NEW YORK TRIP – MARCH 20-23, 2009 – TAYLOR: 9 yrs, SAMMIE: 4 yrs, DISNEY: 2½ yrs, CHRISTOPHER: 8 mos

(continued from previous posts)

Saturday, March 21 – We awoke about 8:30, which seemed early since we had arrived at our hotel late the night before and the kids stayed up for a little bit even after we arrived.  So we went down to the hotel’s restaurant to get breakfast, which was a mistake.  I had thought it’d be cheaper to eat in the restaurant rather than get room service, and I had also thought we’d be cramped trying to eat in the room.  But down at the restaurant, our kids went nuts, and continued to do so while it took about an hour for the food to come.  And this was a nice restaurant – not a friendly mom n pop place where they actually like and tolerate kids like we’re used to back home.  They did have pretty good hollandaise sauce for their eggs benedict, but my enjoyment of it was severely compromised due to the stress of the kids.  Our server kept walking by and mumbling things, and I’ll admit that our 8 month old son does make a mess when he eats, but don’t they all?  We cleaned up the best we could, but that didn’t stop the server from “stealing” our change.  That’s right, when we paid the bill, the included 14% gratuity apparently wasn’t enough for him because he failed to bring the change back.  Rather than try to track down Mr. Rude (we are SO not in Kansas anymore!), my husband took up the issue with the front desk.

Next it was time for the business meeting (the reason we came, I guess), and so Manny Jamy took the kids down to the pool while hubby and I met with the clients.  Except they were late, and while we were waiting, I began to have doubts about the baby and I being disruptive to the meeting, so I took him back to our room to put on his bathing suit so he could join his sisters in  the pool.  Just as I arrived, so did Manny Jamy with the rest of the kids, and we decided to take them for a walk outside instead.  Our hotel was on the New Jersey side, and offered a postcard view of the New York skyline:

Even though I had never been there before, it seemed to me that there was indeed a gaping hole where the twin towers used to stand, and Jamy who had been there before confirmed this.  We watched many a garbage barge sail by, and I was surprised to find that the sea gulls in New York are quite bashful – I guess I’m used to the ones at Sea World and Marineland Canada where they’ll just swoop down and swipe the fish you buy to feed the dolphins and whales.  But it was a nice day, and our hotel offered a nice little pocket of solstice tucked away from the frenzied traffic of the city.  I wanted to kill as much time down there as possible since we were short on room in the car and my packing of toys for the hotel room had to be limited.  But my oldest was tired – she fell asleep on a bench outside – and her little brother started losing it because he also needed a nap so badly.  So we went back up to the room to wait for my husband’s meeting to be over.  Manny Jamy was nice enough to watch  the two middle girls so  that I could catch a nap with my oldest and the baby, and it was MUCH needed and MUCH appreciated.  Our 2 year old fell asleep as well, which was a good thing, but I was disappointed I couldn’t take her to be shown off to the clients when my husband called – she is awfully cute!  So anyway, I went down to meet the clients, and they were extremely nice.    They have a baby who was born just 9 days before my son, and she was really adorable!  I was disappointed – if I had known they had brought the baby, I would have stayed at the meeting and let the babies play together!  Oh, well, at this point, I was just glad to be done with work and ecstatic to be well-rested so that we could go to the city and have SOME FUN!

Because we were on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, every time we wanted to go into the city, we had to wait for our hotel shuttle to take us to the ferry station, then wait for the ferry to take us across the river, and then board a Waterway bus (different from a city bus, as we later learned) to take us to our destination in the city.  Not a big deal, but by the end of the trip, it had gotten a little tiresome to add that much traveling time to get where we wanted to go.  So anyway, Saturday night, we ventured into the city to take a bus tour on one of those double-decker, open-topped buses.  On the way to the tour bus stop, we weaved our way through the massive crowd that is the Manhattan theater district on a Saturday night.  We did have a few celebrity sightings; including the actor Morgan Freeman:

though Mr. Freeman did have the personality of a candle, as Jamy pointed out.  We also saw multiple Statues of Liberty walking around, but a few of them were getting into trouble with the police.  Now that’s something you don’t see everyday – a Statue of Liberty getting arrested – too bad I didn’t get my camera ready in time to take a picture, that would have been one for the scrapbook!  We also saw Bugs Bunny, Elmo, 2 Cookie Monsters, a walking sandwich, a naked cowboy (don’t ask), and Batman.  Except I don’t think it was the real Batman unless he’s always been African American – besides, the real Batman would have been fighting crime in Gotham City, not posing for pictures on the streets of New York.  Here is one of the Cookie Monsters – look carefully and you can see Elmo to the right:

