Thursday, May 16 – Sunday, May 19

Well those will be amusing hours

Thursday was not one of my better workdays.  It was close to home, no more than a 15-minute drive away, so I suppose that was a good thing, but the rest of the day left much to be desired.  It wasn’t due to anything on my part, instead it had to do with the particular workplace.  Fortunately, it’s unlikely I’ll be returning there anytime soon, so I guess that’s another good thing.

Friday was a day off, which gave me the chance to do some much needed yardwork.  Grass in the back yard had reached a height that was almost beyond the lawnmower’s capabilities and would oblige me to rent a herd of goats.  Not being exactly sure where goat rentals are available, I doubt the Tool Rental department at Home Depot would have been much help, I was pleased to find out that yes, the mower was able to handle the task.

Also on Friday, I got my assignments for the upcoming week, and suffice to say they came as a surprise.  The first two of them, at least.  I’ll be working at two different worksites in Manhattan on Monday and Tuesday.  Monday’s worksite is in lower Manhattan, Tuesday’s in Midtown toward the West Side.  While the sites may be different, what is the same is that I’ll have to report to each one at the same time … 4:45 am.  Ugh.  Even with the light traffic I should encounter I’ll have to leave the house at 3:00 am.  Double ugh.  I suppose the best way to deal with these ghastly hours is to think of it as shift work.  Which it really is, I suppose, and of course it’s just for two days.  On Wednesday I won’t have to leave the house until the more civilized hour of 6:00 am, and Thursday and Friday will be even better as I won’t have to leave until 6:45.  Yay.

I didn’t do much of anything on the weekend, rainy weather prevented me from finishing the yardwork.  On Sunday I bought and cooked a large trout, enough for everyone, so I guess that counts as some sort of accomplishment.

Monday, May 13 – Wednesday, May 15

Three days on the road

My work for these three days was different from what I usually do.  While on occasion I go to two worksites in a single day, I really moved around these three days, covering a total of 17 worksites.  I spent about 45 minutes to an hour at each site, though because I got paid for my time driving from site to site each day was a full eight-hour day.  On Monday I went to sites in eastern Suffolk County, Tuesday was western Suffolk, and on Wednesday I stayed closer to home and worked in central Suffolk.

It’s funny.  When I found out about this assignment a couple of weeks ago I was quite eager.  Going around from site to site sounded more interesting than being in one location all day.  The reality?  Well, it wasn’t bad, not exactly, but it wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be.  It’s hard to articulate why.  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t as if I hated each day, maybe it’s just that my expectations were too high.  Whatever the case, it doesn’t really matter, as this was pretty much a one-time deal.

In another break from the usual, I went to hot yoga twice in this period, on Monday evening and again at my “regular” time on Wednesday.  I seem to be making some progress, too.  While my flexibility has improved only slightly, my balance seems to be getting a lot better.  I can do poses on one foot without constantly feeling like I’m going to topple like a tree.  This is actually the best sort of progression, as good balance is more important than flexibility, at least for a neophyte.

Saturday, May 11 – Sunday, May 12

I was all excited about Saturday.  The “Parade of Trains” was being held at Grand Central Terminal, with a number of classic trains from the “golden age” of passenger rail on display.  It was going to be so cool to see these trains, I could barely wait!

With mounting eagerness I took the 9:40 from Ronkonkoma to Penn.  It wasn’t too crowded at first but gradually filled at the various stops.  I was riding in one of the rear cars, and while it never got SRO almost every seat was filled by Hicksville.  Like most weekend trains it was on the noisy side, thanks to many people traveling in groups.   Especially a group of four or five women at the opposite end of the car, who seemed to be trying to break some record for The Loudest Human Speech of All Time.

We got to Penn around 11, and as the earlier rain had stopped, I decided to walk around for a while before going to Grand Central.  When I finally got there, I was puzzled by this huge line I saw wrapping its way through much of the station.  Yep, you guessed it.  The line was for the Parade of Trains, which was being held at the westernmost tracks on the upper level.  At that point, around 12:15, the line was already more than two hours in length.  I debated whether to wait or not, but finally decided “not,” mainly because the Metro North employee who had given the estimate seemed rather vague.  Yes, it might have been two hours, but it just as easily could have been three.  I guess my desire to see the old trains wasn’t quite as acute as it might have seemed.

