EATING AND OTHER PLEASURES

These are our last two days in New York.  Tears are streaming down my face as I write this.  No, wait, that's sweat.  No wait, it's cool, can't be sweat, must be that Julia, the water cat has decided to help me drink water.  

Yesterday we

had a fun time.  We went to the Museum of Art and Design where they had a glass show and a jewelry show.  I was in heaven.  

We had a fabulous lunch from a Halal cart, a falafel sandwich.  It was good, mostly because it was something you couldn't get in Sacramento, but I've had better.  Then we went to MOMA and verna was a real trouper and didn't complain once abut my having the address wrong and causing her to have to walk two or three  extra blocks.  When we were near the museum we stopped  in at the American Craftsman to see if they had any Lazer Glass, and they did, so we decided they would be allowed to stay in business.  She went to the museum, and I, the Philistine, went shopping.  I was still looking for a particular street vendor with a particular purse, but mostly it was to go to all the fabulous bead shops in the garment district.  However, time was short and I only got to go to six.  By the way, it took the woman working in the store four tries to get this picture not blurry.  

We took a wild chance at a restaurant called Flor de Mayo and it was wonderful.  A Peruvian/Chinese menu. 

Today, our last real day,we went to Barbuto's in the west village.  It's  a place Verna knew from cooking shows, and it definitely lived up to expectation.  We had oven roasted chicken, some kind of crispy fried potatoes, , corn and bruschetta,  I also had Prosecco.  We sat in a premium spot for Verna where she could watch the kitchen. I could watch all the beautiful people in the rest of the place 

The rest of our lazy day was playing with cats, going to Zabars, and going to Trader joese

TWO DAYS, TWO PLAYS

Well, technically one was a musical, but hey, headlines are exhausting work.  Cut some slack.  

I think yesterday must have been one of Verna's worst ever.  

Due to the fact that I have been treating our daily routine as a warm up in case we are ever forced to go on something like the Bataan Death March, she woke up feeling pretty awful yesterday.  

We had tickets to go to the Cyndi Lauper musical Kinky Boots, but it seemed touch and go most of the day whether that would really happen.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to expect someone to be on a plane all night, get off it and run all over town in unfamiliar conditions and temperatures in the 80s with high humidity which we westerners know nothing about the next day, and follow it with a similar pattern the following day except that the first night involved cats jumping on you and demanding to be petted all night, and then the second day you don't get to have any actual meals, if you don't consider cookies, or chocolate drinks or roasted nuts a meal, but then you finally do get a meal at 9 pm.  But apparently some people react badly to that.  Who knew?

Anyway, yesterday we just crept from one spot of air conditioning to another, took a taxi ride that proceeded by harrowing crawl from 59th St. to 45th in 25 minutes.  

I think Kinky Boots was probably a good musical, but after I put on my two sweaters in the freezing theater, I was quite comfy  and might have dozed off just a little, like for about two hours or so.  For the price we paid for the tickets, I could have had a quiet room without all that damn music keeping me sort of awake.  But Verna said it was good.  I think I just don't have the gene to like musicals. 

After the show we went to one of my favorite UWS (Upper West Side for those who aren't such insiders as I am)  restaurant, Celeste's.  I had a delicious pasta dish with halibut that I couldn't even finish.  

We had the AC turned on in our room overnight, and I was stunned when I opened the door this morning to find that the rest of the apartment was cooler than our room!  Today's weather was by Verna's standards, refreshingly cool.  I put a pullover sweater on over my shirt and took another cardigan with me, which I did wear during the day.  

We decided to take a challenging trip to Little Italy and go to Lombardi's for a pizza.  I'd never been there, but Verna knew it from cooking shows onTV.  I've never met a pizza I didn't like, but this one was absolutely super.  

Nice thin crust, just the right amount of topping, especially the tomato sauce which had just a hint of sweetness and a nice thick texture.  

We decided not to go to Chinatown, even though it's close, because it was maybe too much walking. Instead we went back to the subway, dtopping twice, once for macarons, once for rice pudding, and rode to Union Square, got out and looked around, got back on, rode to Grand Central Station,

went in and looked around, especially in the food hall, and then came home.

