Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

On Sunday I wandered out to Staten Island, in order to give cattitude a bit of time and space to himself. I had been curious about the Staten Island Railroad, a piece of the city transit system I'd never been on, which turns up under "subways" when I go to the MTA website for maps, information about schedule changes, and the like. It seemed like a not-too-strenuous outing, on a warm enough day that the ferry ride across the harbor was also appealing.

( details, transit-fan geeky )

OK, much simpler and less adventurous than that title might imply: I spent the weekend in Arlington.

Train both ways. On the trip up, I decided not to sit in the quiet car (as I usually do), and wound up sharing an area (table and facing seats, total of four) with a woman and child (4 or 5, I think). She made a significant effort to keep him quiet, far more of one than some of the adults on cell phones made. We talked a little. At one point, the child noticed a loose bit of plastic curtain-holder on the inside wall of the train, and batted it toward me. I could see his mother starting to say something to him, as I batted it back. We played for a while. He used his hand, and after a bit I switched to using my pen hockey-stick style. The kid got a bit bouncy by the time we were in Massachusetts—Stamford to Boston is a long time to ask a child to sit mostly still and quiet—but by the time he wanted to climb over the seats, we were past Route 128 and there was nobody in the other side of his seat. Also near the end of the ride, he asked his mother how many days in a month, and she said "about 30," and he said no, he wanted to know how many hours, and as she looked puzzled, I said "720" and, when she was impressed, said "It's a knack, some of us have it." (From my viewpoint, it's easy, because I know the 12 times table, and you stash the zeros in a corner until you're done with the calculation, but "it's a knack" is shorter and I really didn't need to boast.) Nonetheless, I rode in the quiet car on the way back this evening; I'm not always in the mood to talk to strangers, much less to hear one side of their conversations.

It is definitely spring. We saw crocuses and dwarf iris on Mass Ave in Arlington and Somerville, and when I got off the subway in Manhattan this evening, I stepped into the very beginning of a spring thunderstorm. Walking up Isham Street, I could smell the good, damp soil. Spring.

I have checked off another of the shopping list items I'd been carrying for months, in this case a water bottle for the gym: in an exercise/sports supply store near the sushi place we go to in Porter Square, I got a bright blue stainless steel bottle. I would have settled for plastic, but I haven't seen a plastic bottle with the right kind of lid and in an appropriate size. It wasn't until I got it home and looked at the label that I discovered that washing it in a dishwasher is "not recommended", but since I will be using it for water and rarely iced tea, I'm not expecting to have to do a lot of washing.

I just spent a day and a half in Arlington. Or so it feels, given that we didn't get back from the train station, fed, and our shoes off at home until past ten Friday night, though my time away from New York was just over 48 hours. So, a short visit, and a low-energy one, as I was still getting over whatever had me home sick from work last Tuesday and Wednesday, but worth it. I took the train both ways, trading money for comfort and convenience. (Convenience in part because the Route 128 station is near adrian_turtle's job, so it made sense for her to pick me up there Friday, rather than for me to go all the way to South Station, by train or bus, and then take the T to Arlington.) Amusingly, Friday morning, I was telling some of my co-workers about the very cheap Greyhound tickets from New York to Boston that can be bought online.

I considered cancelling this trip, but we'd already not seen each other in six weeks, which feels like a long time (we average about every four), and if I'd not gone this weekend it would have been over two months between visits, which wouldn't have been good. We were quiet and domestic, mostly--that is, we did go as far as Cambridge, to eat pho and buy tea, before getting groceries. My major contribution to domesticity for the weekend was carving the chicken. Adrian fed me a nice mushroom-barley soup. cattitude has mentioned corn chowder. It tastes like winter.

I came home to an unrelated but very pleasant thank-you email. (*waves* in the direction of Minnesota)

juliansinger offered to pick a letter for anyone who asked, and then we're supposed to pick ten things that start with that letter, and write about them and what they mean to us.

She gave me T. I started by listing some things, and then selected from them based on what I felt ready to write about. This proved trickier than I thought it would be (lots of T's in that sentence, but not ones I want to use) and the results may be more free-associative than was being asked for.( cut because it got quite long )

[Background: there's a long-running campaign of posting poetry, ancient through contemporary, on the subways. I think it started on the London Underground.]

On the train home today, I was out of book, so I glanced up, and saw some very familiar poetry. Eight lines of Yeats: from "Turning and turning in the widening gyre" through "and the worst are full of passionate intensity."

I don't know if whoever chooses poems decided the Republican convention delegates could use that poem--or that the rest of us who are going to have to put up with the damned thing would be comforted, cheered, or otherwise aided by it--or if the timing is sheer coincidence, but it seems fitting somehow.

This wasn't technically a tag sale, because the merchandise was free. Every few months (this is the first time since I started) my employer clears out assorted stuff from the warehouse by setting it out in the lunchroom for employees to help ourselves to. I operated on the strict principle of "if I can't figure out what it is, I'm not taking it." Some of what I could identify included a tote bag (handy for holding the rest of the plunder), The Genius of Ray Charles, a gadget to reduce the heat to a pot on the stove (which may stop the bottom of the pot from burning when cattitude makes chili), a tablecloth (which seemed like a good idea at the time), and a piece of angel tat that I expect will either amuse or horrify rysmiel. Possibly both. Also a "mint mark collection" of recent US dimes, approximate value 30¢, complete with non-grammatical "Certificate of Authenticity."

