From downtown to out of town

It seemed the city fates were smiling on us Friday afternoon.

I had an informational interview with the editor of asap, the AP's new 18-34 news wire -- he was the roommate of Joe, one of my News Service coworkers, back when they were up and coming punk reporters. As I was getting ready to leave, he mentioned in passing "Did you know they're looking for a product manager for asap?" No, I didn't know that, and I can't find the job posting anywhere but he gave me the name and email of the woman doing the hiring. Nice little bonus info for my time.

Afterward I suggested to John that he meet me down in Tribeca for lunch.
Wednesday night, we watched Michigan lose the Alamo Bowl to Nebraska in the same heart-breaking way that seemed their pattern this season. But one bright spot in the evening was meeting Otto, a Michigan alum who for years ran a mystery bookstore in midtown and recently he moved The Mysterious to Tribeca. He raved about how Tribeca is unlike any other part of New York, much friendlier and more architecturally diverse, so on the heels of our expedition to Astoria, we were intrigued.
I shot down from the AP to Tribeca, which is waay south on the island, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, and looked for a place to meet John. A place called The Soda Shop caught my eye, and I peeked in to see if there were tables. It was the lunch rush, and they were busy, so I asked if it would be OK to hold up a table while I waited for my husband. The waiter insisted it was fine, then the owner sent over an amazing complimentary hot chocolate while I waited. Yes, this place was the right choice, I thought.
After John arrived, we poured over the Zagat guide to figure out where the good restaurants in Tribeca are, and hopefully by extension, what the main drag is to check out. Then as we were leaving, I asked the owner what we should see on our first trip to Tribeca. He crouched by our table and gave us a great explanation of which streets are busiest, and which are the boundaries of the neighborhood ... then he walked us out of the store, up one street, over a few blocks, all the while talking about the renaissance of Tribeca, what's just come in within a few months, construction that's still happening. Keep in mind this is the owner of a restaurant, giving strangers a walking tour of the neighborhood during the lunch rush, and it turns out he's only been open maybe 6 weeks.
We wandered extensively, including popping into Robert DeNiro's restaurant, Tribeca Grill. Since we still haven't made plans for New Year's, we asked what they're doing, and the hostess explained that they didn't have any more tables for two for the $150 per person five course dinner. Then another woman added that they could do a table near the bar, if that interested us. Then a guy who I assume was DeNiro's coowner, just by how he seemed in charge and he was doing paperwork this whole time, hops up and says they could do a table near the band and though some people don't like that, you're right in the heart of the action. We said we wanted to think about it, and he told his hostess to give us her card so we could call her directly to make a reservation. I joked about waiting until the last minute, and he joked back that's how he lives his life. No pressure to decide, we're just kindred procrastinating spirits.
Craig, the owner at The Soda Shop, had all but insisted that we go to the restaurant his friends Kevin and Sharif were just opening that day in the Woolworth Building, because they could let us in to the lobby of the building. The lobby of this cathedral to commerce is closed to tourists, so it's not something everyone gets to see.
Kevin dropped what he was doing to walk us though the lobby, then offered us espresso, on the house.
A few minutes later, Sharif came by and chatted with us about how a customer had let him know the space in the Woolworth building was coming available, how Craig had given him the antique cash register at the bar, and generally about how good the neighborhood is. I told him we were thinking of moving into the area -- which by this point, we were -- and he wrote down the name of a friend of his who owns some buildings in the area. OK, so now a guy who's in the midst of opening a gigantic new restaurant in one of the best known buildings in the city was taking the time to give us a real estate contact.
Otto said he had a store in midtown for almost 30 years and he never got the feeling anyone noticed or cared if he was there. When he arrived in Tribeca, neighbors continually popped in to welcome him to the neighborhood and introduce themselves. Apparently even visitors get that kind of treatment.

After walking around Tribeca, we hoofed it all the way down to the bottom of the island, past Wall Street to Battery Park, and past the Stock Exchange, which was just crawling with cops. I thought they might have the street closed for some sort of last-day-of-trading celebration at the end of the year, but when I asked the cops what was happening, they said it's been like this every day since Sept. 11. I'm all for protecting people's lives, but it felt excessive -- more like keeping people in a state of fear to justify this ridiculous occupation of Iraq than because it was necessary. Not unlike the security screenings at the airport, which I think are more about making people feel safe than anything else.
But I digress ...

