very simple

26 days until I go home. I’m very excited.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a good time here. I’ve been out to interesting places, made new friends, and generally have had a nice time. But I’m overwhelmingly homesick. It’s got nothing to do with *here* but rather that I’m not *there*. I’ve realized through this experience that I’m just meant to live in New York. It’s where I’m from, it’s where my family and friends are, and it’s my home (for better or worse). At least now I know for sure. You know it’s bad when I start waxing nostalgic for my office in NY. Granted, the fact that I don’t have to share an office in new york may have something to do with that (again, the actual people that I’ve shared offices with here have been lovely. It’s just that I haven’t shared an office since back in 2000, and it’s really difficult to have someone, anyone, in my space when I’m trying to work).

I should also say that I did luck out here. It’s apparently been the mildest winter in Milan in years. It’s been consistently in the 40s and 50s during the day, and the legendary fog and rain have only been intermittent. And while I did miss the 70 degree days they had in NY in january, I’m also missing the bitterly cold weather they’re experiencing now.

The one thing that I’m disappointed in is that for a pretty long stretch (until Christmas), I had enough work to do that I pretty much had to work at least a little bit every weekend. Certainly nothing crazy (especially for a lawyer), but that pretty much put a damper on my ability to take weekend jaunts to other places. Of course, I’ve actually been to many places in Italy on other trips, so there’s nowhere, at least in northern Italy, that I feel like I need to see before I leave, but now that I’ve got only a few weekends left, a ton of packing to do, and a deal that’s going to close only days before I fly out of here, I’m probably not going to fit in a whole bunch of travelling going forward either. At least I did get to go to Paris – that was really the one thing that I desperately wanted to do while I was over here, and it got done.

So. Specific things I miss about NY…

My family.

My friends.

My apartment.

Sushi from Yama.

The ability to tumble dry my clothes.

Dry cleaning that takes less than two weeks.

Diet Coke (although I’m going to try to limit my intake when I get back).

My oven (seriously. I’ve never wanted to bake as much as I have since I’ve lived in a place with nothing but a two-burner stovetop and a microwave)

My shoe collection.

The Container Store.

American TV (iTunes helps somewhat, but I’m craving a good stretch of crime-TV reruns on A&E. Also, I’d like to watch a few things on my 40-inch LCD rather than my powerbook).

Stores that are open on Sunday.

My super-comfortable couch.

My office (including the 24-hour office support, my aeron chair, a door that closes, my own real-live secretary, and car service home at night).

The Gap and Old Navy.

Fairway.

Easily accessible manicures and pedicures.

Sherree (my hairdresser).

and, of course, the greatest skyline in the world.

I’ve been a terribly derelict blogger, and I apologize. It’s just that, every time I think about writing a post, it’s either to bitch about something (like getting manhandled by a crazy homeless guy on the bus the other day), or I realize that I’m living the most boring life possible for an American expat. I go to work in the morning, get home around 9 at night, and if I’m lucky, I only need to go to work on one day over the weekend (leaving the other day for exciting things like sleeping in, grocery shopping, and attacking the dust bunnies from hell that inhabit my apartment). Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed my time here, made some friends, and certainly do go out (even sometimes with other people!). But it’s not markedly different from, say, going to a friend’s apartment for brunch in NY. or going to a bar in NY. except that I can only understand the people I came with, because they’re the only ones who remember to speak English to me. But none of that’s particularly interesting to blog about.As far as current events are concerned, I still voraciously consume all sorts of news and opinion online, but I can’t help feeling particularly removed from american politics. Heck, the state of the union was the other day, and not only did they not air it here (obviously) even if they had, it would have been at 2 or 3 in the morning. Not very practical. It’s probably for the best as I would probably have thrown something at the TV anyway. I’m more upset that I’m going to miss the Oscars, since they’re airing a week before I head home.

