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Two random after-work stories: About a month ago, I was hanging around Wall Street after work trying to kill time before meeting up with Chad. After a large cup of iced chai tea, I urgently had to go to the bathroom. I ran with my knees locked together to the nearest Starbucks. I snuck past the cashier undetected (or they were just indifferent), and headed to the facilities in the back. Thankfully there was no line, but I did have to wait for whomever was still in the bathroom to leave. While I was holding up the wall, an older man peaked his head into the corridor and smiled at me. I smiled back. He pointed somewhat in my direction and said in a very thick, possibly Swedish, accent something which I heard to be, "You're cute." I was a little taken aback, but thought I'd be polite and told him thanks. He disappeared for a moment, only to reappear on line with me a moment later. At this point I felt a little awkward because of what was said, and I figured he'd try to make small talk with me now which I didn't feel like participating in. He pointed to the bathroom door and asked something in broken English which I deciphered to be, mostly through hand gestures, him questioning me if someone was in the bathroom. I told him yes. After thinking about what just transpired a little longer, I started blushing upon the realization that he had asked me if I was "on queue" before, and had not been telling me I was cute. "You're on queue?" "Thanks." After a long day at work and a tough workout this evening, I was waiting for the M train to arrive at the Broad and Wall Street stop to take me home to Brooklyn. I was slightly engrossed in my newly purchased copy of The Crying of Lot 49, when an old businessman walked up next to me and plopped his briefcase down in a very exaggerated manner. I had the feeling he was looking at me, but I didn't bother to investigate. He finally spoke to me after staring at me for a minute; "Sarah?" I looked at him weird and said, "I'm sorry?" He seemed a little befuddled and said, "Oh." A simple case of mistaken identity, I guessed. But he continued to stare at me, and I continued to ignore him, at this point only pretending to read since I could concentrate on nothing other than the fact that I was being stared at. He leaned over and put his face in front of me to get either a better look at my face, or at what I was reading. I continued to pretend I couldn't see him. He placed a bag he was holding on top of his briefcase, only for it to fall a second later. He chuckled a little and shook his head at the bag and then at me, trying to include me in on his clumsy moment. I started to think he was doing it deliberately to get my attention after the same thing happened again. He looked around a little, and then back at me. Down the tunnel, back at me. I had read the same paragraph eight times at this point. The train lights began to slowly wrap themselves around the tunnel, and the man announced triumphantly to me, "Train's here!" I looked down the tunnel, then back at my book, but never at Mr. Crazy. I made sure to sit in a two-seater with an occupant to prevent him from trying to strike up a conversation with me. It worked and I averted what was sure to be a nonsensical discussion of epic proportions. I don't speak crazy...not fluently anyway. Not very exciting stories with even less enthralling climaxes, but they were just on my mind. 09*26*05 There are only a few things about my job that gross me out. One is when I have to take a blood sample from an eye donor. I usually insert the needle right above or below the clavicle bone on the right side, and aim it towards the heart...and usually not a goddamned drop of blood comes out. I then have to keep searching around for a vein inside the body and almost always scrape against a bone with the needle, which never fails to creep me out. Sometimes I'll find a spot that produces a mere drop of blood to spit out into the syringe, and then I proceed to basically milk that spot by jabbing the needle in and out of the body, almost as if I'm stabbing the person. I can actually hear the skin and/or fat ripping inside as I do this. And usually when I do this, pieces of fat are also drawn up into the syringe. The whole process is disgusting. The rare times I stick the needle directly into a vein and get the quantity of blood I need in under a minute are happy times for me indeed. Well, maybe not happy, but definitely relieving. The other thing that grosses me out was unbeknownst to me until today. I did an enucleation (whole eye removal) this afternoon. Not a big deal; it's actually easier to do than a corneal excision. I've only heard tales of donors who bleed heavily upon the removal of their eyes. But today I was unfortunate to have finally experienced it. The second I started to cut through the tissue in the back of this guy's eye, blood started pouring out of his socket. And it wasn't just a trickle, it was gushing. A pool of blood began to form under his head. I had to complete the procedure though. The more I cut, the more blood came out, followed by fatty tissue. I moved onto the next eye with similar results, if not worse. Cleaning this guy up took me longer than the actual procedure. At one point the