All was not lost, however.  Three subway cars from the 1950′s were running on the 42nd Street shuttle, and I rode back and forth three times so I got to ride in each one.  I especially liked the vintage ads in each car, though it was worth noting that cigarette ads – once the staple of subway advertising – were nowhere to be seen.  I ended up returning to Ronkonkoma on the 3:12 out of Penn, which, curiously, was much quieter than the morning train even though almost as crowded.

Sunday was a fairly laid-back day, though I did make mushroom lasagna.  Although lasagna made with meat is more popular, I would say that it’s better with mushroom.

 

 

Wednesday, May 8 – Friday, May 10

That was a creative route

Wednesday and Thursday were interesting days in work terms.  “Interesting” is not necessarily being used in a good sense.  My Wednesday worksite was in southeastern Queens, not far from JFK Airport.  Getting there should have been relatively easy, but I had made a mistake about the start time.  I thought I was supposed to be there at 8 am, but just before I left the house at 6 – which would have gotten me there with ample time to spare – but for some inexplicable reason I checked my e-mail and saw to my dismay that I was supposed to be there at 7.  Keep in mind that I hate to be late for things.

I gave it my best effort, though heavy traffic on the Expressway at the usual spots was a bit of an obstacle.  It also was difficult getting onto the southbound Cross Island Parkway because part of the ramp is shared with the absurdly crowded exit to the northbound Cross Island.  It was about 7:15 when I got to the worksite, all ready to dive into the day’s work.  As it turned out, the pool was empty (how’s that for a ludicrous metaphor?)  Due to some various organizational issues the  worksite wasn’t ready for what I had to do.  I called my company to explain the situation, and finally got reassigned to a different site in eastern Nassau not far from the Suffolk line.  It worked out okay, because being farther east meant that I had less traffic to deal with in the afternoon.  As usual for Wednesdays, I had my hot yoga session in the evening, with continued improvement.

Thursday was yet another mid-day worksite change, though for different reasons than the day before.  I started out in a town to the east, not as far east as Range Rover Territory though with some (real) name similarities, but after less than an hour had to go to another site several miles further west.  It didn’t really matter so much.

Friday’s assignment was in Long Beach.  Yes, that’s the real name, I’m willing to use it because (a) the location is relevant to my travels, and (b) it’s a large enough city that giving its real name won’t be revealing too much in terms of the worksite.  Getting to Long Beach involved using some rather unusual roads: Sunrise Highway (okay, not so unusual) –> Robert Moses Causeway –> Ocean Parkway –> Loop Parkway.  Ocean Parkway, which formed the main part of the route, runs right along the Atlantic, on a narrow barrier island with the Great South Bay on the other side.  There are a couple of small communities and public beaches along the way, but for the most part there’s nothing but the water and the sand dunes, an end-of-the-Earth atmosphere not to be found anywhere else in the area.  Even at rush hour traffic was very light, though on a summer weekend it would have been busy with traffic going to Jones Beach and, in the other direction, Robert Moses Beach.   It was a huge time-saver over the Sunrise Highway or the Southern State Parkway.  Interestingly, Ocean Parkway reopened just a couple weeks ago after hurricane damage.

 

Monday, May 6 – Tuesday, May 7

All over the place

Monday was an interesting day in driving terms, to say the least.  My worksite for the day was (supposed to be) in the eastern Suffolk community that I had dubbed Range Rover Territory back in my old, unlamented life insurance days.  As I drove there on the Sunrise Highway I mused about how the whole nature of my worklife has changed since those days.  The previous times I had driven to Range Rover Territory for work-related purposes I had no idea whether I’d actually be making any money for my efforts.  Such are the vicissitudes of working on straight commission.  Today, I knew that no matter what, I’d be getting paid for my time.  It is difficult to understand the magnitude of this difference unless you have worked on straight commission.

The drive was easy enough, except for some traffic when Sunrise Highway turns into a ordinary, traffic-lighted road after the Shinnecock Canal.  Shortly after I got to the worksite, however, I found out that due to circumstances beyond my control I’d have to leave and go to a different site, this one being quite some distance away in central Nassau.  In fact it was at least a 50-mile drive, fortunately the peak of rush hour had passed and I made the drive in less than an hour.  My work at the new site went well, and I was able to leave just early enough to beat rush hour on my way home.