So. That’s my long-winded way of saying that yes, I’m just about ready to head home to NY. I actually booked my flight the other day (I’m waitlisted for a mileage upgrade, gotta make use of the massive number of miles I accumulated last year). I’m heading home on March 4th, only a few days after the transaction I’m working on is going to be over. It’ll also be precisely 90 days since I last entered Italy, so I legally need to leave the country that day (not that I really get in trouble for overstaying, what are they going to do? kick me out of the country when they notice as I’m leaving the country? It’s more a concern that they won’t let me back in). And while I certainly don’t want to move to Milan again, I would like to visit, and to go other places in Italy (maybe even on *gasp* a vacation!).

Actually, the most fun I’ve been having is related to my former office-mate here. He’s actually going on secondment to New York in a few weeks, so I’ve been trying to put together some handy, “how to live in NY” info for him. He found out where he’s going to be living today, so I’ve already figured out what bus he’ll need to take to get to work. I know, I’m a dork. It’s a shame he’s getting there a few weeks before I get back, if only because I won’t be there to introduce him around the office. But I’ve already put my group on notice so that he gets taken out for beers and stuff when he gets there (my office in NY has over 200 lawyers, so it can be a bit alienating if you don’t have people looking out for you).

So. I’m going to try to be proactive tomorrow. Yes, I have to go to work for a little while, but it shouldn’t take me very long to get done what I need to get done (basically I got some updates that I need to incorporate into what I’m working on after I left work tonight). Since our office is in the absolute dead-center of Milan, I’m going to really try to make it to the fairly famous museum that’s literally around the corner that I haven’t been to yet (actually, our street abuts the museum property, but you have to go all the way around the corner to via Brera to get to the entrance). I can always clean my apartment on Sunday.

Hopefully it won’t rain.

I keep trying to come up with something to blog about and then deciding that it’s stupid. random topics include…

• how lazy I’ve been so far on my vacation
• tv that I’ve tried to catch up on (seriously – heroes? is awesome)
• the fact that they’re powerwashing the outside of my building.

ugh. I’ve got bloggers block. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been away from it for some time, but I tried to keep up the stream of consciousness at least through the use of a written journal (I know, how archaic!). But that I tend to save for the stuff that I actually don’t want published on the internet. I can’t believe that it’s already Tuesday – that I’m going back in only a few days. Working in a foreign country is certainly a neat thing to do, but ultimately, I miss my home. What can I say. turns out that I’m a homebody. Granted, my home happens to be in one of the largest, most bustlingest, exciting cities in the world, but yeah…I’m a bit provincial at heart. Or maybe I just miss sushi. And convenient home goods stores. and same-day dry cleaners. and american TV. and internet access. (and my family and friends, of course).

My apartment in Italy is very nice. Size-wise, it’s actually about the same size as my apartment in NY. My only problem is aesthetic. Everything is white. If you’ve seen pictures of my apartment in NY, you’ll notice that nothing is white except for the kitchen and bathroom, and even those are because they’re subway tiled. In Italy, the walls are white, the couch is white, the chairs are white…it’s like living in a sanitarium. I can’t very well object to the arrangements, because objectively? it’s a perfectly nice one bedroom apartment in a very nice palazzo. Convenient to work, nice neighbors, helpful porter. But the whiteness is, to say the least, not my style. When I got home though, I all of a sudden felt like my apartment in NY was much smaller, and I realized that it’s because I’ve got, like, 10 foot ceilings in Italy, so when I walked in here, all of a sudden the ceilings felt very…low. So I guess I had adapted more than I thought.

And if I’ve got to pick one thing I’m missing about Italy? definitely the coffee. I have always hated American coffee and never go near the stuff except in overwhelming caffeine emergencies. But espresso? is like a little cup of heaven. I have to limit myself to 2 cups a day, otherwise I’ll end up never going to sleep. Sure, I have an espresso machine here in NY, but it’s not the same. I’ve heard that there’s a seriously high calcium content in the water in Italy, which is what makes their coffee and pasta taste so much better than it does here. Of course, I also end up with a mineral deposit at the bottom of the pot every time I cook dinner, so I’m guessing it’s true.

OK. it’s now after noon, and I’m still in my pajamas. It’s time to get motivated for the day. Especially since I have to go into the office this afternoon for my end-of-year evaluation. What fun. no wonder I’m procrastinating.

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.

