Yes, the first rule of writing anything on a computer is to save, save, save. Well, January 3 has not been too kind to me so far, and the lovely, fascinating (it could happen!), long post I was just about 2/3 of the way through has somehow disappeared. I’m not even sure why. The computer didn’t crash, but I somehow managed to press a succession of buttons that told MS Word to quit and not save the document I was writing. Yup, I did it without touching the mouse, which is why I’m baffled.
This comes after a morning during which I arrived at work at 10 AM. Now while many of you might be gasping, I should acknowledge that 10 AM isn’t so unusual for me in my current job. In fact, for the last couple months, it was unusual only in the sense that it might have been on the early side of things. What was different about this morning is that while I arrived at 42nd & 6th around 10, I left home on the Upper West Side at 8:45 AM. That’s a good 45-50 minutes longer than it ever takes me to get to work, and only some of this long trip was really my fault.
After leaving my apartment this morning and heading for the bank on the way to the B and C lines at 86th and CPW, I realized that I had left my Metrocard and work ID (necessary to get into the building) at home. So I had to turn around to retrieve them. By the time I finally got to the subway, it was just before 9:15 AM, which must have been a magic time to arrive because soon after I heard the announcement that due to “an altercation,” downtown local service was delayed. If we wished, we could hop an uptown train to 125th and then take an express back downtown. But since train service was simply “delayed,” I figured that was more trouble than it was worth.
I doubted my decision when I noticed the C train passing us by on the express track, but then staying put didn’t seem like any better of an idea when the announcement was repeated about 5 — maybe 10 — minutes later. You see, by that time I was staring at a not-moving A train on the express track, just sitting there in our station, torturing all of us standing on the platform. “Sure,” it would say. “Here I am. It would be so easy to get on me while I’m not moving, but, OH … oh … no, no, no. You can’t cross the local track. You don’t want to accidentally hit that third rail. And besides, I won’t open my doors for you anyway.”
Finally, about 5 minutes after the A train did leave, another announcement was made saying that all downtown service had been suspended due to a police matter. Now I’m not sure whether or not this meant the uptown-to-125-to-catch-the-downtown-express option was dead or not; the announcement was a bit confusing. But I decided to leave the station, hike over to Broadway, and hop on a 1/9 train to Times Square. So of course, just as I get back to ground level, it starts to rain. No, not hard; just a drizzle, really, but water from the sky onto my head nonetheless.
And at 10, I got to work.
I then proceeded to start the post I had been planning this whole weekend, especially since reading the inane and pointless (and dare I even say simply wrong) pieces by A.O. Scott and Tom O’Neil in this Sunday’s New York Times Arts & Leisure section, not to mention some other stuff, when suddenly it disappeared in a way unlike anything I have seen before.
So Happy New Year everyone. I’ll get back to this stuff later when the frustration subsides, and I’m once again able to put these minor annoyances into the proper perspective. For now, I actually need to get back to work.
Out of Focus 