New York -- Thanksgiving and After

Due to our early call on Thanksgiving, we chose a 3:15 dinner reservation. Our prix fixe dinner was inexpensive and totally rocked!

Pretty sure we slept 12 hours on Thursday.

We went to a great restaurant for breakfast and it was sunny and chill. We were the only people in there. Sorry for them, but it was completely delightful for us.

Then we headed uptown again to see the Nicholas Roerich museum. 

Here's the man himself:

For more on him, please see his wikipedia page. It's complicated. He was born rich in Russia, went to art school, fled, painted a bunch, was friends with Madame Blavatsky, a guy built him a skyscraper, then they fell out.

In 1935 Roerich got FDR to sign a treaty that would make us not blow up places of cultural or scientific importance in case of war. That was kinda cool.

His small drawings are nice. His big paintings are terrible. Once he discovered blue, it was all downhill.

Unfortunate floor detail:

Fascinating!

We went back to the hotel and to the airport. A relatively chill bit of travel ensued. I watched 4 episodes of the first season of Downton Abbey.

So ends our journey to New York to wrangle a balloon in the Macy's Parade.

New York -- Day 3 -- The Big Day

There is good news and bad news here. On Thanksgiving, Neph and I fulfilled my bucket list item of balloon wrangling in the Macy's parade. I will say the minimum because that's what Macy's would like. It is a huge honor and a great experience to participate in this event. Oh my gosh.

We got up super early and headed to the Hammerstein Ballroom. First you stand in lines on the sidewalk organized by call time. Then you are directed to where the costumes are for your balloon or float, and you start getting dressed. The costumes fit over your clothes. Our costume consisted of big coveralls, a hat, gloves, spats to go over your shoes, a dickie and a tabard. The tabard goes over your coveralls, and ties on the sides. Imagine a small tablecloth with a head hole, with side ties. That's your tabard.

Then they take you by bus up to the Upper West Side to get the balloon. You crawl under the net that is holding it down, and grab a rope line. There are many of you under there, along with a vehicle that is in the middle, bearing most of the weight. Weight -- wait? Yes, you wait for an hour or so until it is time to go. Winds were 22 mph, so we weren't going to fly very high that day. The previous year it rained on Thanksgiving, so we lucked out.

Once underway, we navigated a turn onto Central Park West. That's where you get the first inkling of how many people there are out there. But you're also closely following the directions of the balloon leader. There is a lot to remember. Keep your line kinda taut but not too much. Eyes on your leader. Side streets are where the gusts happen, so stay focused. Then there were chants we were saying.

People filled the sidewalks and cheered for us. On the other side of the fence, people filled Central Park, often standing on those boulders that I photographed in the last post. Every window had a face in it. People in high up buildings looked like tiny excited ants.

There were only two problems during our journey. At one point someone lost their line. It got caught in a tree and in that case you stop the balloon and someone cuts that line. Online somewhere there is a video of a point in which wind caught us and the balloon went sideways and the crowd screamed. I have no recollection of this.

This experience, my friends, was fantastic. I could say it was magical, but it's magical on tv. An entire city comes together to make this wild thing happen for the entire world, and on the ground, you can see how many people it takes to manifest the spectacle. It's so darned cool. It's so much bigger than I even knew, and I feel proud to have been a very small part of it.

Once you're at 34th Street you can see the tv crew high above (while trying to make your float look as under control as possible). There was a dance number right before us, and that was the point at which we could pause and reflect on the miles we'd just walked. Once past 34th, you put down your balloon on blankets, deflate and roll it up. It goes to storage until next year, and we go back to the ballroom to return our costumes. I could barely bend after all of that. Someone else had to remove my spats.

We walked as short a distance as humanly possible until we saw a restaurant. I ate matzoh ball soup, rye toast and some cottage cheese. People of many backgrounds surrounded us. It was lovely. 

It was 11:38am on Thanksgiving.

