Nope, not even a little bit. We keep catching KR googling pictures of puppies and talking about small British children. We're keeping a close eye on that one, but I can't make any promises.
In case you have not seen the news, read the paper or gotten on the Internet this week- we had two presidents in New York this week. This meant that every NYPD officer and orange traffic cone was out in full force, making a center lane in the blocks leading up to the U.N. It’s really reassuring- walking into Grand Central and seeing motorcades of black suburbans with men in sunglasses holding guns and staring at you through their open windows. I’m also fairly confident that the same people protesting the president of Iran just changed shirts and protested Bush the next day. Retired hippies have way too much free time.
We tried our hand at the New York apartment hunt this week- we got the number of a referred broker, met with her, and spent an afternoon viewing openings on the Upper West Side. No one exaggerated about the difficulty of finding a good place here- that’s pretty much the only thing we found to be true. It is every bit of the headache it was promised to be.
The first place we went to was a converted hotel behind the Lincoln Center-, which had the smallest closets and most non-existent living area/kitchen, we saw all day. The second was in a nice neighborhood, but it was under construction, and kind of depressing inside. The third was our favorite- the kitchen and living area were actually separate which was a bonus. I don’t know where we would do laundry or buy groceries, but maybe we will just have to live without food and clean clothes. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. The fourth place I almost don’t even want to talk about. We had to climb seven flights of stairs because the elevator was not in service (red flag), and I was inclined to think it could have a pest problem. I’m not knocking the pre-war buildings, but I do have a standard of cleanliness. It’s negotiable- but it I do have one.
We started joking about our different options, and one of them was getting a nice studio where we could line up three twin beds orphanage- style. What we would sacrifice in privacy, we would gain in nicer appliances and a doorman. I’m really not sure which is more important at this point.
After AV filled out an expandable folder full of paper work for her new job and KR and I continued our job search, we took some time off yesterday morning and set off to lay out in the Central Park sunshine. On our way to the bus stop it began raining intermittently, which was fantastic considering my laptop was in my messenger bag. I should pause to mention that our subway passes also work for the city buses, which are the preferred method of travel for sassy old New York women. So there we were, umbrella-less in the sprinkling rain, looking at two buses with bus drivers who would not acknowledge the fact that we were waiting. The blue hairs of 42nd street were getting their feathers ruffled, and we knew from experience that we did not want to be around for that, so we went to our back up, which is always Bryant Park.
Since we obviously couldn’t win for losing, it made perfect sense that when we found a table in the sun (yep, ten minutes later it was sunny), we were immediately surrounded by a 6th grade class that had settled in for their lunch break. The boys of the class decided to start throwing something, which turned out to be a baby carrot, for the duration of the break. The girls of the class (taller and more awkward than the boys) joined in until one of them got her hair stepped-on. There was also a class of little private-school kindergarteners, who were hilarious. Our level of amusement was probably enhanced by the fact that they were not our responsibility to watch. The kids were yanking up the squares of grass they were supposed to be sitting on, and even with a teacher and two chaperones it took about thirty minutes to get them to stop kicking each other and actually sit and eat something. Oh yes, and AV and KR both got grass stains, which made everything better.
We met up with some girls from our Bible study this morning to deliver food to the “frail elderly” of the Upper East this morning. It was great- the people were really appreciative and it was a beautiful day. We got home just in time to watch none of the football games we wanted to see. We also decided that T.V. really leaves something to be desired on the weekends. Since they don’t show Big 12 games in New York, we just turned on what we thought was America’s Funniest Home Videos on Animal Planet. I can’t decide if they are trying to be funny- we just watched a child playing an accordions in a stable while pigs chewed at his shoes.
You can’t make this stuff up.
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