Before the Plowing
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
My First Snow in NY
It didn't take long. I'd only lived here two and a half months when the blizzard of 2005 hit the northeast. Just two days after we moved my furniture to the Gershwin, the city was blanketed in a foot (at least) of snow, on January 22. It was so beautiful last Saturday and Sunday when it first fell. Nice white, clean, drifting snow.
Traffic was virtually halted. For the first time in my experience, the streets of NY were calm and quiet. Very few cars on the roads--mainly taxi cabs somehow plowing their way through the deep white stuff. Workers with snow blowers came out across the street from the Longacre around 1am or 2am and worked for hours clearing the sidewalks. For once there were no horns, and no sirens. It was eerily quiet those two nights.
Monday and Tuesday were another story. As snow blowers pushed the snow in one direction away from the sidewalks, the snow plows pushed from the streets in the other direction, creating huge piles of snow in the gutters. This narrowed both the streets and the sidewalks, leaving even less space for the thousands of people and cars going to and fro all day long. The horns started up again, but walkers seemed to be fairly patient. The pristine snow became black slush on the sidewalks. I remember getting on the subway to go to work Tuesday - the floors were covered in dirty water. My backpack with wheels left a black watery trail wherever I pulled it.
I've been in Cleveland and seen this much snow, but this is a first for me in NYC. Thank goodness for my new long down coat! (Photo above.) There's no way I could have survived without it. The wind was so strong Sunday night that I was barely able to make forward motion while walking back the one block from Food Emporium.
The temperature hasn't been above freezing in several days. Right now it's a balmy 22 degrees. The good news is, the days are getting longer and spring is near.
Traffic was virtually halted. For the first time in my experience, the streets of NY were calm and quiet. Very few cars on the roads--mainly taxi cabs somehow plowing their way through the deep white stuff. Workers with snow blowers came out across the street from the Longacre around 1am or 2am and worked for hours clearing the sidewalks. For once there were no horns, and no sirens. It was eerily quiet those two nights.
Monday and Tuesday were another story. As snow blowers pushed the snow in one direction away from the sidewalks, the snow plows pushed from the streets in the other direction, creating huge piles of snow in the gutters. This narrowed both the streets and the sidewalks, leaving even less space for the thousands of people and cars going to and fro all day long. The horns started up again, but walkers seemed to be fairly patient. The pristine snow became black slush on the sidewalks. I remember getting on the subway to go to work Tuesday - the floors were covered in dirty water. My backpack with wheels left a black watery trail wherever I pulled it.
I've been in Cleveland and seen this much snow, but this is a first for me in NYC. Thank goodness for my new long down coat! (Photo above.) There's no way I could have survived without it. The wind was so strong Sunday night that I was barely able to make forward motion while walking back the one block from Food Emporium.
The temperature hasn't been above freezing in several days. Right now it's a balmy 22 degrees. The good news is, the days are getting longer and spring is near.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Moving Day
This weekend I finally started getting some relief from my neck pain. The steroid pack finally kicked in. Unfortunately, just as I was beginning to tolerate the pain from my herniated disc, it was time for me to move (again). Ugh. My fifth move in 13 months. I gotta stop doing this.
I started at 10:30am, five good-looking mover guys showed up two hours early at 11am, and we were finished up at 6:30pm. The Gerswhin is pretty strict about move-ins. You have to schedule it with them for a certain time of day, and you can't use the front door for anything bigger than you can carry in your arms. So we had to talk them into letting us in early. Since Microsoft wouldn't coordinate or pay to move my stuff from corporate housing, the movers made an extra "stop" to get my 17 boxes from temp housing. We piled it all up on dollies and walked it across the street in one trip. I tipped them each $20 up front for the extra move.
After 8 hours of hard work, with a crew of five awesome United Vanlines guys, 99% of all my stuff is finally where it belongs. Me, I'm back at the Longacre tonight (corporate housing) because I'm too tired to even make up the bed in the new place. I need to rest. Martin and I will be much more comfortable sleeping in the Longacre tonight.
So now most of my possessions are piled up in a 770-sf apartment. Yay! It doesn't quite feel like a relief yet because I still have a ton of unpacking to do. I am shocked that I only have 20 pieces of furniture. I used to have a lot more! And it all barely fits in the apartment.
There is virtually no bedroom floor space. The king bed and three dressers take up most of the room. Arthur (the handsome New Yorker mover guy who also helped me move into the Longacre in November) had to turn the night stand sideways just to make it fit!
It was an extremely cold day. The sun was out, but the temperature never hit the 30-degree mark. Tommy (the cute upbeat driver) had to park his 28-ft truck in a bus zone on 8th Ave. because there was a pink moving truck parked in the perfect spot across from the back entrance on 49th St. We were hoping they'd leave so we could take that spot. Tommy told me he'd probably get a $120 ticket parked there on the main artery. Sure enough, while I was upstairs letting the other guys in, a cop came by and threatened to write a ticket. Tommy was able to talk him out of it. Whew!
Last week, four of them got $90 tickets for not wearing seatbelts in the truck. Sheesh. Cops here are famous for pulling trucks over for various citations. I learned a lot about NY police and DOT today. They are pretty strict and will cite you for just about anything--including dirty winodws/mirrors, jay-walking, etc. Those guys have a quota to meet.
I stayed on the truck the rest of the time with Tommy, helping him sort stuff for storage and working the checklist. It wasn't long before Vinny (the sweet teddy-bear mover guy) told us a cop was writing us a ticket. Tommy laughed as if it was inevitable. (He does 80% of his moves in the city, so he must be used to the tickets. Geez--how are people supposed to move in Manhattan? There's nowhere to park!)
I said, "Noooooooo! Lets' just tell him we were waiting for the pink truck to move!" I jumped off the truck, and Vinny and I went over to talk to the cop. (Tommy told us to give it up because the guy had already started writing.) I wasn't giving up! I was practically begging this cop not to finish writing the ticket. I was like, "Oh, PLEASE don't write him a ticket, he's moving me, so this is all my fault..." and, "Please? This comes out of his own pocket. Please, it's just so unfair."
By now Tommy had joined us. This cop was pretty cool--and he appeared to be quite amused at our antics. He grinned so much that I thought for sure he'd cave. I went on, "Wow--how much is it? Can you discount it, at least?" Nothing doing. I watched as he checked off the $115 box for parking in a bus zone. Tommy told him good naturedly to be sure to put the ticket on the windshield in plain view so we wouldn't get another.
The good thing was we could stay parked there now that we had a ticket! I had to go upstairs and check furniture placement to see if my third swivel chair would fit. I wasn't gone 15 minutes. When I came back, a different cop had written Tommy another ticket! This cop said that the first ticket was no good because the cop who'd written it didn't put an address on it. Unbeknownst to us, the smiley cop had actually let us off the hook by invalidating the ticket. Very cool. But Tommy ended up with a ticket anyway. Drat. I hope it doesn't come out of his pocket. I said, "Bill Gates should pay!" :)
After unloading everything, we left around 3:30 to head to storage in Queens. I road with Art and Tommy in the truck. I had a nice map w/directions that I'd made using Microsoft Streets and Trips, showing the trip to be 3.6 miles. (One of the drivers had remarked earlier, "Three miles--and it'll take us three hours to get there.") I don't need to explain why. Traffic in NY is like nothing you've ever seen before. It's total chaos. Seattle traffic was bad, but it hardly compares to NYC.