I know that I can sometimes be a touchy and/or demanding customer, so I (may) at times bring bad treatment upon myself, but today must have been just one of those days, where I felt like I walked into the store and I must have had an invisible sign saying “kick me”.

Scene: CVS pharmacy on the corner of 86th and Amsterdam. I usually like walking up to this store, rather than patronizing any of the closer Duane Reade’s, because I generally find the Duane Reades near my apartment to be both poorly staffed and poorly stocked. Plus, I figured it would be good to take a walk on such a nice day to pick up the multitude of things I want to ship to myself before I leave on Friday.

So, among other things, items on my shopping list include more hair conditioner and saline solution for my contact lenses (I wear disposables, but if I don’t get them in on the first try, I generally need to rinse them in saline before I try again), soap, cotton balls, etc…

Shampoo aisle. There is, seriously, no conditioner of the brand that I use remaining in the store. Not just the particular type I prefer, but just rows of shampoo with empty rows sitting in between where the conditioner should be. I actually thought there was some sort of recall because it was just so…odd. But, whatever, I can try to find some more during the week.

Manage to pick up lip gloss, cotton balls, mascara, soap all without a problem.

Then I go looking for the saline solution. Aisle 12 is marked “eye care”. OK, I’ll go there.

Spend 10 minutes wandering up and down aisle 12 (which is not particularly long), wondering why I can only find granola bars and foot baths.

Go to the pharmacist at the back of the store, and ask were the saline solution is. She says “aisle 11”. I then say (and this is important), “aisle 11, really? even though aisle 12 is labeled ‘eye care’?”

So, I go to aisle 11.

Spend 10 minutes wandering up and down aisle 11, wondering why I can only find advil and band-aids. Begin to think I’m losing my mind.

Go back to the pharmacist. Point out that she sent me to an aisle that was completely wrong. She says “what did you want again?” I say “saline solution, you know, for my contact lenses?”

Her response? Oh, that’s over here at the other end of the store. I thought you wanted nasal saline solution.

OK. why the f*ck would I point out that friggin “eye care” was mislabeled if I wanted something that goes up my nose?

I then point out that maybe people wouldn’t have this problem if they labeled the aisles correctly. She says (seriously), “I just work here”. Not realizing of course, that that’s precisely my point.

So. Drama done, I get my saline solution, and go stand on line.

Finally get to the front of the line. Guy behind the counter rings up my purchases. puts them in bag behind counter out of my reach. I pay with debit card. He walks away.

Without handing me my purchases.

I’m just standing there, and look at the guy standing behind me in line, and he’s got the same expression that I’m pretty sure I’ve got on my face, which is pretty much “what the f*ck?”

As the counter guy is walking away, I kind of shout out “hey, do you mind finishing ringing me up here?”

He keeps walking away. Apparently nothing stops this guy from going on break, even when he’s literally in the middle of a transaction.

So, someone else finally comes over. Looks at the register, looks at the bag full of stuff, and says “he didn’t ring any of this up”. And proceeds to start scanning my stuff again.

At which point I have to stop her and point out that I’ve already paid! My receipt is sitting in the friggin’ register.

Do you ever get the feeling like you’re living in some sort of hidden camera universe where people are trying to figure out just how far they can push you by surrounding you with incompetence (and incompetents) before you snap?

Yeah. It was one of those days.

This was of course after I discovered that my toilet and my bathtub were both refusing to drain water. After getting woken up by the construction workers literally outside my window repairing the building facade (the shed they’ve erected makes for a very nice balcony) Which was just a lovely way to start the day. By the way, they’re clearly attempting to comply with the new building regulations, which is ultimately a good thing. Everything’s fixed now (thanks assistant super!!), but what a way to start the day.

But, some friends are coming over tonight for a little farewell thing (I was attempting to have a real party, but almost everyone I know is out of town this weekend) and dinner, so I’ve got to go make myself look less like I got run over by a city bus and more like someone who is about to start living la dolce vita.

My route to work (either walking or taking the bus), takes me past Lincoln Center every day.

