What's Wrong?

Nothing. Today, so far, has been an absolute dream. So was this weekend. Perfect weather. It's been the longest "Indian Summer" I can ever remember. We've only had a very brief cool spell, and that was a week or so ago and didn't last long.

I'll try to keep in mind just how enjoyable it was when the water is lapping at the windows on the 27th floor of my office building on Third Avenue in a couple of years... after the Arctic completes it's meltdown.

No matter, though. By then we'll all be engrossed in WWXIV (between Melanesia and the Portuguese Alliance).

Even this morning's commute into Manhattan went off without a hitch. And THAT'S weird, believe me! Wednesday is coming, though, and if the last 3 catastrophic Wednesday's are any indication, I'm sure the New Jersey Turnpike Authority probably has something up it's sleeve for this week, too!

Sorry. Sometimes I "project the wreckage of the future" as we say in 12-Step programs.

I'm always leery of the other shoe being about to drop. I try hard to be a "glass-half-full" kind of guy, but there are times when it's just easier to expect the worse and to be delighted when it doesn't happen.

I heard a woman share at a meeting recently that "things look fine until I put on my FEAR goggles, then everything looks like shit!" Boy, did I relate to that!

Nobody is about to die. I have no debilitating conditions (well, the diabetes is kicking my ass, but I'm not at death's door (yet)). My bills are paid, I have food, clothing, a roof over my head and a car and the dogs aren't nipping at my rear end.

So things are not only not "wrong" they are, in fact, great.

So how come I don't feel great?

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Addenda:

I think I know one reason. It just dawned on me (I'm so thick sometimes) that the Repuglicans have finally stopped bashing gays (wouldn't want to get too associated with the Matthew Sheperd killing, after all) and have started bashing what gays want, instead.

It's a subtle distinction, rather like it's no longer okay to string up black people, but it's still okay to string up their rights.

I guess I'm a little dispirited because I'm staring down the barrel of 60 and yet I'm still forced to live in 1954.

Pileups

Wednesday is rapidly becoming "Pileup Day" on the New Jersey Turnpike. A tractor-trailer overturned up near the George Washington Bridge around 5:30 this morning prompting one cop to comment, "It used to be Dunkin' Donuts, but now it's Krispy Kreme."

There were also two separate auto pile-ups somewhere along 495 between the exit from the Turnpike and the helix down into the Lincoln Tunnel.

We were a half hour late getting into town. I jumped off my so-called Madison Avenue bus and ran down into the subway outside of the Port Authority in the hopes of catching an uptown E train to the east side faster than the bus would make it. It worked, but that was about the only thing working this week.

Last night, after work and for no other reason than it "was Tuesday" downtown subway service was virtually non-existent on the E train. It took me 20 minutes to get to the Port Authority. Luckily, bus service was as bad as subway service and I was forced to wait another 35 minutes for a bus home.

It just keeps getting worse and worse.

It's almost bad enough to make me want to blow a grand on a tailor-made interviewing suit, another couple of hundred on a fancy-schmancy resume writing service and to start putting myself out there... a lot closer to home than I work now.

Almost.

Tomorrow.

Promise.

The Work Week from Hell - Who's Lurking Out There?

I didn't get a chance to post much this week. It was the work week from hell. Every day I'd arrive at the office fresh from my morning 12-Step Meeting, conveniently located across the street from my office (unless some DODO had crashed his 18-wheeler on the Turnpike in the middle of the night AND, due to budget restraints and cutbacks, it took 9 hours for the 8 year old with a wagon to clear the wreckage) only to log in and face a barrage of overnight e-mails from the 3 lawyers I work for.

And they never said, "Hello! I hope you had a good nights rest." They usually began with "print the 32 attachments and get them to me ASAP." Now the 3 people I work for NEVER talk to each other so they have zero idea of what my workload is really like. All they see is THEIR shit and neglect to multiply it by 3.

By 5 o'clock yesterday my eyeballs were bleeding from all the revisions to various corporate documents I'd been making all day. It was not a good day.

I hate to bitch about the office because, frankly, it's usually a walk in the park compared to my old firm (and by far a better deal than being a corporate vice president of a major Wall Street brokerage house, which was another former gig), but this week really got to me.

The commutes from hell, both ways, several days this week, didn't help.

But it's over and TGIS. A little down time is going to be lovely.