We were about halfway there, on the 59th Street bridge when I noticed on the map that the software program indicated the trip would take 7 minutes. Seven minutes! That's pretty funny. I showed that to the guys, and Art remarked, "Yeah somebody in Redmond wrote that." Too funny.
It took us about 35-40 minutes to get there. We looked at a 5x8x10' storage unit and were all in agreement that "Sure, we can get everything in there." At $115/month for this unit, I was hoping not to go up to the next size. The rest of the guys unloaded the truck while Art packed stuff into the tiny room and I checked items off the list. (Dang, I never did get the fifth guy's name. He was very friendly, too!)
This took a while and some creativity, but Art is a pro. It came down to a final five items. They kept rearranging stuff to make it fit. If it wasn't for the little rocking chair, we would've made it no problem. After several attempts to get a standing fan and small table base in, Tommy finally sent those items back to the truck with Kenny (the very pleasant blue-eyed mover guy), instructing him to take them apart and bring 'em back. I told him we could just throw the fan away, but he was determined to make everyhing fit. That left us with a queen-sized comforter that we would have to somehow squeeze in. They decided to just flatten it against the front of the pile and close the door on it.
Vinny applied his whole 6'3" frame and 300 pounds to squeeze the air out of the comforter bag. It was hysterical. For about 15 minutes he stood there with his back plastered up against the comforter bag (see photo above) while Kenny performed "surgery" on the two items. Talk about dedication to the job! Sure enough, everything fit without a single square foot to spare. I was impressed. I snapped a lock on the door, and we were done! I tipped them each another $40. Believe me, the $300 tip was worth it. They earned every penny. And yet somehow it just didn't seem like enough.
I guess I won't be going to storage to retrieve one of my fancy dresses to wear out. So much for arranging the bins and boxes so that I could later get to stuff I might need--like Christmas decorations. Ha! That ain't gonna happen. I am not opening that storage room door again until I move from NY. Fine by me. It makes for a simpler life (and no extra trips to Queens - gad).
Once again, United movers did a great job moving me, and with fantastic attitudes. (I have a rule about using only United or Mayflower.) This was such a great bunch of guys to work with that they actually made the day "fun," despite the fact that it was freezing cold and they had to go out of their way (i.e., out of Manhattan in horrible traffic) to get my goods to storage. Not to mention, they made the extra trip to move my temp housing items. I never heard one single curse word out of any of them. (Hey, and this is New York!!) They worked really hard, were professional, and were considerate enough to stack all the boxes neatly in my new apartment, with labels on the outside.
To top that all off, they'd orginally told me I'd have to take a cab home from storage. Later, Tommy told me he'd drop me at 2nd and Lexington. I said, "No problem, I'll just take the subway." But when we left storage at 5:40pm, Tommy had decided he was going to take me all the way home. After a fun cross-town ride with Tommy and Art, talking about baseball, football, the city skyline, the DOT, Tommy's poor vision, and other stuff, they dropped me off at 50th and 8th. I came home and took a Percoset and a muscle relaxer.
Time to lie down and veg in front of the TV. My head hurts! I sure wish I had some cookies.... I already moved my snacks across the street!
I started at 10:30am, five good-looking mover guys showed up two hours early at 11am, and we were finished up at 6:30pm. The Gerswhin is pretty strict about move-ins. You have to schedule it with them for a certain time of day, and you can't use the front door for anything bigger than you can carry in your arms. So we had to talk them into letting us in early. Since Microsoft wouldn't coordinate or pay to move my stuff from corporate housing, the movers made an extra "stop" to get my 17 boxes from temp housing. We piled it all up on dollies and walked it across the street in one trip. I tipped them each $20 up front for the extra move.
After 8 hours of hard work, with a crew of five awesome United Vanlines guys, 99% of all my stuff is finally where it belongs. Me, I'm back at the Longacre tonight (corporate housing) because I'm too tired to even make up the bed in the new place. I need to rest. Martin and I will be much more comfortable sleeping in the Longacre tonight.
So now most of my possessions are piled up in a 770-sf apartment. Yay! It doesn't quite feel like a relief yet because I still have a ton of unpacking to do. I am shocked that I only have 20 pieces of furniture. I used to have a lot more! And it all barely fits in the apartment.
There is virtually no bedroom floor space. The king bed and three dressers take up most of the room. Arthur (the handsome New Yorker mover guy who also helped me move into the Longacre in November) had to turn the night stand sideways just to make it fit!
It was an extremely cold day. The sun was out, but the temperature never hit the 30-degree mark. Tommy (the cute upbeat driver) had to park his 28-ft truck in a bus zone on 8th Ave. because there was a pink moving truck parked in the perfect spot across from the back entrance on 49th St. We were hoping they'd leave so we could take that spot. Tommy told me he'd probably get a $120 ticket parked there on the main artery. Sure enough, while I was upstairs letting the other guys in, a cop came by and threatened to write a ticket. Tommy was able to talk him out of it. Whew!
Last week, four of them got $90 tickets for not wearing seatbelts in the truck. Sheesh. Cops here are famous for pulling trucks over for various citations. I learned a lot about NY police and DOT today. They are pretty strict and will cite you for just about anything--including dirty winodws/mirrors, jay-walking, etc. Those guys have a quota to meet.
I stayed on the truck the rest of the time with Tommy, helping him sort stuff for storage and working the checklist. It wasn't long before Vinny (the sweet teddy-bear mover guy) told us a cop was writing us a ticket. Tommy laughed as if it was inevitable. (He does 80% of his moves in the city, so he must be used to the tickets. Geez--how are people supposed to move in Manhattan? There's nowhere to park!)
I said, "Noooooooo! Lets' just tell him we were waiting for the pink truck to move!" I jumped off the truck, and Vinny and I went over to talk to the cop. (Tommy told us to give it up because the guy had already started writing.) I wasn't giving up! I was practically begging this cop not to finish writing the ticket. I was like, "Oh, PLEASE don't write him a ticket, he's moving me, so this is all my fault..." and, "Please? This comes out of his own pocket. Please, it's just so unfair."
By now Tommy had joined us. This cop was pretty cool--and he appeared to be quite amused at our antics. He grinned so much that I thought for sure he'd cave. I went on, "Wow--how much is it? Can you discount it, at least?" Nothing doing. I watched as he checked off the $115 box for parking in a bus zone. Tommy told him good naturedly to be sure to put the ticket on the windshield in plain view so we wouldn't get another.
The good thing was we could stay parked there now that we had a ticket! I had to go upstairs and check furniture placement to see if my third swivel chair would fit. I wasn't gone 15 minutes. When I came back, a different cop had written Tommy another ticket! This cop said that the first ticket was no good because the cop who'd written it didn't put an address on it. Unbeknownst to us, the smiley cop had actually let us off the hook by invalidating the ticket. Very cool. But Tommy ended up with a ticket anyway. Drat. I hope it doesn't come out of his pocket. I said, "Bill Gates should pay!" :)
After unloading everything, we left around 3:30 to head to storage in Queens. I road with Art and Tommy in the truck. I had a nice map w/directions that I'd made using Microsoft Streets and Trips, showing the trip to be 3.6 miles. (One of the drivers had remarked earlier, "Three miles--and it'll take us three hours to get there.") I don't need to explain why. Traffic in NY is like nothing you've ever seen before. It's total chaos. Seattle traffic was bad, but it hardly compares to NYC.