Tuesday I worked in central Brooklyn.  One thing about that part of the borough is that it’s a long way from the nearest actual highway.  Geographers describe a huge square of land centered on the Oklahoma Panhandle as the largest swath of the continental United States that is not served by any Interstate Highways.   While that may be true if “largest” is defined in terms of square mileage, in population terms the central part of Brooklyn is likely the biggest un-highway’ed area.

Getting to the worksite was not easy, with heavy traffic on the Long Island Expressway, culminating in an awkward route to get onto the Jackie Robinson Parkway.  Also known as the road whose neighbors will never complain about traffic noise, as most of them are dead (the Parkway runs past several cemeteries).  I then had a lengthy drive on surface streets to get to the worksite, and of course it seemed as if all of the ten thousand traffic lights were red.  Getting home was somewhat easier, if no piece of cake, as I was just ahead of the worst of rush hour traffic.

Thursday, May 2 – Sunday, May 5

Day-to-day deterioration

Thursday should have been a close copy of the previous day when it came to  driving.  I went to the same worksite just north of the Bronx line and left the house at the same time.  So it should have taken 90 minutes like it did on Wednesday, right?  Wrong!  The drive took nearly a half-hour more, for a total of just under two hours.  And what’s perplexing is that there was no obvious reason why that should have been so.  Traffic on the Expressway was heavy in the same, usual spots (Exit 42, exits 39 – 37), but for some reason it was notably more sluggish.  And the exit from the Expressway to the Cross Island Parkway?  Let’s just say that some things are too gruesome to be related.  Fifteen minutes to negotiate an exit ramp??  Again, there’s nothing I can imagine that would have accounted for such a difference from one day to the next.

I had Friday off, doing some chores around the house but really not too much, while over the weekend I did some fairly heavy-duty yard cleanup.  The amount of work that needed to be done looked daunting, but once I got into it things went reasonably well.  I also did quite a bit of TV-watching.  One thing I’ve figured out is that the Smithsonian Channel is just about the best cable channel out there.  Unlike so many others it’s blessedly free of inane reality shows and similar fluff.  I also watched Raging Bull on Saturday, the first time I’ve seen that movie.  It’s funny, although the movie is on all sorts of Top Ten lists, and even though I have a lot of interest in the subject matter, I found it okay, at best.  Dunno why.  It could be that the boxing scenes were unrealistic, in a way that didn’t sit well with me because I’m a boxing fan, but then again they weren’t meant to be the main focus of the movie.

Next week I’ll be in four different locations for work.  Monday I’ll be in the affluent East End community that I dubbed Range Rover Territory during my insurance days, Tuesday in Brooklyn, Wednesday in Queens, and Thursday in a relatively nearby community.  Don’t know about Friday yet.

Monday, April 29 – Wednesday, May 1

It wasn’t that bad a drive

Monday and Tuesday were days off from work, while on Wednesday I had an assignment in Westchester County right over the Bronx line.  Monday was sort of a boring day, I didn’t do a whole lot during the day, but at night I watched a couple of classic 1950′s science fiction movies on TCM – It Came from Outer Space and The Magnetic Monster.  One thing that occurred to me is that there was nothing nerdy about these movies or indeed others from that era.  Which is quite different from modern sci-fi and its uber-nerd orientation.  I have no idea why.

Tuesday was (ugh!) another dentist appointment, this time for a root canal in preparation for a crown.  As is usual for this procedure, it was a very long appointment, something like an hour and ten minutes start to finish.  Having been advised of my current balance, all I could think about for these 70 minutes was how my bill would be growing like a week, so to speak.  And that’s not even counting the crown, which is scheduled for later in May.  It’s funny that in all the talk about health care reform no one ever seems to mention dentistry, even though dentist bills can be a serious burden for many people.

I had no trouble at all driving to the just-barely-in-Westchester assignment on Wednesday. I left home about 6:10 and made it to the worksite by 7:40.  Ninety minutes isn’t bad for a peak-direction trip.  There were a couple of slow stretches on the Long Island Expressway, around Exit 42 and then the section between exits 39 and 37, and it took several minutes to negotiate the ramp from the Expressway to the Cross Island Parkway.  Getting across the Throgs Neck Bridge and through the (obscene) tolls was easy enough.  My return trip was only about 70 minutes,  as I left prior to the start of rush hour.

