artsysimone

"Let's go to NYC," he said. "You'll love it," he said.

Frankly, I wanted to stay home and play World of Warcraft. It was Hallows End, my favourite non-existent holiday in the the world, and I wanted to trick or treat with my avatars.

Well, we went...and then Sandy nuked the city.

This is how we got out on October 31st, 2012 (we were scheduled to fly out of LeGuardia, which is now a water park).

I'm not telling you to do what I did - I'm simply trying to help give you ideas to help other visitors get out of this disaster zone and get home. I'm not a professional, so don't come back and sue me if you get screwed around (I don't have any money anyway) - RESULTS MAY VARY, and you have to exercise reasonable caution with whatever method you choose to get out of the city. This is simply the story of how we got out, and hopefully it will help you generate ideas and help you get home as well. I've heard there's a gas shortage in some areas of NYC and that people are getting desperate, but we got out with no problems once we accepted that the airports, trains, buses and car rental agencies were crippled because employees were either dealing with their own problems and/or couldn't get to work. Here's how we got out:

- We looked at cities close to NYC with working airports and settled on Philadelphia, a city that was relatively unscathed and was only a 1 hour drive away. Flights weren't yet full out of Philly and they had flights to Canada, and since it was relatively close (and wasn't that busy when we got there, though this may have changed) we booked a flight out of Philly.

- We talked to the bellman at your hotel - the guy who deals with cabbies a lot and helps people with their luggage. We asked him if he knew a cab/limo drivers who they trust who would be willing to drive us to Philadelphia. We tried this on out own at first, but decided against it. We found a cabbie who was willing to take us to Philly, but he was rude, his English skills were sketchy and we didn't get a good feeling from him. I'm not being racist or language-ist, but you need someone you can communicate with. Bellmen tend to deal with cab drivers every day and I think they tend to know who is reliable. You don't want to get halfway to Philly and have some shady driver pull over to the side and say, "I want $1000 more or I'm dropping you off here." I'm NOT saying cab drivers in NYC are like this - I'm just a writer who thinks about the worst case scenarios. My boyfriend's experience in the past is that the guys who drive the yellow cabs are pretty much lost once they leave Manhattan, so you want someone you can communicate easily with and who is a SAFE driver who knows how to use a GPS outside of the city. Our driver had never been to Philly before, but he was a courteous driver and got us to the Philadelphia airport safely and with no problems.

- Be willing to pay at least $400-$500 or more to get to Philly. We negotiated a price of $440 (and he was so nice we tipped him $40) with one of the cab drivers (a fantastic driver named Darwin) who drive the black SUVs (it was a taxi.limo service). It seemed like a lot at the time, but looking back, it was worth every penny.

So that's how we got out, and we are now in Canada. We were relatively insulated where we were staying - we were north of 34th (where the power went out) and south of the crane-related hotel evacuations, so we were very lucky.

Tips:

1. We made the mistake of booking a train to Philly with Amtrak after being reassured by the customer service agent that they would be running trains out of Penn Station on October 31st. THEY AREN'T, and they are STILL selling tickets. Luckily it was exceedingly easy to cancel our ticket with Amtrak, which we booked online (just Google "cancel reservations Amtrak"). Air Canada and several airlines are still selling tickets for flights out of Newark (which was a ghost town when we rove past it). The airport websites and company websites for airlines, car rentals, buses and other modes of transportation are NO HELP and many are still allowing you to make online reservations..

2. After encountering a police barricade when trying to catch our train, we went to the bus depot. No one was there, either, which is why we chose the cab option (our plane ticket was non-refundable, so it was our only option for leaving).

3. If you DO book a flight out of NYC when the airports finally open, get there at LEAST 5 to 6 hours early. My boyfriend works in the airlines in Canada and I worked for the same airline as a flight attendant for 6 years, and we've both seen firsthand how backlogs after a typical Canadian snow storm can wreak havok at airports. Hurricane Sandy is no typical storm and  If you choose to wait and fly out of NYC, the airports are going to be a SHIT SHOW, and in a disaster-type situation, it's going to be even worse. Airline employees are going to be stressed out, other passengers are going to be freaked out, and you just have to accept that there are going to be long lineups at the ticket counter, long lineups going through security and that it's most likely NOT going to be a pleasant experience. If you have liquids and gels, put them in a clear plastic bag in an accessible area of your luggage (like the outside pocket) so you can take it out quickly. Take every bit of change out of your pockets and JUST PUT YOUR SHOES IN THE BIN - people seem to think that THEIR shoes won't set off the alarm, but they probably will, so save yourself the time and wrath of the TSA and just put 'em in there.

