Fake Gingerbread Fake Village

A warning upon the notion of misrepresentation: when you see articles and blurbs on Time Out New York and such about how you simply need to go to Madison Square Park to witness in person the fantastically fun Gingerbread Village to celebrate the wintery holiday season, and even when you click on said articles and blurbs and view the pretty pictures, do not add it to your Must List. Instead, add it to your If I Want To Waste Hours Of My Time List. In fact, simply add it to no lists. Click away, walk away, build your own gingerbread house.

Flashback: Last year, S and I spent a lovely day learning at the New York Hall of Science while also taking a stroll down Gingerbread Lane which is exactly what it said it was: a lot of gingerbread houses built across a wall of the museum.

Flashforward: S and I stood on line for over an hour in the cold during SantaCon to walk through a gingerbread house that was not real gingerbread nor was it a village.

Village: a group of houses and associated buildings, larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, situated in a rural area. (Thank you, Bing).

A group. A GROUP of houses. This is one house. 

Okay, so it's not a village. But it's a house, right? A gingerbread house.

S was disappointed because it wasn't real gingerbread. Nothing about it was real. Not the ginger, not the bread, and not the icing. I wasn't as let down because I didn't expect it to be real because squirrels and birds would eat it.

I did, however, expect a group of houses because it's supposed to be a village. I thought maybe there would be even cardboard 2-D houses and then one to walk through. Nope, this was it.

We stood on line because we were there already. At least we'd get to delight in whatever they thought the inside of a gingerbread house might hold. As we neared the outside, it was cute. Some decoration was questionable, but for the most part, cute.

Cute

We're adorable, too.

It's that square window in the middle panel that's questionable.

I have a version of this in which I smeared out the guard, but having the guard at the gingerbread house is funny.

One of eight pictures S took of me in various poses.

Cute

We wound around to the front and waited some more.  I went to check the other side to see if there was anything special around the house. There was not. However, there was this pretty tree next to us.

And across from us were where the hammocks have been outside of the Flatiron Building for a while. However, the hammocks were down; I'm guessing because of SantaCon.

SantaCon

Please explain.

Hammock holders

Cowboy Santa

No Hammocks Here

 Finally, we made it to the front! And then we went inside! And! Then!

You know how when you're a kid, you can take an empty cardboard box and turn it into anything you want? Like in 3rd or 4th grade, or maybe it was 5th, I made a time machine out of a cardboard box that probably once held a refrigerator and we used a real doorknob held on with duct tape (which was a really big deal from me because I didn't know you could just go to a hardware store and buy a doorknob) and on the inside were drawings we made of swans based on a book we'd read and a chair. Maybe S has a better memory of this than I do if she was involved in this project, and I think she was. Anyway, it was a cardboard box we turned into something neat.

Back to the gingerbread house. It was empty. Our cardboard box had more in it than this house. This house had a projector on the ceiling. Instead of furniture made out of gumdrops--even if the gumdrops weren't real!--they had projectors. The guy who pulled back the curtain behind the door to let us in told us that we could stand in front of each projection and move around and the images would move, too.

So that was it? Motion-sensored projections on the walls of a cardboard box?

By now, everyone should know my problem with motion-sensored anything. In general, doors don't open. Just last week, I was at FoodTown. I grabbed a cart and stood in front of the door. It wouldn't open. A woman came up next to me, grabbed a cart, and still, the doors wouldn't open. We both moved back and forth, further away and closer, and they wouldn't open. We expressed our dismay and disbelief until two other women without carts came up behind us and wondered aloud what we were doing. We explained that the doors wouldn't open for us. One of the women walked between us and the doors opened. I exclaimed, You have the magic touch! She didn't answer because, you know, me, so we all shuffled into the store quickly before the doors closed again.

Also, the sensor light on my garage has not been working at all. It comes on when you swing the car really wide across the street to come into the driveway. Other than that, it doesn't detect anything, and I wind up parking in the dark where the raccoons may lie in wait.

