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shadowkatJust had the oddest experience on the way back from the pharmacy and fruit & vegetable market. I'd walked to the pharmacy and fruit and vegetable market after work - to pick up a few things. It's about 100 degrees outside, so was wearing some lavender pink sandals that I'd bought from Ryka.
On the way back, carrying three shopping bags and my purse across my chest - half way into my building, almost to the foyer - this kid pulled up beside me walking his bike. The bike was dirty, with wide tire treads, and red.
He was short - came to about my shoulder, dark-skinned, and spoke with an accent. My guess, Bengali or Pakistani. In his twenties, maybe younger.
Just as I'm opening the door of my building he pulls up next to me.
Kid: Excuse me, can you tell me where the subway is?
Me: Well it's not in this direction. It's the opposite direction, around the block and next to the Wallgreens.
I open the door and proceed into the foyer of the building - this is where all the door buzzers are.
Kid: Excuse me, I really like your shoes.
Me: Uhm, thank you.
Kid: Where'd you get them?
ME: Ryka - it's online.
Kid: Would you mind if I took a picture?
(I've begun to open the second pair of heavy glass doors and am halfway through, looking at him. He's pulled up on the opposite side of me, near the wall. I am three twice his size - in height and weight. Bengali and Pakistani men in my area are tiny. Actually most of the men in my area are tiny. To be this in perspective? I am 6 feet tall, over 200 pounds, some of that muscle, big boned, and this guy was 5'6, and maybe 100 pounds.)
Me: You want to take a picture of my shoes?
Kid: Yeah.
Me: Okay. (I stick my feet out, and he tries with his phone, which looks like a scanner.)
Kid: Would you mind maybe taking them off?
Me: You want me to take off my shoes?
Kid: Yes to get a picture of them?
Me: I'm not taking my shoes off for you. (I am carrying three bags, one is heavy with a pickle jar, and drinks in it. Plus my satchel/purse, and holding the door open.)
Kid: Oh, sorry, sorry, of course. Could I see the bottom?
Me: You know you can just google it online. Also these are women's shoes.
(I show him the bottom.)
Kid: I know, I want to buy a pair for a friend of mine. What size are they?
ME: 11.
Kid: Can I measure them? (He takes out a tape measure.)
Me: Uhm, no - this is getting a bit personal here. I'm not letting you measure my shoes - if you want them, google them on Ryka (R Y K A) and look it up yourself. Goodbye.
I go through the door, and make sure it shuts behind me. He didn't follow me through. And turn back to look at him. Others pass by him. He looks at the names on the wall with the buzzers then leaves the building while I get my mail, slightly unnerved.
I call mother and tell her the story.
Me: So, I think the kid was trying to steal my shoes off my feet. It was weird, and kind of unnerving.
Mother:He expected you to hand them to him to look at - and then he'd just ride off with them? That's the weirdest conversation. You should write that down somewhere.
Me: Oh I definitely will.
Mother: For later reference. Kind of a New York Story.
I'm not dumb enough to take my shoes off. The kid wasn't wearing a mask. And I realized halfway through that he was probably playing me. Although its hard to know for certain. NY is like that. He might have been planning on grabbing the shoes and riding off with them - although good luck with that - we were in a small confined space and I had the advantage.
Crime has risen across the city since the pandemic hit. Wallgreens is locking up more and more items - making it harder and harder to shop there - without constantly hunting down a store clerk to unlock stuff for you.
***
Crazy workplace felt the need to reassure us that nothing had changed since the Governor resigned. Except, it does mean that his so-called "cabal" is leaving, and he's not going to be micro-managing us any longer. The Lt. Governor is more moderate and less into micromanaging. The focus of the agency may shift from big shiny politically driven projects to maintenance and ridership. We'll see.
I was working remotely today. Which was a good thing with all the teams meetings. I do them on my phone now - not the computer - because they can often crash the computer and if I do it on my phone, I can do both at the same time. Almost didn't get into the staff meeting. Both meetings annoyed me for different reasons. I'd put stuff on the G drive, set up a file folder, etc. But BYT told me that it needed to be protected, because someone could hack into it and get financial records. Except I'd already put everything up there a long time ago - when they first told me to copy all my stuff onto the G drive.
I told this to mother.
Mother: So they asked you to put stuff on the G drive then told you to take it off?
