anyresemblance

The good, the bad and the down right annoying

The good

• I had a terrific time in Madrid, worked with some charming people, ate lots of that delicious grated tomato stuff and drank some very fine Ribeiro
• I had empty seats next to me on the plane there and back
• A visitor from Sydney happened to be in our office today with a whole box of caramel koalas and gave me a handful to dispense

The bad

• The youngest kid ended up in emergency on Monday, sent by her dr, after extremely severe pain.  After some tests, turns out she has a significant ailment which will require surgery but not in the next few day.  The not so bad is this surgery is routine but still knife and anesthetic and all.
• The oldest took it upon herself to task her father to task for failing to offer enough support to the youngest since I was many thousands of miles away. It had the desired effect but took it out of her and caused her 48 hours of sadness.  The good is that the youngest is now convalescing in her father's house where she will be well tended by him and his wife.

The annoying

• It continues to be sweltering in New York but today it finally feels like cooler weather might be on its way.
• The past few days have been extremely stressful but now it looks like the kid's health is under control, or at least has a known outcome, I am just feeling sad that I am so far away from her.

I travel again

I'm in Newark airport waiting for a flight to Charlotte and from there overnight to Madrid.  Charlotte is getting to be one of those "have been in this city but never left the airport" kind of places.

Manhattan was grey and gloomy this morning but still not cold enough.  I managed to fit in a brisk walk to the park with Charlie.  I adore walking in Central Park and never get tired of the city scape surrounding it.  Yesterday morning, we walked down 69th St on our way home and I was charmed by the gracious brownstones and their beautiful halloween displays.  American sure do take holiday decorating seriously and do it with such panache.  There were little flyers on everyone's door way inviting them to a kerbside impromptu coffee morning.  Charming.

Friday evening we went to the opening of Leila Jeffreys' exhibition in a gallery on the Lower East Side.  It was delightful, there was Australian wine but I didn't drink any as I was so hungry I knew I would be immediately drunk.  I was a total fan girl and introduced myself to Leila who was funny and friendly and knew exactly which of her works we owned.  I told the youngest later "she loves birds as much as you love dogs." Even though the exhibition was mostly pigeons (who knew the could be so colourful) there were two of Moluccan cockatoos, Cyril and Prudence.  I was captivated and if anyone has a spare $4k go and buy one of them (but then it would be a shame to separate them...)

I spent the day in a list of get things done tasks.  On the achieved list:

• post ganching's spectacles 
• post S's dad's birthday present 3 weeks late
• post something to I for halloween
• buy more stamps
• replace make up in Sephora
• clean bedroom

We had dinner with Ray last night, yummy Greek food in walking distance of our apartment but a bit $$$.  He lived in Madrid for years and told me to look out for the Joaquin Sorolla museum and the running of the sheep.  Sadly, the former is not open on Mondays and the latter happens on Sunday after I leave.  What I will do, is go to the Prado, eat a lot of delicious food and catch up with many old work friends.

Blue moments

I have spent the week in corporate training in an aging golf club in Connecticut which smells faintly of mould.  Thankfully, the budget did not extend to having to stay the night so us city dwellers are commuting daily.  This is exhausting but a delightful decompression in which we dissect bro culture, entitled white men droning on at length, the depressing lack of diversity and the unedifying spectacle of a white middle aged man rapping from Hamilton.  Oh, and add in "improv" and you'll get the feeling how enthusiastic I have been.

Not to be overly cynical but there have been some moments of enlightenment and learning along the way but I am glad it is almost at a close and I get to be back to normal.  In addition, I won the trivia quiz which required identification of various world cities - Istanbul was one of the answers - and a $50 gift certificate.

Next week, I will be in Madrid.

 

Damp

The weather is unspeakable.  It's humid and warm even though the leaves are starting to turn.  Yesterday, I got drenched taking Charlie to the park which was fine but the cool rain was replaced with warm, wet air for the rest of the day.  We spent most of it hunkered down and cosy.  In the evening we had dinner with my Austin pals in Greenwich Village for food that was exquisite but possibly rather tiny portions and consequently expensive.  I woke up starving in the night.

This morning I drove out to the edges of Connecticut for a 4 day work off site.  I know, those words make me shudder, too.  At least there is a free breakfast to fill the gaps from last night's mini dinner.

The far reaches

Yesterday, we explored the upper reaches of Manhattan visiting the Met's outpost at the Cloisters.  We took the train to 130th and then a bus which stopped right outside the door.  It was a kind of odd experience.  The whole place houses the Met's medieval treasures and is an odd ensemble from several medieval buildings.  I dunno, having been privileged to grow up around medieval cathedrals and spent a lot of time in the past few years in the medieval town of Wells and its beautiful 12thC cathedral, I was unmoved by seeing objects, even ones of great beauty, outside their ecclesiastical settings.  Thumbs down from me but it was good to see Washington Heights from the bus and the beaux arts apartment buildings.