So back to the gingerbread. I spent a few minutes slinking back and forth in front of the projections, not getting much of a response, while right behind me, the children were jumping and delighting in cartoonish glee. S was not pleased, either.

The popcorn pops over the stove.

There's a tree that doesn't do anything.

The lollipops whir in a circle.

The snowman comes in and out of frame.

The gingerbread man stands up and then his other friends do, too.

This is mostly what I experienced. Nothing happening.

There's also a fireplace animation that shows photos people have taken and tagged with #holidayheritage. I have no idea what the hell that hashtag has to do with what we were doing.

When we came outside, we took a cute picture without the guard.

And then people were asking if it was fun and if it was worth it and S was like, if you want to waste your afternoon, and I was like, well there are cute interactive animations if you like that kind of thing but the line is too long, and S was like, No don't do it, again.

Then we went to Yamamama to meet up with LH and her sister, and that made it all better. If you plan to go next year to the gingerbread village, you can simply go to Yamamama and look at the lone standing fake gingerbread house from across the street.

To end my day on a fabulous note, I saw this on my way home. 

It's a dog in a coat on the train.

Sabbaticalling: Weekly Roundup #20 -- The End!

With an epic push towards reaching goals, creativity and progress revved up immensely this past week. I found the core of my full collection and a way to go about revising it. I read a little, I wrote a lot, and I even researched.

Let me say that again. I researched.

Me. The lazy poet. The lazy writer. She who makes things up because she is also the she who does not do research. She did. Me did. I did!

I workshopped with my artist friend. That lead me to figure out how to set up a new order for my poems and where I need more.

I listened to back episodes of both Golden Walkman Magazine and The Other Stories. Give a listen when you have a moment. I also listened to Two Dope Queens, not that that has anything to do with sabbaticalling other than I had time to listen to it.

I went to the Public Art Fund exhibit at Metro Tech Commons with S. Hank Willis Thomas's The Truth Is I See You stretches out along the walking path. A line of poetry appears in either a conversation or thought bubble attached to a lamppost. Each line is in English on one side and in another language on the other side. The pole has a sign that says the language and how to say the phrase phonetically. Poetry is art. Art is poetry.

Cranes can talk, too.

And then there was the everyday art, which is always inspiring.

I submitted work to journals. I applied for a blogging gig and a workshop teaching gig. I also began to watch Transcendence to get sci-fi inspired, but it was so horrible that I turned it off. I rarely turn off movies. It was pretty bad.

And since this past Monday was the last day of the Spring semester, my sabbatical is now over. I don't have a final full collection published to show as an outcome. I don't have something that recognizable or tangible. I mean, I have poems. A lot of poems. Those are tangible. But the overall outcome of what I got from sabbatical is not something anyone can hold. The experience, the being in it and doing the everything in it and the savoring the ability to be able to do it, is the best outcome here. Passion for reading -- reignited.  Passion for writing -- reignited. Passion for going out in the world to do lit and art related things -- reignited.

I'm not exhausted or fuming. I'm exhilarated. I'm not saying that returning to teaching will make me exhausted or fuming. I'm saying that the years of teaching, and dealing with all the politics that come with it, had brought me to a brink of sorts. Sabbatical allowed me to decompress, revisit the core of who I am, what I do, and what I'm capable of doing, and now I'm back to good. (Side note: Wasn't there a song in the 90s called Back to Good?)

But for anyone who needs something more concrete than all that, this final week brought me a new best friend. His name is Sinbad. Such an awesome way to end all this.

Sabbaticalling: Weekly Roundup #14

I went outside into the world twice this week. Like I mean out out.

1. I read for First Tuesdays as the feature at Terraza 7 Cafe in Queens. That's right. Crossed the county line and everything. It was a great gig for a really supportive and fun crowd.

