19 August 2010

The week that wuz...

It started last Friday afternoon with a hasty flight from the office to - appropriately - the airport. SDF to MDW wasn't bad; in fact, the landing was kind of fun. The pilot gave us a heads-up that they'd assigned us the shortest available runway for landing purposes at Midway. Good thing Southwest flies short planes... From where I was sitting, I could just about feel the dude standing on the brake pedal. Seriously professional job of parking that plane, if you ask me.

We flew most of the way to Philly in the dark, then rode to NJ with the Beth and Hillary Show. You put Hillary and her cousin Elizabeth together in the same small space for a few hours, and it gets crazy. And loud. But fun. I, on the other hand, was dead on my butt, so I dozed through most of it.

Saturday was Joe and Damaris' wedding. Joe is Elizabeth's brother, and Damaris is the new Most Recent Addition to the Family. She's a lovely young woman, she was a gorgeous bride, it was a beautiful wedding, and the reception brought back memories of my first Italian Thanksgiving. (Short version: Between the fourth course - i.e., the entree' - and dessert, I found myself in the bathroom, praying, "Please, please let my stomach stop hurting, and I swear I won't eat another bite." And then, 30 minutes later, back at the table just in time for them to bring out the tiramisu, I prayed, "You knew I was kidding, right?" So you get the idea, right?)

Best thing about the reception: Chip Mergott's music. Not that the sit-down dinner wasn't fabulous. The salmon was especially perfect. (Can something be "especially perfect"? Yes, it can.) But Chip was great - the only thing that would have been better would have been Annie, too. Sadly, the Mergotts were unable to find a babysitter, so it was an Annie-less show.

Note to Chip and Annie: The next time we're invited to the same event, call me. I'll look out for Eli and you guys can play all you want.

Spent a good chunk of Sunday at work, thanks to the invention of the "remote desktop." Went online to check a thing or two, and ended up on for about 4 hours, basically being a perfectionist. Good thing I enjoy being a perfectionist.

Monday - a trip to NYC. Made a stop at the recently opened Forever 21 in Times Square, where we bought a gift for the pet sitter. (Hope she likes it!) Then walked about four blocks farther than my knee was willing before I demanded relief, which came in the form of a cab. Never rode in a New York cab before. Monday, I did it twice.

Destination: the studio where The Daily Show is taped. Yes, that Daily Show - the one with Jon Stewart! Trust me, it was worth every minute of the three hours we stood in line. (We had tickets. If you don't have tickets, don't bother. And even if you do, if you show up after 4:30 p.m., forget it. At 4:30, your tickets will become the prized possession of someone who showed up without tickets, but on time.) The guest: Emma Thompson. Among the thoughts that kept going through my head as I watched Her Gorgeousness mugging and cutting up with JS: "Kenneth Brannaugh was screwing around on HER? What a dope..."

Well, and we see whose career has gained serious altitude, and whose pretty much disappeared...

Cab to Penn Station, train back to Basking Ridge. Got in around 10 p.m.; dinner was a malt from the Dairy Queen. (Sadly, I cannot recommend the malts from the Bernardsville DQ. They were low on malt and tasted unmistakeably of skim milk.)

Tuesday, flew home. En route, picked up a New Yorker - fun reading - and a paperback by Alice Hoffman: The Story Sisters, which is classic Hoffman. Charming, bittersweet, fanciful to the point of being almost mystic - a beautiful book. Finished it last night. Not that short; just that engrossing.

Wednesday, back to work. Today, back to work some more. Tomorrow... yeah. That. (At least I have lunch plans.)

Saturday, I've signed up to help build a greenhouse at Brandeis Elementary School. Now, THAT is good use of a weekend!

1 comment:

  1. "We flew most of the way to Philly in the dark, then rode to NJ with the Beth and Hillary Show. You put Hillary and her cousin Elizabeth together in the same small space for a few hours, and it gets crazy. And loud."

    I read this aloud to Nicole, and all she could say was, "Yes. Yes. So true."

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