New York City November 2024

Monday November 18

I’m in New York with Sarah. She had a business meeting and asked me if I wanted to tag along. She would extend it a day and we could go see The Outsiders on Broadway. Of Course! So here I am.

I drove to her house this morning and we drove to the airport together. Lots of the expenses for this trip are comped by her client so I don’t have to pay for the hotel, or the Uber from the airport to NY, but of course I have to pay for my own flight, the show, and my food while we’re here. 

Our flight was kind of crazy. Only 2.5 hours, way shorter than going to SF, right? But first we’re delayed because of airport congestion (thank you, I’d rather be delayed than risk a close call!). But THEN as we’re taxiing to the runway the pilot gets on the intercom and tells us that we have to go back to the gate because a passenger needs to get off the plane! That’s a first for me. We don’t know why, but Sarah heard the person say to a flight attendant “I thought I could get it to stop but….” so we’re thinking some kind of medical emergency.  Not overt though. We’ll never know.

So that took a minute, and then apparently we missed our takeoff window so we ended up delayed another 20 minutes after that. I think we ended up being delayed about 2 hours. Sarah had a client meeting she missed, but what are you going to do? These things happen.

Our hotel was very nice, in the financial district, right on Wall Street near the East River. The Wall Street Hotel. It was very fancy, we would never stay at a hotel like this in New York if her client wasn't paying for it! Our room had a big bathroom with two sinks and lots of counter space, a luxury for two high maintenance women sharing a room! And even though we were only on the 3rd floor the room was quiet.

While she went off to do a client dinner I did a little research and went to an Irish pub right around the corner. I sat at the bar and had an Old Fashioned, their butternut squash ravioli and a piece of apple crumb cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert. I was hungry! It was all very good and the Old Fashioned was great. They always taste better in NY.

Tuesday November 19

I made myself stay up until almost 10 pm, after Sarah came back from her client dinner. Then I somehow slept until 7:30, unheard-of for me, over 9 hours. Sarah was still asleep and I didn’t want to wake her so I grabbed my jeans and sweatshirt and walked to a Starbucks down the street. I got a latte and some oatmeal and took it back to the hotel lounge to eat. I chilled there for a while and then went up to the room to change to go run.

I’m not as familiar with running on the east side, and I’m definitely not familiar with running around Wall Street! But after looking at Strava I decided it made sense to head toward Battery Park along the East River and then hopefully up the Hudson side a ways before turning around. I worked out great, even though Battery Park has a lot of construction going on and I had to zig and zag a little bit. It was a nice run with a bit of speedwork thrown in and an only mildly wonky GPS signal.

Back at the hotel, I took my shower and planned out the rest of my morning. I was going to try a place called Tonii’s Fresh Rice Noodles in Chinatown and then go check out The Eldridge Museum. I decided to walk since taking the subway would save only 10 minutes and it was a beautiful day. I was able to find my way there without too much confusion, even though I had forgotten how crazy Chinatown can be. Unfortunately Tonii’s turned out to be carryout only so I had to find a park where I could eat my lunch. There was one conveniently around the corner from the museum so it all worked out.

I got the noodles with chicken, which I figured would be a safe choice. I also got some lemon tea. The noodles came with lots of different sauces, soy, hoisin, peanut, chili. I used the soy and hoisin. I could have used a little chili but decided not to risk it. The noodles were ok. I mean there was nothing wrong with them but they could have used something more. There were a lot of different options so maybe it was my fault for being too cautious. Oh well! The tea, however, was delicious.

I signed up for a docent led tour at the museum, because at $11 for seniors, why not? I was a tour group of one. My docent was ok. He was very knowledgeable, but a little grumpy. There were a few other tours going on and he got very annoyed when the other docents were in the same area as he was, so we kept moving around. Honestly his irritation was more distracting than the other docents! But the synagogue was neat, and beautifully restored. It was a grand orthodox synagogue, built in the 1880’s and in use from then until sometime in the 40’s when most of the congregation had moved to the Bronx, Brooklyn or beyond. Then the building fell into disrepair until the 1970’s when the slow work of restoration finally began. It took a lot of work and the building opened as a museum in 2007. The building is worth touring, and maybe you’ll have better luck than I did with your docent! Or you can get an online tour instead.

