15 Mar 2010

R: Getting up at 2 a.m. to catch my 6 a.m. flight was not my idea of a thrill. But an e-mail from JetBlue telling me to get to JFK two hours before departure had me debating spending $60 for an extra hour of sleep or taking the train at ungodly hours. I decided to save money and take the train so there I was on the platform, bags in hand waiting for the train at 2:30. I got about two stops from my stop at 14th street before I realized I had forgotten my cell phone. So cursing my carelessness, I jumped off the train and grabbed a cab at Bryant Park.

Turns out I found the chattiest cabbie in New York but it was said cabbie's propensity for chitchat that got me a decent deal. After he found out I was on my way to JFK, he voided my fare back to my apartment and just charged me the flat rate to the airport. Naturally I got there way too early, two and half hours before my flight and before JetBlue had even opened the lines to security. I couldn't wait to get on the plane and sleep. Luckily, I woke up just in time to catch the sun rising over the clouds.

C: I let M convince me to go to Sunset Cantina tonight to meet with some of his/our friends with whom he went to BU. Unfortunately, the rain made me a little late (in the office past 8...qué horror!) which subsequently meant I would be leaving later than normal, and he agreed to meet them at 6PM. There is no convenient way (read: public transportation) to get to BU's campus from work, so I ended up meeting M at Coolidge Corner and walking the 15-minutes from C- to B-line.

Of course, the gale force winds from Friday had persisted through the weekend and were accompanied by gobs of rain, too. After 7 years of living here, I haven't figured out the best way to dress when it is between 33 to 40 degrees with horizontally-blowing precipitation. However, I have figured out more or less how to anticipate the direction of the wind, so I managed to get through the day without my CVS-brand duckhead-handled umbrella turning inside-out but once.

It looks like others had less luck. After stepping off the T on the way home, a weaker cousin of my umbrella was abandoned at the MBTA shelter, and another was just a couple yards down, stuffed in a garbage can. What a tragic day for umbrellas.