There was a note in the elevator when I came home this evening that reminded me of Friday. It was an unusual day in that in that there were several instances of thunder and lightning. The first woke me at 2:29 a.m. A really loud clap of thunder woke me for good several hours later. As I was putting my shoes on to leave for work the skies opened up and I decided I would take the nine o'clock bus to work.
The weather was pleasant enough that evening that I walked from the bus stop at 118th St. to 72nd, stopping every once in a while to do a bit of shopping.
I don't know if it was the recent warm spell, or knowing that cooler weather was on the way, but this past weekend was the weekend of long walks. A Saturday shopping trip took me all the way downtown. I walked from City Hall to the East River then up under the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges before turning inland and grabbing a train at the 2nd Avenue F/V station.
Maybe I was overly tired but the train ride was confusing! The F train was waiting so I jumped on. As sometimes happens at that station the train just sat there so I eagerly ran across the platform when the V arrived. Only it wasn't a V train it was a C train. The good news was that meant I didn't have to switch trains, as the C goes to 116th Street. The bad news was the C doesn't run on the V line. I figured that problem would eventually sort itself out. The train did run express on the local tracks, which caused the conductor to announce "if you missed any of the local stops you're going to have to take the downtown train from here. Sorry about that." as we pulled into 34th Street.
At 42nd St. the conductor announced the next stop would be 59th St.
At 47-50 Rockefeller Center the conductor announced the next stop would be 59th St.
At. 7th Avenue the conductor announced the next stop would be 59th St.
The next stop was 59th St.
We then made all the proper local stops before arriving at 116th.
Sunday was another nice day so I combined birthday shopping with a long walk. Until I got off at 34th Street, the C train made all the stops it was supposed to make and none that it shouldn't. That was a good sign! My plan was to walk uptown along 9th Avenue, do my shopping, and hop on a train when I got tired.
I found a birthday gift at Delphinium Home. I would not normally shop there, it's out of the way and a bit too much for my taste, except that the first time I came across it I was looking for a girly present for someone (someone who thinks I am going straight to hell no less). The store was cute and looked like it held suitably girly stuff so I walked in out of curiosity. As I opened the door Julianne Moore walked out.
You know there's nothing quite like a gratuitous celebrity sighting to perk up a reader's interest in a long story. Anyway, thirty blocks uptown from Delphinium my energy is beginning to flag. Somehow I have the strength to summon up a brilliant idea! Not only is the idea brilliant but it includes the possibility of a gratuitous celebrity look-alike sighting.
The new Jacques Torres chocolate shop is only a couple blocks away. I'll stop in and get a chocolate chip cookie. To my disappointment the woman who sort of looks like Cynthia Nixon isn't working. The cookie, while delicious, is a big mess. They keep them warm so the chocolate is half-melted, and the cookie itself is mostly chocolate held together by the smallest amount of dough possible.
Back on Amsterdam, I'm happily struggling with the messy cookie. Around 80th Street I see the shadow of the water tank against the construction netting and think that it would make a nice picture.
Fifteen blocks later I'm closing in on 96th Street. I've walked nearly four miles and it's another mile-and-a-half if I don't take the subway. Boarding the 2 the elderly woman I sit down across from gives me a big smile. I get to my building, notice that one of our elevators is out of order, go up to my apartment and wash up so I can make dinner.
That's when I see why the woman on the train smiled at me. The chocolate from Jacque Torres' messy chocolate chip cookie is smeared over a good third of my chin. Nice. Thanks smiling train lady and the dozens of Upper West Siders who saw me and said nothing.
This evening I got home, gathered the mail (the 1040 form arrived!), noticed one of the elevators was still out and went up to my apartment.
The speed of sound in air and the speed of light differ such that you can estimate how far away a thunderstorm is by counting the seconds between when lightning flashes and when you hear thunder. If there is a five second difference between flash and crash the lightning is about a mile away. A one second difference means the lightning hit about a thousand feet away.
One clap of thunder on Friday was loud and happened simultaneously with the lightning. What the lightning hit was the water tank on top of our building, six stories above my apartment. The bolt of electricity found its way to ground by zapping a piece of elevator equipment. No serious damage other than the fried elevator part.
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