Bored as a Pakistani Marriage Counselor

I am so bored today. I have a pending deal that is waiting to get quashed. My Craigslist ad is up--maybe fifty people saw it, but no calls to date. The office is as quiet as a mouse peeing on a cotton ball, and speaking of mice, they are nowhere in sight since they renovated the place and I miss the little bastards. I reconnected with an old friend on Classmates--he lived around the block and we used to bike around the neighborhood as kids--he's a grandfather now and there's enough water under our bridges to fill an ocean. Most of my coworkers are out with customers (we don't call them clients until they rent--I don't even call them customers--I call them suspects), and here I am alone and as bored as a barber in an all Sikh town in Punjab. Thasneem called earlier to tell me that they published her article in Femina Magazine. Great news and a kick in boredom's balls, but not for long. I am sitting here waiting for my life to happen, to go to Ottawa, to start a new Canuck-like life. I am practicing Canadian as a second language but my Brooklyn background makes it sound like: "Eh, faggedaboootet." So I am bored as a Pakistani Marriage Counselor and a Punjabi barber. Double my boredom, double my bum.

We Apologize for any Convenience

Good old MTA; how I love those guys. I went online this morning because the weekend commute is always weird and it's best to plan ahead. The route to my office, according to their website, was to take my beloved F train to Jay Street, grab the C train to Broadway and Nassau, then grab the 4 or 5 and bingo, I'm good to go. But the MTA website is about as accurate as a bow and arrow in a hurricane. The F isn't even running from my station and I had to take the G to a totally different stop and grab the F there to Broadway and Lafayette and grab the 6 all the way to work. Why is it that the company running the show is less accurate about itself than the other company who uses and disseminates information about it? The MTA would be lost if it weren't for the tracks.

condo mondo

We are in the process of setting up a closing date on our condo and have pushed it forward to May 28th instead of June 15th. I'm not exactly sure why we're doing it this way when we could just as easily wait for mid June, but for some reason it feels right. The photo in today's blog is definitely not our condo but I like it. I'm beginning to get a bit nervous about the move, which means that it's becoming real to me. I checked on Google and discovered the supermarkets, post offices and Irish pubs in the area. We're gonna be okay.

other things I'll miss

I will miss being the most bumped into New Yorker by other New Yorkers; the lines at the Tasty Delight and other popular places; the people walking dogs that have those funny megaphone thingies around their necks to keep them from biting their ass--the dogs, not the people; the traffic snarls; the amazing graffiti; the millions of choices one has for dinner or just going out; the beggars on the F train; the frenetic Christmas lights that can give a person a seizure; and the culture. Yeah, dat's it; dah culture.

What I'll Miss

I was trying to think about what I'll miss about New York City and here's what came to mind: I will miss the crowded trains where my feet get stepped on with laser guidance precision by people who pretend it didn't happen. I will miss the frenetic pace where people run from place to place or speed to red lights, just to hurry up and wait. I will miss the obscene rental rates. I will miss the winters of yellow snow--and the brown snow even more. I will miss the cool way that people like, speak, like. I will miss the schizophrenic subway dwellers who take up entire train benches or have a monopoly of an entire car because the smell can make a sewer worker vomit. I will miss the opulence, the doorman buildings, the overpriced stores where only the special people shop. I will miss the great restaurants where every cuisine in the world is represented. The nightlife will also be missed by me--particularly those nights that weren't spent trying to rent apartments to people who really only wanted to do comparison shopping. I will miss the glittering beaches of Brooklyn where the glitter comes from the broken beer bottles left by guys who, when they're not on the beach, are wearing jeans below their butts to show their taste in underwear. I will really miss New York--you probably think I won't.