At work

Ahhhhhh what the hell am I doing here?! And no, that is not an existential question, I really have no idea what the f%$& I'm doing here.

Oh My Gawd!

I have HAD it with the LIRR! Rather, the people who ride the LIRR, who automatically make me associate the train with a loud, obnoxious, drunken mass of people who treat the cars as their own private frat house. This has always been a problem while coming back to the Island on the 2:55 am train, but last night was the pinnacle of the rudeness and obnoxiousness that is the Ronkonkoma-bound. The shrieking, the chanting, the pounding on the windows...these are sorry excuses for human beings. Let's not forget the "ladies," who permeate the car with their "oh my gawd" accents and their loud chatter about that night's hook-up. Shut the f*&% up! And the "gentlemen" respond with their standard macho, neanderthal chest-pounding, calling the girls bitches and what-not. When I finally switched to the Long Beach train at Jamaica, it calmed down a bit. But then a baby started crying (folks, what a BABY was doing on a 3 am train is beyond my comprehension) and while at first it was almost refreshing to hear a baby after the football stadium antics to which I had just borne witness, after several howls from the little one, it was time to shut that baby up. How a person doesn't go mad on the LIRR is a mystery.

I wish I could say I am done riding the LIRR, but unfortunately I have to endure it for several months more. I think I'll be driving to the city much more...

You wanna know why Australia rocks? Because, despite living across a whole ocean and a country, their government has issued my tax refund in such a timely fashion, I'm a little embarrassed for this country. So what if they taxed me at a ridiculous 29%, I got it all back baby!

Bored

Omigod, soooooooo bored. Contemplating creating a My Space profile just to pass the freakin' time.

In memory of 9/11/01

Five years ago I was a freshman at Binghamton University, a state university in upstate New York. On the morning of 9/11, I slept late because I didn't have class until about 11am. The first thing that happened was the phone rang. My roommate answered it and, half-sleeping, I heard her say, "You have to tell her yourself." It was my sister on the phone and she was hysterical. My first thought, funny enough, was that she had just broken up with her boyfriend. Then she proceeded to tell me what had happened: that a plane had just flown into one of the twin towers. Bewildered and confused, clearly thinking it had been an accident, I replied, "But isn't it illegal to fly planes so close to tall buildings?" She explained that it was a terrorist attack--this was before the word "terrorist" had become part of everyday lexicon, at least for a 17-year-old. I had a brief moment of panic when I heard that it was the World Trade Center. "But doesn't Dad work nearby?" I remembered that his office was just around the corner. She assured me that he was probably okay, that none of the other buildings outside the Trade Center had been harmed and that they would most likely evacuate them anyway.

I wandered, bleary-eyed, throughout my dorm suite. Every television was turned to CNN. My suitemate, Daniela, was glued to the t.v. but turned to me when I appeared at her door. "Just go back to sleep so you can dream again," she said. I saw the smoke rising from one of the towers. Shortly after, it collapsed. I don't remember when the second tower was struck or where I was at the time. I was probably somewhere in the Pitts (basement floor where I resided) of Hughes Hall, trying to convince one of my suitemates and one of my floormates not to rent a car and drive down to NYC to make sure their families were okay. Possibly, I was upstairs in my friend Heather's suite, watching "Clueless" to take our minds off the mayhem that was ensuing. During the movie (it might have been the part where Cher and Christian are watching "Spartacus"), my roommate came in to tell me that my sister was on the phone again. She had been trying to get in touch with my parents all day and finally got through to my mother, who told her that my dad's office had been evacuated and he had run uptown, away from the madness, and was safe. I finally breathed.

They were holding a candlelight vigil on campus that evening and for some reason, I didn't want to go. I just wanted to go back to sleep and forget the whole thing had happened. But I couldn't go to sleep no matter how hard I tried. I finally ran out of the dorm, across campus, and joined the vigil in the Peace Quad. Some people spoke, everyone held a lighted candle, I think some people were handing out flyers for bereavement groups. I don't remember much of what was spoken, just a lot about peace and justice and what a terrible tragedy had just happened. It was altogether a bizarre and surreal day.

I just wanted to share my experience in a purely empirical way and invite others to do the same. It's sometimes comforting to hear how others experience a similar event and talk about their coping mechanisms.

New Job AND Home

I start my new job tomorrow...really looking forward to a higher balance on my statement.

We officially move out tomorrow as well...isn't there a limit to how much change a person can handle?

And on top of all the stress, tomorrow is September 11, which 5 years ago didn't mean diddly.

House

We close today and move Monday...:::sigh:::...

