| Ok, putting the kid-bashing blog on hold for a moment, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about this past weekend. Patrick and I spent the weekend in NYC, staying with two married college friends of his, Dan and Deb, who have a lovely apartment on the upper (upper) west side. Friday night we went to a Yankee’s/Red Sox game where there were more police officers per spectator than employed in any state penitentiary. We stopped counting how many people got kicked out for throwing peanuts and beer at anyone wearing Red Sox colors. After an embarrassing 11-7 loss for the Yanks, we headed to the Upper East side where we miraculously found this little coffee/wine bar that served s’mores, complete with build-your-own graham cracker-chocolate-marshmallow roasted treat and eternal flame for the roasting. Who would have thought that you’d have to go to Manhattan to do something normally done at a campsite? The next day dawned bright and sunny…and windy. After some trouble inflating a borrowed bike’s tires and some homo-sexual innuendo (“Why don’t you try playing with it while I’m pumping?”), Dan, Patrick and I went for a bike ride along the Hudson River…from 125th street all the way down to (almost) Battery Park. I’m told it was about an 18 mile ride…and I’m also told that my performance was quite impressive for someone of my…ahem…lack of biking experience. I think my butt is still bruised….. That night we ate dinner at a Tapas (no, not topless) restaurant…a Portuguese eatery famous for their appetizer meals. The four of us each ordered a little appetizer and shared it with the table. We had chicken and ham croquets, stuffed artichokes, fried plantains, sausages, and some of us at the table had calamari octopus, and shrimp. After dinner we headed to Madison Square Garden for the Killers Concert, and if you’re in your twenties or thirties and have never heard of the Killers, shame on you…get a radio! The concert rocked (although a few of my more picky friends insisted that the sound quality was horrific). Afterwards, we headed to this basement, literal hole-in-the-wall bar ($8 vodka tonics…but it was more like a tonic vodka since it was only a shot of tonic and the rest was vodka!) Deb’s friend was holding her graduation party there, and we learned, rather disconcertingly, that Deb’s friends had never heard of the Killers. Dan, Patrick and I got bored, so we booked it straight for the best tiramisu in the city: Café Lalo (made famous from that scene in You’ve Got Mail.) Their tiramisu was good, but no necessarily the best I’ve ever had. Their café keoke (coffee with Kaluha and Irish Crème) on the other hand, was to DIE for! The next morning we awoke and my stomach felt a bit nauseous. Some thought it was from eating tiramisu and Kaluha at 2 in the morning, but I highly doubt that’s the real reason. I felt bad because Dan was making waffles with strawberries, and Deb was whipping real whipped cream! I did get to eat a small waffle and a little of the whipped cream and I started feeling better. That’s when we noticed a dark cloud over us. We departed the upper (upper) west side and headed for the train station. Three elderly black ladies were struggling with their luggage on a staircase so I offered them some help. Feeling like I’d done my good deed for the day, we boarded the train and settled down for an hour and a half ride. I had gotten a pretzel since my stomach was feeling better, but I made sure to hold onto my trash, being the good citizen that I am. Patrick got out his wallet in preparation for paying his fare. When he asked the conductor for a one-way ticket to Trenton, the conductor said “I’ll be right back for you.” We got Hamilton Station (one station away from Trenton) and the conductor still hadn’t come back to take Patrick’s fare. We got our things together to walk toward the front of the train in hopes of beating the rush to the River Line (which was scheduled to depart 5 minutes after our arrival in Trenton). It was then that Patrick noticed that he didn’t have his wallet. He walked back to what he thought was the car we were sitting in and searched franticly, on his hands and knees no less, for his wallet. The train slowly pulled into the Trenton station and everyone was getting off in a rush. They finally kicked us off because there was another train coming in and this train had to go back to the yard for cleaning. That was it; his wallet was gone. After calling his mother who reported his credit cards stolen, and registering the lost wallet with NJ Transit, there was nothing more we could do, so we headed over to the River Line, which was just about to depart. People were using the only two ticket machines available so we had to wait. Finally, the bell on the train started ringing, indicating that the train was about to depart. The lady in front of us abandoned her ticket purchase and jumped on the train sans payment. We franticly had to press buttons canceling her order in order to start our own. Needless to say, we missed the train. As we sat on the bench in Trenton waiting for the next train (1/2 hour later), I got to thinking…I really thought we had done everything good citizens should be doing…I helped those ladies with their luggage, we picked up our trash rather than leaving it on the seats like every other filthy passenger. We were respectful and honest trying to do the right thing. And look what it got us? It was hard not to relive the last few moments that Patrick had his wallet. He had it out in the first place because he wanted to be honest in paying his train fare. How’s that for karma? Karma can kiss my bruised little ass. I told Patrick that things happen for a reason, and although we might never know what that reason is, we have to have faith that somehow the events of this day were not in vain. |
