Another Tuesday has finally ended

Tuesdays have been my least favorite day for a while now. Yesterday was one of those Tuesdays where nothing I tried to do seemed to work out. And the buses and subways were particularly irrational. I tried a different route for my Tuesday commute after hearing about a crime comitted at one of my subway stops at the exact time that I'm usually there (only it was a Sunday, not a Tuesday). So I ended up on a bus, which I had been on before, and it should've stopped right outside the gate of the campus, but it didn't - it kept going. That is the worst feeling in the world, to be on a crowded bus that has just passed your stop. Fortunately it stopped probably less that 1/4 mile away, so it wasn't a big deal. And then I called Sam to have him meet me at the subway stop that the bus took me to so that we could right home together and I wouldn't have to wait at the stop alone, but he had to wait 1/2 for the subway to get there and I did have to wait alone, although I wouldn't have had to if I hadn't called him, because the train got there right when I did.

You just can't beat this city. You just have to accept it. Which I can usually do, except after such a long day as yesterday was. Suddenly I've got a lot of work to do for my assistantship. In addition to cataloging books and helping another professor with lots of different projects, I'm going to be holding review sessions once a week for a beginning Latin class and office hours for a Greek class. Two weeks from today I have my first midterm, and two weeks from tomorrow I have a midterm and a presentation in the same class.

So it's not really getting cold in New York, but the other day the apartment apparently decided it was cold enough for the heater to turn on. Our heat is included in our rent so we don't really pay for it (at least not separately) and we also don't, apparently, control it. There are two strange-looking contraptions, one in the living room and one in the bedroom, which, come to find out, are called radiators. I maybe knew this a long time ago before I moved to Texas, where turning on the heater really just means turning off the air conditioner.

Anyway, these heaters naturally deemed it appropriate for themselves to turn on one late night when Sam was gone and I was tired from class. They did so with very strange noises coming from the bedroom, and I, ever-paranoid about burlaries even when they are physically impossible, went to see what was happening there. There were strange hissing noises coming from the white thing in the corner that sounded rather sinister. My first thought was, "oh my gosh, it's a gas leak, and I'm going to die." I've heard about gas leaks and I've seen the people in movies who turn on their gas stoves to commite suicide, and then think better of it. (I don't usually watch movies in which people think of suicide without thinking better of it). Then I thought, "no, don't be ridiculous, it's just noisy because this is the first time it's come on this winter." So I went back to the living room.

Usually at night I get unreasonably hyper after feeling sleepy all day, but that night I felt ridiculously drowsy. This worried me, because I was pretty sure drowsiness was one of the symptoms of dying from inhaling gas. So I thought, "maybe I should call my parents." But I didn't want to sound silly so I put off calling them until it occured to me, that if I were to die, it might look like a suicide, unless I called someone.

They said it was fine but I opened a window for ventilation, just in case.