Blurbs From Eunee's Mind (and Life)

So I said that the train trip into Manhattan was a bit of an adventure because - of course - we took the train. We also happened to be heading into Manhattan on the day before Thanksgiving. When they called the Wednesday before Thanksgiving one of the biggest (or is it THE biggest?) traveling day of the year, I had no idea they also meant rail travel.... We had decided not to stress about catching an early train and thus got on the train maybe at about 1 p.m. To our amazement the train was packed!! Fortunately we had bought our tickets about an hour earlier so we did not have to stand in the looooong line for the ticket machines in the station! I had never seen it so packed!! It was primarily due to all those students going home after their last class (yes, we were catching the train from the Stony Brook station which is right on the edge of our campus). Oh joy.... As we piled into the double-decker train (as I call it), we grabbed a couple of empty seats - me several rows in front of ...

My dear friend Sylvia came to visit me the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and then left this past Saturday. It was so good to see her and to spend some time just having fun. While I did have work to do and had little sleep on some nights, we managed to squeeze in quite a bit of fun. =) The Saturday she arrived, I had to circle JFK 3 times because I couldn't find the terminal sidewalk where you pick up passengers, and then couldn't find her because she was waiting at a different terminal while I was looking for her at another. Thank goodness for cell phones. So finally, I circled again and then met her at a different terminal (she took the Air Train to Terminal 1 while I circled back). Joy oh joy. I am a bit irritated with the signage here in New York; they're not very clear and they're kinda last minute - you know, turn right here, RIGHT NOW because when you're going 45 miles an hour, you really don't need any preparation other than a small sign three feet before...

So the cold weather I was waiting for has arrived. The other night we had a freeze warning during the daybreak hours (3 a.m. to 8 a.m.) and the temperatures that night dipped down to 28 degrees! And with the decrease in temperature, I am happy to say there has been a decrease in crickets - outside AND inside. Granted it's not frequently that freezing, it's still chillier. It's definitely jacket-and-scarf weather, reaching maybe only a high of 50 - usually only in the mid to upper 40s. So it has been COLD for a native tropics and warm-weather kind of girl! BUT I must say that I'm adjusting alright and have not yet found myself bundling up till I feel like I can roll my way to class. I've heard it doesn't start getting too bad out here until mid-January, so maybe I can prolong my tire changes until December or something. We shall see. The leaves have changed colors, for those trees that do. The firs, of course, remain continuously green or white-tipped, making me ...

Although a change in weather will bring its own little concerns such as getting anti-freeze for my car and new tires to drive in snow (in the event it does snow soon), I am looking forward to it for several reasons, one of them being NO MORE CRICKETS. If the superstition that crickets are supposed to be good luck is true, I must have loads of luck to last me till January. I have had a steady stream of cricket invasions in my apartment over the last two months since I've been here. (Wow....can't believe it's been over 2 months already!) Anyway, while the situation has improved to where I can have several cricketless days, from time to time those little buggers still find their way in. One would hope that the word has spread - no cricket has ever left alive out of my apartment, save a couple that were fortunate enough to be in my kitchen because then the door is right there so I just sweep them out. Still I've pretty much had it. I was eating dinner last night and heard a...