Me: No, they said put it on, and that we should be working off of the G drive only, then much later said no, wait, don't do that, it's not protected, but wait don't take it off either. Frigging make up their minds.
Mother: Kind of late to shut the barn door now. The horses have already left.
Me: I have particular management who can't make up their bleeding minds.
Mother: You feel like you are trying to throw jello at a wall to get it to stick?
ME: No, it's worse than that - I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall and not getting anywhere.
Meanwhile BYT Manager keeps coming up with ways to remove my work - granted it's work assignments I do not want. And as long as she replaces them with ones that I do want, we should be fine. I have a feeling I'm going to inherit other people's work and be doing lots of change orders.
By the end of two meetings with managers, I told mother that I wanted to throw the lot of them off the proverbial cliff. They come up these ideas and procedures - then about a month later change their minds, then change them again. An insurance guy I was talking to today vented that our insurance department had changes their procedures twenty times. (I told him it was actually more than that, and they'd been doing it at least twice a year since I started.)
I don't know why government agencies appear to attract indecisive egotists, but they do. Cubical mate opined the other day that he'd never seen an organization that had more people who got full of themselves just because they had a title.
**
Father is doing better, or okay. But they asked mother today if she wanted a psychiatrist to evaluate him. Mother and I agreed there's no real point. He has Alzheimers - which is a degenerative brain disease, not biochemical or a mental illness. There's no cure or anything you can really do about it or fix it. You can't throw drugs at it - if anything that makes it worse.
**
Folks are wearing masks more in the neighborhood. Most likely due to the Delta Variant, also saw a bunch of people waiting at the pharmacy for a COVID vaccine.
I checked the COVID MAP OF DOOM, which has been updated again. Now it shows the number of cases in the last 28 days. Also, oh lord, Indonesia.
Here's the top ones:
Cases | Deaths by Country/Region/Sovereignty
US
28-Day: 2,139,617 (cases) | 10,456 (deaths)
Totals: 36,166,524( cases) | 618,807 (deaths)
Indonesia
28-Day: 1,103,292 (cases) | 42,400 (deaths)
Totals: 3,749,446 | 112,198
India
28-Day: 1,090,364 (cases) | 17,773 (deaths)
Totals: 32,036,511 | 429,179
Brazil
28-Day: 1,060,649 (cases) | 28,935 (deaths)
Totals: 20,245,085 | 565,748
United Kingdom
28-Day: 936,170 (cases) | 2,066 (deaths)
Totals: 6,175,919 | 130,917
Well, that's depressing.
**
Britain’s low death toll is a lesson about the benefits of extraordinarily high vaccination coverage in older and more vulnerable people. Britain didn’t wait for those people to show up at vaccine sites. It mobilized an army of primary care doctors to make sure they all came in for their shots — and almost all of them did. Britain also tested its way extremely aggressively through this crisis. To this day, anyone can order packages of free, at-home rapid tests. They’ve become part of people’s routines and helped them catch cases before any symptoms appeared.
Per NY Times briefing.
Yet another thunderstorm. No wonder I've been irritable these last few nights. My body and thunderstorms are unmixy things. Good news? At least I don't have the headaches any longer. Also, there was a small brown garden spider in my bathroom that I'd been watching. Last night it hid behind the a scrap of paint hanging down from the ceiling. Tonight, it has disappeared.
The thunderstorm has become intense, with intense down pours, I can almost smell the warm rain blasting the windows, and see the tree branches whipping about outside, with flashes of lightening. It's pattering on the A/C, and on the window panes. Half expect it to find its way inside.
On the way back, carrying three shopping bags and my purse across my chest - half way into my building, almost to the foyer - this kid pulled up beside me walking his bike. The bike was dirty, with wide tire treads, and red.
He was short - came to about my shoulder, dark-skinned, and spoke with an accent. My guess, Bengali or Pakistani. In his twenties, maybe younger.
Just as I'm opening the door of my building he pulls up next to me.
Kid: Excuse me, can you tell me where the subway is?
Me: Well it's not in this direction. It's the opposite direction, around the block and next to the Wallgreens.
I open the door and proceed into the foyer of the building - this is where all the door buzzers are.
Kid: Excuse me, I really like your shoes.
Me: Uhm, thank you.
Kid: Where'd you get them?
ME: Ryka - it's online.
Kid: Would you mind if I took a picture?
