the mermaid cafe

Tall Ships!!! So beautiful!!!

Wednesday reading, also beautiful!

What I've just finished
Six of Crows: A Darker Shore: Letters from Ketterdam by Leigh Bardugo. I don't know why the title is longer than the short story but I loved it! It's an epistolary story, using an investigation of the mysterious captain of The Wraith (tall ships!!!) as the framework, and letters between Kaz and Inej make up many of the documents the investigators are using. Ugh, I love them so much! ( spoilers )

I really hope this isn't the only time Bardugo chooses to revisit the Dregs and Ketterdam, because I would pay full hardcover price for a full-length, getting the band back together heist novel.

What I'm reading now
Radiant Star by Ann Leckie. I'm enjoying it but I only have a very vague recollection of what happened in the main trilogy, so some of it is probably going over my head. And I also realized I haven't read Translation State so hopefully that is not to relevant to this one. I do enjoy how Leckie plays with POV though.

What I'm reading next
As always, who can say?

*

Yesterday after I logged off work, I made a ricotta cheesecake, and since I know my springform pans are leaky (they are old and need to be replaced), I just used a deep dish pie plate, and it was fine. I also added about 2/3 cup of mini chocolate chips that the recipe did not call for, but which seemed necessary, though it is also a delicious cake without them (the cinnamon/orange/vanilla flavor is actually super Christmassy to me? but the heart wants what it wants, even if it's June rather than December). Also the vanilla bean paste gives it those little speckles which means it's even more delicious than usual! *g* Anyway, if you need a cheesecake but don't have a springform pan or a stand mixer, and don't want to deal with a water bath, this is the way to go.

Then today, I tried to make baked mozzarella sticks instead of fried - mainly because cleaning up after frying is a lot and also the smell lingers - but I didn't realize you are supposed to freeze them for TWO HOURS so I got a late start and didn't eat until almost 6:30. They were okay but not as wonderfully crisp as they get when fried, even though I used panko. Also, despite what some of these recipes say, you really should season every layer - the flour, the egg, and the breadcrumbs. I am just saying.

My plan for tomorrow is to make bacon so there's that for lunch for the week, along with some chicken pesto meatballs - we'll see how they are. I am apparently on a ground chicken kick, because I have a bunch of recipes I want to try, and as long as it keeps being on sale, I'm good to go!

In other news, the Knicks are up 2-0 on the Spurs and only TWO GAMES away from winning a chip! They've won 13 in a row in these playoffs! What even is happening??? MSG is going to be nuts on Monday. But remember, you absolutely do not have to hand it to James Dolan. #go new york go new york go

*

Bedtime is repealed!

I must say, I really am enjoying the Mayor Mamdani experience. And go Knicks!

*

I hope everyone who felt the earth move this morning is okay! It left me with lingering inner ear weirdness for a while - that feeling like the aftermath of being dizzy. I honestly thought it was some kind of construction accident at first, though then I was like, I'm on the 6th floor, so what the hell? Then I texted everyone I knew plus the work chat, and everybody was having the same reaction. I know we had a smaller one back in 2011 - I was on vacation so I was on the couch in my apartment and I Did Not Like That At All then, and my feelings haven't changed! I get that this wasn't worth getting out of bed for to Californians (my boss is from there), but it's also not something that happens here all that much so we definitely freaked out a little. I certainly didn't have NY/NJ earthquake on my 2024 bingo card (and certainly not 3 days before a total eclipse). I guess the Mets winning a game really did have some earthshaking effects!

[eta] And at 6 pm we had a brief aftershock! [/eta]

I did rewatch CATWS last night for the first time a while and it definitely holds up, though the fight at the end all goes on a little too long. And it hits a little different now that we've had actual real life neo-nazis in the US government (and they're trying to get back there again). If only Captain America could save us! But we'll have to save ourselves.

In other, less fun anniversaries, it was 30 years ago today that Kurt Cobain killed himself. I'm pretty sure he was the first celebrity death I actually cried over. So I'll be listening to some Nirvana and hoping the earth doesn't decide to start shaking again.

