Boastworthy!

So, I know it's wrong to brag, but I didn't really have much to do with this, so I'm gonna -- my tomatoes are EXCELLENT! One of the ballet ladies brought tomatoes to class and I took a few home because our teacher said "Oh, take some of Judy's tomatoes, they're the best." Well, I tried Judy's tomatoes, and they were good, but I've got some beefsteaks growing in the back yard that are deep red, juicy, and incredibly flavorful. I've been pretty much just slicing them up, salting them and eating them. One day I added basil from the garden, but it was unneccesary. They rock. I really love tomatoes when they're good. When they're pink and tough, I don't even want them, and usually push them to the side of my plate, but good tomatoes are hard to beat and I'll happily eat every last damn one of them.

I feel busy and a little stressed right now -- I'm trying to move into my new classroom, prepare lesson plans for a subject I've never taught (and an elective, too, which I imagine to be different from an academic class), stay in shape, do some necessary things to my house and a few more cosmetic things, prepare for a show with my band on the 11th (I really need to take some time to memorize lyrics to a couple songs), figure out lesson plans for half of the first week of school (I took the other days off for a wedding, which I'm delighted to attend, but the timing could have been better), and keep up a few social/family obligations (my grandma is going to kick my ass and probably call me by my middle name if I don't stop by in a day or two), and if I were a really good person I would call my cousin Cynthia and my niece Marissa to hang out, and call my half-brother to arrange the barbecue I promised. Also, it's probably just girl hormones, but I've been feeling a little emotionally overwhelmed lately. What's weird, though, is that when I used to feel this way, I would watch Harold and Maude, cry a little, and get over it, but I've been so emotionally level lately that I don't even really feel like crying. I'm happy and very satisfied with my life (don't worry, anybody), but there's just a lot going on and I need to process it and get over it. Most likely, I'll be back to normal after school starts and I'm in a routine again. It's a little strange to have this much free time. I'm also kind of nervous about not being a student for the first time ever -- what if I fail at not being a student? You know, never undertake the art projects I mean to, or lose the weight I want to, or write any more, or fulfill my post-school goals, like learning Spanish? What if it turns out that I'm secretly really lazy, and only ever did things because I had timelines and due dates and syllabi? You probably think I'm being stupid, but this is totally new for me. Ah well, check back with me in October and we'll see how the lazy life is going -- without school, I'll only have my job, the band, ballet, my boyfriend, my family, the garden, the cat and the house to take up my time!!! What will I ever do?!?!?!?!

Music stuff

Okay, this is the last of my blog-a-thon for a while. On Friday I had a ticket to the Patti Smith concert at the new Empire nightclub. Monkeygirl went with me, and it was kind of a weird set-up. They made us stand outside in line for a long time, even though they'd only pre-sold 300 tickets. The doors were supposed open at 6:30, but they were a little tardy getting us in. Then the band actually didn't come out until 7:30, but it was totally worth the wait. I first heard of Patti Smith when I was in high school and I watched the "History of Rock" series. A fairly brief section of her performing Van Morrison's "Gloria" at CBGBs had me hooked. I was kind of in love. She sang with such passion, such disregard for the standards of rock 'n' roll beauty, such intensity . . . That video was filmed about thirty years ago, but she is every bit as intense now, at 57. She kind of looks like somebody's hippie grandma, appearing onstage in torn jeans, a t-shirt with what appeared to be a hand-drawn peace symbol, and a men's jacket. While she sings, she looks completely absorbed, but in the breaks between songs, she sometimes seems to recognize that the audience is exploding with noise, and she rewards us with a gigantic, beautiful beaming smile. She looks genuinely happy to be singing and performing and to have us all there. She played a number of hits, including "Because the Night," "Dancing Barefoot" (during which she sat down and took off her shoes), "Summer Cannibals," "Free Money," as well as songs from her new album, Trampin'. The crowd was really into it, and whenever Patti would put the mic into the crowd she would find us shouting the lyrics at the top of our lungs. It surprised me to see that Monkeygirl and I were among the youngest people there -- I would say the average age was 45. When the band finally left the stage, I was exhilirated, but also a tiny bit disappointed. "Gloria" is my favorite Patti Smith song, and she hadn't played it. But we screamed and screamed until they came back out for an encore, and she played two more songs, the second being Gloria. I could have cried. I don't go to too many concerts, but this ranks among the top two -- David Bowie was incredible, too, but I was far away, whereas I was about 8 feet from Patti Smith the whole time. Man, if you like her music at all, I'd say go see a show when you get the chance, she really puts on a good one.

I also saw local band Amphora Saturday night at the Blue Lamp. I really, really like their music, but I don't much like the bands they play with. They're selling a CD now, which I should get, since I only have a demo, and love that. I really hope they go somewhere with it, because they deserve to. Just between my blog readers and me, I am not sold on the keyboardist. I don't relaly think they need one, and he looks silly, sitting with his knees pinched together on his little stool. He tries really hard to rock out, though, bending from the waist spasmodically to sort of upper-body-bang. Okay, I've been the blog queen, so I'm taking a little break for a while. Take care, all.
K

Back to New York a little for culture shock

I experienced a little bit of culture shock in Manhattan. See, in the movies, you get the idea that New York is filled about equally with wealthy, well-dressed socialites, punk rockers, and tough guys. Well, we saw exactly one tough guy on the subway (imagine a big beefy dude in a wifebeater telling someone in a very thick Brooklyn accent "Yo, move in bro. Move in. I'll let you out when you need to get off, just move in, bro!"). We hardly saw anyone dresed particularly well -- in fact, we saw about a trillion people getting onto and off of the subways every day, not to mention the thousands more walking around during the day (and we went inside Bloomingdale's and Barney's, don't forget) and most of them were in navy suits with cream blouses. How boring!
As for punk rockers, forget it. I thought Henry Rollins was going to be on like every corner, but instead I saw about two lip piercings, five or so nose rings, about 6 people with funky-colored hair (most of them tourists), two mohawks (one of them twice), and about 40 tattoos. Keep in mind that this is over the course of four days in extremely populated areas, and we did NOT hang out in the hotel -- we were out in public for more than twelve hours every day. You could see more freaky people in Sacramento in one afternoon on K street.
Also, I just assumed that certain aspects of California style were widespread and prevalent on both coasts. Wrong again! In four days I didn't see a single Birkenstock, not one white person with dreadlocks, not one exist broomstick skirt, and none of those shirts that just tie on in the back. Nobody there even looked like they'd heard of the Grateful Dead. It was a little refreshing, actually.
The hippie thing is pretty Bay Area, but I also kind of assumed that L.A. culture wasn't specific to L.A. We have plenty of people in Sacramento with expensive highlights, bodies that scream 'personal trainer,' fake boobies, fake nails . . . but that really didn't seem to exist at all in Manhattan. In fact, not only did the white girls not have highlights, the ethnic girls didn't have highlights either. Nobody did! It was the most brunettes I've ever seen in one place in my life.
I mentioned the mediocre food. I think that may have just been bad luck on our part, but really, being so close the the Bay Area and Napa Valley has amped up the quality of food in my town, too. There is some really good food to be had around here, and I appreciate it.
There were very few panhandlers. In fact, I really didn't see any if you don't count the people that are working for it by singing, playing instruments, or otherwise performing. Not once in four days did we have to step around a homeless person on the sidewalk.
It was dreadfully short of coffee shops. I think the market was so saturated by cafeteria-type places that there wasn't room for the cozy cafes that fill the West Coast.
There was very little litter (although each night there was a mountain of garbage bags on every street, and in the morning they were gone). We only saw one laundromat and one gas station.
We also saw a TON of police officers. They were everywhere! Anytime you wanted to ask directions (and they were cute, so we came up with a lot of questions), there was one right there!
A lot of people in NY smoke cigarattes. Now, part of the enormous clouds of smoke we ran into can be explained by the fact that it was just really crowded and there were a lot more people than we generally run into near home, but I honestly think that more people smoked, too.

