Writing about New York. Starts with my brother in Charlotte, and that goes back to the times we used to walk together at night in Atlanta's summer.
My brother and I hate cockroaches, but love going for long walks together on warm nights. When we both lived in Atlanta, warm nights meant thousands of cockroaches massing from the sewers across streets and lawns. For my brother, sensing a single cockroach could ruin a walk - he'd spend minutes wiping away every last trace of a cockroach from his bare feet, cursing and shivering throughout the operation. I wasn't as bad, but it's still fare to say the crunch of a cockroach exoskeleton between my bare toes is one of my least favorite physical sensations.
But we'd go for these walks anyway, because I think we processed (and continue to process) risks and rewards differently from most people.
The traditional decision making process follows the Plus/Minus model: the decision maker weighs the benefits they'll gain from an activity against the definite and possible bad consequences of that decision. If the pluses outweigh the minuses, the activity is conducted. In this model, the decision maker probably wouldn't walk around Atlanta at night... or would at least wear shoes when they walked.
My brother and I make decisions using the Plus model: if an activity presents any benefits, we do it.
(I'll come back to this later)
So that might explain why I slept so little this last weekend. Here was my itinerary:
Saturday
8:30pm: arrive at the W Hotel in New York, visit with Grandparents and other relatives.
9:30ish: bar with Laura (Oglethorpe friend) and Patricia (friend of a friend, recent NYC transplant from Barcelona)
2am: stumble back to Laura's Harlem apartment for a few hours of sleep.
Sunday
8am: wake, take subway to South Pier
11am: meet Patricia, who is late late late. Take ferry to Governer's Island, walk around and look at art stuff for a few hours.
5pm: wedding
Incalculably later that night: drunken drive with my parents out of Forest Hills to stay the night at an Uncle's house.
Monday
7:30am: wake, subway to Penn Station
10am: Megabus to Boston
3pm: arrive, meet Kyle in Cambridge (Harvard triangle/square)
That afternoon: walk around a lot, get drunk, have adventures
1am: rudely abandon Kyle's nice friends to drive to her house near Hartford, CT
4:13am: sleep
Tuesday
6:50am: wake, drive with Kyle to a train station, rush off to train instead of saying goodbye properly
9:30am: arrive back in NY at Grand Central Station, take bus to LaGuardia.
11am: fly back to Atlanta.
3pm: arrive, go straight to work
Anyway, this doesn't make a lot of sense because I believe I'm discussing a few different things at once. I will write more in the future. Also, I took pictures of my brother washing his cat.