hospital security guard came in to see if I was finished. I tried my best to keep the less bloody gloved hand of mine on the door so he couldn't open it far enough to see what was going on. But he peaked his head around and asked, "Oh, you're still here?" And then looked at the donor and said, "Oh god," and shut the door. I don't know how I did it, but after about 20 gauze pads and 5 paper towels, things were under control for the most part. I could still smell the donor's blood on my way back to the lab. Just to clarify, when I say these things gross me out, it's usually just a repetition of "ew" going on in my head. But I never get nauseous or find myself incapable of doing these things. In any case, if there was one thing to take my mind off other saddening things going on in my personal life, this was it. 09*25*05 It's funny (but not haha funny) the different things I've been hearing from my friends and my mom regarding my recent break-up. I know everyone means well, and they're just doing what they can to make me feel better. But all the "you can do better" and "it just wasn't meant to be" and "his loss" cliché phrases I keep hearing don't do me a bit of good. I know this may be true of some people after a break-up, but I'm not focusing on getting another boyfriend at the moment. I'm not sad because I no longer have a boyfriend, I'm sad because I am no longer dating Chad. The thing is, I say the same things to my friends when they're going through break-ups, too. So I can't be angry at my friends for throwing the same meaningless phrases right back at me. I guess I just wanted to let people know the best thing you can do for someone who is hurt is to just listen to what they have to say, let them know that you think their situation sucks, and you're sorry they're hurt; but most of all, just be there for them and let them know that you'll be there for them if they need to talk. Because, unfortunately, there's no magic phrase you can say to make things better. Unless of course if there is, in which case let me know asap. 09*24*05 I guess timing really is everything. Unfortunately, good timing hasn't always been my forté. Had I met Chad at a time when he was well over most of the issues he had from a devastating break-up early last year, I feel that we could have had something really special. Not to say that what we did have wasn't special, but it obviously wasn't going the way we both knew it should or else we wouldn't have broken up today. Perhaps I'm simplifying things too much by saying this was all due to his past relationship, but I know that definitely played a part in his inability to show me how he felt for me. Regardless, I am extremely distressed at the thought that someone as extraordinary as Chad will no longer be a part of my life. I failed to write about how much Chad meant to me on my site because I have grown weary of what I have come to feel is the exploitation of my personal situations where my relationships are concerned, and thus have tried to keep such entries to a minimum. I have also been particularly careful about doing this where Chad is concerned because I guess I always knew our situation was very delicate, and neither wanted to be boastful about him nor critical about him in fear that I'd regret it later. Now that things have ended, I see no point in trying to hide the fact that it is over, and I will miss him more than I can express on this stupid site. 09*21*05 Pictures of France HERE. I used some other website to host everything. I think it made the picture quality look shittier than it really is, but I don't feel like trying something else at the moment. Enjoy. 09*20*05 Having so much to write about my trip has been deterring me from writing about it. But I know if I wait too long, I'll forget the details. I think I'll write a very specific recollection of the whole trip for myself, but I'll just summarize the highlights here. Among the famous sights we visited in Paris were Père Lachaise Cemetery where we saw both Chopin's and Jim Morrison's grave, the Champs-Elysées and the Arc de Triomph, the Catacombs, Musée d'Orsay, The Eiffel Tower, Palais du Luxembourg, the Panthéon, Notre Dame, Jardin des Plantes, outside the Louvre, Sacré Coeur, and, of course, The Seine. We ended the trip with dessert at the diner where Amélie was filmed. We went to Aix en Provence last Monday morning. It was a small town with narrow roads surrounded by small shops and homes, and plenty of fountains. We easily walked from one end of town to the other in a half hour. Upon our arrival, we went on a 7-mile walk on a small winding road out of town and caught glimpses of the Alps. Tuesday afternoon we headed to Lyon. We walked across the Rhône River and the Saône River to the medieval part of town where we had dinner and spent the rest of the night at a cute bar near the Saône River. We talked with a Frenchman who spoke English pretty well, while some teenage boys with braces bought us drinks. Katrina and I then walked back to our hotel pretty drunk and took pictures of us mooning each other walking over the Rhône. Wednesday evening we arrived in Dijon and looked for a place to eat dinner. The town looked so much like a little village you'd see in the movies that I was convinced it was staged. I almost expected the