New York 2025 -- Day 2

We had breakfast at Barney Greengrass. It was delightful to sit on their sidewalk seating and take in New York sights and sounds. Our waiter said to every customer "Just to remind you -- we have latkes. It's not on the menu." Of course most of the people eating there have never eaten there before, so we thought it was pretty funny. I had a pumpernickel bagel with sturgeon, which was completely delicious. And Cel Ray and coffee and we had those latkes, which weren't great but we had to have after the performance of our waiter.

Museum of Sex? Yeahnothanks. We had tickets to visit the butterfly room at the Museum of Natural History.

We headed back to the hotel, intending to see the balloons inflated nearby on the way to the museum.

Uh oh! All of New York was there to see the same thing (balloons, floats, museum). Neph overheard someone say, of the line, "It's long, but it moves". Here's the view to the right and left of us. Royal Flush porta potties at the ready.

TRUTH. KNOWLEDGE. VISION

GREEN GIANT

We bailed, and went uptown to Harlem (Sugar Hill!!) to see the place listed on my dad's birth certificate, 291 Edgecombe Ave. While waiting for a Lyft, the Chairman of the Walt Disney Company walked right past us. Santa Pizza Man thought we were looking at *him*, and was pretty jazzed.

Here we are at our destination! I had never seen it in person but our besties had once sent us photos. The building looks fancier on the outside than I believe it is on the inside. My aunt said that when my dad was a baby they had a coin-operated stove, and that they put him in there in a shoe box. My dad's retort was "And that's why you called me your half-baked little brother."

Here's the view from the building. It overlooks what is now Jackie Robinson park. The pool wasn't there when my dad was born.

Getting back home wasn't as easy as getting there. Neph couldn't make contact with the Lyft mothership. I had only 6% battery, and didn't think I had enough to hail the Lyft. So we tried to hail a cab (they do exist, but are infrequent), and met some nice people and their dog Pistol ("with no bullets!") who were waiting for a ride. After a while I decided to try to hail a Lyft. At this point I was at 4%. The Lyft arrived, I immediately tipped, and we were good to go.

Back at the hotel we had some snacks and could both watch Star Wars and see that the fire inspector hasn't been there recently. Can't wait to show this photo to our head of facilities at the factory. She will lose it.

Then we went to see the worst comedy ever, at the New York Comedy Club. There were two or three MCs, who really needed help with their crowd work. We in the audience often gave them something to work with and they'd get stuck on the meaning of a WORD, which is part of one of the guys' schtick (being dumb). One young woman, who we were really rooting for, had just booked a Neutrogena commercial that day and I hope that goes well cause she was really not good at comedy. And one guy talked about how his dad goals were for his daughter not to be a "ho" and that if your kid gets molested by a person in a wheelchair, "that's on them". He was met with absolute silence.

Speaking of "that's on them", several of the comics blamed the audience for themselves not being funny. "You're giving 'preview audience' vibes."

That's on you, babe.

New York 2025 -- Day 1

The neph and I went to New York last week to participate in the Macy's Parade. It did not disappoint.

This was a blitz of a visit.

First, transportation. The Lyft driver got to my house at 4:45. As I was putting my bag in her trunk, she went around the front to hitch up her front bumper with gaffer's tape. I asked her politely to please come to a complete stop at stop signs.

I took Mr. Salty with me as a companion on the plane. Housekeeping put him on my pillows every morning.

Our Lyft driver was a peach compared to our car service from JFK to our hotel. That guy scared me so often that I put my hands over my eyes multiple times. I did not hear him use his turn signal until we were somewhere around 125th.

The hotel was nice. It smelled exactly like Comme des Garcons' Avignon. So good.

We played pub quiz and ate dinner a few blocks from our hotel. The other teams were parties of 6. Our own modest goal was to not come in last. We tied for second to last :)

I had a cherry cola slurpie and found it delicious. Also some felafel and shishito peppers.

I believe that Honey Brains is no longer in business. I wonder why.

