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

  Things started out about as well as can be expected when you get up about two hours earlier than usual and decide to not have coffee before heading out because there's a Starbucks right across the street from the colonoscopy joint and how long could it take to drop off Tom and head over there? Bad call on my part. I escorted Tom into the colonoscopy center and then went back out to the car. I put the key in the ignition and noticed someone had sent me an email which I decided to reply to. Did it take 5 minutes? idk but by the time I turned the key in the ignition, the battery was dead.  I called Triple A. While the Triple A guy was on his way over, I decided to pop the hood and you know, take a look at the engine. Maybe I'd even be able to find the battery. I go to yank on the pop-the-hood latch under the dashboard and... it's busted. It's hanging there very limply.  I pace around in the parking lot until the Triple A guy comes. His name is Duane. I say Duane, my hood...

 We just got back from Austin. We went there for two reasons: To see what all the fuss was about It's middle ground, ie in the middle of the country, ie we were meeting Darcey and Kent who moved to Oregon five years ago I don't know what I expected really. Well, I sort of know what I expected because I was in Austin maybe ten years ago for a client meeting. I vaguely recall feeling like I was on an interstate highway... but somehow also in the middle of Austin.  Turns out I have a good memory. And so, my entire time in Austin was essentially three days to reflect on how much I love New York City. I love subways. I love walking places. I love swiveling 360 degrees and there's city in every direction as far as the eye can see. I am spoiled rotten... if the museum or the theater or the restaurant isn't the best in the world I'm like... hmmm, might as well have just stayed home. I know! This is why you just say "new york city" and half the country's heads ...

Tom and I both have a pain in our right heels. We blame New Orleans. I'd suggest our tribulations began because we were hanging with the locals three miles from our hotel. This is where all the cool people watch the Mardi Gras parades. (This is the long version here, so just bear with me. Eventually I'll get to the point about why our heels hurt.) The thing with Mardi Gras weekend, we discovered, is that taxi drivers are too smart to be on the clock when drunk-ass Mardi Gras strangers covered with glitter are on the move. There was not a cab to be found after about 7pm. And the Uber drivers had bailed even earlier. Also the parades run right down the street with the trolley, so they shut down the only mass transit in town.  I say all this to say we got stranded three miles from our hotel. We decided to walk back after the last parade. At first we hoped to spot a taxi along the way, but this optimism quickly vanished.  On the plus side, for at least a mile, we had a distraction...

We've been back to New Orleans many times, especially since I reconnected with my friend Greg who I met at Dungeons and Dragons Summer Camp in eighth grade . Greg has lived in NOLA for thirty years at this point. So now when we visit, hell yeah, we're those tourists all excited to tag along with the locals and pretend we're all cool like that. Greg told me he likes to OD on Mardi Gras parades. The whole month is an event. It's a thing. There's three parades a day and a whole lingo too, for example: Parades roll. If you're in a float, you're rolling in the parade.  There's also throws. This is the beads, or etc, they toss out of the floats. There's good throws and bad throws... meaning the quality of the items getting chucked out are evaluated based on a metric I couldn't quite discern.  The locals, however, are very clear on what's a good throw and a bad throw. They have a keen eye for bead quality, creativity, and adherence to the alleged th...

The first time I encountered New Orleans, it was a family trip at least twenty years ago. We all went, meaning Mom, Dad, Tom, Me, Sethie, Mary and Grandpa and Grandma. The selection of New Orleans as the family trip destination of choice consisted of one major factor: Mom and dad taken a weekend trip to NOLA earlier that year.... and they came home with a timeshare. ... yes, exactly. If you know my parents, this is extremely out of character. My eyebrows went through my hairline and stayed up there for a week.  My major memories of that trip were being blown away by the sprawling lantana flowers (which I love) and the ironwork (which I might love more). Lantana and Ironwork in New Orleans I also have a distinct recollection of the evening of our arrival. Tom and I shared a suite with Sethie and Mary. Someone suggested going out for a hamburger and I begged off. I was tired and I don't eat hamburgers anyway. This all transpired before cell phones, let's keep this in mind. Anyway...

