Ugh, it's hot.

It's 96° and sunny in Manhattan today, and I only have a 10-inch floor fan running and am perfectly cool and relaxed. It may be the fact that I'm on the first floor, or it may be the brick building… or maybe the curtains I bought that do such a good job of blocking the light out also block the heat out? Either way, I came home (after a very long, long, LONG commute), fully expecting to have to crank the ACs…

And I don't! And it's awesome. I've been obsessing and stressing about not bringing in too much money right now, and a high electric bill was one of the concerns floating around in my head. If this apartment can handle 96°, I can imagine it can handle 100°. And hopefully it won't get much hotter than that.

SUMMER IN THE CITY really sucks, weather-wise. Everything seems to be air conditioned, but before you enter the air conditioning, you have to deal with the thick haze and the pissy New Yorkers. The first really hot day out here, I was in a slight panic because I knew I'd show up at the office really sweaty and gross. But then I realized that everyone shows up sweaty and gross so… I felt better about it. It doesn't even really bother me anymore.

It's so weird to spend so much time outdoors. My commute to my old office required me to leave my building, get in my car, drive 20–25 minutes,  park, and walk about 20 steps into the office. Then I'd do the same thing in reverse on the way home. My commute to my new office requires me to walk about half a block to the subway stop, ride the A-train about 20 minutes, and then walk a block and a half to work. It's pretty easy, especially compared to most people's commutes, but it's more walking than I did in W-B on a daily basis. Which is really sad… It was convenient in the winter, I suppose, but it wasn't enough.

Same thing with lunches/breaks. At my old office, I'd get up a few times to go to the bathroom, get a drink… and I'd eat lunch at the same desk I'd spend all day at. We might go outside and stand in an awkward circle or sit in the living room (which meant that I didn't even move from my chair) for break, but we never really had the time to move… stretch our legs… get our hearts beating. On lunch now, I try to walk as often as possible. Either around the office block or down to Madison Square Garden. The other day, I walked to K-Mart on 34th and just explored the aisles. It's just nice to move. And to have time to talk. And to be outside. It may be 96° today, but I still moved around a bit. I ended up at Penn Plaza, perched in the shade with gelato, but… I was still outside! And it was so hot. :(

Within the next couple of days, I need to get new checking/savings accounts and sign up for a gym membership, then just about everything on the "to do" list for the move will be finished and I can finally start a routine. It's really nice to be unpacked, at least. I'm still missing a box, I think, with a few oven mitts and bath towels, but I have a feeling it's in one of the boxes in the office, buried under everything Matt needs to unpack.

WHAT'S REALLY NICE is making my own dinners again. Sure, most of it is prepared via microwave, but at least some of it is healthy. Corn on the cob, steamed veggies… I had a piece of Lean Cuisine lasagna with a salad tonight and last night I heated up some Morningstar meatballs and had them with corn and veggies. I never felt comfortable enough to do that where I was staying before, so I ended up either buying dinner somewhere or just heating up a frozen dinner and retreating to my room. Those days are, thankfully, over.

A few other things I don't miss about my old haunt: sharing a bathroom and being slightly restricted upon its use; not seeing the people I lived with ever, but knowing they were there; worrying about how loud my computer was (I watched a lot of Netflix); and the smell of the apartment. I'm not saying her apartment smelled bad, I'm just saying… it carried a very heavy scent. I smelled it on myself when I was sitting in the office, and the clothes in my basket that I brought over from there smell like it, too.

The whole… smell… thing reminds me of when I came back from Italy. Our apartment building had a horrible mold/mildew problem, I think, and I always felt like I smelled horrible. When I came home and dumped my month's worth of (clean!) clothes out of my suitcase, my mom nearly ran in the other direction. "I smelled like this for a MONTH!" I remember saying, jabbing a finger at the pile. In the kitchen in W-B and removed from the scent that Cagli carried, those clothes smelled worse than they ever had and ever will. I'm pretty sure I even threw out a few pieces because I couldn't get that scent to go away.

I THINK I'M GETTING THE HANG of just about everything in Manhattan, but I know that if I started paying more attention to my surroundings, I'd be in a better place. I've helped the other interns take the mail probably ten times now, and I still don't think I could get to Fed Ex or the post office by myself. I'm too concerned with carrying the mail bag or pushing the cart and making sure that I don't hit anyone on the sidewalk (or myself in the heels), so I'm not paying attention to where I'm going. I'm just… following. It's kind of like how I operate in the car. If I'm a passenger, I have no idea what's going on. If I don't have to pay attention, I don't.

This neglect got me in a bit of trouble today. I went into the subway and just got on the first train that stopped, not even thinking to check which side of the platform I was on. The train said A, so I got on. Then I started reading. I'm still reading MWF Seeking BFF and I'm really enjoying it, so I just kind of blocked everything out. Four stops later, I heard the announcer say that we were approaching the last stop in Manhattan… And at that point, I hustled off the train and across the platform. Somehow I'd gotten on the downtown train instead of the uptown train. It was no big deal, but in the time I was riding downtown, an "incident" occurred at 59th Street and delayed all the trains going uptown. So I sat at 14th Street for nearly 20 minutes. Thankfully, I'd gotten a seat on the uptown train, but I felt bad for everyone standing near me who had to wait. I didn't get home until 6:30, and typically I've been getting back here at 5:30. So… I'd say that was a pretty big screw up. Good thing I didn't have plans! And good thing I had my book! (Which I strongly recommend for any women eager to make friends, whether she's moved to a new city or has lived in the same one her whole life.)

I'll have to watch where I'm going tomorrow... At least I know I can stay calm when some people would typically be panicking, I suppose. Silver lining!