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

There was this first floor commercial/retail location down the block from us that sat empty for a hella long time. Like five years or more. At one point, someone wanted to put in a private club of some kind and host private "parties." I've never seen our block come together faster to make sure "parties" didn't happen. Nothing like an alcohol-infused late night "parties" anything venue to instill a sense of community. So fast forward at least a year and signs appeared announcing an art gallery was moving in. Exciting!  I swear two years later, the "coming soon" signs were still on the windows.  But then, at long last, the art gallery opened. Tom and I buzzed by on their opening night and the show and saw: it's certainly a sculpture. Although the inaugural exhibition in the gallery really did not careen down the middle of my lane, it still was definitely cool to have a gallery across the street.  A couple weeks ago, I noticed that the e...

 Not just a baby goat, this goat was 4 hours old. Literally this goat had been in utero until like just after lunch.  Mom and the goat. We were staying in Ocean City Maryland when this photo was taken. These people renting an airBnB down the block from us said they had to take the goat with them on vacation due to it being born while they were packing up the car to leave.  I don't fully understand this. We failed to ask sufficient questions. For example, no one asked where the Mom Goat was and why she was deemed incompetent.  Hopefully mom goat was home in the barn getting some much needed rest, and this was not a scenario where the people down the block had just made off with a goat infant, 911 style. I bet AirBnB rules don't specifically forbid goats, so at least as far as AirBnB is concerned I'm sure these people are in the clear. 

  Check the box for monstrous. What is this thing? Not all that helpful as far as signs go, honestly. Here's the description of this exhibit : Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie  radically reimagines the story of European porcelain through a feminist lens. When porcelain arrived in early modern Europe from China, it led to the rise of chinoiserie, a decorative style that encompassed Europe’s fantasies of the East and fixations on the exotic, along with new ideas about women, sexuality, and race. This exhibition explores how this fragile material shaped both European women’s identities and racial and cultural stereotypes around Asian women. Shattering the illusion of chinoiserie as a neutral, harmless fantasy,  Monstrous Beauty  adopts a critical glance at the historical style and its afterlives, recasting negative terms through a lens of female empowerment. Admittedly I had to read this like nine times to catch the gist of this whole thing. Is it me...

 It's 11|11, otherwise known as the Corduroy High Holiday because it's the day that looks the most like corduroy. Yes, even though the Corduroy Club has been defunct since 2011 (because once you celebrate 11|11|11 you kinda can't come back from that, honestly) I still am one of those who celebrates. And so: This is how many blog posts I have written. This is the time. This is my place during a Peloton class. I just looked back through the blog archives here and although I've written a sparse few posts about corduroy club in general, looks like I did not, in fact, document the 11|11|11 extravaganza.... which was quite something. Maybe I was blinded by the light, it was such a thing to behold. But I also didn't write anything about any of the lead-up events... we went every year starting from like 2007 or so. But anyway, Happy Corduroy Day to all those who celebrate!

  Breakfast from room service at the  Ritz Carlton in Philly After Davie's funeral, it was weird to realize no one we know still lives in my hometown. My parents moved to a nearby retirement community, but they were traveling and their apartment is pretty far out of the way. It felt completely suboptimal to drive the whole way over there and figure out all the logistics just to stay in an empty place. Also, it's like a three hour drive from the city and thus super taxing to go back and forth in one day. So we decided to see if there might be a nice place to stay in the vicinity. Call it a mini-vacation. Turns out, there's nowhere nice to stay on or about my hometown. We wound up in Philadelphia. At the Ritz Carlton because why not.  It's a pretty building and the restaurant was surprisingly good. View from the room: Does this room overlook the street? Oh why yes it does. Thank you motorcycles at the crack of dawn. Tom and I decide that our main endeavor is going to be t...

  I don't judge.

My pop, a former elementary school principal, had a longstanding tradition of not giving out candy for Halloween. Yup, he was that guy.  One year he gave pencils to the trick-or-treaters. He never did that again.  Pop pivoted to what might be considered a truce— he started handing out plastic spiders. He bought the spiders from Oriental Trader in packs of one million. Growing up you could never celebrate a holiday or birthday without a few dozen spiders showing up as a gift, a decorative element on a gift, a cute napkin ornament, centerpiece detail, chandelier dangle, or if you looked closely at the Christmas tree you could probably find forty spiders tucked in the boughs.  So when I first took this plastic pumpkin out of the basement to fill it up with candy and saw this: I spy something inside this pumpkin. My first instinct was to just leave it in there and maybe give it to a kid who looked like he/she might have a preference for a plastic spider. But then I switched u...

