The Bronx is up and the Battery's down
Jan. 25th, 2004 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonI quite enjoyed my visit to Manhattan for Y's bachelorette party, even though I didn't get to choose much of what I was going to do. Something about that place... I think if I'd grown up there, or even spent appreciable time there at any point, no other place could ever really exist for me. I love that and fear it both... I kind of value the idea that right now I think I could get along in any of four cities, you know? But, addictive or not, NYC sure is wonderful. :)
The visit started out terribly, actually. I had no trouble or feelings of danger walking from the Port Authority to the hotel--a taxi almost ran me over at the very first intersection, but that seemed appropriate and indeed rather charming. Trouble arose when the hotel couldn't find reservations under my fellow bridesmaid's name, Y's name or my name, and then when I couldn't reach Y on either of her cell phones or HLM to see if anyone had left a message for me there. It was 8:30 at that point, so, worried but okay, I headed out to wander downtown for a while... found some food... did another round of calls (from the street at 10:00--now quite tired, lonely, and freezing to death). Still couldn't reach Y but this time I did contact HLM. Although I was pissed off enough to think about coming right home, we decided I should go back to the hotel, stay the night, try to find friends in the morning and/or simply wander Manhattan for a bit before coming home. Well, it turned out Y was waiting for me in the lobby--they'd been there the whole time! The two things that are still mysteries are 1) why the hotel thought they didn't have a reservation and 2) why Y's phone didn't ring either time I called it, even though my messages were getting left. Grrrrrrrr! So if I post about my new cellphone sometime in the next couple of weeks, you'll know my motivation.
(And I didn't even mention how, when I was trying to call people, my calling card didn't work and then one of my credit cards stopped working with 1-800-CALL-ATT, finally leaving me with ONE working way of contacting anyone on earth. Geh.)
Saturday dawned bright and freezing. We had an unremarkable day: breakfast, top of the Empire State Building (they've incorporated shots of the two towers into the skyride, and I teared up right on demand), lunch in Chinatown, shopping (with much discussion of bridesmaid shoe ideas)... then we were late for the show Y had wanted to see, so we just went to sushi dinner and thence to a karaoke bar. The karaoke was actually a ton of fun, because we had a private room and it was mostly just us five girls all singing together--we were joined briefly by Y's rich friend S's husband and a couple of male friends, but they didn't stay long, mostly because it was getting way late. We karaoked until 2:30, at which point I felt dead dead dead zonked. We were in the East Village, by the way... as S told us, you know the part in Men in Black II where they tell the aliens not to come out in the daytime, unless they're in the East Village in which case nobody will notice? Well, this is in the East Village. Heh. :) Well, we caught a cab back to the hotel, where Y found beautiful roses from her fiance waiting for her, and crashed.
This morning was wild in one particular way... I haven't mentioned so far that Y and SL, the maid of honor (whose name the hotel room was, in fact, in, grrrrrrr) are both licensed massage practitioners now. Y is setting up her own practice and SL wants to learn more and then start a school. Anyway, I was very very impressed by how the two of them just casually massaged each other all weekend, both trading tips and loosening up random little things. It seemed like the way it should be in so many ways... everyone a healer, everyone always being healed. I want to learn the style Y does (Swedish, mostly), and I want HLM to learn how to crack/stretch my back the way SL did in the middle of the purse section of Loehmann's. Ahhh. :) So, this morning when Y caught me rubbing at my shoulder to loosen up a nasty stiff spot, she came over to fix me and I knelt at the foot of my bed because I'm taller than she is. She was doing a great job, and after a couple minutes started pressing down on both shoulder muscles with both forearms... and after a few seconds of that I fainted! It was so weird... that was my second time ever, and the first time was a couple of hours after I'd had surgery. I just found myself on the floor, and Y told me to roll over and lie on my back, and she rubbed my neck and head and upper shoulders for about another 5-10 minutes. It was a great way to come out of a faint, and I felt fine after that. But it was still weird. I know my blood sugar was really low, but still. Hmph. Perhaps Y was fibbing when she swore it wasn't a Vulcan neck pinch?
