Nothing so remarkable about wet paint? Well, earlier this week, the MTA in its typical wisdom decided to repaint the yellow banisters on the stairwell from the Euclid Avenue-bound C train to the corner of Fulton Street and Rockaway Avenue -- all at the same friggin time. I know I do the reverse commute and it's exit-only on the Euclid-bound train at that corner, but still, they couldn't do one side at a time? I had some choice words for them as I hobbled up the stairs without the aid of a bannister.

My husband, who has seen a midtown Chinese acupuncture doctor weekly for over a decade, came with me yesterday to the Chinatown acupuncture doctor. There was a small store in front selling 100s of Chinese herbal remedies, then a small non-enclosed room (as in a walk-through aka railroad apartment) with a desk and 2 chairs and at least 50 plaques on the wall, from the very estimable to the ridiculous (in the Who's Who of Business one year), and then a narrow corridor with 3 small rooms with sturdy small beds that were like massage tables, with the hole for when you lie face down. The walls were very thin, as were the folding doors, and I could hear moans from one man getting a massage in one room. In the back was some storage/staff space and a small restroom with a Department of Agriculture & Markets hand washing sign over it, which was odd since I couldn't find anything there that would require our inspection, until I realized that Eugene, the inspector who referred me to this doctor, might have given it to him. Or perhaps it was another patient... the doctor mentioned that a very nice female food inspector visited him before, but I couldn't tell whether she was visiting as an inspector or as a patient.

Andrew came into the treatment room with me, because I started getting very tense and nervous when the doctor started putting needles in my hip. The doctor decided he didn't want me freaking out, so he said no electricity in the needles. "Instead we do cups. Then some massage therapy. Susan will come." He lit some herb or something with a match and used the flame around the edge of a glass to warm it up and then suctioned it to my right ass cheek. He said occasionally during this whole process, "Good girl," which reminded me how embarrassed I was at being a baby about this, given that millions of people have gone through this over hundreds of years, but didn't make me feel that much calmer. I could only feel 1 or 2 of the needles, but I felt every cup, and the 5th one, on the lateral part of my right hip, hurt so much I told him I couldn't tolerate it. Andrew said, oh that spot got very dark immediately, which means you need it there, so just relax, but I couldn't take it. The doctor decided that was enough, and he departed with, "Good girl. Not moving girl."

After about 20 minutes, a woman came in and said "I am Susan." Andrew left to get out of her way, and she took out all the needles and cups. The massage she gave was unlike any I've had before, not so much soothing (although there were soothing parts) as practical, involving only my lower back and my right ass cheek, hip, leg, and foot. Her touch varied from very soft and gentle to very hard pushing on pressure points to a few chopping motions and wiggling all my toes VERY vigorously until the knuckles popped, which felt bad during it and very good afterward. Sometimes she hurt me, but it was a hurt I could control. I don't like lying there face down with needles and glass all over me so I can't move without risking breakage. At one point in the massage, she stopped to put on rubber gloves and I was afraid where she was going with that, but it turned out to only be so she could use baby oil.

When she was done, I breathed a sigh of relief, or only a half-sigh, because she then said, "You get cups again." 4 or 5 more suctioned glass cups for another 5 minutes or so, then the doctor came in, took them off, pressed in a few spots, and said I could get dressed. "Drink water. Lose weight." I was there for over 90 minutes, and left with some oral herbal pills that look like tiny cannonballs, take 9 of them 3 times a day, and some herbal patches to put on my hip when I go to sleep instead of using Tylenol. Andrew also got some cold pills that he's had before and some digestive pills that he hasn't. All together it was under $160, which is phenomenal. A NYC natural doctor outside of Chinatown would have charged about 3x that for a first visit, with that much time spent, and with stuff to take home.

I go back Thursday afternoon, and Andrew said he would go with me again. Yesterday's lunch and dinner were the first two meals he's eaten in ages without feeling bloated afterward, and if that keeps up, he wants to get more of those digestive pills.

