The Top 10

Last week, my cousin and I embarked on a long drive up to New York. The purpose was to move me into my apartment, which is now my new home. The great part about the internet is I still have the ability to contribute to this blog even when I am about 1600 miles away from Dallas. I went to school up here for four years, so I kind of knew the craziness that I was getting myself into. After finally getting settled into my closet (even though the lease says apartment), I now have had the chance to do what I love to do in New York ... sit back and observe!

As I constantly tell my brother, I hate ESPN in the summer because of the garbage that they label as Top 10 material. It consists primarily of baseball 'highlights' and recently it has included Little League World Series plays. So, since we have been robbed of Top 10 plays the past week, I am going to go ahead and provide my own Top 10.

The Top 10 (in no particular order) New York observations from the last 24 hours - and yes, this all happened within a 24 hour time span. I have provided commentary in parentheses...

1. I have browsed in 4 different health food stores and every single one has a pet cat that roams around. (Either this is a crazy coincidence, or the cat has recently replaced video cameras as a security device)

2. One of the big trends in this city is going 'green.' This is understandable. There is a Green Kitchen Diner that IRONICALLY has stacks of take out menus right by the entrance (doesn't sound very green to me).

3. I saw a store that was advertising soy pillows. (Soy pillows?????? I don't even know how to respond to this. My initial thoughts were - this must be the vegan alternative to people who like to eat their pillows. However, even if this was the case, are there really that many people who make up that market?)

4. I went to a fish market yesterday that had tilapia for $10/pound and offered Chilean Sea Bass at $35/pound. (Obviously, they have never heard the term 'recession')

5. I saw a man wearing a TUCKED IN shirt that read "Don't let my enormous d*** scare you away." (I'm glad he had his shirt tucked into his pants just in case he decides to go eat at a nice restaurant).

6. People in this city do not like to be told "God Bless You" after they sneeze. A man in front of me in line at the store sneezed and I received a dirty look from him after saying "Bless You." (No comment)

7. There is a grocery store up the block from me that always has about ten guys out front with flyers and signs, telling people to boycott this store and to never shop there. Two doors down there is a Jehovah's Witness stand handing out literature. (This corner reminds me of the game Monopoly. When your opponent owns two Monopolies on one side of the board, and you just hope you land on Community Chest and Chance when you get in that area - that is how I feel when I walk down this block. I just want to hop from the corner of the street to the exact middle then to the other corner to avoid these two groups of people).

8. The Grilled Chicken Sale! I saw in the grocery store today a sign that said "Sale: Grilled Chicken 6.99 1/2 lb." Now, it is obviously hilarious that 6.99 for a half of a pound is even considered a sale, but let me add two more important pieces of info. First, the '1/2' was written extremely small to fool customers I guess. Second, the price of the grilled chicken the day before was 12.99 per pound. (So, not only is this 'sale' price still expensive, but it is really not on sale at all - it is marked up. I'm just trying to figure out the logic - if you order half of what you normally get, you will pay 58.3% of the normal price??? Somebody please explain this to me).

9. I ordered a pound of turkey at the grocery store today. Now, this store makes a great in-house turkey and I like to get a thick slice so that I can cut it up and use it for salads, etc. I asked the man for a thick slice that will be around a pound of meat and he said, "No problem, I will get it as close as possible." Well, his close as possible was a 1.75 lb. piece of turkey. He then apologized and wrapped it up for me. (I'm confused about a couple of things with this one. First, he could have cut a piece off of that to give me CLOSER to a pound because after all, if he gives too much it is possible to remove some, but if he gave me .75 lbs or turkey, he cannot glue on another quarter pound. Second, if this was 'as close as he could get,' does that mean if I ordered ten pounds of turkey he would give me 17.5 pounds???)

10. This one is a classic. It is about 8 AM, traffic is starting to pick up and the light is red for cars travelling West. All of a sudden, I hear sirens and I see an ambulance moving that direction and he is not slowing down for this intersection - it must be an emergency. Well, fortunately, everyone at the intersection stops for him as he drives by. I happen to notice something bizarre though - he is driving with one hand on the wheel ... because his other hand is stuffing some sort of breakfast sandwich in his mouth. (He must have really left in a rush. However, I am just trying to understand how he unwrapped this, and had the confidence to eat a sandwich while driving through red lights)

I hope you enjoyed my top ten. Have a nice evening.