One not-so-good thing is that my free two weeks’ membership at the new gym won’t start until the 15th of May.  When they let me attend for free on Sunday it was just a one-time introductory visit.  On Wednesday I went to hot yoga, and compared to the last two sessions I seem to be getting a bit more flexible.

Saturday, April 27 – Sunday, April 28

It’s done.  I found a new gym.  It wasn’t the first one I had in mind, the one that used to be affiliated with the now-closing one, but the slightly closer gym.  On Sunday, I went there to check it out and was quite impressed with what I saw.  It is a former racquetball facility that was converted to a gym a few years ago.  Compared to the old gym – actually, there’s no comparison whatsoever.  Everything was clean and in good repair, brightly lit as compared to the dim lights at the old one.  It seemed reasonably hard-core, with a couple of squat racks, several bench press stations, dumbbells going up to 150 pounds, and no prohibition on deadlifting (I saw a person doing them).  Finally, the rates are comparable with the old gym and with the other new one I’d been considering.

I had a decent session, no heavy weights as I’m a bit out of practice.  Bench press: 6 x 135, 6 x 185, 4 x 205, 3 x 4 x 225, 8 x 185.  The pegs which hold the weight bars are of a different design than at the old gym, so it was slightly awkward at first, but I’ll adjust.  Life Fitness plate-loaded shoulder press: 4 x 8 x 70/70.  EZ curls: 3 x 10 x 50 (okay, a light weight, but I’ve got to start somewhere).  Cable pushdowns: 4 x 8 x 57.5.  All in all, it went well, and I’m sure I’ll be happy with this gym.

Saturday, April 20 – Friday, April 26

Yeah, I know

Never before have I compressed six days into a single entry.  I’m doing so now, however, because there just isn’t much to report.  Mostly that’s because my gym-going is on hold until I start at the new place at the start of May.  Speaking of which, a second local gym is now offering a free month’s membership to members of the about-to-close gym.  It’s about three miles away from me, slightly closer than the one I had been planning to join, and while I’ve never been inside it’s a big facility that presumably has everything I could use.  The monthly rates of the two candidates are about the same.  What I’ll most likely do is ask for a tour of each one and then decide.  It could well be that one of them will have a more suitable atmosphere than the other, for example one could be full of noisy teens while the other attracts serious adults.  I just don’t know, so I’ll have to see for myself.

Some schedule changes are afoot at work.  I had thought I’d be spending May at a worksite just a couple miles away from me (coincidentally, right on the way to the new gym candidate).  Due to a variety of circumstances I won’t be able to start there until the day after Memorial Day.  Next week I’ll be going to a location in Westchester County, just over the Bronx line.  Yay, more (obscene) tolls, fortunately the assignment will be for just one week.  As for the next three weeks, until Memorial Day, I don’t yet know, the company hasn’t yet determined the locations.    I should know by May 1, and hopefully I’ll be reasonably close to home.

Other than that … the last week at my current location in western Suffolk went well, as is usual it was pretty low-pressure and I was able to finish my assignments in five or six hours (I still get paid for eight).  On Wednesday I did hot yoga once again, and my flexibility seemed to be slightly better than it had been.  My balance definitely was better.  One change I made is that I used blocks, which reduce the range of motion in some of the poses (a term I dislike, but whatever) and make things a bit easier for beginners.  I also liked the instructor better, among other things she played background music and offered plenty of encouragement.

Thursday, April 18 – Friday, April 19

It actually helped

Thursday was a long and busy day for me, also one that happened to involve quite a bit of physical labor.  After the previous evening’s hot yoga session, however, I was fully invigorated and free of any muscle soreness.  Which illustrates the contrast between yoga and ordinary gym-going.  If I had had a long session with weights on Wednesday evening, even if I always had used proper form I’d have more than my share of aches and pains the next day.  But not with yoga, even though it had been such a tough session.  Along with starting at the new gym, I’ve also resolved to make yoga a regular once-a-week thing.

Thursday may have been a long and exhausting day at work, but Friday was quite the opposite.  I started at 7 am as usual and was pretty much done by noon.  Next week, the last of the four weeks at this location in western Nassau, should be fairly heavy.  I can’t say I’ll be sorry to leave this location, even though the drive’s not too bad, there’s just something about the atmosphere that I don’t particularly like.