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I've mentioned before that I have a little widget on this blog ("Sitemeter") that sort of keeps track of who visits the blog. No names, of course. This isn't "caller id." But it does give the city & state and, sometimes, the name of the sponsoring organization. Most of them seem pretty innocuous and I'm pretty much able to figure out who is checking in from places like Davis, California and Washington State (Hi Bev! Hi Alan!).

I even have some lurkers (people who routinely observe but never comment). There's a law firm in Los Angeles that provides me with a regular reader. Somebody in Bangor, Maine checks me out daily. This week I even had a drop by from the New Jersey Department of Transportation (right after I posted my glowing compliments of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, surprise, surprise).

But it never occured to me until this week that under the current Fascist regime in D.C. a number of those unidentified, yet oddly consistent readers might very well be "fronts" for intelligence gathering groups in D.C., such as the NSA, doing a little "data mining", looking for subversives here at home (I AM, I AM! It's my intention to do everything within my legal power to see that the Republican Party gets it's ass kicked in the next elections and I'd like to see you try to stop me! NEENER, NEENER, NEENER!!!)

Or maybe not. Maybe there are just some people (gasp) who actually derive some yuks from my stuff, or who identify with my wacky world weary witings (sic). When I'm alone with my thoughts it's like being in a bad neighborhood. After dark. All alone.

Weekends used to be made for Michelob (well, they REALLY were made for Chivas because I never liked beer), but nowadays they're made for restoring some semblance of sanity to my life.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

More good news to post, but that'll have to wait for now.

Love to you all....

Been a Long (been a long, been a long) Day.

Name the show the lyric in today's title is from and win absolutely nothing but my undying love and affection. And that should be good enough, you greedy pigs.

Yesterday certainly was a long day. I awoke at the usual time to find out from the smiling bubble-headed bimbos and bimboys on WCBS-TV (NY) that somebody had done something and there was a giant pile-up that had started at 3:30 a.m. on the Turnpike (northbound -- of course) and it was going to be several hours before they could get the mess straightened out so we should all shake a leg getting out the door.

Unfortunately, about eleventy-bajillion other commuters heard the same thing at the same time so that water pressure in Mercer County dramatically dove as everyone hit the terlets and showers at the same time.

My usual one hour commute took exactly 2 hours and 45 minutes. That's to travel a whopping 52 miles.

Lance Armstrong could've bicycled to New York faster.

This is hardly a rarity. This hardly comes as "big news" to the jerks who run the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. These are the same jerks who, when I suggested they install "anti-rubbernecking barriers" the length of the Turnpike, informed me that "they were looking into it. California has had them for years, but I guess nobody had figured out yet how to make a lot of easy money by skimming the project of millions.

To round the day off I didn't get home until 7:30 (lawyers get inspired at 4:45 p.m. daily. Never before).

It was, indeed, a very long day.

TGI Friggs Day

Friday was named after some Germanic goddess of beauty ("Frigg" or "Friya"). Personally, I prefer the Russian or Portuguese way of referring to it (the "fifth day" in Russian, "sixth" in Portuguese. Apparently that depends on when (and if) you observe the Sabbath.

What's special about this Friday is:

a) there were no traffic catastrophes on the NJTurnpike on the inbound commute this morning (however, the day is young).

b) The Simpons Movie opened at midnight last night.

I won't be able to see it until Sunday (Sontag), though. Tomorrow I'm dragging my sorry ass out of bed to travel into Manhattan (which I'm really getting tired of doing) to see...

"Xanadu" the musical.

Based on one of the worst movies I ever saw, one which nearly ruined (well, it probably DID ruin) Olivia Newton-John's career when it bombed at the B.O. back in 1981. It also had the distinction of being Gene Kelly's last film.

However, according to everyone, it has become the hottest gay ticket on B'way this season, and many of my gay friends are PEA-GREEN with Envy!

Then, tomorrow night, I'm in Philly to attend a fundraiser for the upcoming Philadelphia Roundup in October.

Actually the event in Philly promises to be even gayer than the audience for Xanadu. It's a drag show entitled "Caftanistan". Since I'll be at the Roundup I thought it might be nice to attend one of the fundraisers for it.

So, tomorrow morning I drag myself out of bed, do my chores, take a train to Manhattan, see "Xanadu" (fortunately it's short - 90 minutes), catch a train BACK to Princeton, do some more chores then drive to Philly in time to catch the show at the Shakespeare Festival.

So maybe I'll see "The Simpsons Movie" on Sunday.

