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