It's after 10AM and none of my coworkers are here! Then again, they often don't show up, choosing rather to work from home while I toil away as the public face of my company. Not that anybody sees me here. In fact, one could argue that more than ever I should be a full-time telecommuter. But one won't, because somebody's gotta be in the office.
Usually, the Admin is here, but even she hasn't made it in yet. Subways were effed up today! I checked the MTA site before leaving and was astounded to see that it said there was no 4-5-6 service between Borough Hall and 149th Street! That is so insane, considering it's the line that regularly runs at 103% capacity. Where did all those people go?
I normally take the 4 & 6 to work, but given the conditions we opted for the F train today. This wasn't great, but it did eventually arrive and we shoved on uptown. I planned to take the V train at 47-50th Streets, but it stopped running so I walked. Which would have been lovely, as it takes me through Rockefeller Center (hey, they have a greenmarket on Wednesdays!) and St. Patrick's. But it was already getting pretty damn sultry out. Still I'm sure my commute wasn't as horrible as a lot of people's; at least I had the Internet to tell me where to go. In Kensington, it appears there may have been a tornado (or possibly Lindsay Lohan) that swept down the streets, uprooting huge trees and upsetting the delicate balance of gentrification south of Prospect Park.
Anyway, it's all downhill from here, now I've got nothing to do but my job. Blah.
Here's something to waste some time during your workday: Google Maps has added a 'Street View' feature that allows you to see a 360-degree panorama of your location. Granted, they haven't mapped out the most important areas of the city yet (namely, in front of my house), but I'm sure they're working on it. Oddly, they have actually mapped all of Bushwick Ave, which comes within a block of my house. This is odd because I would have thought they would have mapped out Broadway first, which runs parallel to Bushwick Ave. Then again, in my few driving experiences here, I noted with disdain how screwed up Broadway is. For such a seemingly vital thoroughfare, it's pothole-ridden and stoplight-laden. Anyhow, the photo above is a bodega I often frequent at the end of my block. My house is actually the other way down the street, but that view is particularly boring-looking under the eye of this map service. When they get down every street, though, you'll really have something. This should have some interesting ramifications. Now people can virtually walk down Atlantic Ave in Brownsville and East New York with impunity.
Meanwhile, it was a lovely weekend all around. One semi-disappointment was that the tree service guys never came back for all the remaining detritus. They had told me to keep a good portion of their fee as a deposit, which would be collected when they showed up to take all the vines and leafy parts. The logic involved was that this material needed to dry out to be easily handled (all the wood goes to a chipper and gets turned into mulch). Saturday came and went without a word, even after I tried to contact them. The forecast for Sunday was rain, so I got antsy, thinking if the whole reason they left this stuff was because it needed to dry out, getting rained on wasn't gonna help. So i got out the contractor bags and went to town on it. It wasn't actually that difficult, and soon I had almost all of it bagged. Now I just have to dole it out to the trash, and I've just saved a tidy sum on my tree/ladder issue. Still, it's not exactly good business practice to leave your customers hanging, especially since this guy was trying to sell me on many of his fence and deck-building expertise.
[via Curbed.com]
April 13, 2007 – 11:18 am
The last can of foam I bought turned out to be something of a dud. It didn't expand to the impressive degree of the previous can, so I'm a little bitter about the whole foam issue for now. I guess I still love it, but I'm feeling a little cynical about my future with expanding foam, even though it constantly assures me it is GREAT STUFF.
Buzz and I moved all the drywall to the cellar last night, what a relief it's finally down there! It wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be, but moving drywall down a narrow flight of stairs is not something anybody looks forward to. at least it stopped raining. I'd had this sheetrock in my hallway since the end of February. I wish I could say the hallway looks better without it, but actually it's pretty dingy. Well, when I get done with this project, I suppose I should my attention back to the above-ground portions of this house. This will be a difficult transition, since the work I've been doing for the past couple of months needs only to be aesthetically pleasing to me and Buzz. All the other work the house needs has to look good to Real People, and all I've learned so far is that Sherbet-Orange is not a good paint choice.
I hate to talk about the weather instead of something more substantial (like, um, how smart pigs are or fantasy holidays), but this weather sucks. It's like March got really nice for a couple of days only to make us feel the pain of this crap all the more. I was lamenting that South By Southwest is going on, as it drains the city of most of our bands, for better or worse. But I'm not going out in this muck tonight.
What's worse is that as a homeowner, I'm supposed to do something about it on my little plot of sidewalk. I guess I'll throw some salt out (thoughtfully left behind by previous owner), but you can't really shovel this sleety/icy/puddly stuff. You remember the scene in Fargo when the cop talks to the guy while he's sweeping his driveway ("And then he says, 'Geez, I'm goin' crazy out there at the lake'")? Imagine that falling from the sky, that's what it's doing on the streets of New York.
Times like these I wish my building had its own underground connection to the subway. I think all building within a block of a subway station should have tunnels built so we don't have to walk outside. Better yet, let me stay the hell at home and not bother with any of this crap.
Plans for this weekend include hanging drywall on the ceiling in the basement. This will either go smoothly or the ceiling will collapse upon us and kill us. So if I don't update this blog for, like, a couple of weeks, you'll know I didn't make it.
