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

We were down in Maryland with the whole fambo watching Jack's very first college soccer game and I tee'ed up this conversation topic at dinner. After one sentence, someone interrupted and began talking over me, which can only mean one thing: This topic is perfect for a blog post. I originally happened upon this whole matter while reading Reddit. I've been reading a lot of the Reddit. I'm not proud. But someone said something about something or other "In West Village."  And yes, Reddit hashtag NYC lost its mind.  Because it's "In THE West Village." West Village is always preceded by a THE. Just like THE Bronx. Now all the other boroughs do *not* start with a "the." For example, it's: Manhattan. Queens. Brooklyn. Staten Island. THE Bronx. Now. If we're talking about the 'hoods.... I'd say "I'm going to Soho" (no "the"). I'd also say I'm going to NoMad, Chelsea, Turtle Bay, FlatIron,  Hells K...

  photocredit: otherwing photography We were upstate during a major flooding incident and all these crayfish were barreling across roads. "Why did the crayfish cross the road?" No freaking idea, by all accounts it seemed like a really dumbass idea.  We were upstate for the annual familypalooza week in an AirB&B and of course we picked the week it rained apocalyptically. Between the storms, we walked up and down the country roads near our place. We observed flooded out roadways, swamped bridges and pretty much just lakes on either side of the streets. We made comments on the depth, salt content, and likely water recession timelines like we had at least a clue what we were talking about. Which we did not, of course. We ran into this one woman, a volunteer firefighter who had been called to this ramshackle house up the street to pump out water in the basement that had risen higher than the first floor. She came out of the house and apparently saw a crayfish on the road, so s...

So. We didn't proactively do any Pride related activities today.  I say proactively because it is frankly hard for us not to accidentally participate. We live right in the thick of the whole shebang.  The parade gets staged right out front our building and then it ends a few blocks away. So yeah. It's a dawn till dusk type scenario where every time we leave, we gotta take ID because there are barricades and police and we can't get back to our apartment without showing proof of residence.  Luckily the "proof" is pretty loosely defined or we'd still be out there. I left without ID but they let me call the doorman to vouch for me. It was awkward. Now I'm gonna have to give a big ass holiday tip. Tom showed a UPS alert he had on his phone with the address. This was a far superior plan to mine for reasons of finance and also it was a lot faster. After the first border patrol incident, we got smart and started telling the officers as we exited the barricade area...

Incident #1: Wednesday evening, I was sitting in a beautiful venue with blond wood paneling and excellent acoustics watching this big gala presentation. They were presenting some very heartfelt awards. It really was lovely don't get me wrong but just suddenly I was like... I gotta go.  I'm cranky and tired and surrounded by just too many part-time real estate agents and cliques of longtime friends all hugging and squealing and yeah. I was suddenly hit by a solid wave of longing to be in my own home in a pair of more comfortable pants. But: Colossal Problem. I had seen the gift bags they were planning to hand out after the event that included a fancy little box of non pareil chocolates. Non Pareil chocolates. You see the obvious allure. So I sat in my seat for an extra ten minutes trying to puzzle out how to both leave immediately and also get the chocolates you were only supposed to get at the very end when all the normal polite people left en mass. They didn't even have th...

We wound up going to the Print Show at PowerHouse Arts even though the last time I was at PowerHouse Arts, and I could be wrong about this however I didn't bother to look it up as usual, but I'm pretty sure last time I was there, the entire PowerHouse Arts premises were about as big as a not-so-big book shop.   So yeah, I was totally worried about going the whole way out to god knows where in Brooklyn to a show we paid in advance to get into, and then have it be like five sad vendors jammed in a not-so-big bookshop, and maybe one of them is selling home remodeling and another other one is chasing you around with perfume samples.  Heads up: Powerhouse Arts has moved. And it's an upgrade.  Now they have a huge warehouse-ish building and therefore this print show was impressively large and well curated. Worth the trip and the price of admission in other words. After a lot of thinking and circling back, we purchased two prints. One of them was fairly gigantic and in a fr...

A play called "Every Brilliant Thing" is currently on Broadway. Matt and Helen went to see it. Playbill from Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway. So look, I'm only mentioning this so I can be one of the cool crowd who talks very knowledgeably about some show currently on Broadway  because they also saw the original and/or earlier revivals. My friend Danielle from book club and her cousin Greg do this. They hammer through a detailed critique like it's a dereliction of duty not to give excellent notes. For example, out front the theater after we all saw Gypsy last year, both of them launched into comparing and contrasting Audrey whatserface with all the prior leading ladies they'd seen portray Mama Rose using words like "vibrato" and "mezzo soprano."  I think Danielle said she'd seen nine (9) different Gypsy productions. NINE! Her dad was on the Tony committee so she got an early start.  So anyway, this is my one (1) time to shine and I'm t...