Friday, February 10, 2012

Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop, 174 5th Ave., Manhattan

I have once again taken up pre-natal yoga, this time at YogaWorks. They have three locations for pre-natal classes. I had been a few times to the UWS and SoHo locations, but my first attempt to make it to a class at Union Square ended fruitlessly, last week, when I went to 38 5th Ave. and there was no YogaWorks. There I was, pregnantly waddling up and down the block with my yoga mat as if it might suddenly appear, but it did not. I called Pat at work to see if he might look it up for me online, but he wasn't available, so I got back on the subway and went home. Where I learned that actually the studio is at 138 5th Ave.

The next day, I fell pregnantly down in the street for no apparent reason, twisting an ankle and bruising and skinning a knee (and most tragically, putting a hole in my favorite of my few pairs of maternity pants), so yoga was out for a few days, and then there were some scheduling challenges, mostly revolving around a man I was supposed to interview for my consulting gig who kept being only "available" during yoga class times and then failing to be available at those times anyway. Which begs a tangent: has it become professionally acceptable to schedule work calls with someone and then blow them off or be late? And if that's the new standard, how is it possible that someone as reliable and punctual as myself can't get hired? I mean, aside from the obvious fact that I will be giving birth in 5-6 weeks.

Which brings me back to my pre-natal yoga class - I was determined to get to the Union Square class on Tuesday, after several days of inactivity. But as it turns out, Tuesday was also the day of the parade to celebrate the New York Giants winning the Superbowl. The Giants' win was probably as important to Pat as it was unimportant to me. I think football is a brutish sport. However, I like parades, and this one went literally right past our apartment, and so we watched it. It was fun!



But then I underestimated the challenges the parade would present for getting to yoga class. I made it harder for myself by stopping along the way to pick up a free baby item from someone who was giving it away (this has become a hobby of mine), but then I had to head through the post-parade mayhem to get to the subway, again waddling pregnantly and now also lugging a nursing stool. And it turned out that my intended subway stop was closed until they finished the parade clean-up. So I had to schlep back to a different stop and finally got to 138 5th St. just in time for the class, which I didn't enjoy, because I couldn't put pressure on my knee. Then when I got back on the subway, it turns out they were running R trains express past where I wanted to get off, so I had to improvise and transfer and this made ME 4 minutes late for yet another phone interview with someone else! So I guess I shouldn't cast stones when it comes to the punctuality for the phone interviews, after all.

If you are even still reading this sob story, you are really just wishing I would get to my review of Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop, in the Flatiron district, where I stopped to pick up a sandwich before my second ill-fated subway trip of the day. I had pastrami on whole grain bread, with mustard. It was particularly greasy but delicious. The shop's motto is "raising New York's cholesterol since 1929." I enjoyed my artery-clogging sandwich immensely when I finally got to eat it at 4:00.

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