The Whirlwind Tour

I got to be a tour guide yesterday for my sister, her husband and their son. We went up and down the island of Manhattan and even on a boat around the harbor. It was a tremendous amount of walking and a tremendous amount of waiting. We waited for the subway, ran to the boat, ate some yummy peanut butter sandwiches, waited in line for ice cream (that one was probably my fault since I picked a location right next to Time Square), vegged out in Bryant Park, stopped by Toys R Us (they even have a ferris wheel but the line was too long), and waited (about 2 hours) to go up to the top of the Empire State Building.

My six year old nephew only put up a stink one time. He was ready to go home long before we made it there but his only complaint was that he "wanted a drink but it had to not be water!" A little lemonade and a belated birthday gift from the toy store and he was good as new. I must admit, I was impressed when it was 9:30 and he was just settling down to diner, an hour past his normal bedtime! I can only imagine he slept soundly on the ride home and extra long this morning.

List it and they will come

Ok when I moved to the city I knew I would need and a/c unit. Hell, I needed an a/c unit right when I moved in and it was only March. That, of course, is because the heat was on super high and I found out that I wasn't able to turn the radiator off in my room or else it would back up and cause water damage.

Lucky for me, my parents recently upgraded to central air and had some window units lying around. They lugged one up along with some other random things I had left behind until I surveyed the actual capacity of the apartment. Wouldn't want to move it all in and realize I really had way to much stuff for a city apartment. Anyway...

The first real heat wave didn't come until about a month ago and I was so psyched to use my free unit. The sucker totally froze my room and cooled down the living room (right outside my bedroom) in a jiffy. One problem - it also tripped the circuit breaker. Yeah, that was a problem. At first I didn't believe that it happened because it was all hearsay from the roomie, but I saw it for myself a short time after that. It appears that the bedrooms and living room are on a single circuit. Nothing like trying to accomodate today's electronic age on a single circuit!

So the real point of this entry (all of the above can be considered *backround knowledge*) is that I had to get a new one to save the circuit breaker and my good realationship with the roomie. Please, I have a great rent here and don't want to rustle any feathers.

I checked with the fam and they didn't want the thing back and didn't seem to fussed about getting paid for it either. Given the weight and inconvenience, I decided I'd either put it on the street or try to give it away on Craigslist. I put an ad up last night for a free a/c unit "old but working and a bit awkward". I explained the situation and said that I would not deliver but it would need to be picked up. I set up a special email account for things like this and sat in front of the computer a few minutes ago to see what kind of progress I had gotten. I was anticipating maybe a dozen emails but never would I have guessed that in one 24 hour period I would have received 107 emails. Can you believe it?!?

I guess it helps that it was over 90 degrees with 90% humidity. Oh yeah and free might be helpful too.

A card for that

I think I need a seperate wallet just to hold my frequent shoppers cards. I've got cards from sandwich shops, soup, salad, mexican restaurants and of course coffee shops. "Buy 12 beverages from us and the 13th one is free.

I definately think there is a scam to the whole gimmick, but I haven't figured it out. Are they trying to create customer loyalty? All it really creates is a clutter of different cards in my wallet because I get them from all the sandwich shops and all the coffee shops. I don't even eat at Subway anymore, but I can't get myself to throw away the card that is halfway to a free sub.

Actually my Oren's coffee card came in handy as a tip for the cab driver. I only had enough money to get within a mile of my place but he was generous enough to take me the rest of the way. Without any cash, I searched for a reasonable alternative and came up with a free coffee card. Maybe I'll hold onto those cards afteralll.

A little cat nap

Today is the third time in a week that I have made the trip out of the city to Connecticut on MetroNorth. There have been many adventures, birthdays and tommorow I am headed with Allie and Jim to Cooperstown (no visit to the baseball hall of fame, but instead a trip to the Ommegang Brew Festival).

On Tuesday, I jetted from work to the train. Things have been very busy at work and it was no surprise that I just decided to lay my head on the window for a few seconds of shut eye. I'd like to find someone who commutes that has never been afraid of sleeping past their stop. It's that fear that usually jolts us out of our seat just in time to run out of the train. That fear didn't work for me this time, and as I woke up and realized that the train was empty, I knew I had missed it. Whoops! All's well that ends well, though, and I was able to juggle our plans. Still, though, I was pretty upset.