2. I went to the Whitney Museum to see two exhibits. The new location necessitates lots of walking, which is beneficial for Project Pants Fit. Also beneficial was taking the stairs throughout the museum instead of waiting for the elevator. Waiting for a museum elevator is like waiting for Godot, except that, well, I have no idea what Waiting For Godot is about, so really, I wrote it because it sounds like it's probably true. (Sidenote: I fuzzily remember S reading it for a college class when I visited her in Boston. I could be making this up.)

So far, I have no signs of having picked up any kind of illness from any kind of germy tissue-carrying man on the subway. Hooray.

Another out was workshopping with my artist friend. I got some good ideas for reworking some of the newer poems I wrote. I wrote and revised a bunch of poems this week both before and after workshop. I also submitted to a bunch of journals and updated my tracking spreadsheet for submissions and places to read.

After months of back and forth emails and planning, I finally finalized the first phase of setting up a reading for some Dancing Girl Press poets. I also kept planning some Poets In Nassau events. More on all of those as they develop.

Between getting out, I read. I finished a novel, began a non-fiction collection, and checked out Blunderbuss, Flapperhouse, Electric Literature, The Toast, and Fence. Then I listened to a podcast I found that's new for me but has been around for years called This Podcast Will Change Your Life. I also listened to Serial and I realized that listening to Serial really is part of my sabbatical because it really shows how to put together a stellar podcast in addition to how to tell a story from different points of view in different ways without it feeling scattered or getting confusing. So there. Sabbaticalled!

I blogged a bit--I Am Blogging Now--and then updated most of the pages of this blog to redirect to my new website. I'm almost there with the new site. I've added a bunch of pages, and once I get the podcast going (oh, yeah, I should keep working on that and not think it will create itself), I'll be able to link that there, too. I need to make the jump from here to there for blogging eventually. Right now, ooh, blogger, it's my home and I can't move right now.

A lot of the work I completed this week took place at my new desk.

As part of Project Pants Fit, I want to stand more. So instead of purchasing a desk that can go up and down electronically with the option of a treadmill below it, Eddie made me a desk out of a cardboard box. I stand at it and dance to the radio as I type. It's an excellent addition to Project Pants Fit as well as my home office decor, even if it's not exactly in my office and is in my kitchen.

Why You Shouldn't Ignore "Boot Camp" When The Class Is Called Cardio Boot Camp

Focusing on the word Cardio and not actually reading the words Boot Camp, I accompanied S to the gym to take an early afternoon class. I figured it would be something different, it would help with the pants situation, and because she had guest passes, it would be FREE. After sitting in traffic for over an hour, walking to the gym was a luxury. We signed in, found a locker and figured out how to lock it without much effort, and then walked around the gym until we found the right room.

We saw a few people in the room. The woman at the door was like, You're here for class? And I was like, Cardio? And she was like, Yes. Then as soon as we'd entered, she told everyone, Grab a step. I looked at S like, This is step aerobics? We both decided to use one set of bracelets (I don't know if that's what they're actually called, but that's what I've always called them. They are the thingies you put under a step to make it a level higher). S was like, these looked like the ones from gym class. I was like, They totally are. She was like, There's only one step? I was like, Only one like this.

Flashback: we took step aerobics in gym class in high school. It was the only time I ever enjoyed gym class. All the other times, you know, like, playing volleyball and taking the Presidential Physical Fitness test during which I couldn't hold myself in a chin up position for more than a second, those times--not fun.

So the music came on and the instructor was like, Just tap your feet on the step. Then two people were outside the door she'd locked, so she told us to keep going as she let them in. One of them stood in the front, and the other set up her step back to the left of me, which was a bit too close. Then she left. She came back a few minutes later with a tissue. Of course she did.

Then we went from tapping the step to basically jumping up and down over and off of it. There was a lot of jumping, running on top, running around, hopping, kicking, jumping over and around, jacking and straddling, and of course, stepping up and down. There wasn't a dance component as this was not step aerobics. This was, indeed, a boot camp. S was bright red and I looked like I had never worked out a day in my life. The room was also very hot, as was the rest of the gym, so I stopped a few times, a few seconds each time, for water and to make sure I wasn't going to pass out. This is becoming a trend with me working out in public places.

