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#8:20am queue start
ma-du · 1 year
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Last night, on the class group chat:
Me: What time does class start tomorrow? I couldn't hear when the prof said.
Classmate: 8:20am
Me: thanks
*second day of classes*
Mother, 6:00am from the bottom bed of my double bed because apparently she lives there now: hey, don't you have class today?
Me, jumping out of bed and almost stepping on Mother: FUCK *gulps down breakfast while getting dressed and grabs backpack all in less than twenty minutes* FUCK I'M MISSING THE BUS BYE MA LOVE YOU *runs to the bus stop*
Me, 6:30am to the nice lady selling coffee at the bus stop: morning, Aunt Mel! Bye Aunt Mel! *get on the bus* oh, hi Katia. Katia: hi, you left early today. Me: I'm actually late, but as long as I get to school before eight, that's fine with me *embarrassed laughter*
Me, 6:45am entering the train station: oh crap, I missed the train *five minutes later* oh no, nevermind *squeezes into the train*
Me, 7:05am: Oh good, the other bus hasn't passed yet *gets in line for the bus*
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Me, almost crying: where is my goddamn fucking bus aaaaaaaa
Me, 8:19am: FUUUUCK IM LATE IM LATE IM LATE IM LATE IM LATE IM LATE *run to school, it starts to rain* oh for god's sake! *enters the school, runs to the classroom* Hey, where's everyone?
Classmate: prof said we could arrive at 8:30 so everyone is still coming.
Me:
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*it's still raining, and I don't have an umbrella*
Me, 11:40am going to the bus stop: hey, is the bus already gone?
Cool pretty girl with her also pretty and cool friend: No, we are waiting too.
Me: okay, thanks.
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Me, 12:18pm going to the pass card recharge station: holy shit, what a huge queue. Well, here we go.
My low back: What do you think of a little agonizing pain huh?
Me, already agonizing and unable to sit for a while:
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Me, already on home: *drops backpack on the floor, throws face down on the couch, screams for a while* okay here we go again *Put videos of cute cats and dogs to play on the television, go get something resembling a passable lunch, sit back on the sofa, eats the grub* Mmm.... That's good. Now, time to get ready for swimming in two hours!
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about-a-girl-me · 3 years
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Record store day 2021
Record store day 2021 was like no other. 
I live in SoHo NYC close to Generation Records in The Village and almost always find everything I want & need there. I’m hesitant to say I don’t patronize their store nearly as much as I should but my only real purchases these days are Record Store Day collectibles & releases as I have so many records. As I live close by I get up early to stand on line by 7:30am and I’m often first or one of the first there. 
This year I live on a different block, same SoHo neighborhood so I walked a different route through the village to my usual record store day spot on Thompson, this year the journey was like entering a different world. Turning onto Bleecker St from 6th was usually like arriving at the party after most people had left, in 2021 it was like entering a lost city of abandonment & broken dreams. The unmistakable and breath-taking stench of stale sweat, last nights pee, lingering clouds of smoke & weed, forgotten food, trash & reckless summer in NYC mixed with abandonment of decency, humanity & common sense; a street of lost souls & broken dreams and flies, so many fucking flies. Half naked & barely dressed homeless people stretched out in doorways, on street corners and in the street shacks. I started to criss-cross the street to avoid them then got dizzy so I just strode past them ignoring the putrid stench of trash & pee as only a hot NYC summer can produce. 
Upon turning into Thompson at 7:30am it was like stepping into a different world than the usual thriving village streets which now looked like an island shanty town desperate to stay alive. The vibe was proceed-with-caution and was reminiscent of stepping back in time to the crime ridden 70’s but not the nostalgic romanticized version. 
For the first 30 minutes the only other people on the street were the lost souls of which very few noticed me and luckily only 2 approached me where I ignored 1 and interacted with the other as quick as I could get him to leave when I told him I had no money. It was then just me and the flies, still so many fucking flies. 
Just as I started to feel more comfortable a trash truck decided to pull up directly next to me and the putrid stench made me want to vomit, I didn’t want to leave as I was the only person on line except for the old, shirtless, long haired homeless guy cruisin’ for abandoned cigarette butts on the steps of the building next door. 
As the village started to wake up I was joined on the street by restaurant workers cleaning up the night before’s wild abandonment of fun & frivolities and a few dog walkers. 8:30am, still just me online, damn I could have slept in or atleast bought breakfast! I know if I leave a car full of wide awake NJ boys will turn up ready for action to stake out the place and fondly recap their previous night drinking conversations, every sports moment they remember (clue, it’s alot) then I will be tortured by having not only lost my place but to have to listen to their conversation over my crappy headphones- all in the name of a stale breakfast bagel! This story happened one previous year and thankfully not this year so I guess there are upsides to the aftermath of a pandemic! 
