My sinus headache and achiness returned and I wasn’t feeling well at work this morning, so I left around lunch to spend an hour sitting in my doctor’s waiting room, reading old issues of Esquire and New York. Her verdict: sinus infection, for which she prescribed an antibiotic.
By the time I caught the subway home around 3 p.m., it was chock full of schoolkids on their own way home. I’m rarely if ever on the subway at that time on a weekday so I’ve never experienced this children’s crusade up close. Seems like the NYPD beefs up its presence at stations (at least at the 66th and 86th Street stations on the 1 line) to cut down on shenanigans. There was practically nothing but kids on my car, their loud chatter and raw hormonal energy bouncing off the walls. Across from me, two girls split a pair of iPod headphones, one taking the left earbud, the other taking the right. As they listened to their music, they put out a constant hum of conversation, referring to many things as “mad hot,” apparently a superior state of being.
After getting my prescription filled, I stopped at my friendly neighborhood bodega to buy ice cream, noticing that despite the fact the flavor was introduced in 2003, they were for the first time carrying Häagen-Dazs Crème Brûlée. As I bought it, the bodega owner and one of her clerks sidled over and asked me to pronounce the name for them, which I did. Then they asked me to explain what exactly Crème Brûlée was, presumably in case they had to field any questions about the “new” flavor. “Is it like dulce de leche?” they asked. Sort of, I said: it’s a custardy French dessert with a caramelized sugar top.
When I got home, I was delighted to discover that the ice cream was delicious. I was not as delighted to learn that I am allergic to moxifloxacin, the new antibiotic my doctor prescribed. Instead of getting spots all over my trunk as I did with that cipro two years ago, my head broke out in welts. “So, just like Chris Elliott in There’s Something About Mary?” my boss said later, in what’s just about a near-perfect description.