During the class, the woman who had come in late and put her step too close to me was making it her own whenever she was actually moving. However, she spent a good amount of time blowing her nose. She also spend some time sitting on the step and then positioning herself in a way that I can describe only as napping. The instructor kept telling us to go at our own pace. When the instructor was close to the Napping/NoseBlowing woman behind me, I heard the woman say something to her, and then the instructor responded, Then you shouldn't be doing that at all. I don't know what she told the instructor or what the "that" is, but I can make a really good guess that the "that" was Working Out.

The instructor told us at one point to grab a heavy weight. My heavy weight was five pounds. Other women grabbed eight and ten. Nope. No thank you. We did a series of moves that involved arms and steps and turning and lifting and it was a whole lot of weight stuff that was toning and cardio all in one. 

The instructor made her way around the room a few times. S described her instruction style as the Billy Blanks version: doing the move once or twice, and then not doing the rest of the reps. I suppose you can't do Boot Camp every day all day as an instructor, but I looked at the schedule and she'd had some sort of Chair Fitness class right before ours. She could have worked! (Okay, I don't know her life. Maybe she was on her way to marathon training afterwards).

Towards the end, there were mat exercises like push-ups, walking planks, and then a series of ab movements that also involved leg lifting and lots of reaching. Then we had to use a lighter weight to do some of the moves. I used my five pound heavy weight as the lighter weight, too.

I looked at the clock during one of the transitions and S caught me and laughed, saying that it made her feel better that I was looking to see if it was all over yet. I was like, Yes, I'm dying, and I'm apparently not a fit person.

That's not to say that other people weren't struggling. Some were struggling more than others. Like the woman behind me who had left at least once more and continued to nap and blow her nose.

We all clapped when the class was done. Then S and I went to find a place to sit. She suggested that maybe this class as a first class had been too ambitious. Why? Because it's friggin Boot Camp. Still, we got through it. AND we walked back to her place afterwards. That's where I devoured an apple and some turkey slices and then headed home to sit for a while. Sitting is good sometimes, too.

Morgan, Hemingway, and Me

The Morgan Library stands in midtown in NYC, a few blocks from Penn Station, which makes it one of the easiest museums to visit. Why I've never been there before remains a mystery wrapped in stupidity tinged with laziness. Hemingway's A Moveable Feast had me mesmerized as much as McLain's The Paris Wife had, only this time, it was Hemingway's own voice, and it was non-fiction. Then I came across the current exhibit at the Morgan Library -- Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars.

Serendipitous! I had to go! Of course, I found out about it two days before it was to close. I was free on a Friday. The Morgan has free admission on Friday nights from 7 to 9. Serendipitous again! I love free! I love libraries! I love Hemingway!

The Morgan Library's midtown location means a lovely evening walk to Madison. In my head, I repeated 1, 2, 3, Little Piggies Make 5 to make sure I knew how many more blocks to go.

Sidenote: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Lexington, Park, Madison, 5th. Mind blown? I thought so.

No stranger to overheating after a brisk walk in a winter coat, I arrived at the Morgan quite warm. The winter evening was not a typical NYC winter evening. The temperature sat around a balmy 39 at sunset. Inside the museum, you have to check your coat or wear it. I opted to check it because the building generated its own balminess at what felt like a mild 807. I stripped off my scarf, gloves, and coat and stood on line to wait. Then a museum official person came over to me and two people behind me to take us up the stairs and around a corner to a second coat check. So there's your tip of the day--go to the second coat check.

Fancy room across from the second coat check

Of course, once I found the exhibit, there were people walking around holding their coats. The coat check is free. Follow the instructions! Some were following instructions, wearing their coats. These people also generated a quite unpleasant stench. Again, the thermometer read, I'm estimating, 807, so they dealt with that while wearing winter coats.

I found myself sweating at first, too, because, well, I'm prone to sweating, but also because my feet were all cozy in new winter boots that are probably the warmest boots I've ever owned.

