You never call, you never write.

Becoming enmeshed once again in the workaday world, I find one of the first things to fall by the wayside is regularly contributing to the blog (unfortunately). I view work as a necessary evil, it’s specter is akin to a trip to the dentist’s office, you have to go and it will probably be painful but the outcome is to your benefit.

I can’t and shouldn’t complain as the people I’m working with are nice enough. I’m working a night shift which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages in that the overall experience of the workday is a quieter one. All the people who would normally get on your nerves are long gone by the time the night shift shows up and if they are still in attendance, they’re just to tuckered out by the length of the day to cause any significant trouble.

Disadvantage in you find yourself constantly adjusting. Your sleep clock is never really quite what it should be. Some days are day days which stretch long into the night and others are just periods you pass through, sleeping throughout most of the daylight hours trying to readjust your body clock.

One night last week, I got stuck at work pretty late.

There’s this optimum window of time when I want to leave work. After 4:30 in the morning the rush hour actually begins and you have a lot of truck traffic and early commuter traffic on the road which makes the whole experience a bit more stressful than it needs to be. But, get out anytime after 2am and before 4am and your in the golden zone where there are very, very few cars out on the road and the trip home is a breeze. The ride home can take a very satisfying 35 to 40 minutes at that time of night, giving me a sense of what the world is like for people who have more reasonable commutes. I can do 35 to 40 minutes, it’s those hour and a half each way commutes that get to me. Three hours added on to the average work day make for a hellish experience.

Funny thing is, in recent years a few friends have taken the plunge and moved quite far out into the ’burbs. It’s been somewhat ironic to hear their moaning after the fact about the length of the commute and how onerous it makes the day. Ah, I think to myself, join the club as I’ve been doing it for much, much longer.

Anyway, one night last week I was on my way home and got caught in one of those drive home limbo experiences:



Yes, an hour and a half on the FDR. Just parked, not moving forward, not moving backward, just sitting there. If I had a ball I could have played a game of catch with my fellow motorists. Next to me was a cab with a fare in it. I watched as the meter went from just over $11 to over $25 by the time the traffic began to move again.

There was some kind of serious accident - 8 cars involved - up around 116th Street. So, they just closed the highway until everything was squared away. Just imagine working until 6 or 6:30 and then getting stuck on the road until 8, and still not being home!

It really wasn’t that bad though, I mean I could have been in the accident, instead of merely waiting for traffic to clear.