End of an Era

I passed by Dr. Wong's office yesterday on my way to the shoe repair to pick up my cowboy boots. Without so much as a howdy-do, our eye doctor has closed up shop. I told my friend and Pilates instructor, yesterday morning while I was working out. 

She went to the same doctor for her whole adult life. She cried. I think this is as much notice as Dr. Wong gave anybody. I hope that his retirement means that he has lots of time in which to see 1970s soul bands.

It Doesn't Get Much Better Than This

From November:

Yesterday was the monthly meeting of my Irish genealogy group. The topic was FindaGrave and other cemetery databases. One of our members showed us a database that you can use to find additional cemetery information that isn't in FindaGrave. For instance, if there was more than one person in a grave before it was moved to a different cemetery, the entry in the new grave might omit one of the names by mistake.

I was kicking the tires on this new (to me) database and not finding what I want. Because my own relatives aren't buried in this cemetery I looked up I don't have people buried in this area other than my grandparents, so I was looking up Colonel Somebody who is my friend's ancestor. 

Did not find.

Did not find.

Did not find.

Finally I used this search "col%" and it brought up Colonel Somebody Else. Or at least his leg. Then I looked up the circumstances of the amputation:

And then I started searching for amputated limb burial. Fascinating!

Michael O'Rourke lost his leg while following orders during his job on a steam ship. His employer claimed it was not liable for negligence caused by one of its employees. A leg was buried. During later removal of all buried persons out of the city limits they did an inventory of each grave. This is the reason that these index cards exist.

Back then, it cost as much to bury a limb as a whole person:

For a comprehensive article about why people had their limbs buried, enjoy this article from the Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery.

Saturday Doings

It's Saturday. It's 8:30. I've made coffee, done two loads of laundry, started making two pots of stock for soup, fed the cat, made a smoothie for mrguy. Getting off to a good start before...

Vortex of Power meeting at 10:30. Each of these is 2 hours.

Work's been nuts. We put together a pop-up exhibit in honor of our 25th campus anniversary. I did an interview with local tv (super fun) for a forklift anniversary today. I did a live chat with forklift fans while simultaneously watching a video of myself talking about forklifts. Yesterday I did a last-minute interview with the Guardian UK about forklift anniversary. And in between those things I tried to do some actual work. I often feel as if I'm punching above my weight.

Tonight is a work party that I'm really looking forward to. Nothing is required of me, and I am grateful.

Tomorrow I have to prep everything for Thanksgiving in New York with the neph. 

Monday I have a doctor's appointment, then I go to the land of my birth to have the jewelry appraised. That will likely take most of the day due to traffic. 

The Lyft comes at 4:15. I already had the usual dream where I need a lot of change for the kiosk at the airport that lets me get to my gate. At some point when I'm navigating the kiosk I realize that I need my passport. It's at my mom's house, which is 17 minutes from the airport. I think I have enough time. I look for the passport and find it. I get there in time and make my flight.

Cussing.

The prompt: write about cussing. About whether or not you cuss, and when and why. About whether that has changed over time.

I grew up in a non-cussing household. As a young child I was not allowed to use the word "butt". As a teenager my dad dragged me into the bathroom and forced me to bite down on a bar of soap after he heard me softly complain with a "shit". It was really humiliating. He later joked about my "teeth of Ivory", because zingers fixed everything, in his point of view. It was the last week before I left for college, and he was struggling with the idea of losing me. He shouldn't have worried. I continued to make mistakes and offer him opportunities to shame me for years to come.

We didn't start swearing around the house until he died. And I didn't really break free with my mom until I was far beyond her grasp monetarily and emotionally. I knew swearing bothered her, so I did it. Gave me a little thrill.

Over the years, she started using an occasional cuss word herself. The first was "bitch" and I think that says a lot. Not shit. Not asshole. Not fucker. Bitch. Her strongest words were saved for female Democratic politicians that she hated. Diane Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and, most of all, Nancy Pelosi.

