Yesterday on my way to pub trivia I almost got struck by lightning. Meaning I was walking down the street, and I saw a white flash and heard a crack, and wasn't sure for a second whether I had been struck by lightning. Bzzt.
It's insanely hot and humid here.
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The new pad is now tricked out with wireless internet. And wireless printing. And wireless playing of music from the iTunes. I'm getting microwaved as we speak. Yes, but there is air conditioning.
I also enjoy the cooking with gas, the 20 minutes of direct sunlight at 11:00 am, living near every subway line, and free exercize in the form of four flights of walk-up.
Retroactive posssssts.....
As do people who will spontaneously invite you to go at noon on a Sunday, and a train that takes you to an elevator that takes you several stories to a citadel so far north up the Hudson that there are thickly treed banks on the Jersey side and sailboats in the water - though still tenement apartment buildings below 
you on the Manhattan side. The Cloisters is a branch of the Met, constructed out of chunks of mediaeval abbeys and churches from Western Europe. It's quiet and it smells good.
Once a year at Coney Island. I was too busy sitting on a kerb eating a soft-shell crab sandwich and garlic fries to muscle my way to a good view - you know how my version of tourism is to eat my way through something - but I did see the porn star mermaid float and the Mayor of Brooklyn float and the goth mermaids and the Uncle Sam and I won't even mention how wonderfully queer it all was. Travelling in a big group meant spending a lot of time trying to hook up with each other after someone would go to get a hot dog and go missing for an hour, until eventually Suz and I decided to hit the boardwalk and the beach. I didn't have my suit but I put my feet in the water and my feet on the sand - you know how that's 80% of the beach experience for an urbanite anyway - and some guy came by selling cheap Coronas and I basked in the company of some of the people whose invitations I had been turning down for a month in favour of moving. Then I took a sunned-out, head-lolling, open-mouthed nap home on the F train. There is a fab, fab, hot, sandy beach a subway ride away. Shit.
Temporary crash pad neighbour-hood was the site of the largest urban oil spill - six million gallons more oil than the Exxon Valdez. Now moving back to the Financial District, this time even closer to Ground Zero. Because I would rather breathe my environmental toxins than drink them. Well, if it's on the 2/3 and the 4/5!
