Random Thoughts

Woke up this morning very early and turned on the TV. There was a campy movie set in New York--it made me think of a trip we took there in 2000--we were on a bus which took us all around the city--I'll never forget the alarmingly skinny, hairy man rollerskating in a yellow bikini down the middle of the street in Chinatown. The bus driver, catering to us tourists, pointed to a round, mirrored surface of the World Trade Center over the street and slowed the bus down--we took a cheesy self-portrait. I bought drawing of the New York Skyline from a street vendor and put it in a modest frame and hung it on the wall in my office. A couple of weeks after the September 11th tragedy I was in the middle of leaving a voicemail for someone when that drawing caught my eye--it prominently featured the twin towers of the WTC--I was in mid message and I just froze and completely lost my train of thought, realizing that I could never see that view again. I hung up.

Walking down Broadway, being in New York--it felt like being in the center of the world. Like, if I waited long enough on a park bench, I would see anyone I ever knew.

We had the funniest experience--we had taken a handsome cab ride through Central Park--for some reason all of the carriage drivers are Irish--when we were through we started walking back to the hotel, and stopped in an antique gallery. the store was absolutely stuffed with gilded mirrors, statues, and furniture. The median price was about $20,000. We pretended to be interested, just for fun, for about 10 minutes. The store owner offered to throw in free shipping.

-----

Had kind of an eye-opener this week. One of the wedding guests wrote a diary about the wedding--they were an older, British couple who were visiting the US for the first time. They didn't know very many of the guests, and were pretty quiet. I ended up sitting next to them at the rehearsal dinner, and we struck up a very nice conversation--The husband, Roger, worked on computers when they were first invented, and I knew something about the history of computers, so I think it tickled him a little that I knew what a UNIVAC was and how it worked. You know, goofy light conversational-type stuff. I'm very good at that.

I was talking it over with a friend of mine, and I think we've decided that I'm pretty good at making a first impression (one of my unsung superpowers).

----

I told Ryan that if he listened to a set of CD's that I have on conversational French, I would buy him a model boat to build this summer. I don't plan to give him a quiz or anything--my theory is that he will remember some of it because kids that age are supposed to be good at learning language. He's only listened to CD #1. Today, we were driving in the car and the song Lady Marmelade came on, you know, with the lyric Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Ryan translated all of it except for coucher (thankfully). Then asked me question after question, refusing to let it go. I was blown away that he had picked it up so quickly--guess I need to be more careful about what I listen to in the car.