There’s nothing like running into a U.N. blockade to get your day rolling.

That sentence alone speaks volumes about the life I lead now as opposed to a few years ago, when the biggest hindrance to getting to work on time was a slow cashier at the McDonald’s drive-thru.  Now I’m walking up 2nd Avenue, noticing that these iron barricades sure are becoming more frequent and organized and what was that I heard on the news this morning while I was jiggling that toilet thing to make it stop running?  Something about the president speaking at the U.N. today?  And then I notice that the barricades have converged at 50th street creating a No Entry situation, and the resulting scene is this:

It turned out I would not be crossing 50th street until the president and his motorcade crossed on their way from the U.N. to the Waldorf-Astoria.  And I was enraged.  ENRAGED, I tell you!  Because of the empty patient schedule that I would now get a late start on?  Because of the coffee that was now further away?  A little. But mainly because the NYPD was throwing a huge rock in my path and it was annoying.  And there’s something about plans being disrupted that really gets to me…

When it became clear that no amount of huffing and puffing was going to blow these barricades down, I settled in for the show.  Which, as it turns out, can be fun once you get over the personal affront called the World Spinning in a Direction I Did Not Expressly Command.  I laughed as a shirtless dude rode his bike right up to the cops at the intersection, they yelled at him to turn around, and then they all looked at each other saying things like “Huh?” and “How did that happen?”  (I sincerely hope that the NYPD has a different unit in charge of combatting terrorism.)  I listened to the conversations around me, people calling in to work to explain their lateness and frustration.  I turned with everyone else to watch the motorcade that one cop said always reminded him of Coming to America:

Then the moment was over, the barricades were lifted, and the people went about their regularly scheduled programming.  I walked toward my waiting coffee and empty schedule humming the “Soul Glo” commercial and thinking about how the best moments are sometimes interruptions, and that life isn’t just what happens in between them.