We got suckered by some street vendors and sampled their wares of smoked meat, hot dogs, and art.  My husband bought a caricature of our oldest daughter and a sign with our youngest daughter’s name in caligraphy, but walking around with those souvenirs was like writing “suckers” on our foreheads – we got hit up for everything after that, from purses to sunglasses to comedy show tickets.  Actually, we kind of got “had” again- when my husband bought the $5 sign for our daughter, the artist started putting a frame on it, which would have upped the price to $20.  My husband kept saying, “no frame, no frame!” but all of a sudden, the artist no longer spoke English, so he went ahead and framed it and charged us $20.  My husband did not pay him the full $20, but I know it was still more than the $5 it was supposed to have cost – oh well, you only visit New York once, at least in our case – I won’t go back, at least not with little kids!

So then we boarded our tour bus, and that was really neat, informative, and offered gorgeous views of the city at night.

Ok, the picture obviously doesn’t do it justice, but here is my 2-year-old daughter seeing her first skyscraper:

It was kind of chilly, and we tried moving down to the first floor of the bus, but the view did not compare with what we could see on the top, so we ended up moving upstairs again.  The city was gorgeous at night, but when we went over the Manhattan Bridge, it was so high up, it was kind of freaky!  Being on the top of the bus and looking down, you couldn’t even see the road, just the water below, and I couldn’t help but think how easy it would be to just leap over the side…  not that I would do that of course, I’m just saying.

After the bus tour, we tried to find the Waterways bus – the one that would go back to the ferry station, but we had some trouble.  We ended up sitting on  a street corner for about two hours.  We stopped a passing taxi, figuring we’d just pay the expense just to get us and the kids off the streets of New York, but we couldn’t even all fit in one taxi.  I was strongly against the idea of splitting up in any way, shape or form, so our next idea was to stop a passing horse and carriage.  While asking the very friendly Irish driver directions to the ferry bus, his horse took a gi-normous leak right there on the street, but at least the girls were momentarily entertained.  We declined the $70 horse and buggy ride, and finally the Waterways bus arrived – my husband practically jumped in front of it to stop it since the previous one had passed us by, but it worked – the bus actually picked us up!

Overall, an interesting night in New York.  And it’s not like I expected people to be overly nice.  I certainly didn’t expect it to be like my hometown, where you can’t walk down the street without strangers saying hi and you can’t walk around with kids at night without people offering you a lift.  But it was still an adjustment – every time we’d ask how to get to the Waterways bus, people would just point off in a general direction and grunt, even police.  And it was amazing to me how a family with 4 small children could set up camp on a street corner for 2 hours without one soul taking notice – I swear, we could have moved there and no one would have known nor cared.  By the end of it all, I can’t believe how sick of Times Square I was…  Oh, and I forgot to mention, while we were searching for the Waterways bus, we came across a small deli that was actually recommended  to us by our tour bus driver – Z Deli.  The place had amazing falafel and gyro sandwiches!  And their prices were reasonable, especially for New York City – no, reasonable is not even the word for them.  I’m talking $.99 slices of pizza, and the huge gyro sandwich was only $3.99!  Its only shortcoming was the lack of places to sit, but the guys who run the place went out of their way to accommodate us (in anti-New York style, it seems), letting us dine at their “internet cafe” area.