 This whole thing started maybe last year. I joined a Facebook group for Swedish women in NYC. Agreed for sure that my whole application to join (ie "Answer these three questions") was semi-disingenuous since I'm not actually Swedish and I did omit this probably important bit of information. Also, I enlisted a legit native-born Swede to double check my grammar and spelling before I hit submit. But anyhoo, they let me in. Fast forward however long between my visits to Facebook, and I saw a post someone named Anna had put up there asking if anyone was up to meet for a coffee in Chelsea. The post was several days old and no one had replied. Of course no one had replied.  Swedes in general don't just go gallivanting off and have coffee with strangers. They like the idea of socializing, but really have no interest in meeting anyone. Lucky for Anna, Americans such as myself are totally cool with this whole meeting up with strangers thing, and so, a few hours later, I met h...

  birthday parties in bars Don't get. me wrong, I love a birthday party in a bar. You cruise in when you want, you leave when you want, you order what you want. It's very accommodating to guest peccadilloes and god knows I have a few.  Now, before anyone from out of town wonders how expensive it is for the host/hostess to arrange their birthday party in a bar, please do understand this is no open bar situation. It's a "celebrate a birthday at a bar where everyone has their own tab" situation. This is perfectly acceptable in New York City where we make our own damn rules of etiquette.  Speaking of rules of our own damn rules of etiquette, I was talking to Helen yesterday about how she will not be attending a Bar Mitzvah she was invited to due to a conflict. She asked someone who lives in Maryland how much $$ she should send as her gift to the birthday boy along with her regrets. The Maryland person said to send "something like maybe $36." Helen asked some...

  Chelsea Manhattan - losing its charm because we lost: CVS, Rite Aid, Taco Bell and McDonalds (plus the tennis club and the movie theater) OK so RIP the Tennis Club and the movie theater and admittedly I was sad when the 24-hour Super Duane Reed on 8th Avenue closed a few years ago, but... since when are we thinking that two chain drug stores with regular business hours and no downstairs with a sock department and/or a couple fast food joints added charm and character to the neighborhood? I mean, we're not even talking about a fancy restaurant chain like Olive Garden. God forbid one of the seven Starbucks goes out.  Anyway, I would have missed the whole commentary on this sad sad state of affairs if I hadn't haphazardly logged into Facebook this morning to see if there were any FOMO concerns for not logging in for however long. Spoiler alert - there were not. Turns out that right underneath this Chelsea post... seems like the only thing I get these days in my feed are cat vid...

 Here's the deal - the Swedes are really into moonshine. They're all down in their basements the whole long winter tinkering around with their witches' brews -- which they will unleash on guests and I can tell you from personal experience. You must drink the concoction. It is super rude to refuse.  It's all very complicated the whole what-do-you-call the-moonshine. The most known example is Aquavit but Aquavit is moonshine flavored with caraway or dill as the "dominant flavor." Then there is "brännvin." Best I can gather, if the spices are not caraway or dill, then it's not Aquavit, it's brännvin. Which brings us to snaps. Not schnapps, that's a whole other conversation, we're talking snaps. I'm pretty sure snaps can either be Aquavit or Brännvin. It's any varietal along these lines with one distinguishing feature-- it is potent enough that it must be served in very small glasses.  This is my understanding.  Which may be hilar...

 My dad left his sunglasses at our place. These are the shades that he just learned are  worn by celebrities and fashion fiends  so forgetting them here could definitely be a blow to his sartorial reputation. He'll need to keep a low profile until Christmas when he'll get them back.  In the meantime, let me bring you Tom: Tom in Pop's shades

  There are 100 pictures just like this in the dusty and slightly damp photo album I just found in the basement from when I was an exchange student in Stockholm.  I spent a lot of time in clubs that year surrounded by fantastic amounts of very stiff Swedish hair.  I scanned the whole photo album and sent the scanned pages to some of the individuals pictured. Then I spent half the day pretending I remembered way more than I actually do about the events depicted. For example, Annika texted, “OMG! That was Eva’s birthday party. She's not in any of the photos because she got really drunk and spent half the night throwing up in the bathroom!” Umm yeah, haha. So funny…, Not sure if it speaks more to the sad state of my memory, or, the metric ass ton of nights I was out at a club with Milla until 4am, thus rendering any and all individual goings-on fairly indistinguishable.  I remember Swedes passed out drunk on tables, like a lot. Some tall skinny blond kid lying on a tabl...