Played with the cats, fed them, and turned around and went by bus to see the play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.  Loved it!  stayed awake all the way through.  Sigourney Weaver was Masha, and David Hyde Pierce was Vanya, which was a wonderful role and fit him like a glove.  He has such wonderful comedy timing.  

Apparently the heat will be returning tomorrow, and the plan is that we might go to Zabar's, the Museum of Art and Design and then Verna might go to MOMA while I go bead shopping.   I think this can all be accomplished by using the M104 and our metro cards as a hop on hop off tourist bus.  

 I don't have to go bead shopping, but I just can't stand the thought of being in NY and not going to see what's new.  

FUN DAY

We did an easy day today that only involved one subway line and one bus and a minimum of walking.

As I  mentioned before, I think, we bought some umbrellas, thus ensuring it won't rain the rest of the time we are here, unless, of course, we leave them in the apartment.

Our plan was to go to the September 11 memorial, which is a very moving site, but which you don't get much more of a sense of it from a photograph than you do of the Grand Canyon.  It's like the Vietnam Wall, in that the moving thing is just the endless list of people who died.  They have planted trees all around the pools, but they aren't very old yet, so the memorial is still pretty sunny, which didn't work in Verna's  favor too well.   The building john and I have been watching for a couple of years now looks complete. 

Out plan, to minimize walking, had been to go to the memorial on the 1 train, then come back on the one train and go to Jacques Torres chocolate near 72nd on Amsterdam, then take the Amsterdam bus up to 84th or so and go to Hamptons Chutney for lunch.  

But after we went to the memorial, Verna had a chance to get cooled down, and we decided to go down one more stop and go on the Staten Island ferry.  This is fun for a lot of reasons, but for us included the fact that it was just a few steps from the subway, AND, of course, it's FREE.  It goes to Staten Island, which is a bit of a downside, but it goes past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island which otherwise you'd have to pay $20-30 to see from the tour line.  And there's a cool breeze off the water, which was a definite plus. 

After we came back we took the subway back to 72nd street and the chocolate store was very conveniently located.  I had a mocha (hot) which was wonderful, about the consistency of the hot chocolate you get in Spain,  the woman serving looked at me as if I had gone over the edge to order a  hot drink, but we were inside.  Verna had this cold drink she had heard about on tv that was supposed to have a taste of chili, but she hated it and couldn't taste anything spicy at all.  Of course, what with the street nuts and the cookie with the drink at 4:30 pm, the next step is obvious.  We didn't want dinner.  

Ended up going home and Verna needed some alone time away from me, if you can possibly imagine that. I went out looking for street vendors and bought a very cute purse, then took a leisurely walk around the neighborhood and went to riverside park.  Didn't stay quite late enough to see fireflies, and I guess I'm not going to get toshowany taverna, because it's too far to walk.  

We had dinner at Telios right around the corner.  It's a nice Greek and Italian place.  I just had an appetizer, of mussels, and they were delicious.  However, they kept me up most of the night.  I thout I lost my braces again, but I eventually found them either on one of my bathroom trips or during one of the many cat assaults that take place on sleeping catsitters here.

It's Wednesday morning right now, and we are going to the Museum of Art and Design today before we go to see Kinky Boots at 2 pm.  Verna is currently taking a catnap, which with Julia around means the maximum time you can sleep before she starts jumping on you, licking you, yelling at you, or all three.   Verna was having trouble remembering Despina's name, so she was using Desi as a device to kick start her memory.  This made me laugh, because Julia is definitely Lucy.  

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

All good things must come to an end, and eventually, so did the harp festival.  When I go to events like that, I just can't stand for them to end, although I was ready to quit lugging that heavy harp around.  It was a beautiful sounding Blevins harp, but I am spoiled by both the carbon fiber and my lovely Fisher harp.  

But if you have to give up and leave a harp convention, then it's nice to be coming to the most exciting city in the world.  Don't believe that?  Just ask any New Yorker.  

The cats were eager to see me when I arrived, and even more eager to wake me up at 5 a.m. this morning.  Martha had been home the day before, so they had some nice spoiling.  

