washout!

so, you may have heard that there was a tornado in brooklyn.

a. tornado.

i woke up yesterday to the sounds of bright thunder and torrential rain; as these are some of my favorite background sounds for sleeping, i paid them no mind, except to sigh a little and snuggle deeper into my covers. oh, the folly! the folly!

when the time came to stagger my sleepy way to work, i arrived on the F platform to discover the mass of humanity packed six deep, and the train on the track standing sheepishly with its doors akimbo, clearly without any intent to get moving. i stood there for ten minutes before i determined i'd had enough of that particular circle of my personal hell, whereupon i decided to make the hike to the Q train, at the north end of the slope.

now, not to be melodramatic, but the scene that flowed across the twenty blocks i had to traverse was not entirely unlike what i remember from the great blackout of 2003, only with the prospect of air conditioning: strangers were talking to each other, asking questions, helping each other out, sharing cabs, all that kind of stuff. if it hadn't been a billion degrees, and i weren't staring down the barrel of at least an hour's worth of tardiness, i think my heart would have been warmed.

anyway. i arrive at the Q only to discover that it has drowned in the rain, as has the 2/3 and the 4/5. it is at this point that i call into the office to inform them that there are no train-oriented routes out of brooklyn; it is also at this point that they tell me to just get a damn taxi and charge it to the company, already. and much as i was secretly hoping they'd just tell me to take the day, making what was doomed to be a hellish commute in air-conditioned luxury was a perfectly acceptable compromise.

i mean, as acceptable as a 3.5 hour trek can be.

mercifully, the day swung up from there: though work seemed to take forever and ever, i did end the day with a musical revue, a contortion act, bourbon, and a really fun card game.

and no further emails, which is always a good thing.