Work and the impromptu tom-foolery that keeps me sane despite it...

An early, mid-week blog to sort of spew some of the contents of my head. I just had a shit day at work coupled with a great jaunt around parts of Manhattan with Karishma afterward, rounding out the day quite nicely while successfully tiring me out. I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight, that's if the stretch of 42nd Street between 8th and 9th Avenue will have mercy on me tonight and turn down its loud rap music and send its screaming kids indoors.

The shit day at work was really only because of a few misunderstandings resulting in a little bit of unnecessary crossfire between my department and another (coming from the other direction obviously). Nothing that a little perspective couldn't fix though. I don't usually buy into horoscopes and other types of mystical stuff but I read them for the fun of it anyway. I actually get one in my mailbox from a website that purports itself to be Buddhist (it's fairly close) but it's often tinged with a bit of mysticism. Nonetheless it's full of uncanny wisdom and today, it happened to really ring true. This isn't a horoscope in the traditional sense, but more just everyday advice, which is why I read it, because even if there's not the eerie notion that some horoscope writer is predicting my future, it usually contains some gem of wisdom. At any rate, point being, it was right on today and then funny thing is, the horoscope usually ends up in my email box at the end of the day so I have to look back on my day and say, "oh, I guess I could have applied that earlier this morning," or something like that. It's even better when it's telling me how to handle a certain situation and I find that, despite not having read the thing, I already handled said situation exactly, or relatively closely to, the way it told me to.

Weird. Anyway, enough of this. The example. I won't reproduce the whole thing here but it opens like: "You may be on the receiving end of criticism or judgment today, and this could cause you to feel a bit insecure or inadequate." Uh, yeah. So that happened. So I got a little miffed but held it in and then went to my manager to find out whether or not I was in the wrong in this particular situation (instead of fuming about it all day and trying to sweep it under the rug, in case they went over my head with it). Turns out there were steps I or my coworker could have taken that we didn't, let's just put it that way. The details are not important. At any rate, I think I handled it pretty well, even though there was a lot of tension going on throughout the day. The horoscope goes on to say: "Remind yourself of the skills you possess and the work and dedication you’ve put into developing them. If you do receive criticism today, you might consider taking it as constructive feedback. Absorb the information that is helpful and discard the rest."

Sounds like a plan...and that's what I did. Good to know that I instinctively do these things. I knew that if I didn't address my own role in it and forget about how angry I was that my coworker had yelled at me over the phone, then I would gain nothing from the scenario. So that's what I did.

Then, I left work, the second I could and met Karishma at Union Square. We were talking about going to the UWS (okay, okay for all you non-New Yorkers, The Upper West Side), but I randomly suggested we do the Roosevelt Island Tram since Karishma never had. So we grabbed the N Train up to 59 Street Lexington Ave. and walked one block over to the tram. I took loads of pictures. This is the same tram that Spiderman saves Mary Jane from falling out of at the end of I can't remember which Spiderman movie. It glides along beside the Queensboro Bridge (also known as the 59th Street Bridge, Feeling Groovy?). Here are the pics:

Roosevelt Island and Other Stuff_1

After that we walked to 73rd and York Ave. to grab Mexican food at this little hole in the wall called Palazio Azteca that I've eaten at with my friend Matt before. Great stuff. The place is BYOB but luckily there's a little bodega two doors down so we grabbed a tall Corona Extra and brought it in with us.

So, our bellies full, and the weather beckoning we considered going to the Upper West Side anyway, since we were on the Upper East Side and all we'd have to do is traverse the width of the entire island. No small feat so we settled for walking to Central Park and sitting on the Great Lawn and watching the softball games finishing up and the players trickling off the fields.

Such a great night for a walk. And now I'm exhausted and I need to sleep. But first I gotta make a sandwich.