I was cleaning out my computer yesterday when I came across this photo from last year. The sunny weather has inspired me to post this cheery photo of an amazing double rainbow we saw from our rooftop. It spanned from downtown Brooklyn over park slop. (these pictures – roughly composited – were taken may 05) .
Does this seem extreme to you? Or am i just a big baby?
I double park my car once a week in the CG neighborhood (along with all my neighbors). To those who are unfamiliar this mean that from 11:00-2:00 you move your car to the opposite side of the street so the cleaners can get by (blocking in the parked cars).
Today at 2:00 I round the corner to my street (and am less than 10 meters from my car) when I spy with my little eye a nasty traffic agent standing by my car. I run towards her (time is probably now 2:00 and 30 seconds) yelling “Oh don’t worry – I’m moving it right now”. She doesn’t budge “You are already in the system, I can’t delete it.”
I reply “What? It’s 2:00?”
She replies “No, It is 2:01. I gave you time. I waited for you.”
“You waited for me? You gave me TIME?!? YOU GAVE ME 60 SECONDS!!!!” I reply – thoroughly agitated.
” I waited for you.” she replies.
And I’m thinking, you evil little bottom feeding traffic shark. You waited all right. You waited for your clock to strike 2:00:01 and give me a freak’n ticket. 60 Seconds – how very generous of you!
“That’s cold” I tell her.
She prints out the $115 ticket with a time stamp of 2:02 and goes along her merry way.
Once she has left, a neighbor of mine across the street tells me that there is 5 minute grace period in New York City, and offers to be a witness should I decide to plead not guilty. (Really, what a nice guy! I love this neighborhood). Has anybody heard of this grace period before? Do I have any chance of winning a challenge to this ticket?
I have never argued against a ticket before, and normally pay right away, admitting my fault. But this, well this really pisses me off. I should get at least a 120 second benefit of the doubt on my own street.
p.s: If I had been 5 minutes late – I woulda paid without comment.
Photo care of Dan and Jen.
Immediate disclaimer: whoops — we forgot to bring the camera along. Sorry folks.
But here’s how it went. Around dinnertime we headed over to where else? The who-cares-if-it’s-Irish-or-not P.J. Hanley’s (449 Court @ 4th Place). All of Hanley’s was, as expected, packed. Line at the bar. Wait for a table. Pasty people in green looking jolly. There was no water in the glass — only Guinness. I would’ve been arrested if I ordered anything else.
Then a guy comes in with the bagpipes and 100% Celt get-up and starts to shred. Being 2/3 Scot, this makes me want to grab a claymore and/or caber and attack a 19th-century imperialist Brit…which has nothing to do with St. Patrick, but what can you do.
After a short wait, we’re seated. Hanley’s is only serving corned beef & cabbage, Irish stew (lamb, carrots, taters in a Guinness broth), some kind of fish, or cheeseburgers. Me and a pal get the stew, the mrs. orders the corned beef. It’s all very, very good. Warm in our guts.
The second course is making asses of ourselves at the always-raucous Lido Bar Friday night karaoke in Red Hook (200 Columbia St, to be exact). Needless to say, Cheap Trick, Run DMC, ELO, and others were rocked hard and enthusiastically off-key.
The predictible epilogue to this non-threatening little saga turns out to be that pleasant 24-hour diner on Smith St that I can never remember the name of. What can I say? This place does what it does well (fun fact: their burgers/fries make for a solid hangover cure). After quite the combo of blueberry pie and some onion rings, though, it was time to rest.
I recently had the pleasure of looking for some sound fx online. I came across this wonderful listing at www.flashkit.com. The cartoon sound fx category ain’t bad either.
A group of graduate students in the urban planning program at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service is conducting a survey on the Public Place Brown Lot. This project is part of the Waterfront Capstone course offered at NYU Wagner. If you are a local resident or work in the area, take the survey and let them know what you think should be done with the land.
According to myheritage.com Mary (as the bride of Frankenstein) is the 57% spitting image of James Joyce.
We’ve been a little slack in the postings lately and I can tell you my excuse is three-part: 1 part work, 1 part non-blog hobbies, and 1 part glorious TV. By TV I mean the pseudo-edutainment reality-style programming of TLC, Discovery, HGTV and A&E.
In recent months I have glommed onto the numerous house flipping shows such as “Flip THIS House”, “Flip THAT House”, “Property Ladder”, “House Hunters” (both US and BBC), “Curb Appeal” , etc.
But all these home shows (lightly interspersed with Project Runway, The Dog Whisperer, and Miami Ink) are soon to be overshadowed by one potentially awesome (or potentially awful) show — AMERICAN INVENTOR! I’m really getting my hopes up for this one.
I’m picturing a bunch of Dick Van Dyke-esque, charming, American eccentric nut-jobs toiling away in basements across the country. What sort of strange and wonderful oddities will they be revealing to us? A better boiled egg timer-thing-a-ma-jig? A way to train my cat to stop waking me up in the morning? A thin, imperceptible sunscreen dispenser that can be screwed onto the shower nozzle and applied IN the shower (one of my personal ideas, sure to be a big hit in 2040)?
I’ll be tuning in Thursday, March 16 at 8/7c for the Season Premier on ABC to see if this show can live up to it’s Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang-Dad-From-Gremlins-Data-From-Goonies potential.
You are currently browsing the 423smith: hijinx from Carroll Gardens weblog archives for March, 2006.