In the end I did enjoy the break, and the time I spent with the girls was amazingly nurturing given the level to which I knew them all. It was rejuvenating, I think, to get out of my self-absorbed little shell and see all the hope that's embodied in NYC and talk to other people about their marriages/condos/careers. I'm way excited about Y's wedding now. I know now it's time to get back to real life, and I'm going to be all absorbed in its little details this week as I deal with closing and moving (and feeding![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bluechromis's kitties, and making up for lost workouts, and working, and and and), but I've come back with maybe a bit more perspective. And that's the way a vacation should be. :)
The visit started out terribly, actually. I had no trouble or feelings of danger walking from the Port Authority to the hotel--a taxi almost ran me over at the very first intersection, but that seemed appropriate and indeed rather charming. Trouble arose when the hotel couldn't find reservations under my fellow bridesmaid's name, Y's name or my name, and then when I couldn't reach Y on either of her cell phones or HLM to see if anyone had left a message for me there. It was 8:30 at that point, so, worried but okay, I headed out to wander downtown for a while... found some food... did another round of calls (from the street at 10:00--now quite tired, lonely, and freezing to death). Still couldn't reach Y but this time I did contact HLM. Although I was pissed off enough to think about coming right home, we decided I should go back to the hotel, stay the night, try to find friends in the morning and/or simply wander Manhattan for a bit before coming home. Well, it turned out Y was waiting for me in the lobby--they'd been there the whole time! The two things that are still mysteries are 1) why the hotel thought they didn't have a reservation and 2) why Y's phone didn't ring either time I called it, even though my messages were getting left. Grrrrrrrr! So if I post about my new cellphone sometime in the next couple of weeks, you'll know my motivation.
(And I didn't even mention how, when I was trying to call people, my calling card didn't work and then one of my credit cards stopped working with 1-800-CALL-ATT, finally leaving me with ONE working way of contacting anyone on earth. Geh.)
Saturday dawned bright and freezing. We had an unremarkable day: breakfast, top of the Empire State Building (they've incorporated shots of the two towers into the skyride, and I teared up right on demand), lunch in Chinatown, shopping (with much discussion of bridesmaid shoe ideas)... then we were late for the show Y had wanted to see, so we just went to sushi dinner and thence to a karaoke bar. The karaoke was actually a ton of fun, because we had a private room and it was mostly just us five girls all singing together--we were joined briefly by Y's rich friend S's husband and a couple of male friends, but they didn't stay long, mostly because it was getting way late. We karaoked until 2:30, at which point I felt dead dead dead zonked. We were in the East Village, by the way... as S told us, you know the part in Men in Black II where they tell the aliens not to come out in the daytime, unless they're in the East Village in which case nobody will notice? Well, this is in the East Village. Heh. :) Well, we caught a cab back to the hotel, where Y found beautiful roses from her fiance waiting for her, and crashed.
This morning was wild in one particular way... I haven't mentioned so far that Y and SL, the maid of honor (whose name the hotel room was, in fact, in, grrrrrrr) are both licensed massage practitioners now. Y is setting up her own practice and SL wants to learn more and then start a school. Anyway, I was very very impressed by how the two of them just casually massaged each other all weekend, both trading tips and loosening up random little things. It seemed like the way it should be in so many ways... everyone a healer, everyone always being healed. I want to learn the style Y does (Swedish, mostly), and I want HLM to learn how to crack/stretch my back the way SL did in the middle of the purse section of Loehmann's. Ahhh. :) So, this morning when Y caught me rubbing at my shoulder to loosen up a nasty stiff spot, she came over to fix me and I knelt at the foot of my bed because I'm taller than she is. She was doing a great job, and after a couple minutes started pressing down on both shoulder muscles with both forearms... and after a few seconds of that I fainted! It was so weird... that was my second time ever, and the first time was a couple of hours after I'd had surgery. I just found myself on the floor, and Y told me to roll over and lie on my back, and she rubbed my neck and head and upper shoulders for about another 5-10 minutes. It was a great way to come out of a faint, and I felt fine after that. But it was still weird. I know my blood sugar was really low, but still. Hmph. Perhaps Y was fibbing when she swore it wasn't a Vulcan neck pinch?
In the end I did enjoy the break, and the time I spent with the girls was amazingly nurturing given the level to which I knew them all. It was rejuvenating, I think, to get out of my self-absorbed little shell and see all the hope that's embodied in NYC and talk to other people about their marriages/condos/careers. I'm way excited about Y's wedding now. I know now it's time to get back to real life, and I'm going to be all absorbed in its little details this week as I deal with closing and moving (and feeding
bluechromis's kitties, and making up for lost workouts, and working, and and and), but I've come back with maybe a bit more perspective. And that's the way a vacation should be. :)