Wednesday, last day in the Caribbean (sniff)

We had a delicious breakfast again today, and a light rain created a really long-lasting rainbow which you could see both ends of, and the colors were really clear and defined, too. Then we walked our companion to the ferry to say goodbye. We returned to the Arawak room, which really was a nice place to sit and talk, although it was exceptionally hot and muggy that day. We decided to go to the beach and take out kayaks. My sunburn was actually kind of nasty, so I covered myself from my waist to my feet with a sarong. I looked like a granny, but at least the sun wasn't blazing on my burn. Still, it was really hot, so I wet down the sarong with my paddle. Well, I almost needn't have bothered, because as Mom and I paddled out toward the bouys the weather got even muggier and the sky grew overcast, and quite suddenly, it was raining. Like, really raining. And then it amped up some, like someone turned it to 5. Then 6. It was really noticeable. At one point the raindrops were about the size of fava beans and almost hurt. It probably rained for ten minutes, but we didn't make any move to go in, we jsut paddled closer to shore. It was actually really refreshing, because it cut the heat and the mugginess, but wasn't cold by any means, either. And now I can say I've been on the ocean in a kayak during a rainstorm! When it calmed and then ended, we paddled back along the shoreling, where we saw a ton of pelicans just chilling in the mangroves. Cartoons would have you believe that pelicans are goofy and clumsy, but I actually found them kind of lovely and majestic. We got pretty close to them and they just held still and watched us.
Back at the beach, we found our stuff had gotten a little wet, but not bad -- the notebook I had pretty much filled (and am consulting right now) was only damp, thank goodness, and my hat and sarong were quite wet but dried quickly. It was the last beach barbecue day. Again, everything was fantastic (although they didn't serve the same potato salad as the first day, which was mildly disappointing). We read for a little while longer on the beach, and I finished Barbara Kingsolver's "Prodigal Summer," which was wonderful. We then packed most of our stuff. I was regretful that I didn't get to try windsurfing in the right conditions, that I didn't get to take the dinghy out again, and that I never tried the Hobie catamaran (although I can't say that I never have, I was on one in high school once). Still, I was pretty desperate to get home, too, and see my cat and my garden (and sorry for being gushy, but Piggs most of all). At our last dinner I had cream of asparagus soup, red pepper and eggplant tian with kalamata aoli. Lennox made us two special drinks, a Caribbean Sea and a Buttercup, both of which were good. We said our goodbyes to the people we'd met, the staff and visitors alike. Henry and Imogen, the British children, came over to say goodbye. Henry informed us that they'd met some new friends, American teenagers, that day, so that he'd have someone to talk to when we were gone. Incidentally, Jan asked Henry at one point what his favorite part of the trip had been so far, and he answered "Not goggling off my bike, not getting stung by the jellyfish . . . " He actually got stung 5 times! He had stings all around his torso. He also got bitten by the iguana, although Imogen informed us that the iguana wasn't being angry or mean, he just "took an extra big bite." The teenagerd had taught them some game that Imogne said was quite easy, and Henry looked at her like she was insane, then quickly recovered and said "Oh, yeah, it was quite easy once you got the hang of it."
We had some Caribbean battle scars -- mom broke out in hives from her sunscreen, got stung by a jellyfish, and "goggled" off her bike (just like Henry, and in the exact same spot). I came down with Eurasia (for those of you only skimming, a nasty collection of bug bites that swelled up), had a panic attack and got a sunburn. But even despite that, our trip was amazing. I'll close with a direct quote from my notebook: "I would love to come back someday. I want to see so much of the world, but Biras Creek has had the nicest people, the best amenities, the most delicious food and the warmest, bluest ocean of anywhere I've been, ever. Out of paper, the end."

Tuesday on the Fat Virgin

We had arranged for the 7 am ferry to take us to another part of the island, where we met a "taxi" that would take us to the other side of that part of the island. The taxi was a pickup truck with the bed extended and with bench seats bolted into it and a canopy on top. It was a steep and bumpy ride, but very cool. We went through the town where many Biras Creek employees live and passed the post office, the police station, a bunch of buildings under construction, colorful apartments, and one cool pink gigantic private home. We also passed the Last Stop Bar and the First Stop Bar, as well as a truck labeled "Tents and Tings." We were headed to the Baths, an area where right at the shore a bunch of boulders had fallen together in cave-like formations. The path through them was cool: you had to crouch, wade, crawl, climb ladders and stuff, and the light was streaking in through the gaps in the rocks. The goal, unfortunately, was Devil's Bay, which was not really all that cool. I mean, it was beautiful -- everything there was -- but the beach was much smaller than the one at Biras, there were no recliners and no eqipment to use, it was ridden with biting sand fleas, and there wasn't much shade (by then, I was burned and staying out of the sun). We didn't stay long, and we hiked back along another trail. We ate breakfast at the restaruant there and shopped around at the three gift shops (I did get a few things, including a buttery-yellow beaded sarong for me). The we met the taxi again and headed back to Biras. I was in a kind of cranky mood, and I might have enjoyed the Baths more if I'd been in a better mood.
We were late getting back for lunch, so we got a voucher and headed back to the gift shop area and ate lunch at the Fat Virgin Cafe. I had vegetable roti (a West Indian dish that resembled an Indian curry with flatbread). It was delicious, and I briefly felt regretful that despite all the wonderful food, we hadn't really had any local dishes until just then.
NOTE TO THE EASILY GROSSED-OUT: DO NOT READ THIS PARAGRAPH. Okay, Monday while I was diving, I sat on the platform for a while and noticed an itchy and slightly painful spot on the back of my left thigh, but I was trying to ignore it. I slapped at it quite a bit to avoid scratching. By Tuesday afternoon it was still itching a lot, and I checked it out in the mirror. Dude, it was nasty. I had gotten bitten or stung by something (my guess is spiders or mites), and there were about 150 individual bites, but you couldn't really tell that then, because it just looked like one giant (maybe 5 inch in diameter) topographical map of Eurasia. It was swollen and purply-red, and took up most of the back of my thigh, as well as some of my inner thigh. Ever, just for fun, looked through the skin disease section of a medical textbook? It looked like all of them. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any Benadryl, so I did my best with Bactine and tried not to appear in public in my bathing suit.
That night we went to tea and talked until nearly dinnertime. At dinner a local named Morris Mark played guitar and sang somgs like "Take it Easy," "Brown Eyed Girl," "Sounds of Silence," and a few sad country songs like "Always on My Mind" and "Crazy." He had a sweet mellow voice like Cat Stevens, and he played right to our table, since we were swaying and singing along. I had artichoke salad, a mushroom tart and bread pudding for dessert.

Frangy Pangy day! Monday in Virgin Gorda.

