And I've worked on Arbor Day

For the past four years I've only had to work a couple of the major holidays, usually Memorial Day and Labor Day. Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, all free.

For the first eight or nine years of my working life, I rarely had any holiday off. I'd be in the office as the late Thanksgiving football game started. I've watched the Times Square Ball drop while seated at my desk in the Fargo newspaper office. I participated in a competitive Easter Egg hunt in a newsroom.

Come Thursday, I'll again be free of work obligations, but I'll feel sympathy for all of those stuck at a desk or on an assembly line or behind a fast-food counter.

Here, then, some notes about working the various holidays.
* Thanksgiving. Eating a TV dinner is never an entirely pleasing experience, no matter how crisp the brownie or well-buttered the corn. Physically it's fine. It's quick, easy, tasty. But the meal is laced with mystery and a crushing sense of loneliness or incompetency accompanies every kernel and bite of ostensibly mashed potato. Either a significant other isn't there to prepare a meal or a complete lack of cooking skills has led to the point where meat generously defined by Swanson's as chicken is now a viable option.

That's for every other day of the year. But eating a TV dinner on Thanksgiving brings someone to a new level of personal debasement and introspection. I did it four or five times, sticking with the chicken despite occasional flirtations with the salisbury steak. While images of family members downing turkey and stuffing danced in my head, I sat on my stained couch and picked around the skin of the chicken, searching for the white meat trumpeted on the packaging. A volunteer shift at a soup kitchen would have ended the personal pity party, but the preservatives sapped me of my strength and ambition. At work, a co-worker often brought in leftovers, a much-appreciated gesture even if it almost felt more like taunting than goodwill.

"Here you go, here are the 12 pieces of turkey my hoggish family didn't stuff into their overfed faces. Make yourself a sandwich. Sorry, uncle Lester ate all the pie, otherwise I would have brought some in. God, was it a feast. What'd you have to eat?"

A few years I was able to eat the normal meal with the family before going into work around 4 p.m., just when the Cowboys were kicking off. That did mean shelving the much-needed 5 p.m. nap.

* Easter. Best thing about not being able to go home or be with family on this day? No church! No guilt about having no church.

Sorry, I mean, it's upsetting not being able to wake at 8 to mark that day's most famous rising. Easter in a newspaper office is a fairly normal day. Unlike the other holidays when many leagues shut down with the exception of a game or two, there can be, depending on when Easter falls, a full schedule of basketball, baseball or hockey games. Sometimes the Masters finishes that day.

Easter's primarily a morning holiday it seems, so working in the afternoon never bothered me. Didn't feel like I was missing anything.

* Christmas. If I missed a Christmas, I always called back home at some point in the day to get the report on gifts and to speak with relatives I might not get to see for another year. Nothing takes place in the sports world, with the exception of the ABC-sponsored Kobe vs. Shaq/LeBron/Celtics game, so work's a breeze. Wait for the NBA game to finish, slap some 25-inch bowl game previews into the inside sections and format a little agate. If I did work Christmas I usually worked Christmas Eve as well, a dual shift made possible by the fact we'd be celebrating Christmas as a family a few days later, whenever I returned home. That makes Christmas unique, the ability to extend it a week or hold it days earlier, depending on everyone's schedule. No one holds their Thanksgiving meal in early December.

* New Year's Eve. There was never much to do at the paper as the world counts down to midnight. Often the paper implemented early deadlines, meaning we finished an hour or so earlier. But being done at midnight doesn't do much good when everyone else has been drunk since 6. They're already done with the fun stage and are instead reflecting on that awkward pass on the neighbor earlier in the evening. We'd drive to a party after our shift, arriving in time to see someone vomiting or drunkenly vowing to change their ways in the new year, the same resolution the guy's made the previous seven years. Warmed the heart. We snacked on leftover munchies that guests had pawed through, sipped a drink and went home. Happy New Year.

* Fourth of July. In Minnesota most of the big holidays take place in months when snow covers the ground and people actually, unironically say, "Gosh, sure got warm today, didn't it?" when the temperature reaches 30 degrees. While working those days means missing out on family, food, gifts, alcohol and alcoholic relatives, they are all spent indoors. Working the Fourth means missing out on a nice summer day. Pickup basketball in the park, or softball at the local diamond. A day at the beach. No fireworks, illegal or otherwise, at night. That's why I was always sort of secretly happy when bad weather intruded on the Fourth. If I had to be stuck inside reading the AP wire or penning a parasailing feature, others should suffer too. Perhaps the sentiment's vaguely unpatriotic. But at the same I was doing my part for the First Amendment.

The above paragraph also applies to Memorial Day.

Labor Day? Winter holiday in Minnesota.

