I took a Con Ed bill (check for $147) to 51st Street to mail, after stopping off at the Donnell Library to return a Tom Wolfe book (Hooking Up) and Moki’s Elizabeth Hardwick collection, which I kept out when I returned his other ones in December and January. I had the idea I’d be interested in reading these old reviews from NYRB, but I never really got around to it. Something to fill idle moments when you’re stuck on a subway train.
Before getting out onto the street I slapped on the Forerunner 410 after holding it at the window to gain satellite reception. I was already wearing the HR monitor band. The 410 is the most complicated and irritating Garmin watch I’ve ever had. It was on deep discount when I bought it through the track team back in 2012. I immediately realized it was a dog and I should have bought something newer. However, there are still instructions online, so I was finally able to figure out why it was giving the wrong time. It was set for Central Time Zone. Why? A frequent complaint about the 410 is that it’s very easy to touch the bezel accidentally and change a readout or setting. But pressing both buttons locks the thing, so I’m not having a problem with that now. Also, when I have the chestband on and the satellites in gear, I can switch very easily from clock time/running time to HR, back and forth, until I lock it at one display, usually the HR. Astoundingly my heart rate was at 110-120 when I was out on the street. Why so elevated? Too much caffeine? Or the monitor is faulty? Eventually I switched back to the clock and pressed my carotid artery. 18-19 beats in ten seconds, which just about matched what the HR display was telling me.
I thought I’d go over to Staples to see if they had ink cartridges. They did not of course. If everyone doesn’t want it, nobody gets it. Then to the Art Students League art shop, a tiny little warren. They not only have no cartridges, they have no fountain pens (no Rotring ArtPens) and not much in the way of ink. Little bottles of Winsor Newton, and Sumi brush ink. Reaching Seventh Avenue I decided to head downtown to the Dick Blick place across from the old HRC on 13th Street. So down to Union Square on the Q train, and then a search-around for where I thought the old HRC was. It’s a bit farther west than I remembered, toward Fifth, and the navy HRC canopy is still there, though the club isn’t. But across 13th St, on the north side, there’s no Dick Blick. I walk over to Sixth to find that Indian stationers, Kooby & Looby or something, but they’re gone too. So back uptown on the F train.
I was thinking while going down the steps at West 4th St, I hardly ever leave the house now. That’s what nruns was good for. Could not escape subway and ferry rides to far, far away. If they don’t can me soon (the sort of thing always on my mind) then I’ll have a few more starting in a month.
These days I go out of the apartment mainly to buy booze or milk or maybe a snack at the drugstore. This morning, for the second time this week, I went to the drugstore for a quart of milk and two (2) little packages of Entenmann’s crumbcakes. Yesterday evening, when I should have been out on a run, I decided to try out a Chinese restaurant across 56th St. Blue Willow, so discreet I never noticed it. It has rave reviews. I ordered sesame noodles and a pork belly appetizer. Both excellent but this cost me $26. Can’t do that often. And then I bought the Tito’s at Shirley’s, came home and gave my Tom Wolfe piece a once-over before filing it. Checking Proton today I see Greg returned it because of an egregious typo toward the end. Last-minute changes are so fatal.
So now I’ve gone out for a beer and a Healthy Choice dinner from Klein’s (chicken marsala). No running just now. I got in my two or three miles of walking today. I’ve stuck my 410 in its charger and will be removing the chest strap.
Greg guessed the error, and fixed it, but I made a further alteration and have pasted it in. I can now start in on the Colin Wilson thing.
Lovely warm weather today. Manhattan is looking clean and tidy again. There’s a feel of 2015-2016 in the air. In fact, everywhere you go, including here in the bedroom, hearing traffic out the window, somebody is playing Taylor Swift’s 1989 album. I hear “Shake It Off” about three times a day, and a little while ago someone out on the street was playing “Blank Space.” Could be the pedicab people. So why not “Welcome to New York”? And what was the song where she wore the black Ava Gardner wig in the video, set in a Mogambo type of Africa?
Dick Blick, it seems, is all over. They moved their 13th St location around the block, to 12th St and 4th Avenue.They have an old Utrecht shop at 20th and Sixth as well. Someday, someday.
