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alexpgpI went into Manhattan today. The train was late getting into Penn Station, and it was expensive enough buying a round-trip "off-peak" ticket, without it giving me the acute feeling that I had a "deadline" by which I must return home, so I blew off my planned museum visit and wandered around midtown, instead.
Coming up the escalator from the LIRR, my fitbit showed I had logged about 1200 steps for the day. By the time I was on the train headed home, that figure had an extra zero on it.
I made a point of visiting Times Square, to walk around about 3 days before the big crowd assembles for the New Year's festivities. One thing I hadn't realized is that the ball that signals the end of the old year and the start of the new is positioned at the south end of the square, which sort of goes against what one might assume after a lifetime of watching stories unwind on large and small screens, among which is the annual "story" of the descent of the glittering ball during the last minute of the old year.
On such screens, airplanes traveling west to east fly to the right, and planes that fly left are headed east to west. That makes north the direction looking into the screen.
Except on Times Square on New Year's Eve, when the cameras are actually pointed south.
I had been prepared to go without lunch during my day in town, but as I was in no rush to be anywhere (except Penn Station for the ride home), I stopped by a Thai "bistro"—Heng2, on 10th Avenue between 51st and 52nd ("Your Thai Neighbor")—for some pad see ewe, which consists of the kind of broad, flat noodles one usually associates with "drunken noodles (pad kee mao) cooked with sweet black soy sauce. As it turned out, the bistro served portion of just the right size: one bite less would have left me hungry; one bite more would have been too much.
Somewhere between arriving and leaving Manhattan, it got good and cold and very windy, but I survived. Next time, it'll be with Galina (who says I now owe her a night in town, and specifies the town as "Paris").
Cheers...
Coming up the escalator from the LIRR, my fitbit showed I had logged about 1200 steps for the day. By the time I was on the train headed home, that figure had an extra zero on it.
I made a point of visiting Times Square, to walk around about 3 days before the big crowd assembles for the New Year's festivities. One thing I hadn't realized is that the ball that signals the end of the old year and the start of the new is positioned at the south end of the square, which sort of goes against what one might assume after a lifetime of watching stories unwind on large and small screens, among which is the annual "story" of the descent of the glittering ball during the last minute of the old year.
On such screens, airplanes traveling west to east fly to the right, and planes that fly left are headed east to west. That makes north the direction looking into the screen.
Except on Times Square on New Year's Eve, when the cameras are actually pointed south.
I had been prepared to go without lunch during my day in town, but as I was in no rush to be anywhere (except Penn Station for the ride home), I stopped by a Thai "bistro"—Heng2, on 10th Avenue between 51st and 52nd ("Your Thai Neighbor")—for some pad see ewe, which consists of the kind of broad, flat noodles one usually associates with "drunken noodles (pad kee mao) cooked with sweet black soy sauce. As it turned out, the bistro served portion of just the right size: one bite less would have left me hungry; one bite more would have been too much.
Somewhere between arriving and leaving Manhattan, it got good and cold and very windy, but I survived. Next time, it'll be with Galina (who says I now owe her a night in town, and specifies the town as "Paris").
Cheers...