Flashback to like two weeks ago, I'm meeting S in the city to see Sisters (incredibly funny movie!). As I'm walking to the theatre, I hear behind me some guy say, Eskimo boots! Eskimo boots! He didn't so much say it as exclaim it. I looked around. Then I looked down. Oh. I was Eskimo Boots. It was the first time I was wearing them, so it was the first time I noticed how brightly white they were. The woman he was with agreed with him: Eskimo boots! Yes, Eskimo boots! Sometimes I acknowledge this kind of thing. This time, I did not because they weren't actually talking to me. They were talking to each other, and then they were off ahead of me, crossing against the light, and then hollering things about other people they clearly did not know. Anyway, I suppose what also made them Eskimo boots that our lovely couple could not know was that they were really super warm, and I'd arrived at the theatre practically doing a strip tease.

So while oohing and ahhing at the first set of journals and letters of Hemingway and his friends, I focused on not passing out. Lots of crowding and bunching happened at first, but then people found their own groove of looking and reading, so it thinned out, and finally cooled down.

We were not allowed to take pictures. I took pictures. I did not get caught taking pictures. I'm guessing two reasons we could not take pictures. Either everything was copyrighted or they wanted everyone to buy the $35 book from the museum shop. Thank you no thank you. I'll take my on the sly blurry pics any day over that. I also spent much time scribbling down interesting tidbits from the letters, the pictures, and the explanations. Because I'm not an asshole, I'm not going to post pics from inside the exhibit here. In fact, I feel so bad about it that I'm deleting them right now. (No, I'm not).

I had about fifteen minutes left after seeing the exhibit before the museum closed, so I went to see some of the permanent rooms. The rotunda, the study, and the huge rooms of books are pretty and awesome and pretty awesome.

Gutenberg Bible

Phyllis Wheatley, the first published African-American poet

I checked out the museum store to see what Hemingway books they had. They seemed to have them all plus the aforementioned exhibit book of extraordinary cost. They also had this:

Because Hemingway lived in Paris and he drank a lot

Then it was time to go.  I allowed myself one corny moment on my way out.

The next time I go to the Morgan Library, Andy Warhol will be there. Can't friggin wait!

Golden Globes For The Win

Every year, we bet nickels with S, R, and whomever else might join in to watch the Golden Globes. I always lose. Eddie studies the categories and then loses. This year, Eddie didn't study, and I still lost. But Eddie won. So after a fun night in a new place with yummy food (Southpaw Sweets salted caramel cookies and buttercrunch matzah--seriously yummy food) and great friends, S capped off the night with this surprise:

It's a trophy, y'all.

Eddie asked if he could put his name on it. We decided, yes, that's a fun idea. The next day, S texted me that he can write Eddie 2016 and then next year we'll write the next winner. So I was like, you mean he needs to leave room for other winners.

We began the next morning with Eddie parading around the house with his winning ballot. For someone who does not watch much TV or many movies, he sure loves the Golden Globes. Now.

Trivia Maven

I've always wanted to go to Trivia Night. Like any Trivia Night. There have not been any in particular that I've pined after. Simply Trivia Night. I don't have a very good memory, but I do know a lot of junk, and sometimes I can recall it when something sparks it. Like trivia questions. What's even better is I know a lot of people who know a lot of stuff.

Sip This, a local coffee shop that also runs as a mecca of local arts and entertainment, has been running Trivia Night for a while, and I've wanted to go, so when I saw Classic TV and Music as the latest theme, I sprang into action.

I called on S because she recognizes faces and voices after seeing and hearing them once.

I called on my officemate E because she's been around the world and knows entertainment on a scholarly level.

I called on my brother who is a walking vinyl shop.

My expertise, clearly, was "putting together the team."

The night of the trivia, we met up and snacked and drank, and we tossed around team names, E pointing out that we could call ourselves The Three Musketeers because there were actually four of them. We figured that would blow everyone's mind. We wound up being Team 3. Also mind-blowing.

