Happy to be home!

In the span of just over a week, I was in Kansas City, LA and Baltimore -- these were regional meetings with AP bureau chiefs from all over the country, and it was great to get to meet them in person since I work with them by email and phone quite a bit.

Still, that much coming and going (it was back to NYC in between each, not from one place to the other) was pretty tiring. Especially the trip back from Kansas City, which included a layover at Chicago Midway and a cancelled connection back on the low-cost, low-service ATA.
The upside of spending a surprise night in Chicago was that three other travelers in the same boat became fast friends and we hung out in the airport bar laughing about the situation. The guys even started going off on the ATA desk on my behalf when everyone else got an 8 a.m. flight the next day but I was told the soonest I could fly out was 5:40 p.m. Here are my traveling companions:











To wind down after long hours away from home -- up 'til midnight, then starting meetings at 7 the next day -- John and I lazed away a lot of the weekend in Central Park.
A few observations about Central Park:
-- whatever you do there just seems to be normal. If you want to do tai chi by yourself, or make out with your boyfriend, it seems like people are not at all self conscious about treating the park like their own back yard, which they happen to share with a few million other New Yorkers.
Take for instance these guys playing guitar. In the first picture, two guys who didn't know each other both brought their guitars to the park and one asked the other if he'd like to play together. In the second, a guy smokes a cigarette while he plays his guitar ... and his pet rabbit hangs out behind him.












-- the cell phone has not only become ubiquitious, but it's changed how people behave. People no longer meet their friends by saying "I'll be by the big tree at 2 p.m." Instead, the last person to arrive calls the party that's already there, and the person getting the call stands up, waves, and starts to describe everyone around him or her, playing a sort of electronic Marco Polo. It's almost uniform the way it's executed dozens of times a day. I especially like if there are multiple people waiting for a friend. Those who are not on the phone will call out something like "Tell him to look for the guy in the white T-shirt," because it seems no one thinks the person giving directions is giving the *right* directions.
Also, is it just me, or is it strange to see people sunning in bikinis chatting away on the phone? This girl was calling a guy who it sounded like she'd maybe met at a party or been introduced to by friends. That means everyone within earshot was getting to hear her try to be nonchalant calling this guy and flirting.











Then back at home tonight, John and I took one more step toward becoming official New Yorkers -- we were sipping tea after dinner, reading the Times, when John felt something tickle his foot.
Ewwww.
Still, even though it's our first cucharacha, we couldn't kill it. John captured it and sent it to cockroach heaven by dropping it down our trash chute.


This weekend we were supposed to host Barry and Carrie, who were on a week-long road trip that was to wrap up in New York. Instead they had car troubles and had to call off the last stop on their trip. Doggone it. Though we probably wouldn't have been great hosts, what with still being pretty unsettled here and me being worn out from traveling, it would have been great to see them. Maybe sometime soon.