It's been one pigfucker of a day, ladies and gentlemen. Best moment I had all day came when I rocked out to "Ride, Captain, Ride" by Blues Image. Everybody SING: "Ride, Captain, ride upon your mystery ship..."

From an e-mail I got the other day: "Go with what you've got to give and not something intangible or removed from what is."

Yeah, man.

...I'm just gonna snap and start dancing around my office singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" for thirteen hours straight.

That'll show 'em!

It's after midnight, it's 78 degrees out, and I'm sweating like a pig.

People. It's April. It was snowing a month ago, for heaven's sake. What the hell's going on here, and why didn't someone warn me so I could at least purchase a fan?

Grrrwhine!

Living just outside of Manhattan is an odd experience. There are all kinds of stores in Manhattan that deliver inside the city's boundaries for a rather small fee. However, that fee is usually doubled once the delivery van goes over a bridge or through a tunnel to my side of the river, so I usually don't bother -- I'd rather plop my butt on the subway or in a cab and have my purchase home with me, now, than pay twice my cab fare and wait for a delivery.

Sometimes this approach works, sometimes it doesn't. One day I almost dropped cans of food all over the subway because a cashier didn't double-bag me. Another time, I almost fell on my stairs because I was trying to carry too much at once.

While I do like Whole Foods and some of the other organic markets in Manhattan, I've found myself shopping closer to home and using my little red cart. The produce sometimes isn't as good, but the convenience has made up for it, especially when I've had no time to shop and need to stock up.

All of this may change, however. When I lived out East on Long Island (way, way, way out), I was never able to use any of those nifty food delivery services -- there was never anything in my area. (Pity me, do, my diamond shoes were too tight!) Now that I've "gone urban" -- or at least gone "bridge and tunnel" -- there's Fresh Direct, an online grocery store. And they've just started delivering to my neighborhood.

On the one hand, I'm totally stoked, since their selection seems pretty extensive. They have a nice range of fruits and vegetables (tomatillos and habaneros, hurrah), as well as organic frozen dinners for the nights when I can't cook. They also carry coffees, cheese, baked goods, meat, seafood, and wine. There's even a "health and beauty" section that includes -- hee! -- condoms. (You could have an entire romantic evening delivered -- cook a nice meal accompanied by wine, "play safe" afterwards, and have coffee and croissants the morning after.) I could really see this service working for me -- it's a $40.00 minimum order, but if I placed a largeish order every few weeks, it would balance out. I'd just need to keep a close eye on what vegetables I ordered, and when I used them.

On the other hand, I could totally see this encouraging me to be even more sedentary than I already am. :P All of my food delivered -- hey, why leave the house?! But more important, this will take away some of the things I really enjoy about food shopping -- checking out the quality of the vegetables and fruits that I buy, roaming the aisles to see if something sparks me to cook a new dish, or (ahem) making that sneak impulse purchase of a rather unhealthy snack. :D

I know I'll try the service at least once; the prospect of having fresh food delivered the day before I wish to cook something is too good to pass up. Let's just hope it doesn't contribute to my downward spiral of urban sloth... :)

Ow! My head, it pounds...
Loud German tourists crowd in.
Hope their stop is soon.

I saw a Segway on Saturday night -- my first sighting of one, ever. It was in the Times Square subway station, and it was ridden by either a New York City Transit officer or a New York City policeman.

I was coming up the stairs, and saw this...uh...Segway sitting there. My inner geek rose up, and I exclaimed, "Oooooh! It's a Segway!" The policeman (who'd been riding away) did a fancy little loop-de-loop and headed back in my direction. My subway was coming in, so I didn't get to admire -- but I did say "Check that shit out!" (yes, aloud, and loudly) as I ran for the 2 express train.

Most cool. I hope to see one again soon and ask about it...