We were about halfway there, on the 59th Street bridge when I noticed on the map that the software program indicated the trip would take 7 minutes. Seven minutes! That's pretty funny. I showed that to the guys, and Art remarked, "Yeah somebody in Redmond wrote that." Too funny.
It took us about 35-40 minutes to get there. We looked at a 5x8x10' storage unit and were all in agreement that "Sure, we can get everything in there." At $115/month for this unit, I was hoping not to go up to the next size. The rest of the guys unloaded the truck while Art packed stuff into the tiny room and I checked items off the list. (Dang, I never did get the fifth guy's name. He was very friendly, too!)
This took a while and some creativity, but Art is a pro. It came down to a final five items. They kept rearranging stuff to make it fit. If it wasn't for the little rocking chair, we would've made it no problem. After several attempts to get a standing fan and small table base in, Tommy finally sent those items back to the truck with Kenny (the very pleasant blue-eyed mover guy), instructing him to take them apart and bring 'em back. I told him we could just throw the fan away, but he was determined to make everyhing fit. That left us with a queen-sized comforter that we would have to somehow squeeze in. They decided to just flatten it against the front of the pile and close the door on it.
Vinny applied his whole 6'3" frame and 300 pounds to squeeze the air out of the comforter bag. It was hysterical. For about 15 minutes he stood there with his back plastered up against the comforter bag (see photo above) while Kenny performed "surgery" on the two items. Talk about dedication to the job! Sure enough, everything fit without a single square foot to spare. I was impressed. I snapped a lock on the door, and we were done! I tipped them each another $40. Believe me, the $300 tip was worth it. They earned every penny. And yet somehow it just didn't seem like enough.
I guess I won't be going to storage to retrieve one of my fancy dresses to wear out. So much for arranging the bins and boxes so that I could later get to stuff I might need--like Christmas decorations. Ha! That ain't gonna happen. I am not opening that storage room door again until I move from NY. Fine by me. It makes for a simpler life (and no extra trips to Queens - gad).
Once again, United movers did a great job moving me, and with fantastic attitudes. (I have a rule about using only United or Mayflower.) This was such a great bunch of guys to work with that they actually made the day "fun," despite the fact that it was freezing cold and they had to go out of their way (i.e., out of Manhattan in horrible traffic) to get my goods to storage. Not to mention, they made the extra trip to move my temp housing items. I never heard one single curse word out of any of them. (Hey, and this is New York!!) They worked really hard, were professional, and were considerate enough to stack all the boxes neatly in my new apartment, with labels on the outside.
To top that all off, they'd orginally told me I'd have to take a cab home from storage. Later, Tommy told me he'd drop me at 2nd and Lexington. I said, "No problem, I'll just take the subway." But when we left storage at 5:40pm, Tommy had decided he was going to take me all the way home. After a fun cross-town ride with Tommy and Art, talking about baseball, football, the city skyline, the DOT, Tommy's poor vision, and other stuff, they dropped me off at 50th and 8th. I came home and took a Percoset and a muscle relaxer.
Time to lie down and veg in front of the TV. My head hurts! I sure wish I had some cookies.... I already moved my snacks across the street!
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Price of Coffee in Manhattan
Grocery price of the week: 15oz. can of Cafe DuMonde coffee with Chicory.
Price in NYC: $8.99
Store: Whole Foods, Columbus Circle
Price I normally pay: $4.65
Store: www.cafedumonde.com
Price in NYC: $8.99
Store: Whole Foods, Columbus Circle
Price I normally pay: $4.65
Store: www.cafedumonde.com
Monday, January 10, 2005
The Conclusion of "After Christmas"
The moral of this story is: Don’t try to see Manhattan in one day.
Picking up (and finally concluding) this story, I take you back to December 27th, which is when I got home after a fun family Christmas visit down South.
Note to readers: I was perfectly healthy when I flew to Atlanta on Friday, 12/24. By the time I returned home 2-1/2 days later, I had a miserable head cold, gastric flu, and a pulled muscle in my neck.
It was that day (12/27) that I heard about the Indian Ocean tragedy that claimed over 150,000 lives and reshaped several continental coastlines. The 9.0-magnitude underwater quake and resulting tsunamis wreaked a devastation that defies human comprehension. I must admit that, after seeing the destruction on the news, my pains and troubles seemed much less significant.
By Wednesday or Thursday, I was able to start eating and working again, and was doing my best to get better before my friend Vonceil’s 12/30 arrival to the Big Apple from Mississippi. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was too sick for her visit, so I psyched myself into a quick recuperation.
Weeks earlier, Vonceil had sent me a list of around 25-30 places she wanted to see in NYC, and I had mapped them all out nicely in Microsoft Streets & Trips, printing out pretty, labeled color maps for us. I was really excited about her 3-day trip. Oh, and the weather was absolutely fantastic! I couldn’t get over the mild temperatures we had. We were so lucky!
That first evening we walked all over midtown, along with hundreds of thousands of other people who were here for New Year’s weekend. Among other places, we saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral (my first time inside that stunning church), Rockefeller Center, Bryant Park, and a red and green lit-up Empire State Building. It was the eve of New Year’s Eve, so Manhattan was packed. We squished our way home through the people in Times Square.
By the end of that first evening, my neck and shoulder had started hurting. When I awoke the next morning, I hurt so badly I thought I was gonna die. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Seemed like more than a pulled muscle, at that point.
To make a long story short, Vonceil and I saw nearly all of Manhattan by the time she left at 4am the following Monday morning. She kept insisting we’d walked 15 miles altogether. I actually napped a total of two times while she was here—more naps than I’ve had in five years or so. Between infrequent trips home (for me to apply heat and ice to my throbbing neck), we wore ourselves out seeing the sites. We even stood in line two hours at Lombardi’s in SoHo to eat the world’s best pizza in America’s first-ever pizza parlor. And one of the highlights was Vonceil finally meeting her policeman friend Kahn, whom she’d known for 11 or 12 years but had never met face-to-face. That was pretty neat.
The coolest places we saw were the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History. Both are overwhelmingly large—you can’t even begin to see either in a day. The space show at the history museum was so spectacular that Vonceil was moved to tears. Narrated by Tom Hanks, it is a show inside the planetarium that allows you to see the world from a spaceship rocketing out into space from Manhattan. You fly further and further out into the universe until all of our local galaxies combined appear smaller than the size of a pinhead—with millions of new stars being created every second. Wow! I’ve never felt more insignificant in my life. What a truly thought-provoking and surreal experience. (After that my neck pain seemed even less significant—even though it didn’t FEEL any less significant.)
Anyway, she and I had a blast exploring various areas of Manhattan together. There’s just so much to see that I feel really lucky to actually live here and be able to truly experience New York!
By Monday I was unable to function physically. The neck and shoulder pain was unbearable and created nausea and headaches that only compounded the problem. Vonceil had joked, “I broke Susie!” That’s how I felt. I couldn’t sleep, and to this day there is no position I can get into that is painless. It will probably take me four days to write this blog. Ack!!
Ultimately, after a miserable day in Roosevelt Hospital last week that included two separate blood lettings, two lumbar punctures (the first didn’t go so well), a urine test, a CAT scan, and an MRI, I found out that I had “cervical radiculitis.” As my sister said, “That’s ridiculous!” I must agree.
