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

Photo credit: https://bentleyhotelnewyork.com/greenwich-village/ 1 am in Greenwich Village: On the sidewalk in front of us, the one pudgy short girl in very tight pants motored ahead of the other pudgy short girl in very tight pants. And when I say, "motored ahead" I mean in a relative kind of way. Tom and I just kind of strolled by the two of them. We might have appeared nonchalant, but make no mistake, we were paying attention. There was drama. The one in the back squawked at the one in the front, something about slowing down. I couldn't really hear so well. I was totally distracted by the frantic slapping of their strappy sandals on the sidewalk and my disbelief over how it was possible to move one's legs that rapidly and at the same time achieve such low velocity... I was astounded really. It was like watching hummingbirds. Hummingbirds from say Long Island. The one in the front really started to pull away. But by then they were way behind us. I ask...

The twins, my niece and nephew, turned ten last Monday. I decided the big one zero was certainly old enough for Jack and Ella's first game of Dungeons & Dragons.  We all were upstate for the week. My mom and pop, otherwise known as Grandma and Grandpa, rented a cottage in the woods near Lake Placid. I was full-on prepared to overcome long evenings with only dial-up DSL. We would go OG old school with dice and graph paper and photocopies. No worries that I had not actually played D&D for something like 30 years. Being Dungeon Master was like riding a bike, right?  It seemed frivolous to consider that nobody else besides me had ever actually played a game of D&D before. Tom and Grandma were in, and so were Jack and Ella. Grandma grabbed a piece of graph paper and said she’d draw the maps. Ella situated her iPad-mini on the table, at the ready to total up her gold pieces. I was pleased with the adventuring...