As her dementia kicked in, the words were released. She used all of them. It was the one of the few sources of power she had at her disposal. That and put-downs consisting of the words she still knew could hurt you. One Christmas she told me that I wanted her dead so I could go in the fields and "fuck boys". In our last conversation she threatened me without using profanities, and I was half-impressed!

By the end, my mom, who was once really proper, who was remembered as a mom who shushed you at a sleepover, had taken to using an F-bomb as often as she pleased. She often embarrassed her caregivers, who were nice church ladies, to the point at which one of them chastised her:  "Mama. We are married ladies and we know what that word means. Please do not say that word!!"

I, over time, have come to love a blend of something deeply and creatively vulgar (mostly to the amusement of my husband and friends) and the random "Poopy!!" or "Holy cow". I like the mix, just as I like wearing something I got at Goodwill alongside a piece of nice jewelry.

One final word on swearing -- I had a friend whose greatest expression of tenderness was the words "Shit, Fool". It took on various meanings, depending on her inflection. These conversations usually took place on the phone.

Me: "My boyfriend just broke up with me..."

Her, slowly: "Shit, Fool!" (tender solidarity)

or

Me: "I just got that job I wanted"

Her, brightly: "SHIT, Fool!!" (astonishment, congratulations)

Back then we were so close that she could call me "Fool", and it would warm the cockles of my heart. Not sure if that's normal. Was it too much in the "He hit me and it felt like a kiss" vein? I think the proper response was "Thank you".

Today, if she called me, I would say nothing at all.

Written on Halloween

Today was pretty great. I had to do a thing in front of the company, which I did in concert with my colleague from the archives. My walk-on music? A harp. Pretty fab.

When I came home I watched the birds vs the dodgers, and it did not go well for us so we go to Game 7.

Then the phone rang with the special ring set aside for my sisters. I assumed it was my oldest sister telling me that my brother-in-law was dead, because he has dementia and things are rough up there. But no.

It was my middle sister, the one I call The Hammer.

I have been joking rather seriously for the last few years that I would like to own a big diamond that belonged to my grandmother, who thought herself quite fancy. This was her wedding ring for marriage #2. I had it appraised a while back, and started wearing it, while tabulating the amount of money that I was spending on my mom. Starting with plane tickets in 2017 and adding all of the things that I bought for her between then and her death, her tab is in the low 5 figure.

So my mom dies and I ask my sister about the jewelry, because she'll want to let the estate attorney know about it. In the past years I've been wearing the diamond, which is hilariously large, but I know it's not really mine until after the estate settles. Or maybe that won't work out. Anyhoo, a while back my sister asks about the 1990s appraisal of the jewelry. She wants me to mail her paper copies. For some reason I didn't do it at first. It made no sense to me. I could have sent her the pdfs that day. I hate mailing things. She is afraid of taxes. I don't know what she did with the appraisal. 

A few weeks ago my sister calls to tell me that she's going to tell the estate attorney about the jewelry. Either then or during that weekend's vortex of power meeting she tells me that she's going to tell the estate lawyer that I'd found the jewelry in a box of documents or something. She let me know that I had to decide what the story was because I'd be telling it. Wait. She told a lie about me and now I had to participate in that lie also? I didn't tell her at the time, but if the lawyer asked me I planned to tell the truth. My sister's lie is not my problem.

She calls tonight at 10:30 her time. We are planning to have a family meeting tomorrow morning with the lawyer. My sister has called because she wants to know if we can talk in the morning. She wants to be able to take a Xanax or whatever tonight and go to bed knowing that we can talk in the morning. I asked if we could discuss whatever it is now, because now *I* wasn't going to sleep well wondering what the topic was that she wanted to discuss. I mean really! So I coaxed her into a conversation. It was about the jewelry, and what we were going to say about it. I can't recall all of what was said but I told her that I wasn't going to lie. She tried to manipulate me by saying "You can't possibly know how much I'm doing for the family" etc. I do know this, but the fact that she lied about whether my family had jewelry as part of the estate and now she wants to come clean and lay it on me has nothing to do with that. She said I was "un-generous" and "selfish" and that she was sorry that she had misunderstood what I wanted to have happen to the jewelry (or something). In the meantime, mrguy could hear everything that she was saying and was performing an extraordinary pantomime of nailing himself to a cross and such while I was on the phone. It was highly entertaining / distracting. I stuck to my guns and did not back down and there were empty silences in which I think she might have understood that I was immovable. Mrguy said he was proud of me. I was proud of me, too.