Wednesday November 20

I walked back to the hotel. Sarah was already there, finished with her work for the trip. Around 3 we decided to go ahead and take the subway to SoHo and do some window shopping before our dinner reservation at 5. 

We got ourselves all dressed up, Sarah in a beautiful green skirt from Farm Rio and me in my fancy skirt from Nuuly.

First of all, using Omni Pay to pay for the subway is amazing! You just have to authorize it on your phone and then just tap as you go through the gate. No more metro card, the charge goes on your primary cc in your Apple Wallet. If you lived in NY and used the subway a lot you never have to pay more than $32 every 7 days so it’s economical too.

Second, we’re both fairly experienced subway users but we got on an express train without realizing it, so we overshot our stop a bit. It wouldn’t have mattered except that my boots started to hurt my feet after a while. I was fine that morning because I wore my tennis shoes, but after about 30 minutes of strolling back to and then around SoHo I was starting to feel my age.

We both like Farm Rio so we looked in there. I walked into the UGG store and then walked right back out, too crowded. We went into Paige so Sarah could check out their jeans, and I found myself looking at a variety of silky button down shirts. Hmm. Finally we went into Free People and I saw a houndstooth overcoat I really liked. I wanted it but I wasn’t about to buy it in NY instead of MN where there’s no sales tax on clothes, so I’m going to look for it online.

We still had lots of time. We took the subway to a stop closer to the restaurant. We went into a chocolate shop and bought some truffles for a snack for intermission at the show. We walked down the street to the restaurant and  popped into a lovely shop that sold artisanal things by various makers from all over the world. We were both tempted! I loved some oyster shells that had been dipped in gold paint and filled with a painted ceramic flower. Not practical or really very useful but pretty! There were also some ceramic dishes made by someone in Brooklyn that we both really liked. And glass platters with flecks of silver and gold paint, and silk scarves, and Norwegian sweaters and….

It was finally 5 o’clock so we went across the street for our reservation at Seema. This restaurant had seen a lot of hype and it was hard to get a reservation but I focused and hopped on Resy right at 8 AM 15 days earlier and got us in.

We both got a cocktail, very good. We followed our servers suggestions and got dumplings, scallops, a dosa (giant), a branzino steamed in a banana leaf, and the oxtail. It was too much food, but so good. It was a shame to leave some of it but we couldn’t help it. 

Seema Dumplings

At 6:30 it was time to go. The show started at 7. We had to walk 5 blocks to the subway, then a 15 minute subway ride, and then hoof it through Times Square to the theater. I put my Hong Kong hat on and led the way, weaving expertly through the crowds. We made it with a few minutes to spare. Sarah scooted to the bathroom. The lights went down and there was Ponyboy, writing his story about a week in Tulsa in 1967….

                                                               

The Outsiders is an interesting story in a lot of ways. The most fascinating part to me is that SE Hinton wrote it when she was 17 yo, and it was published by the time she was 18. How she managed to do that I’ll never know. Not only that but she managed to get herself inside the head of a 14 yo “greaser” boy, and make him and his friends real, and people any teenager could identify with, no matter what class or social milieu they were from.

The Outsiders has always been one of my daughter’s favorite books. I didn’t read it until my 40’s (I generally read anything my kids read if they thought it was worth reading). I reread it on Monday and I think it made the musical more interesting.

They made a few changes to the plot that I thought actually improved the story, simplifying the love interest in the book and changing how Dallas dies in the end.

The songs were good, but at least without listening to it again a few times, nothing too memorable. It reminded me of Rent, both in the set, and the general theme of misunderstood kids against the world. However, the music of Rent was electrifying from the get go, and something I listened to over and over, until I was sick of it. I doubt that I will do that with the Outsiders.

The one thing in The Outsiders that was just astonishing was the rainfall during the "rumble" (gang fight) toward the end of the show. Water fell in torrents upon the stage, but no puddles formed even though everything got wet. And it fell for several minutes, at least. Where in the world did it go? The floor of the stage was covered in pea gravel (another mystery, how did they keep that gravel in place with people dancing and singing all over it for almost 3 hours?). The “rain” fell on the gravel and disappeared. There must have been some kind of grating underneath the gravel that would let the water out, but keep the gravel in. And how did they manage to dance on that kind of surface? I’d love to know!