(I've begun to open the second pair of heavy glass doors and am halfway through, looking at him. He's pulled up on the opposite side of me, near the wall. I am three twice his size - in height and weight. Bengali and Pakistani men in my area are tiny. Actually most of the men in my area are tiny. To be this in perspective? I am 6 feet tall, over 200 pounds, some of that muscle, big boned, and this guy was 5'6, and maybe 100 pounds.)
Me: You want to take a picture of my shoes?
Kid: Yeah.
Me: Okay. (I stick my feet out, and he tries with his phone, which looks like a scanner.)
Kid: Would you mind maybe taking them off?
Me: You want me to take off my shoes?
Kid: Yes to get a picture of them?
Me: I'm not taking my shoes off for you. (I am carrying three bags, one is heavy with a pickle jar, and drinks in it. Plus my satchel/purse, and holding the door open.)
Kid: Oh, sorry, sorry, of course. Could I see the bottom?
Me: You know you can just google it online. Also these are women's shoes.
(I show him the bottom.)
Kid: I know, I want to buy a pair for a friend of mine. What size are they?
ME: 11.
Kid: Can I measure them? (He takes out a tape measure.)
Me: Uhm, no - this is getting a bit personal here. I'm not letting you measure my shoes - if you want them, google them on Ryka (R Y K A) and look it up yourself. Goodbye.
I go through the door, and make sure it shuts behind me. He didn't follow me through. And turn back to look at him. Others pass by him. He looks at the names on the wall with the buzzers then leaves the building while I get my mail, slightly unnerved.
I call mother and tell her the story.
Me: So, I think the kid was trying to steal my shoes off my feet. It was weird, and kind of unnerving.
Mother:He expected you to hand them to him to look at - and then he'd just ride off with them? That's the weirdest conversation. You should write that down somewhere.
Me: Oh I definitely will.
Mother: For later reference. Kind of a New York Story.
I'm not dumb enough to take my shoes off. The kid wasn't wearing a mask. And I realized halfway through that he was probably playing me. Although its hard to know for certain. NY is like that. He might have been planning on grabbing the shoes and riding off with them - although good luck with that - we were in a small confined space and I had the advantage.
Crime has risen across the city since the pandemic hit. Wallgreens is locking up more and more items - making it harder and harder to shop there - without constantly hunting down a store clerk to unlock stuff for you.
***
Crazy workplace felt the need to reassure us that nothing had changed since the Governor resigned. Except, it does mean that his so-called "cabal" is leaving, and he's not going to be micro-managing us any longer. The Lt. Governor is more moderate and less into micromanaging. The focus of the agency may shift from big shiny politically driven projects to maintenance and ridership. We'll see.
I was working remotely today. Which was a good thing with all the teams meetings. I do them on my phone now - not the computer - because they can often crash the computer and if I do it on my phone, I can do both at the same time. Almost didn't get into the staff meeting. Both meetings annoyed me for different reasons. I'd put stuff on the G drive, set up a file folder, etc. But BYT told me that it needed to be protected, because someone could hack into it and get financial records. Except I'd already put everything up there a long time ago - when they first told me to copy all my stuff onto the G drive.
I told this to mother.
Mother: So they asked you to put stuff on the G drive then told you to take it off?
Me: No, they said put it on, and that we should be working off of the G drive only, then much later said no, wait, don't do that, it's not protected, but wait don't take it off either. Frigging make up their minds.
Mother: Kind of late to shut the barn door now. The horses have already left.
Me: I have particular management who can't make up their bleeding minds.
Mother: You feel like you are trying to throw jello at a wall to get it to stick?
ME: No, it's worse than that - I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall and not getting anywhere.
Meanwhile BYT Manager keeps coming up with ways to remove my work - granted it's work assignments I do not want. And as long as she replaces them with ones that I do want, we should be fine. I have a feeling I'm going to inherit other people's work and be doing lots of change orders.
By the end of two meetings with managers, I told mother that I wanted to throw the lot of them off the proverbial cliff. They come up these ideas and procedures - then about a month later change their minds, then change them again. An insurance guy I was talking to today vented that our insurance department had changes their procedures twenty times. (I told him it was actually more than that, and they'd been doing it at least twice a year since I started.)