So after the “miracle bus” picked us up, took us to the ferry station, and we rode the ferry and picked up the hotel shuttle, it was very late and we were exhausted.  It exhausts me just to type out the story, as it probably exhausts the reader to absorb my excruciating details, so now’s a good time to cut this volume short – more later…

After leaving the NJ/NYC area, we decided to break the drive home in half and spend another few hours of fun at the Pittsburgh Zoo.  After arriving at our hotel at 2.30AM (or was it 3.30?  “Jill” the obviously feminine GPS was an hour slow), I got a few hours of sleep.  The trek to the zoo AGAIN was met with detours and misdirection.  We stopped at a police station and parked in a towing spot.  Thank goodness Chris & Lisa returned to the van before we were given notice.  Once again, Chris seemed to ignore Jill’s directions to get us to the zoo.  We stopped at a road side dairy treat where they had the largest and HOTTEST fish sandwich ever.  It was so hot that I had to let it cool a few minutes,  but it was good.

The Pittsburgh Zoo was in my opinion the best of the three.  The exhibits were all extraordinary and entertaining.  The African elephants were a special treat especially seeing the babies.  A keeper was in the area with the 4 or five elephants and looked right at home.

The aquarium featured more jellyfish (I think Akron’s jelly exhibit was better), HUGE (relative) pot-bellied seahorses, and penguins.  My favorite exhibit was the sea lions on display.  The trainers made them perform for their food and it was amazing to see the animals wave, leap out of the water, bark, and perform other eye-catching feats.

There was also a mole-rat tunnel area for the little ones to play in.  Taylor and Sammie made a new friend inside the maze of tunnels.  Little Disney was more apprehensive about starting off but once she did, it took some time to get her out.  The park was closed by the time we got her out.  But we had to stop by the sea lions one last time.

Then, it was back on the road for the final leg of the journey.  We stopped in Elyria for dinner and stopped at Wal-Mart (there is no escaping it!!!!).  Funny thing, this Wal-Mart was still a regular store.  I had thought that all the old stores were becoming Super Centers… bigger and better, right?  Well…

We returned from our trip around 12:00 Tuesday morning.  Once again, I had an absolutely fabulous time in my role of Manny.  Thank you Chris and Lisa for having me.  Thank you Taylor, Sammie, Disney, and little Beeber.  I was so proud of the four of you.  There were a few moments when most kids would have been pulling their hair out, but you were all wonderful.  The end of this fantastic voyage.  Much too quick but memories to last a lifetime.  Be sure to check out taylhis‘ blog for her own journal of the trip.  I found that I had to make one adjustment to my own.  HEHE

Thanks to advance posting (thank you taylhis for making me look for this), I am able to wish myself a happy blogging anniversary and not have to worry about getting it done that day.

I wasn’t sure what I was planning on doing when I started this blog. I thought I would get a few more space/science related blogs than I have, but that is neither here nor there. I did assume that I would write about my theater experience. That I did. I also wrote about my family, friends, life experiences and even some book and movie reviews.

I am always interested in who reads my blog, but it seems that most visitors are either computers (loads of spam visits) or very shy lurkers. For the most part I average around 25-30 visitors a day. Less if I don’t write anything new, more if I do. Are people telling their friends that I wrote something? I don’t know. My guess is that it is just the computers finding new stuff. I also noticed I get more visitors when I post on other sites with my blog as part of my signature. I hope they enjoy what they find here.

My regulars, well I just think they are the some of the best people I know. But of course I still wish more people would reply. I’m in theater, I enjoy the notice. 😉

Glad I could two events of the past month together.  Our final hours in the Big Apple were some of the most thought provoking and emotional.  It began after we decided to have breakfast delivered instead of doing the hotel restaurant again.  We made our way back across the river for another bus tour.  This time on a jump on and off trek.  Our hostess was a barrel of laughs and energy.  At one stop, a vendor jumped on offering refreshments.  The guide quipped that “this is not a movie theatre” in a decidedly Oriental accent.  After 9 stops, we arrived at our destination.

