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behind the Trader Joe's
Friday, December 2 2016
location: Abbott & Costello Room, 6th Floor, Blue Moon Hotel, Lower East Side, Manhattan, NY
Had it been up to me, we would've checked out of our hotel at a reasonable time, gotten a light breakfast with coffee, and headed for home so I'd be there in time for the noontime beginning of my workday. But Gretchen likes to take advantage of her time in the City, so we would be staying late enough to have an early lunch. First, though, we walked to Spreadhouse, a coffee shop that Gretchen had heard good things about but whose logo is a little too close to being a swastika. It turned out that the vegan things she'd heard about were a myth, at least today. And for some reason they served us our soy cappuccinos in paper cups.
Gretchen wanted to get some Chinese products we'd been reminded of during last night's meal at Dirt Candy. So we walked into Chinatown and went into a big Chinese grocery store called Hong Kong Supermarket. Initially we were the only gringos there, and I had the odd feeling of being the tallest person in the place (my height is almost exactly 70 inches, which is precisely average for an American male). The store smelled like stale seafood, and had a well-trodden visual funk. Over by the aquaria of live edible sea creatures, the floor was covered with enormous puddles of unmopped seawater, and nobody seemed in any hurry to do anything about it. All we could do was avert our eyes from the doomed beings and breathe through our mouths. Near there were the racks of canned and pickled goods: sauces, condiments, and things that wouldn't take much work to turn into a main course. We were looking for black vinegar, fermented black beans, and wonton wrappers. We ended up finding a few other things along the way, or course. It was important to read ingredients, more to avoid sugar than animal products. Gretchen had trouble tracking down the fermented black beans, and then she had trouble finding an employee who spoke English. By the time we were checking out, I'd seen three other non-Asians in the store.
As we were checking out of the Blue Moon Hotel, Gretchen tried to finagle a discount by complaining about the problems with the heat, but she had no success. There'd been other oddities about the room, such as the dispensers of Breck shampoo (Gretchen didn't know that brand still existed), the lack of cups, and the strange brown strain beneath the safety rail in the bathtub (it washed away when I took a shower, but still).
At the parking place, the tuneful electronic human detector played the opening notes of "Dixie." I don't know where they'd put our car, but when it appeared it was from an elevator. Gretchen drove us to the West Village and found us a slightly-illegal parking spot that looked usable, as it would become legal at 12:30 and parking enforcement had already come through. Our last Manhattan stop of the day was By Chloe, that tastefully-retro-high-design vegan diner. We got a "meatball" sub, a burger, and two enormous orders of thin-cut french fries. The place was crowded with cheerful millennials (most of them women), but somehow a table opened up just as we needed one.
Gretchen had driven us all the way to Manhattan, and she would drive us all the way home today. This was so I could be responsive on Slack, since nearly all of our drivetime was during my working hours. Again, Google sent us home via the Holland Tunnel, advice that Gretchen followed but then regretted. Google also instructed us to take Route 17 through New Jersey, but there was a great silver lining to that: we could stop at Trader Joe's. We arrived there a few minutes before my video meeting, which I thought I could do with my laptop tethered to my cellphone (which converts a cellphone connection to a wireless connection). I had to do this because Trader Joe's doesn't have WiFi or, for that matter, any place to sit. Indeed, to have a quiet place to attend the meeting, I had to go around behind the Trader Joe's to get away from the Route 17 traffic noise. Fortunately, the day was warm enough for sitting comfortably outdoors in the shade. Initially, the tethering worked great. But then it crapped out randomly and the stupid tethering program (which had been working reliably) suddenly said I would have to pay money if I wanted to continue using it. There had been nothing about this in any of the materials associated with the app (FoxFi), and this came as such a surprise at the worst possible time (I was in the meeting) that I almost did pay. But then I was like, fuck it, and used my phone to attend the meeting instead. I'd never done that before, but it worked just fine. I need to spend the time to find a reliable tethering app that is free and won't pull a stunt like that. One of the guys in the meeting said my video feed looked like a hostage video (I had a barren concrete block wall behind me). And my boss joked that if he saw someone dressed like me (I was still wearing my nice jacket) back behind a building sitting by himself (and, I added, "talking to my hand"), he'd be sure I was a homeless guy.
Inside Trader Joe's Gretchen had already overstuffed a cart and was now putting items in shopping bags. We didn't have much more shopping to do after that, though we did end up getting a second cart. Today's haul cost just shy of $400.
Nancy and Eric (their painter friend, that guy who had painted our Wall Street house) had just walked the dogs on the Farm Road as we returned home. They chatted with Gretchen and ate By Chloe cinnamon roll while I ran around putting away groceries. After that, I returned to work after what had been a 25 hour absence, but it was no big deal. There had been no crises, and the only pressing issue was to determine how 1500 people had failed to receive a mass-mailing yesterday. The answer I came up with might not have been correct (mysqld had experienced too many connections because of too much reporting undertaken by a new employee), but it was all I had and it seemed to satisfy those who wanted to know (by which I mean The Organization's founder, with whom I communicated via an intermediary).
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