We met a an MBA friend of mine, Chris, at Penn Station and took the train with him out to his place in Summit, NJ, where his wife, Kara, made a fantastic Italian dinner. Their neighborhood felt like an older street in Plymouth, with nicely maintained historic homes. It's almost an hour's train ride from Penn Station, and this is Chris's daily commute, as Kara works as a reporter at a New Jersey newspaper and it's sort of splitting the difference. In all fairness, though, it took me about 40 minutes to get from our apartment to the AP by subway, so having an hour-long train ride where you get a comfy seat and a smooth ride above ground rather than standing up in a noisy cave isn't an intolerable thought.

That said, though, if we're going to move to New York, I want to be a part of it. I don't want to commute from the burbs, I want to walk out my door and feel the energy of the city. If we can afford it, I think that could mean Tribeca.

Michigan alumni in NYC

The Park Avenue Country Club, a huge sports bar, was packed from wall to wall with Michigan alums for the Alamo Bowl Wednesday night. It's a little weird to be in the middle of Manhattan and be in a bar where everyone's wearing blue and gold, singing the fight song, and talking about where they lived when they did their undergrad.

I reconnected with Sarah, a super energetic alum who quit a great job at Yahoo to chase her dream of entrepreneurship. She's recently launched a candy company that's gotten writeups in Business Week and Epicurious, among other places. To my friends back in A2, you can find Sweet Riot candies at Zingermans, and if you like Scharfen Berger, you've really got to taste Sarah's chocolates.

That's it for now. Gotta get started packing. :-(

One week and counting

It's hard to believe we're in the final days of our month in New York -- there are still so many things we wanted to do that we haven't gotten to. But Mary Jean warned me that even when they spent three months here last winter, they didn't put a dent in their to-do list, so I was prepared for this.

One thing we just checked off our list today: a trip to Astoria in Queens. It's a surprisingly fast subway ride out there, faster than getting to the Village, but culturally it's so different. It's said to be one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the country, and it sure looked it -- from the faces to the restaurants, it was a real mix. Architecturally, it feels more like a neighborhood in Chicago than like Manhattan, with commercial buildings of maybe four or five stories at most, and a few homes that even had driveways and garages. Archie Bunker lived in Queens. That's what many of the side streets look like.

We had late lunch at a Greek place called Uncle George's, on Jen's recommendation. A whole feast of great food, including some of the best tsadziki I've ever had, for under 20 bucks.

Then we had a spectacular Turkish coffee and dessert at Mombar, a crazy little Egyptian spot where the owner is a former computer guy who's now both the chef and the interior decorator, having designed amazing chandeliers out of pieces of picture frame and intricate tabletops out of buttons. I knew it was my kind of place when there were three dessert choices, and one of them was "chef's surprise." Naturally, I chose that, and was rewarded with this amazing plate of shredded wheat with chopped nuts, half an apple with sweet sauce, ice cream and blueberries. You see it here in front of John.




One of my favorite things about traveling in New York is that instead of being hermetically sealed in the bubble of your own car, you're interacting with the world -- smelling food for sale from carts on the street, and seeing all the little shops in your neighborhood, for example.
Part of this experience is an incredible array of buskers. Now every city has beggars and panhandlers, but in New York, these are real performers. For example, the day after Christmas I was coming home from the overcrowded overrated sale at Macy's when I heard an opera singer down on the train platform. I expected to see either a hipster music student or an old Italian man, but instead a middle-aged Asian guy had set up a full-sized keyboard on a stand and was belting out Amazing Grace for travelers.
Tonight we saw four guys singing Motown, wearing matching sweaters and headset microphones. They even had choreography.
























Christmas in New York was beautiful -- though a steady rain made it more of a wet Christmas than a white Christmas.



We had coffee at Caffe Reggio, the place that was reportedly the first in the U.S. to serve espresso.

Then we played Boggle at Chumley's, next to a real, toasty-warm fireplace. Besides all the literary goodies on the walls, I love that Chumleys always has dogs hanging around.












We finished the night in the East Village at Cucina de Pesce, an Italian place we really like that's in a cozy, downstairs spot and lit almost entirely by candlelight. This photo makes it look really bright -- damned flash! -- but it's actually more romantic and dark, like the black and white one below.

Strike two

With a fistful of Motrin and copious stretching, I'm trying to recover from a full day of activity sans subways.