And finally, here's today's poem:

Eve On Her Deathbed
by Linda Pastan

In the end we are no more than our own stories:
mine a few brief passages in the Book,
no further trace of plot or dialogue.
But I once had a lover no one noticed
as he slipped through the pages, through
the lists of those begotten and begetting.
Does he remember our faltering younger selves,
the pleasures we took while Adam,
a good bureaucrat, busied himself
with naming things, even after Eden?
What scraps will our children remember of us
to whom our story is simple
and they themselves the heroes of it?

I woke that first day with Adam for company,
and the tangled path I would soon follow
I've tried to forget: the animals, stunned
at first in the forest; the terrible, beating wings
of the angel; the livid curse of childbirth to come.
And then the children themselves,
loving at times, at times unmerciful.
Because of me there is just one narrative
for everyone, one indelible line from birth to death,
with pain or lust, with even love or murder
only brief diversions, subplots.

But what I think of now,
in the final bitterness of age,
is the way the garden groomed itself
in the succulent air of summer--each flower
the essence of its own color; the way even
the serpent knew it had a part it had to play, if
there were to be a story at all.

***

If you haven't seen the pictures of what it looks like in NYC today, check out the front page of the NY Times. I've always felt bad for other people dealing with terrible air during/after wildfires - I never thought it'd be such a huge problem here. This afternoon, the sky was apocalyptically orange and when I checked my zip code in airnow.gov, it was HAZARDOUS. I'm annoyed on a variety of levels, not least of which is having to keep the windows closed and put the AC on even though it was otherwise a really nice day with a cool breeze. Also, I keep coughing. Bah.

My phone keeps buzzing with teams chats from the higher-ups about announcing that staff should work remotely tomorrow, since they didn't get the communication out before 5 pm this afternoon.

***

So I'm at my brother's, dog-sitting while they are on vacation. I scheduled a car for 12:20, and he came on time but I should have known it was going to be a frustrating trip when he pulled up on the other side of the street, and there were no easy openings between parked cars to get to him, and also there were a bunch of cars coming so getting in on the street side was not the best (one car finally did pause and let me open the door and get in). He pulled back into the flow of traffic and...stopped, because there was a truck unloading stuff three cars in front of us. What a great start!

Then he chose the weirdest route - I know I complain about this all the time, but I find it super frustrating and confusing! Listen, it was 12:30 pm on a beautiful summer Saturday and we were heading to Long Island. I knew traffic was going to be terrible no matter what we did! I accept that. But there's a difference between rolling slowly along in heavy volume on the Grand Central (the obvious choice), and choosing to roll along in heavy volume and having to stop at every traffic light because for some reason this guy chose to take Union Turnpike to the Clearview for one exit to get on the LIE (also jammed with heavy volume). WHY? WHY DO THIS???

Like, I guess if there were an actual accident clogging the Grand Central, that would be one thing, but traffic seemed to be moving when we passed it by. I would have also accepted the Van Wyck to the LIE, or, if he had to do it with lights, Woodhaven to Queens Blvd to the LIE, which would have been shorter.

I am not a driver, but I am a person who likes to know multiple routes to a destination. When I lived in Manhattan I tested out seven different ways to get to work. Even from Queens now, I have about a similar number and I've tried them all, just so I know how they work in case my usual route is unavailable.

But like, this seemed really dumb to me. Especially since we took the LIE past the exit to get onto the Northern State, but then got off at Seaford to go back to the Northern State anyway.

I know they all use Waze and it's supposed to have real-time traffic reports and help them avoid jams and such, but sometimes it chooses really stupid ways to get places (e.g., the time a driver took me up to the Bronx to get to Queens from Midtown Manhattan at 11 pm. WHY? WHY THIS???). Given that I don't know what conditions were elsewhere, I can't say for sure that this route made my trip 25 minutes longer than it needed to be, but it sure felt like it did.

*

elanid said, I’d love to hear about your feelings about different NYC neighborhoods and/or trains!

Since I haven't been anywhere interesting since the pandemic started, and things change so quickly, I am not going to talk about neighborhoods. I am however going to have Many Opinions on trains.