I biked down to the beach early today and read for a while. It was completely deserted. Then we went to breakfast where I had pain au chocolate (just half, and it was delicious!). There was a garden walk this morning led by Alvin, who was the landscaper there, and had worked there for 30 years! Also on the walk were Meredith and Jan, a sweet older lesbian couple who had just gotten married on Saturday! (They were from Massachusets.) Alvin was older, very dark-skinned, and he had a heavy accent. His manner was kind of funny -- he would meander over to a plant, listlessly point at it, and say "Dis one yellow Alamanda." Then we'd all stare at it for a minute, and he'd start meandering again. He was a little mroe animated if we asked him questions, too. I really liked the Flamboyant tree -- it had leaves that were almost fern-like and bright orange flowers sprayed across the top. I also liked the sea hyacinth, which had delicate conical yellow flowers that looked like gently wrinkled tissue paper. We also saw mangroves, turpentine trees (if you rub the sap, you can smell the turpentine), frangipani (which smelled incredible, like a cross between jasmine and gardenia, and was pronounced charmingly by Alvin as frangy-pangy, with hard Gs), cottonwood trees, ironwood trees, a bunch of cacti (some were spherical with a red fuzzy thing popping out of the top, and the red things sprouted fuschia fruits that looked like hot peppers but tasted like kiwis), almond trees with big almonds (and another garderner told us that on Dominica, they mix the almonds with sugar syrup and a bunch of spices and lay them on some kind of slab and cook them, and they called it sweet cake), three colors of vivid bouganvilla, enormous spider lilies, and about three kinds of sweet white and blue flowers that I now longer remember the names of. Whew. Thank you for reading the world's longest sentence.
The walk ended right outside Jan and Meredith's suite, which they offered to show us -- it was one of the big and really expensive ones, and it was COOL! They had big windows all along one side that had a perfect ocean view. They also had a big sitting room at least as big as my living room at home, and a super-deluxe bathroom. The whole thing was probably 750 square feet, bigger than two apartments I've lived in.
Then I went straight to the beach and asked for windsurfing lessons. Shawn, the instructor, was about 18, and he told me right off the bat that it wasn't a good day for windsurfing. There wasn't much wind and the water was rough. Still, I knew I'd kick myself if I didn't at least try it while we were there. He gave me the basics and helped me steady myself on the board. I must have fallen on my ass about 50 times, but I still had a good time, and was just laughing every time I fell. So now I can officially say I tried windsurfing. To be fair to myself, I did get going several times, but the wind was pointed directly towards shore, so every time I got balanced and got the sail up, I would be pushed immediately up onto the sand. Oh well. I do think that with some practice I might be able to get the hang of it. I got into the kayak again and paddled to a platform out in the middle of the bay. There didn't seem to be any jellyfish around, so I dived off several times before coming back in for another great beack barbecue. I sunned a little and kayaked some more after lunch, but came in when I realized I was getting burned. Then I read in the shade for a while. It's really relaxing. Basically, except for at mealtimes, the beach is nearly empty, so it's completely quiet except for the surf.
That evening was the general manager's cocktail party, and mom and I each had a rum punch, then we split a painkiller. I had several delicious appetizers, too, including little baguette slices with bleu cheese mouse and cherry tomatoes with feta. It was nice, and we got to socialize a great deal with th eother guests, including this British couple we'd been running into a lot but hadn't talked to. I mentioned to the husband that we'd also been admiring his wife's amazing physique (listen, I HAD to say something, her abs were better than Janet Jackson's or Serena Williams'), and he laughed and said "Oh, I know, I keep telling her she'd better watch it or people will think she works out!" My jaw may have dropped, and I asked him what she did do, exactly, and he said that since their daughter, Imogen, rides horses, the mom hauls around a lot of bales of hay and jumps and things. We also found out that the reason Luke and Kristin moved to Georgia was that Luke just passed the Bar exam and got a job with a law firm there.
Then we went to dinner and I had a Stilton souffle, another first for me! Delicious.

Sunday, day 4 in Virgin Gorda

Hey, a note on the name Virgin Gorda. When we first got there, someone told us that the explorers who first visited the island thought it looked like a pregnant virgin, but his cronies told him that was dumb, so they changed it to fat virgin. Later we heard that actually, unmarried pregnant women are referred to locally as fat virgins. Hmmph.
Breakfast was delicious again, and by this time I was totally aware of how much I'd been eating. I tried to lighten up a little, but everything is so good! I took Mom out in a two-person kayak, then I went and checked out some snorkelling gear. We biked back to the beach and I put on all the gear and swam out about ten feet. I saw a few jellies, but tried not to freak out, rather, just admire them. But they're not like deer, you know? You don't just see one from a distance. They're more like raindrops -- once you've seen one, you're about to get deluged. I can see around my head, but don't really know what's going on in the vicinity of my legs, so I start getting pretty nervous. Still, I'm not scared, just a little creeped out. But I'm also starting to feel a little confined. This may sound stupid, but I have a real thing about having my breathing restricted -- I don't even wear turtlenecks or choker-style necklaces (and one of the things I was wearing was a hood that was tight on the neck), and I always breathe through both my mouth and nose. I'm a lifelong asthmatic, which probably had something to do with it. So anyway, I try to relax and take a few deep breaths, but you really can't through a snorkel, which DID make me freak out a little, and I started to hyperventilate. I pulled my head above water and ripped all the equipment off to get a deep breath. Then I tried to put it back on, but had gotten saltwater in the mask, and immediately tried to breathe through my nose and got a big sinus-ful of saltwater and I got some in my eyes, too. By then, I pretty much was having a full-blown panic attack. I swam back to shore fast as hell and relaxed there on the beach for a long time.
Time out for rumination. I consider myself a pretty brave person. I've jumped off bridges, I've skydived, I've been in some pretty nasty mosh pits . . . and beyond that, I've done a lot of emotionally brave things, too -- leaving a bad marriage, leaving a good career to try education . . . but this whole snorkelling thing? I chickened out, I freaked, I panicked, I was scared. I did not like the whole restricted-breathing thing, I did not like the jellyfish, I was just totally uncomfortable. I might consider trying it again someday, but definitely in a no-jellyfish area, and after maybe a real lesson, too. I'm doing most of this writing from memory and just consulting my notes occasionally, but here's a direct quote from my notebook about the experience "Suddenly we were in jellyfish-LAND. It was like the ballpit at Chuck E Cheese, excpet that these menacing globby fuckers were the size of dinner plates."
After I had calmed down sufficiently, I took a sit-on-top ocean kayak out toward the bouys that cordon off the swimming area and let the waves rock me a little and powered through them a little and felt brave and confident and capable and strong again. It was definitely palliative. For lunch, I had salad and rice and a johnnycake and puppodum with chutney and a "Faye's sweet potato cake." I have been diligent about slathering on SPF 50, but I am still getting dark. My blond arm hairs are starting to really stand out against my tan arms. Our sailboat ride is scheduled for 5:30 tonight. We fed the iguana some more (a little one this time, and he still devoured like 30 flowers!). It was actualyl really funny, because we couldn't find him at first, and we were at a sort of crossroads. I had two huge handfuls of flowers, and we'd been out there calling "here, iguana" for about 15 minutes, and finally I walked around the corner and shrugged and said "Well, I guess he'd not coming out!" Mom laughed, and pointed behind me. The iguana was following me!
I noted at this point that I had just finished Anne Lamott's "Traveling Mercies" and a silly mystery called "Pipsqueak." Another short note here is that on the beach earlier they were listening to Elvis in the bar area, and singing along in their rad island accents.
The sailboat ride was great! Chris was the captain, and sorry baby, but this guy was a hunk. Like, a blond surfer-haired buff blue-eyed British hunk. Rachel was the first mate (and possibly his girlfriend) and she made us rum punch that, because it wasn't stirred, had about an inch worth of rum floating on top! It was called a sunset sail, but it was a little too overcast for a nice sunset. Nevertheless, I really just liked being out there on the water. There were about six couples from Biras on the trip, and we had a nice conversation with the ones closest to us (including the couple from North Carolina). I wore my new red dress that I picked up in New York, and I felt glamorous. We went to dinner and had anothe ramazing meal, with a tomato mozzarella tart and a chocolate fondant for dessert (it was like a tiny chocolate cake with a melty middle). I took advantage of the cheese and port again, too.