Verna arrived this morning.  I tried to get her to take a nap, but she wasn't ready, even though she didn't sleep on the plane.  We decided we would just do one easy thing, which was to go to Katz's deli.  Verna likes a lot of chef shows on cable, so she has an interesting list of places for us to try.  

We took the crosstown bus over to the 6 and then changed to the J for one stop to go to Katz's, which is on the lower east side.  When we came out of the subway it was raining.  When we had walked half a block, it was pouring.  We stepped inside a store and waited it out for about a half hour, then walked down to Katz's.  Katz's is probably most famous for being the place where the line "I'll have what she's having" was uttered in the movie When Harry Met Sally.  It was very full today, but we got a seat and had not one, but two sandwiches, a pastrami and a corned beef.  We did save the second half for dinner.  Frankly, it was a full day's food.  

We could have shared, but I didn't want pastrami on white bread.  We met this typical Brooklyner in line who told us not to get those bright green pickles because they were just cucumbers, and to get the garlic ones, and I should push ahead because this skinny guy next to me would get in front of me if I didn't, and she didn't know why she even came in here, it's so busy, and didn't those guys have some nerve putting that tip cup right up there on the counter (overflowing with money, I might add -- you'd have to stuff the money into the cup like stuffing it into a stripper's g-string to make it stay) and the thing about this place is, now you gotta go to a different station to order your fries and drinks, but I think I'll just pretend I'm a tourist and maybe they'll take care of it right here.  You aren't a tourist, are you?

Well, yes, I'm a tourist, and not only that, I'm from California, and with that accent, I don't really think he's going to buy that you're a tourist, but I doubt that he cares.  Meanwhile she's pushing up to the counter between Verna and me and saying to the counter guy that she's with us, mostly so that skinny guy won't slip in and place an order ahead of her.  

Our trip back to the apartment was an adventure.  We were in a station waiting for an F train, when an A train stopped, probably due to some construction somewhere along the line, but we didn't get on it because we weren't prepared.  Then we waited another 15 minutes for an F train., only to have it be on a somewhat different schedule of stops than it was supposed to have.  So we transferred to the A only to discover that it was a Jamaica bound train, and we had to get off early and get on the C for one stop before we could get on the 1. 

Remember, Verna has some mobility problems, and oh, yes, she'd been up all night, and oh yes, it was hot and humid, particularly down in the stations, and two or three times I thought she was going to faint.  

We did make it home, stopped and had a coke -- well, she had two, but who's counting -- and sat in the AC at Europan until we cooled off and then came home.  In other words, we did what I have mastered at home -- spent all day having lunch.  Practice makes perfect.  

Tomorrow we're going to the 9-11 Memorial, then to a fancy chocolate place she's seen on TV, and then to Hampton Chutney for lunch.  I think I have arranged this as a day with minimal stairs, minimal walking and minimal transit changes.  

She's worried about not waking up in the morning.  She doesn't know about the Julia alarm clock.  

Here's Julia trying to drink water out of my glass.  

SOMERSET DAY 3

 I really am having the time of my life.  It is so much fun to be around a bunch of people who love the harp, play the harp, and so many of them are so very confident about what they do.  The only part I'm not crazy about is schlepping the harp.  

When I arrived the loaner harp I got weighed about 25 pounds. Now, two days later it weighs about 50 pounds.  I have finally settled on a strategy of going to the classroom where my class will be, looking around to see if anyone has already unloaded a cart, and then asking to borrow the cart to go get my harp.  I wish I had thought of this two days ago.

This morning I took a wonderful class taught by Martha Gallagher. She is a pistol. She gave such a cool performance last night that she had everybody in the palm of her hand.  I took the class just hoping some of it would rub off on me.

At lunch time we had a geek session where we all discussed things we did with our iPads and harps. I think I may have gotten some good information there.   I will have to see if I can put it into practice.

I have met a couple of people here who I just know from reading their posts on the Harplist.  

One of them is named De Luna and she is very cool. She showed me how she made a harp cart out of a beach cart.  She is also extremely knowledgeable about all things Macintosh.

I took a great class this afternoon from Alfredo Ortiz and another okay class from Patrice Fisher. 