First of all, the 1 train is the best train. It gets me where I want to go and I nearly always get a seat on it, even in the Before Times. Is it slower and does it make many more stops than the 2 and the 3? Yes. But not that much slower, and the 2 and the 3 are always super crowded (or they used to be) and I don't want to ever deal with that unless I absolutely have to.

Also a great train? The Q. Bringing it up to 96th Street was genius, even if it took 100 years to happen (and I mean that literally). It's not nearly as crowded or gross as the 4-5 and lets you off a little further east, but also, it has working elevators and escalators, so you don't have to be in a swarming crowd on the stairs.

The worst train is probably the 7 (I mean, the L could the worst, but I never take it so I can't say). The J is also slow as fuck and who even knows where it actually stops. I'm told the G has improved, but that used to be another train you could wait for forever.

The C is also very slow and doesn't have the benefit of coming every 3 minutes like the 1. The A is fine when it's express but deadly when it runs local, and also it doesn't come particularly often either. The E comes more frequently but even when it runs express in Queens it somehow takes forever. I don't understand why there is always supposedly "congestion" in the tunnel at 10 pm when there hasn't been another train in 15 or 20 minutes. It's a good train if you can get a seat though. I don't like the F quite as much and also sometimes for some reason on the F you are deep in the fucking bowels of the earth without a working escalator (what even is that 63rd St station).

The 4-5-6 are the worst for random perverts, at least in my experience. Take the 6 if you can so you can get a seat and not have to deal with gross men rubbing up against you in the crowd, but if you have to stand on the 6, be wary.

I don't regularly take any other trains, but I feel like this covers a pretty wide variety. *g*

*

I think it finally stopped snowing. I'm not sure how much snow we got here, but it seems like a decent amount. We didn't have the wild wind that they were predicting though - not like that storm a couple of weeks ago that kept me awake with how the wind howled in the middle of the night.

I had a really nice call with my niece earlier, but since I recently changed my apple password, FaceTime wasn't letting me log in on the laptop, so I had to use my phone, and the battery died after 2 hours of FaceTime. Whoops.

*

Last night the Rangers retired Henrik Lundqvist's number. They did it up really nice and I choked up a little bit. Unfortunately, they then lost the game, which sucks, especially since it looked like they'd tied it up with 1 second left, but the goal was then disallowed. Sigh. Whatever.

*

Me, to myself last night, after ordering a couple of necessary household items to replace things that have broken/worn out: "and now no more spending money until we pay down some credit card debt!"

Me, to myself this afternoon, after trying to make an unwise third cup of coffee and listening to the Keurig break down: "I guess I'm buying a new Keurig."

Arrgh. I knew it was on its last legs, but I put off ordering a new one and now I will have to go without coffee until it arrives - hopefully tomorrow but 1-day delivery is always iffy. (I mean, technically I have other ways of making coffee, but I also invested in a metric fuckton of k-cups during the spring and summer when I was anxious about supply chain issues so...)

In better news, this weekend I baked these oatmeal cookies, and instead of raisins, I used the dried mixed berries from Sahadi's and they are really good! (I also left out the nuts, and used AP flour instead of white whole wheat.)

In other oatmeal news, steel cut oats were on sale so I bought some and I have tried them in a couple of different ways and...I don't like them. The texture is too chewy and the taste isn't that great. *hands* It's all the things I disliked about oatmeal previously. So I am going back to my plebeian rolled oats, which come out creamy and delicious when done overnight in the slow cooker.

I did manage to finally get all my laundry done last night - I put it off all weekend, but couldn't face letting it hang around any longer. It's even mostly all folded too - just sheets and towels left. Whew.

*

Today's January journal topic comes from callmesandyk: What you wish stories set in NYC right now would get right and rarely do!

In terms of professional stuff - movies and TV shows - I think we could do away with the unrealistically large apartments people live in on TV. At least in Manhattan. I realize they have to get some equipment etc. into the set, but it's just...unbelievable. Unless there are like eight people living there or they are rich people. Or they explicitly mention inheriting the rent-controlled apartment from their parents or something.

