I love a good snow day, even when there’s nothing to stay home from. What kid, or kid at heart, doesn’t? To this day, the news radio chimes make me hope for the words, “Montgomery County schools will be closed today,” no matter the time or season. A snow day is special, a surprise holiday, [...]
Category Archives: Subways
Unemployment gets a man off the subway platform for a change
Friday, October 16, 2009
Life used to be so easy when I had a job. Okay, maybe that’s overstating it a little. Subway travel was easy, or at least buying a fare card was. Life was hard then too, just in a different, more financially enriching way. And subway travel was and is always an adventure, like the flume [...]
Unemployed guy fits right in at the US Open
Friday, September 4, 2009
Tourists and Manhattanites don’t come to Queens. They’re still scared of Brooklyn’s tonier neighborhoods, where killer mothers, nanny henchmen and four-headed demon newborns of death rule the parks, boutiques and cafes. So this side of the East River, a little north of Brooklyn, where all the foreign people live, might as well be Sadr City [...]
These are the people in my neighborhood
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
In your neighborhood?
Say, who are the people in your neighborhood?
The people that you meet each day
Once upon a time I had a job. Or maybe I just dreamt it up to kill time between layoffs. The neighborhood where I worked was filled with tourists and people [...]
Adventures in bus riding, part 1
Friday, July 17, 2009
Traveling long distance by bus is terrible. How terrible is it? You really want to know? Can I get a “how terrible is it, Norm?” It’s so terrible that it requires a second (and third) post to fully appreciate the heights, err, depths, err, breadth of… well, it’s really bad. And for those wondering, I [...]
I’m an unemployed lumberjack, and I’m okay
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
I don’t wish I were a woman. Being a manly, guy-type creature of the male species works for me. It’s nice to have a built-in excuse for my noises, smells and propensity to stop channel surfing on any sports-related event. (I actually just watched a replay of an all-star high school football game while eating [...]
A place where the unemployed blogger people run free
Saturday, June 20, 2009
I need a new place to go blog and be unemployed during the day with my computer… ok, with wifey’s computer. My requirements are simple. It has to be reasonably close to home, or at least in NYC. It has to be cheap (by which I mean free) and near food and a bathroom. It [...]
The grouch man cometh
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
The subway station wasn’t crowded, particularly for morning rush hour in Jackson Heights. The main section is wide open besides, to accommodate the swarms of commuters who weren’t there. I swiped my fare card and moved toward the stairs. An old man – probably in his 80s, but probably not Wilfred Brimley – approached the [...]
Job interview routine, the morning of
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Every batter has a routine – what he does to get ready for the next plate appearance. Some are elaborate and laced with crazy superstitions. Others are basic and pretty utilitarian. Getting ready for a job interview is like warming up in the on deck circle, without the million-dollar payouts for mediocrity.
The time and effort [...]
Short job interview, long train ride
Monday, February 2, 2009
I had today what might be the shortest job interview ever. Final determination from the Guinness World Record people is still pending; the Sarah Palin vetting committee may still have me beat. To give you a better sense of time elapsed, here are some things I did today that took longer…
Cleaned up cat barf. It [...]