Ground zero itself created a very heavy feeling within me.  Seeing the empty skyline was nothing compared to actually being up close to the site surrounded by a fence behind which the memorial is being constructed complete with the 1776 foot tall Freedom Tower.  The 9/11 exhibit was also an emotional journey.  Artifacts on display recovered from the wreckage of the hi-jacked planes, the buildings, even a stuffed lamb that was buried and somehow survived intact (symbolism, anyone?).   Video tributes of the tragedies and heroes.  Downstairs, letters written by children of different culures were on display.  Many of these were so heartfelt that it was hard to keep a dry eye.

Following the tour of the exhibit, we had to once again make our way to the pier to get back to the hotel.  We thought we were in luck when were directed to the front of the Commerce Building where there was to be a dock where a ferry came and went.  Not so luckily, the dock is closed on Sunday.  SOOOO WE HAD TO FIND YET ANOTHER WATERWAY BUS to take us to the pier we were accustomed to.  That is a story best left for another time… I may just let taylhis relate that adventure.

Finally, we got back to the Jersey shore and went to dinner before departing.  On our way out of Jersey, we stopped for gas.  Chris got out, started pumping gas, and was immediately confronted by an attendant who began shouting at him.  Apparently, we had inadvertantly come across one of the few remaining full service pumps in existence.  But outbursts like “Papi” were heard.  I thought he was a fan of David Ortiz (wrong area to be one of those… YUCK).  By the time the gas was pumped, Chris was promoted (?) to “Boss.”  On the way out, it was discovered that we were unsure if the rattled attendant attached the fuel cap… sure enough after travelling a few blocks, we found out that it was not.

Today marks one year of my blog. More on that in the next post… 😉

I was wondering how random my thoughts have really been in the past year. I’ve written about a lot of different topics that interest me, but I’ve seem to have posted most about the things in life that are most important to me.

Family and Friends.

Posts written in times of sadness revolved around family and friends no longer in my life. Posts written in better times revolved around family and friends I share my life with now. Theater posts revolve around plays and my dear friends that I’ve met through that theater. Even posts on space and science go back to family events I’ve kept in my mind through many a year.

Just how random?

Over three hundred posts and some posts fit into more than one category, but here is a rough break down.

160 Thoughts on Life (default category could contain anything)
100+ posts on Family
50 posts on Friends
48 on the theater
42 on movies or reviews
37 on Widows and Widowers
24 on Science and Technology
10 to 20 on the remaining categories.

If we add the posts for family, friends and widow/widowers together, that is over 1/2 my post total. Yep, kind of shows were my mind is most of the time. This place is a dumping ground to clear my mind and help get thoughts back in gear. I’ve always know what is important to me, and it is good to see that my thought ‘dumps’ confirm this.
😉

I have noticed over the past few months that a number of large newspapers are either going out of business or filing for bankruptcy. I’m sure this is also a problem with many of the small town newspapers too.

Personally, I have not had a subscription to a newspaper in many years. I was tired of the apparent lack of news I was seeing. More and more it seemed I was getting opinion pieces on the front page. It doesn’t matter if I agree with the opinion or not, I just wanted straight news. While I still haven’t found a place to get that, I feel I get better news coverage now, than I ever did before. I go to many different news sites on the internet. If I find that the stories I’m interested in are reported by more than one news organization, I will read multiple articles. I’ve found that most news is just regurgitated from one of a few major news sources, never a chance to get a full story there.

To my eyes, the newspaper industry lost its focus years ago. They didn’t see that they were losing customers when cable news became a mainstay for most people. They missed the internet boom of getting news to people too. The newspapers became a place to get ads and coupons. The news or opinions were no longer important to people. They could get those in other places. And along came coupon bug and other web based coupon sites. No need to wait for the Sunday edition of the newspaper for coupons.

Today I heard bits and pieces of some of the things coming from Washington, and there is some movement to bail out the Newspaper industry. My question is why. How is it important to the country. There are other news outlets, why do we need a newspaper that can’t stand on its own? I don’t like seeing jobs lost, this economy needs all the jobs it can get. I would like to see sustainable jobs. With newspapers going downhill for years (maybe even longer than auto industry), I only see bailing out newspapers as a big waste of money. If the economy had stayed healthy, I still saw the newspapers failing within the next few years. The young adults of today don’t relish the feel of a newspaper anymore. It is much easier to get your news on the go. I-phones, Blackberries, computers, televisions all do a better job reaching people today.