I also wish they did better in terms of showing how to get places/how long it takes etc. The subways and buses almost always look wrong, and when they substitute one part of the city for another, sometimes they don't handle it well and you're like, "but that's not how you get there?" Or "that building isn't on the way to that place?" In cities I'm not familiar with, it doesn't bother me, but it does jar me momentarily when I see a diner in Tribeca portraying a diner in Hell's Kitchen and it doesn't look right.

In terms of people writing fic - please stop having people drive everywhere. Unless they live out in the suburbs (on Long Island, in Westchester, in Jersey) or certain areas of Queens (eta: and Staten Island /eta), a large number of people do not drive - we take buses or subways or the LIRR. Or we walk or bike. Walking a lot is very common, especially on errands that are within walking distance (which is farther than you think), and Manhattan, and many outer borough neighborhoods, are set up to be walkable - the grocery store, the dry cleaner, the liquor store, the pizzeria - these are all probably on the way home from the subway. Subways are referred to by their letters or numbers (the 1, the 6, the E) - nobody uses color designations (the blue line, the green line). Crosstown/avenue blocks are longer than north-south number/name blocks (i.e., the one block between 2nd and 3rd Avenue is longer than the one block between 81st and 82nd).

If you're going to namecheck a place, please look at a map - I still recall someone telling me about a story where characters got lost in Bryant Park, which is a park that is one block square. You can't get lost in it - it's not big enough.

In terms of Spider-Man, MCU Peter lives in Forest Hills, so he likely takes the E train to get into Manhattan (when not, you know, webswinging). It's a nice neighborhood, lots of restaurants and shops, absolutely not enough parking. Which is the truth about most places in the city. Oh, speaking of parking - alternate side of the street parking is a thing! You have to get up early to move your car on certain days! This could be used to hilarious effect in fic, though I don't recall seeing it come up much, if at all.

I think that covers my current usual complaints. *g*

***

I am so far behind on answering comments but I want to talk to you all! I just haven't had the time, and that is unlikely to change until later in the week.

Today, I went into the office to pick up my new work-issued laptop, and pick up the wine that has been beneath my desk since March. It was great to see two of my co-workers, but it was really weird to be all alone in the dark in my cubicle. I got rid of some things and uploaded some files from the server to my OneDrive, but with my new laptop I will be able to actually reach the server so I don't have to be physically present to continue to do so. (IT: "you shouldn't be working on the server anymore! Everything should be in OneDrive!" Me: "I've been here for 11 years and you gave me 2 days to make the move before we went to emergency WFH. I didn't have time to upload 11 years worth of files!")

The new laptop is really light, though so far I don't love the touchpad - I will have to get used to it. Plugged my second monitor in and that works fine, though the audio is basically so low as to be inaudible on calls, both incoming and outgoing. I emailed them about that and it's a Known Issue that has to be patched, so they'll be doing that tomorrow.

As glad as I am that I took yesterday off, planning to go in this morning meant that I didn't get to my vacation backlog of email until I got home (around noon), so that and starting to set up the laptop took up most of the day. Otoh, it was only about 1/3 of what it would have been in my old position, so that was nice (124 instead of over 300).

I did take an Uber both ways, and for once, both drivers took almost exactly the same routes I would have if I were driving, which I appreciated. Going into the city, we went to Atlantic Ave (he went Jackie Robinson to Eastern Parkway, which is not the way I would have done it, but whatever! Atlantic to the Brooklyn Bridge is a solid choice) and it was fine until the actual approach to the bridge, where everyone had to merge into one lane, which took FOREVER. And the driver on the way home took the Williamsburg to the BQE to the LIE to Woodhaven Blvd, though instead of turning onto Metropolitan, or going down to Park Lane South, he took Myrtle Ave for some reason. So again, not exactly how I would have done it, but closer than the dudes who take weird roundabout side streets in order to avoid traffic but just end up extending the trip longer anyway because of all the lights.

So I left here at 9 am, arrived at the office at 10, spent an hour there, and was home by noon. Which was about what I expected. Then my 4 - 5 pm meeting turned into a gossip session from 5 - 6, which was entertaining, but cut into my evening time.

***

After today, I only have to work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week and then I am off for two weeks! I will be very busy with baking, but at least I won't have to commute?