I felt well enough (about 1/4-1/3 reduction in pain while walking, though stairs are still a bitch) afterward to walk slowly with Andrew down East Broadway to his dim sum restaurant of choice, Golden Unicorn. Their turnip cakes are the best. We got there at a bad time, I think, very busy and long intervals between carts with scanty offerings. I'm glad I grabbed the turnip cakes as I was sitting down and the cart was leaving our area, because I didn't see them again until we left. Still, I was full on leaving, mainly because they serve the bamboo leaf rice packets only in pairs, and Andrew doesn't eat them. One of the carts offered some good-looking General Tso's chicken's feet. I'd never seen chicken's feet prepared that way, and it was the first time I considered eating them. We didn't get them, as there are about a dozen in a bowl, but I would have tried them if I were with a bigger, also curious group.

Tonight is a big TV night. The Amazing Race getting TiVoed in the living room while we go downstairs to watch The Simpsons, featuring Will Shortz and Merl Reagle and little Lisa in a crossword tournament. I have to go do today's NY Times crossword now, since it will be featured in the show. The icon today is from the NY Times website's puzzle page. Lisa as pictured is how I imagine ennienyc as a child.

JoAnn and I used the barely-a-couple of hours of daylight after 5pm on Tuesday to walk around downtown Rochester. The Rochester tourism table at the convention had included a flyer with 3 phone numbers for 3 walking tours. You call from your cellphone and input a credit card number to get charged $5, and then you have access for the next 24 hours to call that number from your cellphone, punch in a number and hear information about that stop on the walking tour.

The flyer said where to start for each of the 3 tours, so I figured the recording on the phone would say "now turn left and walk..." as a museum audio guide would. However, the recording said "Number 2 on your map..." Uh, what map? (I checked with the tourism lady at the table the next day, and she knew nothing about any map. I must be the first customer they have had for the service.) Fortunately, I had a generic downtown map, no stop was more than 2 blocks from the one before it, and JoAnn and I were good at figuring out what they were talking about. The only thing was that we kept having to click the next number, listen for a sentence or two, and then hang up and walk to the next spot before calling back and listening again from the beginning of that stop.

It's actually a good thing that there was some brainwork necessary, because the walk itself was pretty damn boring. Apparently, most of the character of the downtown neighborhood was torn down when the city decided it didn't like having a lot of industry around the Genesee River, and they tore down the working buildings to build the convention center area. For the remaining buildings, the tour mostly gave what type of architecture it was and who the tenants were over the decades.

( Three interesting things on the tour, behind the cut. )

Sunday the 14th I took a nearly 8-hour train ride to Rochester NY on the shore of Lake Ontario in order to represent my coworkers as a delegate at the annual convention of the Public Employees Federation union. It was supposed to be a 7-hour train ride, but we had some delays.

I got in just after 6pm and checked in at the Clarion across the street from the convention center. If I were willing to share a room, I could have stayed nearby at the Hyatt for free, but I wanted to have my own room and, since that meant I had to pay for the other half of the room, I went for the cheaper place. This was the view from my room during the day:


And from a ballroom in a similar spot on a lower floor at night:


saphir23 called me soon after I got to my room to say she could be there to pick me up at 6:30. I said I needed until 7 so I could register for the convention and pick up some dinner to take to her house, since she and her husband Harry had just eaten at his mom's house. Unfortunately, there was nothing open within a 3-block radius of the hotel except for the hotel restaurant, and I didn't have time for that, so I was a ravenous grouchy bear when they picked me up. They drove out of their way to find something open on a Sunday evening in Rochester, and I ended up eating supermarket pizza. It was a special pizzamaking section in Trader Joe's and did not taste bad at all, especially considering it was made in a supermarket, but it wasn't something I'd go out of my way for. Oh wait, I just did.

( Pictures at Saphir and Harry's house behind the cut )

I got the latest issue of PandA magazine after handily cosolving the last one with Xemu. I am having a hard time with all but a few of the puzzles in this one and am chagrined to read foggyb's editorial note saying that the metapuzzle in the last issue was unusually easy.

If anyone in the NYNJA wants to get together to cosolve the current and/or future issues, please comment here or email me. If you hear of someone local who was looking, please clue me in on that, too.

Thanks.

PS Whether or not you read PandA, who doesn't enjoy a red panda?

