Saturday reflections

Taken on the way to school this morning.

My knee replacement surgery is two months from today. Mostly I am able to get around, but I desperately miss walking. Just walking.

I hobble, I limp, I lurch, but it's walking only in a technical sense of the word, in that I manage to transport myself from one location to another. Slowly and gracelessly, but I get there eventually. Doing it for more than a couple of blocks is exhausting though, despite the industrial-strength prescription NSAIDS I am taking.

Which I forgot to take on Thursday, and then again this morning. I took a pill as soon as I got home, and by tomorrow I assume that all of the screaming joints will have quieted down again, but I am so ready for this to be over.

Not that I can blame my unmedicated state for my bonehead move of the day. I have braces for my knee and ankles, so getting dressed is more complicated than it used to be. This morning I put on a shirt from the closet and grabbed a clean pair of socks, then moved to the chair where I strap myself into all my medical accoutrements. When I was ready to put on the ankle braces, socks, and shoes, I couldn't find the socks. I knew I had just had them, and they were nowhere to be found. So I hobbled back to the dresser, got another pair of socks, put on my shoes, and left for school.

Later, I was standing in my classroom chatting with the early arrivals when I happened to glance down and saw the missing pair of socks poking out of my cleavage. Clearly I had needed another free hand while I was gathering clothes and shoes and just stuffed the socks down my shirt temporarily.

The students thought it was hilarious, and once I got over the embarrassment, so did I.

Saturday reflections

The reflections are secondary maybe, but I liked this truck in camouflage colors I saw parked in the East Village last night.

Snowcrete

That's the half-joking name for the masses of snow that have lingered for the two and half weeks since the big storm. It's been so cold—zero degrees Fahrenheit Saturday night—that the little bit of snow that that has managed to melt has quickly been refrozen into something you'd need a jackhammer to remove. If, say, you wanted to drive one of these cars on East 89th Street anytime before April.

I took the picture of the car on the right last night, and realized that I'd already taken a picture of it, a week ago. You'd have to look very closely at the two pictures to notice any difference in the amount of snow.

Cars

I've always loved the details on cars. Here are a few that have been sitting in the folder forever.

Saturday reflections

A not very interesting look at the main street in Regent, North Dakota. It's the terminus of the Enchanted Highway, a series of scrap metal sculptures along 32 miles of road through farm country. We met the artist, Gary Greff, who started the project in 1989. He now gets a subsidy from the state, but for many years he financed the project on his own.

Saturday reflections

I took this picture as we were trying to navigate our way out of the car rental lot at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June. I liked the abstract weirdness of that grid and the reflections on the car.

Saturday reflections

Here's something more recent and local for a change: cars waiting for a light on Walker Street in Lower Manhattan on Thursday.

I had just had my annual eye exam, and with my eyes dilated the patterns on these windshields looked practically psychedelic.

Saturday reflections

Palm trees reflected in a car window in Berkeley.

Saturday reflections

Cars in a parking lot sporting some amazing reflections.

I took this picture about six months ago—I remember that I was cutting through the parking lot on my way somewhere in a tremendous hurry, though I no longer remember where I was exactly or where I was going. But obviously I had to stop and take this picture.

Anyway, it promptly got buried in the hundreds of photos on my phone related to school and our group chats, and I found it today when I was trying to clean some of the junk out.

Saturday reflections

The Upper East Side reflected in a car on East 68th Street, taken on my way to the bus stop after class today.

Saturday reflections

A car on West 43rd Street.

I was surprised and delighted to wake up to a world covered in snow this morning. It's already disappearing, even though it's well below freezing outside, but I think it still counts as a White Christmas.

Saturday reflections

I upgraded my phone a couple of weeks ago; although I was curious about how much better the new cameras are, I was driven more by a dying battery and the fact that I kept running out of storage space.

I haven't tried to take many pictures yet, but this car reflection isn't bad.

Saturday reflections

A car parked on the very California-like streets of the San Isidro neighborhood in Lima. The West Coast is the West Coast, apparently.

Saturday reflections

Yes, sometimes when I'm waiting at a red light, I take pictures to pass the time. Why do you ask?

Saturday reflections

A rather wintry and stark car reflection.

Saturday reflections

A car turned an Upper East Side street into a desaturated abstract.

Urban poetry

Random photos from a cab ride home a few weeks ago: an upper level store window on 57th Street, and cars on Ninth Avenue.

Saturday reflections

A sunny day in late spring in New York City, reflected by a parked car in a dark garage.

Spring semester is over, and summer term has begun (gee, that break went quickly.) The main work for the summer class will be two and a half weeks in Costa Rica next month, and the workload is pretty easy until then, but I can't help thinking, Wait, wasn't this supposed to be my time off?

Saturday reflections

I found this reflection in the back window of a car on my phone. I know that I took it last month because my phone tells me so, but where exactly on the island of Manhattan I was, I don't know.

Saturday reflections

This was a moving car in Brooklyn a few weeks ago, which explains the blurriness. After having to make major last-minute changes to a lesson Tuesday morning, and then teaching it through a throbbing toothache, everything that has happened since has felt pleasantly dreamlike. I may be stuck inside on a beautiful spring day reading and commenting on research paper outlines, but at least nothing hurts.

And I am now on spring break, which really just means that I get to do just as much homework but I don't have any scheduled classes. At least I will be doing some of the work from an AirBnB in Ithaca for a few days next week.