Speaking of, I have to go to Brooklyn tomorrow, and I couldn't understand why none of the apps or the MTA website was giving me the fastest/most direct route (the A from Lefferts to the F at Jay St and then the F to the destination) but the old MTA website actually mentions that there are buses replacing trains from Utica Avenue to Jay Street on the A line over the weekend, so that explains that. I do not like the new MTA website - it does not give you all the information you need to make an informed travel plan. I also don't like that I have to go into Manhattan to get to Brooklyn from Queens, but I guess I can take the railroad into Penn and take the F from Herald Square - it's definitely faster than taking the F the whole way from Union Tpke.

In other news, I don't really have time to do the December talking meme in December, but I've done it in January the past couple of years and it's gone well, so let's do it again.

You know the drill: Pick a date in January and give me something to talk about. TV, books, movies, music, poetry, fandom, writing, food, travel, fictional characters (&/or pairings) and all of their feelings, stuff about my life, whatever (note: I reserve the right to ask for a different topic if it's something I don't think I can do justice to). You can see my answers to previous instances of the meme here.

- You don't have to be following me or ever have commented to request a topic.
- If you're doing the meme, I'll leave topics for you, too! Feel free to link me at any time if you want one.
- Feel free to just leave a topic and no date. I'll fill it in.

January 1 - 2019 year in review
January 2 - In a universe where instead of the sequel trilogy we get a three part Clone Wars trilogy, and for some reason Ashley Eckstein is not available in any way: whom would you cast as Ashoka? - for selenak
January 3 - five things TPTB could have done to make Eps 1-3 suck less? - for grammarwoman
January 4 - What was your best and worst Yuletide experience? - for rachelmanija
January 5 - you're given script-revision duty for The Last Jedi. The plot has to stay essentially the same, in that Rey goes to find Luke, Poe massively fucks up in a battle against the First Order, and Kylo Ren may or may not have an identity crisis. Everything else is up for grabs. What is the biggest thing you change, and how? - for maidenjedi
January 6 - my fannish timeline
January 7 -
January 8 -
January 9 - If there was a live action Nightwing movie trilogy (in our dreams!) what stories would it include? - for silveronthetree
January 10 - do you have any birthday traditions? How do you feel about birthdays? Do you like celebrating or not? - for falena
January 11 - opinions about apple varieties! Or whatever other foodie thing you want to talk about. - for rose_griffes
January 12
January 13 - Favourite MCU movie? - for kore
January 14 -
January 15 - How would you tweak Titans to be better? - for callmesandyk
January 16 -
January 17 - More Joy Day!
January 18 - If you could change 1 thing about the MCU that's minor (character shows up earlier or later, has a different look, is played by a different actor) what would it be and why? - for glitteryv
January 19 -
January 20 - remember the riff-off from Pitch Perfect? What would your sequence be? - for innie_darling
January 21 -
January 22 - favorite fiction set in New York City that gives you most the sense of it feeling like New York City? - for skygiants
January 23 - your favorite summer vacation, where you went, what you did, why it's your favorite. - for bonibaru
January 24 -
January 25 - How have you changed over the course of your adult life? What do you know now that you wish you'd known at 18? - for lunabee34
January 26 - what are your favourite 'hidden gems' in NYC, you know those places off the beaten track that tourists usually don't go to but you think are well worth a visit, instead? - for falena
January 27 -
January 28 -
January 29 -
January 30 - 5 books you recommend to ppl who don't like your favorite genre - for glitteryv
January 31 -

***

I have been here since 7:20 am and I am 1000% ready to go home, but I can't yet. *whines*

I did have an amusing commute story to tell from Friday night, right? Okay, so there's these two dudes with bicycles jackassing around on the platform as it gets more and more crowded because somehow during rush hour the A train is only coming every 9-12 minutes, which is intolerable. And then - I didn't see what happened, just the aftermath - just as the train is pulling into the station, one of the bicycles is ON THE TRACKS. So the people in front of me start waving their phone flashlights at the train so the engineer will put the brakes on before hitting the bicycle and making everyone's evening commute that much worse. The train miraculously pulls up short, one bicycle dumbass lies down on the platform to grab his bike and the other holds his ankle so he doesn't end up on the tracks as well, and the bicycle is rescued! Applause broke out when this happened, no lie.