And of course with the new soy based inks, silly putty doesn’t do nearly as good of job producing reverse images of the comics. That was a big set back for the newspaper industry. Kids weren’t playing with newspapers anymore…. 😉

Since Sunday my sleep patterns have been severely off kilter. While even in the best of times, my sleep habits are not the best (only around 5 hours per night), this is weird even for me.

I don’t care what time the post says (I haven’t bothered adjusting it to local time), it is now almost 1:00am. I went to bed around 8:30pm. I was just exhausted. I’ve been doing similar things every night this week. And then around 12:30, I wake up. Not just wake up to roll over again. No, I’m wide awake. I’m not sure how long I will stay awake tonight, but on other nights, it was the whole night or most of it.

On Sunday, I’m sure my nerves were getting in the way of any sleep I was going to get. After answering all the questions at the Hospital on Monday, I realized that this was the first time I’ve every been admitted to a Hospital. Any other time I’ve had something wrong, it was done in a clinic or the Doctor’s Office. While I’ve visited many hospitals, this was the first time I was in for me. Good news that, I guess, even this visit was a screening visit. I’ve had no complaints.

I’m very certain the medicine used to put me under has been the main culprit behind my strange sleep habits this week. It put me under quickly, and I remained in a relaxed state of mind for 2 days. Too bad I was very relaxed early in the evening. Now I’m wide awake and I can’t think of anything really quiet to do. I need to hit a library or a book store for some new books to read. I just don’t feel like watching a movie. So here I am writing a blog about being awake. Dang that sounds familiar, just without the kids. Wonder if I can find something a little different to comment on.

NEW YORK TRIP – MARCH 20-23, 2009 – TAYLOR: 9 yrs, SAMMIE: 4 yrs, DISNEY: 2½ yrs, CHRISTOPHER: 8 mos

(continued from a previous post)

Friday March 20 (cont’d) – We arrived at the Akron Zoo about 2pm, which was right on schedule pretty much, although it would have been nice to have more time to explore the wonderful zoo that awaited us.  From what I saw, Akron looked like a dumpy little city with a beautiful little zoo.  All of the exhibits seemed to be of newer construction, and the animals seemed really active and happy.  The Akron Zoo has many unique animals in their collection; including the super rare Sumatran Tiger, (most people are used to seeing Bengals, also called Siberian tigers as those are the ones frequently exhibited at zoos) and the Sumatran tiger was roaring when we saw him.  They also have 2 types of animals that I was looking forward to seeing – the hyacinth macaw and the capybara (largest rodent on earth) – but both species were off exhibit waiting for warmer weather.  No problem, we had seen capybaras at the Cleveland Zoo earlier in the day, and I have a macaw at home, not a rare hyacinth, but a macaw just the same.  Akron has a Malayan sun bear, the type of bear that was the inspiration to A. A. Milne for his Winnie the Pooh stories, and these are also not commonly on exhibit in zoos.  When we stopped for lunch, we were pleased to find that the cafe is attached to a building with a Galapagos tortoise habitat, a komodo dragon exhibit, a really cool marmoset environment (a little marmoset – it’s a small primate, if you don’t know – came running up to the glass when he saw us with our nacho container and started licking the glass!), and an awesome jellyfish exhibit.  Before Friday I had only seen one type of jellyfish – moon jellies – but the Akron Zoo has several different kinds on display.  My  favorite were the bulbous blue blubber jellies.  Here is the marmoset trying to taste our nachos through the glass while my daughter is in the middle of a blink:

And next is a picture of the komodo dragon; I couldn’t resist posting it.  These things are incredibly ferocious and huge.  Once they claw (and look at those claws!) or bite their prey (and I’m talking prey as large as water buffalo), they hang around until the animal succumbs to the 28 varieties of deadly bacteria the komodo has in its saliva and then devour it.  Sharon Stone and her husband Phil Bronstein have something to say about the danger of komodos after one bit off his toes during a behind the scenes visit.  You can’t really tell from the picture, but this thing was almost 10 feet long!