My C3-C4 disk is herniated. And to think I’d gone running all over Manhattan in that condition! Holy molies. This was not good news. It meant that my years-old spondylosis - (a fancy word for degenerative disk disease) - had moved north, migrating from my lower lumbar to my neck.
So I missed two more days of work on my new job after Vonceil left last week. How stressful is that?! Fortunately, I have a very understanding boss who puts my health ahead of the job. I’m so grateful for that, in light of some of my past bosshole experiences.
I actually once had a boss who made me come into work for a meeting after an emergency double wisdom tooth extraction. I sat there in silent pain with an icepack on my face for what proved to be a pretty useless 2.5-hour meeting. To top that off, my boss interrogated me the following week about “why” I scheduled my emergency tooth infection for the same day as the meeting. I kid you not. Ah, but those days are gone, and I’m lucky to work in a great organization now.
In closing, I must say that being in midtown, Manhattan, on New Year’s Eve was quite an experience. I’ve never seen so many cops in one place in my life. There were a total of 15,000 police officers in Times Square, and nearly 1,000,000 other people. Vonceil said she'd never felt safer.
Around 6pm that night, Vonceil and I filmed a lot of this excitement on Broadway, where the crowd had already packed itself in as far back as 52nd street. We ate dinner at a Greek restaurant over on 9th Ave just before venturing home to my apartment. Right at midnight we could hear the crowds outside voicing the final countdown in unison—even from my 10th floor apartment with closed windows. It was such a cool feeling just being so close to all that energy and excitement!
This brings us to New Year’s 2005. Happy New Year, everyone, and always remember that no matter what, help is on the way!
Picking up (and finally concluding) this story, I take you back to December 27th, which is when I got home after a fun family Christmas visit down South.
Note to readers: I was perfectly healthy when I flew to Atlanta on Friday, 12/24. By the time I returned home 2-1/2 days later, I had a miserable head cold, gastric flu, and a pulled muscle in my neck.
It was that day (12/27) that I heard about the Indian Ocean tragedy that claimed over 150,000 lives and reshaped several continental coastlines. The 9.0-magnitude underwater quake and resulting tsunamis wreaked a devastation that defies human comprehension. I must admit that, after seeing the destruction on the news, my pains and troubles seemed much less significant.
By Wednesday or Thursday, I was able to start eating and working again, and was doing my best to get better before my friend Vonceil’s 12/30 arrival to the Big Apple from Mississippi. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was too sick for her visit, so I psyched myself into a quick recuperation.
Weeks earlier, Vonceil had sent me a list of around 25-30 places she wanted to see in NYC, and I had mapped them all out nicely in Microsoft Streets & Trips, printing out pretty, labeled color maps for us. I was really excited about her 3-day trip. Oh, and the weather was absolutely fantastic! I couldn’t get over the mild temperatures we had. We were so lucky!
That first evening we walked all over midtown, along with hundreds of thousands of other people who were here for New Year’s weekend. Among other places, we saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral (my first time inside that stunning church), Rockefeller Center, Bryant Park, and a red and green lit-up Empire State Building. It was the eve of New Year’s Eve, so Manhattan was packed. We squished our way home through the people in Times Square.
By the end of that first evening, my neck and shoulder had started hurting. When I awoke the next morning, I hurt so badly I thought I was gonna die. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Seemed like more than a pulled muscle, at that point.
To make a long story short, Vonceil and I saw nearly all of Manhattan by the time she left at 4am the following Monday morning. She kept insisting we’d walked 15 miles altogether. I actually napped a total of two times while she was here—more naps than I’ve had in five years or so. Between infrequent trips home (for me to apply heat and ice to my throbbing neck), we wore ourselves out seeing the sites. We even stood in line two hours at Lombardi’s in SoHo to eat the world’s best pizza in America’s first-ever pizza parlor. And one of the highlights was Vonceil finally meeting her policeman friend Kahn, whom she’d known for 11 or 12 years but had never met face-to-face. That was pretty neat.
The coolest places we saw were the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History. Both are overwhelmingly large—you can’t even begin to see either in a day. The space show at the history museum was so spectacular that Vonceil was moved to tears. Narrated by Tom Hanks, it is a show inside the planetarium that allows you to see the world from a spaceship rocketing out into space from Manhattan. You fly further and further out into the universe until all of our local galaxies combined appear smaller than the size of a pinhead—with millions of new stars being created every second. Wow! I’ve never felt more insignificant in my life. What a truly thought-provoking and surreal experience. (After that my neck pain seemed even less significant—even though it didn’t FEEL any less significant.)
Anyway, she and I had a blast exploring various areas of Manhattan together. There’s just so much to see that I feel really lucky to actually live here and be able to truly experience New York!
By Monday I was unable to function physically. The neck and shoulder pain was unbearable and created nausea and headaches that only compounded the problem. Vonceil had joked, “I broke Susie!” That’s how I felt. I couldn’t sleep, and to this day there is no position I can get into that is painless. It will probably take me four days to write this blog. Ack!!
Ultimately, after a miserable day in Roosevelt Hospital last week that included two separate blood lettings, two lumbar punctures (the first didn’t go so well), a urine test, a CAT scan, and an MRI, I found out that I had “cervical radiculitis.” As my sister said, “That’s ridiculous!” I must agree.
My C3-C4 disk is herniated. And to think I’d gone running all over Manhattan in that condition! Holy molies. This was not good news. It meant that my years-old spondylosis - (a fancy word for degenerative disk disease) - had moved north, migrating from my lower lumbar to my neck.
So I missed two more days of work on my new job after Vonceil left last week. How stressful is that?! Fortunately, I have a very understanding boss who puts my health ahead of the job. I’m so grateful for that, in light of some of my past bosshole experiences.
I actually once had a boss who made me come into work for a meeting after an emergency double wisdom tooth extraction. I sat there in silent pain with an icepack on my face for what proved to be a pretty useless 2.5-hour meeting. To top that off, my boss interrogated me the following week about “why” I scheduled my emergency tooth infection for the same day as the meeting. I kid you not. Ah, but those days are gone, and I’m lucky to work in a great organization now.
In closing, I must say that being in midtown, Manhattan, on New Year’s Eve was quite an experience. I’ve never seen so many cops in one place in my life. There were a total of 15,000 police officers in Times Square, and nearly 1,000,000 other people. Vonceil said she'd never felt safer.
Around 6pm that night, Vonceil and I filmed a lot of this excitement on Broadway, where the crowd had already packed itself in as far back as 52nd street. We ate dinner at a Greek restaurant over on 9th Ave just before venturing home to my apartment. Right at midnight we could hear the crowds outside voicing the final countdown in unison—even from my 10th floor apartment with closed windows. It was such a cool feeling just being so close to all that energy and excitement!
This brings us to New Year’s 2005. Happy New Year, everyone, and always remember that no matter what, help is on the way!