Saturday, Virgin Gorda day 3

I read for a while in the morning while my companions slept, then I checked out the window, and yep, it still looks like that! We have an ocean view, as well as a charming look at the landscaping between the buildings and the bicycles leaned together with their little wicker baskets. It was sweet and perfect. We had breakfast, a nice assortment of breads and fruits and yogurt and tiny cute glass jars of jam and good coffee. We reserved a dinghy for 1:30, then went to the beach briefly. We saw a bunch more jellyfish and mom got stung. She said it felt like a bee sting and stopped hurting after about a minute. The one that got her was particularly tenacious -- we had tried to gently wave it away several times. We also got a pretty good look at them. They're called moon jellies, and are about the size of dinner plates (it varies), with a purple ring around the outside with little purple hairs coming off it. Inside are what look like two purple infinity symbols and some waggly clear turkey waddles. They seem to locomote by contracting into a dome shape and expanding again. We hung out in the warm water until lunchtime, then wandered back. Mom forgot that you have to backpedal to brake on the bikes, and ran straight into a hedge. She only got a little scratched, so it was okay to laugh. A few yards beyond us some people were crouching down looking in a very interested manner into a hedge. We sidled up and found them feeding red hibiscus flowers to a big iguana. We had already seen a bunch of small lizards all over the island, but this guy was massive, and had a big spiky lizard mohawk all down his back. He was ravenous, too. We all fed him, and when we would take a break to talk, he'd get bored and start to wander away, but the second we offered another blossom, he was back. I liked him. I also liked the couple from North Carolina that we met -- the woman was telling us about her grinning dog, Shiner, who does a waggly-bootie happy dog dance, which she gleefully demonstrated for us. The husband has a very attractive face, but Andy Warhol hair.
We had dilly-dallied and got to lunch right at the end, but I had a spinach mushroom feta quiche with tomato-olive tapenade and a salad with roasted vegetables. I also jhad what they called strawberry parfait, kind of a semi-frozen strawberry mousse with salty crumbles of pistachio on the plate, as well as "creme anglaise." We walked down to the marina and looked around the gift shop, and by the time we were done we had missed our reservation time by a long shot. At the marina, we met "Captain," whose real name is Ernest, and he can't tell us why they call him Captain. He said mom and I looked like we were at the horse races (it was our big pasty white girl hats). We also asked him what these plants were called, and he said they were sea grapes, and that you can eat them. Some of them are sweet, but some of them can make your mouth go (here he made a great nasty-bitter-sour-dried-up face). He was very expressive and funny. He also told us that the sea grape trees are formed by the wind and that because they often bend into an arc, people put benches under them. It sounded lovely.
We decided to go to the other beach, but got sidetracked, so just went to the pool for a while before dinner. We had another very late dinner, herb-encrusted Camembert on mixed greens with mango vinagrette and some of Mom's pecan blue cheese apple spinach salad. The entree was a delicious butternut squash and pea risotto. I tasted two desserts, a hazelnut chocolate/white chocolate mousse and a strawberry-apple cobbler with ginger ice cream. The petit-fours that night were chocolate coconut things and ginger-cream scones. Fuck, this was some of the best food I've had in my life. Also, there seems to be something vegetarian on the menu for the starter and the entree every single night. We also killed a bottle of Gewurtzraminer before I could no longer resist the steel pan band that was playing, and I went down to the deck where they were playing and danced to their last two songs of the evening. Earlier, while we were waiting to be seated, I was boogie-ing mildly (I can almost never help myself) and a staffer told me "Hey, you still got sugar in your feet!" Among others, they played "Hot Hot Hot," "Imagine," and "Blowing in the Wind." Somehow, everything sounded upbeat.
The women here especially have lovely accents. We stayed late by the restaurant, and as they walked to the ferry with their bags, several of them called out "Good night, ladies" in soft lilting tones.

Friday, Day 2 in the Caribbean

Yesterday, Royce, the shuttle driver, told us "Welcome to Paradise," and we laughed at the Fantasy Island reference. But actually, I think he wa s right. We had breakfast first thing today, and I had mango-coconut pancakes. Then we went back to the room to change into swimsuits and slather ourselves with sunscreen. I believe I have mentioned my pasty-white countenance before, but I've got nothing on Mom. God love her, the woman's blue. We put on sarongs and went to reception to see if we could check out a dinghy. Gabby said "Sure, cool, done deal." We walked to the marina (and found out why they have the bicycles -- it's really very humid and hot) and hopped in a boat after a brief lesson on how to use it. I honestly thought it might be more difficult to take out the equipment, but this was the first of many instances of finding the resources at Biras Creek totally abandoned. Anyway, we went out down what I believe was the east side of the inside of the U-shape that was Virgin Gorda. We passed a lovely cove that had what I'm almost certain was a palatial private home with a stretch of white sandy beach. Wow! We tried to round the corner to the next cove, and I saw that we were heading into shallower water, but mom and I had been silently enjoying the scenery as she drove, and I assumed she was looking where she was going. Well, we hit a rock and the engine died. The islander who had given us the brief lesson had a very heavy accent (almost everyone else we spoke to throughout the week was completely comprehensible) and we had gotten the part about pulling the motor up out of the water and locking it in place if we were in a shallow area. We did that right away and with relative ease. Then we used the oar to get into shallower water. The next step was putting the motor back down, and the instructions had been (as far as either of us could tell) to put a lever on the side into a different position, then lower the motor. Well, it didn't work. The damn thing was totally locked in place. We pushed, we pulled, we pushed and pulled at the same time, we came damn near to breaking blood vessels in our eyeballs . . . we put the lever into both possible positions, we put the gear lever into all the possible positions. We put the steering stick thing into all the possible potitions. We were stuck. Finally I made Mom get up and I just stared at the damn lever mechanism thing for a while. I realized it looked kind of like the back of a reclining chair, the kind that look like stairsteps, and you have to LIFT and then lower. I tried it and it worked like a dream. Duh. We'd somehow missed (or he had forgotten) the lift part. Anyway, then we went to the next cove down and dropped anchor. I jumped into the Caribbean water for the first time and it felt good. Not bathwater warm as some people had described it, but nice, and warmer than most pools. I immersed myself all the way and swam about a foot, and there, the water was about the temperature that I prefer my coffee! It was kind of in fits and spurts, cooler and warmer, but it was absolutely wonderful. Mom was still walking around and spotted some starfish, so I swam back to her to check them out. We also saw some urchins and something red poking little fingers up out of the sand. I got a little water in my mouth, and it was NOT like Pacific water, which is salty, but also brackish and tastes vaguely of rotten fish. This was super salty, and very clean-tasting. Mom and I agreed that it tasted like the rim of a margarita glass. We also walked along the beach, and there was an amazing bounty of perfect shells. In fact, there were three 8 inch or more conch shells just sitting there in a pile. We also found hundreds of cowrie shells, big pieces of broken shell that were orange on one side and pink on another. There were shells in fuschia, coral, blue . . . there were some that looked like little brains and several giant perfect clamshells. There were pieces of bleached-white driftwood. There was also some trash, unfortunately, like a rusted-out coller. Altogether, it was fantastic -- never have I been on another beach where there were so many lovely shells. We swam a little more, then went around to the other side of the island a bit to check out the other resort (The Bitter End) and the bar, restaurant and gas station there. We didn't stop though, we just looked. As we drove around, the water dried on our skin, and there was so much salt in it that it crystallized all over my arms. I tasted it just to check, and it was salt! Fine little glittering white crystals. I really like it. I drove the boat about half the time, too. When we were crossing the bay, I told mom "I'm gonna open it up," and I did. It was cool -- I haven't been in a speedboat at all in about 5 years. Then we zoomed back to the marina so we could make it to the other beack for the lunch barbecue. Biras Creek is at a narrow part of the island, so the dining room overlooks a part of the bay where the marina is, and our rooms overlook the ocean on the other side of the island. You could easily walk from water to water in five minutes.
I never have high hopes for barbecues, because since I became a vegetarian fifteen years ago, barbecues usually mean a white bread bun with a slab of lettuce and tomato and a slice of cheese, and maybe some watermelon. (Not my own barbecues -- I am a genius with the tandoori tofu.) But this . . . the was the best barbecue of my whole entire life. There was green salad with marinated tomatoes, potato salad that is about ten times better than any other I have ever had (dude, they fried the potatoes before they dressed them!), a ton of fresh fruit (a delicious selection of apple, mango, pineapple, plum, papaya, pears, melon . . . ), fantastic cookies (oatmeal raisin and chocolate chocolate chip), pickles, cucumber salad in yogut dill dressing, water crackers with about 8 cheeses, and a couscous salad. Mom said the chicken she tried was about the best chicken she'd ever had, too. I had floated around in the water right near the eating deck thing, and it was even warmer with only occasional patches. After lunch I found a hammock tied between two coconut trees (no shit!) and read. Mom did the same in a recliner under one of those palm-thatched umbrellas. After a while, Mom went to get some Visine (the sunscreen she brought was really making her eyes water), and I stayed to swim. She mentioned she'd seen some jellyfish, and Luke and Kristin said they'd seen a bunch when they were out kayaking. Still, I hadn't seen any earlier in the shallow part, so I went in again. Almost the second it got deep enough to float, I started doing that lazy frog-paddle thing, and my elbow felt as though it brushed something somewhat insubstantial. The next instant I looked in front of me and saw a jellyfish bigger than my head about a foot away! I waved my arms to go backwardsand poked another one, then saw another to my left. I beat feet out of the water. Whether they're relatively mild or not, I don't really want to get swarmed by them. Kristin asked what they felt like, and I answered truthfully that they felt like those asian lychee jelly candies, or coconut jellies. No wonder they call them jellyfish. Blech!
Back at the room, we met Recina, the housekeeper. She was really nice, and had the most beautiful accent. She has eight kids ranging in age from 2 to 22, and she can do the accents from about 12 different islands. We talked to her for quite a while. Everyone we met on the staff was nice and accomodating, but I LOVED Recina. She told us this hilarious story about her 2-year-old, who'd been picking up filthy words from BET, and her struggles to keep the girl from using those words. It culminated in Sarah pointing at a group of boys and saying "Mama, dose boys? Ass fuck!" She cracked me up. Later in the week she brought us some black cake, a local dish that's like fruitcake, only with fresh fruit instead of those freakiish green cherries. It was good!
We showered and went to the Arawak room for tea and to see if we could spot my friend's ferry coming in. We'd been told she was coming in at 4, but that was wrong -- she actually didn't get there until 7. Mom and I ate pear tarts and raisin scones and drank tea. We passed most of the afternoon just talking and reading. We changed for dinner and waited for the ferry. We asked at 7, and they knew that she was going to be there in about ten minutes. They seemed to know everything, in fact. At one point they called the phone in the Arawak room to let us know a sailboat ride had been rescheduled -- now how did they know we were there? I ran back to the room to put on bug spray and our new arrival got ready for dinner and we all went up for a late meal. (I had creapy parsnip soup with honey and parsnip chips, couscous with roasted veggies, chocolate ice cream, and a pina colada. I also sampled the port and the cheese course, trying Stilton, Port Samda?, and Explorateur.) I also noticed that the air smells like ocean, but different than it does in California. I was loving the Caribbean.

