day 1 of my excellent adventure

I'm going to talk about my vacation now. You can't even stop me if you try! I told you about the flight already. It was largely uneventful, I was thankfully seated next to a trim, cosmopolitan Spaniard and his mother who were on their way to Valencia (as opposed to the brash, Rubenesque girls across the aisle), and the toddler two rows up didn't scream the entire time, just part of the time. Her parents were all scruffy and hairy and wearing climbing fashion, so they were probably hippie beatniks who don't believe in suppressing their child's instinct to scream and carry on in a plane full of disgruntled travelers. Lousy beatniks.

The landing was the roughest I've ever experienced, and I got all nauseated. When I got in my cab to go to Claire and Nate's apartment I was able to sit up and look around at part of Queens, but then the constant, violent stopping and starting got to me and I had to lie down on the seat and quietly moan to myself. I haven't gotten carsick like that since I was pregnant. I almost died.

This is before I almost died/ruined the cab.

Then I got to Claire's apartment and after composing myself we went to the Empire State Building, which is such a perfect example of all that is beautiful about Art Deco architecture. It's so clean and refined without being stark or cold. It's lovely. There was a middle-school group there at the same time, and I enjoyed making assumptions about the students near us, e.g., that the boy and girl who were glomming all over each other are sexually active, and that this is probably their most enjoyable field trip ever. Who knows, it may even be life-changing!

It's a really tall building, and the visibility was good that day. But so ungrateful is humankind that after a while it becomes mundane, and then you're just thinking, so we're really high up, so what? I'm kidding! It was neat. But no apes.

So we schlepped home, ate at Hummus Place (their hummus is really good, and it gave me some good ideas about how to make my hummus better), then went to bed.