heh heh. I see on the first Blogger page that they're having a problem with the problem page. That really is a problem, yeah?
Now here we are scheduled to have some damned fine paddling weather this weekend – a little breezy Saturday, but not too bad, highs in the low 60’s, partly sunny, oh BOY. Too bad I have to work. And last week – plenty of time, and a fearsome gale shaking the windows in their frames. Clearly the Weather Gods are having a little fun with me. Ha ha, very funny.
Oh, well, at least Budget Hell is almost over. Although there is a presentation & I usually get involved in creating the PowerPoints for those – but we’re pretty close. Of course, Year-End Close Hell and Harry Potter Hell (ok, and just in case anybody’s wondering, no, sorry, I have to wait just as long as anyone else…er, I think I did make a similar statement once but left a loophole just the size of Johnny Depp wearing his Jack Sparrow costume – I may have consumed some scotch before saying that though) are on their way too. But I have a feeling this is the worst one – it’s this three-way collision of absolute drop-dead deadlines, one for the sales conference, one for the budget, and one for March month-end close, that makes it such a bear. I am working hard, and feeling it – and I think it’s showing - one of the people I sometimes work with on one of our reporting systems saw me in the elevator the other day & said “Oh, so you’re still standing?”
No gym time this week even after that special trip home after gym clothes. Actually I could have – but, as we say in Brooklyn:
Spring is Sprung
The grass is riz
I wonder where
Dem boidies is?
Der little boid is on der wing
Oh, how absoid
Der little wing is on der boid!
Ok, actually I’m lying; I’ve never heard anyone say that in Brooklyn, except maybe me. The person who does say that is my mom, usually in Hawaii. My mom is from Jersey, though…but that doesn’t even count ‘cause y’know, you can be from JERsey or you can be from JOIsey and my mom is definitely from JERsey. But maybe she picked up the boid thing sometime when she’d made a trip into Joisey.
Whoops, overworked-scrambled-eggs-for-brains side trip there. I was talking about the gym & how I didn’t go – well, I actually could have, a couple of times, but god, it has been so gloriously Spring-y this week that I just have no desire to go down to the basement where the company gym is. It’s a nice little gym, they have all the machines you’d want (including a rowing machine, my favorite - naturally, and a versa-climber which I like ‘cause you are working out every single muscle simultaneously) – but it’s in the basement. That’s all. I prefer outside exercise, even if it’s just walking (I could run but, uh, I don’t really like to run that much, much rather walk for longer and look at stuff).
I’m just so bummed I’ll be stuck in the office tomorrow. Still, we may not have to work Sunday, and I have some friends who are doing a circumnavigation of Manhattan, so if we wrap things up tomorrow I may just send out a quick post on our hold tenant Yahoo group, see if anybody wants to paddle north to meet them coming down the Upper West Side. I wouldn’t try to get in on it even if Sunday is free – they are starting at a painfully early hour, and getting ready for a circumnavigation (28 miles, usually with one lunch break & one shorter “pit stop”) actually involves quite a bit of organizing the day before, which I doubt I’ll feel much like doing if we actually work hard enough to wrap things up (in fact I expect I'll be completely zonked).
I must say that at least I have gotten some GREAT after-work walks in this week. New York being Springy is pretty cool. I saw a guy with a hairdo exactly like a rockhopper penguin one night, and there was an incredible evening sky tonight, all pink clouds against a Maxfield Parrish kinda blue…daffodils…tons of people just out enjoying Spring, eating in the sidewalk cafes, not wearing hats, good stuff. Yay Spring.
I had a funny early-90’s flashback last night as I was crossing 42nd Street. The Executive (who was the one who got me to move to New York – that’s a story for another post) and another friend gave my first up-close intro to 42nd Street in the bad ol’ days (and yeah, they were bad, it really was pretty awful – it doesn’t have much character now, but the old 42nd street took character a leetle too far…) – he was living in the 40’s near 11th avenue, and the other friend and I had just taken a one-bedroom (I was straight out of college & so still OK with a dorm-room type living arrangement) on 35th street near 9th avenue – not too far away. The stretch between the Port Authority Building and Times Square was the epicenter of all that is debauched, debased, and…uh…diurnal, no, that doesn’t work does it…ok, screw the alliteration, it was the sleaziest block in town. We started at the Port Authority Building. Bobo gave me instructions: “OK, now if we get split up, just keep walking like you know where you’re going and are in a hurry to get there, don’t stare at anybody, don’t talk to anybody, don’t ask anybody any questions, and we’ll meet at x-and-such street corner”. Halfway down the block, weaving our way between the junkies and the hookers and the three-card monte guys, with the “LIVE NUDE GIRLS” signs flashing overhead, he leaned over and very quietly, and with a total deadpan voice, began to sing in my ear:
Oh these are the people in your neighborhood
In your neighborhood
In your neeeigh-boooor-hooo-ood…
I just about fell over laughing. Good thing I didn’t ‘cause one of the locals would’ve been required to kick me in the head & steal my purse if I had, those were the rules, y’know, but god, it was funny.
Anyways, walking through that area last night reminded me of that. Sure looks different now…
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