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2007-07-22 - 9:27 a.m. Outed,and stressed...but OK I haven't been on dland for a while since I was "outed" at work for an entry...of course I didn't mention where I worked, or any names, but still someone complained about me; I was called into the President's office and told I was out of line...I took the entry down and shrugged it off as internet ignorance. What, was someone going to do a google on petty cash, and come up with my vague entry? Oh, please. Gretta and I went for a walk last night by the river, which is a block away. There wss a couple cuddling under the moonlight who waved and smiled at us. "It's a beautiful night!" I said. "Just the right breeze from the river..." the man answered. "And what a great dog! We love your dog!" The bridge sparkled like a jeweled necklace across the river. Magical. I do so love New York. I went to a book release/signing last night and the author and I got along well...from Long Island also, she drew on her past. As usual, I am reading about five books at one time, and added hers to my list. I am a confessed serial reader. It's been a trying month. The slumlord's building changed hands and the new owner is just a rich big-shot slumlord dressed up nice and talking big and yakking on a cellphone. He brought in Mexican illegals and without any permits began demolition in the vacant apartments. Lead paint dust was everywhere as they hacked apart the walls and interior structures - my ceiling began falling in chunks about 8:30 on a Saturday morning and I ran upstairs like a mad woman screaming, STOP! STOP!!! Since they realized they were about to fall through my ceiling their demolition came to a screeching halt. I had to take two days off work and remove EVERYTHING from my kitchen so they could sheetrock the apartment. The women in our building banded together and said, no more! They had smashed through the apt upstairs to the little girl's room and they had to put rugs down over the holes so they couldn't see up...they told me I shouldn't use my bathroom because they had removed the rotten subflooring and standing in there was dangerous. Isn't going to the bathroom, like, a necessity? Given, the thing doesn't even flush...I put in several more complaints to the city. A rat tried to scramble in through a hole they left in my floor as I was sitting on the toilet...oh. Come on. They were throwing debris from the fourth floor into the yard and damaged my metal bistro table and left it like that, with the leg off. I came home from work that night and one of the guys who spoke English said, how are you? I said, extremely angry...you destroyed my personal property...he acted clueless and said, what if we go to Home Depot and get a replacement? I said, it's a metal bistro set, you're not going to replace it with something from Home Depot! They tossed it into the basement as junk. My neighbor dragged it up again into the garden and today I repaired the broken leg myself, with a metal stint and plenty of steel epoxy and two hours of work. It's been real. The cool thing is, there's a street carnival about ten blocks up, with old-fashioned rides resurrected from Dreamland in Coney Island, a vintage carousel, corn dogs on a stick, fried dough, frosty pina-coladas. I was there last weekend and got so many good artistic photos - I'll be back there again tonight.