We stayed over at my friend Melissa's new condo at the beach. This was over the summer after our friend Suzanne's big party, so call this post a NaBloPoMo sandbag. I kept it at the ready for four months just lying in wait for this NaBloPoMo moment.  So we stayed over at Melissa's new beach condo. Unfortunately, Melissa had an early flight to Florida at the crack of dawn the next morning, so she was gone by the time we woke up. Tom and I arose after the sun had fully risen; it was a late night in our defense. Melissa texted and asked how it was going. I sent her this photo and said I love your new bedside tables with the little pull outs! So handy! Little pull out shelf so convenient for coffee cups! I thought Melissa would take this as a compliment on her decor choices. Not so much. She replied something about whether I noticed the white carpet right underneath that big old cup of unfettered black stain-my-new-white-condo perched there on that little pull-out. Oops. Stick t...

Ok well this Poster Museum is idk less than 10 blocks from my apartment I've been living in for decades. I never knew it existed prior to two weeks ago when Bruce stumbled on an exhibit of Italians for Fascism posters and decided we definitely needed to go.  I for sure walked by this Poster Museum who knows how many times without noticing it. This is a really striking exhibit, the Italian Fascist posters: This red is not your usual museum beige. Huge Props. gotta love a skull. ...and no more posters after this. We went down in the basement past this hallway of music posters: Pretty cool. Then there was this really nifty design your own poster interactive thing. We poked away at for probably way too long. It might have been for children, but yeah. I make no excuses. you pick different styles and themes and it makes you a poster. Oh, here's some more posters: I mentioned to my book club that I went to the Poster Museum, and said something like, who knew there was a Poster Museum!...

I don't know why I just didn't take a video. I went with a series of live action photos instead. But yeah. Here's our ensuite while we were on vacation in Banff. We had a nook for a bathroom. No door. It went down like this: Walking toward the bathroom nook. No door, mind you, just change of flooring. Rounding the corner into the bathroom nook. Yup! It's a full bathroom in this nook around the corner! In the nook. Exiting the bathroom nook. Kent said that the builder probably saved tens of thousands of dollars not having to pay for doors on every bathroom in this condo complex. Meanwhile... idk. It was fine.  A little fresh air never hurt anybody... in the bathroom. Anybody in the next room, however... no comment. I say all this to say, in sum, it was a weird choice.

So when Eric stayed overnight at our place a couple weeks ago, he needed to go to a hospital on the Upper East Side the following morning to visit his wife, aka the patient. Tom and I took a pulse on his subway skills as the first step in our "giving directions" process. We've learned this is vital. Eric said flat out he wanted the simplest route, so we didn't need to ask casual subway knowledge level assessment questions such as, "Define Uptown" or "If a train car is empty would you go in?" ( answer: hell no ) We told Eric to just take the F. He could walk over to the 14th street stop and get off less than 5 blocks from his destination, so. Not the fastest route for sure, but we were confident he wouldn't wind up in the Bronx by mistake. The morning of Eric's "commute" he took the elevator downstairs and said hi to Nachi the doorman. Naturally, Nachi takes the opportunity to ask Eric where he's headed.  Eric says Upper East. ...

Was talking to Mom & Dad the other day and Pop starts talking about how, one time long ago, they were in Ireland. Pop chatted up a farmer and asked the guy to teach him something in Irish. The farmer said, well you should learn   Póg mo thóin which means "Kiss my Ass." And sure, you could see how that would come in handy. Fast forward and it's raining. So Mom & Dad go to a pub to dry off. Pop sits down at the bar and tells the bartender he's learned a couple words in Irish. The bartender is game. He says, what'd you learn? Pop says, " Póg mo thóin" The bartender says, "oh yes, that means Thank you."

A long long time ago, in 2013 to be exact, Tom and I babysat my 6-yo twin nephew and niece for an entire day. I wrote about it here:  https://waitingtogetthere.blogspot.com/2013/06/uncle-tom-and-aunt-stacey-best.html One of our activities that day was to rehearse a skit and then perform it for my brother and Mary when they returned home. Our inspiration was a dramatic rendition of this scene: It's from the movie Rushmore. The kids have, apparently, no recollection of their theatrical debut but I remember laughing so hard I could barely say my lines. "I like your nurses uniform, guy." Today is a big day because we are hosting a Rushmore watch party. Tom will make spaghetti and meatballs, we'll have popcorn and left over halloween candy. We'll all watch the movie and then. If all goes according to my nefarious plan, we'll perform an encore version of the skit in question. Call it a 12 year anniversary redux.  I'll let you know how it goes.