townspeople to come running down the road chasing someone with torches in hand. We couldn't find a good restaurant, so we settled on a place that had raviolis on the menu. I told the waiter we were vegetarians to make sure the word I didn't know in the entrée I wanted wasn't meat. He seemed to understand me, or so I thought. Next thing I know he brought out rice, noodles and spring rolls for dinner. I was hungry though, and didn't feel like trying to figure out how to say "what the hell!?" in French. The next morning we did some shopping and then headed back to Paris in the afternoon. We ate at plenty of vegetarian restaurants in Paris, drank a lot of coffee and ate a lot of bread and cheese. I spoke French whenever possible...and somewhat poorly I might add. I did manage to make train reservations in French several times. But there was also an occasion where I was attempting to tell a train station employee I missed my train and needed help so that it wouldn't happen again, but lacked the vocabulary to do so. It's extremely frustrating to not be able to communicate with people. But on a whole, most people were very patient and friendly with me. We did accidentally make up a few new French phrases. Instead of bonjour, Katrina kept saying bougeois (pronounced boo-jwa; almost bourgeois, but not quite). I meant to say bonne nuit to our waiter (good night), but instead said bonne noir (good black). And one night a waiter greeted me with "bonsoir" (good evening), but I didn't hear him correctly and answered back au revoir (goodbye). So that's my trip in a nutshell. I had a great time. Now that I'm back I'm filled with a mixture of feelings; mostly I feel a bit restless with my life and sad that the trip I've been looking forward to for so long is over. I'm thinking of things to do to break out of the routine I've entered into. I'm setting goals to shoot for in the near future. I want to travel more, I want to move, I want to read more, I want to work out more, I want to learn to speak French better. But right now I guess I want to go back to bed. It's 3:30 in the morning. I'll post the 160 pictures from my trip at some point just as soon as I figure out the easiest and least time-consuming way to do so. 09*07*05 I got hit on by a security officer in a morgue last night. How could I could I turn him down? Easily. It was the first time I did a donor by myself. I was on-call and only ended up getting 2 hours of sleep. Oddly enough, I was deliriously hyper at work today. I'm crashing now, though. Katrina is in the other room watching Manhattan, and I believe I am finished packing everything for France. I left out a lot of clothes I had wanted to bring so I could fit all my stuff in a smaller carry-on suitcase. I'm really proud of myself. This is a bit of an improvement over the time I packed so much stuff for my weekend-long trip to Las Vegas that I almost went over the 50-pound limit at the airport. Anyway, I'll miss Chad and my cats, but I plan to bring back lots of cheese and wine for everyone. I come back on the 18th; until then, viva le fromage! 09*03*05 So I'm finally done training for corneal excisions and enucleations. My boss told me Friday. I had my first on-call shift from midnight to noon today. I didn't get called in, but I still get $150 for doing the shift. I'm on call tomorrow from noon to midnight as well. But I'm just someone's back-up, so it's doubtful I'll get a call. I'm also on-call Tuesday night. The reason I was suddenly inundated with on-call shifts is because my boss just told me Wednesday that I won't be paid while I'm on vacation; so this was his way of compensating for that. I guess I should have thought about that back when I asked if I could go before my six months probationary period was up. But I was just so happy I could even go and still have a job to come back to. Anyway, the on-call shifts will almost make up for the money I'll be losing. I'm almost in disbelief that I'm going to France on Thursday. This is something I feel like I've waited for my whole life. And something I've been anticipating ever since my mom told me a year ago she'd give me the money to go as my graduation present. And now I'm leaving in less than five days. I'm so excited and a bit flustered. I've basically arranged this whole trip; I got the plane tickets, I booked the hotels, I got the train tickets, I researched where we should visit. I can honestly say I've never felt more like an adult in my whole life. It's kind of scary. Nonetheless, I couldn't be happier to go. I got my hair cut and dyed today. I love my stylist. Usually we talk about various things, but today I was tired and she looked tired, so we kept conversation to a minimum. Just before she rinsed the dye out my hair, one of the two birds she had in a cage to my left keeled over and died. Well, I think it was dead. The other stylist freaked out and took it to an animal hospital. I'm not a superstitious person usually, but the fact that I will shortly be flying to Europe, and a creature of flight fell down and died within the few hours I was there kind of made me a little nervous. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. But if I crash and burn, you read it here first that I predicted it.
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