Big planes, little planes, boats, and Virgin Gorda!

Okay, we got up at 5:30, caught our shuttle, took forever to get to JFK, and got off at the wrong terminal (but it was only a short walk to the right one). We had been too early for breakfast at the Dylan, so we planned on eating at the airport, but when we saw the line, we realized that we might not have time, even though we arrived the recommended three hours early. See, the line was unfathomably long. Apparently, because of the hurricanes down south and the inclement weather in NY, several flights from teh evening before had been moved to this morning. We waited an hour just to check in, and again, there were no signs indicating which line we were supposed to be in. We asked, and found out to our dismay that it was, in fact, Linezilla. We weren't the only ones confused either -- everyone around us was asking everyone else, and sending scouts out to find out the deal. When we'd been in the line for about 45 minutes and could actually see the counter, the devil, dressed like an airline employee, started calling other people to the front of the line!! Yes, that's right, the idiots who couldn't be bothered to arrive a couple hours early got cuts! We started joking with the people behind us should grab that lady and lock her in a closet. Anyway, we finally got through check-in and security (not a big deal the whole trip -- we had to take our shoes off a couple times, but never even got our bags searched), and decided to get a muffin at Starbucks. I grabbed a table and Mom waited in the world's second longest line for a couple mediocre pastries. Then we waited for the plane for quite a while. After we boarded, we had to ride around on the tarmac for another hour (I know I exaggerate sometimes, but in this case, we were supposed to take off at 9:30 and took off at 10:30 instead). Then finally we were in the air. The first half hour or so reminded me of the field trip I took once with my ghetto middle school students. Everyone was shouting at each other and singing along with their headsets and laughing and asking the flight attendant for blankets and pillows and trying to trade seats with other people and just generally being rowdy. Then it settled down, but I did begin to experience my first bad flight -- you know how everyone complains about the lack of space and crying babies and stuff? This was that flight. The guy next to mom took the whole armrest and another 6 inches or so, both people in front of us reclined their seats all the way, the ADHD teen in front of me was bouncing, and the little girl behind me was kicking my seat nonstop, despite her mother's gentle reminders not to. Had I known what was coming, though, I would have PRAYED to keep the kicker. Because she and her mom traded for a mom with an 18-or-so month old, who was standing on his mom's knees and bouncing his stinky little diapered ass against my headrest with glee. He also had an incredibly healthy set of lungs and spent about two hours of our trip exercising them right in my ear, screaming at someone six aisles back (the dude could have heard this kid from Idaho). We gently shushed him a couple times, btu I was getting really irritated. I decided I should be more charitable. Maybe he was just bored, I thought, and I could tell him a story. I started thinking of all the stories I knew . . . Where the Wild Things Are, Frog and Toad, Winnie the Pooh . . . and then the morning's second devil appeared, this time on my left shoulder. I leaned over, snickering, and told my mom of the story plan, and that I could tell the story of the little boy on the airplane that wouldn't stop screaming. She finished it for me, in more vicious detail than I'd conceived of " . . . and the other passengers beat him bloody and threw him out the window and he landed in the ocean and the sharks were circling, but the giant underwater dinosaur got him first!" This will sound like exaggerating, too, but it's not -- I was actually afraid my eardrums might burst, since I was experiencing actual physical pain, and I go to rock concerts! I usually am not irritated by kids and their behavior -- I'm a big old kid-lover, and tend to find even their most repellent behaviors kinf of cute, but this kids was the Neutron bomb of noise. I put my earphones back in and turned loud music on. It calmed down for a while, and got rowdy again at the end, but it was also my first plane ride where the passengers applauded the landing, which was kind of cool.

We had to RUN to catch the connecting flight (from terminal 8 to terminal 1), but just as the guy tore our boarding passes, he got a message that they were de-boarding because the plane needed some mechanical work. We didn't wait all that long, though, and then we boarded again. It was massively hot on the plane until we took off, and we had to sit on the tarmac for a while. This was a much smaller plane, maybe ten rows long, and it was another first for me, my first propeller plane! It was a 40 minute flight, and we landed at Tortola/Beef Island. Oh, I should have mentioned that as we flew into Puerto Rico, we could see all kinds of coool colorful buildings. It looked neat. There was a guy named Royce waiting for us, and we went through Customs, and he met us and said "Biras?" Biras Creek is the resort where we stayed, and we actually hadn't heard it pronounced before. We thought it was Beer-ass, but it was Byre-ass. He loaded us and another couple (Luke and Kristin, honeymooners who had just moved from Michigan to Georgia) into a van and drove us about 50 yards to a dock, where we got on a pretty big speedboat. Mom really wanted to drive it. We chatted and looked at the scenery. You can think I'm retarded if you like, but you know how you always see pictures of tropical waters, and they're this intense bright aquamarine color? Well, I always thought that was fake, or the photographs were enhanced, or it was only in certain places at certain times of day, but I was wrong! It really looked like that! I was seriously impressed, I have to tell you. Do you remember Bob Ross, the PBS artist guy? He used to use a color called pthalo blue all the time, and the water was that color. It was just after 4 when we got there (they don't do daylight savings time, so we didn't slip into a different time zone), and we were taken straight to the dock at Biras Creek, where Gabby, a sweet blond Canadian met us with a gold cart to give us a tour of the resort. We saw hiking paths, the gift shop and cafe, the bicycles they provide for you to get around on (you could walk to most of the resort's beaches and things, but it would be a pretty long walk in the hot weather), an iguana sunning spot, the pool, the office, the dining room, the bar, the Arawak room (where tea is served), the beach, the place to get snorkelling gear, the place to take boats out (dinghys and sailboats), another place to get kayaks, windsurfing gear, and catamarans), the library, the snooker room, the spa, and finally our room. It has a bedroom and a sitting area, as well as a nice closet, a patio with an ocean view and a bathroom with an outdoor (enclosed) shower. They even provide bug spray (if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have skipped it one night!).
We almost immediately went to get tea (nothing much to eat on the plane) and they had delicious scones and a raisin muffin thing that was surprisingly good (oh yes, our culinary luck was changing drastically). Then we went to rest a little and get ready for dinner. Gabby had said we could dress "as elegantly as you like," which kind of worried us, because in packing, the adjectives we had in mind were more like "comfortablle, lightweight, versatile, small . . . " Meaning, I had a lot of capri pants and t-shirts. Same for Mom. Actually, I also had picked up a few things in New York, so luckily I had a few skirts and dresses. Some of the other women were really dressed nicely, like in cocktail dresses! I had a pine-nut encrusted goat cheese salad with mango basil vinagrette, and a puff pastry box with roasted vegetables. Dessert was lime sorbet and a taste of Mom's mango sorbet. They also brought us a plate with two little bites of brownie and two halved strawberries with whipped cream. Everything was delicious! Incidentally, there were several brief rainshowers, including one as we went to bed. All for now.

More New York

Tuesday (day 3 in NY).