We took the bus back down to 130th - we'd planned to go all the way to midtown but there was a food market and a stall selling falafel that tempted us off the bus to snarf down tahini and tabbouli deliciousness.  It's quite a different feel up there which makes me realise I need to do a bit more neighbourhood sleuthing.

Last night we had homemade pizza trying to match the amazing pizza we ate at Del Popolo in San Francisco with green olives and harissa but finding harissa paste was tough and what we ended up buying did not match the fieriness of the brand I'm used to.  I still don't know the trick to stretching the dough to get the thin pizza either, I always end up with too doughy a base.  Life challenges.  

Daily life

Yesterday was a good day.  I was in a good mood from the theatre outing and got up early enough to take Charlie to Central Park.  We had two days of cooler weather when ganching and I got back from DC but it is back to 30 degree days.  Since we got the electricity bill I have forbidden S to put the air con on and she goes around sighing at the heat but I don't care.  Anyway, the park was lovely but the trees still have a way to go to look fully autumnal.

Since I was working at home and my schedule was a bit more flexible, we had Mumbai toasties for breakfast.  Diana Henry is a goddess and this is one of her finest creations.  If you think cheese and Indian spices sounds weird, you'd be like me before I ate it, but try it and see (not for coriander cilantro haters.)  Then I spent the day in a series of pleasant calls with people I like, a rare occurrence these days.

I did get irked with one piece of news about our team which I described to my colleague as akin to be placed in the Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs making no noise and pretending we didn't exist but we decided we'd use the opportunity to have a cupboard celebration of our own making.

At 4.30, I called it a day and went to get a mani pedi from the charming Nepalese lady down the road.

We had dinner at the Smith with a visiting Canberra friend (the person who had gifted me the 3 months of Amazon Prime and set me off on that rocky road "Oh, I can just order the loo roll on amazon prime").  She was in NYC for the weekend (she was here for 4 years and only got a job back in Australia due to my divine intervention) and was on her way to Harvard for a week.  We ate at the Smith which I suspect is a cliche with its white subway tiles and sub industrial feel, but the food was really good and she treated us (this is clearly a week for fairy god mothers.). Anyway, I felt better when she described how hard it was to make friends in NYC and how the first year was painful and lonely and how she made lots of weekend trips to make herself feel better.  Reconsulting the Amtrak schedule right now. 

The golden ticket

My good friend is going to be in NYC next week.  We'd been trading WhatsApp messages to work out a meeting plan next week then late on Wednesday night, she messaged me:

"hey, a good friend gave me tickets for Hamilton Thurs that I can't use, would you and S like to be my guests and take them?"

Who could refuse? I knew the tickets were $$$ but it was only when I printed them I realized how $$$$ they were.  It's a small theatre and we had a great view on the mezzanine.  I can only tell you that it was a great show but hugely helped by the dose of American history I had the week previous in Monticello and the museums of American History and African American culture.  It was amazingly good and the spontaneous applause at the line "immigrants: we get the job done" was heartening.  It's a long time since 2 hours and 45 minutes flew by.  Of course, I felt bad that the kid missed out as she is the one who has been listening to the sound track endlessly for months and knows all the words...  I'm entering the lottery for $10 tickets for her now.

 

Step up

When ganching was here 10,000 steps was considered a bare minimum and she had us (or more properly her) going for at least 20,000 steps a day.  I thought she had become more competitive as the years passed and then I remembered 25 years ago her making me ride up 1:3 incline hills on our bikes, shouting at me "legs, legs" as my complexion went from Renoir to Radish.  Anyway, sad to say that although I managed 12,000 yesterday (Sunday and two long walks with the dog) today I managed only 6,000 and did not feel in the least like leaving the house again. 

Despite this I did leave manage to catch the shift change for the stables and saw this cop writing a parking ticket.

 

Many feelings

Ganching and I went to Monticello last Tuesday.  We were in DC and rented a car for the day trip. We booked the Behind the Scenes tour which allowed us into the upstairs rooms including the amazing dome room.  The tour was not until the afternoon so we spent the intervening time in exploring the gardens and doing the free tour on enslavement at Monticello.  The guide was excellent: clear, straightforward, respectful.  I found that tone continued into the house tour with every acknowledgement of the appalling dichotomy between the words of the declaration of independence and the lot of the enslaved people working the estate.

We stopped in Charlottesville for dinner before driving home.  It was likely being in the Cotswolds and then realising that a few weeks before a hateful spectacle and shocking murder had taken place.  Very sobering.

My colleague had told me about the new African American History and Culture museum in DC but that it was fully booked for months.  There was an option to get tickets in a lottery if you logged on early enough.  Fortunately, I was awake at 6.30am the following day and checked and managed to score us timed tickets for Wednesday morning.  First off, the museum itself is an imposing structure with strong west African influences. Then the visitors, who were overwhelmingly people of colour, were dressed as if to attend a religious service, which in a way, this is.  A lift takes you down 3 levels and you work your way up from slavery to emancipation to Jim Crow and more recent history.  It is impossible not to view the exhibit and be profoundly moved nor to wonder why people still can not talk about race in contemporary times or our own complicity.