Saturday, January 08, 2005
"After Christmas, Part II" (Or, "The Other Jamaica")
Here we are on the 8th day of the New Year, and already I think I’ve suffered every recoverable illness known to man. But I’m still alive and kicking. The reason I know this is because I managed to buy groceries today and later heard myself screaming in agony when reviewing the receipt. $3.19 for 12 oz. of Ken Somebody’s Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing?! $4.95 for 3/4 lb. of strawberries? $3.99 for 9 oz. of Nacho Cheese Chips? $3.08 for one turkey burger at the deli (just the patty, that is)? The roll was 89 cents, and I was actually pleased with that price. I'd just spent forty-one bucks for two and a half meals. So, yes I’m alive and complaining about the price of groceries in NY. :)
Let’s get back to where I left off last time when I was flying home from Atlanta the day after Christmas. I had a nasty head cold and had just hurled into every spare barf bag on the airplane. We disembarked onto the JFK tarmac into swirling snow, finally having landed after a long delay on an insufferably hot airplane. I was burning up with sweat on the inside, and freezing on the outside. As all the passengers waited just inside the glass doors for our carry-ons (that we were forbidden to carry on to the small plane) to be delivered to us, I tried to hide in the corner so nobody could see “the woman who threw up” on the plane. I called my sister’s cell phone and left some garbled message about this being the most embarrassing plane ride of my life.
After a few minutes (that seemed like hours), a baggage guy rolled our luggage over to us through the snow, and we all furiously grabbed for our bags—only to make a mad dash for the real baggage carousel at the other end of the airport.
By now it was 10pm, and all I wanted was to get my other bag, get on the subway, and go HOME. I felt so ill. But the baggage wait dragged on forever. I stood there trying to be invisible amongst my fellow passengers. Forty five miserable minutes later, the bags started to come out of the chute. I grabbed my heavy bag full of Christmas presents (mostly books I’d requested) and headed toward Air Train, the monorail that would take me to the subway.
I accidentally missed the turn for Air Train and doubled back to the escalator that would take me up to the monorail platform. I didn’t think I’d be successful navigating the escalator with two rolly bags and one tote, so I found an elevator and pushed the Up button. I waited and waited. The elevator seemed to be stuck just one floor away. Finally it came, and another girl and I got on. When the door opened, she stepped out in front of me. I awkwardly got my bags out and rolling again when I noticed the girl had taken off running toward the monorail. The train was there! Oh, goody!
I too, began to run. The girl just made it inside the closing doors ahead of me. I’d missed the train to Howard Beach by one second. Some uniformed lady saw me and callously commented “You missed it by one second!” No duh, Ms. Scrooge, I thought to myself before informing her, “I’m going to cry. I just want to go home,” in my best Dorothy voice. She cautioned me not to do that and walked away.
Missing that train was all I could take. The tears gushed forth involuntarily from my eyes. The uniformed lady must’ve felt sorry for me. She came back and suggested that I take the next train to Jamaica instead of waiting for the HB train. She said I could get on the E express (subway) all the way to midtown. A profound idea! Yes. Within a few minutes, the monorail arrived, and I was on my way to Jamaica. Jamaica, Queens, that is--a place I never knew existed until that night.
As soon as I sat down in the car, I dialed up my girlfriend Vonceil. (She and I have a rule that we don’t call one another after 9pm except in the case of emotional or other crisis. This not being able to get home thing was definitely a crisis.)
Vonceil picked up, and I blubbered, “I hate Christmas! Every year it’s something else! All I want to do is get home, and I can’t! I want to go HOME!!” Poor V. This was an unexpected late-night call. She consoled me, and I blubbered on and on like this for a few minutes before I finally realized I was talking to dead air. We’d been disconnected at some point minutes earlier. Ergh. She’d missed out on all of my eloquent “wanna go home” dialog.
I finally got Vonceil back on the line, and we agreed I’d call her when I got home, despite the late hour. Good thing she’s on Central time.
The monorail arrived at Jamaica and I lumbered off with all my bags.
I followed signs to the subway. But when I got to the exit leading outside to the subway station, it was roped off as if under construction. I found a uniformed person who pointed to a door, telling me to turn left outside that door. I stepped out into the windy, freezing snow. In all my scurrying, I hadn’t put on my gloves or scarf or zipped up my coat. A black car was there at the curb blowing its horn. The driver leaned over and yelled out the open passenger window to me, “Taxi! Taxi! Taxi!” Yeh, right. I don’t get into a cab unless it’s yellow.
This man continued blowing his horn and yelling at me, which compelled me to move faster away toward the subway station. Once far enough away from the black car, I stopped to zip up my coat and try to figure out the signs. Where the heck was the E train?? Ahead of me was a bunch of construction work and scaffolding surrounding the sidewalk. I didn’t know where I was, other than Jamaica, Queens.
I saw signs for several different tracks. None of the first three were going in the right direction. But Track 4, yes, that was going to Penn Station! Yay! I would get on that train and transfer to the subway from Penn Station. I followed the sign to Track 4. Unfortunately, the platform was 2 or 3 flights up. Ugh. Where the heck was the elevator? The sign said the train left at 11:05pm, and I knew it was close to that time, so I grabbed my heavy bags and hauled them up several flights. There was the train! Yay! It was covered with ice. I ran up to it on the platform, and just as I got close, it began to move.
I’d missed this train by one minute.
It was dark. It was cold. It was Jamaica. I had a cold and some bizarre stomach flu. By now I was no longer sad; I was pissed.
Would I ever make it home?
The next several minutes of climbing up and down stairs and escalators in search of the evasive E train are mostly a blur. I do remember one poor woman standing alone who said she’d been waiting on this outdoor platform for an hour. We commiserated our stories, each leaving out no expletives. After a minute of that much-needed empathizing, I wished her good luck and went on to find my E train. I finally found an elevator that appeared would take me to a subway station. I hit the Down button. This was a glass elevator so I could see the two cars a couple floors down. They didn't move. I pressed the lit Down button again. (Like that’s going to help.) Still nothing. Finally, I balled up my frozen fist and pounded on the Down button, screaming violently that I just want the elevator to come so I could go home!
I took the stairs.
At some point in all of this, I felt a muscle pull in my neck. This was not a good thing. I knew this meant several days of neck pain. Somehow, I finally found the E platform. Trying to pass through the turnstile with my bags, I was nothing short of silently raging mad. A very diverse group of people stood in wait on the platform. I plopped my bags down, and when one bag fell over I just kicked it and cursed under my breath. (Actually, this fuming mad attitude is a good stance to take when standing alone on a subway platform in Jamaica around midnight, I thought later. Even the muggers wouldn’t come near me. )
Waited and waited for the E train. It came. Yay! I’m only about five or six stops from home because this is an express train. Double yay! I got on and plopped down, rossing my arms like a West Side Story character. My suit case fell over again, and I kicked it again. Nobody was going to mess with me--ha! (...she typed as she sat on her couch wearing a cervical collar.)
There were only a few other people in the train car with me. After the first stop, I became severely dismayed to hear the conductor announce, “This train is making local stops. This train will make all local stops.” “Noooooooooo!” I said and slammed down my precious lamenated subway map. No one even looked at me. Finally, at that point, I surrendered. Nothing else could go wrong this night, short of the subway breaking down or me herniating a disk.
Twenty-two stops later I gratefully got off at 50th St., hauled my heavy bags up another couple flights of stairs, and walked home. The concierge took one look at me when I came through the revolving door and immediately expressed condolences. I said something about it taking twelve hours for me to get home from Atlanta and how I could’ve flown to Seattle and back in the time it took me to get home.
