My bosses’ youngest son just qualified to represent the US in the Olympics in Beijing next summer by winning the Men’s Modern Pentathlon at the Pan American games. We didn’t get much work done today because we kept hitting refresh on the PanAm site. He had a decent shoot, an okay fence, and won the swim. That put him going into the ride in third place. He went into the run in first place, and then all we could do was hit refresh constantly. Then Duncan’s phone rang, and he started screaming. It was his son saying, “Dad, I’m an…
8:30 in the morning came way too early. I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone to get our morning Cokes. We got on the train into town and got off to get some Ess-a-Bagel. Unfortunately, the cross streets I had written down for it were incorrect. My Google Maps mashup of Famous Fat Dave’s favorites had addresses in the titles (the only thing I had printed out, and Sydney doesn’t have a printer), when what you really need to navigate in New York is cross streets and a Street Wise map (highly recommended). So after walking six or so blocks to nowhere,…
I don’t know if I like New York or not. I spent some effort trying to decide, but it doesn’t matter. While Jonah’s working on the narratives, I thought I would observate a bit. As we drove away from the Denver airport, I noticed a light happy feeling that took a moment to place. I eventually realized that the feeling was one of escape. We escaped New York. I mentioned it to Joanna and she agreed. The top was down, the buildings were small, few and far between, the world was green and brown, and while it was currently hotter…
We got a later start on Friday than we’d intended, but we’d been up so late the night before. After everyone got a shower, Sydney, her roommate, Todd, Berck, and I walked to Tom’s Restaurant south of Syd’s brownstone in Brooklyn. Famous Fat Dave had not steered us wrong; the waffles and home fries were exceptional. I had a Belgian waffle with ice cream, whip cream, syrup, and cinnamon butter. Tom’s is strange because they hand out orange slices and cookies before taking your order. Then there were post-breakfast cookies and lollipops. Todd had forgotten his wallet and MetroPass, so…
The Ani DiFranco concert on Wednesday night was fun. Deciding to cut through the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and Prospect Park, we navigated according to my compass along paths that kept winding the wrong way. Little directional signs at intersections weren’t a whole lot of help; one pointed the direction we were going, while the next pointed the opposite. We finally realized that if we just followed the short-haired girls with lots of piercings, they’d take us directly to the band shell. Then we relaxed out on the grass while the two opening acts played (both of them Ani wannabes), drank…