Rhythms of Life in NYC

After two plus months of living in NYC, a rhythm of life is starting to emerge for how the time goes. Every morning starts with my spiritual practice of meditation, chanting, and prayers.  I've been able to expand my spiritual practice now that I live at a much slower pace. It's one of the best parts of having more time. Mondays are shaping up to be days for "maintenance" : laundry, groceries, cleaning the apartment, and making a stab at tackling all the reading that has accumulated with the delivery of the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday New York times and the weekly New Yorker and New York Magazine that arrive on Mondays. Reading the paper when it arrives on the weekend is hard to do because the weekend is usually packed with activity.  It's sometimes a bit overwhelming seeing that stack of reading material staring me down. I feel obligated to plow through it since I don't like wasting money and I did subscribe to all these reading sources.  Part of the "problem" is that they are all well written and all have great informative articles across the spectrum and list after list of happenings for activities in and around the city. So to stay "au courant," I make every effort to get through the stack. Middle of the week is catching up on emails, errands, READING, internet related searches for upcoming travel or whatever, figuring out my work situation (still trying to get my NYC professional license secured-just hit another snafu and I applied for a part time job, also still doing some UW work related things) etc  Wednesdays, I've started to have a weekly phone call with a friend in Vermont which is very grounding for me. It's good to have a regular connection with someone who knows my history. Long walks exploring a new part of the city is always part of the weekdays. Fridays seems to get here before I know it and that means DATE NIGHT for me and Bob. We've had this tradition of date night for forever........it's quite lovely and sweet and fun. Then Saturday and Sunday are all about exploring new places and activities in and around NYC.  Once the holiday busyness is over, I am hoping to add a yoga class to my weekly routine at least twice a week. Sonic Yoga is just up the street on 9th a few blocks away and it gets really good ratings for all levels of practice. I am looking forward to getting that underway.

For a brief couple of weeks there seems to be a decrease in the tourism, at least here in the Times Square area. With the days much shorter now (dark by 5pm now) and the weather cooling down (though this weekend was like summer, unseasonably warm and sunny), there are a lot less tourists out and about. The streets are far less crowded and it's so much easier to wheel my granny cart around when I am out getting groceries. I expect this will end this week as New York City prepares for the onslaught of visitors to the city for the Holidays.  Slowly the city is transforming itself into the magical image that it is famous for around the holidays. The skating rinks at Bryant Park, Rockefeller Center, and Wollman Rink in Central Park are all up and running. The big landmark stores are starting to put together their very famous Christmas themed windows and instore decorations.  Even the street food cart vendors get into the spirit with green, gold, and red garland on their trucks. Lots of twinkly lights on the trees and the salvation army bell ringers are out as well. I am excited for when the whole city is made up--I was here visiting Bob last year before Christmas and it was pretty special to be in NYC around Christmas time. I am looking very forward to seeing lots more of the HOLIDAY DRESSED NYC when my niece and her husband and baby come to visit the first week of December.

Tis also the season for buying a good winter coat. The stores are just overflowing with coats of all different styles and materials.  PETA has not made any ground here in NYC it seems. Fur coats and fur trimmed or fur lined coats ABOUND here. It's almost hard to find a coat WITHOUT some fur on it. Maybe it has something to do with the early history of New York being a major player in fur trading. Puffy feather and down coats seem to be the most functional armor against the brutal winter cold here.  Yet, the true battle is finding one that doesn't make you look like the Michelen tire man. I found one that is reasonable looking on me and hopefully will be warm enough. This is my first winter here and there is lots of speculation that it could be a killer winter because of how unusually hot the summer was and how warm the weather has been so far this fall season. Guess it is a wait and see game. I just hope it doesn't mess up our trip to CA for Christmas with our families.

I will say that not everyone in NYC is in the Holiday Spirit.  Bob was out running errands Saturday morning and spotted an open man hole. He wanted to see what was down in the belly of NYC but by the time he got to the opening, the city worker pulled the manhole cover over the hole. Bob said, "Oh I wanted to see what's down there," and the guy looked at him and said "NOTHING....RATS."  And that was pretty much that in quashing Bob's curiosity.