The rules are simple. Write your answer on the small dry-erase board they gave us. If we thought we could earn points with a different answer or were confused, we could simply raise our hand and ask. Also, we were having fun. That was the point. Our host stressed that. It was all for fun.

Fast forward to everyone whining whenever she brought up a new category to the point where she asked, Maybe could you please not moan at me?  I get it. My writing students moan at me when I tell them we are going to write something.

The music went pretty well. Figuring out the title of a song when someone is speaking the lyrics proves to be brain-bending. We got a lot right, mostly because of my brother, who also knew something about a pig being on an album cover. I cheered loudly when he was the only person to get it right. We also got some things wrong because we were second-guessing ourselves and each other. That's bound to happen in a newly-formed team. We should've practiced first! Next time!  There was also the question of who was the youngest Rolling Stone, and since some have died, we were very confused.

The TV portion? Didn't go so well. The trivia was based more on specific episodes or tiny elements of a show--like what was Dick Van Dyck's son's middle name on the show? Spoiler alert: Rosebud. Unless you already knew that. In which case, hit me up--I want you on my team.

So much for team loyalty. I like winning.

We did not win. We did come in third out of six, so the upper echelon finish for a brand new team is pretty impressive, I'd say. Well, I am saying. We are impressive. Even though we didn't win free t-shirts. And I like free stuff, but the experience was still great.

I did decide that if I can't guarantee a win, I'd like to be a trivia host. Think about it. I'd totally excel! All these years of teaching, being in front of people who might rebel at any minute if they don't like your question or the right answer--I mean, this seems to be what I've been gearing up for completely!

Avengers, FAO, and More In Humidity

Big city summer plans, just in time for humidity so thick that the air is eatable and every street in NYC has a different smell and in this context, it's smell with a negative connotation. On the upside, July days like that offer the opportunity to play Name That Stench or Who Smells Like That?  However, S and I did not play those games.  We wandered through odor after odor, from midtown to uptown to across town and back.

The Avengers exhibit at Discovery Times Square  promises to be an interactive fun-filled time.  For only $27 a person!  Not for us, though.  I'd won tickets from one of LIRR's Twitter contests (I was one of three who entered, so "win" here is subjective), so we went for free.  And I'm really happy I didn't have to pay $27 dollars because the exhibit was only semi-interactive.  And there were a lot of rules like don't eat anything, don't drink anything, and don't take any pictures.  And so we didn't do any of that.

Sort of.

We fully participated in the interactive portions.  Before that, though, we were ushered into a room to watch video about the different agents of SHEILD, but for some reason, neither of us could see the screens very well.  We could see the ones across and upside down from us and each other's from the side, but not the ones right in front of us.  I thought that something was going to jump out at us at some point or the room might fill with fake smoke or flashing lights.  None of that happened.

We tested our physical and mental abilities against those of Captain America.  We were both worse than Captain America in reflexes and grip strength, and I was much worse in grip strength than S, but we were pretty even in arm-pedaling (I don't know what the test was for--we had to pedal with our arms like patients in Physical Therapy do).  Also, there was an activity that tested our reaction to pictures like puppies and evil criminals by reading our skin and pulse, and we both sort of flatlined.  Finally, for no real reason, we both stepped on the interactive scale and got weighed and measured, though I'm not sure why we needed to do that since we know Captain America is like 6 feet tall and we are not.

The Hulk room showed how Bruce Banner's brain is different from the Hulk's brain.  Spoiler alert: The Hulk's brain is green.  At least that's what the visual was, and we could click on touch screens to read the fake science of it all and look at fake microscopes to see fake differences between Banner's blood and Hulk's blood, but the most exciting thing for us in that room was realizing we were on a security camera and figuring out where the camera was so we could wave. I would have expected some sort of jump test or punch test.