4. $500 sounds like a lot for a cab ride, but we did the math and figured that the cost of accommodations and food were going to be more, so getting a cab out of NYC was worth every penny to us.

5. Be nice to the hotel staff, restaurant staff and airline staff in NYC. Many of them work around the clock to keep you safe and comfortable, and they can't get home to their families. The staff at our hotel (The Candlewood) were actually sleeping at the hotel and haven't seen their families for days. There was a deli shop around the corner from us called the Gourmet Kitchen where the counter staff seemed to be working 15-20 hour shifts. Be patient with employees in the service industry - they're working in unprecedented circumstances.

So that's our story. We waited two days before we wrote off getting a flight out of NYC (we were tempted by the "One more day it will get better" mantra, but after seeing the news, we realized it wasn't).

Good luck, and stay safe.

Ugh, it's snowing outside right now. It's covering the ground and piling on top of cars. I wish I liked outdoor snow activities, I'd be in heaven.

I seem to have lost 25lbs and I'm not sure how, but I'm happy with it. I think I'll return to my vegetarian ways since BBQ season is over and try to give it another kick at the can.

I haven't written fuck-all, but NaNoWriMo is coming up, so hopefully that will give me some fresh motivation.

Not much to say. I was in an epic mood yesterday...and today I feel like ass. Gotta love inconsistent moodiness.

I think I need a job. I feel like my life has no purpose.

It's been an emotionally grueling couple of months. I've been caught up in the unnecessary drama that is my life. Well, my boyfriend's family drama, anyway, but that's a barnyard of bitterness I shalln't get into. LOL!

I seem to be an ADHD writer (nor surprising, seeing I have ADHD. LOL!). I haven't really been in the mood to write, but when I do it usually consists of rants on message boards or starting a new story that never goes anywhere. Le sigh.

I admit I've been depressed lately...and have no energy to do anything about it. I've been trying to increase my tumour medication to the daily dose I should be on, and I'm sure that has something to do with it. I have a non-cancerous pituitary tumour, and the medication you have to take for it is kind of like...the complete OPPOSITE of an antidepressant. The side-effects of this drug - bromocriptine - make me feel anxious, tired and depressed. I've been off it for several months because I just wanted to feel normal for awhile, but if the tumour grows too large I could lose my eyesight (it could grow into the optic nerve, and then I'll be screwed...being blind means I can't play video games, and that would suck ass).

What I don't understand is that bromocriptine is a dopamine-agonist, and I thought dopamine had to do with feelings of euphoria. Apparently not.

So that's where things are at with me. Hopefully once I get myself weaned back up to my maintenance dose, the side-effects will stabilize, as will my mood.

I just woke up....like, 15 minutes ago...so if this entry is full of bizarre grammatical errors, that's why.

I finally figured out why I have writer's block - "architect writers."

One of my favourite authors (well, it's complicated. LOL!) George R.R. Martin once said, there are two kinds of writers - Architects, who plan their novels down to the cellular level and know when their characters are going to take a shit (page 35!), they know what characters will die and how (Sephora, page 349, from a train to the face!), and they map out every detail and event before they put pen to paper.

I am not one of those kinds of writers - hell, I'm not that kind of person in ANY aspect of my life.

I go on road trips and decide the route during the road trip. Decisions are often made at the moment, and impulsively.

That's how I write - I'm what Martin calls a Gardener-writer. Martin and Stephen King (my all-time favourite novellist) are both Gardeners. The story develops as we write it. We have a general idea of where the story is going (sometimes) and the story develops as we think it up. It starts out as a "seed" of an idea and develops from there. Sometimes we have no idea how it's going to end - sometimes we do. Sometimes we have a vague idea where we're going - sometimes we are just struck with an idea and start writing see where it goes.

