May 1st to May 6th
For Master D’s birthday, we told him that B was going to come visit him in April. When I went to book the trip, Master D realized he would be pretty busy and wouldn’t be able to entertain him the whole time and B said he wanted me to go too – well that would be just plain foolish of me to argue – so I joined the party. Little did we know at that time (in fact we found out the day before we left) that Halle went and got herself knocked up by the doggie next door and puppies were going to be born within a week or two of the day before we left. B and TT took Halle to the vet and then got to work building her a whelping pen, got instructions from the vet for the kids just in case and we left. More on the puppies in my next post.
We stayed in The Beacon Hotel again (that was the one I stayed with mom in) as it is very convenient to where Master D is living. The first room we were in didn’t have much of a view but it smelled like someone had been smoking in there and then overnight the toilet began leaking and we woke up to an inch of water on the bathroom floor -so they moved us to the back side of the hotel with an amazing view of Central Park.
I’ll admit I’m pretty good at planning events for our trips – many thanks to google and the internet! This time both events I planned were truly amazing experiences. First I googled comedians performing that weekend and Jerry Seinfeld just happened to be performing at our hotel both weekend nights and I secured us tickets. And then Master D told me he heard that “To Kill a Mockingbird” was supposed to be good so I looked for tickets and was able to get us 3rd row seats.
The guy who opened for Jerry was Ryan Hamilton from Idaho. He was honestly funnier than Jerry was. I”m sure only performing for 15 minutes and we’ve never heard his material helped him – but if you get a chance to see him – it’s totally worth it. Jerry was hilarious but his NY bitterness is coming out a little more these days.
B needed a haircut and beard trim so Master D told us to go to this barber shop/museum place nearby. So we headed over and just happened to get Bruce Willis’ barber. Seriously. So he really knew how to work with B’s headshape and face. I wish he could go to him all of the time – he did a great job!
It rained on us a bunch, but we still walked around and through Central Park. For ‘Mockingbird’ we headed down to Times Square a bit early. It was slightly traumatizing for us and seriously traumatizing for Master D. We just happened upon a live streaming event for the Family First organization of a woman’s ultrasound – who USED to work for Planned Parenthood and is the star of the anti-abortion recent film…..and just imagine what kind of protestors in NY that kind of an event would bring out and then imagine them naked because that’s what we encountered. Then we poorly chose a movie that none of us liked and then we chose a restaurant that was not too crowded and we found out why not. But then as we walked towards the theatre for our show, I was a bit ahead and turned to look where B and D were and walking right next to me was Ewan McGregor – he turned and looked at me and I recognized him as someone I probably knew but didn’t figure out who until about 5 or 10 seconds later and then I fell back to point him out to D and B, and he walked off very fast with his girlfriend. So yes I had an up close personal eye contact walking next to me encounter with Obie Wan Kenobi.
Then we got to watch Jeff Daniels try redeem himself somewhat from “Dumb and Dumber” as Atticus. He was decent, but the play was amazing! We sat next to a whole family of Columbia law school alumni and the patriarch asked me where and when I bought our tickets because the show was nominated for 9 Tony awards and he got his tickets 6 months ago. I told him about 3 weeks before and he was slightly upset. I just felt extremely lucky and told him I was able to get Hamilton last year within a few weeks and really good seats. He tried to burst my bubble and for a second I thought “Oh dang now that I know it’s cool, it won’t happen again” but I choose to think “that’s just how I roll”. JK – kinda…
On Sunday I really wanted to go to this super cool flea market in Brooklyn so we took a subway – it takes a really long time to get to Brooklyn btw – and it was raining. We did eat at a really yummy little restaurant right outside the subway station. But once we got to the flea market, hardly anyone was there because of the rain. We wandered into a little bookstore and I found a super cool puzzle so all was not lost.
On our last day, we went up to see Master D at Columbia and ate at the restaurant next door to the Seinfeld coffee shop. Of all the times I’ve been to NY I’m surprised I never saw it before.
