Day Off Not-Venturing

Again, with the whole losing posts thing. If I were smart, I'd write them in Neo Office and then transfer them over to minimize the risk of losing them. Because this really sucks.

So today I was planning on going to the Brooklyn Bridge, looking around, and taking a bunch of pictures of the assembling bulkhead of clouds. All for you, my dear blog-followers, all for you. I wanted to show you a little more of the way I see things here, maybe give you a visual of the things that most of you have already seen, but that I'm newly experiencing. I set foot outside my door, though, and was absolutely shattered by the freezing cold weather and the even colder wind. It was about 45 degrees outside, and the wind was going at about 20 miles per hour, but I stumbled down to the subway station (regretting every step taken away from my reasonably comfortable apartment) and attempted to stifle the shivering once I got into the train.

I got off the R train, and went to transfer to the F train . . . only to find that the F train wasn't running this weekend. I stand there, a little frustrated by the fact that the iPod Touch app sent me this way of all ways, and got shuffled onto what they called the "F Express." That's nice of them to say, but the fact that it's above-ground means that it takes literally three times as long to get anywhere. It's also more difficult to navigate from here, as they don't announce the stops, and the stops are not delineated at all - very often the driver would only open the doors if someone requested it. Possibly because he didn't like that bitter cold any more than we did.

Anyway, I climbed off when I saw a sign with an arrow and "Brooklyn Bridge" emblazoned on it. Of course, that really only meant that it was in that general direction - not that it was within three miles of it. I walked probably a quarter mile before I realized it was just too cold for my long sleeved T-shirt and my Puma jacket (see that, Puma? I'm doing work for you over here!), and stopped into a Starbucks. I spent about an hour warming up and tearing through many pages of American Gods (by Neil Gaiman), which I'm close to finishing now. I need to find a used bookstore really soon so I can still have subway reading material. This trip has been great for my literacy, if nothing else.

Thought for the day: although the iPod Touch has been wonderful and revolutionary in a hundred different ways, has anyone considered the fact that you can see what everyone else is playing? Anytime you power on that screen, even just for a second, whoever is sitting anywhere near you can glance over, see the CD cover, and judge you. I say this because the little Asian hipster across from me in the subway was listening to the Glee soundtrack, which really amused me for some reason. But haven't we all glanced over at the iPod next to us, seen something we liked/didn't like, and snickered to ourselves? God knows I have, but then again, I'm a little bit of a music elitist.