Stephen King says, "I don’t take notes; I don’t outline, I don’t do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing."

The reason I have writer's block is because I've been trying desperately to be an Architect - and I SUCK at it.

So I'm going to write the way I was born to write. My friend Derek is an "architect" and believes that "gardener" writers are, at their core, flawed. Of course, we all believe this about things that are the opposite of what we are - but I've been listening to him, and that's going to stop. He may be smarter than I am in many things, but you can't fit a square peg into a triangular portal that leads to another universe.

So there is is. I'm a Gardener writer and fuck trying to be what I'm not.

That's right. I have a case of the dreaded Writer's Block. Fuck MY life.

My friend Derek has told me, "If you can't write, then that's the time to read," so that's what I'm going do. I'm feeling like a fucking failure as a writer and a human being and have been profoundly depressed lately.

On my list of things to read (yes, they're all SciFi/Fantasy/Horror...genres I want to write):

Duma Key, by Stephen King
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
The Passage, by Justin Cronin
Fevre Dream, by George R.R. Martin
Blood Oath, by Christopher Farnsworth
Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
The Mordant's Need series, by Stephen R. Donaldson

I feel like absolute shit lately. I don't know if it's because I've been eating meat or not - I went through a dip during my vegan experiment when my energy level simply dropped, as did my mood...and I ate some red meat the last night my favourite restaurant was in business, and within 30 minutes I felt like I could lift up a fucking truck and throw it all the way to Edmonton.

My boyfriend has been...somewhat horrible in the past few weeks, though I attribute it to stress due to his exams that he had coming up. He's been in a great mood since, but the weeks of "bad days" have taken their toll on me.

So I'm going to withdraw into books and see if that inspires me. I'm so unhappy I feel like I'm drowning. Perhaps it's post-Game of Thrones-syndrome (though the next season of True Blood starts tomorrow, so there's some more escapist fodder for the next 10 weeks).

The movie 2012 is on the television right now. What a clusterfuck of CGI and unlikely escapes from certain death. What I want to know is this: Why the FUCK was the plane flying so low - to the point where they were buzzing police cars and flying between buildings? If you're going to put action into a film, at least make it plausible.

That is all. LOL!

I hope I feel better tomorrow.

I'm still (mostly) a vegetarian. I've eaten meat. There, I've said it.

I've eaten meat about 5 times in the past month. The first time was at my favourite restaurant on its last night before it closed its doors forever. I mean, it was the LAST NIGHT - and their food was SPECTACULAR - so on that one night, I didn't care if the little lambs died.

I've had about 1 serving of meat per week ever since. It wasn't a conscious thing - it was more of an "I don't want to have to prepare two fucking meals again" kind of snap-decision. I'm still about 90% vegetarian/vegan. I don't eat eggs or dairy and I rarely eat meat.

And you know what? That's good enough for me. I eat 100% vegan meals most of the time - and sometimes (once a week, sometimes twice) I don't.

The weight loss levelled off at about 12lbs when I was still 100% vegan. That pissed me off after reading all of these books that said, "The weight will just fall off you!"

Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Anyway, I lost another 3lbs when I began substituting brown rice for white rice. Guess I'll start doing that with pasta too.

I'm not really in the mood to write. I'm in the mood to read. I've been reading a lot lately. I just finished 11/22/63 by Stephen King and I absolutely LOVED it - it's a time travel novel. I'm now reading Duma Key by Stephen King. It took me awhile to get into it, but it's getting awesome now.

Anyway, gonna go read, maybe have a nap. Will write later.

-S

For FUCK'S sake. Just when I'm ready to flip the bird of this series and wash my hands of the whole thing, they have to come out with an episode that BLEW MY FUCKING MIND.

I can't rave enough. I really can't. The season finale was epic. I hate that it was epic, because I'm trying my damndest to turn my back on the whole thing...but it's impossible.

I bawled my eyes out on the couch, it was that good. Fucking GRRM and his ASOIAF brain heroine!

I'm going to go watch it again.

As much as I've been griping and borderline nerd-raging about the A Song of Ice and Fire series, tonight's episode of Game of Thrones was the most epic thing I've ever seen on television.