The Akron Zoo is a place for great family fun.  The girls got to be penguins:

and measure their wing spans:

Even though their baby brother didn’t quite make it long enough to see all of the animals and activities Akron had to offer:

Another cool experience we had at Akron was hearing the bald eagles chirping.  I always kind of assumed they would have big voices to match their size, but their tweeting was really cute!  Overall, we had a wonderful day zoo-hopping.  After our visit to Akron, it was time to head for our hotel in New Jersey.  The ride was uneventful; the kids got some sleep and so did I.  The traffic in New Jersey was absolutely horrible, which we totally expected, but what we didn’t expect was all the detours.  There were police and road construction everywhere, which amounted to a ton of traffic, especially for one in the morning.  It was a bit stressful, but we did it, and kudos to my wonderful husband who kept his cool and guided us through the many detours for which Jill the GPS couldn’t compensate.  But who needs Jill?  We made it without getting lost!  And as we were walking down the hall to room 913 to turn in for the evening, I turned to Jamy our great friend and traveling Manny (man who’s a nanny in case you missed my first diary installment) and said, “At least we’re not staying in room 911 for our trip to New York.”  He showed me his key, which did say 911 – oops.  Thankfully it was just a coincidence, not an omen:

And here is a parting shot of our family outside the Akron Zoo from earlier in the day – stayed tuned for Trip Diary Volume 3!

After our adventures on our own tour of Times Square, the time was near to get on the bus for our twilight tour.  I had never gone on a guided tour of the area so I thought it would be kind of neat to sit back, ride around, and learn about the area.  We got on top of the two-level bus in the back.  There was a canopy that covered half of the bus that some of us had to be wary of or we could end up with a lump on the head.  The vehicle took us from So-Ho to No-Ho (hehe), across the Brooklyn Bridge, to Greenwich Village, and pretty much all over.  Some of the landmarks we were able to see included the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Washington Arch (which was constructed to commemorate the centennial of President Washington’s inauguration). the Flatiron Building (which served as the facade for the Daily Bugle in the Spider-Man movies).  The tour itself was awesome by starlight with the lights and atmosphere… even if it was below 40 degrees.  I bundled up the little guy as best I could.

While the tour was enjoyable, the guide was not so enjoyable at times.  Quite frequently, he would get carried away with his commentary and we would be at a new location when he was still lecturing about the previous one.  He even quipped that the info would be beneficial if any of the passengers were ever going to be on Jeopardy!

Following the tour, we departed the bus.  Then the real fun began!  We had to find a Waterway bus to get us back to the Ferry to take us back across the Hudson to our Jersey hotel.    This turned into a comedy of errors.  To quote Admiral Kirk, “We looked like a cadet review.”  Apparently, finding one of the buses required a bit of timely luck.  We first had to find a location where we thought one would eventually arrive.  So we asked police officers, hotel personnel, and other people who looked like they would know.  The most we got was some pointing and mumbling neither of which were extremely helpful.  I thought about asking the Dark Knight himself who we saw earlier.  Now if Spidey had been patrolling the area, I’m sure that he would have been more than happy to help us.  He is from Queens after all.

We eventually got to the location for a bus arrival (I won’t say that we were at one time a corner away from it).  And we waited, and we waited, and we waited.  Chris approached a horse-drawn carriage driver to see if he would take us to the pier (for not less than $75).  A taxi would have been just as bad.  Finally, C decided that he would jump out in front of the first Waterway bus that came along.  Finally, our hero came along.  I think it was two hours after we began looking for one.   So, another late night for all.  Still no major meltdowns.  I was really proud of the kids.  However, this would not be the last encounter we would have with Waterway buses.

I heard and read that Baseball player/hall of famer/tv announcer George Kell died. I am just a bit too young to remember his ball playing days, but I do remember him announcing the games on television.

My brother and I used to watch the ballgames on TV just and his voice gave more to the game. With Ernie Harwell on the radio, we had wonderful announcer either on TV or radio.

Just another sad day for me. Memories shared with my late brother. A voice from my past gone. Sad thoughts for me today.