I usually take the E one stop from 23rd St./Ely Ave to 53rd and Lex; this morning, I took the 7 to Grand Central. A very crowded train. A lady with shoulders like I-95 tried to push me off as I got on, saying, "Stop it! Stop it!"

"Stop what?" I asked. "There's no room," she said.

"There was room before; three people got off, and now there is less room? I think you should brush up on your math, lady, or just stand aside with your mouth shut."

Folks, don't tell a Queenswoman to shut her mouth, ever. Unless you're one yourself, in which case, go hog wild, but not when I'm around. She started yowling about respect, and sunuvabitch, and white motherfuckers (at which point I looked around and asked, "Who let all the white motherfuckers on this train?")

She kept it up through Hunter's Point, and then after we left Vernon-Jackson, I discovered the secret deep in her heart. "I bet you have a beautiful singing voice," I said.

"What?"

"I said I bet you have a beautiful singing voice. You should save your voice for singing, I bet you make someone happy with that."

She blushed.

I'm on the sofa. It's a mess out there and the steam room quality of it all makes it even more hellacious.

It is, however, refreshing to hear blue-haired grandes dames in Chanel shout "Get your shit outta my way, asshole" as they cross the sidewalk in front of the W hotel at 49th St.

I guess the rains have made it to America.

It's strange; it hasn't seemed particularly rainy this year, but every time it does rain, Long Island sinks under a deluge and New Jersey reverts to fens. So the train tunnels all turn to underwater canals.

All of midtown's a wet t-shirt contest.

It's been a while since I've got to the station at 6.30am to find no trains. When that happens, I usually drive the mile home, have a coffee, check periodically to see when it's up and running and then go in late to the office.

Far worse, though, are the days when, once I'm at work there's a problem. In general, despite the amount of complaining Londoners do, the Underground is fairly reliable, and disruptions are usually the result of human, rather than mechanical, difficulties ("We apologise for the delay, which is due to a person under a train at Mile End ...")

If it's only the Underground that's out, I can usually get home by the Docklands Light Railway, overground railway, then a long, long bus ride, but it adds a couple of hours to my journey. But when there's a major meltdown due to terrorism or weather, I have no way home from the city but my own two feet.

When we had hurricane winds last year, there were big problems where trees had fallen across the lines on various lines. Although I'm on the 'underground' it's actually overground where I live.

I heard that trains were out on my line and we'd have difficulty getting home so I emailed a woman in the office who lives near me to let her know. I had a feeling she drove into work, but wasn't 100% sure (there are limited parking spaces and it suits me better to go by train). A couple of hours later as she was leaving, she walked right past my desk with a cheery wave and a "'bye" and was almost at the lifts when she must have had a pang of conscience and came back to ask me if I wanted a lift. And she acted like it was a huge fucking inconvenience, especially the 100 yard detour off her normal route to drop me on my corner.

nice and sunny here, how about you, chuckdarwin? ('bout time too)

Hey, I watched part of The Day After Tomorrow again the other night (I confess: this is one of my favorite movies. Especially the ice wolves! I love the unfrozen, spring-legged ice wolves!) and the flooding of the NY subway is a particularly satisfying part. Y'all had better be careful, because the flooded subways are just the beginning.

So glad I decided to work from home today. When was it raining? I didn't hear a thing.

Sometime early; it wasn't raining after 7:45.

Commute was so bad I forgot until just now that my hot water wasn't working and I hadda have a cold shower this morning. Hardly mattered, as I arrived at my desk bathed in sweat.

It's been raining pretty heavily this year in Texas - the rainiest 7 months on record or something. It's nice because everything is green and blooming madly (last year everything was dead by this point), and we're not having a drought summer with water restrictions...

...but I wish I didn't have to wade through ankle-deep water every few days. When it rains, it floods.

It's gorgeous here... finally.

Worst comes to worst.
≡ Click to see image ≡

Sunny here but so humid that it might as well be raining. I picked a bad month to move to a house without air-conditioning.

Took 3 hours to get from washington heights to Union Square. A and 1 were both down so I ended up on a bus that took 2.5 hours to get from 181 to 42nd. I then had to hike it to union square.

half the office didn't make it today. I should have stayed home.

Oh. we also had the dumbest bus driver in the world who was stopping at every stop even though there wasn't room. The mob in the bus finally took charge and a lady would shout "DOES ANYONE NEED TO GET OFF HERE?" and everyone would respond with "NO" and the bus driver would keep going.

And everyone hated when someone went out the backdoor. 1 person would get off and 5 people would try to sneak on.

This is why I hate NY subways in the morning. It's like everyone is spectacularly wired to be angry for no damn reason. It's not that big of a deal people. I get being annoyed at being squooshed or dealing with people trying to push their way in, but half the arguments I see on trains are really quite unnecessary, whether it's people who are too indignant to move in or people who are too indignant and think they can fit in when they can't.

I managed to squeeze on the 1. It was like the last helicopter out of Hanoi or something. I overheard one woman tell someone else in an incredulous tone that she'd said excuse me to squeeze in and a man called her a "fatass." Really, is that necessary? That's beyond being annoyed by circumstances, that's just plain rude. Look, we're ALL having trouble getting to work, getting worked up about it is hardly going to solve the problem. Especially when you try to defy displacement and want to squeeze in before people can get off and start hollering and yelling holding up the already late and full train.

Just the other day, I politely said, "Excuse me," to a woman in front of me so I wouldn't be barreling into her when I'd get off and she turned around and went off with a, "If I could move, I would!" I guess she would've just rather I pushed her out of the way to get out.

What the hell is wrong with people on the subways?

They're from out of town, but they heard New Yorkers were ruder than where they came from, so they think they should be rude to fit in; in reality, New Yorkers are only rude to assholes, and since they're being assholes, New Yorkers are rude to them, confirming their opinion of New Yorkers.

Kinda like the way the fat cat young Repubs were when the RNC was in town; remember how they would take up the whole sidewalk and talk shit if you tried to squeeze by? Well, someone told them that's what New York was like, and they made New York like that.

Fact is, we'd all get along if the assholes would let us, but the assholes think they're the only nice guys on the train, so we gotta be assholes to them to get them to stop.

I'm imagining an F train on a circular track, inches away from rear-ending itself.

Well all this makes me feel better about missing my morning train by 10 seconds and having to sit here on the cold platform for 30 minutes to catch the next train. We bitch about our public transport system here too, particularly the line that I catch every day, which is also known as the Bombay Express but, considering the staggering growth this area is experiencing, Queensland Rail actually do a pretty good job. The only time I've been significantly delayed (2 hours) was when someone jumped in front of the train I was on, so they couldn't let anyone off until they had cleared the track of the larger body chunks.

Still, we have to bitch about something, don't we?

Very expertly defused, Hugh. I'll try to keep this in mind next time that happens to me.

Thought I could escape the nasty weather up north, but no---though the peace is a tonic.