Up close with the George Washington Bridge Bus Station

Every workday I ride the A train four stops to 175th Street, where I transfer to a New Jersey Transit bus located in the George Washington Bridge Bus Station. As New York City commutes go, it's about as painless as it gets. While thousands - millions - of angry, perturbed, tired, confused, beaten-down worker bees spend an hour or much more on the subways or buses, transferring several times, I ride the subway for less than 10 minutes. From the bus station, the good old 186 New Jersey bus takes about 10 minutes to get to work. Still, I give myself 45 minutes to an hour for the trip, as traffic and a late subway or bus can crush any well-intended schedule. By car, the trip takes about 20 minutes if traffic cooperates, though that knowledge only frustrates me when my commute home via public transportation does last an hour.

So I actually spend little time on the subway during the week. Instead, the majority of my commuting time is spent in the confines of the GWB Bridge Bus Station, a terminal located in Washington Heights between 178th and 179th Streets.

And what a terminal.

The higher you are, the easier it is to appreciate the terminal, sort of like a Pink Floyd album or 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this case, it's about elevation, as from above the terminal's unique design captures the eye. From this angle the building looks sleek, almost futuristic.

Pier Luigi Nervi, a famed Italian engineer who also created Rome's 1960 Olympic Stadium, designed the terminal, which opened in 1963. That same year, the building received the Concrete Industry Board's Award, though I didn't see any mention of other contenders for the plainly named honor. Here's an extensive story about the history of the terminal.

That's the history and the architecture. Inside...inside life's a little different, starting with the 175th Street subway stop. Seemingly burrowed even deeper underground than other subway stops, the platform areas attract a decent number of unhinged people.

One night after work, I walked down the steps with a friend. Behind us a lady ranted nonsensically, stringing together unrelated words and thoughts that were impossible to follow. It's a standard sight. But her mannerisms perfectly communicated the idea that she was a person to avoid. As we waited for the train, we heard a gasp and louder yelling. Finally two girls in their early 20s walked past and up the steps, with one of the women holding her cheek, attempting to cover up a growing red spot. The screamer had stopped yelling long enough to slug the poor woman. After hitting her victim, the lady continued walking and talking, as everyone else avoided eye contact. Livened up the commute home.

To get to the waiting area for the buses, you walk up a lengthy tunnel, where performers of varying skill and panhandlers greet you. It's a fairly regular cast of characters, from the kindly guy who simply tells everyone who walks by how good-looking they are - "Hello, there, My Princess... Hello there my good-looking brother" - to the middle-aged man who rests against a wall and softly, politely asks, "Excuse me, sir. Can you help me?" Performers include a saxophone player who sounds like he could play with nearly any band in the country, and an elderly, tough-looking crooner who sings but one song day after day, and sings it poorly. Of the many people at work who have heard him, no one knows the song. The only words anyone understands are, "It's all riiiight. Oh yeaaaah," which he repeats on an endless loop. The saxophonist deserves money and applause. But I've seen the warbler bring in just as much money, perhaps misguided attempts to bribe him quitting for a new career.

Inside the main waiting area, a pair of newsstands share space with a handful of other businesses, including an optometrist's office, donut and coffee shops, and a barber. The biggest crowd each day gathers in the off-track betting parlor. No matter when I walk by, it sounds like someone just hit a Pick 6. The 70,000 people at the 1973 Belmont who stood and wildly cheered as Secretariat blew away the field and completed the Triple Crown didn't show the type of excitement displayed daily at the off-track site at the GWB Bus Station. I don't know if any fortunes are won and lost, but bragging rights surely are.

Waiting passengers fill the metal chairs, watching on black-and-white video screens for their bus to roll in. At their feet, dozens of pigeons wander around, searching for scraps of food and taking off in flight on a moment's notice, often directly at someone's head. Kids love the pigeons. Fools feed them. Everyone else just avoids the crap and carnage.

A cop from an in-house station lightly nudges anyone who nods off in a chair, like a parent jolting a sleeping kid awake during a church sermon. Sometimes the person's homeless. The cop ushers them out. Other times it's simply someone who had to wake up at 5 a.m. and is waiting for a 6:30 bus. At the GWB Bus station, fatigue, apparently, isn't allowed. A week ago, as I sat reading the paper a few minutes before noon, I looked up just in time to see a young guy fall to his face, inches from my feet, the ever-present cop hovering nearby. He fell all on his own, but didn't leave under his own willpower. The cop escorted the intoxicated man out of the terminal and onto the street. No one raised an eyebrow.

The floor is home to more than a half-dozen pay phones, relics that fit in perfectly in 1963, but always seem weirdly out of place in modern-day New York. But as a person who remains cell phone-less, I can say I have actually used the pay phones, braving germs, outdated technology and the looks of cell phone snobs.

Have to use the bathroom? Hold it. I don't care if the bus won't arrive for another 20 minutes and your destination's 45 minutes away. Don't use these bathrooms. All of your senses, and inner belief in the basic goodness of humanity, will thank you later.