On a drive to New Jersey, I was doing the thing where I regale Tom, somewhat endlessly tbh, about some incident that has transpired. This time, the incident requiring endless regaling happened to be my most recent visit to the newly reopened Frick museum with my friend Bruce.  Sidebar: Journalists and tourists have recently taken to calling the newly renovated Frick the "jewel box" of midtown. The conservatory in the middle of the Frick Mansion. Sure. It's very lovely even though, according to Bruce, "it smells a little funky." A pretty room in the "jewelbox" And right? The place is top trim don't get me wrong.  Yet, turns out, this multi-year, hundreds of millions of dollars remodeling triumph is nothing in the face of this fact: Bruce and I had to show our tickets three (3) times to the ticket taker. OMG Right?! Luckily I'm a member so we skip the line, I would never go there as a non-member. I do not stand in lines. But line or no line, when...

 File this in "things that make you realize Ferris Bueller has a point": The long version of this begins with me helping my friend Jenn for about a year navigate a big diagnosis and then another separate diagnosis. I did what I could to help research what the doctor said, coming up with lists of questions to ask at the next appointment... just stuff that's a lot easier to do when you aren't the patient. Anyway, after a lot of contemplation, Jenn decided to go with a NYC surgeon for a needed surgery. But that meant that her husband needed a place to stay in NYC. We of course said he should stay with us. Fast forward to the evening after the surgery and Jenn’s husband is making his way from the hospital to the local restaurant where Tom and I are having dinner. It started to get kinda late and long story getting longer, Tom ate an entire giant plate of chicken parm that really was on the huge side.  After Jenn’s husband showed up and we all went back to the apartmen...

  Davie at the beach with my grandparents, circa 1982 Yesterday we attended the funeral of my childhood next door neighbor, Davie. Davie and his wife Sandy had three girls who were roughly the same ages as my brother and me and lived across the street from my parents for 50+ years. And when I say next door neighbor, I mean the kind of neighbor we didn't knock on their door, we just slammed right in their house and made ourselves a sandwich. (Which would have been white bread, butter on one slice, mayo on the other slice, Lebanon Balogna with a dab of yellow mustard and a handful of potato chips jammed in there. But this is beside the point). With the perspective of hindsight, Davie was a skinny chain-smoking functioning alcoholic with anger management issues. He also was always up to something you desperately wanted to be a part of. One halloween he dressed up like Fig Newton and all I remember is his skinny legs in these bright green tights sticking out of a gigantic green fig cos...

I was at a Thai restaurant last night with Tom and Scott, looking over the signature cocktail menu. I didn't see one that really was calling my name. And, of course, I would never order my go-to bourbon drinks in a Thai restaurant. It's too much cognitive dissonance for even me. So I vaguely waved my hand and asked for a vodka tonic.  Half a screenshot of the cocktail menu at Laut Thai. And then I halted mid-sentence.  "Do you have Fever Tree?" I asked in a panicked voice because I was, in fact, slightly panicked.  I would certainly never drink tonic that came out of a bar gun. Tonic from a gun always has that bitter taste of under-bar tube slime and the bubble quotient is extremely variable. Also I don't like tonic from a previously opened plastic bottle. It doesn't fizz properly. No thank you sir. I like Fever Tree tonic from a single use glass bottle.  Anyway, the Thai restaurant did not have Fever Tree and so I changed my order to a more Thai-forward cockt...

 Bruce asked if I would be their witness at his wedding in City Hall and I could not have been more honored and filled with bubbles of joy. It made me so happy to imagine the two of them being able to call each other husband for the first time.  Of course I immediately started fretting about my outfit, which I loved the opportunity to think way too hard about for at least four days. You can't hit up the google for "appropriate outfit for wedding witness" and really get any collective wisdom on the topic. Trust me, I tried. Meanwhile, I have to say I enjoyed the official wedding appointment booking email from NYC probably a little too much: If you can't read this, the important part is this: "Please bring to your appointment: One valid form of ID & One Witness" Is it just me or does it feel like you’re supposed to tuck the "one witness" under your arm and haul 'er into the courthouse in the same sack as your one valid form of ID? I didn'...

First of all, Tom and I were on our own. For the past probably ten Broadway shows either of us has seen, we've gone with other parties who see shows idk twice a month? I mean Danielle's dad used to be on the Tony committee for chrissakes I'm not messing around here. So being on our own meant we had to forge our own path, pick our own seats, keep track of our own tickets, figure out when to get to the theater all by ourselves.... So we get there: Approaching the queue to get in John Proctor is the Villain . Foreshadowing: Notice the color scheme. Right after I took this sort of random photo of the barricade signage for unknown reasons, perhaps I was thinking I'd need an alibi to prove my whereabouts I have no idea, I see something actually photo-worthy. I text out this photo to Danielle because she has seen John Proctor is the Villain two times already and has tickets for closing night in September: A guy in the line is dressed in EXACTLY THE SAME COLORS AS THE MARQUES F...