wahoooooooo

I just learned this morning that the offer we made on the house came through. We're going to Ottawa. I am going to become a Senator's fan, say words differently, like "aboot," and freeze my ass off in October. I probably will remain a Yankees/Mets fan, Jets/Giants, but with hockey, I'll have to go with the Senators if I know what's good for me. The best thing is that we'll be close to Shabana and Frankie. I really don't feel that I'm losing anything by leaving New York--all my friends are gone and the only thing I will miss is the convenience of shopping and the availability of great restaurants and entertainment, but the truth is, I/we don't really go out that much. So when I came out of the subway this morning, Thas left me an email that beeped and the subject was "Wahooooooo!" And that's how I feel 

Roosevelt Island

I am really getting into HDR--High Dynamic Range Photography. I never thought I'd even like digital photography when it first came out, thinking it was less than art, that it was cheating, but I changed my tune. HDR, and digital photography in general is fantastic. It's amazing how much you can manipulate reality with it--schizophrenics would have a ball--and there's an art to it too. This photo was taken the other day from Carl Schurz Park near Gracie Mansion, on the Upper East Side. It's a balanced composite of three shots spaced at one f-stop apart and blended for balance. Then it was "Photoshopped" to punch up the quality a bit. Now that I've written this, I believe that this is my most technical blog I've ever written.

Onstar Reporting

"This is Onstar. Your vehicle Onstar System has reported a crash. Are you okay, Mrs. Goldberg?"
"I've felt better."
"How do you feel?"
"How should I feel?"
"Don't worry, we're sending help now."
"It's so hard to find good help."

The F'ing F train

Red is the appropriate color for tonight's blog. I left work almost at a normal hour--5:30 PM after taking out a nice suspect to see a few apartments. I got on the Lexington Avenue bus, the 103 local, went to 65th, walked to the F train station at 63rd and took the F. Unfortunately, there was a problem of a stalled F train at Church Avenue, my stop, all the way in Brooklyn from where I had to get off on West 4th. Now why couldn't they have used the express track in Brooklyn instead of changing the F train into a D train? I had to go to Coney Island and we crept along and waited for five minutes at a time at each station for no particular reason that any passenger could fathom. Two hours to get home. And here I was so glad to be able to not have to work an extra long day, typical of my business. Why is it that whenever there's an MTA controversy, such as there is now about cuts in service, that the trains get screwed up? Is it always a coincidence--every single time? Yes, I am pissed. I am tired of this garbage and tired of this city. I cannot wait to move away. Ottawa, here I come. I am even happy about leaving this country with all the violence aimed against the very democratic processes we uphold. Gee, I sound angry--sorry if I offended anyone.

HDR

I've become quite fascinated with HDR photography--I took this photo a few days ago from the window of an apartment I was previewing on the Upper East Side. It's near Asphalt Green, as you might be able to tell. And while HDR makes the world look a lot prettier than it often is, I think there's an artsy quality to it.

the wasteful census

I recently received my census paper asking me questions whereby I had to predict who would be living in my apartment on April 1st, whether or not they would be white, black, hispanic, etc. Two days later I received instructions on who to call if I had questions, but it was too late--I had sent out the form and figured it out, guessed how many white, black, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, etcetera would be living in my apartment besides my Asian Indian wife. I cannot imagine the actual cost of this second mailing, but I know it's more than I make in a year--or in a lifetime. Why did they send it separately in the first place? It was just a small paper. Who runs the Census Bureau anyway? I know it's some guy I saw briefly on CNN. Anyway, they are spending billions of our dollars for this nonsense when they could be using it for something that has to be better than that.

buy my beads

Stuff

Two days ago my coworker came into the office all upset. He had been stuck on the number 6 train (Lexington Avenue line) and had witnessed a horrific accident. A young child, (or so he thought), had somehow fallen in front of the oncoming train as it approached the 77th Street Station, and got hit and killed by the train because it couldn't stop in time. She was decapitated. As it turned out, this was actually a 48 year old woman who had dropped her gym bag onto the tracks and jumped down to get it. The train then approached the station as frightened onlookers, failing to pull her up, kept yelling for her to get into the middle of the tracks where there is a gap that she could lie down in and the train would pass over her. Instead, she tried to go under the platform area between the train and the platform, but there wasn't enough room. She died instantly. In her gym bag were her gym shorts, towel, and a cell phone. She died for her stuff. How crazy have we become to risk it all for nothing important.

Daylight Savings Time

Life is short but this Sunday we lose another hour thanks to Daylight Savings Time. In spite of that, and the fact that I don't have as many hours remaining on my "clock," I happen to love the fact that it's still light out by the time I walk up those subway stairs, arthritic knees throbbing like Tito Puente used them as vibes at the Blue Note, and the sun is still out. Soon it will be warm and eventually hot. In fact, sooner than later it will be a freaking oven in New York, and those morons who thought that global warming was a myth, (simply because it snowed like crazy this winter--due to global warming there was an increase in water vapor in the atmosphere), will change their tune. What are you hoping for this summer? Me, I'm hoping for a reduction in my weight, a reduction in the deficit, a reduction in the number of suicide bombers killing for their deluded ideas, and an increase in my writing output. I have more than enough to be happy for--the best wife, daughter, friends, and a Kindle.

I was like yo

I was like on the F train and like this bunch of guys in like down-below-the-butt jeans, know what I'm sayin' gets on and like look around at all us passengers with a look like they was up to no good and I was like yo. Sup with that? I mean like whatever, you know what I'm sayin'? And I'm thinking forgetaboutit, yo, like, whatever.

Thursday

So there's this guy with the biggest damned ten dollar watch I've ever seen and I'm ready to say to him, "Hey, dude, why not get a small watch that doesn't scream out, 'cheap, cheap, cheap' like some ghetto bird?" But I say nothing because preserving one's life is more important than making one's point. I watch my fellow transit riders, my commuter buddies, and observe the guy taking up two seats, sleeping like a baby, albeit an odiferous baby, with shoes that could make a potent tea, and a hat that had seen better Yankee days. But across from me is this older man, perhaps even older than me, who sits and sleeps, perchance to dream, perchance to pretend he's asleep to avoid the money beggars. The pretenders who say they would accept food, but really want money, because they can get food at their SRO--single room occupancy facilities that provides not only shelter, but three squares, heat, hot water, and another reason to be angry about "the system." Oh well, it's just our tax dollars hard at work.