Back in my apartment, I dropped my bags in the foyer and immediately picked up my beloved kitty (whom I missed terribly), held him tight and just cried tears of joy into his fur, going on and on about good it was to be home. Martin didn’t seem to mind. I was just happy to be home. And he was happy to have me there.
I was sick in bed with the flu the next 48 hours and missed two days of work. Believe it or not, it gets worse from there. Stay tuned for the conclusion of "After Christmas."
Let’s get back to where I left off last time when I was flying home from Atlanta the day after Christmas. I had a nasty head cold and had just hurled into every spare barf bag on the airplane. We disembarked onto the JFK tarmac into swirling snow, finally having landed after a long delay on an insufferably hot airplane. I was burning up with sweat on the inside, and freezing on the outside. As all the passengers waited just inside the glass doors for our carry-ons (that we were forbidden to carry on to the small plane) to be delivered to us, I tried to hide in the corner so nobody could see “the woman who threw up” on the plane. I called my sister’s cell phone and left some garbled message about this being the most embarrassing plane ride of my life.
After a few minutes (that seemed like hours), a baggage guy rolled our luggage over to us through the snow, and we all furiously grabbed for our bags—only to make a mad dash for the real baggage carousel at the other end of the airport.
By now it was 10pm, and all I wanted was to get my other bag, get on the subway, and go HOME. I felt so ill. But the baggage wait dragged on forever. I stood there trying to be invisible amongst my fellow passengers. Forty five miserable minutes later, the bags started to come out of the chute. I grabbed my heavy bag full of Christmas presents (mostly books I’d requested) and headed toward Air Train, the monorail that would take me to the subway.
I accidentally missed the turn for Air Train and doubled back to the escalator that would take me up to the monorail platform. I didn’t think I’d be successful navigating the escalator with two rolly bags and one tote, so I found an elevator and pushed the Up button. I waited and waited. The elevator seemed to be stuck just one floor away. Finally it came, and another girl and I got on. When the door opened, she stepped out in front of me. I awkwardly got my bags out and rolling again when I noticed the girl had taken off running toward the monorail. The train was there! Oh, goody!
I too, began to run. The girl just made it inside the closing doors ahead of me. I’d missed the train to Howard Beach by one second. Some uniformed lady saw me and callously commented “You missed it by one second!” No duh, Ms. Scrooge, I thought to myself before informing her, “I’m going to cry. I just want to go home,” in my best Dorothy voice. She cautioned me not to do that and walked away.
Missing that train was all I could take. The tears gushed forth involuntarily from my eyes. The uniformed lady must’ve felt sorry for me. She came back and suggested that I take the next train to Jamaica instead of waiting for the HB train. She said I could get on the E express (subway) all the way to midtown. A profound idea! Yes. Within a few minutes, the monorail arrived, and I was on my way to Jamaica. Jamaica, Queens, that is--a place I never knew existed until that night.
As soon as I sat down in the car, I dialed up my girlfriend Vonceil. (She and I have a rule that we don’t call one another after 9pm except in the case of emotional or other crisis. This not being able to get home thing was definitely a crisis.)
Vonceil picked up, and I blubbered, “I hate Christmas! Every year it’s something else! All I want to do is get home, and I can’t! I want to go HOME!!” Poor V. This was an unexpected late-night call. She consoled me, and I blubbered on and on like this for a few minutes before I finally realized I was talking to dead air. We’d been disconnected at some point minutes earlier. Ergh. She’d missed out on all of my eloquent “wanna go home” dialog.
I finally got Vonceil back on the line, and we agreed I’d call her when I got home, despite the late hour. Good thing she’s on Central time.
The monorail arrived at Jamaica and I lumbered off with all my bags.
I followed signs to the subway. But when I got to the exit leading outside to the subway station, it was roped off as if under construction. I found a uniformed person who pointed to a door, telling me to turn left outside that door. I stepped out into the windy, freezing snow. In all my scurrying, I hadn’t put on my gloves or scarf or zipped up my coat. A black car was there at the curb blowing its horn. The driver leaned over and yelled out the open passenger window to me, “Taxi! Taxi! Taxi!” Yeh, right. I don’t get into a cab unless it’s yellow.
This man continued blowing his horn and yelling at me, which compelled me to move faster away toward the subway station. Once far enough away from the black car, I stopped to zip up my coat and try to figure out the signs. Where the heck was the E train?? Ahead of me was a bunch of construction work and scaffolding surrounding the sidewalk. I didn’t know where I was, other than Jamaica, Queens.
I saw signs for several different tracks. None of the first three were going in the right direction. But Track 4, yes, that was going to Penn Station! Yay! I would get on that train and transfer to the subway from Penn Station. I followed the sign to Track 4. Unfortunately, the platform was 2 or 3 flights up. Ugh. Where the heck was the elevator? The sign said the train left at 11:05pm, and I knew it was close to that time, so I grabbed my heavy bags and hauled them up several flights. There was the train! Yay! It was covered with ice. I ran up to it on the platform, and just as I got close, it began to move.
I’d missed this train by one minute.
It was dark. It was cold. It was Jamaica. I had a cold and some bizarre stomach flu. By now I was no longer sad; I was pissed.
Would I ever make it home?
The next several minutes of climbing up and down stairs and escalators in search of the evasive E train are mostly a blur. I do remember one poor woman standing alone who said she’d been waiting on this outdoor platform for an hour. We commiserated our stories, each leaving out no expletives. After a minute of that much-needed empathizing, I wished her good luck and went on to find my E train. I finally found an elevator that appeared would take me to a subway station. I hit the Down button. This was a glass elevator so I could see the two cars a couple floors down. They didn't move. I pressed the lit Down button again. (Like that’s going to help.) Still nothing. Finally, I balled up my frozen fist and pounded on the Down button, screaming violently that I just want the elevator to come so I could go home!
I took the stairs.
At some point in all of this, I felt a muscle pull in my neck. This was not a good thing. I knew this meant several days of neck pain. Somehow, I finally found the E platform. Trying to pass through the turnstile with my bags, I was nothing short of silently raging mad. A very diverse group of people stood in wait on the platform. I plopped my bags down, and when one bag fell over I just kicked it and cursed under my breath. (Actually, this fuming mad attitude is a good stance to take when standing alone on a subway platform in Jamaica around midnight, I thought later. Even the muggers wouldn’t come near me. )
Waited and waited for the E train. It came. Yay! I’m only about five or six stops from home because this is an express train. Double yay! I got on and plopped down, rossing my arms like a West Side Story character. My suit case fell over again, and I kicked it again. Nobody was going to mess with me--ha! (...she typed as she sat on her couch wearing a cervical collar.)
There were only a few other people in the train car with me. After the first stop, I became severely dismayed to hear the conductor announce, “This train is making local stops. This train will make all local stops.” “Noooooooooo!” I said and slammed down my precious lamenated subway map. No one even looked at me. Finally, at that point, I surrendered. Nothing else could go wrong this night, short of the subway breaking down or me herniating a disk.
Twenty-two stops later I gratefully got off at 50th St., hauled my heavy bags up another couple flights of stairs, and walked home. The concierge took one look at me when I came through the revolving door and immediately expressed condolences. I said something about it taking twelve hours for me to get home from Atlanta and how I could’ve flown to Seattle and back in the time it took me to get home.