Yesterday I hopped into a cab for breakfast in the Village. I was feeling a little cocky about the transit strike as I sailed south in a cab with two strangers ... then we hit midtown and people walking on the sidewalks were passing us. It took me about an hour to finally get to the Village, about 80 blocks south of where I started.
The payoff was breakfast with Bill Serrin, a CMU grad who won a Pulitzer for covering race riots at the Detroit Free Press, who went on to write at the NY Times, then become an author, and then head of the graduate journalism program at NYU. We discovered that he lived a few blocks from my mom's house in Saginaw, we graduated from the same high school, he worked at the Saginaw News and Ann Arbor News, as I did, and we even share the same birthday. Kismet.
After breakfast, he gave me a walking tour of the Village. I've been there dozens of times, but Bill teaches a class called Writing New York, so he pointed out things like the place Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Cask of Amontillado and where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, plus lots of places that have some connection to Bob Dylan and the beat poets. Bill's students typically love one point of his walking tours: the exterior to the house in the Cosby Show.

After that, I figured since I'd paid 20 bucks to cab it to the Village, I might as well enjoy some time there, so I bought some cheese at Murray's and some bread at Amy's next door, then hoofed it across the island to Moo Shoes, a shoe store that specializes in non-leather products and that advertises heavily in PETA's magazine and Vegetarian Times. They had some cute stuff, but to say the place is poorly run with lousy customer service would be an understatement. What is it with hippies and bad customer service? Do you have to be a Republican to know to greet the only customer in your store, or to clean up the dirt and cat fur on the floor?
I left with no shoes, but I was near Guss Pickles, the only traditional pickle purveyor left in the pickle district of the lower east side, so I figured it'd still be a worthwhile trip. Damned transit strike. I was ready to pick a peck of pickled pickles, but when I arrived, Guss was locked up tight with no sign outside about when they might open.

Back in a cab, with a fantastic driver who knew how to manage a city in gridlock, and home for a bit. Then another cab ride across the park for a second interview at Columbia.

This time I met several of the writers and we talked for a bit about the vision for what The Record could be. It sounds like I have a strong chance of getting the job, if I want it, so my big internal debate is whether to stay in academia and risk getting pigeonholed, or hold out for a job in the media industry, which continues to lay people off in droves.

I shared a cab home with a woman who works in executive education at Columbia's business school, and it struck me that the transit strike does have some upside -- you get to connect a little with your fellow New Yorkers who are making the best of a bad situation.

We were supposed to have dinner with John, Anne's brother, but he's getting sick and decided to rest up before going home for the holidays, as opposed to dealing with annoying travel sans subway.

With our night off from socializing, John and I went for a walk in the neighborhood and made up for the Guss disappointment with a visit to Pickles Olives Etc. The olives are OK, but the pickles are superb and the pickled tomatoes are better than any I've ever tasted. Our fridge is loaded with brine, and while I was wondering if we could finish it all before we go, John's already talking about what we'll buy on our next trip.

So the tally yesterday was about 80 bucks in cab fare, more walking than I want to total, one job interview, one fun meeting, two meetings canceled because of the strike, and a little less than two weeks to go in the city.

Social in the city

If you're looking for a comment on the transit strike, that's the next post down. This one's just the social update.

Here's Sunday night dinner at a cozy little Italian restaurant not far from our apartment -- on the left are John's old roommate Jeff; Chris, an evening MBA alum who now lives just a few blocks from our sublet; Andrea, an Ann Arbor townie who's friends with a coworker and who lives in our 'hood; and Sarah, one of our out of town guests. Across from Sarah is Saejin -- they're both former MBA classmates of mine. Then that's me making a faux-surprised face, and Teebs chowing down on the bread basket.
If you're ever on the upper east, try the sardine pasta at Carino. Super yummy. The spaghetti and meatballs only had two meatballs. OK, so they were bigger than softballs. ;-)

After dinner, we went the Auction House, a cool little bar/lounge about a block from our apartment. It's all candlelight, with red velvet drapes and red velvet couches and an abundance of curvaceous nudes on the walls.

Strike!

Today is the first transit strike in NYC in 25 years. That meant all the cabs are booked solid and Sarah and Saejin couldn't get a cab to the airport to fly home today. Instead they had to walk about 50 blocks south to Grand Central to try to get a shuttle bus to LaGuardia.