Sunday started off fine. I was awake in time for shower and breakfast (oh, screw the workout), and thanks to my fantastic extravaganza team, I picked up a small crossword book for my massage therapist, who does up to Tuesday or Wednesday in the NY Times and who loved Wordplay, and later got Willz to autograph it for her.

Willz told me later that after the awards/farewell, he was talking to Ai for several minutes while a man he'd never met hung off to one side. When Willz got done, the man approached him with a stack of books to autograph. The man had heard the NPR segment about Will being in Denver, and had researched where Will would be and driven down there in a hurry. At the end of their little meet and greet, the man leaned in and whispered something in Willz's ear.

( As Willz made people guess before he said what it was, you have to guess before you click for the answer. )

I grabbed some M&M's (nice chocolate provisions in the hospitality room!) and found Wheels; we had private space in one of the many comfortable main-floor meeting rooms that tmcay arranged, and solved Trick's cryptic without too much difficulty, once we stopped worrying about directions and just started solving the gimmick-free entries.

I could see the swimming pool from my hotel window (here's a view from early Thursday morning)

and decided to take a dip. Unfortunately, all the grownups I knew at the hotel were at the trivia panel, so I just stayed long enough to salvage a few calisthenics adapted from my land-based workout.

At 5 I met IRBS at the 5th floor cocktail hour and we solved Wombat's legendary cryptic with the red, yellow, and green pencils. It was a marvel of seemingly impossible construction, and I was glad that IRBS's sharp eyes caught the hard-to-find pieces of the final answers.

Dinner was in a spacious tent behind the hotel, not quite indoors, not quite outdoors, with a view of a fake but lovely stream that was perfect for all the wedding pictures that got taken there on Saturday. After dinner, I took advantage of the soft natural light to get some pictures of Krewe.

Willz, Avidan, and Charts

( About 30 more pictures of Krewe and their evening projects, here behind the cut )

I got to the zoo early Thursday afternoon with enough time for about 2.5 hours of looking at animals before having to walk back to the car. As I hurried in, the man who took my ticket stopped me.
Man: Oh, you're alone today?
Me: Yes. (grrr)
Man: You from Denver?
Me: (smiling and moving away) New Jersey.
Man: Oh. Enjoy your visit.

And so I did.

( Cats here! Just a few pictures. Tomorrow's post, I hope, will be much longer and take us through the end of Thursday. )

Here is the other store I was talking about yesterday. Why would anyone bother to use their products? I bet the owner of the store goes to a dentist who has rotted teeth.


No time for lj-links...

Thanks very much to En for the skating book and to Cazique for picking the most interesting and comfortable Szechuan restaurant, which had plain American-style Chinese food as well as what looked like authentic Szechuan rated with one to four red peppers in the margin. I enjoyed the adventure of reading the menu even if I was too wimpy to try the four-pepper sauteed intestines. The chicken appetizer was delicious but, I think, rated more than the one pepper, so I'm glad I didn't try anything hotter. I would definitely go there again.

It was a fun time sitting with Jeffurry during David J. Kahn's puzzle talk and then going to dinner with Jeffurry/En/Cazique/Noam/Chainsaw/317537/Blackpool (new member I just met), but too late getting home and very stressful; I got home at 10-frickin-30, entered inspection reports at record speed (hope there are no embarassing errors), and still have to collect and put out the trash and do a couple other little things before bed.

New NPL member Blackpool is an entertainment lawyer who was a rookie at ACPT this year and came in 3rd in the C Division. He enjoys competitive ballroom dancing and chess tournaments. He just turned 50, is straight, unattached, and never married, and his biggest problem with finding dates is that women he knows don't like to dress up (he has been to the Grammy, Tony, and Emmy awards as well as various ballet galas) and don't like to eat red meat (ladies, he wants to find someone to share a chateaubriand steak with). I told him he has to get fixed up with someone soon so we can double date. Which is funny because I don't think I've ever owned a dress that would be worthy of an opening night gala.

Rant: I just donated $20 to Peter Gordon yesterday because of the NY Sun puzzle internet access, and now that page redirects to the NY Sun's official site, where entering "crossword" in the site search comes up with nothing found. I guess they started a subscription service? I'll check it out this weekend. I don't mind paying for the puzzles a la the NY Times diversion pages, but my timing with the donation couldn't have been worse.

