A short trip to Queens

 

Queens, NY. In some areas, it is as congested as Manhattan Island.  In other areas, it has a lower population density than other suburban areas.  Today's mission was to find a parking spot in a moderately congested part of Queens, and then stay with RQS for a couple of nights.  

But first....

I have been going to the same location to have my taxes done for almost 50 years.  This doesn't mean that I have been going to the same business for 50 years.  For the first 48 of these years, I have used the same tax person that my parents used for their business.  When she retired, she recommended the person who took over the location and opened a new business of her own.  This was my first destination for the day.

To give you an idea of where I was going, Corona is a section of Queens that became predominantly Hispanic over the part 50 years.  It is much more common to hear Spanish being spoken here, and to find people who can't speak English.  I'd bet that a very large portion of the area's residents are illegal, and will soon be terrorized by the Orange Snowflake's crackdown on immigrants, legal and illegal.  Bur I digress.  For now, Corona is still a vibrant community, a region of New York City where I feel safe to visit in the day time.

Normally, it is hard to find a parking spot in Corona. Yet, I easily found one less than 300 feet away from my tax lady's office.  Although I put $2.00 in the meter for 90 minutes, I could have put in only $0.50 for 30 minutes - I was in and out of her office that quickly.  Then it was off to RQS's place.  And that's where the "fun" began.  Or, I should say, that's where I started having a  little bit of bad luck with traffic.

Cross-borough traffic in Queens is terrible, unless one is on a subway line that connects to Manhattan island.  It is easy to go from Flushing to Corona, Corona to Jackson Heights, and Jackson Heights to Long Island City before reaching Manhattan.  But, if one wants to travel from Ridgewood to Flushing, one either has to travel on the NYC Subway to Manhattan then change trains to reach Flushing, or take a bus that slowly winds through narrow streets to reach the same place.  There is no easy way to reach Ridgewood from Corona, and I had to fight Friday afternoon traffic to reach RQS.

A little over 1 1/4 hours later, I was in Ridgewood, and found a parking spot within 10 minutes.  And then, I was at RQS's for the evening. Unlike most trips, this one would be way too short.  I knew I'd be leaving on Sunday.  But, for the next 2 nights, I'd be with RQS.  And that was the most important thing to me.

Helping a friend with buying/setting up a computer

 

This is how I imagine I look when at my computer desk, save that I don't have a cat on a nearby windowsill.  However, I helped a friend buy a computer today and set it up for her use.  And she is much more likely to look like this, as she has two cats that want to be nearby their human.

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When I woke up this morning, I really didn't want to go out.  But I'm glad I did, as I felt a little bit useful for a change.  My plans for the day were to drive to meet RQS where she undergoes physical therapy, drive to Micro Center where she would buy a new laptop, then back to her place in Queens to get it set up. Since I knew how long it should take me to reach the Ridgewood area of Queens, I was able to leave the house around 11:15 and reach her on time.

The drive to Queens was uneventful, and I reached her area a little early.  So I waited nearby (not wanting to pay for parking) for her to give me a buzz.  Shortly afterwards, I picked her up and drew a "straight line" to the nearest Micro Center store in Flushing.  (I put "Straight Line" in quotes, as I stayed on the same road under different names, and with curves from Ridgewood to Flushing.) Within 15 minutes of getting to the store, we left with a new computer, heading towards her place.

RQS lives in an area in which it is hard to find parking.  It was fortunate that I was able to find parking within a very short walk of her house.  And then the fun began.  We had to unpack the new computer, perform initial system setup, remove the old anti virus, and install the new anti virus before doing much of anything else.  It was a minor headache to install the new anti virus, as the setup insisted that we add dashes ('-') between several 4 character codes on the barely readable receipt (upon which the dashes were not printed). AARGH!  After a quick bite to eat, we progressed onto the next task of the day - moving data from her old PC to her new PC.  And again, we had problems with product serial numbers before using the Laplink software.  Yet, we got the job done, and I was out of the place by 7:30 pm.

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It was not the right time to tell RQS about Marian - but that time is getting close.  When I do, I hope she can deal with this part of me.  Only time will tell....

 

 

PS: I called RQS the next day.  She loves the computer, but found that I didn't copy everything over to the new machine.  So, she's done some manual work to do so.  On the whole, the operation was a success.