Their flight isn't until 6 p.m. tonight but they decided to start walking before lunchtime, just to make sure they got a bus in time for the flight.
Here they are bundled up for that long walk.
















I did pretty well in my MBA negotiations class and I have to say that in my educated opinion, the MTA and the city are doing a lousy job.
First of all, the MTA had about a $1 million surplus heading into negotiations and instead of putting that toward the emergency training the union wants ... or just shutting up about it ... they made a big, public display of giving half-price rides for the holiday season. Why? It's unlikely that cut rate rides will encourage more people to ride, or that it's even a goal to get more people onto an already busy system.
Second, I've read that the average salary of the union workers is $55-62k a year, and their position was demanding 8 percent annual raises. They also haven't had to pay anything for their health care, or for their pension, and they've been eligible for full pension at 55 years old. Seems to me the MTA could easily say "These people are making a good living for a low skill job, and nobody gets free health care and free pension any more, particularly government employees."
Third, Bloomberg had weeks to prepare for this strike. His contingency plan is an elaborate pricing structure for taxis. Since it's illegal for the transit workers to strike, why didn't he have thousands of replacement workers trained and ready to work? Instead, they keep talking about how they can fine strikers $25,000 a day, but that doesn't keep the city moving.

If this is how they've handled it so far, I'm not optimistic this will be settled soon.

Making it a bigger drag, John had a lunch meeting today with one of the editors of the New Yorker -- and he had to cancel because the strike is lousing up his commute and he doesn't have time to take a lunch.

Guess we'll be staying close to home today. I have a breakfast meeting scheduled in the Village tomorrow. I'm crossing my fingers that something's happened. Otherwise, I think it's going to be a 20 dollar cab ride down there, assuming I can get a cab.





Key issues in the NYC transit strike

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Key issues:

PENSIONS: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority originally wanted to raise the age at which new employees become eligible for a full pension from 55 to 62. The union objected. The MTA later agreed to allow pension eligibility at 55 for new employees, but asked that they contribute 6 percent of their salaries for their first 10 years of employment.

WAGES: The MTA had proposed annual raises of 3 percent. The union wanted considerably higher pay increases; a later MTA offer included annual raises of 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent.

HEALTH: The MTA wants new employees to contribute 1 percent of their salary to pay for health insurance. Transit workers currently do not have to pay anything for health insurance.

SECURITY: The union wants disaster-preparedness training, following transit system bombings in Madrid and London.

HOLIDAYS: The latest MTA proposal added the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Picture pages

Pictures pages, picture pages, now it's time for picture pages ...

I've got some catching up to do, photowise, so let's start with our very first NYC dinner party, which ended with a lengthy game of charades. Anyone can act out books and movies. Can you do current events or food and wine?











Next, the one and only photo I got to take at Jazz at Lincoln Center, before one of the staff told me there are no cameras allowed in the theater.
Still, you'll be able to tell from this picture that we had amazing seats -- we were stage right, and I was literally directly behind the monitors. We probably sat closer to Wynton Marsalis than I would have been at the Elbow Room for Lenny's band on Thursday.



Finally, some pics from Top of the Rock, the recently reopened observation deck on top of Rockefeller Center.
Parker got to town late Thursday and one of the things he really wanted to do was Top of the Rock. We got there just in time for sunset -- it was beautiful and chilly.

Star gazing

Outside of organized events, we haven't seen a single celebrity and it's ticking me off.

I want to bump into Sarah Jessica Parker buying bagels.
I want to see Philip Seymour Hoffman pushing a stroller in the park.
I want to see Dr. Ruth playing frisbee with her dog.

Where is Jerry Seinfeld, damn it?

Allegedly the upper east is a good place to see stars. So where are they?

Rock and roll history

Last night we saw guitar legend Les Paul play in a cozy little basement club just off Times Square.

He's 90, so not surprisingly he doesn't play with the frenetic abandon of youth. It's more finesse playing, like the way two partners who've known each other for 50 years dance -- no wasted motions, total knowledge of what each movement will do.
(OK, so I was thinking more that it was the difference between sex in your 20s and sex in your 90s, but for some reason I was trying to be more G-rated.)

It was more like a jazz club night than I expected. A quartet including a piano, standup bass and rhythm guitar played standards like Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Begin the Beguine.

