notes from: a sudden feeling of safety

We’ll start with a little entertainment.

Approximately 5 pm, southbound 2 train.
White man boards train.
Two black men board train with large suitcases.

White guy: HEY! You guys… European?
Black guy shakes his head.
White guy: No? Where you from? You look… you know… European.
Me, in my head: WTF?
Black guy: New Orleans.
Me, in my head: Awkward…
White guy: Oh, really? Nice. How’d you end up here?
Black guy: Staying with a friend in Brooklyn.
White guy: Oh, okay, I figured you were from outta town. Not many people around here bring suitcases on the train at rush hour.
Black guy smiles.
White guy: You know how it is, though. I’m from here, so I gotta bust your balls.
Me, in my head: Do you?

White guy and more talkative black guy make idle, excruciatingly awkward conversation, which I ignore.
At a certain point, I start paying attention again, right around the time that the white guy busts out his wallet to show the black guy something, and I see his NYPD badge.

The End

Okay, so here’s what I think. I think that undercover cop was totally kicking ass at his job! I didn’t even think of it as anything strange that these two dudes had large suitcases at a pretty well-known no-suitcases time on the subway. I tend to go right to the “extreme irritation” end of that spectrum, as opposed to the smarter “suspicious” option.

Anyway, I haven’t lived in NYC for an extremely long time, but I was really proud that I live in a city with smart cops like that.

notes from: high above the chimney tops

I’m kind of really into birds right now. Well, not the actual living things, but illustrations and/or portrayals of birds. 20×200 features an artist, Laura Levine, who does some really cool illustrations/old-stamp-collages that I looove. She’s been on the site with five iterations, and I am the proud owner of four of them. Check it:

And then yesterday I bought this little guy off of Three Potato Four (Thanks, Abby!):

This one’s actually one of a set of four, and it was REALLY HARD to limit myself to just the one, because they’re all so nice together! I like sets. I do not like paying over $100 for them. We’re in a recession, people! And if it comes to a choice between art and new clothes… I choose beer.

We have a couple more framed birdies at home, too: A black sparrow on a plain white background, and a blue bird (not a Bluebird, just a bird that’s blue) lying dead on a stump. Hey man, not all bird pictures can (or should) be brightly-colored, happy looking Twitter birds! Even though Twitter’s wicked fun.

notes to: abby

i call this “a whale of a snowstorm: the cars didn’t see it coming”.

notes from: alien life on earth?

can someone please tell me why my garlic sprouted antennae?

notes to: lucille

blindhorsetravel: and as far as the hat goes, I really do believe you can do it. You’ve pulled off much more difficult things.

Your confidence inspired me.

It’s totally lumpy and weird at the top because I misunderstood the directions just a tiny bit at the end, but I don’t care. I learned how to knit in the round, and what the hell “stockinette” means and all sorts of other knitting lingo. Cute, right? This is the link for the pattern, if anyone’s interested.

notes from: cupid

I thought you might be curious about how other people do it. Enjoy.

Denmark and Norway: Valentine’s Day (14 Feb) is known as Valentinsdag. It is not celebrated to a large extent, but a lot people take time to eat a romantic dinner with their partner, to send a card to a secret love or give a red rose to their loved one.
Sweden: Alla hjärtans dag (“All Hearts’ Day”) was launched in the 1960s by the flower industry’s commercial interests, and due to influence of American culture. It is not an official holiday, but its celebration is recognized and sales of cosmetics and flowers for this holiday are only bested by those for Mother’s Day.
Finland: Valentine’s Day is called Ystävänpäivä which translates into “Friend’s day”. As the name indicates, this day is more about remembering all your friends, not only your loved one.
Romania: the traditional holiday for lovers is Dragobete, which is celebrated on February 24. In recent years, Romania has also started celebrating Valentine’s Day, despite already having Dragobete as a traditional holiday.
Venezuela: In 2009, President Hugo Chavez said in a meeting to his supporters for the upcoming referendum vote on February 15th, that “since on the 14th, there will be no time of doing nothing, nothing or next to nothing … maybe a little kiss or something very superficial”, he recommended people to celebrate a week of love after the referendum vote.
South Korea: Women give chocolate to men on February 14, and men give non-chocolate candy to women on March 14. On April 14 (Black Day), those who did not receive anything on the 14th of Feb or March go to a Chinese restaurant to eat black noodles and “mourn” their single life.

So those are nice. Happy V-Day.

notes from: bed

That’s right, kids. I’m taking a sick day today. I have a throat and sinus thing. No biggie, I just sound like a 45-year old 2-pack-a-day smoker from the south (I don’t know why that last part… it just makes it seem dirtier). Anyway, in honor of taking lots of things that will make me drowsy, I’ve decided to talk about movies to watch when you’re home sick. The two that popped immediately to mind are Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Princess Bride. These are both extremely important films that you should probably stay home sick today to watch, as well.