8:45am 2 guys arrived to officially make it a queue and not just a weird girl hanging out outside a closed record shop, they chatted amongst themselves while I read my magazines (smug grin). The street felt less threatening and more normal as it awoke. 
9:20am one more person arrived with a fold out chair and breakfast, a plan that will make him happy until he has to lug it around the city all day and schlep it on the train when he will wish he hadn’t brought it and could have just stood on line for 90 minutes! 
A few more people arrived & the early morning smells started to get drowned out by bleach and cleaning supplies as the street came back to life.
The first staff member arrived 10:25am and optimism trickled down the small crowd, opening time was approaching!! 
10:30am 3 more staff arrived, the lights were on and excitement was building! 
Hot hot hot, the sun rose, the heat increased and my glasses steamed up. Just as it started to seem the opening was getting close the air conditioner on one of the top floors started to drip that New York rain that over-worked a/c’s do, the comfortable crowd dispersed to avoid being dripped on. You never can be too sure in NYC!
Damp & sweaty I was getting impatient, In previous years the doors opened and customers were directed downstairs to line up and form an orderly queue to ask for items required in stock from behind a counter therefore the nearer the civilised front of the queue the more likely you got your wanted items from limited stock. I saw the staff putting out what looked like RSD items in a corner rack and began to panic. I was first in the queue but what if I stood in front of the wrong row and did not get my items, what if they only had 1-2 of the items I desperately wanted and someone else got them, then my time would have been for nothing. I started eyeing up the people behind me trying to determine if they looked like PJ fans and confidently convinced myself I was good and had this sorted. 
The doors opened and I eagerly entered the store. I asked the guy at the door if the corner display was RSD releases and he confirmed it. I began to flick through rows of records and found Pearl Jam (hooray!!) a girl next to me asked where I found it and I helped direct her to it, asking for help with the Foo Fighters if anyone spotted it. My years of flicking through record crates served me well and within less than 5 minutes I had found all I wanted and headed to the counter. I picked up a 7″single and a cassette at the counter and by 11:06am I headed home happy with my purchases and $86 lighter. 
Was it worth it, absolutely. 
Do I have a record player to play them on, nope but one day soon! 
Happy Record Store Day 2021.
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Day 190 – Fini
We woke up at the ungodly hour of 4:20am to finish packing and head to the airport. However, waking up was easier than we expected as it was perfectly light outside. Checkout was smooth, and the front desk guy let us take some food and drinks from the Hilton market as a substitute for our breakfast. Our taxi driver was a young, petite Icelandic lady. She actually managed to lift the Beast with J’s assistance. The ride to the airport was quick.
Check-in at the airport was fairly quick. We ended up having enough time for S to go to the lounge and for J to visit one of her favourite stores. Strangely, this is the same lounge we went to two years ago. It is the only lounge in Keflavik airport and services all the airlines. It even remembered S’ phone. J’s favourite store even sells the seal fur products S bought for his daughters on our last trip to Greenland.
The airport was very quiet, but there were around 8 flights departing. Most of them were to the EU, but there was also a flight to the US and our flight to London.
We got to fly on our first 737 Max. It is incredibly quiet, comfortable and smooth. The plane is less than half full. Only a few business people and a few intrepid British holidaymaker families are on our flight. We chatted with a nice Scottish chap who lives in Iceland. He works for a vaccine tracking company and was on his first flight in 18 months to visit a client. He told us some interesting stories about vaccine distribution and boxes that had gone missing. Each box of the Pfizer vaccine contains 6,000 vaccines, has a radio tracker and is worth a quarter of a million dollars.
We landed in Terminal 2. We thought we were in a queue for passengers from Green List countries. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Green and Amber List passengers were mixed, and we were lucky enough to get behind a plane from Lebanon and a plane from the US. We also arrived at lunchtime, when most of the border control staff were on break. There were just two people manning the border for hundreds of passengers. The couple we were standing next to accurately predicted that it would take 1.5 hours to get through the line. It was so bad that the Heathrow staff started handing out water bottles. However, a trip to the bathroom was not on offer so any people declined the water. The couple is in the travel industry and they were telling everyone to sign a Change.org petition to get remove the UK Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps. If you want to support it, here is the link: https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-vote-of-no-confidence-in-grant-shapps-you-have-failed-to-support-the-travel-industry/psf/promote_or_share. 
After customs, we collected our bags and headed to our new home, a Hilton in north London.
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Japan - Day 12 (Tokyo Disney Sea )
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It was our second day in Tokyo Disney Sea. We opted to spend to days in each of the parks. However it was incredibly windy so it made it difficult to do a whole lot during the day - the park was quieter though!
We started to day off later than our first day at Sea, the crowds were supposed to be lighter and we already did a lot so weren’t worried about rushing in to get fast passes.
