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May 22, 2004

First Friday in NYC

Friday was so full of cool things that here's a post just of that:

-- the air hand dryer in the restroom of Rosie O'Grady's (one place i went last night) is called something "Turbo Dryer", with a little label above the air chute that says "Feel the POWER". Sure enough, it felt like sticking my hands outside of a car travelling at 80mph -- not only did it completely blow the water off my hands, it almost blew my hands off my wrists...

-- seeing people walking down the street in gowns and suits b/c they were coming out of the Daytime Emmy Awards being held at Radio City Music Hall (down the street from the Heartland Brewery, the first place i went). i didn't see any celebrities tho -- even Susan Lucci... ;)

-- i visited the WTC site on Friday as well, and that being the first time i've seen it since before the Towers fell, i was amazed. it is eerily quiet, and almost reverent. In contrast to the loud busy-ness on the other side of Broadway, the WTC side is full of quiet, contemplating people, gazing through the heavy metal fences toward the huge expanse of cleaned-up rubble. There is even a cross made from two charred steel beams of the buildings... Sure enough, the city is busily working on the site, restoring the PATH train to NJ and making foot bridges across the streets. Almost as amazing as the actual site is the fact that all the other skyscrapers around it are all still there (well, almost all of them - one is being rebuilt). Beyond imagining being IN the towers when they were hit, I also can't imagine being in one of the many more buildings next to them, and wondering in which direction they will fall. it must have been absolute chaos in those buildings too. Fortunately they are still there. it was a touching experience for me, and i'm glad i went.

-- Topping off my WTC experience, i stopped to watch some people on the street (some dressed in shorts and t-shirts, others in their business suits) play chess and backgammon. They have these thin, make-shift tables, and bring their own timers and pieces, but wow, are they GOOD! so fast, so calculating -- they must have each went thru 4 or 5 games while i was there. it just felt happy to watch them play...

Posted by MaTT at May 22, 2004 03:39 PM

Comments

I'm glad that you posted this because when you told me last night, it sounded like:

*cell phone static*
*bar noise*
*srah thinks: I am SO DRUNK!*
*bar noise*
*cell phone static*
*srah thinks: SERIOUSLY! DRUNK!*
*bar noise*
*cell phone static*
Matt: ... Susan Lucci!

Posted by: srah at May 22, 2004 07:15 PM

when I was there, some of the other buildings still had big tarps over them

Posted by: Urs at May 23, 2004 09:50 AM

Maybe if you didn't have such scrawny, I mean, um, *delicate* wrists, you would not have lost your hands under the Turbo Dryer... :)

Posted by: Rachel at May 23, 2004 01:27 PM

I think that the term 'delicate' might be worse than scrawny :]

(because you're caalling him gay, and by gay, I mean homosexual)

Posted by: Urs at May 24, 2004 08:29 AM

*limp* would be worse...

Posted by: srah at May 24, 2004 10:48 AM

Those pesky words and their connotations... It's impossible to say anything nice to anyone anymore without someone commenting that it means something dirty in another language, or it's taken on a new slang meaning that I wasn't aware of. Next thing you know peepul will get their pants all in a bunch because I said their queue was FIFO.

Posted by: Rachel at May 24, 2004 01:51 PM

Queues are just lines for waiting!!!!!!!!!!1!1!!!

Posted by: Urs at May 24, 2004 03:22 PM

Wow, my wrists are quite popular, unfortunately -- but i think scrawny was the best choice overall -- delicate? limp? (yikes!) Or how about we just stick to 'thin' and everybody erases this memory from their minds? :D

Or maybe if people decided against putting jet engines in their hand dryers i wouldn't have this problem!

Posted by: MaTT at May 24, 2004 05:34 PM

I don't know... I think your wrists are looking kind of chunky. Maybe you should go on a wrist diet.

(There, maybe we can make you self-conscious about your wrists in the *other* direction!)

Posted by: srah at May 24, 2004 11:09 PM

Aaah! That's even worse than thin wrists -- i don't want FAT wrists... maybe i like my skinny wrists now... :)

Posted by: MaTT at May 25, 2004 10:05 PM

Ursula says she is willing to take your fat-ass wrists to the gym next semester.

Posted by: srah at May 26, 2004 07:26 PM

Yeah Matt! We are going to get those wrists back down to fighting weight by christmas!

Posted by: Urs at May 27, 2004 05:33 PM