Or maybe I'll just spend the entire day in bed.... finishing the Harry Potter novel.

I am seriously behind in my entertainment.

Pissing Off the Commuter Gods!

The commuter Gods are obviously pissed off that I took two weeks vacation. Since I've returned there have been numerous delays of every sort just about every day this week.

Last night my bus broke down on the Turnpike and it was over an hour before a replacement came out to rescue us. I got home at 8:30. Just in time for bed. At least there were only 45 of us who were thoroughly inconvenienced.

Unlike yesterday morning and this morning.

Yesterday there was an "incident" involving a burned-out (well, it was burned out by the time we got there) old wreck in the southbound lanes which everyone in the northbound lanes had to slow down and look at, thus adding 20 minutes to the commute. 20 minutes times 75,000 people equals 1,500,000 minutes, or 25,000 people-hours in lost productivity.

This morning was even worse. I knew it was going to be bad when the bubble-headed bleach-blonde traffic report lady on WCBS-TV (in "HD!") at 5:00 a.m. blathered on about "a bad accident in the southbound lanes near Exit 14, so you might want to take Routes 1 and 9 around the airport (Newark/Liberty) instead."

She wasn't lying. It was bad. There was an overturned and gutted tractor-trailer, a demolished divider between the bus and auto lanes AND the burned out wreck of an expensive looking sports car. Apparently there was death, and possibly several, involved. There were multiple state police cruisers all over the southbound side.

Again, it was important for everyone in the northbound lanes to slow down and gawk. Another 25,000 person-hours down the crapper. Probably more because the southbound traffic, mostly tractor trailers, were backup up northbound on the western spur all the way to the George Washington Bridge. It was going to be a very bad day for an awful lot of people.

I have written e-mails to the Turnpike Authority after previous incidents like this, suggesting strongly that they install "anti-rubbernecking" barriers the full length of the Turnpike but apparently the State Police don't like the idea because it would hinder the ability of patrol troopers to monitor conditions both northbound AND southbound while driving along in the opposite lanes.

But it seems to me that there comes a time, and that time has long since past, when the needs of tens of thousands of commuters outstrip the needs of the police to "check out" what's going on in the other lanes.

Maybe it's just time to hire more troopers and to buy them more cruisers.

I'm sure it'd be a helluva lot cheaper than the 10's of millions of dollars which go up in smoke from the exhaust pipes of thousands of vehicles stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike every year; burning up oil which the youth of America is currently, and pointlessly, dying trying to protect.

I wish the New Jersey Turnpike Authority would tell me again why it's so goddamned important for the State Police to be able to look over the barriers, "just in case"?

It's a Long Way to Tipperary (and Sobriety)!

Poster: "Christian?" © Austin Cline

Somebody overturned an 18-wheel car carrier in the northbound lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike yesterday afternoon, thereby causing hours-long delays, northbound AND southbound for tens of thousands of motorists and commuters.

May whoever did it rot in Hell.

Okay, I don't really mean that. Look, I know that accidents happen. I even know that some nefarious, unseen, all-powerful force in the universe does not lie in wait for ME, does not pre-plan these catastrophes for the sole purpose of ruining MY evening and isn't deliberately trying to get ME drunk again.

Well, I know that intellectually. But deep down inside, on some gut level, I "feel" like all those things ARE true and that I am, magically, the only person being inconvenienced by something like that.

This is the alcoholic mind at work. Self-centered in the extreme. My default reaction to any situation is that it is "all about me!" Infantile pre-occupation with self. Something happens, early on, with us drunks. Maybe we get dropped on our heads. Maybe, at the age of six months, some well-meaning soul, just to shut us up, slips a couple of shots of whiskey into our bottles.

Or, maybe, we're just born this way.

I've worked pretty hard over the last nine years to delve into all these character defects of mine. I've looked at them "six-ways from Sunday." I think I have a real handle on a lot my "stuff" from why I seek out the sort of men I seek out, to why I distrust love in general.

But then something like this happens. Whether it's an accident on the turnpike, or pouring down rain, or the slow checkout line at the supermarket, I'll invariably think, "why do these things ALWAYS happen to ME??!!"

The honest answer is that these things happen... and I happen to be there at the time.

You should've seen me last night, at the back of my commuter bus. I would've looked "okay" on the outside, but inside I was a mess.

I wonder if any of the other 43,000 vehicles stuck in traffic had messes in them, too?