We left for our 40 minute train ride at about 7:20AM, with the park opening at 8:30AM. We ended up getting in line about 10 minutes before the gates opened. You could tell right away there were less people than the first day. 
Upon entering we both went to the locker today, and right after stopped for some breakfast pastries. Afterward we made our way to Journey to the Center of the Earth for fast passes. It was really quiet so we rode it while we were there as well.
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We basically did exactly what we did the first day with less rushing around. Rode on Indiana Jones a few times, and Journey a few more.
We of course were snacking the entire day!
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For lunch we made reservations at one of the sit down restaurants - Magellan’s.
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The restaurant was really lovely, had a great ambiance.
After lunch the wind had gotten even worse, and on top of the wind my foot problems had also gotten worse. I just decided to power through and I will suffer in a few days when we get home.
We decided to walk through the shops again to get out of the wind. We did end up picking up a few things for ourselves and for the Twitch stream giveaway.
There are still a few more items I want to pick up before we leave, hopefully I can find them all in the Disneyland park!
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We spent a lot of time exploring again, we did end up going to see a show, Out of Shadowland. We didn’t know what to expect going in, but it was a cute show! All the dialogue and singing was obviously in Japanese, but the store is still very easy to follow with visual queues. 
After some more exploring and hanging out in the Ariel location (it’s out of the wind!) we decided we were going to call it a day. On the way out we made our way to one of the popcorn stands to pick up a popcorn bucket that one of my coworkers asked for.
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He’s pretty cute. Not the popcorn bucket i’d necessarily pick, but still unique. He also hold’s a surprising amount of popcorn. This cart in particular had caramel popcorn. So I munched on it on our way out of the park!
The ride back was pretty uneventful. There was some high alert on the JR line, but I have no idea what for.
Also, it was significantly less windy in Asakusa. Go figure.
All of the walking in the wind really tired me out, after to internet browsing I ended up going to bed at 8:00PM.
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svetlanabelikova · 5 years
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Journaling (III)
content warning:
bodily functions
food talk
i shit in a bucket.
i know that was almost a week ago at this point but it has been a rough week. im going to go through it as best i can from memory. i think my last post was about a week ago and i was dreading the ‘shit in a bucket’ moment of my life which-- did not disappoint. it was just as bad as i thought it would be. 
monday: i set my alarm for about 6am with the intention of getting up and wondering around the house until my body was like ‘aye mate, the time is upon us.’ but instead i just ran around the house trying to get myself and the kids ready for school-- which turned out to be a good thing as it turns out, when it comes to shitting in a bucket, there are some rules you gotta follow. the principle one being that you have about an hour from toilet seat to dropping it into the hands of some lab assistant. we usually leave the house at about 7:20am or so, get the older two kids to their school before 7:40am, then take the youngest to her school by 8am, so i would then need to book it across town to the medical center, jaunt up to the lab and drop off the specimen. it was going to be a fairly tight schedule but you really can’t-- well, i can’t, produce on queue and with the chaos of the kids and everything... it just didn’t happen. but it turned out to be a good thing as my stupid-ass brother took out the truck the night before, literally ran it dry and left it outside on empty. so my mom had no choice but to use her tiny car which didn’t have space for me and three kids in car seats. so they left, i was able to be alone in my thoughts and then the moment came. i-- i am sure that i looked like a totally insane person. i had a lot of anxiety, i was just pacing around the room hyping myself up. it was a lot of ‘look, this is something that, while you’ve never done anything like it before, it will be a fun story to tell. you never pissed in a cup before either-- but you just did that on friday. you’ve never told everyone on the internet your weight and yet you did that too! this is nothing. you just gotta walk into the bathroom and just do it! this is something that you really want! if you want to be successful in this program you gotta deal with all the weird shit they throw at you! come on, get in there champ!’ it was not a pretty picture and i did not believe my own lies.  eventually the dark deed was done. i got to use my super advanced, medically sterile cup and popsicle stick. sealed it in a sterile bag, put that bag inside another bag with my name, the time and date on it, then waited for my mom to get back so she could drive me over to the lab. at the lab, i stood around for almost 20 minutes just waiting for someone to come out and tell me what i was supposed to do. eventually, someone came out, got my sample, then i went with my mom grocery shopping. that ended up running a little late, so we got the littlest from pre-k, then decided to go get lump from kindergarten a little early. while my mom went in to sign him out, i got a call from the lab. apparently, someone used one of my samples for the wrong test. i kept trying to get more information but the woman just did not want to tell me over the phone. just kept saying the specimen needed to be recollected and the sooner, the better. my phone is at like 28% at this point and i still haven’t eaten anything yet. we take the kids home, i change clothes, get the kids calmed down then drive back over there absolutely furious that they somehow used an ENTIRE SAMPLE for the wrong test and scare shitless (pun intended) that i’m going to have to shit in another bucket.  