For the past week, I’ve had the “joy” of getting to see David Blaine in his stupid plastic bubble (albeit briefly, as I certainly didn’t stop to stare). Other than the fact that the guy appeared on my regular route, I had no interest in his latest stunt, and didn’t even know that it was ending last night until I took the bus home and noticed that the crowd and the cameras were in much greater abundance than they had been earlier in the week. Still, I wasn’t planning on watching the finale. But then I finished watching something else I had tivo’d, and my TV automatically switched over to the last 20 minutes of his TV special, right as he was about to do the whole “hold his breath for 9 minutes” thing. So, of course I had to watch.

I don’t know what was funnier – the fact that he failed, or the fact that for all of his claims of being a magician or an illusionist, he’s clearly neither. Ooh, he’s going to have to free himself from chains of death…

…with a key!

Sitting in an oversized bathtub for a week (or a plastic box over the Thames), breathing through an oxygen tube, and doing nothing else of consequence may be something, but it’s certainly not magic.

An Illusion implies that your eyes are seeing something that’s not really (or can’t be) happening. Something that appears to defy natural law (like levitation, sawing someone in half, or making a bengal tiger “disappear”). If Blaine had made it appear that he wasn’t breathing oxygen through a tube for the week, that would have been an illusion. If he had made it appear that he was in the tank when he really wasn’t, that would have been an illusion. Heck, If we had all been distracted and Blaine had suddenly come walking out of the Metropolitan Opera while we all thought he was still in the tank, that might have been pretty cool.

My favorite quote, from the NY Times review:

In dreamy montages last night, Mr. Blaine explained that these exercises are all part of his “journey,” that they “make people think.” Magic, he said, “brings people together who might not come together.” Well, so does the airport.

Again, not magic. And I’m pretty sure that they “make people think” he’s an idiot. I can’t be the only one.

When I was younger, I got to see Penn and Teller in one of their off-broadway shows. I even got called up on stage for one of their tricks. I had to seal Teller inside a box, while Penn was talking to the audience. I was up close with the box. There were absolutely no trap doors that I could see. A few minutes later, Teller came walking out from the wings. Then we noticed that someone was banging on the inside on the box. When we let them out, it was Penn, who had somehow gotten inside the box. I’m sure it was cool from the audience perspective, but nothing can compare to being so close to a true illusion that you’re actually part of the act and still not seeing the strings. And lest you think there was something shoddy about the box-sealing, there were power drills involved. I’m sure it was just a very well-concealed hidden passageway, but that’s what an illusion is.

Blaine is just an attention whore. And that would be fine if he didn’t try to claim that what he did was something that requires more talent.

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’m normally of the opinion that the New York public transit system is one of the best inventions in the world. Go anywhere for $2 (or, if you’re me, “nothing”, because you have a yearly unlimited metrocard from work). Live in one of the only places in America where the majority of the population does not own a car. But then there are days like today.

I took a trip down to Soho to visit the Apple Store (a fairly regular occurrence), to attend a digital photo/photoshop presentation. Which was cool (although I realized that I probably needed the advanced class – yes, I know what a drop down menu is). That was pretty uneventful. Then, I had to come back home.

And the fun started.

I have to preface this by pointing out that I subscribe to the weekly MTA advisories, where the MTA e-mails you with all of the random service interruptions and changes that will be occurring on the weekends. I always check out what my local trains are doing, and this Friday was no different. Here’s what it said:

D

Uptown trains run local from 59 to 145 St
All times until 5 AM Fri, May 12

So, anyhow, To get back home I walk up to the D train station, and get on. Now, knowing that the train is running local, it means that it will stop at my normal station. When it runs express, it goes directly from Columbus Circle to 125th street with no stops in between.

Train stops at Rockefeller Center. Conductor makes an announcement that this train will be making all local stops.

Okay, good. Conductor just reaffirming what the advisory said, for those people who don’t get them.

Train stops at 7th Avenue. Conductor makes another announcement that he’ll be making all local stops.

Train gets to Columbus Circle. Conductor makes at least 3 more announcements while the train is held there, both that the train will be making all local stops and the next stop will be 72nd street (my stop). Now, if the train was running it’s normal route, this is where I would get off and wait for the C train (mind you, the reason the D is running local is that for some reason, the C is running express). But hey, I’ve heard at least 5 announcements at this point that the train will be going my way.