Yes, I'm sick of cliffhangers and the lack of resolution. Yes, I wish the entire series was written. Yes, I'm done with the series for the next couple of years until it's finished - but despite my gripes, tonight's episode was fucking fantastic. It was written by GRRM himself, and it was, by far, the best episode of the second season.

I still really wish I hadn't read the books and had stuck with the television series. As a reader, I guess I'm just burnt out by the whole thing. The 4th and 5th books seemed to be filled up with a whole lot of filler, a whole lot of set-up with little of the action and excitement that made the first 3 books so fantastic. I didn't like the 4th book, and the 5th book was good and had some cool scenes, but there are so many unanswered questions, and after reading 2000+ pages, a reader needs a payoff every now and then. Instead of answering some of our questions, Martin chose to withhold giving the reader any resolution and add more questions and cliffhangers to the mix.

Here's my prediction for The Winds of Winter: Jon Snow won't be mentioned. At all. He'll pull a Feast for Crows on us.

I am also doubtful he'll mention much about Jayme Lannister and will focus on Dany dithering away her time with the Dothraki, Stannis and his bullshit that I don't care about, Dorne and their machinations that I could care less about and the Greyjoy uncles, who I really wish would just die.

I suppose I simply fell out of love with the series. Readers want a payoff for all the hard "work" and time they put into reading the series. Throw us a frickin' bone every now and then. Write in too many plot lines and the reader is just lost.

Tonight's episode served as a reminder why I loved the series in the first place...but knowing what's coming (after season 3 and 4 give us the epic scenes from the third book), I'm just....ugh. Unless the writers of the television series make some significant changes and do some serious literary sorcery, I'm not sure if the series can survive past book 3.

Perhaps I'm bitter and cynical. Perhaps I'm just burnt out from the exhausting rabbit trails that books 4 and 5 took us on. Perhaps I'm not confident that book 6 will give us any answers.

Anyway, I'm going to go cook something. LOL!

I've written, then deleted, then written again, then deleted again, posts about the whole A Song of Ice and Fire debacle. Unfortunately, some of the stuff I deleted is still showing up whenever I do a search on "GRRM" on here. Dammit. So I shall explain my position - which is basically "I am torn down the middle."

The reader/fan in me is pissed off and tired of being left in a constant state of "cliffhanger." I'm tired of the series having no resolution and seemingly sailing in stagnant waters in books 4 and 5. I mean, in the previous books, major characters were being killed off in shocking scenes and things were happening - but the last 2 books seemed to be nothing but lengthy and verbose setups that didn't resolve anything. It's FRUSTRATING as a reader to have to read 900-200 pages and have very little happen - and when something does happen, it's a cliffhanger that won't be resolved for about 3-5 years.

The series has exhausted me...and yet it has riveted me (at least in the first 3 books...and parts of the 5th). Part of me wants to write songs like "Write Faster" and bitch about it - but the writer part of me wants to support George R.R.Martin.

I want to be an understanding and supportive fan rather than the nerd-raging consumer I swore I'd never become - and yet I'm nerd-raging inside my own head about it. As a consumer and a reader, the last 2 books of the series have been frustrating to get through, and the magic of the first 3 books - and the exciting, "stay up all night reading until you can't comprehend English anymore" pace - seems to be gone for me.

Knowing it will be three to five years before the next book comes out - honestly, I'm not MAD at George...not really. I've simply lost interest. The past 2 books in the series have been, to me, 2000+ pages of setup. Readers like to be thrown a frickin' bone every now and then - tell us SOMETHING. Resolve SOMETHING. Don't taze me, bro!

When the next book comes out in the next three to five years, I know that by then the events of the first 5 books will be fuzzy in my mind...and the thought of reading through them all AGAIN - it's agonizing to even think of it.

I don't want to shit on George - as a writer, I understand how hard it is to motivate yourself to write. I admire him as a writer and a person - but as a reader and a consumer, I'm frustrated. He seems to take pleasure in not revealing anything to his readers - that's probably not true, but it certainly feels that way after reading the past 2 books.

I dunno. I think Martin is a fantastic writer and he's probably a nice person, but I am no longer invested in his series. As a reader, I've been craving stories with a beginning, middle and end - I want answers, I want resolution, so I'm buying books that give me that. Fuck, I was so hungry for a story with a satisfying conclusion that I just read Stephen King's book 11/22/63 in TWO DAYS. I'm probably one of the world's slowest readers, so 2 days to read a novel is light speed for me.