[No gym post yesterday because I decided that a day-long sore throat plus sore knees added up to it being a bad idea to go work out. I was probably right, inasmuch as I awoke with a headache this morning, but aspirin worked wonders, and I may even exercise tomorrow.]

Research, in the form of riding the relevant trains this evening, has determined that it takes maybe five minutes longer to get from work by taking the #7 subway train at Woodside to the A than it does to go all the way to Penn Station by railroad and get the A there. This leaves only one disadvantage--the lack of a suitable bakeshop on that route, at which I can get a muffin for my second breakfast.

I rode both ways on the railroad with Alina (I'd been seriously misspelling her name) today. We were talking about life and travel and stuff, as we will, on the way home. A woman got on at Great Neck, apologized for interrupting, and asked if this was the train to New York. I said yes, and explained that the other people on the platform were waiting for the local. Then I laughed to myself, because this is exactly the sort of thing I'd been describing--people asking me for information on transit--just before she got on.

A little bit after that, Alina took a call on her mobile, and the woman apologized again, and asked me a question about the euro and relative expenses of visiting different parts of Europe. I sorted things out (she'd gotten confused between "single currency" and "prices the same everywhere"), and she proceeded to join our conversation the rest of the way. I encouraged her to invite her German friend to visit, when he finishes school in Auckland. I doubt we'll see her again--she's a native Brooklynite, but now lives in Arizona, and is visiting relatives.

After that, I went to the gym.( Read more... )

I was working on a freelance editing project on the railroad this morning; sitting with Elena as usual, but she was reading a novel while I edited. The train came to a stop between stations (just north of the Hall of Science, for those of you who know Flushing), and the conductor announced that there was a fire on the tracks ahead. We sat there a while, with variations on that message, including one that explained that the train couldn't proceed because there were city firefighters on the track. It took about 20 minutes to resolve, and then we were held--by announcement--an extra four minutes at Flushing to fit the schedule of the train [that should have been] behind us. So I was a bit late for work, but so were a dozen other people, and the van waited for the train, of course. If I'm going to be on a delayed train, I'll take a sunny morning, above ground, with work I'm being paid for.

(I hope and expect to finish this manuscript by the time I get into the city after work tomorrow. If so, and if I'm any more alert than I have been tonight, I can not only go to the gym, but possibly get to the piano bar.)

This is a catch-up post.

I had a basically quiet day at work, with a pleasant lunch break. Wandering around the grounds after eating my sandwich, I found a second gate down to the street, and went for a walk in the town. There seem to be enough pleasant residential streets nearby to keep me in walks for a bit, on days when I don't actually need to get lunch--it looks as though none of them lead to anything other than houses within the time I have available, except for the route I've already been told about to the King Kullen and related stores. A more varied walk will be good.

One of the odder products the company is offering is a "God Bless America angel visor clip", a pewter tschotchke with that text and a red, white, and blue ribbon. I am boggled by its existence, but that's not my problem. When it turned up in a flyer that's going to Canada, I circled it and wrote a note that said something like "Is this appropriate for Canada?" (Most of the difference between US, Canadian, and British mailings is measurements, prices, and spelling, and I guess someone forgot to check for content as distinct from style. This is part of what they pay me to catch, of course.)

( gym notes: Xpressline thoughts, and numbers )

On the trip home after exercising, someone threw up in the subway car I was sitting in. So I did something I normally don't do, not being 12 anymore: I walked between cars while the train was moving. I did this because I was in the second car, and wanted to tell the train driver as soon as possible that there was a sick passenger. I did so before we stopped at the next station, he thanked me, went on the P.A. and announced we were being held here momentarily, and sent the man he'd been chatting with back to check. He came back and said "Too much to drink" and the train went on to the next station: I'd thought it probably wasn't anything serious, but best to check, and the instructions they keep posting are "tell a TA employee and don't pull the emergency cord."

I had another nice chat on the train in this morning, with the woman I sat with on Wednesday; her name is Elena, and she's a programmer, which means she works in a different building than I do. We talked about kids, good and bad divorces (this sprung from the odd case in the news of a man who dropped his three-year-old off with a complete stranger, saying he'd be right back--a few days later, said stranger either got tired of caring for the child, or realized that someone might be looking for her, and called the police. It now transpires that the parents had been separated for two years, and the mother wants the girl back), Montreal, and the metric system. The ride home, I got off the train at Woodside, on the theory that if I was seriously thinking of getting on the #7 train for peace and quiet, I probably should. My ticket was for Penn Station, but commuter railroads don't care if you get off early. It turns out to take, maybe, ten minutes longer for me to get to the gym that way than by taking the railroad all the way in and an uptown local two stops.

I had a good workout, then came home, where cattitude fed me a nice dinner while we talked about our neighbors and discussed whether to try to get cats tomorrow, and I've been catching up on LJ and even a bit on email.

Unsurprisingly, when I finally got through to the Payroll Department at the temp agency, it turns out that, despite my specifically saying I wanted my check mailed, they'd been told to send it to the NYC office, which was holding it for me. The payroll person was helpful, and put me through to that office, which agreed to mail it, even though their "stamp machine is broken." I'm very glad that this is only 2/3 of a day's pay, and that the money since has been direct deposited.

( gym details )