A more official (read: paid) authority on the matter:
EW.com’s top 11 films

I will also attempt to restart (for the fourth time) the hat I started knitting a couple of weeks ago. Lucy told me it wasn’t totally out of my league, but now I think she might have just been humoring me.

Side Note: Karma for the sick day… My neighbor’s phone is vibrating against our shared wall and he’s not turning it off. Seriously, it’s been almost ten minutes.

notes from: 35,000 feet

For those of you who live in a cave (or maybe Los Angeles), you may not have heard that there was an emergency plane landing on the Hudson River (between roughly 48th Street in Manhattan, and Weehawken, New Jersey) on Thursday. My office is too “inland” to have seen it, but here are some photos that have been compiled on CNN.

Luckily, the pilot, “Sully”, rocked the shit out of the landing, despite birds flying into and ruining two engines on the plane. Everyone got out safely, with the help of the crew and the subsequent ferries and emergency water vehicles that jumped in to help. The plane floated down river until it got to Battery Park City (lower Manhattan) where they apparently tried to lift it out of the water. Which is kind of nuts, if you think about it. Airlifting an airplane. Anyway.

This story is of particular importance to me because I have to get on a plane in 14 days. But it’s of even more importance because I hate flying. Or maybe not hate, but definitely fear. I know a lot of people are super paranoid about things like terrorists and/or snakes on planes, but not me. I just have a straight up fear of plummeting to my death. That probably seems a little overdramatic, but that’s what an irrational fear is. Regardless, I decided it would be good catharsis to post some important facts about airplanes and safety.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his latest book Outliers, does a chapter about plane crashes. This was hard for me to get through, for obvious reasons, but he did an excellent job of explaining the circumstances surrounding most crashes. He says:

In a typical crash, for example, the weather is poor— not terrible, necessarily, but bad enough that the pilot feels a little bit more stresed than usual. In an overwhelming number of crashes, the plane is behind schedule, so the pilots are hurrying. In 52 percent of crashes, the pilot at the time of the accident has been awake for twelve hours or more, meaning that he is tired and not thinking sharply. And 44 percent of the time, the two pilots have never flown together before, so they’re not comfortable with each other.

Okay, so here’s my question… Can we get them to not do that stuff? I mean, is it really super hard to make sure pilots aren’t sleepy? That seems kind of, I don’t know, easy to do. He goes on to explain that it’s never really just one big movie-like moment of engine explosion and panic that creates a plane crash, that it’s actually a series of small, seemingly insignificant human errors.

Well that’s a great explanation, but why are the numbers so high on things like this? Like, okay, (pretend) it’s Sunday night, right? And I have to work tomorrow. So I go to bed at a reasonable hour so going to work and then actually working isn’t a total disaster. I don’t go out and get drunk, I don’t watch TV until 3 am because I’m bored, I do the adult thing and make sure to get a good night’s sleep. Now that’s me. And I take the subway to work, and then I sit in front of a computer for 8.5 hours minding my own business. What I do at that computer affects basically no one but me, because if I do a bad job, well, I get fired. But no one dies. So if I take all that care and precaution for getting to my little Upper West Side desk-chair job, then why the fuck are people who are literally holding hundreds of lives in their hands miles above the earth going to work tired??

Alright, I really just wanted to vent a little, but I think my logic makes kind of a lot of sense. Luckily, there are more people out there who are more understanding of the sometimes blatantly disrespect for people’s lives, who have given some advice on planes and fear of flying and emergencies. Enjoy.

Upon death your soul will leave your body.
Just get on the damn plane.
Don’t forget your pets!

notes from: someone on hold

“Thank you for being patient. A representative will be with you shortly.”

I don’t think a worse 12 words have been spoken. As some of you may know, I had a “situation” with Comcast this past fall. That took roughly 478,932,483 minutes on hold to take care of. Now I’m going through yet another “situation” with National Grid. This one is actually like 30% my fault because I kind of started it for being dumb and not paying for my gas for a year, but regardless… there’s no need for it to continue on for months and months. Long story short, my account has been cancelled – according to the lovely people at National Grid – three times now, and I’m still getting contacted about opening accounts and scheduled appointments that I did not set up. The customer service rep I finally got through to just now, though, guarantees me that it has all been cancelled – for real this time – so I shouldn’t be hearing from them again. Yeah, we’ll see about that.

For the record, I did eventually pay for my gas – in full! – so you can all settle down.

notes from: santa

merry christmas, to one and all.