The Heat Wave Breaks....

We were so HOT for SO LONG!!! It has been beautiful here for the last several days now. We've gotten to get out of town and go to Lisa's old family lake in Connecticut, I've gotten to hang with the boys, and we've seen more museums. But before that, we had a few other adventures...Let's go to the pictures...

Under the Arch (look close, it's big) at Washington Square Park in the Village.

Keeping cool at Washington Square.

Hot again on The Bowery, looking through to the Williamsburg Bridge.

Getting our Hebrew on at the Eldridge Street Synagogue.

Heading to the cool (but trash-filled) waters of Pelham Bay Park in da Bronx.

Long Island Sound will get you chilled out fast. Don't mind the Po-lice everywhere.

Which one is the Strongman?

Why would they even walk together?.... Unless, the stormtrooper is Luke in disguise! And what's in the bag Chewie? Just a regular day in Times Square....

OK, see the circle sign hanging up? The table under it is where Sally (whom Harry Met), um,... "enjoyed" her sandwich at Katz's Deli.

Outside historic Katz's on Houston St. Their pastrami is almost as famous as Sally's outburst. And the sandwich is ONLY $17!.... 

Return trip to the big Library, what is this thing attached to the cord?

Out the window in one of the reading rooms in the amazing library.

One of these is the King of the Jungle.

Sure it's just a book, but it happens to be one of the less than 50 surviving copies of the original Gutenberg Bibles. Almost as impressive as the original Tigger in the library's collection.

Fresh Air!.. Times Square!

Craziest rainstorm ever to hit a baseball game. We're all in new (dry) Brooklyn Cyclones shirts as the rest of the cold front hits Coney Island.

Uncle Eddie came back to town to take us around the northwestern end of Manhattan. Riverside Church may be one of the most impressive cathedrals I've ever seen.

Outside Riverside, those are some tall saints....

That's Savannah at the entrance to Grant's Tomb, across from Riverside.

Funky benches outside Grant's

Still warm enough for Spongebob pops...

The Cathedral tour continues (note the excitement in the children). This is St. John the Divine beside Columbia University where they just had Tony Soprano's funeral.

Library on the surprisingly awesome Ivy League campus of Columbia.

Quiet little path down to the lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge.

See ya next time....

NYTimes Part Two: The Basketball Diaries..

In New York, almost everything is easy to get to. You know what's hard to get to? Blogging!
I've decided to go with the photo and video blog approach for the most part, but I do have a quick story that probably includes racism, but I didn't kill anybody, so I hope you'll forgive me...
It was Thursday afternoon, we were again shooting some hoops down at Bellevue South Park, about as close to the 'Hood as I have seen in Manhattan. A couple of ethnic gentlemen, both older than me, approached us and asked if they could shoot with us. Seemed harmless enough, so I said it was okay. Right behind them, came four more younger guys, obviously with much more court experience than Sawyer or I. Savannah sat out as what was them "shooting some with us" turned into more of a competition. I freely admit that I left Sawyer to the wolves and stepped back to avoid the coming embarrassment.
They started shooting three pointers. The oldest guy would fire it to each of the high school/college age fellas, and they would put it up from behind the arc. Most of them were hitting about fifty percent. Sawyer was still milling by them (it was his basketball after all), and the guy said, "let the kid shoot."...

Ummm....

Sawyer eyed the basket and then put it up (somehow in slow motion) and SWISHED the first one! The guy fired it back at him and he immediately put it up, it went right around the rim and just came back out. Old guy told the big ol' teen that rebounded it to give it back to 'the kid'. And damned if Sawyer didn't NAIL THE THIRD ONE! They passed it to him one more time, and it was another lipper that earned groans from all around. I couldn't have been prouder. It had to be the most pressure situation I've ever seen him in. One of the older guys, who had been watching us play for a while, took several minutes to tell Sawyer how much he liked his stroke, and that when Saw had time, he would "take him up to Harlem and let him really learn how to play."
We'll wait 'til the Zimmerman trial is over to see about that one....