Doors close. I start gathering up my stuff. And we blow past 72nd Street. And 81st street. and 86th street. and 96th street. and 101st street. and Cathedral Parkway. and 116th street.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, that’s right, the friggin’ train ran express! And I even double checked with the two guys sitting near me that I wasn’t going crazy, and they’re all “you’re totally right, the conductor absolutely said the train was running local”. Argh.

So, needless to say I was a bit pissed off.

Got off the train at 125th, hiked up and down the stairs with my packages to get to the other platform and catch the downtown C train, which is running local (the signs point out that the uptown is running express), get on the train after about a 15 minute wait, and…

yup. The downtown C ran express. So. After 45 minutes of traveling underground, I’m back at Columbus Circle.

At which point I get the hell out of the subway and find the damn bus.

Now, I’m sure every tourist has a story about how they got on the wrong train and “accidentally” ended up in Harlem. This usually occurs when they’re waiting for the B (to go somewhere like the Museum of Natural History) and accidentally get on a D, which runs on the same track. Common error. But one that I’m generally proud to say, as a local, that I generally don’t make. But this? This was sabotage.

Why on earth would the conductor make at least five separate announcements and then immediately do the exact opposite? It just makes no sense.

I find that some of the more, let’s say, confrontational, experiences that I have living in NYC involve riding on public transportation. Most of my anecdotes about "crazy" new yorkers usually involve the bus. Like Thursday.

Decided to take the bus home from work, and it seemed like it would be an uneventful ride. Got a good seat, and it’s only 20 blocks to home.

Then, the fighting of the old biddies started. Two women who were sitting in the "elerly and disabled" seats at the front of the bus (neither of them looking particularly elderly or disabled, but that’s not really the point of the story), almost came to blows over the third seat.

First, I should probably describe these seats for those of you who don’t spend your lives memorizing MTA routes. At the front of the bus, behind the driver, are a set of seats designated for the elderly and disabled. These seats line the sides of the bus, a bench of three on each side, and face each other. Once you get past these seats, the rest of the seats, until you get to the back, face forward. I am in the very first forward-facing seat. Sitting on the front bench on my side of the bus are two women (the aforementioned old biddies), seated next to each other, with the one in the middle seat having piled up a bunch of bags in the "empty" seat directly behind the driver. Across the way, there are also two women, who have sat leaving the middle seat empty.

So, next stop.

Elderly stooped man with a cane gets onto the bus. Moves (slowly) towards the empty middle seat on the opposite side. This is when the biddy closest to me starts chastising the other one that she should move her bags so that the old man can sit down, because she’s taking up two seats. This then degenerates into a screaming match, with the middle biddy pointing out that the guy is already sitting down somewhere else, and then insulting the other one by saying that it’s not her bags that are the problem, it’s the fact that the first biddy is so fat that she’s taking up too much space (never mind that objectively, the first biddy, while heavy, is obviously only taking up one seat, and the middle biddy has 18 plastic bags filling a legitimately empty seat). So now we all know that the middle biddy is a bitch as well as a seat hog (even if she started out kind of right, in that giving up the spare seat wasn’t absolutely necessary).

I of course, sitting right next to these people, start wishing desperately that I had remembered my new issue of the The New Yorker so that I could ignore all of these people even more pointedly than I already am.

But the best part is that at the very next stop, a very pregnant woman gets on, looks at the seat with all of the bags, and just says, "move those, I want to sit down." So middle biddy of course makes a big show of how much effort it is to move the bags, with this look on her face like this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her (and now, of course, she’s also completely embarrassed because she had made such a big stink about not moving the bags only two minutes earlier), and the other biddy has the biggest, self-satisfied grin on her face and starts silently mouthing "see! see!" to everyone in the back of the bus.

At this point, I got off the bus.

Of course, none of this compares to the time back when I was a summer associate when the bus driver had to actually call the police to force a crazy woman off of the bus. That one will always remain the best. I’ll have to actually write about it one of these days.

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)