Feeling discombobulated

OK. I have not in fact missed my deadline for today, because the deadline is 4 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, not Eastern. (Having thought I might have, I dashed off the most minimal of cover letters and attached the file.) Still, better that than making the error in the other direction.

It felt like a long week somehow; various things didn't quite go right, so a couple of different small problems at the gym yesterday felt like a big deal. But I pulled myself together, did a little walking on a treadmill and then got a cardio bike, and got more settled. I hadn't even realized how many different things there had been until I was talking to Emilie and she put it that way. (One of them was that I'd changed my time to see her to Friday in order to do something else on Thursday, which then fell through.) But I still think the gym needs more cardio bikes; they're down to four, two of which were out of order yesterday, and only one of them labeled as such.

I felt like I was running a bit late after the workout, so changed quickly, got downstairs, and saw a very intense thunderstorm. I didn't walk out into the storm, because the hotel exit I normally use leads into a covered arcade/driveway/road that connects 48th and 49th Streets, but I walked toward the street before I realized that I didn't want to go out into that: heavy rain, winds driving it at an angle, and frequent nearby lightning and thunder. I called cattitude to let him know that I wasn't going anywhere for a little while; I saw Emilie calling her husband to say much the same, and then we talked for 15 or 20 minutes until the rain eased enough that I was willing to walk to the nearest subway station. (I had an umbrella. That's okay for rain; not for lightning.) Cattitude, at home several miles away, was looking at a similar storm. When we went for a walk in the park today, there was a lot of mud, and deeper puddles than usual.

I was wearing a Bronx Zoo shirt, with otters on it; I think it was the members' freebie a few years ago. The organization that runs the zoo is now identifying itself as the "Wildlife Conservation Society," which is what it says on the shirt [1]. As I was heading home, some people looked at us and one of them said something like "Wildlife conservation, you're probably a good person to tell us what we want to know" and then asked some questions about the park. I handed them off to Cattitude, who has a better sense of direction, and he suggested they go uphill and then west.

( workout details )

[1] Legally it's still the New York Zoological Society, but our old souvenir shirts don't say that, they say "Bronx Zoo."

Train query: Amtrak from Schenectady

There don't seem to be a lot of good trains from Schenectady to New York City on Sundays, though there are reasonable-for-us trains from New York to Schenectady on Saturdays. There aren't many Schenectady-New York trains on Sunday at all, and I can't call the Adirondack "good," in a context where I'm not going to or from Montreal and won't get to look at Lake Champlain.

Opinions and experience on getting to New York via either the Lake Shore Limited or the Maple Leaf trains would be welcome.

(The Amtrak website claims that I could take the Lake Shore Limited from Schenectady to New York via Albany-Rensselaer, but when we asked about trains from Albany to New York, that train didn't come up. I can think of several possible explanations, ranging from "they just won't sell you a ticket from Albany" to "the web page is messed up." (The PDF schedule for that train is confusing.) On closer examination, it appears that the NY-bound train stops in Albany only to discharge passengers, and the one from New York stops only to receive them.)

We've already considered leaving from Albany (which has more trains to New York City), but it's not practical.