SITTING HERE AT LT, where I have been kept unusually busy this morning, going over around 10 posters and ads. LT has been berry berry good to me. For instance, this week I will have worked four days. That seems to be what M. and the staff here have settled on; working from 10 to around 4, 4:30. Also, just got a call from A. asking me if I was available this very day to work a shift at S.Comm. Claro que si! I will shoot downtown at 4, get to S. around 4:30, and work as needed. That gives me a nice check for next week. I last worked for S. around three weeks ago, so it's good to get them back into the rotation.
But I've been making ends meet here as a freelancer. Since late June, when I got the hotel job and then turned it down, I've only missed three days of work. The great majority of the work has come from LT, where I've settled into a nice daily routine. I get up at 7:30, have my breakfast of cereal and soy milk, out of the house by 8:30, and if the sun is a-shining I take the train to the Fifth Avenue stop, go to Central Park to have my ritual cup of Earl Grey tea, and then soak up the atmosphere for around an hour, from 9 till 10, before walking the short distance to the LT offices on Eighth, riding the elevator to the sky 32 floors up, where I settle into my cozy cubicle. Unfortunately, I've been eating at Mickey D's far too often, usually off the dollar menu, where I get a McChicken or a small burger and fries to hold me over. To put it in pespective, I've eaten at McDonald's more in the last month than the previous, oh, 10 years put together. They say that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but does it make you any healthier? We'll see. I just can't afford to spend 6 or 7 bucks on lunch like I used to back in the Transcript days, and there are far fewer food choices here in Midtown.
By the way, except for the relative proximity to Central Park, Midtown sucks compared to the Downtown area I used to work in. I used to love the Seaport in the summer. In addition, the traffic here in Midtown Manhattan can only be described as a nightmare blend of speeding taxis, delivery trucks, gargantuan double-decker tourist buses and selfish suburban SUV scumbags constantly running lights and blocking the intersections. I take comfort somehow in the fact that even saintly Walt Whitman would be shouting obscenities and profanity at these obnoxious obstructive bastards who make getting around such an ordeal. You never see anyone ticketed for blocking the box or other violations, never mind talking on their cell phones while driving. It should be suspended license for at least a month each time some self-important asshole is caught driving while ego-impaired, as I like to call it. How about a commuter tax, Bloomberg, or some traffic congestion ideas like London has successfully implemented -- you pathetic excuse for a mayor.
This just in: Pluto is no longer a full-fledged planet. It's been summarily downgraded to the status of a "dwarf planet," ending its brief 76-year run as the ninth planet. Not that it was one of my favorite orbital bodies, that's an honor reserved for sexy spheroids like Mars, Venus and big old badass Jupiter. But I hate when they change stuff like that. No word yet on the fate of the goofy Disney character, but if Pluto is not a planet, what the hell was it doing taking up so much space in MY solar system all these years. Now we're down to just eight planets, which for me ruins the whole damn galaxy really. Next they'll change the pronunciation of Uranus back to your-anus. Now that would be painful.
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