Walking At Lunchtime

It's a pretty nice day, so I took the opportunity to go for a walk at lunchtime. The sidewalks at home are still treacherous in many places. And sometimes at the end of the day I'm just too tired to want to bother walking at all. Besides, leaving the building for half an hour in the middle of the day makes a nice break. For 30 minutes I can forget about all things Episcopal, all things Anglican, and all things reorganizational. (By the way, we've been told that if someone asks, we can tell them where we've been placed in the new structure.) Not to mention that it's good for my blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

One of the things about Manhattan that surprises me over and over again, especially when I haven't been out walking in a while, is that it's not flat. For some reason, given that it's an island and its location, I have this mental picture of Manhattan as being relatively flat, especially from the Midtown area south. What makes this mental picture even more odd is that every morning I walk UPHILL from Grand Central Terminal to the office. Maybe it was all that time I spent in Chicago as a child. Chicago is relatively flat, at least the parts of it I frequented during visits to my mother's family. So my child's eye picture of "city is flat" seems to remain with me.

Today's surprise? I learned that the Murray Hill neighborhood is just south of where I work. For years I'd heard about Murray Hill. One of the Ricardo's phone numbers on I Love Lucy was MUrray Hill 5-9975. And for some reason it was a popular neighborhood for fictional settings in New York City. Today as my path went whichever way the walk lights led, I found myself in Murray Hill and realizing that it was Murray Hill. Six years I've been working here, occasionally walking through parts of the Murray Hill, and I never knew I was just two blocks away from my office.

The other thing I love about walking in the City is the architecture. For a time during my childhood I wanted to be an architect. Then I found out how much math was involved. However, buildings still interest me--especially older buildings. There are lots to see around here. Sometimes I wish I'd spent more time learning to draw, so I could capture some of them in sketches. Still, it is fun to look.

And now back to our regularly scheduled...

Peace,
Jeffri