picklebacks, yankees, CLE, random acts of guilt avoidance

i've been drinking for pretty much 48 straight hours. that shit isn't healthy, i can say that much. pickebacks at the breslin. (jameson followed by pickle/jalapeno juice, the juice disperses the taste of the whiskey. it's as if the alcohol was never there. dangerous.) we were snuck into a skybox at yankee stadium, which, YES. and then we possibly weren't charged for a single beer. and i maybe got an extra fried pickle with my burger all of which mean I WIN. fireworks from julie's roof where her view was pretty phenomenal and where nobody died from falling off the edge. again, WIN. 

i have to renew my bar membership and realized i haven't taken any CLE credits. i'm an idiot. i had 2 years to get 24 credits in and now i'm stuck trying to get them all in the next two months. GAH. procrastination! i found 13 IP seminars that you can download for free so i guess i have at least 8 hours of lectures i have to listen to (assuming i can play them back at 2X in quicktime)...

a strange thing happened in the subway a few days ago. it was late, 1am maybe, and i was waiting for the A train. i saw a blind man kind of aggressively swinging his stick across the ground in a pretty erratic manner. the minute his stick would hit the yellow strip along the platform he'd kind of cower and scoot back, like an abused dog to a raised hand. i saw him headed for a really narrow part of the platform and had a single vision of him falling onto the tracks run through my head before i ran over to grab him. so it wasn't so much out of the goodness of my heart (which you all know is cold and dead) but rather thinking how i'd like to avoid the personal guilt of watching a blind man die on the tracks 3 feet from me. as i walked over to him, beyond his shoulder, i saw this adonis. it was like a mirage. a tall guy with broad shoulders and glasses, a striped button down and he looked straight out of a ralph lauren catalog. stunning. i did a double take before i asked the blind man where he was headed and if he needed help. he said he was going to the first car and asked for my elbow. then he started getting ranty about how nobody offers to help and how they just want to watch him and make fun of him (which, really? do people really do that?) and i countered that maybe a lot of people would resent being treated like a crippled person so maybe they were afraid to offer. he responded, correctly, that the least they could do was ask. lesson learned. 

i took him to where the first car would land. he had change he was jingling in his hand, which he promptly dropped on the ground and i see him fall to his hands and knees, swiping the ground with his fingers in little circles. so i have to run over again and tell him to get off the ground and that i'd pick it up for him. he just seemed so angry at the world, and maybe he was. i walk back 20 feet or so and see the adonis standing there, staring in my direction. maybe he's one of those people the blind guy was so angry about. the ones who just watch. i looked down at my magazine and back up and the dude was gone. he'd disappeared out of thin air which seemed appropriate since he seemed to have materialized the same way.

the subway pulls up, i watch as the blind guy gets on and then watch as he proceeds to holler at all the passengers, begging for change, and whacking peoples shins with his stick as he tries to make it to the other end of the car.