Columbus Day

One of the nice things about working for a monolithic retail bank is that we get the bank holidays off - such as Columbus Day. I'm not really sure why banks feel the need to close their doors in order to celebrate the raping and pillaging of my ancestors (I'm 1/16th Cherokee, as you all know) by an Italian, but I will forgive them because it meant that I had an excuse for sleeping in until 9:45 in the morning on a Monday. Of course, none of my friends had the day off, so it was going to be a mellow one for me, and we had perfect 80 degree fall weather to boot!

With such nice weather, I decided to utilize the rollerblades for my errand-running. Rollerblading on the crazy UES sidewalks always puts my life in peril, but I figured it wouldn't be too bad avoiding the milfs, trophy wives, and nannies that the narrow sidewalks are full of during a "normal" day. But, sure enough, I had two near-death experiences, one of which involved a shopping cart that was turned around and rolled right into my path. Of course I hit it but demonstrated my impeccable grace by not spilling myself all over the sidewalk and instead turned around and glared at the guy. I can't totally fault him since I was on my rollerblades on the sidewalk. The second event was on an empty sidewalk where a wealthy lady was standing next to the entrance of the car garage waiting for someone to pull her car out - as I found out just as it pulled out right in front of me. The dumb biotch had clearly seen me slowly coming up the street but didn't bother to ask her driver to wait a second or let me know that her car was coming out. Annoying.

Having already seen my life flash in front of my eyes twice already, I decided to push my luck by rollerblading around Central Park and heading down into the heart of all that is evil - Time Square. With speeding traffic, throngs of tourists, tour buses, and messed up roads, this isn't exactly optimal rollerblading territory. But I was so close to it when I hit the south end of the park that I had to take the chance in order to save $7 on Citizen Cope concert tickets that will come in handy during my recovery time next month....

J. Riley, speaking of which I've finally gotten insurance approval for Nov. 1's main event.