The Thor room showed what seemed to be a hologram of his hammer.  S asked me, Does he not have a real hammer and it just appears like that?  I answered, No, he has an actual hammer.  So the hologram was lost on both of us as were the three screens of fake planets and exactly what we were supposed to do with them. And as we passed by the costumes--and we saw a lot of real costumes which is kinda cool--I realized that I actually know a lot about Thor, or at least more than S knew.  I was all about Loki and evil and brotherhood and the aforementioned non-hologram hammer.  Impressive, I know.

The Iron Man room was a nice way to end things because it was interactive again.  First, you can make a fake element by mixing real elements in Tony Stark's lab.  Mine came out to be something like Faronium.  Basically, they take whatever last name you give them at the beginning for your Agent ID Card (oh, yeah, we were supposed to be agents in training) and they add -ium to it to make the fake element.  Then we stood in front of green screens and got to see what we'd look like in the Iron Man suit.  That was kinda cool because we could fly and shoot things by moving our arms.  Mostly, however, we made Iron Man really musical by flapping our arms all line-dance-like.  We also got to aim at things with our eye balls and control a program by blinking, but for some reason, my blinking did not work.  Finally, we could control the Iron Man arm by putting our own hands over a sensor and moving it so that the arm would do the same thing.  It kind of worked.

And that was it.  Since we couldn't take any pictures inside, we did our best super hero poses outside.

We took a walk to Central Park and found our way to FAO, which is closing for now.  I'd never been there before, but it was pretty much what I'd expected based on what I've seen in movies.  Toys everywhere.  A section devoted to candy.  We got macarons in the end, but first we played The Big Piano.

We hadn't actually planned on playing The Big Piano, so we had to do it barefoot because we had no socks.  As S said, in this situation, we're the gross ones.  Since we'd been walking all over Manhattan in flip flops and it was raining on and off so that there was mystery moisture pooling at every curb, I'd already developed a strong case of city foot anyway, so it didn't matter to me. 

Then we pondered, was this called The Big Piano because it was in the movie Big, or was it The Big Piano because it is actually big and then was used in a scene in Big, not necessarily because of the name.  I mean, with Zoltar only one floor below, you've gotta wonder.

From there, we went off to Koreatown so S could get the dish she likes, and the women in the restaurant supplied us with super tall glasses of ice water while we waited.  This glass of water was much needed as I was pretty sure I was going to keel over from the heat. When we left, I realized that I needed a bathroom because of the ice water and the previous bottle of water I'd gotten on our walk (from the 7-11 in which there were two police officers, one of whom called me "ma'am" as I let them go ahead of me.  because I'm clearly an old lady) and the closest bathroom was a public bathroom.  Now I've seen bathrooms in parks, but this was midtown.  Was this really something I should be doing?  I braved it since the other one I could think of would be in Penn, and since I'd decided to walk back to Bryant Park for their Word For Word poetry series, I couldn't see going the few blocks in the wrong direction when this bathroom was right here.

It was clean!  Phew!

It also had these.  I don't tend to take pictures inside of bathrooms, but I had to.  Can someone tell me what these are please?

With S pointing me in the right direction, I headed off to the Bryant Park Reading Room as she headed home to bake.  Sitting in the park offered me some time to relax and write down some ideas that have been floating around.  I usually write when I go to poetry readings.  I'm usually inspired.  This was not exactly inspiring.  The theme was supposed to be humor, I think, but I didn't think the poems the first guy was reading were funny.  He referred to genitals a lot, and then he cursed a bit.  It was not my thing. But then Tony Hoagland took the mic.  I'm a fan.  Every time he has an article in The  Writer's Chronicle, I dive in and read through and cut it out and save it.  Some times I assign it to my poetry classes.  I've read two of his collections (gave them 3 stars each on Goodreads!), so I was looking forward to this.  During his reading, I don't know if he's changed his style or content, but I realized that I wasn't enjoying it.  I left after he read, opting out of listening to the third poet.  It was time to go home and take a long shower, getting rid of the city foot any other maladies I may have picked up on such a soupy smelly day.  Soupy smelly days are the best.