Saturday 08th 2006f July 2006

Summer Rain

Permanent Link
A , posted by Anthony in the early afternoon.

I’ll be back in Dublin for a week in the beginning of August, to help my parents throw away all my stuff before they move into their new house. It’ll be temporarily quieter in work at that point so I’ve essentially been ordered to take a week of my vacation time while I can. My parents had been agitating for me to go over, even offering to pay for my ticket, so that’s all worked out. This will be the first time I’ve seen Dublin in the summer since 2003. It’ll probably be raining.

Not that it hasn’t been raining here. On Wednesday morning I was caught in something of a downpour. I was out near Prospect Park in Brooklyn trying to get into work. Obviously, I don’t actually live there. I had spent the night in my boss Eli’s spare room.

Eli is the person I’ve seen more often than any other recently. In addition to working together, we’ve been hanging out fairly often, along with Ian and his wife Jackie. That wedding was excellent – almost as good as the bachelor party. It took place in Westchester, in the garden of Ian’s Uncle’s giant mansion. It was raining, but there was a tent, and if it hadn’t been it would have been unbearably hot. Particularly in a suit. As happens at weddings, I danced. I’m terrified that there are photographs. They’re back from their honeymoon tomorrow, I believe. Jamaica.

This weekend just gone was, of course, the weekend of July 4th – Independence Day here in the US of A. Beautifully, July 4th was a Tuesday so we had a four day weekend – positively unheard of. On Friday night I went out to Brooklyn to meet up with Maeve, her fiancee Jordan and her friend Kat. We had been intending to see an open air gig, but the sky was threatening so we bailed and just went drinking. I ended up on Maeve and Jordan’s sofa that night. The trek from Prospect Park to Harlem is not one lightly undertaken late at night while drunk.

How much more so the journey from Red Hook to Harlem. Quite an odyssey even in broad daylight in a state of complete sobriety. That’s where I went to watch the fireworks.

On Monday I went into work to pick up my gym gear. I’d left it there rather than trek it out to Brooklyn on Friday. Eli was there (not surprisingly, even though it was a day off). I went for a workout (so, so boring) and then met Eli for a drink. We had a few and completely failed to go to a gig in Manhattan that his friends band was playing. It finished at 9pm rather than starting then – an important distinction. Missing gigs and drinking was really the motif of the weekend.

We agreed to meet up to watch the fireworks. Maeve had suggested I join her and a few of her friends on a pier in Red Hook to see them, and Eli was agreeable to this. He had in fact worked with Maeve many years before – New York is pretty small. In the event he mostly missed them. He and his girlfriend Liz had a hard time finding the place. They ended up at the wrong pier standing beside a huge pile of smelly garbage. I don’t think they stuck it long. The fireworks were great. I didn’t take this video.

From where we were standing we could see the display on the East River as well as the simultaneous, synchronized one by Staten Island. We had only to turn our heads to see the same thing from a different angle, which was nice. We met up with Eli and Liz in a nearby bar later. As there was work the next day it soon became obvious that I wasn’t going to make it home. Eli offerd to put me up and that’s how the next morning I ended up almost stranded in a flood with him in Brooklyn rather than safe on the relatively high ground of Harlem. Athough this did happen just a few blocks away, so maybe Brooklyn isn’t so bad.

I haven’t been to see a movie in ages. I used to go on my own all the time, but then I got into the habit of going with certain other people. And now for one reason or another I don’t go with those people anymore, so I don’t go. But this will change, I’m sure. If Superman or Pirates of the Caribbean don’t tempt me out, the A Scanner Darkly certainly will. That’s one of my favourite books. And how good was the last episode of Doctor Who? I can’t wait for the next one. Rose can’t die! I mean, literally – she’s narrating.

I’m thinking about starting to control comments more tightly. Recently they seem to have gotten a little – off colour. I’ve had comments issues before but I chose to deal with them by means other than brute deletion. I’ve never actually deleted a comment except at the request of the commenter, and I’ve only edited when a bit of non-standard punctuation has gotten into the Textile filter and screws up the formatting. This may change. So tone it down, people. And by “people” I mean Dean and Daragh. This is not a challenge.

Elenamary, you I don’t mind so much.

Back to Top