While I am still unemployed but housed, I have been on a bit of a creative streak. Since the second underpaid stint at Mitchell's ended on January 24, I came up with a song (1099) that blasts their pay structure and other businesses moving to that pay structure to avoid paying the new $8 per hour minimum wage. Over the last couple of days, I went to slightly less incendiary lyrical topics- the piping plovers who are holding the Rockaway Boardwalk hostage (Piping Plovers) and Governor Cuomo, Mayor De Blasio, and other ACORN/Working Families politicians who think pro-life, pro gun Catholics have no business being in New York (Heaven, Hell, and Rockaway- Coda).
New year, same old problems. I am unemployed again- because 5 months worth of sub-minimum wage commission delivery work did a number on both my wallet and my right knee. I started the new year in Rockaway Park with my sister and nephew visiting from Dyersburg, TN. This was the first time I had seen either since my 30th birthday- in May 2002! Not long after they got here, a major snowstorm socked NYC with 6-12 inches of the white stuff.
My nephew, of course, enjoyed it. I nearly got frostbite taking those pictures.
On the way back to Pennsylvania and Tennessee, my sister got trapped in an ice storm. About 2.5 weeks later, another snow storm of around a foot hit NYC.
Supposedly NYC is not the only place in North America with horrifically-below-average January temps. Austin had temps in the 20s- a good 20-30 below average (and a humanitarian crisis with 4000+ homeless flooding the shelters that were designed for one tenth that number). Colorado Springs had major snowstorms. Minnesota had days in which the high temperature was below 0. And the Southeast got paralyzed this week by snow- albeit far less snow than what NYC has seen this month. Even Florida and Texas can't escape this cold. The Super Bowl will be held across the river from NYC on Sunday. I hope the NFL knows what it's in for- cold (although 30s by then will be a heat wave compared to most of this month), chance of snow, unfilled seats because few sane people want to pay 4 figures to see an outdoor game in the cold. Even the hotels (which unlike Met Life Stadium do have heat) are having trouble filling their rooms. I can see now why Liz Stonehill (an EMT dispatcher whose office is probably warmer than my room in Rockaway) considers snow to be a 4 letter word.