I've become a regular at one of the delis, so well-known and predictable with my order that the owner and other workers now pull out a white-frosted donut if they spot me from 10 feet away. Even if I wanted to order something different now - and there have been times I've desired just that - I don't know if they'd allow it.

That type of service almost makes me feel at home in the terminal. Of course, the station is not the type of place you want to get too comfortable in. The station leads to the George Washington Bridge, one of the wonders of the city. But in this case, the beauty really is on the outside, not on the inside.

Good morning? No, not really

The last job I had that required me to wake up before 7 a.m. on a daily basis for more than a month was a factory job back in college, and that was a summer gig.

Since entering the real world and being confronted with the surreal salaries of young journalists - "Twenty thousand a year? Great! I can start tomorrow!" - I've never had to wake up early every day. My first job had me at work from about 2 in the afternoon to midnight. After that it was a job that ran from 4 p.m. until 1 a.m.

Today, like nearly every Monday, I'll be in the office from 4 p.m. until about 3 a.m. Even on the days I get up early - and I really should put air quotes around the word early there - it only means waking up at 9 for a 10 a.m. start. Twice a month I do have to live the life of millions. The alarm sounds at 5:30 a.m. It seems unreal that anyone else is up at this hour. But the subway's always jammed two stops down, and I assume those people are getting up that early every day.

Not a morning person.

The phrase implies a lot about someone. It means you probably stay up late, past midnight, past 1 a.m. It means you are a morning person, as long as those morning hours are between 12 and 3. It means those who talk to you early in the day do so at their own risk. It's a phrase that almost forgives bad behavior between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 a.m.

Say you snap at a parent or a spouse because they used up the last of the milk.

They look at you as if the person who went to sleep last night is not the same monster confronting them now. Instead of apologizing, simply shrug your shoulders, give a gee-whiz smile and say, "Sorry, not a morning person."

It's like the friend who offends everyone but gets excused with, "Well, he's a good guy but you know what he's like when he gets a few drinks in him."

"He's a good guy but you know what he's like if he's awake for the start of the Today show."

I've always wanted to stay up late, and like many things in my life, the blame - or credit - goes to the Lakers. As a kid I engaged in high-level negotiations with my parents whenever the Lakers had a late game on television. They started at 9:30 Central time and invariably lasted until midnight. To get permission to stay up for it, I had to convince my mom that it was an especially big game (and, yes, my homework was already done). Sure, it was a January game in a neverending regular season, "But, mom, this could determine homecourt advantage for the playoffs."

She'd give me half the game, especially if I gave an assurance that it would be a blowout by halftime and I wouldn't even have to watch the last two quarters. Around 10 my dad headed off to bed. When halftime finally arrived and the Lakers only had a one-point lead, there was no way I was turning the TV off. Back then, I might have to wait two days to find out the result of the game, as the morning newspaper never had the late West Coast games. Mom would give a skeptical look.

"But it's a big game," I'd remind her.

Grudgingly, she relented.

I stayed up. Watched the Lakers win. Went to bed. And cursed when the morning arrived and school beckoned. Not a morning person. It was then I started realizing that life is so much more interesting after midnight, and so meaningless nearly anytime before noon.

Today, 12 years into my full-time embrace of jobs that always include at least one late night and only rarely an early morning, it might be too late for me to ever change. There are better TV shows on late at night. Scarier movies, more entertaining and bizarre infomercials. More heartbreaking Cold Case episodes on TNT. It's quieter, more peaceful. I think better after midnight, I write better. Creativity flows easier. Or, more likely, I've simply conditioned myself to believe that, and the clock serves as an electric placebo.

Kids would certainly change my sleeping habits, if not my waking preferences. Maybe they'll learn to hate the morning, too. Maybe we can share that.

Louise is the rare creature who's a night owl and a morning person. In her ideal world, she'd stay up until 1 a.m. and wake up at 5 a.m. And the earlier she wakes up, the happier she is, the more chipper her personality. It's some type of defect.

I have it lucky. I fit into the not-a-morning-person category but my job and lifestyle caters perfectly to me. The people I feel the worst for are those who aren't morning people yet find themselves waking up early every day, month after month, year after year. My mom is one of those unfortunate souls. For 40 years she's woken up at 6:30, often 5 a.m. or even earlier. You'd think by now she'd be a morning person, that it would have been ingrained in her. But she's not.

So perhaps it's not just the Lakers that started me on this path, maybe it's genetics.

Regardless, I embrace it. Last night I stayed up until 3, reading, writing, and watching a V marathon on cable. Tonight I'll be up awake past four, winding down from work. I'll sleep until noon and half the day will be gone before I wake up. But if I miss the morning, I'll know I haven't really missed a thing.