Up To Your Ankles
In New York early this morning near hurricane strength gusts of wind ripped through the city bringing down leaves from trees to come crashing wetly down on vehicles below, in some cases sticking to windshields or even sunroofs.
The devastation was felt citywide, trashcans not emptied of their refuse prior to the storm gave up their contents to a greedy and less than fastidious Irene, who set about spreading wrappers and brown paper bags hither and thither.
In lower lying areas of southern Manhattan the flooding was widespread, if measured in inches. The brave and curious could be seen wading in water up to their ankles and in some cases mid thigh.
A city torn apart by worry and meteorological speculation now rebuilds.
...more recent posts
The Irene After
Instead Of Dessert
We stopped off for dinner in Cleveland at some well reviewed place which was only adequate but had a nice meal until the alcohol and 10 hours of driving kicked in and then we arm wrestled a little bit instead of looking at the dessert menu.
But did enjoy Cleveland for a couple of hours exploring on a rainy Sunday. Drove around, went to a park and looked at the black sky over Lake Erie.
Got back on the road after the early dinner and headed straight for Toledo, Ohio which I have been eager to add to list of places I can answer affirmatively about when asked have I been there. Yes I have I smiled knowingly.
We are off to a written about diner somewhere here in Toledo and then to Dearborn to commune with its Arabic population, and have what I strongly feel will be excellent Middle Eastern for lunch and fit in between these a visit to the Henry Ford Museum so I can take a look at the limousine inside of which President Kennedy was killed.
Then to Detroit for a few days before driving back to NY possibly in the rain again which was not so bad once we replaced the windshield wiper and Interstate 80 is a fine piece of road and western PA is pretty kick ass.
We stopped off for dinner in Cleveland at some well reviewed place which was only adequate but had a nice meal until the alcohol and 10 hours of driving kicked in and then we arm wrestled a little bit instead of looking at the dessert menu.
But did enjoy Cleveland for a couple of hours exploring on a rainy Sunday. Drove around, went to a park and looked at the black sky over Lake Erie.
Got back on the road after the early dinner and headed straight for Toledo, Ohio which I have been eager to add to list of places I can answer affirmatively about when asked have I been there. Yes I have I smiled knowingly.
We are off to a written about diner somewhere here in Toledo and then to Dearborn to commune with its Arabic population, and have what I strongly feel will be excellent Middle Eastern for lunch and fit in between these a visit to the Henry Ford Museum so I can take a look at the limousine inside of which President Kennedy was killed.
Then to Detroit for a few days before driving back to NY possibly in the rain again which was not so bad once we replaced the windshield wiper and Interstate 80 is a fine piece of road and western PA is pretty kick ass.
No Mention Of Pepsi
To the naked eye of anyone who might gaze upon the scene of me it would probably not look like I am engaged in a crucially important task.
I am waiting for the phone to ring while reading an assortment of things, the novel Black Swan Green, news and feature articles (like I need to read someone's assessment of how pissed off the average American is at those that govern), some article about how Brooklyn (and possibly Detroit) wants to be careful about becoming Portland, another one about three plausible inventors of the High Five even though the first one is a hoax, which takes a brief foray into what it might mean to be a gay baseball player in the late 70s and to date Tommy Lasorda's son, even though the son, emphatically so says Coach Lasorda, was not gay.
As a passive barrier to the approaching afternoon sun the shades are drawn so gazing out the window is not an option.
I received a forwarded letter from Allstate informing me that their policy in North Carolina is to cancel the home insurance of any of their customers who don't also insure their vehicle with Allstate. I've wasted a number of days in pure befuddlement over how this could be so, another few in deep research, and the last several in casual but non forward moving acceptance of yet another thing added to the barrel of things that suck. Suck is as close as I am going to come to using foul language as partly this is an exercise in self control; an attempt at mature handling of a difficult situation.
I am finally this morning talking to a human from that aforementioned company, which I refer to in such anonymous fashion to prevent certain readers from looking for alternate meaning via secret between the lines coding as implied by repeated use of the company name. Like--see how he used the company name preceded by such and such a number of words whose total letter count adds up to such and such which if divided by three and subtracted from 37 equals cocksuckers. I don't want that to happen and I ask for mature reading only.
