FIRST DAY

We arrived on time, got our luggage and our car was waiting for us and we were at Martha's before she was up, like maybe about 8 :30. After we chatted for awhile Billie took a nap and I went to Sak's to see if Melodie's art was still there, but they were taking the window down today, so I missed it. I went from there to the Trader Joe's on 23rd and got some groceries and, most importantly, some wine. I was back at the apartment by 1:30, but everybody was still sleeping so I went out again to get some fruit and stuff and had a piece of pizza for lunch. Too much food. But I ate it all so no children in AFrica will starve. So we are here and ready to rock and roll. Oh, right, we don't rock and roll. We do early music. We started out last night (Friday) by going to a fabulous concert. It was put on by a group called Artek and was music by Monteverde, set to be Vespers. The singers were amazing, they had three viols at one point and everything was so beautifully in tune that it almost made you cry. By the end of the concert I felt that I could have become a believer if I could listen to something that good every week. It passed, though. You can't imagine what it's like to have three stubborn old ladies trying to decide to saomething. We went to dinner at a restaurant Martha likes which serves Japanese food. The menu was kind of different and it took us forever to decide what we wanted. So we had some strsange combination of things. I had shrimp dumplings and seaweed. My dinner was good. After we'd been there for awhile Billie decided she'd like some udon noodles, which seems to be the longest prep time of anything in the restaurant, but you have to realize, we couldn't get our act together enough to order things all at once. And then Billie was on a little dropping kick, first she dropped her chopsticks, then she dropped her spoon. When we left, we were going to either walk down to the concert (from 93rd to 87th,) or take the bus, or go back to Martha's and rest and then walk, or some other combination. Martha couldn't understand that Billie has a hard time walking, but Martha also wanted only to use her own bathroom as opposed to the one at the restaurant or perhaps the one at the church. I did overestimate the time it would take to eat and stroll, so when everything was said and done and we actually walked the whole distance and didn't stop at Martha's for a pit stop, we were there almost an hour early. So then we did more walking and went for coffee. But the concert was so totally worth it. On the way home, we walked up West End Avenue, and found this really great Halloween-decorated place. These are pictures with flash. Makes me realize how far we have to go to keep up.