Perhaps I might change my mind and revisit the A Song of Ice and Fire series - but I won't touch another book in the series until it's finished. I don't want to be a bitchy fan anymore. I don't want to be left in a state of constant frustration anymore, waiting for action, for resolution, for answers.

Do I regret watching the television series? No - I really enjoyed Season 1 (though I find Season 2 to be jumpy and sporadic, though the writing, acting and sets are spectacular). Do I regret reading the books? ABSOLUTELY. In the past I've made a point of not reading a series that isn't finished, because when I start reading a story, I want to be able to read it all the way through. I waited until the Harry Potter series was done, and have made it a general rule to avoid incomplete book series.

Everyone who BREATHED recommended the ASOIAF series to me - and after watching the first season, I finally relented and bought all of the books. I wish I hadn't now. I wish I had waited.

To recover from this "ordeal" ;) I've got a bunch of stand-alone books in the queue - mostly Stephen King novels or trilogies I've always meant to read. I love Martin's work (though I have found myself lost in the mire of too many subplots in the past 2 books), but in order to spare myself the frustration (and to nip being a bitchy, bitter fan in the bud), I'm going to forget about the ASOIAF series and read the work of other novelists. I suppose I became a little TOO invested in the characters and the story, which is a testament to Martin's ability to craft a fantastic story - but I'm done with it. I can't help feeling, as a reader, that this story has been dragged out for far too long, and I can't shake the feeling of being toyed with after reading books 4 and 5.

It is not my place to tell Mr. Martin what to do with his time. "Art is not a democracy," he once said, and I agree with him - but it IS a relationship between the author and their readers, and this reader is tired, so tired. It's like waiting by the phone, waiting for a call that will never come...and it gets to the point where the only sane thing to do is to walk away.

I've been awake for...35 hours now. I think I fucked up by drinking tonight. I stopped eating at 8pm. No exposure to blue light....but then I had a bourbon while watching the latest installment of Game of Thrones. Then I had 2 or 3 more. Now I'm drunk.

I'm coming down from the drunk a bit...I'm drinking water now to counteract the dehydration, plus I took a Redoxon-B, a disolvable Vitamin C & B-Complex tablet you put in water that my friend Kyle SWEARS by as a hangover preventative treatment (just dissolve it in water and drink it before going to bed is his prescription). I still felt like I was going to hurl, so I just downed another glass of water and am feeling better...

...but I'm still awake. GODDAMMIT! My experiment has FAILED!

Well, I wouldn't say "failed" - I'm tired, but I feel almost hyper. I wrote my first poem in something like 5 or 10 years before I had my 3 to 4 glasses of bourbon. I sent it to my boyfriend's sister on an eCard for Mother's Day. She said it made her cry and that I should start a greeting card business.

I wrote it in something like 5 minutes. It just came to me. I sent her a card from my boyfriend and I and she called 5 minutes later and said she was printing it out and that she loved it. I asked her how she knew I wrote it and that it wasn't something I pasted into the card from another website, and she merely said, "I just know. You're very talented."

Today was a sentimental day. I wrote to both of my boyfriend's sisters on their Mother's Day eCards and told them how awesome they were. My boyfriend and I have been fighting lately...I've been thinking about putting some distance between us...then I realized he was likely irritable because of Mother's Day - his mother died almost 20 years ago of ovarian cancer. I think that's why he's been in such a bad mood for the past week, and when I realized this...I had this weird influx of positivity. No idea where it came from.

So despite the fact the day started out negatively with my boyfriend, after a few drinks, some jamming on my keyboard and listening to some 80s music, it seemed to get better and I figured a lot of shit out.

I still think I might hurl tonight...but I think I might head to bed. I'm tired. Perhaps my experiment hasn't failed, I just fucked it up by drinking (which is known to fuck up your sleep quality). We'll see what time I get up tomorrow morning, I guess. This is the first night in as long as I can remember that I didn't snack on chips or anything, so it's not surprising that the 3 drinks I had hit me so hard.

Dumb, Simone.

Nitey night.