September 17 – Day 11: The 18th Anniversary Gift Is ... Detergent?
Monday was a rare day when I didn’t have anything planned.
Normally when I travel, I stuff all my dirty clothes into a big black plastic garbage bag and do a load when I get home. On longer trips (like this one), though, it gets problematic. When we were at a hotel in Dublin in 2009, we sent out our wash and the bill came to something in the neighborhood of $200.
When I was here last year, the laundry situation was easier, since there was a laundromat literally under the apartment, so carrying the bag down there wasn’t too much trouble.
This time, though, my stay is longer and the laundromat is farther away (though not as far as I thought), so I needed something more substantial to carry my clothes than a Hefty bag. We’d stopped at Target before I left, and I found a nice heavy duty bag that even included a pocket for a bottle of detergent. (Last time, it didn’t occur to me to buy a bottle, so I spent too much dough buying little boxes of soap from the machines in the laundromat.)
I’d originally planned on sticking to my usual laundry schedule of doing loads every other Saturday, but knowing we’d be rehearsing on Saturday and starting to have trouble closing the drawer I’m using to store my dirty, sweaty clothes, I figured Monday was going to be Laundry Day. As it turned out, this was a wise decision, because the clothes I had pretty much filled up my bag, so if I’d waited, I would have had to make multiple trips.
The other obstacle I faced is the one that everyone who doesn’t own a washer and dryer faces: needing enough quarters to wash everything. I figured I could do this pretty easily. There’s a credit union over on Avenue C, and I could use their ATM to get some cash, then go inside to buy quarters. Little did I know how unfriendly this credit union could be.
I have some kind of karma that, when I get into a line (at the bank, at the post office, at the DMV, wherever …), the people in front of me have either massively complicated transactions or are just kind of dumb and need a lot of explanations from the person behind the counter. This day proved to be no exception to that rule, although part of the problem might have been the unfriendly and unhelpful staff. There were two tellers working, one of whom had a big “trainee” sign on her window, and the other was dealing with a customer at length. The trainee was observing, or asking questions, or ignoring everyone—or something. She eventually finished her task and came back to her window and called me over (by the way; every bank I’ve ever been to in New York has thick Plexiglas protecting the teller areas, separating them from the customers. Is bank robbery still that big of a problem in the tri-state area?). I held out a $20 bill and said, “I’d like to buy two rolls of quarters.” She replied that she didn’t have any quarters, which made me curious as to what kind of a financial institution this was. (“We deal only in dimes, tens, and Sacajawea dollars.”) She further told me I’d have to get them from “her,” pointing to the other teller. That worthy finally finished with her customer, and I held up the same $20 and repeated my request. She asked if I had an account. I replied no; that I just wanted change. She said something that I couldn’t quite hear because of the Plexiglas, but it sounded like “We can’t do that if you’re not a member, so go fuck yourself.” (I may have misheard her …)
I left in a huff (If I’d had the time, I’d have waited for a minute and a huff), then looked up the next closest bank (which was a real bank). I went inside, waited in another line, went up to the window, made my same request with the same $20, and was handed two rolls of quarters in exchange for it, somehow getting no attitude from the teller.
Leaving the bank, I needed to buy detergent (I’d stopped at a couple of bodegas, and the ones that had it at all were charging well over $15 for a bottle). Right there was a supermarket (which seemed to be in the middle of some major remodel, but was still open), so I went in, found the detergent aisle, and got exactly what I wanted for $3.75. I went back to the apartment and picked up my laundry bag—or tried to; it was heavy. The bag has straps on it, but I couldn’t figure out how to tote it like a backpack without everything falling out, so I grabbed the closing tie on the top, slung it over my shoulder like a sailor on leave, and headed for the laundromat down the block that had gotten a high rating on Yelp. I went the wrong direction at first, then retraced my steps, ended up at the corner, couldn’t figure out where it was, looked it up again, then realized I’d already walked by it at least twice.
The thing that bugs me about New York laundromats (or at least the ones around here), even as I understand why this is the way they are, is that during the days, anyway, almost all of the machines are tied up by the people who work at the laundry doing other peoples’ washes. I get that. People don’t have the time or don’t have machines, and need clean clothes. What I don’t get it why the workers leave completed loads sitting in washers or dryers rather than clearing the machines for the people who are actually there.
"How did you spend your anniversary, Dave?"
"Funny you should ask ... "
Regardless, I found two machines, loaded them, located the one seat—not one empty seat; the one chair—in the place, and sat and waited for my load to finish, then tried to find a cart (almost all of which were tied up by people doing other peoples’ washes), succeeded at that, then loaded two dryers. Despite all of the complications, it still took less than two hours, and I was able to leave and sort my clean clothes and put them back in their drawers.
I still couldn’t think of anything to do, and it was getting to be late afternoon. I remembered that the guy at the AT&T store had told me that they’d email me when my phone arrived, but I realized that, since the account is in Pidge’s name (we get a discount through her company), the mails would probably go to her. I texted her that that was probably going to happen, and asked that, if it did, she forward them to me. Sure enough, three emails had been sent to her, one of which had tracking information that indicated the phone had been dropped off at the store just after 4:00. I walked over, picked it up, uploaded the information from my old phone to the new one, and waited for some of the apps to load before leaving—then realized that I’d need to be on wifi for all of them to load. I had taken the Mophie battery case I’d bought on Saturday to put the phone in, but didn’t want to take the time to do it while I was in the store.
I stopped at Veneiro’s, an Italian bakery on 11th that I discovered last year. It’s been there since 1894, and the pastries and cookies are absolutely superb. I wanted to pick up a box as a first-rehearsal treat for the rest of the cast. I stopped at a Starbucks without buying anything and got some of the apps loaded, but I was also hungry, so I decided I’d finally hit David’s Café and try their award-winning burger.
Yum!
I got there during Happy Hour (which meant a free glass of wine or beer with the burger; I opted for the former), and sat in a window seat, seated next to two men; one older and English, the other younger and American. From their conversation, I gathered that the older man was a writer of some kind (I didn’t recognize him), and the younger man was doing all he could to flatter and suck up to him. It was fascinating to listen to; the toadying as much as the (well-deserved? I have no idea) egotism.
While it was good entertainment, I was preoccupied with the Mophie case. I took it out of the box and thought, “Hmmm … that seems pretty big.” Sure enough, it turned out that I’d bought a case for the iPhone Plus, which is much larger than the standard version. I tried fitting the new phone into my old case, but it just didn’t work, so I knew I was going to have to make a trip to Best Buy and exchange the wrong case for the right one. Between that, trying to figure out what apps needed to be reloaded, what podcasts hadn’t made the transition, and just what was going on, I didn’t have as much time to eavesdrop as I might have liked.
The burger turned out to be very good, and reminded me of nothing so much as my beloved Bob’s Big Boy double cheeseburger, which is quite a compliment, as far as I’m concerned.
Comments
Post a Comment