Tonight was the final concert. It was all the male harpists tonight.   Those South Americans are amazing. After the concert we had a fiesta. 

The woman in the long blue skirt is Louise Trotter who got the lifetime achievement award.  The redhead in black is Luz Ortiz who is Alfredo's wife and makes fabulous jewelry. Not to mention being a great dancer. 

We still have one set of classes in the morning, but this is the grand finale tonight. 

I hit the roommate jackpot with Rachel, by the way. 

SOMERSET DAY 2

Louise Trotter received a lifetime achievement award last night.  She is a very funny woman.  Dresses like she's going to a western dance.  She's also very funny.  

Louise Trotter teaching a class this morning.  

Maeve Gilcrest who did a fantastic duo with a dancer.  

The dancer. 

Pat Gallagher who told racy stories about working in a strip club. M

Sue Richards and another concert attendee with appropriate shirts.  These are cool.  They have taken logos from many shirts and sewn them all on to one.  

New Orleans jazz group with Patrice Fisher 

I have had so many good classes today and been to wonderful concerts, that my brain is fried nd I'm unable to do more than post pictures.  

SOMERSET FOLK HARP FESTIVAL

I am here at the Somerset Festival, which is actually in Parsippany, NJ, but started out in the town of Somerset.  I put the picture on the top, because there I am in the program in the top middle picture.   I think this is the biggest harp event of its kind, and I love to come to it.  They had it in San Jose once, but I guess they didn't have enough people to make it financially worthwhile.

I was going to come from NY this morning, but realized last night that I could sleep at least three hours longer if I came last night.  

I made the mistake of trying to get on a commuter train at 6:22, which I should have known better than to do.  Penn station was so crowded that you could have rested your feet by just picking them up.  The system is that when the train comes into the station, they announce the track, and then everybody rushes for it.  If you aren't close to the right track, you probably won't make it onto the train, because you are one of several hundred people all hoping to catch the same train, which, by the way, was about 15 minutes late.  And if you don't know your NJ geography, you don't know what other train might also go through your station. Once the track for our train was posted, we all made for the door, which was pretty much the equivalent of cattle going into a chute, though the prize on the other side was basically better for us than it usually is for the cattle.   I did make it onto the first train I tried to get on, by dint of having a big backpack in front of me and looking like a sweet little old lady, but one with an NBA elbow.  

When I arrived  in Morris Plains the Hilton van came to pick me up, and when we arrived at the Hilton, which is having some construction work done, the driver pointed me to the wrong door and I walked all the way around the hotel.  That sort of pissed me off.  At least I  wasnt schlepping a harp.  

I'm sharing a room with a harpist from Madison, and she wasn't here yet.  Our room was located about two miles (maybe the famous 200 meters they always tell us in Europe) from everything that's going on at the event, and we have to lug our borrowed harps back to the room every night.  And my borrowed harp, which is very nice, is definitely not lightweight.  So we checked with the desk this morning and got moved to a room right next to the elevator.  And it's a much nicer room than the other one.

Events start at 1 pm.  I took a jazz workshop at 1 pm, with Maeve Gilcrist, then planned to take a historical harp workshop at 3 pm., But I got so much out of part one that I stayed and took part two.  These are really extra events for early birds.  So I'm very thrilled.  I can't wait till the exhibit starts tomorrow.  I promised not to buy a harp, but there are many other options of goodies to buy.  

And oh, yes.  They gave us free Internet while we're here.  What more could I ask for?

We went to a nice little Thai place for dinner tonight that I suspect is about a 10 minute walk from the hotel but it took us about fifteen minutes to get there in a car because you can't cross the road and its on the wrong side of a street.  I think the road is a highway, so you actually can't walk there either.  

There is a concert tonight.  

ESCAPING THE HEAT

Anybody with a newspaper, TV, or internet connection knows that there's a big heat wave going on in the west.  It's not as bad in Sacramento as a lot of other places, but we've had five days in a row over 100 degrees.  And when you don't have air conditioning, and it doesn't cool off at night, it gets you down.  And then there's the embarrassment of friends checking on us to see if we're still alive, because we're those elderly people you should check on. 

