Tag: #NewYork

  • School’s Back, For-Ever!

    The first thing that took me by surprise this morning was the amount of people on the streets. I went to walk the dog early, 7:30am, and I was taken aback by everyone being out. It almost felt like the New York of old, before the pandemic. I mean, I know why. Today is the first day of school, and for many companies, the first day back in the office.

    But the big deal is school being back, and in person. The kid could barely sleep last night, and she was up at the crack of dawn, and ready to go. She had been counting down the days for the past two weeks, and I would say that this first day of school was close to as exciting as Christmas morning.

    Last night, we let her pick out the clothes she wanted to ware today. We took time packing all of her school supplies, and taking pictures. It was starting to feel very real for us as well. Soon, she will be out of the house, and back with kids, learning and having all the adventures that come with a school day.

    I won’t lie, things did not go smoothly getting into the school, and getting settled in the classroom. BUT! I didn’t expect it to go swimmingly on the first day. I don’t even expect that it will go well for the first week even. Tomorrow will be better, and the day after that will be a little better as well. No one has done this for a year and a half, so let’s all cut each other some slack.

    Because, the kids are back in school. And that’s a win.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Coffee Mugs in Cars, Nothing But Ads, and the Last Weekend

    “Odds and Ends” is my continuing series of random thoughts and follow ups…

    There are many things that I don’t get about this world. One of them is people who take coffee mugs, full of coffee into their cars. I’m not talking a thermos, or a travel mug. No, what I am talking about are people who take a normal, regular coffee mug with them in their car. How do they stop it from spilling? Is there a secret to this? It just seems like uncovered vessels that contain liquid in a car is a recipe for a disaster.

    Not that I spend a bunch of time on FaceBook anymore, but I was scrolling through this morning, and I noticed that about half of the postings on my feed were sponsored posts. I have one from NEWSMAX, which if the algorithm was working correctly, should know that type of post would find not purchase in my feed. I am sure this has to do with my lack of interaction with the site. So, if I keep up this level of inactivity, in like two years, my feed with be nothing but sponsored posts?

    So, not that this is a big deal, but this is the last weekend of Summer Vacation. Eleven weeks went flying by, and we are ready for school to start on Monday. We got the school shopping done, talked to the kid about have to wear a mask all day. The wife and I talked about what the morning routine will need to be, because we haven’t had to do this since March 2020. It also means the end of Dad teaching school, and playing board games, and Barbies. No more pirate ship and puppet shows. It needs to come to an end, as the kid needs to be back in school and around her friends. This was a special time together, and I don’t know if I will even get this much father/daughter time again. But the other side of this is that she will get that spark of excitement of learning, and the daily victories and defeats that come with friendships. She’ll start becoming her own person, independent of her parents, as it should be.

  • Caught in the Rain

    Man, that was a lot of rain last night. On the UWS, it started around 5pm, and I got caught out in it. I was coming back from a doctor’s appointment, and thought I could out run it. Not so much. Even a ride on the 1 train to get back to Harlem didn’t help, as the rain came down in waves. It would let up, and then come down even harder.

    There is something very humbling with being caught out in a downpour in New York. When a hard rain hits, you can watch as people going running inside, or to the subway, or hopping in cabs or on a bus. Then there are the people who hide out in doorways. Everyone waiting out the rain. You do see people running down the street with an umbrella or a rain coat, because people do have places to be.

    But the saddest of all are the people who are just walking; no rain coat, no umbrella. Just walking like normal, as if it’s not raining. Showing all the signs that they weren’t expecting to get caught out in it, but now that they are, they have accepted the situation.

    Everyone, at one time or other, gets caught in the rain. It’s like a right of passage. It happened to me the first week after I moved to New York. I learned my lesson though. I check the weather and carry an umbrella.

  • New York Move Anniversary

    This past Saturday, August 28th, a personal anniversary of mine slipped by unnoticed. It was the 15-year anniversary of my move to New York. Well… to be correct, I first moved to Jersey City, and THEN to New York City.

    Moving to New York was something that I had always wanted to do. I had been dreaming about it since high school, and though my life went in a lot of different directions, it wasn’t until about 2005 that I sort of got my shit together, and was able to start planning the move.

    But as I think about it, and if I am very honest, I wouldn’t have been able to make the move happen without the support of my friends Alex and Rebecca. Alex was a friend of mine from junior high, and Rebecca was his fiancée at the time. They had a house in Jersey City, and they were kind enough to rent out their basement to me so I had a place to live and get situated. Without them, without their friendship and support, I don’t know how I would have gotten here. And then there was Rebecca’s parents, who would come and visit, and I got to know them, and they made me feel welcome and accepted me into their family group, which was an extremely gracious gesture.

    And as I thought about Alex and Rebecca, I started thinking that in a larger sense, I’ve never really accomplished anything alone. I have been lucky to have friends and family who have supported me, and I really hope that I was the type of friend that supported in return. No one is an island, right?

  • I Met Tourists Today

    Normally, I grocery shop for the family on Wednesday, but this week, I thought I would move it up a day. For me to grocery shop is an event that takes up a couple of hours. I hit up the grocery store in our neighborhood, but there are some staples that are just cheaper at Trader Joe’s. The nearest one is at 93rd Street, which means a subway ride. Having been vaccinated since May, I have returned to using mass transit to run errands, so I have been venturing out of our neighborhood all Summer.

    Today went normal. I took the local train down to 96th Street, walked along Central Park West to 93rd, and then cut over to Columbus Ave. It wasn’t busy in the Trader Joe’s, so I was in and out in about thirty minutes. Totally normal. I walked back to the 96th subway station listening to music while carrying my bags.

    I go down into the station, swipe my card through the turnstile, and then I hear loudly, “Good Morning!” shouted at me by a middle-aged woman in a mask. Then she shouted it at me two more times; “Good Morning!”

    Now, as any New Yorker would do, when someone shouts at me, I ignore them. The second shout, I will look at you to make sure you aren’t about to attack me. The third shout will be the closer look, to check to see if you are crazy or maybe a normal person.

    When I checked to see if this woman was crazy, I saw that she was flanked by a middle-aged man, and two teenagers – a guy and a gal – all in masks. When I stopped to look at them, that’s when the teenagers said in a very thick Italian accent, “We are looking for Brooklyn Bridge.”

    And it hit me – They were tourists!

    I mean, I didn’t think foreign tourists were allowed in the country, but that notwithstanding, I fell into the old role of “New Yorker Giving Directions.” Not that there was much I could do. There isn’t a straight shot to the Brooklyn Bridge. My thought was to go to City Hall on the N R W line, but that meant a transfer at 34th, if you took the B from 96th. See, not easy, and not easy to explain to people who aren’t that familiar with English. Anyway, I got them on a downtown B, and I guess they will figure it out from there.

    New York is Back, Baby!