sunday night at JFK and the flight, naturally, is delayed. something about airports sends all my best intentions straight down the toilet, so i say the hell with going vegetarian and walk over to NY Deli thinking about a pastrami sandwich. it’s not that kind of place, but they do have one of those great rolling steel cylinder hot dog grills and the dogs look good so i order one with mustard. the girl doesn’t take it off the grill for me, though, no sir — i get one already handily packaged in a little hot-dog-shaped styrofoam coffin. styrofoam! evil, non-recyclable planet-killing styrofoam! “we don’t put the mustard on,” she says, and rings me up.
i pay and then, as thousands, tens of thousands, twenties of thousands of people before me have done, i walk two feet to the condiment counter, open a metallicized packet of gulden’s brown mustard with my teeth, season the dog, and throw both the styro and the packet in the trash.
tens of twenties of thousands of hundreds of millions of useless and unnecessary styrofoam coffins and packets of gulden’s straight down the tubes, straight into the earth’s strangling gullet.
well, i’ve still got a flight to catch. no children aboard, thank god, and only an hour of fretting on the runway. friendly but not overfriendly seatmate. ok.
what with my winter cold, i need a lot of water in addition to hall’s lozenges to keep the coughing down to some sort of a civil level, though really on an airplane any coughing at all is uncivil. the flight attendant hands me a new plastic cup for every refill, simply ignoring the cup i wave at her over my seatmate’s head. by the end of the flight i’ve got a little tower of empty, cold-contaminated plastic disposables on my tray table.
in san francisco carousel 14 is announced for our baggage, and some of it comes, and then a surprise load is dumped on carousel 15 and everybody’s scrambling back and forth. after a long time, both carousels stop turning. the dozen of us still waiting bagless at the rims head sadly for baggage claims. there’s a sign on the glass wall that says they’re open until 1 and i am filled with dread for a moment before remembering that it’s only 1AM at home and i am not at home (i am DECIDEDLY not at home) i am in california. it’s just something after midnight here. i wait my turn on line, fill out the forms, and as soon as i’m finished, the bag has been found. thank you, saint of lost things, whoever you are.
budget rent-a-car is closed, but the clerk at their express kiosk is willing to do me a “favor” and honor my reservation. lucky me. i ask for a GPS. knowing i’ll need one to find the corporate apartment in santa clara. i’m staying there, rather than in a hotel, to save my company a few bucks. and i think it might be nicer than a hotel anyway.
i left home at 3-o-clock on sunday afternoon. eastern time. i’m getting a little punchy. the GPS sounds like she has an attitude, ordering me to bear left and so forth. but she does get me here efficiently.
there are a full page of instructions on how to break into this place in the middle of the night. first, a code for the gate. there are several sets of gates, though, and not all of them are ready to accept codes. it’s raining, and i don’t know how to turn on the interior lights of the rental car, so i have to hold the door open, getting all rained on my thigh, in order to read. i repeat this a few times until i find the right gate.
now for parking space 145. there are spaces. there are no numbers. i back, i forth, i peer. i curse. the GPS keeps insisting that we must turn right on montague and i can’t figure out how to shut her off. i park in front of the building i’m assigned, vowing to rip the face off any tow-truck driver who comes to confiscate my car. now to find the apartment. door open, rain dutifully soaking the sweatpants, i read about how to open the lockbox where the keys are stored. i’ve been awake nearly 24 hours. turn right on montague!
the lockbox is attached to the door of the apartment which, i am shocked to discover, is a four-floor walkup. okay, i’m a new yorker, i can handle walkups. what i can’t do is read the numbers on the goddam lockbox in the rain in the middle of the night with my half-century-old eyeballs. back down four flights, get the reading glasses, turn right on montague.
1AM pacific time i am on my knees in the rain striking clumps of matches and trying to decipher the microscopic numbers etched, not printed, on the silver lockbox cylinder. it takes a long time. it takes a really, really long time and i am hating california more than i have ever hated her before.
the thing finally opens and i make two trips down and up the four flights, shlepping crap from the car, GPS still shouting its single, lunatic instruction.
anyway.
the place looks like a dentist office, all cream and beige and muted and strategic. it’s so cold inside my teeth chatter, though of course that could have something to do with donating my left leg to the rain gods in order to read. i turn up the thermostat and notice that i must “do my part” by lowering the temp to 55 during the day.
i wonder if the amount of energy saved by turning down the thermostat for one day equals the amount of energy wasted by a single styrofoam hotdog coffin and its matching metallicized packet of gulden’s, but i’m too tired to figure it out, and fall asleep listening to the GPS’ montague serenade. by the time i wake up, her battery is dead.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Now *that’s* what I’m talkin’ about.
This is lol funny! Welcome to Cali.
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