But wait.  A mere 90 miles from here the weather is 40 degrees cooler.  In fact, you need a jacket if you're going to go there, and that's not even assuming you're going to an over air-conditioned restaurant.  Here's the picture that greeted us as we arrived.  The nice cool fog rolling across the bay. 

We really didn't have any plans for the day.  I wanted to go look at antique stores, and John wanted to see the Impressionists on the Water show at the Legion of Honor.  

We went to the museum first, since it is nearest the Golden Gate bridge.  Oh, I forgot to mention, BART is having a strike and we have been hearing that hundreds of people who usually come to work on BART are having to drive or find other ways to get to work.  Since BART doesn't serve the north bay, we figured there wouldn't be much traffic on the Golden Gate.  I don't know whether there was or not, but by the time we got there at 11 a.m., it was easy.  And then I got lost between the bridge and we had one of our big fights where I accuse John of not giving me the right directions and he accuses me of not listening to him.  Eventually after we drove around through the Presidio for 10 minutes, while I yelled at him for not looking at the map -- well, no point belaboring it.  We eventually got to the museum and there were no dead bodies by the time we arrived.  And we got a good parking place really close, and everything was good once again.   It was so pleasant outside, we even ate lunch sitting in the sun. 

This is a wonderful exhibit, by the way.  The America's Cup is starting July 5 in San Francisco, so this exhibit is of Impressionist paintings that have to do with boating or water.  I could try to pretend I'm a clever art critic, but I'm not.  I like to look at pretty pictures, and if they are bright colors and have pictures of water or boats, there's little that could make me happier.  John, on the other hand, likes to look at every brush stroke of every picture. 

We spent another hour or so checking out other exhibits in the museum.  I just couldn't get over this particular painting.  I swear the painter actually put a piece of burlap on the canvas in order to get the character of the rug and it's the only painting I've ever seen from this period (1600s) that appears to have this collage effect. It really makes a difference in the realism.  I've also been wondering when they finally decided to put the rugs on the floor.  I used to think that painters just liked the way they could show off their skills by folding and rumpling them and putting the on the tables.  But now I'm thinking that maybe there really was a period when they had them at least on the walls to keep out the chill.  I'm still not convinced about the tables. 

 I'm also enamored by this Egyptian collar necklace which looks like something I might see directions for in any of the million bead magazines I read. 

And finally, from the end of this visit, I was kind of creeped out by these paintings.  Somehow these childen doing adult things and with sort of different bodies, like Munchkins or something, just felt wierd.  I know that there's a long history of painting children to look like tiny adults -- with proportions that are wrong, but these don't seem to be that either.  So now that I've demonstrated how erudite I am, I'll move along.  We decided to go on over in the direction of the De Young because I thought there were some antique stores over that way, but by the time we got over there, the only thing there was time to do was go to the museum.  This turned out to be a good thing, because they were having a show of Diebenkorn's Oakland years, where he went from abstract work backwards into expressionism.  It was a very interesting show. 
I have no pictures of that one, because you're not allowed to take pictures of special shows. 

I convinced John to stay overnight, because it was going to be 106 in Sacramento, and not even cool off at night, and that meant we could go out to dinner in SF. 
I had read a story in a cooking magazine about someone who had started a restaurant in the ferry building, so we thought we'd try to find it.  We didn't, because I couldn't remember the names of anything.  But we did find a nice seafood restaurant where we got to have clams and mussels.  The mussels (which John ordered) were in a coconut milk sauce, and they were better than the clams which were in a ginger broth.  But the clams were good.  And then we headed over to Ghiradelli square where we had sundaes for dessert.  We hardly needed them, but they were delicious.  We didn't even split just one, but each had our own.  Oink.  And did I mention we got close street parking everywhere we went, and the only time we had to pay was when we went to the Ferry Building.  In San Francisco if you find three good parking spaces in a day, you should probably buy a Lotto ticket.