CURTAILMENT (4)
TRIGRAM CURTAILMENT (6)

The recent memorial booklet to longime NPL member Twisto included an article of his from the July 1992 Enigma where he described the havoc caused upon libraries and their reference books by solvers of puzzle contests in the 1930s. He stated in it:

"In the South Hall of the New York Public Library's main reading room, along its western aisle, there is a row of dictionary stands. Attached to the third one facing south is a plasticized sign that proclaims in bold block letters: THE USE OF LIBRARY BOOKS IN CONNECTION WITH CONTESTS AND PUZZLES IS PROHIBITED."

I wasn't *too* optimistic that the sign would still be there, since Twisto mentioned that a similar sign in the North Hall had disappeared, and sure enough, no such sign. The South Room looks as though it has been refurbished in the past decade or so. Fortunately, the furniture is still made of wood, and the architectural details of the walls, etc, look like the originals or faithful-but-better-condition copies. It is all still beautiful, but not dusty, musty, or old-fashioned. A couple of hundred people were seated at the reading tables while I was there, many of them tapping away on laptops much as I am doing now.

Well, there was no sign about puzzles on the third dictionary stand facing south or any other stand. However, I did take a picture of the sign on the third table from the far end of the South Hall, which shows that (given that cellphone use is of course prohibited anywhere in a library) that pastime of tapping away on a portable computer has replaced the puzzle frenzy as the library annoyance of the century:

rpipuzzleguy wore a very cool shirt on Saturday. I count it as a sign because he's telling something about himself. (You may have to click on the picture to enlarge it in order to read it here.)

Ditto also comes with plenty of signage. The sphinx on her bag is not related to her NPL membership but to her alma mater.

treesongnpl comes with his own signs:


My favorite is this one:

These banners were hung high, curbside, along Adams Street in front of the hotel, but no one I asked, not even the concierge, knew their meaning:


( More pictures from the awards banquet behind the cut )

Minimalist signs at the Borough Hall train station near the hotel:


( Some people went up in the standings and some went down. Here are pictures from the awards ceremony: )

Haven't posted for a while...

Overwhelmed in my inspection job, where my workload increased 20% due to someone in my zone transferring out, and to a bunch of places with repeat failures requiring legal action as well as the more frequent follow-ups.

Overwhelmed in my volunteer work, where I'm now allegedly the chief fundraiser and have yet to collect a dollar, but we're working on it.

Absolutely underwhelmed in real estate, where Andrew and our partners do most of the work on our investments, and where I made less than $2000 in the past year as an agent. Even the guy I started out with (same license class in 2000) who works more than full-time hours had his worst year. We both noticed an article in the most recent agent newsletter saying there are 3x as many agents in our county now as there were when we began. Combine that with the increase in direct landlord/tenant contact on the Internet and you have a recipe for forced career change.

Had great holiday times, including our 18th wedding anniversary, the 17th annual family Xmas eve walk from Macy's to Bloomingdale's (best windows were the Broadway ones at Macy's), annual NYE fireworks courtesy of Chainsaw's family, NYD party at Squonk/Cecil's.

I've made it so far to every movie of the Woody Allen retrospective, always accompanied by some combination of Andrew, Rose, and Noam. All 4 of us had a nice Indian dinner after the movie on NYE.

I've been enjoying seeing so much of everyone, although it makes me feel very weird and antsy to not have too much alone time lately, so I will also enjoy having my own hotel room at... Mystery Hunt! The last Woody Allen movie ends at around 5:30 the day before, so I will not get there in time for Eric's pre-party, but hope to see bunches of you Friday at noon.

Finally, since thedan has been too busy to post his, I'll post my times (T=NY Times; S=NY Sun) and leave this entry public for a change:

Sat 12/30 T 12:07
Sun 12/31 T 17:14
Mon 1/1 T 3:24

Tue 1/2 T 4:17
S 5:55

Wed 1/3 T 5:11
S 6:13

Thu 1/4 T 7:34 +2wrong (39A/35D; can someone explain 35D?)
S 8:54

Fri 1/5 T 8:57
S 8:31

Sat 1/6 T 6:44 (possibly a record for me for a Saturday)