I've been taking the subway regularly since 1988 and everything about that was a first. Except the part where the A took forever to come. It's always been that way. Sigh.

In other news, I've caught up on some tv, but I don't know if it's me or my shows but I'm kind of meh about everything.

Normally I love a bottle episode, but Friday's Killjoys felt like a wasted episode - it didn't tell us anything new and there's so much other stuff they could have covered instead. *hands*

And as for Young Justice, I was glad to see they finally confirmed Kaldur's bi (I mean, I don't want to erase his relationship with Tula), and Harper's into girls (or into Violet anyway) and I enjoyed Diana reading Bruce the riot act, but overall, I'm just meh about all of it. I don't think they're handling Terra in an interesting way, and I don't care about most of the new kids that much except for Violet and Brion, and even that is wearing a little thin for me. idk.

***

So there was a blackout in Manhattan last night, on the 42nd anniversary of the big 1977 blackout. This one appears to have caused much less damage all around. We were recently telling the kids about the '77 blackout and the Son of Sam and can I just say that the 70s were a weird fucking time from the perspective of a kid. (I mean, I'm sure everybody feels this way looking back on when they grew up, but the 70s! So fucking weird! And the 80s! So fucking terrifying!)

I'm not sure if this actually happened or if I just remember it this way but I think we got to eat the ice cream cake for my brother's birthday (which is today) early because the power was out and it wouldn't stay frozen in the freezer.

Anyway, I hope none of you were stuck in the subway or an elevator while it was happening last night, and I hope you've got power back if you lost it!

***

There's a new AO3 stats meme, going around and it seemed interesting so here we go:

List your top fanfic on AO3 for every year, sorted by kudos.

( 2009 - 2019 (so far) )

I think you can see the clear differences in when I was writing in (what became) a big pairing, or when a story got recced (e.g., the Star Wars stuff), versus when it's just me doing whatever it is that I do. Also, ftr, the breakdown is 6 m/m, 1 m/f, and 4 gen, if that is meaningful in any way. Idk.

***

Oh my god my commute this morning. *laughs hysterically*

I learned two things. Well, one thing I already knew, and one thing that would have been really helpful to know and now I know it, so...let me share my wisdom with you, in case you are ever commuting in NYC:

1. Varick Street runs downtown. This is very helpful to know, especially since I walked about 6 blocks in the wrong direction before I figured it out and turned the wrong way and finally ended up walking south on Greenwich the whole way, which worked out because at least then I knew where I was and what direction I was going in.

2. ALWAYS STAY ON THE TRAIN. Oh my god, self, you KNOW this. It doesn't matter how slow and how much trouble it is, STAY ON THE TRAIN. Because it will always begin moving more quickly than you will decide to get off and walk, and you will still get there faster with the delays than you will walking (in the wrong direction). But I was already an hour and ten minutes late at that point thanks the the combined efforts of the LIRR and the MTA, so walking seemed the less bad option but see above about walking the wrong direction AS I ALWAYS DO when I exit the train at Canal Street. (I mean, I do have several apps on my phone that would tell me how to go, but WHY WOULD I DO THAT when I could just WALK THE WRONG WAY EVERY TIME.) If I had stayed on the train, I'd have arrived at about the same time (I saw people exiting the station as I walked by) but I would have been sitting and reading instead of walking the wrong way multiple times.

I have other things to say but my head is pounding and work is ridiculous and so have a poem instead:

Act of God
by Madhur Anand

Waiting for the runway to be cleared,
I find this poem about a nun on an airplane:

Even though we don't believe in god we
are more inclined to god's will than engine failure*

In the off chance an airplane crashes
into a bird, god is summoned.

Did this airplane ground a bird,
or a bird this airplane?

Its few hundred reincarnated passenger pigeons,
aviation engineers and what they fear most
(tiny bones and feathers, delicate details,
their tendency to mess up engines),

a woman reading about a poet afraid of dying.

