We woke early yesterday morning to the news that the strike had been called. All across the city, subways and buses were paralyzed. No one was entirely sure what to do but follow through on the various Plan Bs that were made, some apparently more carefully thought out than others.

Not that it mattered. Everyone seemed to have the same Plan B.

At 8 am, the line to buy a ticket for the Long Island Railroad was over ninety minutes long; by nine the line had stretched easily several hours and not only around the corner but halfway down Continental and all the way down Burns to Ascan, past Austin and over to Queens Boulevard where it wrapped around Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and the watchful eyes of the church there. "It's easier to walk around the next few blocks in the opposite direction to get to the end of the line, rather than follow the line to the end," the police officer had said.

There was no way I was going to stand in that line.

I worked from home yesterday, stopping by the LIRR station half a dozen times to try to get a ticket to Penn Station. By 9 pm, the wait had shortened to only an hour and I debated whether or not I should join the procession. It was all for naught. Three minutes later, an officer came down the line with a bullhorn. "The ticket booth is now closed," he said. "It will reopen tomorrow at 5 am."

The crowd let up a collective gasp of disbelief, and there was a moment of uncomfortable silence as I surveyed the tired faces about me. Everyone stared at the officer. Then the yelling began. I left to get a bite to eat and called it a night when another officer nonchalantly pulled out his nightstick and began tapping it nervously into his hand.

***

It's 6:30 am now and I'm just back from the LIRR station with my tickets in hand. The wait wasn't too bad this time, only about an hour in the freezing temperatures with everyone bundled up in the pre-dawn darkness. But better now than later, I thought. I'd learned my lesson yesterday. I had managed to make my way up to the station platform, but the crowds were three, four person deep, and people pushed to get onto the impossibly crowded trains. A young woman on her cellphone nearby stood complaining that she hadn't been able to board the past three trains.

All around me, people converged from nearby neighbourhoods. It's such a contrast to see the throngs of people up at the LIRR station, a contrast to the empty subway stations from yesterday. (Curiosity had gotten the better of me, and I had ducked under the "Closed" signs and stole down into the stations to see what I could see. It was eerily quiet.) This morning tempers matched in brevity today, the shortest day of the year, and fistfights it seemed were prevented only by the bitter cold. No one wanted to work up a sweat, and angry glares and occasional words seemed to suffice for now.

I think I'll work from home today again, instead of braving the trip into Manhattan and subsequent hellish return home. It's just too crazy out there. Way too crazy. Instead, I'll make a few calls in to the office, work on a few spreadsheets and pop on the tv once in a while to check in on the news. I'll see how long I can sit out this strike.

Madness. Madness, indeed.

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Four years. Wow, four years.

Four years, journal, just you and me. Happy, happy.

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I wake early this morning to a cold and dark apartment, the window side of the bed no brighter today than the side near the closet and the side where I sleep. Outside the skies are saturated with winter gray, dull-white flakes of thick snow falling falling falling to the ground. The apartment is quiet save the intermittent hiss of the old steam radiator. It's snowing in the city.

In the darkness I see the tiny forms of our two pigeons huddled outside the bedroom window, their little faces curious and peering at me as I make my way to the bathroom. I consider for a moment checking in on them, but they are a hardy pair and I know the feral creatures can take care of themselves. I turn on the tv to mute and continue my morning routine. Down on Austin Street, a soft amber light spills quietly from the streetlamps and onto the evenly layered morning snow, the sidewalks white and as yet undisturbed by pedestrian traffic. It's still dark out when I walk to the subway, and the noises of the city float muffled in the still-falling snow. They seem gentler somehow, the distant honking of a horn, the close of a car door, the whoomph-whoomph-whoomph of tyres as a city bus trundles down the street. Everything seems more polite, more genteel, more tempered. Everyone seems mesmerised by the soft whiteness blanketing the city. I too am mesmerised, my mood similarly calm. I love an early morning snowfall.

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