Black Eyed Peas

Part of my last-full-week-of-work duties involved a standby shift at HSBC Arena on Wednesday. I hadn't been to an Arena standby in a while--not since hockey season ended--but when the Black Eyed Peas came to town, I answered the call. All in all it was a fun concert. Even though I didn't know every song they played, it was a high-energy performance and an exuberant crowd. The concert was more of a production than the Elton John/Billy Joel show I saw in the early spring--costume changes and dancers and multimedia components--but it rarely detracted from the music itself. I hear Nickelback is coming to HSBC sometime in September ... I'm going to have to figure out a way to get on the schedule for that show.

With my departure for New Hampshire only days away, I've reluctantly begun to pack. Ordinarily, packing is pretty straightforward: I grab half a dozen trash bags and stuff all my belongings in them. Once I arrive at my new abode, I begin the arduous process of sorting through everything and weeding out items I no longer want or need. This year, I'm trying a different tack and sorting through everything before packing it up. I'm hoping to spend less time unpacking on the other end; there's certainly enough else to occupy me in the last days before the wedding!

Moving downstate, the New York City Department of Transportation just released a report analyzing more than 7,000 crashes from the middle of the decade in which at least one pedestrian suffered severe or fatal injuries. The report concluded, among other things, that left-hand turns were most likely to result in fatal collisions and jaywalkers stood a lower chance of being run down than people using crosswalks (these are not necessarily related. After all, it's hard to picture hitting a jaywalker while turning left in the middle of a block). The correlation-causation disconnect applies here, as it does to any statistical compilation, but it's nevertheless interesting to hear five years of collisions tell their tales.

In other news, football season is almost upon us. The New York Giants defeated the New York Jets in their preseason matchup Monday night. This is a great time of year to be a sports fan.