First of all, I got this new CO2 measurer thing. It tests the air quality so you can see how much of other people's breath you are probably sucking in directly. The C train uptown scored an orange, which is why I wear a mask on the subway and will continue to do so ad infinitum because why the hell not. We are adventurous, so at the Met, we decided to see if we could make it into the American Wing from European paintings upstairs. This involved a complicated journey through arms and armor. Then we went back upstairs to the Balcony Lounge through Asian art, just to really lock in the win. Balcony Lounge Air Quality Check. Not bad.... But waffled into the yellow periodically. Yech. Why do I always forget that the mixed drinks at the Met truly suck and I'm not even talking about the shitty little ice cubes. Wise words to my future self and anyone reading this: Do not be fooled by the interesting-sounding cocktail names on the menu. They pre-mix everything in vats downstairs in the...

  Every time I am walking across Central Park and happen to catch these roller skaters doing their discorama, I am inspired to find my roller skates and head on over there. I think they do the skate every week, so this could be my new thing. I think I'd have a little performance anxiety since, you know, I was a pretty spectacular roller skater back in my day and thus have high expectations of myself. I can skate backwards and do some very noteworthy spins.  The last time I roller skated, however, may have been at my 40th birthday party at the roller rink. Yes, my most amazing husband planned my 40th Birthday party at the roller rink. It was me and some 9 year old who also had a birthday party the same evening.  We shared our glow sticks with the kids if I recall correctly. It was kind of epic.

The Hydrow Rowing Machine Jack rowed on the Hydrow today under my username. I have the leaderboard set to compete against other women in my age range. Jack skirted with first place for awhile but then AnnaBT started pulling ahead. Then others started to catch up. It was a valiant effort but Jack finished in 11th place just after Skolsister. Which was about 100 places ahead of my typical showing.  Ella started teasing him about not winning and he squawked, “some of those old ladies are really fast dammit!” Made my Thanksgiving and also my lifetime Hydrow average just got a lot better.  

At Friendsgiving, Stacie asked what the name of my old band was and I told her: Fred's Been Shot.  Stacie asked if there's a Fred... I said, yeah, my Pop. Was he shot? she wondered. Well... I had to tell her the whole thing. Pop was a volunteer park ranger in Hawaii. He was out in the park picking up something on the ground and he stood up really fast. He scratched his head on a low-hanging tree branch. He didn't realize the cut was bleeding, especially because he was all sweaty. As Pop started back along the beach (he was in Hawaii so odds are there'd be a beach), he encountered one of the other park rangers leading a group of tourists.  The other park ranger shrieked, "Fred's been shot! Everybody get down!" And they all hit the deck. Meanwhile, Fred was very confused. I told this story I guess to my bandmates and they laughed as hard as Stacie and somehow that became the name of the band. 

 Tom saw this article in the NYT and I texted it to my pop: Pop's been wearing wrap around shades for, idk, 30 years? Instantly, I get a reply: My favorite part is the "trending" comment he included with the photo.

  Can never get enough of this town.

 Yesterday it was Friendsgiving in Queens and also the first time in 2022 that I met my step goal before I got up in the morning. Yes, there are certain advantages to galavanting around in an outer borough well after midnight. Such a pretty table ready for friends. Also, excitingly, we managed to get on an LIRR train from Monahan station, meaning the new side of Penn Station.  It has been disconcerting lately when in Penn, which I used to know like the back of my hand. Right now, it's all ripped up and turned around. While wandering around looking for my train, I spend the whole time muttering about what I think used to be where I currently am, and how exactly the new situation is possible unless they moved an escalator or something that you'd think they would not have moved. Anyway, it requires way more brain power than I am used to exerting in a station I have traversed, conservatively, 4 million times. But there's new very clean stairways down to the LIRR platforms with ...

  A Blueberry in the bottom of my coffee cup What are the odds I'd find a blueberry in the bottom of my coffee cup?! Pretty high actually since I was eating blueberries with my breakfast. Day 19, in the can.

Yeah, Elon's back on the block, probably building and coding the internet with his bare calloused hands. He's gone from the office already in this photo. That's a news crew over there doing a little after hours reporting.  When we came home after the play at 59E59 we got a full reckoning of the goings on over there. The doorman has been Eyes On all day. First of all, like a squadron of police are on call to escort Elon from Twitter's office door to his waiting Escalade. The doorman counted how many there were so that he could estimate the cost to the city. He complained that Elon, a billionaire, is not paying for all this security and WTF really.   Also Elon's Escalade sits there idling the entire day emitting combustion engine fumes. So weird the dude owns an electric car company and he rolls around in a giant Escalade. I suggested to Tom he do that thing where you take a video of an idling vehicle and submit it to the city and they pay you $50 and the vehicle'...