Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

Bruce got the tickets for the Marriage of Figaro show at Little Island weeks and weeks ago. He asked if we wanted to come and I said yes immediately. There was no investigations or research. Nothing was looked into. I had a vague notion it was an opera... which made sense since Nardo is a big fan of the opera.  Nonetheless, I ran out of time and failed to deploy my Opera Best Practices checklist. This is where I read about said opera in advance. Otherwise, as I have discovered the hard way, most operas are completely incomprehensible. Even if they were in English, I'd still be tragically lost.  Which feels even more tragic when it's hour two into a three or four hour show and very likely the heroine is out in the garden or up in the attic or out of a boat impersonating the other heroine while meanwhile the villain is in the mix and the hero is going to misunderstand the whole scene and probably there will be a duel in which either the wrong person will die or someone will becom

First random thing transpired while we were whipping up Hudson Street in surprising very little traffic considering the rush hour situation. Tom and I had just had a good laugh listening to Casey Newton on the Hard Fork podcast. I think Casey is so fucking funny.  Kevin Roose had been recounting that after he did a story where he tried to befriend AI Chatbots and turn them evil, the chatbots had apparently started to dislike him and give uncharitable descriptions of him, such as responding that Kevin is "unethical" when compared to most reporters. Kevin enlisted some firm to fix his AI reputation and they gave him a line of code,  he put it on his website and somewhat later, the AI Chatbots were glowing in their assessments. Casey said it kind of sounded like Kevin had bought a spell from some witches. Like a chatbot love spell. I thought it was hilarious. While I was cackling, a guy in his car comes whipping out of a side street and turns left going the wrong direction down

  We had great seats for the baseball game. The third section up (300 level seats) were unexpectedly excellent. For his birthday, my pop wanted the whole fambo to go see a baseball game. I had more fun than I thought I was going to have, honestly. The weather was great, it was nice to see pop in his element and the whole experience was not nearly as exasperating and arduous as I had expected.  Don't get me wrong, the traffic in Philadelphia always sucks no matter when you go. But the stadium itself was very efficient and we got in and got out and the game was 2.5 hours, which is shorter than I remember. They have these countdown clocks now so the pitcher has like 30 seconds to pitch the ball and etc. No dicking around anymore is the bottomline and I'm there for it. We had decided to stay in center city and just kinda take the opportunity to spend the next day banging around downtown Philly, etc. I used to live there, afterall, and rarely go back... so everytime I do it's a

Let's hear it for NYC. David was talking about how excited he was to move to San Diego when he retired (granted from Miami, he's never lived here) and Bruce is all about Spain and Helen and Matt are looking to cruise in the Caribbean for a couple years and rent out their place in Harlem. Sometimes (ok, often) this town is a rough place to be, to work, to just deal with.  And then you have a week like I just had. Maria was in from Stockholm and we took this city by storm.  For example, on Thursday evening, on the way to the train, I took this golden photo and that's kind of when my whole OMG I will never leave this place kicked in full gear: Not even sure what caption to write. This view shows the site of where the WTC used to be if you weren't aware. I mean, literally two hours earlier: Hanging in the park by the river watching the sunset and Leela James and objects are much closer than they appear in the viewfinder, I just feel the need to mention. This is after seeing

So we're hiking this trail along the Oregon coast. When we set off, I decide my new thing is going to be to document a "Fern Life List" because Helen has a Bird Life List and I'm intrigued by the list but not by the birds. So I begin to take photos of all the ferns I see.  I will do this until I have seen all the ferns in the world!!! Some Ferns Some more ferns which at a certain point I realize are the same kind of ferns. My full attention on ferns lasts until we hit the views of the coast, which are undeniably spectacular! I also realize we are very high up and the trail edges a cliff that is a straight shot into the sea: Approximately right then, some guy hiking the opposite direction with his wife/girlfriend does a weird backward step just as he comes abreast of us and he topples off the side of the precipice. He falls backwards and luckily gets tangled up in a bush and therefore does not immediately plunge to his death. Time halts as we all stand there staring at

 We stopped on the drive to the Oregon coast to pick up a can of fireworks, because yeah. Ever since Matt originally procured such a can  a couple years ago, we've been all in.  So we got our can of fireworks, but then the problem became where to light it, because the rental agreement of the place we're renting had some pretty strict "please don't blow up the house" clauses and also the dune grass surrounding the place looked pretty flammable and you know, we'd hate to lose our rental deposit. Therefore, someone came up with the pretty great idea to light up the Fireworks Can on the beach. Except: hmmm, this could be a decision-making factor re: our plan to light up a can of fireworks on the beach. On July 3rd at dinner, we asked our waiter if people were lawless enough to set off fireworks on the beach despite the clear signage. He kind of smirked and said oh no, absolutely not. Hindsight revealed the extent of his sarcasm. Spoiler alert. Helen mused about th