So back to Friday night Date Night. We found a really great Mexican hole in the wall place, Burrito Box on 9th and 57th. It reminded me of the really great burritos at a Taquiera place we used to like to go to in West Seattle where the people there barely spoke any English. After that we went on this thing called The Ride (check out their link at http://www.experiencetheride.com/) I was able to get cheap same day complimentary tickets to this rather overpriced excursion.  Anyway, it was pretty corny but probably good if you've never been to NYC  before as it gives a fair amount of history about NYC and several of the landmarks. There are also performers on the street that break into song and dance as the bus goes by. The interesting thing about this giant bus you ride around in is that one entire side of the bus as well as the ceiling of the bus are all clear windows. So while you are looking out at all the sites and street performances, people are also looking in at you. Lots of people wave and smile and point. We are encouraged to do the same to those on the street. It's a little interactive that way.  Going at night was cool in that of course the city is all lit up which brings a whole different atmosphere to the event and one of the very best parts was going around Columbus Circle with the fountain lit up and they had a ballerina with all kinds of twinkly lights attached to her that made for a very magical performance as she and her partner danced around the fountain. That was really cool.

On Saturday, our chosen excursion was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and explore Brooklyn a bit so as to make more of a first hand assessment rather than a knee jerk reaction to it as a lesser borough. The weather was SPECTACULAR for such a walk, sunny and warm. We subwayed to City Hall and on our walk to the pedestrian entrance to the bridge we were just awed by all the beautiful architecture, fountains, gardens, skyscrapers, and on and on. The pedestrian walkway is wood planks that go for the mile length of the bridge. I think they are original planks. The view of the city as we walked across the bridge is so worth it to take this walk. Once we reached the Brooklyn side, it was VERY CLEAR we were no longer in Manhattan. Not to sound snobbish but really that is the only way this is going to sound, we had an immediate impulse to want to run across the bridge as quickly as we could to get back to Manhattan. It's that distinct of a difference. Ultimately the best thing about Brooklyn is its proximity to Manhattan. Now to be fair, we only explored from Brooklyn Heights to Park Slope.  We didn't get to Williamsburg, or Fort Greene or Greenport or other places deemed as the really COOL parts of Brooklyn. So our opinion is probably rather premature (and OtO might even say immature).  Unfortunate too is that the famous Brooklyn Flea Market was not being held in this really cool bank space so we didn't get to experience that, our attempt to get into the Brooklyn Botanical Garden was marred by a never ending search to the entrance of it and the sidewalk along one full side was strewn with so much trash, it reminded us of India--not a good connotation when it comes to trash. To add insult to injury, we had been looking very forward all day to finally getting to Difara, supposedly serving the best pizza in NYC. We trained there specifically and it was CLOSED when we arrived and wasn't going to open for TWO HOURS. So we didn't get that Brooklyn experience either. We did enjoy a picnic lunch at the little park on the East River that faces the Brooklyn Bridge and has great views of Manhattan (of course we loved that spot because it viewed Manhattan!!)  Brooklyn Heights to Park Slope is new family CENTRAL.  Seems that about 90% of the people we saw were pregnant, pushing a stroller, and/or had small kids in tow. This is apparently the place you go to incubate future Manhattanites. We aren't sure when our next venture into Brooklyn will be but this excursion didn't exactly whet our appetite for more. If we ever do go back to Brooklyn, we do have the advantage of getting there fairly directly as there are several direct subway lines from our Times Square subway station.

Given our disappointment of not being able to eat at DiFara's, we trained back to Manhattan, got off in Chinatown, and ate dinner at Vegetarian Dim Sum, picked up some ginseng filled vials for Bob, and bought some really beautiful pomegranites from one of the street vendors. We enjoyed our walk around Chinatown more this go round than last time. Not sure why, just did.

Kelly is in town this weekend and she and her friend David came to our place for brunch today. It is so nice to have her in town, a rare treat for us. She along with other African American medical students are charged up to propose changes in the UW med school curriculum to increase the thoughtfulness and relevance to information about treating people of color.  They are a determined group--I hope the UW can be positively responsive.
To end this entry on a very whimsical note, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE take a few minutes (less than 4 to be exact) to check out this incredible You Tube video. Kelly's friend, David, showed it to us today. It is so sweetly amusing......the link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF9-sEbqDvU&NR=1 and it is titled Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.