i get over there, wait in the waiting room for like 40 minutes before the nurse will finally see me and then tells me they just need another vial of blood. i give them the vial and go home. at this point, i start to notice my ears are stuffy. the day before (sunday) i had noticed my throat was sore. but it was the first big wind storm of the season, there was a high pollen alert from my area so i was just trying to tell myself it was allergies-- add to that my hyperfocus on the whole ‘shitting in a bucket’ thing and i just didn’t want to realize that it was a headcold coming on-- and wouldn’t ya know it-- it was a headcold. and my white blood cell count in all my tests for this week are all high. so i’m probably going to have to take them again when i’m feeling better. so tuesday through today (friday) i have spent in an anti-histamine daze. take a pill, feel better for an hour, sleep for 3 hours, take another pill, repeat. today however, i got 2 different phone calls to set up appointments next week: an upper GI scan (which by the way and tone the lady who i talked to on the phone said “Oh those are so fun.” means it will most certainly be not fun at all so....) and a follow-up with rupinder to go over all, and there is no joke here, 20 test results from the last week or so. as i mentioned before, everything is high but not scary high. the only things scary high are my b1 levels (i take vitamins to boost those and i guess there is just a lot built up in my system. oops), insulin (like i mentioned, my body over produces the stuff) and white blood cells (cause i was getting sick). everything thing else is high due to a shitty diet and being so overweight and once i get that under control, i expect to see all those levels drop. all week i have been eating about half a cup of oatmeal and whole wheat toast for breakfast than either homemade soup and salad for my other meals. which i don’t mind at all! i was vegetarian for over 8 years. i love salads and veggie burgers, etc. it is just a combination of it being expensive and that shitty, cheap food is more available. like yes, i could have been adding only veggie burgers and salad stuff to my grocery list but when your not paying for your own food, you kind of take what you’re given. but now that i’m seeing the toll it is taking on my health and trying to wrangle in what’s going on in my body, i am going to be more conscious of what i’m eating overall. i’ve gotten used to avoiding dairy due to my lactose intolerance, and red meat/ high sugar foods due to my gallbladder issues, but not being cognizant of calorie count and sodium levels and total fat-- all the stuff i used to make fun of skinny white girls in yoga pants doing in the grocery isle. i have to be that girl-- minus the skinny part. and the yoga pants. but i do have to be the bitch in the cracker isle turning the box over and doing the math in my head, trying to add up to the magic number that will make me... better. healthier. i have a lot of deep-seated hatred and unbridled vitriol for the health and fitness lifestyle. it has been pushed upon me my entire life and i’ve always gone out of my way to try and avoid it as much as fucking possible and while i’m never going to be drinking whatever the hell kombucha is or doing px20 or whatever other health craze is going on, i am going to have to put some of that acidic anger on the backburner-- at least for now.                            
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mumbaikaarle · 6 years
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P.E.A.K.Troops, Trek to Lohgad Fort, Lonavala on 23 Sep. 2018
  Region: LonavalaHeight: 3450 ft.Grade: EasyType: Hill FortBase Village: LohagadwadiTrek Fees: Rs. 450/-Contact: 9029148241  Lohgad Fort  With a 2000 year old history and at 3450 ft high, Lohagad one of the majestic forts in the region. The climb to the fort takes you to panoramic vantage points, huge balconies, doors and reminds you how important this place was which was used to defend freedom. Surrounded by lakes on all side the views from the fort are breathtaking specially from vinchu kata (Scorpion's tail), Lohagad fort – means "Iron fort" in Marathi and is situated in Lonavala region It divides the basins of the Indrayani and Pavna and is situated on a side range of the Sahyadris. The Visapur fort is located on its eastern side. The four large gates of Lohagad are still in good condition.  Meeting point: Sunday 22nd Sep.  2018 : Lonavala Station @ 08:05 AM Mumbai participants can start journey by Indrayani express (22105) People interested should reserve   their tickets (Class 2S, Fair Rs. 90/-) or catch this train from respective stations with ticket till Lonavala & meet at Lonavala station. (Please reserve your tickets’ or reach your respected stations at least half an hour earlier, as there might be a long queue for the tickets)  Train Timings: - Indrayani Express (22105) CST                                                                       5.40 am DADAR                                                                5.51 am THANE                                                                6.14 am KALYAN                                                              6.35 am LONAVALA                                                        7.58 am  Brief itinerary: (Tentative)  Will catch Pune local train to  Malavali (8 :20am at Lonavala station platform no 3).  08:28 Hrs: Will reach Malavali 08:55 Hrs: Will start our trek towards Lohgad Fort after breakfast. 10:40 Hrs: Will reach lohgad wadi (base village) will visit Bhaje caves en-route... Read more source https://mumbaihikers.com/m/events/view/-P-E-A-K-Troops-Trek-to-Lohgad-Fort-Lonavala-on-23-Sep-2018
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