Beach

I finally went to the beach yesterday...it was just such a beautiful day. I had been meaning to go since I got back but just never found the opportunity, mainly because the weather has been crap. I have to admit, I felt a bit of a rush stepping onto the sand at first as I remembered all those wonderful days in Sydney spent on the beaches. But really, it wasn't as great as I expected. I mean, obviously, spending a day on the beach in your hometown is never going to be as exciting as it is in some exotic or foreign locale. When I was in Australia, I kept thinking that when I go home, I'm not going to take the beach for granted anymore, I'm going to take full advantage of my location. Of course that didn't happen because here it is, almost 5 weeks after my return, and this is the first time I found the time to go to the beach. But I think what I was really looking for when I stepped onto Lido West was Coogee or Bronte, and obviously that can't happen because those beaches are thousands of miles away. That's not to say Lido West isn't a beautiful beach, but let's face it, there's nothing like the Sydney beaches.

Partly for a sense of closure and partly because it's such an awesome book, I just finished re-reading Bill Bryson's book, "In A Sunburned Country" and want to share his closing remarks. I think they explain a lot about my feelings on leaving and for many people who leave this amazing country after visiting for a period of time:

"It seemed a particularly melancholy notion to me that life would go on in Australia and I would hear almost nothing of it.... Crocodiles would attack, bushfires would rage, ministers would depart in shame, amazing things would be found in the desert, and possibly lost again, and word of none of this would reach my ears. Life in Australia would go on, and I would hear nothing, because once you leave Australia, Australia ceases to be."

Obviously, this is a little dramatic and not entirely true--just look at the recent Steve Irwin tragedy. But I think he has a good point in that this is a country that is hardly ever on most Americans' radar. It's too bad really and as Bryson says, "the loss is entirely ours."

SHAME ON THE LONG ISLAND POWER AUTHORITY (yes, I'm shouting!)

Here follows a rather Shakespearean (in my opinion) letter my Dad wrote to LIPA. Note the wonderful sarcasm in the last line:

The power to 5 houses on Regent Drive in Lido Beach went out at approximately 3:30 PM on Saturday, 9/2/06. It is now 12:24 AM on Monday, 9/4/06, and the power has not yet been restored. LIPA crews have been out here three times, the first to look at the burning tree (the one that knocked the power out in the first place), the second time -I'm not sure what they did the second time they came out, but they sure as hell didn't restore power (then the tree crew came out to chop up the offending tree), then a third crew came out, actually there were two crews to replace a fuse in a transformer, and still, no power. If it sounds as though I'm angry, you are quite right. I just came in from driving around the area looking for a repair crew: none to be found in Long Beach, Lido Beach or Point Lookout, although your outage report shows a total of 89 current outages in this area. WHY AREN'T THEY WORKING AROUND THE CLOCK HERE TO RESTORE OUR POWER?????????

This was a minor storm by comparison to what could have been; is this what we can expect from our power utility in a major storm, weeks of no power (by extrapolation). I never thought LIPA would be able to make FPL look like super heroes; but you did it this time. So much for our northern expertise and sophistication!

Just being able to talk to a human would have helped us though what started as a minor inconvenience and evolved into a very major annoyance, making the calmest of us come to the brink of utter rage. Richard Kessel and company should hang their heads in shame for the complete bungling of this situation, which could probably have been minimized by proper monitoring of local trees, and the proper crowning and pruning instead of the butcher job I've seen your crews do.

It has now been 35 hours since I've been able to put up a pot of coffee or read my newspaper in the evening, or watch a movie on TV. I am able to write this only through the generosity of my next door neighbor, who just happened to be lucky enough to be on the other side of the utility pole.

SO KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, LIPA, AND DON'T BE TOO SURPRISED WHEN THE PUBLIC DEMANDS HEARINGS INTO YOUR TOTAL INEPTNESS IN HANDLING A STORM SO MINOR THAT IT DOESN'T EVEN RATE A CATEGORY!

Blackout!

Gotta love LIPA...apparently because there are only 3 or 4 houses on my block that are suffering a power outage, they don't seem to think it's a priority. THINK AGAIN MFs! It's going on 30 hours here with no power or hot water. Our next-door neighbors, who miraculously escaped the blackout, let us plug a super-long extension cord in one of their outlets so we can have a little piece of the electrical pie. As a result, our refrigerator and computer are running...you know, the essentials.

They're working on it right now, supposedly, and it will take "5-30 minutes." Yeah right. They were supposed to be working on it yesterday too, but first they had to clear the damn trees that caught on fire when the electrical wires snapped. Oh man, never a dull moment on Regent Drive.