I don't know why government agencies appear to attract indecisive egotists, but they do. Cubical mate opined the other day that he'd never seen an organization that had more people who got full of themselves just because they had a title.
**
Father is doing better, or okay. But they asked mother today if she wanted a psychiatrist to evaluate him. Mother and I agreed there's no real point. He has Alzheimers - which is a degenerative brain disease, not biochemical or a mental illness. There's no cure or anything you can really do about it or fix it. You can't throw drugs at it - if anything that makes it worse.
**
Folks are wearing masks more in the neighborhood. Most likely due to the Delta Variant, also saw a bunch of people waiting at the pharmacy for a COVID vaccine.
I checked the COVID MAP OF DOOM, which has been updated again. Now it shows the number of cases in the last 28 days. Also, oh lord, Indonesia.
Here's the top ones:
Cases | Deaths by Country/Region/Sovereignty
US
28-Day: 2,139,617 (cases) | 10,456 (deaths)
Totals: 36,166,524( cases) | 618,807 (deaths)
Indonesia
28-Day: 1,103,292 (cases) | 42,400 (deaths)
Totals: 3,749,446 | 112,198
India
28-Day: 1,090,364 (cases) | 17,773 (deaths)
Totals: 32,036,511 | 429,179
Brazil
28-Day: 1,060,649 (cases) | 28,935 (deaths)
Totals: 20,245,085 | 565,748
United Kingdom
28-Day: 936,170 (cases) | 2,066 (deaths)
Totals: 6,175,919 | 130,917
Well, that's depressing.
**
Britain’s low death toll is a lesson about the benefits of extraordinarily high vaccination coverage in older and more vulnerable people. Britain didn’t wait for those people to show up at vaccine sites. It mobilized an army of primary care doctors to make sure they all came in for their shots — and almost all of them did. Britain also tested its way extremely aggressively through this crisis. To this day, anyone can order packages of free, at-home rapid tests. They’ve become part of people’s routines and helped them catch cases before any symptoms appeared.
Per NY Times briefing.
Yet another thunderstorm. No wonder I've been irritable these last few nights. My body and thunderstorms are unmixy things. Good news? At least I don't have the headaches any longer. Also, there was a small brown garden spider in my bathroom that I'd been watching. Last night it hid behind the a scrap of paint hanging down from the ceiling. Tonight, it has disappeared.
The thunderstorm has become intense, with intense down pours, I can almost smell the warm rain blasting the windows, and see the tree branches whipping about outside, with flashes of lightening. It's pattering on the A/C, and on the window panes. Half expect it to find its way inside.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 04:42 am (UTC)ME: No, it's worse than that - I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall and not getting anywhere.
This line, which I'm fairly sure came from an old Dilbert cartoon, is a favorite of mine re: frustration at trying to get things done...
"Do you ever feel like you're wallpapering fog?"
*******
Yeah, almost a certainty the kid was trying to steal your shoes. Asking you to take them off was clue one, but the clincher to me was asking to measure them. Yeeeeaaaah, no.
*******
Strange inadvertent association moment earlier today. This classic old Dire Straits tune came over the radio, and for some reason the lyric...
A ladykiller, regulation tattoo / Silver spurs on his heels
Says "What can I tell you, as I'm standing next to you"
She threw herself under my wheels
... made me think of your now ex-governor. In the paper today, he was quoted as saying (I'm paraphrasing) that he never meant any real harm, his behavior was part of his personality, and the time and culture he grew up in. He apologized, saying he's realized that things are different now, and that he has to change.
The Straits tune is, of course, about a private detective, or possibly just a man searching for something he can no longer have. Very noir. Here's the entire lyrics:
There's gotta be a record of you someplace
You gotta be on somebody's books
The lowdown, a picture of your face
Your injured looks
The sacred and profane
The pleasure and the pain
Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
And it's your face I'm looking for on every street
A ladykiller, regulation tattoo
Silver spurs on his heels
Says "What can I tell you, as I'm standing next to you"
She threw herself under my wheels
Oh, it's a dangerous road and a hazardous load
And the fireworks over liberty explode in the heat
And it's your face I'm looking for on every street
A three-chord symphony crashes into space
The moon is hanging upside down
I don't know why it is I'm still on the case
It's a ravenous town
And you still refuse to be traced
Seems to me such a waste
And every victory has a taste that's bittersweet
And it's your face I'm looking for on every street
Yeah, it's your face I'm looking for on every street
-- Mark Knopfler
People's brains often do tend to become very hardwired after early adulthood, and can't always see the need to adapt to change even if it's all but staring them in the face. And one can be basically a decent, reasonably moral person and still do stupid things.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 01:44 pm (UTC)Also he thought he could take them off my feet, but they were fastened tightly in two places and I've got big feet. I'm going back to wearing the beaten up ones for a bit. Good news is I live in a 77 unit apartment building, no balcony's, and fire escape is in an inside court yard, and I'm on the third floor. I'm hard to find inside the building. And we've got security cameras inside the lobby and in the foyer.