Les was playful and seemed to be really enjoying himself.
The piano player was talking between songs about all the things he has to think about when he's improvising -- pace and where he's headed and what everyone else is doing and technique ... Les said, "I don't think about any of that." "What do you think about?" the piano player asked. "My wife's sister."
Early in the show, someone in front was taking a picture and Les stopped the song they'd just begun to pose with his band mates. Flashes started going off like mad, then Les flipped the finger and said "This is for the guy driving in New Jersey."



http://www.iridiumjazzclub.com/les.shtml
One fateful night while performing in front of an outdoor crowd, Les became frustrated that people farther back couldn’t hear him. Les Paul created an electric guitar and amplification system out a radio, the earpiece of a telephone and a needle from a family record player that he jammed into the fret board as a "pickup"! Les'guitar and voice were now heard by all. However, the resulting vibration and resulting feedback had to be contained. Les experimented by stuffing clothes and plaster of paris in the guitar; he even went so far as attaching a string to a hinge placed at the end of a railroad track. The sound was perfect. When Les showed his mother his accomplishment she replied, "You’ll never see Gene carrying that thing around". So he settled on using a 4x4 block of wood attached to an Epiphone neck. When the audience paid no attention to his playing because the instrument was too strange, he attaches two non-functional "wings" to the 4x4 so it looked like a normal guitar.The fans loved the sound and the solid body electric guitar was born! In 1950, Les started his design of the Les Paul model for The Gibson Guitar Company, which has become the world’s best selling line of electric guitars.

This could make life interesting

It appears the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway and buses, and the Transport Workers Association are playing chicken.

The union's contract expires this week, and over the weekend, they authorized a strike if the MTA doesn't come to the table with a better deal. Apparently the union is insulted by the measly 3 percent raise MTA offered -- which is as good or better than the University of Michigan has given its staff for the last few years. Maybe I should apply to drive a subway train?

The New York Times says:
Even though there has not been a transit strike since 1980, even though state law bars such walkouts and even though union and management say a strike is unlikely, a strike is always possible, and this year the chances appear higher than usual.

Newsday story
New York Daily News story

In a city that's completely dependent on public transportation, where the streets are already congested at rush hour, where getting a cab can be nearly impossible, the weekend before Christmas could be absolutely manic if this strike happens.

Good thing my good walking shoes finally showed up in our UPS box.

Show and tell time

UPS finally decided to deliver our boxes, almost a week and several angry phone calls later, so we finally have the cord to upload pictures from our camera to my computer.

So for an easy weekend read, here are some pics of our first week in the city.

First, the sunsets have been incredibly beautiful and the view of them from our south and west facing sublet is tremendous. I tried taking several photos of the sunsets off our balcony, and unfortunately, I just can't do them justice. Guess you'll just have to trust me. They're fantastic.
For folks who know NYC, the twin tall buildings in the distance are the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, on the southwest corner of Central Park.



Second, can you see the little hand-written note on the closet door? When we got here, Ben had posted little labels with what's in each closet, which one had room for us, which ones were private, etc. Really considerate. It made me smile.












This is us getting ready to go to First Friday at the Guggenheim. John has a tradition of taking pictures of himself using the camera's timer in the mirror of places he visits, so these sort of fit into that genre.







Here's us in our seats at the Producers Thursday night -- it was good, but neither John nor I feel compelled to follow Al Hirschfeld's lead and see tons of musical theater.



Finally, John's old Michigan Radio pal Brook is in town from Colorado this weekend, celebrating her birthday, and these are some pics of us going out last night with her and some of her friends here, plus Jeff and Barbara.

Cross your fingers!

This is to all the naysayers who shook their heads and said nothing happens in the world of hiring in December --

My fellow jobseeker Parker just sent me a great sounding posting at the AP that went live Dec. 1:
Deputy Director, Business
http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/jobseeker/jobsearch/job_detail.html?job_id=J565138HN

I'll ask them about it when I'm down there schmoozing on Friday. Then I'll chain myself to the door, like a hippie on a redwood, until they hire me.

Not all fun and games

Yes, we've seen Dan Akroyd and Donovan at book store appearances, yes we've feasted all over town, but we do have some serious work to do here.

Today I turned in a freelance piece for the Ann Arbor Observer. I still owe one to LS&A magazine, and to Michigan Today, so tomorrow's likely to be a writing day, too.

