Saturday, March 6, 2010

NYC and Pingpong



Hi all,

I didn't get back until about midnight last night, and I was WAY too zonked to post. Hopefully this picture of Dusty with a FAO Schwarz giraffe makes up for it. He's six and a half feet, so that should put it into perspective. Luckily, since my brothers are pretty tall, I'm used to keeping up with long legs. Dusty's also a shopper - at least a window shopper in NYC. We stopped in Hilfiger, Abercrombie and Fitch, Lacoste, Zara, H &M, Levi, Hollister and a few more. I'm discovering more and more every day about how low maintenance I really am!

We wanted to check out the Museum of Natural History and the Botanical Garden, but since Dusty was going to meet up with someone at 2 for lunch (and we didn't get in until about 11) our day was too split up. So we did the shopping in the morning and met a very late co-worker who was coming back from vacation. While standing around in Grand Central Station, we noticed the paparazzi. I'd seen a sign for parking for "Gossip Girls" and apparently we could just see them filming from the balcony on one side. Some girl ran up and squealed to us that it was them. There is no picture, because I don't give a damn. Erm, yeah.

Since she was so late, (and we had to go to her hostel since she was staying the city for a few more days with her sister and friend...) we thus ate a very late lunch. We debated on whether or not to try to find the Botanical Garden and decided that even an hour and a half would be nice. By the time we got to the subway stop it was down to an hour. Then we walked in the wrong direction for 45 minutes (um, about that...sorry....). And although we didn't see the building on fire that had about 30 firetrucks and 3 helicopters, we did eventually find the garden. It has very nice gates.

We then decided to pick up something to eat for the train ride back, but found ourselves in a grocery store where we were the only Caucasians. This was a first for me in an American grocery store. It also didn't have a bakery. We ended up going back to Time's Square (yay for Hershey's and M&M World! Yum.) and then wasting some time picking up some dinner at Grand Central and got on the train completely exhausted. I phoned my parents to let them know I survived, and decided NYC in one day is just not a good idea. Also, although I'm growing fond of Dusty with his amiable personality, there's no way I ever want to do that much shopping ever again.

I slept through the night like a rock, but was reasonably well rested this morning. Housemom and the kids left by 10, so housedad and I ran the cleaning project and I did lunch. We went out to a neighboring associated community and used their "rec hall". Beau was kind of standing around with a basketball. On a whim I asked if he wanted to play pingpong.

He LOVED it.

He literally was in paroxysms of laughter. He would lay the ball on the table and then kind of slice at it and about 50% of the time it would whip right over the net in a deadly trajectory. When the ball bounced off the table he would chase it with glee and chuckle loudly when he tried to pounce on it and it'd escape. He even dove a few times, and as a guy over 50, that's pretty impressive! At the height of these dramatics he was shushing an invisible crowd and even asking:
"Eady?!"
Each time before he whipped it at me. We'll definitely have to go back every once in a while, as it's the most animated and excited I've seen him so far. He even said thank you and goodbye to the building as we left! I myself laughed long and hard with him, his joy was contagious.

We got back in time to get ready for dinner, only to have one of the neighbormoms come over and express surprise that we weren't going over to their house. Apparently this was an arrangement that housemom failed to notify us of. We thought it was kind of pointless, as we were practically ready and we were sending people over the next night. It was also slightly insulting, I mean, do they think we can't manage at all without housemom?!? Especially with the kids gone!!!

Oh well, day one was survived. Although I had a small incident with one of the chickens (the non-dominant rooster...the dominant one ran back inside after I told him that being eaten by a fox would effectively end his sex life...), that went find as well. I think you might have to raise one in order to get attached. Which is good, because housemom said I could have a chick, and I'm excited to call him/her nugget. : p

Hope all is well,
Steph

PS My only souvenir for myself was a package of Sixlets...yum

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