Back in my apartment, I dropped my bags in the foyer and immediately picked up my beloved kitty (whom I missed terribly), held him tight and just cried tears of joy into his fur, going on and on about good it was to be home. Martin didn’t seem to mind. I was just happy to be home. And he was happy to have me there.
I was sick in bed with the flu the next 48 hours and missed two days of work. Believe it or not, it gets worse from there. Stay tuned for the conclusion of "After Christmas."
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
"After Christmas"
One of the better movies in my VHS collection is “After Hours.” It’s an hysterical 1985 dark comedy about a nice guy living in NYC who just can’t get home one night.
That’s exactly how I felt the evening of December 26, beginning with my delayed connecting flight out of Dulles aiport in D.C. Everthing looked to be on time when I first arrived at the Independence Air concourse after my flight from Atlanta. The gate listed on the monitors was different than the gate listed on my boarding pass, and I didn’t realize that the monitor was wrong until after I’d sat outside the wrong gate for a while. I was immediately suspicious.
I was getting a tad nauseated--which is rare for me. So I decided to walk around. I drank an OJ, walked around, and soon felt better. I found the correct gate, and things were looking good. We were going to board on time.
That we did. Board, that is...on time. Leaving, though....well, that is another story.
I’d selected seat 1A, first row window. It was a small plane—just four seats per row—but I still wanted to be first off after landing so I could get the heck home. I boarded first and sat down immediately. Our flight was due to take off in about 15 minutes. Soon everyone was buckled in and ready to go. I’d be at JFK in Queens by 9-ish; home by 10:30 at the latest. Yes! Home....
Then a handsome young man (who looked to be the co-pilot, I guessed), stood up in front and announced that he had some bad news. We didn’t have a pilot for this flight. The good news was that we had a good tail wind, so the flight would only take 35-40 minutes, and we'd easily make up the time. He said the pilot would be there in 20 minutes. I admired his optimism and thanked the goddess of wind. It was getting hot on the plane, so I started fanning myself with the emergency instruction card.
Sure enough, exactly 20 minutes later I spied a pilot through the window. He boarded and went into the cockpit. That was the good news. Five minutes later, the nice young man came back out, all apologetic. He said that, unfortunately, it’s snowing in NY, and this particular pilot didn’t have enough hours to land us. He explained that, due to the ComAir strike that left zillions of people stranded the day before, Independence Air had added extra flights to try to accommodate those poor lost souls. (Is this a good time for me to mention that I hate the airlines? All of them. They never fail to ruin my Christmas.)
As I watched the pilot exit the plane, I turned to the girl next to me and said, “Wanna see a grown woman cry?” I just wasn’t feeling well. I wanted to go home and go to bed. I’d gotten sick with a bad head cold my first night in Atlanta and hardly slept either night there. (Me and twin beds just don’t get along.)
The next flight to JFK was scheduled to leave at 9pm, and it was rapidly approaching that time. I wondered, “Why don’t they just give us that pilot, and let the other planeload of people wait 20 minutes?”
By the time a pilot finally arrived, we’d been in the stuffy, warm plane for an hour, with no air circulating. This pilot was scheduled to go home but volunteered to stay on and get us home. My hero. But I was burning up by this time. I couldn’t wait to take off so the air could start flowing.
About halfway into the flight, I felt nauseated—-a bit worse than when I was in the airport earlier. The nice flight attendant, Aubrey, was serving drinks. I stood up and told her I just needed to stand up for a bit. She asked if I wanted a Ginger Ale, but I declined and headed toward the rear of the plane. The bathroom was occupied. By now I was pretty sure I was gonna be sick. I waited for what seemed like an eternity for the other passenger to come out of the bathroom. I went in. About a minute later I threw up. Three times.
Another first for me. I’d never thrown up on a plane before. (In fact, the last time I threw up was in 2000, I think.) Naturally, that wasn’t good enough. I had to top it off with diarrhea. Aaaaaaaaghh! What could be worse? After all of that, I cooled down my face and neck with a wet paper towel, and that seemed to help immensely. I went back to Aubrey, said “I think I’ll take that Ginger Ale now,” and sat down. I was feeling better.
Sitting there, I got hotter and hotter all over again. My whole body was sweating, and I started to feel prickly all over. We were SO close to landing, so there was no way I’d throw up again—we were almost there! In fact, we should’ve landed by now—what with the good tail wind and all. Hmph. But for some reason it took about 10 minutes longer than it should have.
That ten minutes was all it took.
I grabbed the paper air sickness bag and held it in my right hand, assuring the girl next to me that this move was just a precaution. There was no way I was going to throw up in my seat on an airplane in front of all those people! Absolutely no way.
We were on our approach. I was getting hotter and hotter and my stomach was not cooperating with my “no throwing up in public” policy . I did everything I could to hold it in. Big mistake. I should’ve just thrown up when I was prepared (with bag) to do so.
Instead, we hit the runway and were braking when all of a sudden I just hurled. The bag was in my right hand but I couldn’t get it all the way open in time. How mortifying that I threw up anyway! I yelled, “Aubrey, help! Get me a bag, any bag, even a plastic bag!” She came around and passed me another paper bag, and I threw up in that. This time I didn't miss.
Then she came back with a white plastic bag. I put the other two paper bags in that one and threw up again (and again and again) into the plastic bag. I threw up more than I thought a single stomach could hold. I’ve never been so sick or embarrassed in my life. I had throw-up on my shirt, throw-up on my jeans, throw-up on my purse, and throw-up on my right shoe. I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die.
Thank god for Aubrey and her quick thinking. She brought me moist towelettes (to clean up with) and several ice cold wet paper towels. That worked. My stomach was empty, we were taxiing, things were cooling off, and I was finally getting off that damn plane. I almost killed the rude lady in the row behind me who tried to push her way in front and get off the plane ahead of me. But I held my tongue and just barged into my rightful place in line and got off the plane into the freezing, snowy cold.
It was about 10pm.
But wait—there’s more! Stay tuned for the rest of “After Christmas,” as I tried in vain to make my way home to my sweet kitty cat and down pillows.
That’s exactly how I felt the evening of December 26, beginning with my delayed connecting flight out of Dulles aiport in D.C. Everthing looked to be on time when I first arrived at the Independence Air concourse after my flight from Atlanta. The gate listed on the monitors was different than the gate listed on my boarding pass, and I didn’t realize that the monitor was wrong until after I’d sat outside the wrong gate for a while. I was immediately suspicious.
I was getting a tad nauseated--which is rare for me. So I decided to walk around. I drank an OJ, walked around, and soon felt better. I found the correct gate, and things were looking good. We were going to board on time.
That we did. Board, that is...on time. Leaving, though....well, that is another story.
I’d selected seat 1A, first row window. It was a small plane—just four seats per row—but I still wanted to be first off after landing so I could get the heck home. I boarded first and sat down immediately. Our flight was due to take off in about 15 minutes. Soon everyone was buckled in and ready to go. I’d be at JFK in Queens by 9-ish; home by 10:30 at the latest. Yes! Home....
Then a handsome young man (who looked to be the co-pilot, I guessed), stood up in front and announced that he had some bad news. We didn’t have a pilot for this flight. The good news was that we had a good tail wind, so the flight would only take 35-40 minutes, and we'd easily make up the time. He said the pilot would be there in 20 minutes. I admired his optimism and thanked the goddess of wind. It was getting hot on the plane, so I started fanning myself with the emergency instruction card.
