Sightseeing

On the five-hundred block of South Sixth Street, we get the best of both worlds. 


Walk south and we run into South Street--famous for nightlife, restaurants, hip shops, and tourists. The sidewalks are always busy with a mosaic of pedestrians, vendors, and street musicians. Even the restaurants need bouncers late at night on South Street.


On Friday and Saturday nights after the bars close, you can usually count on a domestic dispute or two (often incited by the arrival of a tow truck), a handful of people using alleys as receptacles for the release of various bodily fluids, and a confetti-like sprinkling of discarded, greasy paper plates and other trash along the street and sidewalk.


But when you head north on Sixth Street, after a few blocks you're greeted with red brick roads, horse-drawn carriages, and lush, green parks full of people reading, relaxing, walking. The shady, winding pathways of Washington Square are a tranquil refuge in the eye of a storm of city traffic and turmoil. There are no signs posted, but there is an unspoken agreement to maintain the serenity among the habitués.


There's nothing particularly special about our block itself, other than being the dividing line between two parallel universes. We live next to a computer repair shop, a dumpy take-out pizzeria, and across the street from a gated, community park with basketball courts and a children's playground.


A couple nights ago, however, things got a little exciting.


Around 1, Jason stepped out on the front stoop for a smoke. Even though the park closes at dusk, the streetlights made two intruders quite visible. They were sitting on a bench just a few feet from the street. Exchanging sexual favors.


A male passerby stopped dead in his tracks for a few moments to view the spectacle. He eventually walked on,  but not before glancing across the street to see Jason, and flashing him a big thumbs-up.


Never one to leave a guy hanging, Jason returned the gesture with a grin.

It's raining, pasta sauce is pouring

So far, I love life in the city. So many perks--like having everything you need within walking distance, so much history and diversity...

And a few quirks:

Jason and I woke up and immediately remembered we forgot to put the trash out on the curb for collection last night. But when we dragged the bags out from the laundry room to take outside, we also dragged out a mouse. The cat couldn't catch it, but Jason's sandal did. Death, I found, (especially of an animal larger than your average bug) is particularly hard to stomach just moments after you wake up. We're guessing he found his way in through the storm cellar in the laundry room that opens up onto the sidewalk. We're also guessing he has lots of friends and family nearby.

For reasons unknown, the city didn't even end up collecting the trash on our block this morning as scheduled. The streets always smell on trash night. The streets smell surprisingly worse after everyone's trash has been sitting out overnight in the rain. Also, we had fish for dinner last night, and I just cleaned the cat litter box.

So, tonight Jason, Joe and I stopped at SuperFresh for a few dinner supplies. We just needed a jar of marinara for our soon-to-be stuffed pasta shells. The thing about grocery stores in the middle of a city is they're often small. And cramped. And sometimes when someone pushes by you in a narrow aisle when you're holding a jar of pasta sauce, it causes you to drop it. (You equals Jason in this scenario.)

The store employee who happened to be just a few feet away, kindly told us to please step back, he would clean it up. Then he kindly reminded us, along with everyone else in the store, to USE A BASKET, USE A BASKET, YOU KIDS ALWAYS THINK YOU CAN CARRY EVERYTHING IN YOUR HANDS, BUT YOU CAN'T. USE A BASKET, YOU GOTTA USE A BASKET, PLLLEEEASE. THIS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU WOULDA USED A BASKET. GO ON, GET A BASKET, NOW, ALL OF YOU!

Walking home, it started to rain again. A lady in a passing car made a point to hang the upper half of her body out the window and sing to us, tauntingly, "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring!"

I guess the joke's on her, though, because she wasn't wearing a raincoat either.

I've made an example of myself, and not the good kind.

You see, the thing about typos is they happen. Publishers make reprints, newspapers run corrections, professors make marks with their red pens. Just think of all the time, money, and effort spent on avoiding and correcting misspelled words, run on sentences--I've already made (and fortunately caught) three of them in this blog.

The other thing about typos is that there are some places where they can't happen, or at least where they are seldom forgiven.

Like on a resume.

For a proofreading job.

You heard right, my friends, I boasted my community invovlement on my resume that I sent to a marketing firm that warns potential employees on their job posting that "errors are costly and time-consuming for our clients and our company; they could be cause for dismissal." Their confident and daring use of the often-debated semi-colon makes the statement that much more intimidating.

And, no. The squiggly red line we've all come to rely on so well did not save my ass. I made my resume in InDesign, a graphic design program that I'm new to, and haven't yet found its spell check function. I was trying to make it tech-savvy and user-friendly--I even converted it into a PDF.

Luckily, the only other company who received that copy of my resume was advertising a job for which I knew I was highly under-qualified.

But as for the hip-sounding marketing firm, it makes it all the harder to take knowing that I was a perfect match for the job. The ad even said "must love dogs." Sure, I'm more of a cat person, but still, how cool is that?

I haven't heard anything back yet, not even a rejection. Part of me is tempted to write to them again and admit my flaw, in the vain hope they kept my papers on file because my writing samples were just that good. My less optimistic side says I made their decision for them. You wouldn't hire a nanny with a criminal record. You don't hire a dyslexic to do your taxes.

Until the next sweet-sounding job posting surfaces on Craig's List, I'll keep on hoping that company's need for a proofreader is particularly desperate.

By the way, can you find the typos I left uncorrected in this post? Maybe that's just the perfect way to end all of my cover letters.