Stay at Home Chapter 3 - Day 21

 Wednesday April 28

This is Day 21 of the current Stay at Home order, week 3 of 6.  Is it half finished or still half to go? Depends on your perspective, I suppose.  In my current state of mind, I'm thinking half finished.

I had to pop over to the Shoppers where I got my vaccine and the place was empty.  I suspect they've run out of the shot.

Did a bit of gardening today.  Nothing too aggressive - I just trimmed the Rose of Sharon a bit. I hope I haven't screwed it up for blooms later in the summer.  I also trimmed back my euonymus - it got shaggy quickly.  

Two years ago today, we spent the day in New York City.  Overall, I would say it was not a very pleasant experience, a bit of a cluster fuck really.  We took the commuter train from near where The Doctor lives and arrived at Grand Central Station at about 10:30.  It's a very impressive building and we saw this - 

Two fully armed police officers just standing there.  There was nothing going on, no criminal activity.  You can't tell very clearly from the photo (because I couldn't just walk up to these people with guns and take their picture so I had to do it from a distance) but the lady on the right, a state trooper I would guess was holding a kick-ass semi-automatic rifle and the guy on the left, NYPD officer was holding a normal? rifle.  It was a bit startling.

We left the quiet of the station and walk outside to a wall of noise and commotion.  That too was startling.  We'd bought a hop on, hop off bus package online and tried to find the nearest stop to get out tickets validated.  It was across the road in front of some building with a name by a no parking sign post.  It was a little like Platform 9 3/4.  Not marked at all.  The ticket agent came along, we got all our little tickets printed out and realized we were waiting at the wrong stop.  We were at a blue route stop and we wanted the red route stop.  The ticket guy helpfully told us the closest red stop was up a couple of blocks at a news stand. We walked smartly up to the kiosk only to realize as the red bus drove past us that there were, in fact two kiosks on that block and we were at the wrong one.  It just got ridiculous from there.

Walked to the Empire State building which was actually faster than the bus, tried to go to the top only to be told that part of our ticket had not been validated and we could go no further. We stood in a line to sort out our tickets that didn't move for 10 minutes. By this time, I was becoming hypoglycemic and needed to eat.  So we left the Empire State Building and found a Wendy's for lunch where someone with mental health issues came to the front of the line, turned to face us all and proceeded to fondle himself.  Fortunately, he kept his pants up.  

It's now about 12:30 and we have seen nothing.  We finally got on the damn bus and took it all the way down to  where you get the ferry to Staten Island.  There's a nice park there, Battersea maybe where you can look across to the Statue of Liberty. After a little wander around the ferry area, we got back on the bus to go to Times Square. 

It was a little underwhelming to be honest but by this time I was pretty much done with the whole day and didn't give a shit about seeing anything anymore.  We still had to get up that frigging Empire State Building which was the one thing Himself and HistoryBoy wanted to see.  The head office for the bus company was in some lobby of some building at (in? on?) Times Square so our tickets were finally validated.  All the guy said was sorry for the inconvenience.  Sorry for the inconvenience? It fucked up our whole day.  If I hadn't been brain dead by this point, I would have ripped him a new one or at least asked for some compensation.

One of the views from the top of the stupid building:

I think this is looking down towards the World Trade Centre.  You can't really tell what anything is, all the tall buildings look the same so I won't bore you any other pictures of the view.  As I was waiting inside for Himself and HB, who found the experience much more interesting than I did I saw this:

Yup, here we were at the top of the Empire State Building, in one of the most interesting cities in the world and these doinks were on their phones. They weren't the only ones. 

This was almost the end of our day.  We found supper in a little pizza place, not the authentic New York Italian restaurant that Himself thought we would eat at, but at this point we were just in survival mode, and made our way back to Grand Central Station for the 40 minute train ride back to my cousin's.  The three of us were absolutely shattered. Himself thought we might go back the next day but HB and I just laughed. 

Our outing the next day was much more enjoyable.

Until tomorrow. Stay sane.