**
"Do you ever feel like you're wallpapering fog?"
That's actually a great description. Very similar to my Dad's "nailing jello to a wall".
**
People's brains often do tend to become very hardwired after early adulthood, and can't always see the need to adapt to change even if it's all but staring them in the face. And one can be basically a decent, reasonably moral person and still do stupid things.
So, I've been watching The Morning Show on Apple TV this week - and there's this great conversation between Mitch (Steve Carroll) and a disgraced Hollywood Director (Martin Short). Mitch has just been fired from the Morning Show for sexual harassment and predatory behavior. (He's basically Matt Lauher from The Today Show complete with the button that automatically closes and locks his office door - which was several years earlier). Anyhow, in the conversation, he's stating how he didn't do anything - it was consensual, etc, but the Director starts saying things that turn his stomach. They talk about how maybe they should do a documentary and Short states how their accusers should be interviewed - so they can show in a kind of Gotcha moment that the accusers are playing victims, which horrifies Mitch. "Like," states Short, "how was I supposed to know you were only 15? When you come across as a disgruntled dried out old lady." Mitch visibly cringes. And in the course of the conversation it begins to dawn on Mitch that perhaps his actions aren't as innocent as he thought. He thinks he's better than Short, but as Short points out - they've done the same things, and abused their power in similar ways.
It's a great scene - because it takes you inside the point of view of someone like Cuomo.
I honestly don't think Cuomo realizes this type of behavior was never okay. His father did it. He saw others do it. Also he's an egoist, with a huge ego, and folks with huge egos tend to be narcissistic. Also our society rewards narcissism. It gives folks awards for being the greatest or the best at something or other, even makes up awards - and narcissists need them to thrive. A narcissistic society tends to have a lot of awards and acknowledgements.
Cuomo got an award for his live briefings. He got a 15 million dollar advance for his book on handling the pandemic (which he illegally used government resources to write). He created a poster, featuring himself and his daughters and dog showing NY's win over the pandemic in June 2020. Every briefing since June 2020, he patted himself on the back.
But at the same time he's done a lot of good things. People are more than one thing. And capable of doing horrible and wonderful things - often at the same time. It's why it is so confusing. Be easier if they were straight up evil. (Although I truly believe Trump is straight up evil.)
no subject
Date: 2021-08-13 03:45 am (UTC)Well, one can be a narcissist without being evil, but when you add the deeply sociopathic aspect that the man possesses, then indeed that makes for a pretty good description of evil.
On a lighter note... found it! I was right, it was an older Dilbert cartoon. Don't have the exact date of publication, but it was sometime in 2009, when I posted this on Toon of the Day back on LJ. Here 'tis:
Heee... :-)
no subject
Date: 2021-08-14 12:59 am (UTC)And the 50 somethings reaction to their vents today..."Eh, I don't get that invested." LOL!
no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 08:52 am (UTC)I think I posted about being texted by my general practice and being given sites to go to and the only issue being when they actually had open slots at the one I can easily walk to (which I had to wait for).
no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 09:11 pm (UTC)But that is not true of everyone. My brother and his family - went to pharmacies to get it. A friend signed up via the state site and got it in the city. My parents retirement facility took care of them. It depended on where you live, and where you worked, etc over here.
I think Britain benefits from a more consistent approach across the board - which is also easier to accomplish with a smaller population and area of land. But even there - I know of smaller countries that kind of screwed up, and larger countries that were more successful. It's hard to see a discernible pattern.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 09:13 pm (UTC)But weird story about India. That's a lot of work - to take photos of random strangers and do photo shop with naked photos. What's the intent? Blackmail?
no subject
Date: 2021-08-13 07:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-13 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-13 02:21 am (UTC)