After the play we strolled back to the subway and this time gratefully took an express train back to Wall St. We were both in bed by 11. I didn’t sleep great, heartburn and a nightmare (Harper ran away and we forgot to look for her for 2 days, in retrospect ridiculous but terrifying at the time). At least on the way home everything has gone smoothly (so far, I”m writing this on the plane) (it did).

I’m so glad Sarah asked me to come. It was a lot of fun. I miss New York and it was great to get a city fix.

 

Now back to Minnesota where it may be snowing. Time for thanksgiving!

A Reckoning

I’ve known Trump was going to win for about a month. I can’t tell you why I knew this; it was just a feeling I had. I was still hopeful, but I knew my hope was irrational. I was trying to prepare myself mentally. I didn’t want to go through how I felt in 2016 again; crushed, devastated, furious at everyone that wouldn’t vote for Clinton because she was a woman, whether they recognized that or not.

In the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about the first presidential election I voted in, McGovern vs Nixon in 1972. When McGovern lost, and lost so profoundly and thoroughly (Nixon got 60% of the popular vote, and McGovern won only one state) I was shocked. I lived in a little hippie bubble, and although I knew that not everyone thought the hippies were great, I still thought most people knew we were all about peace and love and against the war and who would disagree with that? Most people, apparently.

Since that time I’ve grown up a lot, of course. But in some ways part of my brain is still in that bubble, and so are the brains of a lot of other liberal/progressive folks. I’ve been condescending about Trump voters, and so have you. I’ve thought they were ill informed, uneducated, brainwashed even. I’ve thought they were bigoted, xenophobic, angry. Either that or rich, typical Republicans that only care about their taxes.

So I need to stop that, and if any of this seems familiar, so do you. Trump voters are my neighbors, and indeed some of them are my friends. I’m going to throw away my old assumptions and be genuinely interested in what they think and why they voted the way they did. 

Does this mean that I’m going to try to find something to like about Trump? OH.HELL.NO. I think that HE is a despicable human being that only cares about himself and doesn’t give a shit for the people that voted for him, or anybody else for that matter. But just because I dislike him, doesn’t mean that I dislike his voters, if I look at them as individuals and not as a raucous mob at one of his rallies. That’s what we want them to do when they talk about liberals, don’t we? So let us be an example.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to throw in the towel on issues I care about. Abortion. Undocumented people and reforming the immigration system. Mass incarceration. Gun control. Etc. Etc. But I’m going to be looking at the big picture differently, at least for awhile.

This doesn’t mean either that I’m not worried about our democracy. It’s never good when one party holds all the branches of government. That’s where things can go really amuck. 

On the local level, however, I’m grateful to live in Minnesota, which is still a reliably blue state, and where the voters in Shorewood, the small suburban town on the outskirts of Minneapolis where I live, have voted in some fresh blood on the city council which will hopefully loosen the hold of the good old boys network that has run this town for too many years. I’m looking for some positives, and this is one! Even the crank that ran for mayor, although he didn’t win, and I didn’t vote for him, made a strong showing, so the current mayor has been given a wakeup call. Time to focus on local issues for a while.

And personally like a lot of people, I’m going to be working on self care this week. A lingering knot in my stomach? Go for a run, take a pilates class, play with my grandsons. A lump in my throat? Take a shower and cry, go for a walk in the brisk fall air. A piece of news that makes my heart sink? Write a letter to my congressman, vote when I can, write.

We will get through this. People are already saying that Harris’ slogan was too weak and nebulous. I disagree. I knew exactly what it means, and I still believe it. Come what may, we are NOT going back. We.Are.Not.

Fall in California 2024

Saturday October 26

We flew here today. Nice weather, easy flight. It was chilly in Minnesota when we left; 30’s to 50’s. It’s a little warmer here, 40’s to 70’s. We arrived here around 2. Dan picked us up in their new car, a Mercedes hybrid/electric plugin SUV. It’s very nice! Roomie, all kinds of new bells and whistles. They say it will park itself if you want it to, but I haven’t seen that yet.

On the way here there was a perfect circular rainbow around the sun. I got some pictures. I looked it up; it’s called a solar halo and it’s pretty uncommon, only happens a few times a year at most.

