New York in the Fall

I'm happy to report that after two weeks in Manhattan I still have in my possession two eyes, two arms, two legs, ten fingers and ten toes. I also have no new scars, bone chips and did not contract the plague, Ebola or MRSA. So, while I did not accomplish all that I set out to at work during that time, I have no problem putting this trip in the success category. My luggage made it on time and intact though I did mangle my bag while attempting to remove it from the conveyor. All of the zipper handles on the front of the suitcase managed to get wedged between the conveyor's sliding plates (the plates get close together as they snake around the curves of the track). Had I grabbed my bag in a straight away I would have been all set but because I grabbed it on a curve I now have only halves and quarters of the original zipper handles left to work with. I don't mind much, I never put anything in the front pockets anyway.

Most of my time was spent working at Alice Tully Hall at Julliard. They are building an addition on to the existing structure (roughly doubling the size of the building) and will need to hook old things to new things in order for everything to function properly. My job was to see if the old things were in good enough condition to work properly when they start everything back up in a few months. My conclusion: No. They may well try it anyway. It was a pretty dirty job. It involved climbing on rickety old ladders into spaces people my size are not meant to be in to do things that were in some cases unnecessary. I did them anyway of course and had to laugh a little when I picked up a newspaper in one crawl space to find a headline about a game that Doc Gooden pitched for the Mets.....in 1984.

I didn't take a lot of pictures mainly for two reasons. First was that I was just in New York not too terribly long ago and took some of the more touristy pictures then. Second, I got out of work at dusk more or less every day so getting decent lighting for the pictures I might have taken was nearly impossible. A tripod and some fast-ish film would have been great but all I had was my point and shoot digital pocket camera and so i was forced to give up on some of the shots I wanted. So I took a few cityscape sort of shots looking out from the Central Park and then everything else was just sort of "hrmm...that might look cool as a B&W hanging in my house" sort of picture. Here are a few:

Bethesda Terrace: They've just finished replacing the ceiling tiles under the bridge. It looks great.




I really love the color of the stone. Having an overcast sky really helped me capture the colors accurately.


The lake that abuts the terrace is behind me. Notice how there is almost nobody around. The weather was also very helpful for keeping passers by out of my pictures.

Some sort of preservation society has done a lot of work restoring areas of the park to their original state. I was surprised and delighted to see the addition of these park benches all over the place. They really change the feel of the park.

The benches are solid wood with cast iron posts. Again, note the lack of people.


This picture looks like something out of the first Ghostbusters movie.

I also came upon this vine canopy while strolling through the park. I don't know what kind of vines these are but they looked cool without any vegetation on them. It must be nice to sit here in the summer.

I spent my evenings getting fattened up at my uncle's apartment. Between the gin & tonics and chateau neuf and the wonderful dinners I swear I put on 5 pounds. Delicious though. It was really great to see both he and Mary. I don't get to see him all that often and as luck would have it he had those two weeks off from work so we were able to spend a lot of time hanging out. My last weekend in town we went out to Shelter Island. Dale and Eric, friends of Tim and Mary both of whom work with Tim at SNL, have a house there that they bought about 5 years ago. They had to do some renovations to it after they bought it and are still in the process of putting some things back in place, like the shutters, which you will notice are not present. It's a great house. We stayed in the guest house which was renovated straight away after their purchase. It had a cool Franklin stove in the living room which I made full use of. Saturday's weather was not good but Sunday was brilliant and sunny and cool but not cold. The perfect sort of day for sitting around drinking French 75's and cooking food, which we did. It was very relaxing and much needed and I can't wait for the opportunity to go back. Here are some pics:

Looking out from the guest house balcony.


The house from the road.


Down the road to the ocean.


Looking down the beach. There is a lighthouse out there in the distance.


Sun room in the house. Dale and Eric will be the first to tell you that it is very Golden Girls.

The following Monday we arrived back in the city and I went to the Seurat exhibit at MOMA. It was pretty cool and not really crowded so that was nice. I had a few hours to kill before I had to head to the airport so I walked around town for a bit. More pics:

7:45pm and I was at the airport waiting to leave. It was a sweet trip and I look forward to my next chance to get back.


music: "Time and Time again" - Counting Crows