I thought I had received an actual email from the agent informing me of the whyfore of this policy change but as it turns out that was clearly just an automated personal sounding response activated when his inbox receives certain keywords. So I'm talking to him this morning and he has no actual knowledge that we have "communicated" by email and begins to go into the reasons for this new policy (even though I had not asked for any explanation) which are in short--blah blah limiting exposure in states with coastal areas blah and you can kiss our large ass if you don't like it. And I had to politely halt him midway through, not to inform him that I had already read the automated email and a considerably long assessment from a Lexus-Nexus type news database for financial matters, but just to say I had been in New Orleans after the big one and had certain feelings about the cocksuckers, I mean company, and how they limited their exposure but did not want to get sidetracked on that, was more just interested in the alternate insurance company mentioned in his email. I am not so interested in the specifics of how said company will one day screw me, just stupidly eager to add them to the list of things I can complain about in the future.
Sometimes I feel like I am following a path lined with little yellow lights and along which there are loudspeakers announcing--all dumb asses this way, all dumb assess this way, and even at the forks of implied choice the neon arrows pointing each way are above blinking Vegas-like signage redundantly leading me with the words, dumb asses only, dumb asses only. Eagerly walking and in some cases running ahead of me are any number of people more ambitious, some who turn and taunt--I'm going to be there ahead of you. When I ask where they answer ahead of you.
To the naked eye of anyone who might gaze upon the scene of me it would probably not look like I am engaged in a crucially important task.
I am waiting for the phone to ring while reading an assortment of things, the novel Black Swan Green, news and feature articles (like I need to read someone's assessment of how pissed off the average American is at those that govern), some article about how Brooklyn (and possibly Detroit) wants to be careful about becoming Portland, another one about three plausible inventors of the High Five even though the first one is a hoax, which takes a brief foray into what it might mean to be a gay baseball player in the late 70s and to date Tommy Lasorda's son, even though the son, emphatically so says Coach Lasorda, was not gay.
As a passive barrier to the approaching afternoon sun the shades are drawn so gazing out the window is not an option.
I received a forwarded letter from Allstate informing me that their policy in North Carolina is to cancel the home insurance of any of their customers who don't also insure their vehicle with Allstate. I've wasted a number of days in pure befuddlement over how this could be so, another few in deep research, and the last several in casual but non forward moving acceptance of yet another thing added to the barrel of things that suck. Suck is as close as I am going to come to using foul language as partly this is an exercise in self control; an attempt at mature handling of a difficult situation.
I am finally this morning talking to a human from that aforementioned company, which I refer to in such anonymous fashion to prevent certain readers from looking for alternate meaning via secret between the lines coding as implied by repeated use of the company name. Like--see how he used the company name preceded by such and such a number of words whose total letter count adds up to such and such which if divided by three and subtracted from 37 equals cocksuckers. I don't want that to happen and I ask for mature reading only.
I thought I had received an actual email from the agent informing me of the whyfore of this policy change but as it turns out that was clearly just an automated personal sounding response activated when his inbox receives certain keywords. So I'm talking to him this morning and he has no actual knowledge that we have "communicated" by email and begins to go into the reasons for this new policy (even though I had not asked for any explanation) which are in short--blah blah limiting exposure in states with coastal areas blah and you can kiss our large ass if you don't like it. And I had to politely halt him midway through, not to inform him that I had already read the automated email and a considerably long assessment from a Lexus-Nexus type news database for financial matters, but just to say I had been in New Orleans after the big one and had certain feelings about the cocksuckers, I mean company, and how they limited their exposure but did not want to get sidetracked on that, was more just interested in the alternate insurance company mentioned in his email. I am not so interested in the specifics of how said company will one day screw me, just stupidly eager to add them to the list of things I can complain about in the future.
Sometimes I feel like I am following a path lined with little yellow lights and along which there are loudspeakers announcing--all dumb asses this way, all dumb assess this way, and even at the forks of implied choice the neon arrows pointing each way are above blinking Vegas-like signage redundantly leading me with the words, dumb asses only, dumb asses only. Eagerly walking and in some cases running ahead of me are any number of people more ambitious, some who turn and taunt--I'm going to be there ahead of you. When I ask where they answer ahead of you.