I already miss NYC

Bob and I are leaving tomorrow for a nine day trip to CA and MI to spend time with our beloved spiritual teacher and other devotees. While I am looking very forward to seeing Amma and many friends of ours, I am already missing New York.  I've been doing a lot of walking around the city this week, sometimes 6 to 7 miles a day. As I discover more and more of it, I just get sucked in deeper and deeper into loving this city. Pretty much every neighborhood I wander about in, I can see us living in that neighborhood (sans the East Village or too far north Manhattan). With Christmas just around the corner, the magic is really starting to rev up here. It's quite special to be witness to it. I've been doing a lot of power discount shopping this week, checking out all the Housing Works thrift stores as well as the major discount designer stores throughout the city (east village, gramercy, UES, UWS, west village, midtown) . I've been having a lot of fun finding dirt cheap designer clothes to build up a more NYC fashion look. We also saw two plays this week, All Through the Night, a one man show about African American men. The actor, Daniel Beaty, is absolutely amazing in his fluidity to be able to populate the entire play single handedly for all the characters, male and female, adult and child. I scored cheap complimentary tickets with my Gold Club theatre mania membership. What a great treat to see this play. It was performed in a theatre off of Union Square, so it was fun to be in that part of town for the evening, just a 15 minute subway ride from our apartment. Loving it! Then tonight we went to see the Pitmen Painters, a rare non-musical on Broadway. It was a very well done production. We had a bit of a celebration tonight because our house is SOLD! The sale closed today for us and that chapter of our life is now behind us. For the first time in decades, we are completely debt free. Pretty amazing when you really think about it. We had dinner at a really great sushi place just a block from where we live, can't remember the exact name but it was really good. I can see us being regulars there. Cruised through four special holiday artist bazaars today (midtown, grand central station, St.Barts, Bryant Park). Saw some really beautiful creations but all pretty pricey--not quite there yet feeling comfortable dropping that much cash on anything. It was fun just to look. Got some bad news about my psychology license. Turns out it will take a lot longer than I expected--more requirements than I initially understood. It's mostly a waiting game now with WA state having to go through their archived records to find the necesssary info to mail to NY state but it could take months. So just plodding along with the process. So this will likely be my last entry for a while...........Happy Thanksgiving!!