Small World Taxi

Today was one of those days where I missed the bus by 30 seconds. I have learned that running after it on the east side is often successful, but a fruitless and exhausting frustration on the west side, which is where I was. As I stood on Hudson Street, I noticed this refurbished Checker Cab with a sign saying it would take HSBC customers anywhere they want to go, free. FREE! What do I love more than free? Not too much. Plus, I have a problem with my toe right now and had just this morning been to the podiatrist where he tortured me with a shot in the foot, so walking east was not a good option.

I saw this cab, parked and empty, and thought, "Well just like a bank to offer something free but not be able to take advantage of it." I remembered what a heartache it was when my local HSBC branch moved away to take over the bald chocolate guy's store, and I had to start all over with another bank that is more blue, but has convenient ATMs in every Duane Reade.

Still though, I've maintained one account at HSBC and had my card in my wallet, and I wanted a free ride. Just then, a tall, curly haired man with a hipster hat opened the door and got in. I knocked on the window and asked him to take me to the east side. "Sure, hop in," he said.

What absolute luck. In fact, as soon as I finish writing this I will rush to play lotto because today is my lucky day.

Here's the reason I'm writing this way too long story: I was chatting with the cab driver about the East Village, recent changes blah blah the same conversation you have with every New Yorker, when he says I look familiar. This is not unusual - everyone thinks they've seen me before, I have that kind of face.

But then he thinks for a moment and says "I used to live on your block, back around 1994 or so, subletted for about a year." Really? Where? And then he named a minor movie star who used to live downstairs, who he sublet from after said minor movie star moved to LA to become a a more famous movie star. He couldn't remember anybody else who lived here though so I guess he didn't socialize much. When I told him we had babies on the top floor around then, with one directly above him, it seemed to spark a memory. In six months, those babies will be in college.

Small world.

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Off Kilter

This past weekend was one big sleep-in, and not just because of the annoyance of waking up Sunday at 9:30 and then in a moment finding out it was actually 10:30. All weekend we lazed around, unable to move far from the bed or couch, watching movies and the last season of Weeds. We ventured out once each day hoping to catch the sun to inject some life into our lifeless lives, but each time, the moment we got outside it clouded up and felt chilly and uncomfortable, so we rushed back inside.

Then today, in an unusual and uncharacteristically clumsy move, the son fell on that weird cement raised step coming out of the 1st Avenue L train stairs coming out of the subway, banging his shoulder, knee and hip, and scraping his thumb. (He's ok mom.)

The husband has announced that the reason we felt so bad this weekend was because the earth was knocked 6.5" off its axis from the Japanese earthquake and shortened the day by 1.1 millionth of a second, which didn't nearly make up for daylight expensive time.

Mechanical Turk

Last night Steven opened my eyes to modern slave labor at Amazon Mechanical Turk. It's a website, connected to your Amazon account, where you can work for hours and earn approximately $1.00 per hour. I have just been sitting here translating 3-5 second sound clips. I wish I had timed it but at .02 cents each, I have now earned .32 and my dashboard says I have 31 more "hits" pending on approval.

While I am not earning enough to send my son to college, somehow doing this is a little bit addictive, in a balloon popping video game sort of way. I could see myself sitting here losing time, doing these stupid tasks for no reason other than I get great satisfaction finishing a task and hitting "submit."

I wonder what is a Mechanical Turk and is that a racist term for slave labor? According to Wikipedia, this type of hiring of contract labor is called "crowdsourcing" which enables companies to hire other people to do labor that computers can't do. The term comes from "The Turk" which was an 18th century chess automaton. It was revealed as a scam, not a machine as advertised, with a hidden chess master at the controls, something like the Wizard of Oz. Was the Oz Turkish? Perhaps.