11-16-2005 Playing Hooky

2005-11-17 - 8:57 a.m.

So much to catch up on.

Tuesday night I turned in my audition scripts at the volunteer gig. And they let me direct half a session and then read half a session. We were reading a children's novel. It was a blast.

Got about half a night's sleep thanks to waking up with horrible cramps and knee pain. Wheee. Annoyed cat with my middle of the night consciousness.

Up early and stopped for a road-trip fuel up. Not gasoline, but 7-11 coffee and a box of chocolate frosted donuts. The essentials. We had originally planned on driving up to Princeton and training in to NYC, but ended up driving instead. Or, in my case, riding. Not even navigating, whee. I was keeper of the cookies in the backseat.

We squeezed so much into the day. First we hit the MOMA. My first time there. Lunch at a brew pub with a kick-butt veggie burger. Caught a matinee of Doubt, which won this year's Tony for best screenplay. Also was my first time seeing a show in NYC. Crazy, I know. Saw an installation of modern sculpture, got free chocolate at the Times Square Hershey store. Toured the American Folk Art museum. Caught dinner at a Turkish restaurant with wondrous stuffed grape leaves and ended the meal with Turkish coffee. Next stop was Starbucks, where I had a double espresso zzzzzzzzing! Then on to Symphony Space for an evening of Selected Shorts featuring McSweeneys writers.

I love that every time I go to NYC it's such a completely different sort of trip. This one really renewed my longing to live there at some point, at least for a few years. It's just my kind of place. The only things that could make it more ideal would be to drag it further south and to make it more affordable. But, since I don't think either is likely to happen soon, I'll settle for longing for it and spending more time in it.

Despite all the weather reports that had called for storms all day, we didn't get any rain until evening. Then we had the sharp contrast of the city lights with soft, blurry streets. Driving away from Manhattan I looked back and saw the tops of just the tallest buildings swallowed into the clouds.

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