We stayed overnight in a Best Western in Corte Madera because I wanted to go to Book Passage
the next day, which has always been my favorite bookstore.  They used to specialize in travel books, though so many of those have been phased out by the internet, they seem to have more of the kind of books you'd like to read while you're on a trip.  But it's still a charming independent bookshop.  Anyway, this Best Western turned out to be really nice for us hicks from the valley.  Had a giant swiming pool, nice landscaped grounds, exercise room, front and back door to our room, wih a patio outside and with the complimentary breakfast delivered to our door in the morning.  I could have just stayed there all day. 

We planned to go to Stinson Beach, which is about 15 miles from Corte Madera, but the traffic was terrible.  I guess it isn't often that a sunny day on the northern coast coincides with a holiday (4th of July) and we ended up turning back before we got more than halfway to the beach.  This is how close we got to the beach. 

I campaigned to stay overnight another night, but John was anxious to get home.  We knew Lynda wasn't feeling well, and John was afraid our plants would all be dead by the time we got back. 

When we drove up at 7:45, it was still 102 and Tim was watering our plants. They were looking pretty pathetic, but he had rescued them.  We have the best neighbors in the world. 
By about 10 p.m., our good friend the delta breeze was back.  The temperature dropped about 30 degrees, and today, Friday, it only got up to 82.   Gave me a chance to do a decent length walk today, AND water the traffic circle and put another three feet of duct tape on the hose to try to repair it.  Since whenever we water it, we have to leave the hose out in the street for cars to run over it, it is now more tape than hose. 

PADDLE BOARDING



My neighbor Kim and I went out on a day that turned out to be about 105 --we're in the middle of a heat wave-- and like all water classes, they love to have you stand out in the hot sun, mere feet from delicious cool water, while they keep telling you things that you need to know at some time, but not necessarily right now, like which boards are best, and how you can rent the good boards once you complete the class. After we stood there sweating and dying, one of the young whippersnappers had heat stroke, so they let us all jump in the water for a minute, and then went back to the lesson after they took care of her. There are only a few things to know about paddle boarding: where to put your feet on the board, which way to hold the paddle, (it has a front and a back) and use your core to paddle rather than your arms. There's one more lesson which is how to turn the board over in the water if you fall off and turn it over, but that's really on-the-water training. So why did we have to stand out in the sun for an hour, especially me in my hot shirt?

 Once we got out on the water it was fun. Nobody fell. All of us jumped in, several times, during the course of our evening, because did I mention it was HOT?

 

After talking about it for two years, I finally made it out this year to learn to do stand up  boarding.  This is where you use a board that is pretty much like an old fashioned windsurfer board, except with a very short fin in the back, instead of the two footer daggerbpard a windsurfer has, and you stand up on it and paddle.  I've watched people do it in Hawaii, and it doesn't look all that difficult, especially since it appears to me that the hardest part is balancing on the board, and I should be able to do that after windsurfing.  I'd like to windsurf again, but I'm afraid it would be too much for my shoulder, especially since the last time I tried, about 7 years ago when I didn't have any shoulder problems, the wind just whipped the boom out of my hand. I guess there's something to be said for staying in shape.  

But I digress

.  

CSUS has an aquatic center which is a bit of a secret, but it's open to the general public.  You can take a class for $45, less if you're a student or alumnus,  and beyond the obvious benefit of learning how to do something, the best part is that you get a certificate that says you're an expert and allows you to rent the good equipment when you go out there instead of the schlocky stuff.  And if you look like an old lady like I do, a nice strong young man will also launch and put the boards away for you.  Age hath its privileges.  

I'm relaxed and comfortable on the board, even if it doesn't look like it.  It is obviously time for me to get a swimsuit that covers more of my fat up, though.  Notice the long sleeved shirt.  This feels good once it gets wet, keeps you cool standing up.  Thought I'd die when we were standing around in the sun dry getting directions.  

Kim is a natural.  No matter how hard I paddle, I'm working to get where she glides.  Maybe 12 years age difference helps?

Cruising down the lake

Here she is cruising, and I'm rapidly getting too far away to take a picture.  

Kim and I went out again about three days later. This time it was kind of windy, which meant we had a really nice time going out, went a lot farther than the first time, and worked our butts off getting back in against the wind. And again, Kim was always 6 board lengths head of me, looking relaxed while I'm working like a slave in the hold of a viking ship.

Paddling into the sunset