Sure enough, exactly 20 minutes later I spied a pilot through the window. He boarded and went into the cockpit. That was the good news. Five minutes later, the nice young man came back out, all apologetic. He said that, unfortunately, it’s snowing in NY, and this particular pilot didn’t have enough hours to land us. He explained that, due to the ComAir strike that left zillions of people stranded the day before, Independence Air had added extra flights to try to accommodate those poor lost souls. (Is this a good time for me to mention that I hate the airlines? All of them. They never fail to ruin my Christmas.)
As I watched the pilot exit the plane, I turned to the girl next to me and said, “Wanna see a grown woman cry?” I just wasn’t feeling well. I wanted to go home and go to bed. I’d gotten sick with a bad head cold my first night in Atlanta and hardly slept either night there. (Me and twin beds just don’t get along.)
The next flight to JFK was scheduled to leave at 9pm, and it was rapidly approaching that time. I wondered, “Why don’t they just give us that pilot, and let the other planeload of people wait 20 minutes?”
By the time a pilot finally arrived, we’d been in the stuffy, warm plane for an hour, with no air circulating. This pilot was scheduled to go home but volunteered to stay on and get us home. My hero. But I was burning up by this time. I couldn’t wait to take off so the air could start flowing.
About halfway into the flight, I felt nauseated—-a bit worse than when I was in the airport earlier. The nice flight attendant, Aubrey, was serving drinks. I stood up and told her I just needed to stand up for a bit. She asked if I wanted a Ginger Ale, but I declined and headed toward the rear of the plane. The bathroom was occupied. By now I was pretty sure I was gonna be sick. I waited for what seemed like an eternity for the other passenger to come out of the bathroom. I went in. About a minute later I threw up. Three times.
Another first for me. I’d never thrown up on a plane before. (In fact, the last time I threw up was in 2000, I think.) Naturally, that wasn’t good enough. I had to top it off with diarrhea. Aaaaaaaaghh! What could be worse? After all of that, I cooled down my face and neck with a wet paper towel, and that seemed to help immensely. I went back to Aubrey, said “I think I’ll take that Ginger Ale now,” and sat down. I was feeling better.
Sitting there, I got hotter and hotter all over again. My whole body was sweating, and I started to feel prickly all over. We were SO close to landing, so there was no way I’d throw up again—we were almost there! In fact, we should’ve landed by now—what with the good tail wind and all. Hmph. But for some reason it took about 10 minutes longer than it should have.
That ten minutes was all it took.
I grabbed the paper air sickness bag and held it in my right hand, assuring the girl next to me that this move was just a precaution. There was no way I was going to throw up in my seat on an airplane in front of all those people! Absolutely no way.
We were on our approach. I was getting hotter and hotter and my stomach was not cooperating with my “no throwing up in public” policy . I did everything I could to hold it in. Big mistake. I should’ve just thrown up when I was prepared (with bag) to do so.
Instead, we hit the runway and were braking when all of a sudden I just hurled. The bag was in my right hand but I couldn’t get it all the way open in time. How mortifying that I threw up anyway! I yelled, “Aubrey, help! Get me a bag, any bag, even a plastic bag!” She came around and passed me another paper bag, and I threw up in that. This time I didn't miss.
Then she came back with a white plastic bag. I put the other two paper bags in that one and threw up again (and again and again) into the plastic bag. I threw up more than I thought a single stomach could hold. I’ve never been so sick or embarrassed in my life. I had throw-up on my shirt, throw-up on my jeans, throw-up on my purse, and throw-up on my right shoe. I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die.
Thank god for Aubrey and her quick thinking. She brought me moist towelettes (to clean up with) and several ice cold wet paper towels. That worked. My stomach was empty, we were taxiing, things were cooling off, and I was finally getting off that damn plane. I almost killed the rude lady in the row behind me who tried to push her way in front and get off the plane ahead of me. But I held my tongue and just barged into my rightful place in line and got off the plane into the freezing, snowy cold.
It was about 10pm.
But wait—there’s more! Stay tuned for the rest of “After Christmas,” as I tried in vain to make my way home to my sweet kitty cat and down pillows.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Christmas in Atlanta
I am blogging from Washington-Dulles International Airport, awaiting my final flight home on Independence Airlines. It’s a new airline with small planes that travel mainly throughout the northeast and the lower eastern seaboard. Comfortable blue leather seats. Until now, I haven’t been in a small commuter plane that has comfortable seats. I recommend rows 8 (exit) and 1 (front) if you like the extra leg room.
Remember ValueJet? I loved ValueJet. They were cheap, frequently on-time (truly a rarity in airline travel today), and the flight crew was funny. Too bad they went out of business. The thing that strikes me most about Independence is the friendliness of the crew. Even when a flight runs late and passengers are grumpy, the crew members manage to maintain a cheerful attitude. I like that.
And they try to be funny with their pre-recorded safety announcements at the beginning of the flight. “Should your oxygen mask drop from the ceiling above you, place the mask over your face and tighten the strap before assisting those near you who can’t move as quickly — such as small children or congressmen.”
Well, it’s funny the first time you hear it.
This is the funniest Christmas I’ve had in a long time. I love when my cousins from Louisiana show up for Christmas. My cousin Ronnie has to hold the all-time family record for Best Cajun Joke Teller. It’s the same story every time. After dinner we all find ourselves sitting and standing around the dining room table, with Ronnie standing at one end. Out of the blue he’ll say, “Ol’ Boudreau and Thibodeaux were out fishin’ on the bayou one day…,” and the joke-telling of the evening has officially begun. (I always wish I had a video camera to catch Ronnie on film when he gets into his joke-telling mode. Being a natural-born Cajun, he does the accent better than anyone I know.) I don't remember the last time I laughed that hard. A good time was had by all!
**** And that was just the first half of my trip home. Things changed drastically after that. But the nightmare that ensued is a whole other story—definitely suitable for a later blog entry. Stay tuned. *****
Remember ValueJet? I loved ValueJet. They were cheap, frequently on-time (truly a rarity in airline travel today), and the flight crew was funny. Too bad they went out of business. The thing that strikes me most about Independence is the friendliness of the crew. Even when a flight runs late and passengers are grumpy, the crew members manage to maintain a cheerful attitude. I like that.
And they try to be funny with their pre-recorded safety announcements at the beginning of the flight. “Should your oxygen mask drop from the ceiling above you, place the mask over your face and tighten the strap before assisting those near you who can’t move as quickly — such as small children or congressmen.”
Well, it’s funny the first time you hear it.
This is the funniest Christmas I’ve had in a long time. I love when my cousins from Louisiana show up for Christmas. My cousin Ronnie has to hold the all-time family record for Best Cajun Joke Teller. It’s the same story every time. After dinner we all find ourselves sitting and standing around the dining room table, with Ronnie standing at one end. Out of the blue he’ll say, “Ol’ Boudreau and Thibodeaux were out fishin’ on the bayou one day…,” and the joke-telling of the evening has officially begun. (I always wish I had a video camera to catch Ronnie on film when he gets into his joke-telling mode. Being a natural-born Cajun, he does the accent better than anyone I know.) I don't remember the last time I laughed that hard. A good time was had by all!
**** And that was just the first half of my trip home. Things changed drastically after that. But the nightmare that ensued is a whole other story—definitely suitable for a later blog entry. Stay tuned. *****
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