Do You See It Now?

Just visiting NYC during a meeting this week and thought I'd take the camera out for some interesting 'views' since last here. If my $200 per night "3 star" [Har!] hotel room was big enough to take a picture in I'd include it on the Blog but the room is so darn pathetic it's preferable to walk in the rain among crooked umbrellas universally aiming for my retina. Thank goodness the 'wayward' folks '[formerly known as 'bums'] who sleep on the fire escape immediately outside my 4th floor window, are relatively quiet only leaving their empty bottles in a row.

Wow, the musical Chicago is still in town. It's only mid-October; why is the ice skating rink all set up in Rockefeller Center? What keeps those pedicab drivers from being run over? Why the heck do they need a giant Hershey store near Times Square? You know, the usual stuff.

Newspaper under arm, take-out coffee, notebook under other arm, umbrella under death grip in left hand and camera hooked on right wrist when I notice the sign. Blink for a second and the sign changes.

I try to position the umbrella back a bit while zooming the lens without exposing it to rain to capture the high-rise sign, "The U.S. cost of war in Iraq is $1,364,225,675.97."

A puff of wind comes around the corner and ka-phlewey, down goes my camera (thankfully, lens closed) into a mud puddle. Yuck.

Rearranging the gear under arms and tied to wrists again, I wiped off the sad-looking Pentax and opened the lens one more time for another shot. It was just about 15 seconds later more or less but heck, you know, those numbers just grew and grew while I wasn't looking. Now?
Gone to $1,365,008,103.52.

Do you see it now?