The Latest

This is what the candles looked like in the light of day. Very different from each other!

And now this is the latest: mrguy's most recent scans are in.

"IMPRESSION:

1. No evidence of metastatic disease."

The other stuff is still in the report, the things I call "old guy stuff". He has an enlarged prostate and some arthritis in his neck, and a cyst on his "robust pancreas". Even his original tumor site, the esophagus, shows only "Stable trace circumferential wall thickening" which makes it seem as if it might be returning to its pre-cancerous appearance? Dunno. Mind you, this cancer often snatches you back at the slightest hesitation. But this is great. Mrguy has been worried. I have not. 

He seems so good on his good days. This morning he made us an avocado cheese omelette using his new favorite pan, and I imagine that right now he's in the man room dancing the tarantella.

So Yesterday Happened

We left the home together! And we bought camel shaped pastries at the Italian bakery in the rain.

After a while, I started making pumpkin salmon soup in advance of watching Game 2 of the World Series. The Blue Jays are my team and I've been looking forward to this for 30+ years. So I got my ingredients and was cutting my many vegetables and listening to an interview with Roy Wood Jr. and Trevor Noah. I began to feel settled, looking out of my kitchen window with my headphones on, while making my cozy soup. Then the day took a turn for a worse.

I saw a woman and her dog pass from my side of the street to the island and deposit a huge bag of dog doo on the island, leaving it there and walking away. I snapped. I ran out of the house, grabbed her bag of poo and shouted down the street "Don't worry. I'll take care of your dog shit for you!!!!" Surprisingly, she heard me, came back halfway and said "I always do that and come back for it later". I turned my back and yelled "I've got it this time!!"

Not my finest moment, and I feel somewhat ashamed, but there I was making something yummy and if I didn't move the dog shit I was going to have to look at it. How did I know she was coming back, and WHATEVER. I regularly see dog doo bags in our front yard left behind by dog owners. And on top of it I was just thinking today about maybe planting something in the barren island in the middle of the street.

So I finished the soup -- and if you use this recipe it really isn't quite the same if you use celery instead of celery root (there was none at the store). But I was just thickening it and putting in the corn and salmon. Mrguy replayed the Canadian national anthem for me, and after the top of the first the power went dead.

The power company told us that the outage would last until 7:45, which would be the end of the game. I decided to pull out some fun candles -- the kind that turn colors as they melt. They did not give off much light, so I added a regular candle. And we listened to a Canadian broadcast of the game on SiriusXM.

The soup was delicious, but we lost Game 2 and are now tied 1 - 1 with the team that mrguy calls The Hated Dodgers.

Here's what caused our outage. 

Bot Fun

I wore out a bot who reached out to me last night while we were watching Game 5 of the ALCS. 

The bot reached out to me because I subscribe to a fan page of a musician I once worked with. In my experience he is a terrible tipper! 

Also we only played music, just so you know. This was my first attempt at bot torture. We have a friend who is really great at it, and that's what inspired me to engage when the bot wanted to talk to me. I made a point of not telling it anything revealing.

No Kings II

Updates: The New York Times today says "thousands" came out to protest. The president then posted an AI video of himself in a fighter plane dumping feces on crowds of protesters, who are then covered in shit. The president is so icky.

++++

Sometimes you just need to get your yayas out. I met with a bunch of (mostly) older folks out on the pavement and waved to cars, getting them to honk.

Woooooo!!!!

Honk if you love America!

Honk if you love Democracy!

Thank you!

and for those who did not honk:

Honk in your heart!