Solar Halo

Once here we ate a late lunch and then played with Emi and talked to Dan and Kelsey for most of the rest of the afternoon. Emi has changed a bunch since August! She’s less chill, more opinionated, more insistent on what she wants. She crawls fast, with ease. She cruises around tables and loves her walker toy. She’ll walk holding on to Daniel’s fingers but not anyone else’s! (actually by the end of the week she was walking with my fingers, and Lee's too!)  We all thought she’d be walking by now because she stood so early but no. She’s very talkative, and will babble conversationally. She’s also hungry! She’s very into solid food and eager to try new things. We did go on a walk around the neighborhood and threw a ball for Rossi in the school yard.

For dinner we went to a Pakistani restaurant in downtown Palo Alto. It wasn’t fancy, you stood in line to order, chose a table outside and displayed your number and they brought your food to you. It was very similar to Indian food. It was very good, especially their naan. Emi mostly ate baby food but she did try naan, and a little bit of Lee’s dahl. She made a funny face at the dahl, and then wanted more!

Monday October 28

Today we’ll start babysitting Emi. Yesterday morning I woke up around 4:15. I went ahead and got up instead of trying to go back to sleep because I had a long run to do (8 miles). I ran to the Byxbee Trails park, a wetlands with lots of trails. Its about 3 miles there and the one other time I’ve run there I was only doing 6 miles so I turned around right after I got there, but this time I was able to run a couple miles into the park. It’s really beautiful, all these rolling hills of grassland, and so many birds! I saw a heron but couldn’t get close enough to get a picture.

Byxbee Trails

When I got back the others were just leaving to go for a walk and to get coffee and sweet rolls. They brought me back some, so I had a second breakfast. 

We mostly hung out all day. We went into Palo Alto for lunch at a diner, and then later we went to San Jose, hoping to eat at Din Tai Fung but apparently half of the Bay Area had the same idea. We got there at around 5:15 and the wait time for a table was over 3 hours!. We put our name on the list but we ended up eating at a french restaurant nearby named Left Bank instead. We hoped that some people in front of us would have given up but our wait time never really changed. 

The restaurant we ate at was ok. Lee got a salad lyonnnaise and french onion soup. Daniel and Kelsey got steak frites. I got a beet salad and mussels. The mussels were inedible, fishy and tough. I sent them back and Dan and Kelsey gave me bites of their steak instead. I was fine! There was plenty of food.

They had profiteroles and I thought I would get one for dessert but the waitress took so long to come back and get our dessert order that I changed my mind. We went to an ice cream place called Summit instead, where they make your ice cream order on the spot with dry ice. I got roasted banana with chocolate sauce. It was good, but I think I might like Sugar and Salt better. I’ll have to do a taste comparison to be sure!

Emi was very busy yesterday, exploring all sorts of things she shouldn’t. Periodically we’d have to trap her in the play room where there isn’t anything off limits, except that she’s starting to try to figure out how to climb up on things, such as her cookstove! She also fought her naps tooth and nail, and ended up taking both of them in the car. I think she might still be dealing with a little jet lag from their trip to Japan.

Emi Showing Rossi What's What

Tuesday October 29

Monday was a day off from running. I went on a morning walk to park with Lee, Rossi and Emi.  Emi took her nap in  the stroller, which was fine with us. We put Emi on one of the little rocking animals in the park. They are in a sand pit and Rossi thought the sand was lots of fun, tossing it up in the air with her nose and running around madly. 

For lunch I got a Bahn Mi from LeQuy, a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. In the afternoon we took a walk to get coffee at Covour and Emi took another stroller nap. In the evening we met Craig and Jean at a northern Italian restaurant, Che Fi. There were lots of small plates and antipasti. It was all very good, and we shared everything so we got to taste a variety of food.

This morning I had a good run. I mostly ran around Mitchell Park to stay close to known bathrooms because my stomach was a little upset, but I was ok. Then we took Emi to story time at the library. She was mostly interested in the other kids, sitting quietly with her thumb in her mouth, observing. There were a lot of out of control toddlers. The story teller was very patient with them! She did a combination of singing and stories. I thought that the caregivers of the misbehaving toddlers were sort of negligent but Dan pointed out later that they were probably nannies and didn't feel like they had the authority to discipline their charges, at least not in public. 

