Today I went to meet a friend for free lunch at her work (yes, she works at Google, the company I so very-much-want-to-but-probably-will-never-work-for). After catching up on all the deets of late, I started home. Which is when I found out I had taken the wrong keys in my frantic run out of the house (to be fair, I was on the phone getting my annual review from my career counselor at the time).

I went through the building next door (we live next to a...thing...that is kind of half insane asylum / half retirement home / always interesting...anyway I'm friendly with one of the building managers there, we shoot hoops together) to check and see if I had left the back door unlocked, but I hadn't.

So I took an unplanned walk over to Dave's office to get his keys.

I got to Union Square without much event, although the typical street performers were out in force. A block past that I was passing a cop giving an older dude a ticket of some sort, and the old guy just started losing his wig. Next thing you know the cop and him are screaming at each other "ARE YOU THREATENING ME, SIR?" (They were both screaming this.) Then the dude takes a swing at the cop and down they go and next thing he's in cuffs and the cop is sitting on top of him radio-ing for a car.

Get to Dave's office. Pick up keys.

I'm on the next block and I'm walking up behind a rather shady looking guy in one of those big long hooded black North Face jackets that the hoodlums like to wear. "I shouldn't judge him based on his looks," I thought briefly. Then I watched as one of the med students from the University hospital there walked up to him and casually bought a dime-bag from him (this was in midtown at like 3pm in broad daylight, I kid you not).

I turn the corner to head downtown at the next street and I'm walking past the hospital lobby, which is floor to ceiling glass windows facing the street. And there's a mother in there, about my mom's age, and she's facing me and she's holding what I can only guess was her adult daughter very tightly. She's looking right at me but she doesn't even see me. Tears are coming down her face. I was momentarily awestruck; I kept walking to leave them in their moment but it was one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

Two blocks later I'm at Grace Episcopal and I see the above sign. So I do. I'm sitting there in the strange quiet that doesn't belong in the middle of midtown Manhattan, and I'm talking some things over quietly when all of a sudden I feel the familiar rumbling of the floor as an N/R train passes underneath.

And then I walked the rest of the way home and didn't see anything really of note other than the guy a couple blocks away from our place who was showing off his freshly shaven legs to a girlfriend of his.

Oh and they're shooting a movie on our block apparently.

I love you New York. I'm going to miss you.