At one point the most beautiful parade of lowriders came through, with gorgeous paint jobs and delightful joie de vivre. Two little kids rode their illegal tiny motorbikes, which would usually make me angry, but they were with the program. We had one student driver pass by who was freaked out by the commotion, but her instructor honked the horn for her.

One lady early on approached me to ask what the fuss was about. I explained the thinking behind the movement and she thanked me. I hope she comes out next time.

I would say that there were close to twice as many people out today. The signs were amusing and heartfelt, the police were respectful, but the shade was sparse. I met a really nice lady who, if I see her again, I want to share contact info with.

I went hard at sign waving and fun making for my fellow protesters, and I hydrated because it was really warm today. After giving my all for an hour, I went home to scoop up mrguy. He had chemo this week and was not feeling well, and also disappointed that he wasn't well enough to go out. He was making himself some toast when I got home, and I took him down in Tiger Brown to see the local protest for himself. He did not, as I suggested, try out my sun roof. We honked and wooed at people and then went to the store to get some juice. It was lovely. He felt great that he got to participate. 

We'll see if I have any voice tomorrow. I was singing in the store and my voice was cracking a bunch...It felt great to go out there and express myself and amuse the people. 

First Amendment, baby.

Thank You, Mr. President

Thank you for ranting about the restoration of this awesome-looking church, the United States Air Force Academy Chapel in Colorado Springs. Without your passion for whatever it is today I would not have known about it. There is a similar looking structure near the airport on Oahu, and I wonder if there is a connection between the two.

The offending church

Here's an interesting interview with the architect, Walter Netsch. By the spelling of his last name I'm guessing that his ancestors were Wendish, by the way.

Here is the Netsch family home, recently restored. He really took "death stairs" to a whole new level.

Loooove this cool library. 

And without the inflammatory post about the church, I would not know about

Cats_Of_Brutalism

Thank you, oh great one!

A Week in October

It's felt really busy at work this week. I wrestled with this guy, that had a document from the 3rd forklift line on it. I had to get the floppy reader, coax it to engage with the floppy, and then I attempted to put the files straight onto the server because I was worried I'd never get the floppy to connect again. That was not permitted by the operating system, so I had to drag it to the desktop. Could not be read by Word, so I opened it in TextEdit, from there into Docx, then tried to put it on the server. Apple, right now you are on my bad list. You know there is a bug in your software that is making my life impossible, and you won't fix it.

So I get my newly converted elderly digital file on the server and it's greyed out. I had to use some backend code that my coworker taught me in order to put a new version (and my all-important readme about the machinations that led to this file still being alive almost 30 years later) on the server without being greyed out. 

Also work -- I wonder if there is a term for something that has been on the free table on multiple occasions. I found this on the free table before the pandemic. I wore it for a while, trimmed the beads off, got tired of it and put it back on the free table. Just found it there again.

This is my beautiful handbag that I found on the free table a few months ago. I love it so much! It contains a special package -- cat poop from my baby boy, to be sent to the vet. All good, but he had a tooth cleaning this week and now he is a little wiggy and sometimes fears me.

I have been very social this week. Talked with the Rev after work on Tuesday. Went out to dinner with Precious Nephew on Thursday. Burned my tongue on Immunity Broth, which I had to get because of its name. Still hurts two days later. Yesterday I went to a luncheon for work (lots of people-ing) and then went out with a girlfriend from the restaurant for dinner (more people-ing). But it was great.

There were some gorgeous skies this week.

My Christmas cactus seems to be an October cactus. Pretty!

And my team is going to the division series for the first time since 1993. There was a lot of baseball. Vlad Guerrero Jr. is so great. I will be rooting for you, young man!

I had two hours of people-ing this morning, attending my Irish genealogy group meeting. By now I am pooped, both literally and figuratively. There's something going on with my innards that is unpleasant and makes me suspect that I should stay home this evening instead of watching a Japanese horror film with friends as I had planned.

More in these pages.