July 2nd, 2002. Tuesday
 

    This morning, on my way to work, a blonde girl in a pink sun dress passed me, and I got a good whiff of whatever scent she was wearing.  It was surprisingly pleasant, and oddly familiar.  My immediate thought was "Hmmm...she smells like freshman year."  I'm not sure what freshman year smelled like, and if I were given a bottle and told it contained a smell typifying freshman year, I'd be almost certain that it would be the scent of cigarette butts floating in old Southern Comfort and Cokes or something.  But this was an entirely nostalgic smell (not that the butts and SoCo isn't).  Smelled like a spring day.  I think. I think a girl in my Chinese class wore the same thing. I found it unpleasant while I had to sit next to her, only because I had to smell it everyday at 9am for two years straight.  But this morning, it was a nice little moment before walking into the office.

    I had another writing class last night.  It's getting to the point where I can pretty much guess who wrote what, even though the papers are written anonymously. One woman writes solely about her divorce, or meeting guys since her divorce. Another one writes about being kidnapped and raped.  I finally figured out who it was. You can usually tell, because the only people taking notes are people whose papers were just read. Her story was good, but not all that great. However, it's impossible to criticize something like that in a class of strangers.  One story yesterday was particularly awful, and it was difficult to keep my mouth shut about it.  I've decided that only about three or four people in the class really know what the fuck they're talking about. Some people need to realize that you don't always have to say what you're thinking, especially if it has nothing to do with writing.

    At work last night, I was once again assigned to find a humorous quote from the evening's tv show.  Last week, I had to find one in a movie about a wife-beating cop. This week, I had to watch 48 Hours, which centered around a man suspected of killing his infant child in order to collect hefty insurance claims.

    I cannot believe how uncomfortable to weather is.  Last night after work, around midnight, I sprinted through the oppressive heat to catch the train before midnight, because my Metrocard expired after Monday.  I didn't make it, but the card worked.  Maybe it expires around 2.  Anyway, I had worked up a decent sweat, which wasn't aided by the hot tunnel.  The tunnels are so hot in part because the subway cars are air-conditioned, and the hot air is vented out into the tunnel.  This is a fair trade-off.  So naturally when I got on the train last night, the a/c wasn't functioning, and I spent the whole ride eagerly anticipating each stop, because the tunnels and trains were actually cooler than the cars.
    Between East Broadway and York St., the two stations that separate Manhattan and Brooklyn, I heard the train sounding its whistle, which lead me to believe that there was a person or persons on the track.  When I first moved to New York, traveling under the East River on an everyday basis was one of my big concerns. And I still don't like when the train comes to a stop in that stretch of tunnel.  So naturally the train came to a stop. I couldn't think of any other reason than someone being on the tracks.  So as we crawled slowly down the tunnel, I looked out the window for people, hoping not to see anyone.  Then I suddenly thought that the air-conditioning on the fritz wasn't an accident after all, and maybe it was because someone had been screwing around with the mechanics of our subway train for some sinister purpose.  Just as I thought this, the train passed a man standing on the walkway just outside the tracks.  This startled the shit out of me. Luckily, it was an MTA worker. There were several MTA workers around working in the tunnels.  So that calmed me a bit.  But it was still hot as hell.

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