How I envisioned my day:

Wake up early-ish, as printout of Very Important Project is to arrive by FedEx. Go downstairs (looking fabulous, natch), to greet handsome, sassy FedEx person. Whirl upstairs where I proof printout of above project over a leisurely cup of coffee and some nice snacks. Find no typos and marvel at the design -- all is well with my world, and I will make my deadline of Thursday with no problems whatsoever.

How my day has actually gone:

Woke grumbling, with drool on my cheek. Groused over to my computer, where I tried to track my FedEx package online. One gasp of horror and four increasingly desperate phone calls later (three to FedEx and one to my designer), it is determined that my package is sitting in a drop box somewhere in the middle of Connecticut. Not only am I not getting it today, it's not coming on Monday, either.

Designer helpfully uploads Quark files to FTP server in the afternoon. I run into the office, as I've got no Mac at home, to make sure nothing's been corrupted and that I can print the files. FTP download goes fine, and I open the files perfectly -- good good good -- except my print job mysteriously cancels out about every ten minutes or so. After about 45 minutes, I realize that the job is cancelling whenever my Mac falls asleep. Fixed that, but because of the size of the job, it's now taken me about three hours just to print the damned thing, I'm still at work, and I'm still not done.

I'd say Mercury in retrograde wins the day on this one. Mercury, you fucker.

Today's horoscope: "Why do you want a happy-ever-after? Do you have no thirst for adventure? Do you want to spend the rest of your life wallowing in quiet complacency, leading a flat, dull existence in a world devoid of depth and drama? Bland contentment is monochrome. If you want to sample the rich Technicolor of true fulfilment, you must be prepared to mix the light with the dark, the difficult with the easy, the stressful with the wonderful. Stand back from the canvas this Easter. Life may be intense but you are looking at a masterpiece."

Uh, I've had more than enough drama, thanks. I've a major print project going on press next week, things around it are a bit insane, and -- naturally! -- Mercury's in retrograde.

Someone throw some "bland contentment" my way, m'kay? :)

A friend of mine just had a baby girl yesterday morning.

A friend of my family's passed away last night -- he was just a few years younger than me. His kids -- twins -- are only two years old.

I'm both happy and sad today.

Living in Astoria can be surreal, at times. It's easy as pie to get to my place from the subway, and relatively easy to drive in from Long Island. Getting there from Manhattan is another story...

It's not that it's a difficult drive to my apartment: you take the upper level of the Queensboro Bridge if you have time and want to skip the toll; the Midtown Tunnel if you're in a rush and are flush that week. It's the part that comes after the bridge or tunnel that's the problem.

Let me digress for a sec: I'm from Long Island, where we're infamous for having roads with more than one name. For example: Route 231 hooks up with Deer Park Avenue, which, after you cross a major thoroughfare, turns into Park Avenue. A major parkway, the Sagtikos Parkway (or "the Sag") becomes the Sunken Meadow Parkway; people refer to it as both or either.

Folks, that ain't nuttin' compared to my portion of Queens. Example: 21st Street. 21st Street, a fairly major street, intersects with 21st Avenue. Okay, uh, fine...but if that isn't confusing enough, 21st Street also intersects with 21st Drive and 21st Road, and, yup, they're all right next to each other.

Going to 23rd? Bully for you! But are you going to 23rd Terrace, 23rd Drive, 23rd Road, or 23rd Avenue, and how do you plan to get there when you throw in all the one-way streets? (Answer: drive down 23rd Street, which intersects all of them.)

Makes Long Island look like a cakewalk, no? Especially when one is slightly tipsy and trying to direct a confused cabdriver...it's just not pretty, people. ("Go down 22nd -- no, the next 22nd!") I, for one, am used to numbered streets having a different number for each street -- not just chunks of street numbers everywhere, strewn higgeldy-piggeldy across the urban landscape!

Anyone got a map?

There's marks on that seat
I sit anyway, but wait:
Something's on my butt!

Doing a first entry in a new blog is like sleeping in a new home for the first time: you're a little excited, but a bit uneasy.

It's good to be back -- and, hey, y'all just knew I couldn't stick with that bright yellow for long, no?! :)