Here's a bunch of pictures with captions talking about our trip to the High Line, Yankee Stadium, the Irish Hunger Memorial, Vietnam Memorial and Grand Central, Pooh Himself at the Library, and back down to Battery Park. (There are three different links there, but you might be able to go to 'albums' once you get to the first one...what do I know?)

That is TIGGER. No impostor, no lie...

Manhattanhenge as viewed from Bryant Square Park (look it up)...

Below Freedom Tower

And here's the latest in the video series. It includes some pics that were on Facebook already, and some video that wasn't.

See ya on here when I can get to it.... Papa Glenn out.

Settling In to the City That Never Sleeps

It's been a week since we took off from Boone to head north. After stopovers in Philadelphia and New Jersey,....

That was how far I got into entry number one this morning when the pipe started leaking under the kitchen sink. -- Wait, let me start earlier: We are innkeeping at the Appalachian Loft on 24th Street between Park and Lexington in Manhattan. We started on Saturday, and we've been whirlwinding around the facility and the city ever since. -- So, I checked the pipe and started hunting the right tools. I just found the toolbox yesterday (only because one of our guests happened to be around to translate between Ramon the cleaner and myself) because I had to get a screwdriver to unlatch the shower drain covers in the communal bathrooms. Why would I do such a thing? Because each new Loftkeeper is supposed to "Snake" out the shower drains in each bathroom. No, really, why would anyone want to do such a thing? Hold on, I have to take a couple deep breaths and suppress the memory of the gooey hair again...
I didn't really intend for this to be a Loft improvement blog (insert giggles from all those familiar with my domestic repair expertise), so let me tell you quickly what else we've been getting into this week. First, we got a day in Philadelphia and two nights with the Baxter family. Despite sleeping until 11 or so, we still got to look at innumerable skulls, elephantine colons and more deformed feti than anyone ever needs to see at the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities, plus a jaunt to the Liberty Bell and a good chunk of downtown before sucking down five kinds of 'Water Ice' from Rita's. After the next night with the Jersey relatives, we got an ancient hotel room with a view of the Empire State something or other for our last night before The Job started. Since then has been an ongoing blur: running around in Madison Square Park, just a block and a half away, then on down to Union Square for the farmer's market fruit, Chinese at Sammy's on the west end of the Village, thinnest crust pizza ever with bacon, romaine lettuce, green apples, and a balsamic reduction (wha'?), Ground Zero memorial (considering discussion of generated feelings in nearby blog), BIG breakfast at the bagel joint at Baruch College's "vertical" campus next door, consideration of the interconnectedness of life at the whale exhibit at the Museum of Natural History after walking across Central Park by castle and turtle pond, which was after another delicious exorbitantly priced Italian lunch on the Upper East Side at a place where they claim Ralph Lauren eats (it's right there on the menu!), I'm sorry, I need to catch my breath...And then the best Mexican ever, and we have more water ice and 'creme ice' too, on the next block over.
So I go and look under the sink on what is now yesterday morning after FINALLY starting the blog, and there's a steady drip at the joint of the drain to the elbow, so I get the GIANT PIPE WRENCH -- wait, I mean GIANT!...

So, I manhandle the nut off (if you say it in my preposterous New York accent, it doesn't sound as dirty) and the leak only gets worse as I expose the rust hole, which turns out to be an entire rusted end of the friggin' pipe! Again, you don't believe me?

So's! I go down ta da twenny thoid street hoddware stowah' an' I grab 'da pipe I need, ya see? I find dat dere pipe cutter and I trim it down to size and wrench 'dat baby back in there like so's and we got us a whol' new kitchen sink drainage netwoyk.
Oh, law mercy, I'm not sure where that came from. Maybe I got a little infected when our train home from the Natural History Museum suddenly became an express to Brooklyn Tuesday! We made the most of it and took in a bit o' the culture on the far side of the East River. Then we walked back across the Brooklyn Bridge herself. Tired, tired, tired. Here's the movie with video evidence for all my claims, let me know what you wanna hear about.... Come see us! --Papa Glenn