This day was more of a mixed bag. We had another great breakfast at the Dylan (with the same Madonna album blasting), then walked to the subway and went to NYU. I partly just wanted to see it, and partly wanted to get my sweetie a t-shirt. I always thought it was like a campus campus, with school buildings sorrounding a central lawn or something, but it was actually just buildings on city streets interspersed with other, non-campus buildings. We did a little shopping in Soho -- a Victoria's Secret, a Fluevog store (cute shoes), and Kariktur, which had Tintin stuff among other junk. We had a cold drink in Little Italy, then took the subway to the Battery Park area so we could catch a ferry to Liberty Island. The line was really long and for the first time it felt uncomfortably hot and muggy. The ferry ride was nice, although we got on almost last, so we had to sit on a lower deck, and on the side you couldn't really see from. Nevertheless, as we approached the Statue and got our first glimpse (of her backside, no less!), we were pretty much awestruck. We stayed for quite a while on the island (partly because our feet hurt again and we were having a nice talk sitting on the grass. I guess it's kind of a touristy thing to do, but we were tourists! And it was pretty powerful, actually, to imagine all the people for whom Lady Liberty was their first vision of the country, and all the people for whom she is a symbol of freedom and hope. Okay, I'm a big weepy girl, but I got a little teary again. We got on the ferry again (on the top deck this time) and got some goood pictures of Ellis Island, but didn't get off, because the lines for the ferry were increasingly long and we didn't feel like waiting in yet another to get off, get on, get off again. Also, it was after 2 and we still hadn't eaten lunch. Summary: Statue, amazing, lines, sucky.

Then we went to ground zero, and I had anticipated getting choked up again, but actually there wasn't much to see, just a big hole in the ground and some construction fencing. Besides, I was REALLY hungry by then, because we hadn't been able to find the subway station and had walked, and my feet were beyond sore and all the way into unbearable. Now, Mom's friends Don and Rebecca had told us both that they ate at a fantastic restaurant across from Century 21, a store across from ground zero. We walked around pretty much three sides of the store, but couldn't remember the name of the place, and nothing rang any bells, so finally we just popped into a place with a nice front. Unfortunately, that was all that was nice about it -- it was yet another cafeteria-style place (oh my god, how many of these does one city need?), and it was late in the afternoon, so everything in the buffet was super-old. I had some hard fried rice that my fruit salad kind of got mixed into. Pretty yucky, actually. Then we went to Century 21, which everyone had said was supposed to be this shopping mecca where you could find designer clothes for something like ten percent of the original price. Well, in my estimation, you probably can, if you don't mind that they are either ripped to shreds or the absolute ugliest shit the designer makes. It was like a Ross or Marshalls -- you could probably find some good stuff if you had all day to root through the garbage, but I do not have the patience. I thought I might have more luck in the shoe department, but only found one pair I liked, they didn't have them in ym size or the color I liked, and after I opened a few boxes I discovered that they were all in the wrong boxes, to boot. Lame-ass lame.

I started to get an inkling of how the subway is actually laid out when we took the subway back home. See, it appears on the map as though there are seperate subway stations for each different line, but actually, the subway stations can be accessed from several different entrances, and they extend several blocks, so that you can catch different lines from the same station. We had a really medioce Thai dinner that evening. Spring rolls were okay, deep fried with sweet and sour sauce, just like I like 'em. But our curry and fried rice were only palatable. Both came with totally tasteless tofu (go ahead, make fun, but when tofu is deep fried and cooked in a dish, it picks up a lot of flavor), and the pineapple fried rice had exactly three chunks of canned pineapple. We took the subway back to Grand Central, and OH MY GOD! It's BIG! We had actually been in it twice before and never even seen the Grand Concourse, because it's so huge you might not even know it was there. Man, I couldn't believe the height of the ceiling! I got a little dizzy trying to look at it. It's painted with the constellations and it genuinely beautiful. I was suprised to find out how really lovely the room was. It was also huge -- there were about four restaurants in that one room alone. We ate dessert (an okay chocolate-y cake thing) there. It may sound stupid, but Grand Central was actually one of my favorite place.

Wednesday (day 4).

Last breakfast at the Dylan (somebody really thinks that Madonna is great breakfast music). We walked to the Empire State Building, since we had been told that it was best to get there early in the morning. The people that work there were really not very helpful, so we ended up waiting longer than we probably needed to. One lady yelled at us that we needed to go in this room, and the lady in there yelled at us that she wasn't open yet. There was another room with a ticket window next door, but it kind of looked cordoned off, so we idled around there, since the lady in that window never looked at us as though she was open and we might be welcome to approach. Now, movies would have you believe that you just waltz up to the top, a la Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle. Oh no. You purchase a ticket. You wait in a line. You take an elevator. You wait in a line. You get your picture taken, you wait in a line. You take another elevator, and THEN you get to the observation deck (although they make you go through the gift shop to get there). Ultimately it was worth it, though, because you get a great view of the entire island. You can see all sorts of things that you might not notice from the ground, too, like this gold castle-like thing on the top of an apartment building, and all these rooftop gardens. On the way out, there are no signs directing you which way to go, and the guards all just stand there silently, but if you turn the wrong way, they shout "NO" at you, and then tell you point you in the right direction. Couldn't they have said "this way, please" to start with? Then we walked back to Times Square to catch the double decker bus that takes you on the uptown route. We saw Columbus Circle, more of Central Park, the Lincoln Center, Julliard, the Upper West Side, Columbia University . . . we saw places where MLK, the Dalai Lama and Albert Einstein had spoken (within a few blocks of one another) . . . the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Grant's Tomb, the Apollo, Harlem, Clinton's law office, the projects, Mt. Sinai, and the schoolyard where the fight scenes were filmed in "West Side Story." We got off the bus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and our tour guide gave us some good advice -- don't try to see it all in one day. He said that he was a lifelong New Yorker, and that he'd been to the museum over 100 times and still never seen all of it! Amazing, huh? It's one of the three biggest museums in the world. We basically stuck to two art deco exhibits, though we did get sidetracked in an Egyptian room and I saw my first, second, and third mummies. We decided to eat lunch there, and tried the rooftop cafe first, but it was yet another pre-made sandwich on ice joint, so we decided to go downstairs and eat in a sit-down cafe. But when we opened the door to the roof, it was so humid that my clothes instantly got wet and started clinging to me. It felt like when you put on clothes straight out of the dryer, and they're hot but not yet dry. Laugh if you must, but having barely ever left California, I'm not used to humidity at all. We had a decent sandwich in the cafe (again, nothing spectacular), but what was cool was that there were huge windows all along one wall overlooking Central Park, and apparently that sudden-increase-in-humidity thing tends to be related to the onset of rain (okay, I'm a rube, whatever). We saw cool lightning storms, and it really started raining hard! We went into the lobby to try to call to confirm our shuttle, but everyone from outside had rushed in, so it was insanely crowded. We ended up looking around just a little bit more (I hate to keep beating this dead horse, but my feet really hurt), then we caught our double decker bus again. This time, because it had been raining, the bottom level was completely full, and the top was empty because the seats were wet. Mom and I and a few other people braved it up there, since we were pretty much wet already, and it was actually really fun. I was laughing most of the way, because the tree branches were extra heavy with water, and were hagning low. Every time we passed under a tree, we had to duck, and the leaves hit the seat in front of us and shook water all over our backs! I don't know, it made me laugh. We passed all those horse and carraige set-ups at one corner of the park, and the really expensive apartment buildings. We also passed a 20 year old hawk's nest on an apartment building -- at first we thought the guide was talking about a metaphorical hawk's nest, some sort of architectural feature or something, but no, there was really a gigantic bird nest on this building! We also saw Carnegie Hall and the apartments of Latoya Jackson, Madonna, Raquel Welch, Nicole Kidman, and Mayor Bloomberg. Apparently, some apartments in this neighborhood (on the South side of the park) are selling for $35 million dollars. An APARTMENT, dude. Whoa. After we got off the bus on 45th, the rain came gushign down again. The gutters all flooded, and even though we bought an umbrella, we got completely soaked. It wasn't cold though, and we weren't uncomfortable. We stopped by the internet cafe, where I informed my Piggs about the impromptu wet t-shirt contest, then walked back to the hotel room to use the blowdryer and iron to try to dry all our clothes so that we could pack them away. We went to dinner a little earlier than usual because our shuttle was supposed to come at 5:30 a.m. By that time, we were pretty disappointed with the meals we'd had so far, and we decided we would try to get a slice of New York style pizza in New York. We asked the concierge for a suggestion, and she didn't know, so she asked someone else, and he said there was a place at Madison and E 43rd called Little Italy. Perfect, only 3 blocks away! We started walking, and due to my bad navigation (actually, to be fair, I was really good at navigating except for this one evening, and my mom, who's usually exceptionally good at orienting herself, was a little lost for most of the trip), we ended up walking a few blocks out of our way. When we got to the appointed corner, it was raining, and there was not a pizza place in sight. Giving up, we decided to walk into the next inviting-looking place. We bypassed a TGI Fridays (note: there were a TON of chain restaurants all over the place, and they were packed to the gills), and went into Annie Moore's, a sort of charming looking place that seemed to have food. Again, no veggie food on the menu, so Mom had a New York Steak and I asked for a grilled cheese sandwich. I've had both better and worse grilled cheeses in my life. It was about equivalent to the ones I used to get in the cafeteria at my work. The chocolate cake we had for dessert was good, though. I reminded myself to tell my Grandma about it, because it was named after the first immigrant to get processed at Ellis Island, an Irish teenager. Grandma loves that Irish shit. It was a decent place with subtle decor, nice moulding and paneling. We returned to the hotel, made sure everything was dry (we had washed some clothes, too, and they didn't dry on their own very well), then packed and set the alarm.
I'm posting again so I don't lose it. Here we go.

