Acorns everywhere!

It's that time of year again, when squirrels are busy digging holes in the ground, getting their cute noises all dirty, and hiding acorns that will grow up to be big oak trees! That got me reminiscing...

During the past autumn, Toby and I took plenty of walks in the parks near our place. And we noticed a wide variety of acorns on the ground. I had no idea that acorns came in so many different shapes and sizes! So we collected some.




We put these acorns in the fridge over the winter, and were trying to germinate them. They seemed to get started, but unfortunately, the seeds got moldy. Ick. It would have been nifty to have had a tiny oak tree though!

Not only acorns, but we collected gingko seeds too! Did you know that most decorative gingko trees around are males? That's because the female trees are the ones bearing fruit and that fruit stinks! Imagine stale urine plus garbage juice on a hot and humid summer afternoon. Unfortunately for us, many female gingkos live in this city. I'm not sure how we missed the stench during our first fall in this city. Perhaps we were too busy trying to figure stuff out? Or maybe we just mistook it for city-smell? At any rate, fall of 2006 was a bounty year for stinky gingkos! And did they ever last! I think we had stinkiness in the streets well into December! I love their leaves, and would love to have a gingko some day. But it had better be a male one!

I'm my best friend

Surely I've written about people who talk to themselves, right? I can't seem to find a post in my (albeit rather cursory look back) so I'll have to rant a bit now.

There are three categories of people who talk to themselves, I have decided.

Category 1: Cyborgs.
There are many of these in the city. They actually are having hands-free, blue-tooth-enabled cell-phone conversations. From one side, you'll see a smallish blob attached to their ear, probably with a blinking blue light. From the other side of their face, you just see someone having an animated discussion to no one in particular. It's spooky. Especially since people in this city don't have a sense of privacy. Perhaps it is because it is so crowded, so you never get true privacy anyone; you share a home with strangers, you share your commute in very close proximity with strangers, sometimes you go to the club and spend the night with strangers.... So people don't really seem to mind having private conversations in public. I, however, find it uncomfortable to overhear private conversations. Especially when i can't see the other half of that conversation!

Category 2: Crazies.
Okay, there are people who just see invisible beings, and feel the need to converse with them. Sometimes these conversations are fairly benign, but I don't usually notice those ones. The ones I notice tend to be on the near-violent-rage end of the conversation spectrum. These people tend to be rather agitated and are intensely upset over something/someone. When in the subway or on the bus, I try to move far away, just in case this person (the one that *I* can see) decides to act on his/her violent urges. Unfortunately, even if they aren't about to be violent, they often don't smell very good, which is also why I like to move far away.

Category 3: Stream-of-Consciousness.
We all self-talk; that's pretty standard. I often replay conversations in my head, think about what probject I'd like to work on next, imagine what I'd like to eat for supper. But these thoughts are just that: thoughts. There seems to be a large proportion of people here who verbalize their thoughts, though. I find this strange and a bit creepy. (Yes, I know, I am easily creeped out.) And I'm not talking about the occasional expletive when you've stubbed your toe, or the occasional mono-phrase utterance.
One time at a grocery store, I overheard this self-conversation: "Hmmm. The potatoes look good. Guess I can make potato salad for supper. I gotta get milk. Four dollars for milk?! It's cheaper at the other store. I'll get it there." And on and on. It makes me wonder why some people just verbalize their thoughts. Is it because they're under much stress? It's literally too noisy to hear their own thoughts? It does make me worry that I'll start verbalizing my thoughts some day. And what a frightening day that will be!

Explosion!

You might have heard it in the news about 10 days ago: there was a giant explosion in midtown Manhattan. In that weird self-connection thing, I did go through that area about an hour before it happened, since the route home took me by those subway stations. Anyway, it turns out that an old pipe carrying steam collected too much cold water and managed to explode. (If you want to know the physics of it, Toby figured it out.) The damage is pretty phenomenal! I thought I'd share the photos I saw on the gothamist.com in case you missed the news. I've been avoiding the area since there are still street closures, making an already-crowded area even more crowded!

The exposion occured around 6pm, so it was rush-hour, meaning tonnes of people were around to take camera-phone photos of the rising cloud of steam. It was a humid day, making the steam cloud even more impressive!



A tow-truck was swallowed up by the hole in the road. From what I've read, the driver has severe burns to most of his body.


A few days after the explosion, and much of the area has been tested (there were fears of asbestos in the air), and cleaned up. The tow-truck remains in this photo.

Summer in the City

I am frightened when the weather forecast icons look like this:

It's hot hot hot! And of course, summer wouldn't be complete with a generous dose of humidity. Blech. I'm so tired of being sticky all the time. Not to mention the stench of stale sweaty bodies, urine, dog poop and garbage everywhere. I'm all for green-conciousness, but I'm loving the concept of A/C. I mean, when the mere activity of breathing makes you sweat, something must be done! And I'm definitely on the sweating-lots end of the human spectrum. Yay. I've started carrying around a spray bottle filled with water, a 'sweat rag' and bottles of ice water.

I start teaching next week and most rooms in my building don't have air-conditioning. I've been worrying disproportionately much about this. How little can I wear and still be professional? Or at least decent? Certainly the bikini-top-and-short-shorts look is not street wear in my opinion, though evidence would suggest that I'm in the minority here. Thankfully, many corners have ice-carts: fruit ices for fairly cheap! If I plan my walking route right, I can keep from sweating too much with ices.

In other news, our fair countries celebrated birthdays recently. We had Canada Day celebrations with our ex-pat Canadian meetup group in Central Park. The Canadian Consulate put on a concert set as part of the Summer Stage series in Central Park. These are free concerts several times a week. Much fun! A few meetup members brought along maple-leaf-emblazoned balloons and beach balls (one with a fleur-de-lis for the Quebecois) which we happily batted around. Nearly everyone around us joined in, though we did scare away one huffy couple. They were definitely New Yorkers!

We'd planned to see Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times at MoMA on the Fourth of July, but I came down with a tenacious summer cold. Instead we marvelled at the (illegal) fireworks in our neighbourhood. Is it just me that thinks fire and explosions don't belong near my home? Apparently! Here was the view out of our bathroom window. Note the abundance of buildings!


And last night, I went to a nearby bus stop to meet Ed who is visiting on business for a few days. It was a well-timed arrival: during the midst of a torrential rainstorm! It took about 3 whole steps for my clothes to be completely saturated with water! (The weather website I use says that over an inch of rain fell within an hour. Yikes!) Any dip in the sidewalk involved a several-inch wade. I have a greater appreciation for river-fording now! It was great fun, really! Of course, it helped that I knew that I'd be wet for a short time; then I'd be home and could put on dry clothes! I hope Ed's shoes managed to dry overnight though! Poor guy! It was an impressive rainfall! And I'm glad I don't have a basement to deal with.

Finally, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before: The US has issued Star Wars stamps. Wheee! The USPS has covered some mailboxes with decals to make them into R2D2s. I've been tremendously excited about this promotion. Like, far too excited to be normal! Wheeee!