Where there's smoke...

On the one hand, I appreciate that my smoke detector emits a piercing noise that I would never be able to sleep through. I also appreciate, on some level, the fact that it contains a hard line to my building (not sure what this "hard line" involves, but sounds serious) such that even when the battery runs out, it continues to beep. After all, my safety and the safety of my neighbors is at issue here.

On the other hand, this beeping began after midnight last night, and while it stopped for a short while after we removed the battery, it resumed bright and early at 6am. Naturally, it had never occurred to us previously to keep spare 9 volt batteries on hand, there was no time to purchase one before work this morning, the super didn't have one handy either, and the noise level is so loud that I jumped a bit every time the thing went off...all in all, rendering me significantly less appreciative of the inherent fire safety. Couldn't this thing be rigged to beep a few times for a couple of hours so that I know to replace the battery, but then allow a longer rest time (say, a couple of days) before resuming? The whole experience was like living with a newborn for a night, the battery is presently still not replaced, and now instead of saving our neighbors with a swift alert of a fire hazard, we're probably going to be pushed out of the building for creating a noise disturbance!

Further fall fashion

Due to the previously-mentioned change of seasons, I've been coat shopping, and something just isn't adding up: why on earth would I want a wool coat with 3/4 length sleeves? There are tons out there right now! What the heck is that about?

Time Warner Cable, your days are numbered

It won't be long, I think, before conventional cable television goes the way of the VCR and we all watch everything on an a la carte basis, paying as we go only for the shows we actually want to see.  Until then, however, much of Manhattan, at least, is beholden to Time Warner Cable, and they're terrible. All problems are met with the longest wait times imaginable on the customer service line, and in my case, I am driven up a wall by the pettiest of issues: every night from midnight on, the cable guide in my bedroom rolls over to "No Data" for all channels.  As a result, although we are spending an exorbitant amount of money to have lots of channels available, I have no idea what's on any of them later at night and have to scroll through, guessing, like it's 1986 and I am in my childhood living room all over again, turning a giant dial on a television set. Naturally, after midnight I am hardly inclined to pick up the phone and call Time Warner (who I doubt would be answering anyway), and during the rest of the day I am generally busy with other things.  Argh.

Fall: time for foliage, fireplaces, and...fashion emergencies

I am in an endless battle with the weather: every time the seasons change, I just can't seem to get it right. As spring turns to summer, there is the inevitable moment when I find myself sweating rivers on a subway platform in a pair of tights and tall boots. And now, as the long late summer finally turns to fall, I am, in a word, freezing.  Wrong shoes (flats), wrong sweater (short sleeves), wrong jacket (thin cotton). Yet just as surely, I will bundle up tomorrow in a nice warm wool-and-cashmere combo, the sun will come out, and I will melt into a puddle on Seventh Avenue. Can't win. 

Additional Journalism Commentary

I'd love to know whether any military families agree with me that it is just a terrible idea to broadcast so many surprise homecomings from troops serving in Iraq. Of course anyone can see the emotional appeal of such stories, but every time I see a piece like this, all I can think of is how disappointing it must be for the thousands of kids across the country whose moms and dads haven't been able to plan similar reunions, and especially those kids whose parents aren't coming home at all. To say nothing of the spouses struggling every day on their own! I'm sure it's nice to see another family enjoy such a wonderful surprise, but for children in particular, it has to be a little confusing to see some other dad on national tv hugging his daughter and taking rides around Central Park while wondering how come your mom's can't come home to pick you up from school or whatever. Seems insensitive, is all.

Please, Try A Mint

Lately it seems everywhere I go, I keep running into people with horribly bad breath. Is it that hard to brush your teeth in the morning before hopping on a crowded subway car to go to work? Or to perhaps chew some gum after a garlicky lunch? Do these people not know they have bad breath? Could I have bad breath and not even realize it? Hm.

The Coddling Continues

Frankly, easing high school students into college with all the delicacy of extracting an intact soft-boiled egg from a shell is ridiculous. How about a program to ease college graduates into the real world? We can just create a bunch of little cities that pay 22-year-olds great salaries to blog about themselves all day for a year, then toss them into the wild of actual cities and see how they fare. If students at our best universities can't hack sharing space and faculty access with a few students with a couple more years of life experience, then I have some serious fears about our country. Parents, and educators: if you really want to help today's most promising youngsters, how about a year off between high school and college for traveling the world and learning what's really out there, rather than further insulating them from the challenges they will inevitably face later in life? Why are we more interested in creating gentle buffers than truly expanding life experiences? We're going to have to do a lot better than this.