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

When we were in Asheville, NC a few weeks ago, we took a hike. Do you see it? Yes. there's a snake. Tom saw the snake way before I did. But we were really close to it. We were too busy scuttling backwards to take a photo where you could see the snake's head, but it was extremely triangular. I vaguely remembered from probably some Instagram meme that triangular snake heads were not the best shaped head for friendly encounters. But the snake slithered off, flicking his forked tongue at us but otherwise just disappearing into the leaves. We really didn't think much about it until a little while later down the trail, when we came across this helpful sign: Beware of the copperhead snakes! It would have been idk kind of nice to have positioned the sign maybe a little bit closer to the start of the trail, just saying!!!

I joined this facebook group called "Buy Nothing Chelsea" where you give stuff away to your neighbors. It has to be totally free, no money can be exchanged. By way of background, here's few facts about Chelsea according Wikipedia: 1) 55,000 people live in Chelsea, a neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City. 2) It is 0.75 square miles (2 square kilometers). So yeah, Buy Nothing, Chelsea is total low key chaos at all times of the day and night. I mean, if you want a little snack, it's entirely possible you can find one in a two block radius and pick it up faster than you can get take out. Such as: 2 almost full jars of peanut butter. #Flash give - which means pick them up NOW! OK fine, you might not get to pick and choose your food groups, but almost every weekend someone is giving away a tote bag of dairy products, baby carrots and like a piece of cheese cake because they're going on vacation.  Or every now and then you can pick up what amounts to a full fridge wit...

Cruise ships are huge!!!  A cruise ship on the Hudson River heading out to sea past the  island of Manhattan in New York City The ships dock in midtown and the only reason I know this is because tourists get off in packs of a thousand and no one tells anybody to look both ways when they cross the bike path alongside the dock where eBikes go 90 miles an hour. Someone occasionally misses their matinee due to an unfortunate ER visit. You'd think there'd be lawsuits and traffic cops at this point but no. It's not the finest welcome in the world, I think we all can admit. So Tom and I are minding our own business doing a thing we call Hiking to Dinner along the Hudson River. As we do now and then. Some may not consider it much of a hike considering total elevation gain is 0.00 and the path is paved and there is an outdoor bar you can stop at if you're really parched, but yeah. We go down to TriBeCa to this Indian place we discovered during the pandemic.  Suddenly we hear thi...

I just want to point something out before we begin. How you say "vegetables" in both Swedish and Norwegian is e xactly the same word : "grönsaker," which literally translates to "green things."  I also want to point out that many Swedish and Norwegian words are exactly the same .  I'm telling you this in the hopes that when I tell you this next part, you might find it sort of hilarious in a "someone has been double crossed!!" kind of way.  So it all started with a text I got from my friend Petrina, who is Norwegian. She probably thought I'd laugh out loud because while I speak Swedish, I am not Swedish. She would be right, by the way. Spoiler alert. So anyway, Petrina sent over a link to a video on Instagram which I'm including for posterity but if you don't speak Swedish, yeah. Maybe just skip it and take my word for it.  In short: It's a game show.  A bunch of Swedes get asked how to say "banana" in Norwegian. A...

The local music fest in Sunnyside, Queens   A friend of ours invited us to a music festival in Queens, it was a fundraiser for their local park. So we go, there's a whole bunch of us. This photo above is from early on in the evening, it got a little wall-to-wall blankets as the night wore on. Mostly the crowd was families and lots of sneakers and practical clothing chosen for comfort and warmth and walking home with a backpack full of lawn gear. I say this as foreshadowing. I will also point out that the Chelsea area of Manhattan where we live, has been, less so now, but has historically been known for its very out gay community. Marchers line up for the Pride parade in front of our building, and it doesn't matter who you are, you know when it's Bear Week let me tell you.  When we first moved in, they'd call 8th Avenue near our building "the runway" and it sure was. The outfits you could spot on the weekends were legendary. While I'm on this topic, I reme...

A major component of all my museum-going endeavors is to calculate when to show up to avoid the worst of the crowds. I occasionally succeed. There's just too many variables, including but not limited to: - Whether school is in or out. Both can be a problem, meaning school field trips vs. families on vacation or coming into the city for the day. - The weather. Again, it's not a clean if/then. If it's sunny, you'd think people would do outdoor things and not be at a museum. But also, if it's sunny, people leave their homes for an outing, such as the Met. Definitely though if it's raining, there are more tourists at almost all the museums. - The time of day. But just when I think I have the perfect arrival time all figured out, I get there and there's a line out the door. So I have no idea with this one. Anyway, I say all this to say, when Tom and I popped in to see the huge and extremely popular exhibit of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollack 's work... it was...

