Monday, July 18, 2016

weekend update

It was a good weekend here on the HQ. We had no bunkering to do, so I got to get caught up on paperwork, serviced our generators and pumps, and did a little painting, plus I got to go for daily walks in Brooklyn.

 Yesterday I crossed paths with actor Peter Dinklage, of Game of Thrones fame, who was out walking his dog. Nice guy. Softspoken, very polite. His dog appeared very well trained, which I see as a positive thing, and also very unusual for a New Yorker.

 There was the usual collection of assholes with man-buns, dirty people (seriously, why the fuck do so many foreign people in New York spit everywhere, and do so constantly? They don't have a dip in their mouths that I can see. It's gross, and I resolved that anyone who did so within my personal space would get a good hard shove, but I pussied out and just dipped a shoulder and lightly checked a guy to make him stagger. Kind of a dick move, but what the hell).

      The neighborhood I walk through is a mix of upper-class SWPL and the last vestiges of a Jewish-Italian neighborhood. Great for people-watching. The most obvious thing I see is a very unusual number of pregnant white women. Seriously, lots of waddlers, which I credit to the neighborhood being famous as a liberal bastion for the relatively well-do-do. This is the same neighborhood that inspired a piece in the New Yorker about a lesbian couple's fear that their adopted daughter would turn out straight.

    I also walked by the office of the car service we use as taxis for the airport trips and grocery runs. Middle Eastern men, mostly, many of whom I know somewhat, so I stopped by, said hi, and the older guys took turns patting my gut and congratulating me on getting out for a walk.
    Slightly embarassing, but what can you do? I get around as much a possible, but I do have a gut. Good guys.


1 comment:

Jill said...

Nice that you get a chance to get off and take a walk around the neighborhood every now and then.

I hated it when we came back to work in the GoM and the companies all treated us like we were their prisoners, not even allowed off the boats to walk up the street for a newspaper!

I understand they've got us over a barrel, especially now with the unemployment situation offshore, but I still can't understand how they get away with treating us like that.

When I worked deep sea, I understood there were laws that prevented companies from keeping people 'restricted to the ship', if they did that, they'd have to pay us all overtime! Easier to just do the right thing and let us go ashore. They even had to provide the means for us to do so.

Why is the GoM allowed to treat its sailors so differently?