neighborhood happenings

Yesterday: I arrive home at approximately 1am, find the locks on both doors into the apartment building have been jammed with toilet paper. I manage to pry free the TP on the first door, give up on the second.

Tonight: I walk out of the subway around 12:20am (early night!), see the aftermath of a car crash. One car in the middle of the road, one car halfway through a chain-link fence, four cop cars and eleven or twelve cops standing around.

The two events are probably unrelated.

Also, when is the city going to put out rat poison? The rats are running free on the streets; I saw one run from the street into that little park at West 4th and Sixth Ave, holding part of a roll in its diseased little mouth. It was adorably gross and disgusting.

Speaking of disgusting, trimming your fingernails in public IS NOT OKAY. It is not okay on the subway, it is not okay on the street, it is not okay anywhere outside of your bathroom. When I am on the D train to work, I am already annoyed that I'm on the D train (makes at least one more stop than the A train) and that I'm on the way to work. Watching and listening to you cut your nails pushes me from "annoyed" to "violent," and I refuse to believe I'm the only one.

the world is going crazy

I don't even know how to explain how confused I was last night... I was sitting on the A train, minding my own business. Sometime after 59th street, I want to say between the 72nd and 86th street stops, a guy on the other end of the car took out a pipe or something and started smoking. And not cigarettes, which would have been weird enough but not unprecedented. No, this guy was smoking weed. On the A train! And it was only like midnight! I just... it was so confusing. The guy sitting across from me started cracking up, and I just sat there, reading The New Yorker, trying to figure out if it smelled like weed or possibly crack. I don't know what crack smells like or anything, but somehow it didn't smell like weed. Still, there's no way someone was actually smoking crack on the subway, right?

Then, on the way from the subway station to my apartment, I saw a rat again on the same trash pile as last night and decided I should avoid that side of the street.

disgusting

New York is really trying its hardest to get rid of me. Last night, I tried not to scream like a pathetic girl as a rat ran down the subway platform, getting within six inches of me. Disgusting. Then, as I was walking from the subway station to my apartment, I had traveled not even half a block when a rat ran from a pile of trash on the curb to the disgusting little alley between two buildings, almost tripping me. Then! I got back to my apartment safely, managing not to actually step on any diseased rats on the way, which was great, but as I was checking my email and getting ready for bed, a loud horrible noise scared the crap out of my cats and startled me. But guess what garbagemen? You can collect the garbage in the middle of the night, make as much noise as you want, you can't wake me up! I have to work the night shift, so I'm never in bed by 1am anymore! New York: 2, Marina: 1.