Wednesday October 30

We took another walk to get coffee yesterday afternoon, then Lee made dinner, chicken ala becca. Kelsey, Dan and Emi went to get their covid and flu shots yesterday afternoon. After dinner Daniel, Kelsey, Emi and I went to get gelato at the gelateria run by the same Italian restaurant we went to last night (Dan wanted to go yesterday but we were too full!). We all got small cups and none of us could finish it. I don’t know why places give people so much ice cream. We all would have gotten kiddie cones if they had had them.

I did a 4 mile easy run this am, then went on a walk with Lee, Emi and Rossi, to Mitchell Park and back. Lee made tostadas for lunch. I was starving and afraid I would get cranky waiting, but I made it. Even after 2 tostadas and a big cookie I was still kind of hungry, but I’ll live. In a little while we’ll go on our afternoon coffee walk. Maybe I’ll get a snack too. I wonder what we’ll do for dinner?

Thursday October 31

I tried the Honey Financier at Covour; it was yummy and filling. I wasn’t hungry any more after that! Our afternoon walk was a little early and Emi didn’t fall asleep so we put her down for a nap in her crib around 3. Boyoboy did she fight it! They let her fuss for 15 minutes and she used every single minute before she gave up. I watched her on the baby monitor. She would stand in her crib, crying, sit down for a second, stand back up, over and over. Gradually the sit downs got a little longer and she started laying her head down too, until finally down she stayed. Whew!

We hadn’t seen Kelsey all day and it turns out she had a reaction to her shot and had been sick all day. We decided to get pho delivered for dinner. It was very good and hit the spot. Even Emi liked the meat.

Then they decided they had better carve their pumpkins. They had a pumpkin carving kit from last year but we couldn’t find it so Dan and Lee winged it. I thought they came out pretty good considering. 

Pumpkins

Friday November 1

Thursday morning I slept in a little bit (5:45 AM lol) and procrastinated so by the time I got started I needed to abbreviate my run a little so that I would be available to babysit Emi by 9. I did a 1 mile warmup, then about 3.40 miles at half marathon pace and didn’t do a cooldown. Better than nothing!

We did our morning walk with Emi and timed it right so she fell asleep right away. She slept the whole walk and another hour at least once we got back to the house, close to 2 hours! That’s a very long nap for her! Lee went and got us InandOut burgers for lunch and Emi had some too, torn up hamburger mostly, although Lee gave her some of a french fry and she really liked them! She wanted them instead of the hamburger but we held tough and told her no more french fries!

Then in the afternoon we did another coffee walk. She fell asleep for that one too. We went there a different way that was slightly longer so we ended up walking closer to 2.2 miles. I have good intentions to continue with these walks in Minnesota, but we’ll see. I tried a pumpkin creme latte in honor of Halloween. It was delicious!

Craig came over for dinner, with pizza, salad, and halloween cupcakes. Jean couldn’t come because she wasn’t feeling well. After dinner Kelsey, Dan and Emi put on their costumes. Kelsey was Sully, Daniel was Mike Wazowski, and Emi was Boo, from the movie Monsters, Inc. Emi's costume consisted of a long t-shirt (a 2T that almost fit her!) and pink pom poms on her little pony tails! Rossi was very tolerant of her little monster costume. They left to go trick or treating with some friends and we stayed behind to give out candy. 

Happy Halloween From Monster's Inc!

At first there were hardly any kids, but then more and more started showing up. Their front door is in a courtyard, so we opened the gate and I sat in the gateway with the candy so they could see me! There were a lot of cute costumes but my favorite was a girl that was dressed as a jellyfish. She had a transparent umbrella and had strung twinkly lights from it to look like a jellyfish’s tentacles. It looked great and she was very easy to see.

We were down to just a few pieces of candy when a very large group of kids started coming down the street. We didn’t have enough candy left for all of them so I quickly closed the gate and we turned off the lights and went inside. Whew!

It was lots of fun doing halloween. We never get trick or treaters at our house so I was happy to get to hand out candy for the first time since we lived in Waconia. Back in Minnesota they had snow for halloween, something of a tradition. Leo was Darth Vader, Kirby was a storm trooper, Sarah was princess Leia and Erik was Luke. The boys are very into Star Wars right now, thanks to Erik. The pictures were pretty awesome!

Herberg Star Wars

Now we’re back in Minnesota where it’s cold but not too bad. Someone tore up my homemade Harris/Walz sign but a neighbor left us another and the one I ordered came, so now we have 2 nice signs. I hope they last til election day.