The three jewels of Refuge . I enjoyed learning about this! I decided to take a three-part class after work called "Taking Refuge" that was billed as helping to find peace in a crazy world. It's at a meditation center. As with most of my calendar-related decisions, I RSVP'ed yes because: 1) I can walk there. 2) It's at a convenient time. A minor consideration is often "did I actually read the whole description thoroughly." (see prior Day 2 post ). Apparently I thrive on not quite knowing what's going on. So I go trucking uptown to make it in time for the first class, and turn on the cross street. This is in that weird no man's land between midtown and Chelsea. I pass a couple of those handbag stores selling, you know Pradda and Louis Vuittin. They're closed with the metal security doors down because it's after hours and dark. I pass a closed lunch place and a bunch of old dark office buildings and sign for a pottery studio on the 8th floo...

 I wondered why she was not responding to my texts.

So right it’s true my knickers were in a twist about something at work. A remote colleague advised me over Zoom that maybe it would be good to go out and "touch grass." She said it's a really great way to get grounded and set one's knickers aright.  Fine! I had limited time before my next annoying meeting, but I set out down the street. This is not grass. It's also covered by netting so hard to touch. This is grass, although the ornamental kind. If I'm not standing on the grass, but lean over and take a swat at it, does this count for grounding purposes? I am way too lazy to go up on the highline, even though I recall there being some grass up there. But i forget exactly where. There is grass on that pier over there, but it is far away and also suspended above the river. If I touch grass that is not planted in actual ground that is connected to the earth... idk. This feels incorrect. And I am not in the right pants for a quarter mile sprint.  More grass in a r...

PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE THERMOSTAT Yeah, when you need a sign because everyone really really wants to touch the thermostat.

 So look, first of all, this new building is wild: In case you were wondering, I did not take this photo. I also did not take this photo. I took this photo. It's a very imposing entrance. I got invited to this conference. It was to be held at the JPM building where they have a Dry Bar stall with lots of hair products and fancy curling irons in almost all the rest rooms so yeah. Of course I decided to go, I did not even read the entire email.... as I tend not to when invited to something I literally could walk to from my apartment.  I mean, if the event sucks I could grab a snack and just go home, you see what I mean? Not bothering with all the fine print is called time management. So right, the email confirmation said I was invited to "Day 2." I figured there was a "Day 1" that was separate and which I was not invited to. Some VIP something or other. Fine, whatever. I only figured out when to show up because I got seven "you're coming right?" follo...

Two years ago I thought I was the only one left in the universe celebrating (not sure if that's the right word) NaBloPoMo. Frankly, you might have even convinced me I was the only maniac left still hammering away at a web log. (And if I just confused you with the "web log" lingo, I might have also thought it possible I'm the last one standing who still remembers explaining in the early aughts about this newfangled "blog" thing and how it was just "web" and "log" jammed together.) But then last year, feeling lonely and bereft, I googled "NaBloPoMo." And I found San's web log -- available with a wireless and/or ethernet internet hookup at   https://theinbetweenismine.com/nablopomo /.  San has daisy chained together a few dozen bloggers still pounding away out here with me in the world wide web. Chugging along the information superhighway as it were, getting passed on all sides by god knows what social media content creator inf...

  How it started... How it went: My bookclub made plans for dinner and a show. Specifically, a fancy dinner at Palma juxtaposed by one of those "work in progress" kinds of shows with $12 tickets.  The show in question was a one-woman performance and while it had a few hitches in its giddyup, the youth of today know how to put it all out there. It's not like back in my time when most of the not-quite-ready-for-primetime one acts were held together with like earnesty, goth vibes and dental floss. Three points for the internet and streaming video, I guess. So this show is the early show and it's over at 8:30. Upon exit, Casey notices the sign for a performance featuring Jim Rash (from the Way Way Back movie).  See photo above. You can see how one might presume that the Jim Rash performance is at 9pm and also be clear on where to line up. Casey is all in for a theatrical double header and she zips back inside and asks the young woman purveyor in the ticket window if seats...

We were down in Maryland with the whole fambo watching Jack's very first college soccer game and I tee'ed up this conversation 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. Speaking of boroughs, all the other boroughs do *not* start with a "the." For example, it's: Manhattan. Queens. Brooklyn. Staten Island. THE Bronx. As for the rest of 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 Ki...

  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...