Not like that bird, his death properly pronounced
by our pilot himself, one anonymous soul
transcending machinery, fluttering into future poems.

And not like the nun on the plane
whispering prayers whether cruising or crashing,
while the poem in which she is flying searches everywhere
for a safe landing.
_______________________________________
*lines from the poem entitled: "It is unlucky to be
travelling on the same airplane as a nun" by Helen
Humphreys, The Perils of Geography, Brick Books, 1995.

***

Last night, after a lovely dinner with innie_darling (I had spaghetti and meatballs and flourless chocolate cake for dessert), as I was walking home from the train station, for half a block I was stuck behind a guy in a Luigi costume riding a pony. I don't even know, you guys. I did not have anything but water to drink at dinner. It was very surreal. So much so that the pug going for a walk in a Superman costume barely merits mentioning. But it was very cute, so I will mention that I also saw a pug in a Superman costume.

It's only a 6 block walk, and yet so full of weird and amazing things!

And I can tell I'm reading too much Bat fic (as if such a thing exists), because also last night, I dreamt that a much younger me was hired to be a substitute au pair for Bruce Wayne's children while Alfred was on vacation. Bruce looked like Jon Hamm and sounded like Kevin Conroy, so that part was okay, but he had one son (Tim!) and two daughters (I can't recall their names) and they were all under the age of 8. I don't know if they were biologically his kids, and I did not ask. He made me wear an old lady disguise in public so there would be no gossip and we were at some rich people party and there was a kidnapping attempt (Tim again! And he foiled it and rescued himself) and one of the little girls was drugged as part of the attempt, so I was carrying her around trying to find Bruce and get the valet to bring the car around while shedding the gray-haired old lady wig he'd made me wear.

It was an entertaining dream, at least, cut short by my alarm. Which means now I feel groggy and unable to face the day. Sigh.

***

ZOMG THIS DAY. Just shoot me in the face. It'd be less painful. Today I saw an exchange of emails that unintentionally reenacted "Who's on First" which I would find hilarious if it weren't so frustrating. We are at truly peak levels of Catch-22 type absurdity with boss3 wondering how we got there (it's because too many people were involved in making it happen and so nothing actually got decided and so nothing got done until about 15 minutes ago).

It doesn't help that last night once again I took the long way home - and by golly it was long, with the typical crawl from Roosevelt Avenue to 71st-Continental taking FOREVER, and then the complete absence of a bus, so I took a cab for that last leg. It was worth the $9 it cost me not to have to stand there waiting in the cold, I tell you what.

Then this morning my train was canceled again, so I decided to take the bus to the E, but I missed the bus and the Bus Time app said there wouldn't be another one for 13 minutes, BUT I could take one going the other way to the A train and that would arrive in 1 minute. So that is what I did. It was VERY WEIRD to take the A from Lefferts Blvd. For those of you who are new, I grew up in Ozone Park and lived there until 2002, so I took the A from 80th Street every day for years and years; this was taking from even further into Queens, and it would have been quicker than the E except that Lefferts is the first/last stop, so we sat there for 15 minutes while they cleaned the train. Which is a thing I thought didn't ever actually happen, but no, I saw a guy in an MTA uniform with a little broom and dustpan wander through our car while we sat in the station.

I shouldn't complain - it was very cold and it's an elevated station, so at least they let us wait on the train. And I had a seat the whole way, though I was at the wrong end of the station - what I thought was the front was the back. Which just meant I had to walk the whole platform when I got off at Chambers.

But even with a stop at Starbucks, I was at my desk by 9:20, which isn't bad at all. That extra 20 minutes is definitely attributable to the wait in the station and then the stop for coffee. It's nice to have more than one alternate route in my back pocket. (There is also the J train, but that is a last resort, because it takes EVEN LONGER and involves EVEN MORE WALKING.)

I really should investigate the express buses now that I'm slightly more familiar with the neighborhood.

Anyway, I keep feeling like today should be Friday but it's not and I have a meeting tomorrow morning and I just want this week to be over because it feels like it's lasted eight weeks already and I am le tired... Sigh.

It's finally time to go home. \o/

***