It Certainly Wasn't Flawless, part two: The Return
I forgot to mention a few things yesterday.
One was the train from Grand Central to White Plains had the squeakiest wheel in the history of the NYC transit system. The subway cars can be shrill shrill, at times, but this train took it to several more levels. There was also a screaming toddler that redefined the phrase "Armageddon."
Most importantly, I forgot to mention that the path we took to White Plains was actually Plan D, after plans A, B, and C had all failed.
This is how the trip from White Plains back home went.
The Uber picked us up in one minute. We got to the train station and went for a quick breakfast sandwich (I hadn't eaten for six hours) at a Tim Horton's right by the platform. I tossed the wrapper in the trash, we stepped on the platform, and the train arrived two minutes later.
It was an express train, so we made one stop (instead of fifteen) before we disembarked at Grand Central.
A musician with a violin was playing as we walked up the stairs. I looked at C. "Are you kidding me?" I asked. She laughed.
We needed to take two subway trains to get home. They both arrived within thirty seconds of us stepping on the platform.
On the way home, a man with a guitar stood up and serenaded us (quite nicely, too) for one stop.
"The universe is just *ucking with us now," I said.
It was all impossibly, unreasonably perfect.
Time to get to White Plains? Almost two and a half hours. Time to get home? An hour and thirty minutes. With violin.
It Certainly Wasn't Flawless
As C said, this is the story that embellishes itself.
It was a straightforward trip to White Plains. A fifteen minute walk to an express bus, then an express train to White Plains, then a ten-minute bus ride to the medical center. A little over an hour and a half.
Looks easy, right?
It was not easy.
Right before we're leaving, I see that the express bus is delayed by over half an hour. Delays of a few minutes are common, but 30+ minutes? Never.
That's okay, though. We can just take the subway.
The subway is jammed, for some reason, and then they announce that everyone has to get off before we even get into Manhattan because of track fires at a station further down the line.
The domino effects builds.
Now a ton of people already jammed onto the train who can't reach their destination have to take an alternate line that has it's own traffic already. That subway car looked like the last copter out of Saigon.
We're not going to be able to take the express train because we're miles away (thanks to the bus/fires etc.), but we can still catch a train to White Plains. No problem.
It only has 15 additional stops.
Then, it doesn't even move for a while. I'm getting stressed at this point. We left at 10 for a 12:45 check-in before the procedure on a trip that should have had us there by 11:40.
In the end, after taking an Uber instead of a bus for the last few miles, we made it. Not by much.
That easy trip of just over an hour and a half became an absolute cluster of a trip for nearly two and a half hours.
Tomorrow, the return trip. It was another planet entirely.
Fortunate
At least for now, it seems like I've gotten lucky.
It's been six days since I tested positive for COVID, and even though the first three days were very rough, I felt quite a bit better yesterday and a bit better than that today. I'm still quite tired, but I can manage that over time. More importantly, the sore throat has gone away, I don't have a fever, and my cough is annoying at times but not terrible.
That all sounds like a win to me.
I'm going to White Plains tomorrow for some kind of cardiac CAT scan (just trying to get a more complete picture of how much blockage I actually have), so I'm planning on updating tomorrow but not with 100% certainly.
Happy Memorial Day to everyone in the U.S. And for those of you in Europe, try not to melt!
Ugh
By the time I went to bed last night, I had quite a sore throat, along with a cough.
After coughing all night and waking up constantly, I got up this morning and felt feverish. I took my temperature and had a fever of 101.
We had some old COVID tests (C feels bad, too, although her symptoms are a bit different than mine), so we both took one. Her test was negative.
Mine was not.
So after six years of dodging COVID successfully, it finally got me.
It feels like the flu, and that's my Wednesday.
The Good News or the Bad News?
I went to see my new gastroenterologist today.
I've had IBS for 25+ years, and she recommended a new medication that she said might help substantially.
That's pretty great.
I'm all hyped up about this new medication, and when I go to the pharmacy to pick it up, they said I had to give "permission" for it to be filled.
Why? Because a one-month supply is $270.
Um, no.
I went home and checked the price everywhere (including Amazon Pharmacy). Because of the patent, it's almost $300 anywhere you get it filled, and that's WITH insurance covering it.
No way would I spend that much on a prescription for a condition that isn't life-threatening. So I guess I'm waiting for the generic version to come out in 2029.
I was able to fit in a swim because the gastro's office is only about a mile from the pool. I walked all over the place, though (about six miles), and it was 93 today, so I'm definitely beat.
Geese and the Requirements of an Industry
The band Geese is everywhere.
I can't go anywhere on the Web without seeing an article about them. They're the big, new, hot rock band.
There's only one problem: they suck.
The first time I heard one of their songs I started laughing because it was so bad. I'd heard so much hype that I expected it to be terrific, but it wasn't even serviceable.
Zero creativity and zero innovation. Everything they do has been done much better by other bands.
This made me wonder why they're getting so much promotion, and it made me realize something I should have understood decades ago.
Think of promotion as the music industrial complex, for lack of a better description. Over decades, the skeleton of this beast has grown and grown. It's huge now, and it feeds on stars.
Without the stars, thousands and thousands of people lose their jobs.
So no matter the basic level of band quality in an era, stars must be produced and promoted as if they were dropped straight from music heaven.
It can't ever stop.
This explains Foreigner and Poison and quite a few other bands. They weren't great or even average, but they existed in a time of thin talent and became stars.
The show must go on, as they say. Even when it makes you cringe.
The Greatest Job in the World (not actually extinct)
Thanks to all of you (including an actual librarian) who wrote in to tell me that the research desk DOES still exist, even with information being so readily available these days.
L. Wade (librarian) described it best:
The Greatest Job that Doesn't Exist does, in fact, exist. Public libraries still have people with Masters in Library & Information Science who sit at a desk and answer reference questions. University libraries and federal agency libraries do, too. There may be some special libraries that no longer have a staffed reference desk, and some desks may be consolidated Information/Reference/Circulation desks, but they continue to be staffed by people with MLIS degrees.
Book Update
The book which now has no title continues at pace.
I received such excellent and comprehensive (almost overwhelming) feedback from the editor I worked with that I thought I would never get through it all.
I did, though. Finally.
Now I'm in the process of making several high-level and hundreds of lower-level decisions. Solving problems. It's inordinately messy, but I'm not stuck.
I was expecting to be stuck. Paralyzed, really, from the sheer volume of feedback. And I'm not, but I am moving methodically.
This is to say that end of the year for publication is probably in some peril at this point. The quality of the book has risen considerably, though, and in all the right ways. It's a possible trade-off worth making.
A Fever
C is in Montreal to visit her mom.
We talked today and she said the city has gone completely mad over the Canadiens. Almost every store she passed had team gear or a sign in the window. One had a signed jersey under glass from Jean Beliveau, who played for the Canadiens from 1953-1971.
Given that there were 20,000+ people inside the Bell Center on Sunday night and 20,000+ more watching right outside the arena (on huge screens the team brought in), I'm not surprised. They'll be be solid favorites to make it to the conference finals if they win tonight.
