I don’t know what I was thinking when I booked a 6:15 a.m. flight to the Financial Blogger Conference, which starts this afternoon in Denver. Why, oh why, didn’t I travel yesterday?
That will teach me to make flight plans while I’m in New Jersey. Apparently the combined impact of heat, humidity and Tastykakes prevented me from thinking clearly.
Things got a little hectic during my New York trip last week. Too much to do, poor air quality, my inability to score at the lottery for “The Book of Mormon” tickets, heat and humidity, dueling deadlines and general exhaustion laid me low on Thursday evening.
(How many times do you get to use word “Mormon” and “lottery” in the same sentence? Not enough, if you ask me.)
Let me say up front that it’s not as though I’ve never been to a big city before. I’ve lived in or visited quite a few.
But there’s nowhere like New York — especially for someone who’s spent eight years in a city where Scandinavian reticence mingles with progressive politics and hipster irony.
Allow me to share a few gawking-tourist observations, then. You’re likely in New York if….
You can walk out the door, cross the street and buy hot-from-the-oven bagels.
You pay $3.99 for cream cheese at the corner store. (Which is actually 50 cents cheaper than the bagel store was charging.)
The Sunday paper costs $5, and it has only one coupon insert and no color comics.
The Megabus died within spitting distance of the Lincoln Tunnel exit of the New Jersey Turnpike, close enough to see (and yearn after) the Empire State Building. We filed outside and stood or sat under a couple of trees, breathing in vehicle fumes mixed with air as humid as most oceans.
“It’s my birthday,” moaned one of the young women who was heading to the Big Apple with two friends to celebrate.
A skinny red-haired guy pulled out an equally skinny, almost triangular guitar and began strumming under his breath. One of the trio of young women noticed.
“Play us some music,” she ordered. “Do you know ‘Wobble Wobble’?”
Her friends snickered. The young man said, “No, I don’t know that one.” Instead, he launched into Bob Marley’s “Is This Love.” The birthday girl began to dance, one of her friends began filming with her smartphone, and other passengers stopped kvetching and began to listen.
Your summer plane trips will be simpler if you go carry-on only. This week’s giveaway can help.
Sorry to have maintained radio silence for so long. I’ve had to take some time to grieve because my daughter had a second miscarriage. She found out she was pregnant while I was visiting last month, and would have been due close to Christmas.
That was May 11 – their fourth wedding anniversary and two days before Mother’s Day.
The 2011 Talkeetna Bachelors Auction and Wilderness Woman Competition has come and gone in its usual whirlwind of oddity. Funny how it all seemed so normal at the time.
Last year I wrote about the auction in extensive detail. This year I decided to deliver scenes from the weekend as a series of tweets. I’m doing this because I need to get in the habit of posting more often on Twitter.
Note: This doesn’t change my conviction that no one should use the verb “tweet” unless he is, in fact, a bird.
Going somewhere for the holidays? This week’s giveaway will go with you.
I’m so tired. Madeline Kahn said it much more melodically as Lili von Schtupp in “Blazing Saddles,” but all I can do is say it outright.
I’d planned to stay in New York City (at a hostel, of course) for several days after SaveUp 2011. But I cut the trip short when I realized that I was dangerously tired.
Can’t-remember-things tired. Bumping-into-stuff tired. Tired past the point where sleep rests me. My brain feels like a glacier: cold and sluggish and with chunks calving off.
Lately I’ve felt unable to do what I consider good work on Surviving and Thriving. It’s taken everything I’ve got just to meet deadlines for the other three sites for which I write.
In fact, some days I feel like crying when I sit down at the computer. Not a good sign.
Until recently I was a fairly confident person. I took buses and trains both here and in other cities.
But after being mugged in Seattle’s Westlake Center transit tunnel, I lost my happy thoughts. To paraphrase the little kid from “The Sixth Sense,” I see bad people – everywhere.