been for the past few months (except, of course, the week of the transit strike – that was the week that it had to get all frigid on us?). I’m not saying I won’t bitch and moan, particularly at the aftermath – ahh, blackened slush piles, you look so solid until I end up ankle deep in freezing dirty street water – but we go through a lot worse every few years. My senior year at college was, officially, the third worst winter in Buffalo history (I think there was a winter a few years later that knocked it down to fourth, but at the time, third worst!). And it was Buffalo – where there isn’t not snow from October through May (and yes, it snowed the week before my graduation). During one storm, we were averaging something like a foot every two hours. They had to close the streets because they couldn’t plow them fast enough.

Oh, and then there was the time when it let up a little bit and I flew home to surprise my mom when she was having surgery. We got stuck in the city because the snowbanks were taller than our heads (that was the actually huge nor’easter of 1996). Of course, what my dad and I always remember is my brother almost setting a restaurant on fire (totally an accident – those little candles they like to put in the middle of your table? not such a brilliant idea when you have your special menu taped inside the regular menu so that you have to flip it over the top). You know, I now live only a few blocks from that restaurant, and I giggle like a 12 year old every time I walk past.

So this? annoying? yes. Cause for repeated newscaster freakouts? not so much. Of course, tomorrow’s Sunday, and my only plans involve laundry, reviewing some documents, and staring numbly at my computer screen while I watch three more hours of continuing legal education before my birthday (and state bar registration deadline) on Monday. So the fact that the weather is going to force me to stay inside is probably a blessing.

Seriously the best New York Times Graphic ever.

In a discussion of quantum physics, by way of explanation, they have a graphic explaining the concept of Schroedinger’s cat.

The graphic consists entirely of a cat inside an imaginary box (with an imaginary radioactive atom very complexly represented by a yellow dot). The best part is that there are two images. One with a living cat and one with…yes…a dead cat.

Ladies and Gentlemen – I present to you the stupidest article on the transit strike that could possibly have been written this week:

"A Sense of Fashion is Lost in Transit"

That’s right. Because when someone leaves their house in Brooklyn or Queens at four in the morning to spend several hours walking in below-freezing temperatures to try to make it to their jobs on time, what they should be focusing on is whether their scarves and hats are coordinated. Otherwise, they may end up as a fashion "don’t" in the Thursday Styles section.