Later today I have an interview at Columbia for the editor's job at their faculty/staff newspaper.
Friday I have meetings with two people I would love to work for at the Associated Press.
Yesterday was breakfast with a great guy who's head of Dow Jones' integrated advertising effort.

Who knows how any of the job schmoozing will pan out, but at least the freelance gigs are helping to pay the inflated rent while we're here.

The great textile shortage of '05?

When JT checked out the apartment, he naturally looked at the layout and the location.
What he didn't ask was whether our landlords had any sort of aversion to linens.

We've found napkin rings but no napkins -- not cloth or paper.
There are no washcloths, which is very European, but I don't think you could say the same for no dishcloths.
There are no blankets. I don't mean extra blankets. Just blankets. Or blanket singular. There's an enormous heavy duvet on the bed, so the choices are to sleep under 42 pounds of feathers or go without.

I understand that in a 700-square-foot apartment, you live leaner than Midwesterners are used to. But if you have several sets of sheets and an array of decorative pillows, not to mention a huge collection of albums, perhaps you could squeeze in room for a dish towel?

I broke down and spent 15 bucks on some washcloths and a hand towel, and we bought a dish sponge and some handiwipes. Who knew we shoulda packed that stuff?

Hopefully they have blankets in their storage room, but if not, we'll need to ask our guests to bring their own.

This is the sort of stuff that's entertaining about not just becoming temporary citizens of the city, but taking up short term residence in someone else's life. HT is probably mumbling similar things about how we could be so crazy as to live the way we do.

Things I love, things I don't

I love eating in this city -- we've had great Vietnamese, Indian and Mexican, we bought yummy cheese and bread and veggies to eat at home. My taste buds love it here.

My nose is less happy. Our apartment smells alternately like a litter box or natural gas. If we keep the windows open to air it out, it's not bad, but if we close up to leave, it's noxious when we return.
The cold winter air helps, but some streets smell horrific. It's not just trash on the curb bad -- it's like years of accumulated vomit and urine or something.

I love walking around. There's always something to look at -- interesting store windows, great people watching, people who look just like their dogs.

Riding the subway is less great. Sometimes it's fine, but today I was 15 minutes late for a breakfast meeting because a broken rail shut down the train I needed. Not knowing how to formulate a plan B on the fly, and without hope of getting a cab during the morning rush, I hoofed it about a mile.

The local markets are fun. Tiny little shops with curious selections and colorful guys (and it is almost always guys) working the counter. The Italian shop on our corner in particular is fast becoming a favorite stop.

FreshDirect and Food Emporium are dreadful. FreshDirect is the mega-marketed online grocer, and when they botched my order and left out a loaf of bread, it became a major challenge to get a refund for it. They wouldn't just deliver my bread, which is what I wanted, or refund my credit card, which I'd have accepted. They wanted to give me a store credit. With past-their-prime mushrooms and no packing slip to check against, I don't want a store credit! Food Emporium, meanwhile, is the big-ish neighborhood grocer, with high prices, limited selection and painfully bad customer service.

Thankfully, there's a Whole Foods in Columbus Circle (where we were last night to see Dan Akroyd and John Belushi's widow).

I'm especially peeved with UPS right now.
We shipped ourselves two big boxes last week to avoid having to schlep too much stuff on the plane. They were to arrive either Friday or Monday, but didn't. Today I tracked them online and found they'd entered the address wrong: E. 80th instead of E. 89th. Now here's the great part: they have my phone number on file, but when they discovered the address was wrong, did they call? No. Instead, get this -- they send a postcard to the recipient. That's right. They send a postcard to an address they know doesn't work to resolve the issue of an address that doesn't work. Not a call to the sender, not a postcard to the sender, not even Googling the recipient to see if they can find a problem with the address.
It's ridiculous. Isn't a phone call faster and cheaper, and more likely to get results?

Overall, though, we're having a great time.
People are almost without exception friendly and helpful. Pull out a map and you're all but certain to have a stranger offer to help you find your destination.
We've gotten lots of help making the whole thing work, from our neighbor down the hall helping us when we had stuff to move in, to our vet calling in a prescription for Haley's food to the vet across the street.

The Times is my local paper now

Sunday morning with a cup of coffee, reading the Times (for $3.50, mind you, not five bucks like in A2), and listening to an ipod shuffle of relaxing music, this is the life.