Part one, Manhattan

Airplane rides.

Okay, our journey started with a red-eye from Sacramento to Dallas/Fort Worth. I had a window seat, which was cool because the last time I was on a plane I was five, and I only remember it very vaguely. It was dark, obviously, but nevertheless I could see the lights of the cities, and that was cool. They're strangely beautiful, they way when you're closer to the ground they kind of resemble maps made out of Lite Brites, and when you're up higher all you can really see is a glowing constellation. As we neared the Rockies, we could also see a lightning storm over the mountains, looking almost like white ground flowers on the Fourth of July. I didn't sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, partly due to excitement, but partly I'm just not good at sleeping around other people, or sleeping sitting up (and those airplane seats really do not allow for any lounging!). It was dawn when we got to Dallas, and Mom and I both had a hot cocoa. The guy who served us said "Thanks, y'all" in the absolute swishiest gay Texas accent I have ever heard. It was cool. We didn't have to wait all that long to board the next plane to New York, and Mom bought a paper while we waited. The ride to New York was brighter, and longer, and a little louder. I had a window seat again, and got a little sleep/rest. I put my iPod earphones in and listened to Joni Mitchell. I'm sure I was mouthbreathing and I was really relaxed, but at the same time I was aware of every song that was on, so I'm not sure you could call it sleep. I also looked out the window a lot again. So much of the country is covered in water and farmland! When mom spotted the Statue of Liberty, Mom whacked me on the arm in her excitement. We arrived at LaGuardia and had to wait for a while for our shuttle. While we waited, I heard my first New York accent over a P.A. ("Wait until your numbah is cawled.")

New York!

Traffic was nasty bad, and it took us an hour to get from La Guardia to midtown Manhattan. We found out later that several streets were closed off due to a Dominican Day parade, but honestly I think the traffic there is pretty bad all the time. The honking you hear in movies about New York? Totally accurate. We couldn't even figure out what people were honking at or about most of the time, it was just a nonstop staccato of honk. They let us check into the hotel a little early, and then we were HUNGRY, and even though it was lunchtime there, we were still hungry for breakfast. We found a place around the corner from the hotel that served pancakes and eggs, and we went for it. We called our respective sweeties to let them know we'd arrived, then hit the road. First stop was the NY Public Library, which looks just like it did in Ghostbusters! Then we walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was amazing, gigantic . . . the architacture was astounding, as were all the stained glass windows. I lit a candle for my grandfather (I'm not Catholic, but he was) and for good measure I tried to say an "Our Father," but I forgot some of the words - it's been a long time, okay -- but then I recovered. Still, I'm a little embarrassed to have flubbed like the most common prayer ever in a house of God that actually might inspire one to believe. We passed several famous stores, like Tiffany & Co, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, as well as Trump Tower and a store I'd been wanting to go to called H&M. We walked part of the way into Central Park, but kind of dead-ended at the zoo and had to back-track out. We kept passing carts that smelled heavenly (roasted nuts), and carts that smelled revolting (pretzels, but the salt and aluminum foil on nearly all of them smelled charred. While we were out, some guy accosted and "fined" us for looking like we were having a good time. He was asking for donations for a homeless program, and Mom gave him money and he gave us two free NY hats and some kind of goofy religion pamphlet. Then he made us do a yoga cheer, "Jai Neto something." Then we returned to the hotel for a nap. When we got up, we went to Times Square for the first time. It was a little confusing to us, because we were actually expecting a square of some kind, when in reality, Times Square is just the name for a neighborhood that seems to stretch several blocks. We ate at Viva Pancho!, a Mexican joint that was only okay (we didn't know then that this would foreshadow our dining experiences for the whole trip). Then we went back to walking, seeking out landmarks like the Ed Sullivan Theatre (hey, we're both David Letterman fans). We walked all up and down Madison, Park Avenue, 5th, 6th, and 7th. The streets were incredibly crowded, to the point that at times we really couldn't even see around us. There were a lot of smokers -- more than at home, for sure. There were also street musicians and performers everywhere, but no plain old panhandlers. We stopped by Bryant park, behind the library, and they were supposed to be showing "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" on an outdoor screen. Quite a few people were gathered already, and Mom and I found some chairs and watched the cartoon (Foghorn Leghorn), and the first few minutes of the movie, but then they had projector problems and we left. We decided to walk to the Empire State Building -- we could see it clearly and it looked close by, but was actually quite a walk, and when we got there there was a 45-60 minute wait. It was about 9:15, so we went to a Starbucks (yes, they're everywhere) and got an iced tea and waited, thinking the wait might get shorter as the evening wore on. Nope -- when we came back it was 60-75 minutes! It was 10, so we went back to the hotel and I wrote the notes that helped me write this.

New York, day 2.

