My friend and I were eating at the outside tables at Charm Thai (SO good!) and I saw a crazy guy asking a random stranger for four quarters. He was waving a dollar bill around, so he wanted change, not charity. I ignored him and went back to finishing my meal. He was casting about for somebody else to get change from, and all of a sudden he approached from behind me and got right up next to me and yelled DO YOU HAVE FOUR QUARTERS???? He had headphones in, but he was shouting much louder than necessary. Much, MUCH louder than necessary. So I recoiled and said “No!” I put my hands up because he was SO far into my personal space, it startled me.

So he starting cursing at me, and stepped away, but continued to threaten to cut me, “I’m gonna kill you bitch,” etc. My friend had signed the check but the waitress hadn’t picked it up yet, so he said “let’s take this inside, shall we?” And we did, and the guy continued to shout obscenities as we went inside. I got irritated, and as I went through the door, I flipped him the bird and said “Fuck off!” Of course, everybody in the restaurant heard me. But the bartender had seen what happened, and was totally fine with us hanging out at the bar until the guy went away.

It took him a couple of minutes to leave, though. I kept turning around to look, and he was standing at a phone booth staring right at me. I could see his lips moving so I know he was continuing to threaten me. He finally went away and we went back to Westside Pearl, our hostel.

So not an actual dangerous encounter, because he was probably just a little bit crazy and not a real threat. It was weird that he breached the perimeter of the restaurant, though – behind the little walls that set the tables off from the sidewalk. The tension was SO high though, so we went inside to be safe. Anyway, that’s the long story behind a couple of weird tweets from me.

Instead of movable type, try finding a licensed mover that knows how to type!

This was on a blog entry about Movable Type, the blogging software. The commenter included their business URL, a moving company.

Unbelievable. Anyway, more about New York later!

For several years, I posted every day without fail. I think I might go back to that. It might be hard, and I might not get something up every single day, but I want to try it. The challenge will be not beating myself up if I miss a day. Daily posting used to be a point of pride for me, and I felt bad when I missed a day. I don’t want to do that anymore! So I think I will try to keep it light, try to make it daily, but not die if it’s not.

:A: is watching a show about the “undersea” – those depths where crazy-looking fish with lots of teeth live. It’s pretty interesting. I need to take a shower though, because I have to leave at 7:35am tomorrow to catch my train. Yeah, I’ll be super early, but better safe than sorry!