I've got an Observer feature to write this afternoon, and I still owe a short piece for Michigan Today, so I get to play a freelance writer in the city. I wonder how many other wordsmiths are sitting at their laptops all around the island right now? If only I had a cosmo and a sex column half written on a Mac ...

Last night we had a fun night out with Parker's friends Jim and Courtney, including a late-night stop for drinks with John's old roomie Jeff and his sig O Barbara, plus maybe 10 of their friends. Standing around a crowded bar, stepping out of the way of the pool players and chatting with folks, it felt almost homey. Maybe it's not a city of 8 million strangers. Just 7,999, 900?

In the movie of our life, this would be a flashback scene

Slightly out of chronological order, here's the comedy of errors tale of our departure for the Big Apple.

Thursday morning comes and in spite of our copious planning, John and I were still scrambling to get everything done in time to leave at noon.
As John was heading out the door to go pick up HT for housesitting duty, I started to slice myself some bread for toast -- and tore deep into my thumb with the serated bread knife. I applied direct pressure, I held it over my head, and yet it was still bleeding when John and HT got back.
All of this wasted time I needed to spend getting ready, and soon it was well past 11 a.m., when I'd wanted to give Haley her kitty tranqs for the flight. I tried to catch her just before 11:30, and she lost her marbles. I trapped her in our basement bathroom and she screamed and yowled and bit my shoe when I tried to get near her. Giving a cat a pill is no treat normally but I couldn't imagine how I was going to hold her long enough to jam the thing down her gullet.
About 20 minutes into the cat debacle, Matt showed up to give us a ride to the airport. The brave soul came downstairs with oven mitts on and volunteered that he's pretty good with angry cats. Much against her will, he got her into her cat carrier and I whisked her off to the vet to let someone there help with the pill problem.
She must have worn herself out, because once she was in the carrier, she was mute -- and stayed that way for the rest of the day. The receptionist at the vet was able to grab her by the scruff and give her the pill with zero effort. They must have thought I was the biggest loser not to be able to do that.
Matt got us to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and the Spirit Airlines woman kindly put us in a three-seat row to ourselves, so I could have Haley under the seat in front of me but still have room for my computer bag and such.
I cringed when a woman sat down directly in front of John with a baby who began caterwauling before the plane even took off, but soon that baby and he one behind us mellowed out.
The flight was uneventful, our taxi ride in a breeze, and the doorman at our high rise loaded all our bags onto a cart to help us make it up in one trip.
We opened the door and I was assaulted by the smell of urine. Yikes, I thought, can I live for a month in a place that smells like this?
The baby across the hall wails that full-throated raspy scream that almost sounds like an angry cat ... and I should know.
But as we stepped out onto our balcony, nothing, not my thumb wrapped in blood-soaked gauze, not my bitchy cat still hiding in her carrier, could take away from how amazing it was to be here.

Now we've aired the place out and it smells better.
We can't hear the baby at all in the bedroom, so even if it's yowling time, we can escape it.
My thumb still bleeds a little if I catch it on something, but it's doing better.
Haley's even adjusted to the new place enough to hang out in bed with us -- something she won't even do at home.

Some of the cool stuff we've already done:
* First Friday at the Guggenheim -- imagine a dance club blended with a high class cocktail party in the lobby of one of the world's best known museums. People of all ages drank and shouted over the DJed music, and many even looked at centuries-old Russian art.
* Saturday morning at Greenmarket in Union Square -- so this is what farmer's market is like when you live in a huge city. Great selection, even better people watching. Just be judicious in your purchases since you'll have to schlep it all home on the subway.
* We popped in to literary hangout Elaine's (on Woody Allen's birthday, but we didn't see him there)

I've also worked out in our building's gym, we cooked a spaghetti dinner, and we slept in -- generally trying to live a normal life in our home away from home.

I'd give you some photos, but as seems to be the way for us, we're suffering technical difficulties. We don't have the cord that connects our camera to the computer. Maybe it's in one of the boxes we UPSed to ourselves? We'll find out Monday.

We're moving on up, to the east side ...

We arrived, we're unpacked, the groceries I bought online got here just before we did, and I've connected to Ben's wireless network -- all is good in the world.

I'll give a more detailed report later, but I have to get going for a morning manicure. Good New York girls always have their nails done, ya know.

One quick laugh: our building is called The Monarch. If you watch the Venture Brothers, that will surely make you think of ...