We had breakfast at our hotel, the Dylan. They were playing a newer Madonna album really loud, but had a surprising array of delicious fresh fruits, including several kinds of berries and melon. Then we went back to the Times Square area and wandered around. Mom had arranged for us to have these things called the New York Pass, so we went to Madame Tussaud's to pick it up, and Mom took a picture of me with Wax Samuel L Jackson and Wax The Rock. We didn't actually go in, although it was free with the pass, but those guys were in the lobby. With my arm around Samuel L, I said something to the effect of "Say 'what' again motherfucker" and some guy laughed. We also used the internet cafe next door to again communicate with respective sweeties. We walked back to our hotel to ditch unnecessary sweatshirts, then walked to Bloomingdale's (where we also ate a mediocre and painfully slow lunch) and Barney's. Barney's was not like I expected -- it was really spread out, and not crowded at all. I thought it would be cool to buy Monkeygirl some argyle socks, but they were $25, and does anybody relaly need $25 socks, even if they are from Barney's? I thought not. We also noticed for the first time today that some of our preconceived notions of New York were totally off-base. We thought we'd see socialites dressed to the nines, or at least that the general populace would be somewhat stylish, but basically everyone in the entire town was in the same "state worker" uniform -- a navy suit. In fact, Mom and I got asked for directions by someone who thought WE looked savvy and sophisticated. Then we walked to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it was beautiful from the outside, but, sadly, closed on Mondays. We were a little tired of walking, but decided to go to the Guggenheim instead, and stopped on the way for a cold drink. Man, the Guggemheim was COOL! Fuck the art inside, the building was a masterpiece. I mean, I like Frank Lloyd Wright anyway, but this sealed the deal -- the view from the ground floor looking straight up was phenomenal. I bought a couple postcards and a little souveneir (I didn't have much room for stuff like that, because I only packed one carry-on bag). Then we walked straight through Central Park, which was lovely -- we passed a bunch of nannies walking babies, and some joggers. I didn't realize there were city streets that cut through it, either. The paths were very windy - you would almost need a map to navigate it well. We wanted to go to Strawberry Fields, but it was still a long way, so we took our first subway ride. It was cool -- so fast and efficient. Cheap, too. You can go as far as you want for only $2 -- that's much cheaper than BART in S.F. Also, our feet were killing us -- 21 blocks is a mile, and by that point we'd walked for about 9 hours straight. Strawberry Fields was cool - just a little piece of park with a ton of benches circling a central mosaic with the word "Imagine" in the center. I will cop to getting a little bit weepy (it was only the first of several occasions). A compentent guitarist was singing and playing Beatles songs, and in the fairly short time we sat there, maybe a hundred people came by and sat down, took pictures of the mosaic, got weepy themselves . . . and what was really cool was that they were speaking so many different languages! It seemed that people from all over the world were there to check it out. There was even a group of Japanese tourists whose tour guide had a name tag that said "S.T.D. tours." Then we checked out the Dakota, which is where John Lennon was shot. We went back to the hotel and got dressed for dinner -- a little fancier this evening, because we decided to go to the Algonquin. Now, for the average person, that name might not even ring a bell, but for a literature geek like me, I was FREAKING OUT! Dude, home of the Algonquin Round Table? Basically, a bunch of famous writers used to sit around and get drunk and talk there, and the group included Dorothy Parker, whom I adore. For the first time in years, I ran into a menu that didn't have a single vegetarian entree, but I had two appetizers instead, an asparagus and portobello thing, and split pea soup. They were delicious. I also had my most expensive cocktail ever -- a $13 cosmo. The building itself was beautiful, too. Then we went back to Times Square and got on a double decker bus for the evening tour of downtown. It went through Soho, Greenwich Village, Hell's Kitchen (which is now called Clinton for the sake of yuppies that are gentrifying it), and we went over the Manhattan bridge to Brooklyn, past the Statue of Liberty and back. We saw Al Capone's birthplace, a church and a former NYPD headquarters that have been converted to nightclubs, a building that used to be a women's prison that housed both Billie Holiday and Mae West, the fire escape where Courtney Love went crazy and got hauled off to Bellevue, and Bellevue itself! We also saw the world's biggest Macy's and the world's biggest record store (a Virgin), the biggest clock in the world -- it's odd, because Manhattan Island is actually quite small, but it seems to have a lot of biggest things. We saw a place where Lincoln spoke, and a place where Mary Todd Lincoln caused a scandal by buying $6000 worth of dishes. We saw a jail called the Brooklyn Tomb, a park where 2,000 people are buried because of a typhus outbreak, and in the same park, a 300 year old hanging tree. We also passed a bunch of celebrity apartments, but I don't really remember who besides Denzel Washington. Soho is short for "South of Houston,' and apparently Houston is pronounced "How-ston." I also saw a ton of buildings that I recognize from movies. After the tour we walked quite a bit more, trying to find dessert. Unfortunately, NY seems to be a little bit lacking in cozy coffee shops and dessert houses (at least where we were looking), and we ended up getting an okay brownie at a cafeteria-type shop. Also, it may be the city that never sleeps, but apparently that doesn't hold true for every district, because to the east of our hotel, everything was locked up tight. In my notes from this day, I start to express bewilderment that we haven't run into more simply amazing food, but conclude that maybe I am hard to impress because of all the great dining in my town, and in Napa and the Bay Area. Little did I know . . .

(Oh, incidentally, I'm going to post now, just because I'm afraid that pretty soon I'll hit a button wrong and lose this whole post.)

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

I think there's something about a big fat pig in that nursery rhyme, which is pretty apt right now. First of all, the food we had in the Caribbean was so insanely good (probably the best food I've had in my life) that I could never resist dessert, or pain au chocolate with breakfast, or a rum drink with coconut, or one little cookie or scone at tea . . . So in one way, I'm a pigglestein because of my big jiggly belly. And it's also appropriate because even though I started with SPF 50 and moved up to SPF 70 (did you even know they sold that shit?), I got a relatively dark tan for me, and I am about the color of a honey-baked ham.

The short version is, I took a plane with my mom to Manhattan, saw every tourist attraction that exists, and then took another plane to Tortola and a boat to Virgin Gorda and did a lot of eating and playing in the ocean. Now, if that's not enough detail for you, I actually filled a whole notebook with my adventures, and I promise to include quite a lot of that on this here site. However, it may come in installments, because now that I'm back to my real life, I have stuff to do at school, band practice, ballet classes, house and garden stuff, and other random things to keep me from being on the laptop all day long.

I had a great time, though, and don't feel too jet lagged, and can't wait to see me sweetie again! (Just over an hour now.)

Last minute ramblings

Well, I'm about 36 hours from heading to the airport to leave for New York. I'm really excited, though I know I'm going to miss the heck out of my sweetie. I just wanted to log on to say a few tiny things.

My morning glories got their first blooms --- they're beautiful. I almost understand those gardening freaks, because it really feels amazing to watch things grow and know you had a hand in it.

I went to the drive-ins the other night and saw "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle." It was FUNNY. Unbelieveably funny. Bust a gut funny. Irritate people in other cars by laughing so hard funny. Sing along to Wilson Phillips' "Hold On" funny. Lose my red licorice straw into my Diet Pepsi funny. Afterwards we stayed for Anchorman, which also had its moments, but I weas tired, and it didn't compare to Harold and Kumar for me.

I'm trying to go to as many extra ballet classes as possible, because I missed 2 weeks, and when I went back Tuesday my legs were so sore I could have cried. Yikes!

I get to make curry tonight. Yay! I hope I don't have major leftovers, though, because they'll go bad while I'm gone. I plan to use fresh basil and peppers from my garden.

Uh, I've got more stuff to do. If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I'm on vacation!

Take care of yourselves, and I'm sure you'll get an earful on the 20th or so.

The Kissing Disease

I should probably not even say this, because I usually reserve some of my best scorn and derision for hypochondriacs, but I'm beginning to wonder whether I have mono. Seriously, I've been super-extra tired lately, way beyond normal. In fact, I've been taking NAPS, and I'm usually not a big napper. When we were in Portland, every afternoon by 2 or 3 I started feeling like the only thing I wanted to do on earth was retire and nap for a while, but I attributed it to the excitement of travelling, and the fact that we had been pretty active. But since we've gotten back I've felt simply exhausted, too, and I haven't done anything to warrant that. And now that I'm wondering, it occurs to me that right before the tired-thing struck, I had a sore throat for about 2 days. There are two other explanations I could hypothesize: I haven't been taking my iron, and I could be a little anemic. It's certainly happened in the past. Second, usually when school gets out, I do go through a sort of crash period. I know it sounds strange to people who work all year round ("Poor baby, on summer vacation"), but my job requires so much emotional investment that I do usually need about a week of doing absolutely nothing, and it didn't hit me earlier this summer. Maybe it's just catching up with me late. Today's entire activity list -- read the newspaper. Contacted band members regarding practice. Showered. Went to the mall to see whether I could spend my Pottery Barn gift certificate. Ate lunch out, reading my book. Napped. Soon I shall have band practice and go to sweetie's. The end.

Xtreme Bowling

I had several dreams last night, but the only one I can remember is "Xtreme Bowling." We all went to a bowling alley and bowled, we just didn't use the alleys -- we threw our balls down the hallways, steps, through the bar, around the scoring machines . . . and you had to jump over them and dodge them as they came at you.

STRANGE HAPPENINGS AROUND THE HOMESTEAD

So, while we were gone, a broken bottle of Mexican hot sauce appeared on the back doorstep. I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but I could tell from the way the glass was broken that it wasn't thrown over the fence, but rather dropped right there. There was no spilled hot sauce, so it was empty when it got broken. Nothing was taken or vandalized -- in fact, I had left keys to our band van in plain sight on the patio table, and they were untouched.
Also, on Tuesday our streets got resurfaced, and on Tuesday evening my mom (who was watching the house) took the garbage and recycling to the street. On Wednesday afternoon when she came back, the cans had been rolled back up the driveway, full. Also, all the neighborhood cans had been put away, which is unusual because most of my neighbors don't put the cans away until they're home from work, at least. Mysteries abound.