The holidays are over, and Gary needs a rest. He was due for 2 days off beginning about 16 hours after this picture was taken on Sunday afternoon.

I chose Gary's restaurant as the meeting place for the holiday party of the Greater NYC Chapter of the Betsy-Tacy Society. Last year no one could agree on a place... people did not like my suggestion of dim sum. They wanted somewhere not too noisy (although 15-20 women in one place can get pretty noisy themselves), better than fast food, and no more than $25 including tax and tip. We got all that at Prince Street Cafe & Catering in SoHo, at 26 Prince Street near Mott Street, only 2 short blocks from our bimonthly book club meetings at the McNally Jackson Bookstore. I stopped in there for gnocchi once before a meeting and was blown away.

For our $25 including tax and tip we got: baskets of nice bread with butter; choice of soup or a giant bowl of salad (I had butternut squash soup, done to exactly the right viscosity of puree with no lumps and no annoying gagging amounts of herbs and spices); plates of delicous sandwiches and wraps brought to the table to pass (and some women didn't like the selection and asked for, say, tuna salad and were accommodated at no extra charge); soda, coffee, and/or tea, with plenty of refills brought; and plates of cookies, cupcakes, and Danish passed around.

I didn't take too many pictures, because I don't like to bother people when they're eating. Here's a picture of Suzanne, who collects all the suggestions and the reviews thumbs up and down on those suggestions and then makes the calendar of what books we read when.

The Giants were busy eating it on the TV behind her.

We have a book grab bag at every holiday party. I left before the three hours we had reserved were up, because I get too stiff sitting in a little chair in a small space for too long and it was getting loud in there, too. I chose the book I took away based on the pretty wrapping, and I'm glad I didn't open it there because I might have said something unpleasant. It was a $5 paperback edition of Anne of Green Gables, which we read as a group about 2 years ago. You would think whoever had that book would have remembered why she had it and not pass it along to someone else who by definition would also already have it or at least have read it. At least Harry loved the ribbon that was around it. He has played with it every day from Sunday to today.

It was a good book, anyway... if you want it and will be at Mystery Hunt, let me know and I'll pass it on. Ditto on the electronic children's sudoku that inexplicably arrived in yesterday's mail to my husband from my mother.

The books I contributed were The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, which I recently read and enjoyed very much, and Poetry in Motion, a collection of short poems that have appeared in place of public service announcements on NYC subway trains that I've had for a while and figured I'd never get around to reading.

Noam absolutely adores Alize, the restaurant at the top of the Palms casino, just a little off the strip, so the four of us went there for dinner. It was very hoity-toity, as in "I am Cloud [Claude, I guess] and I will be your sommelier." The views of the strip (all we could really see in the dark) were great, but there was so much rain on the windows that none of the pictures I took were worth saving. The restaurant? Meh, although perhaps if you eat meat you will have a better experience. The escargot appetizer was very good, although it's hard to have anything taste bad if you smother it in garlic butter. The bread was the best I had in Las Vegas. They offered 2 amusees, a foamy sorbet that was just fine and pate de foie gras, which Andrew and I refused on account of the likelihood of animal cruelty. The entree I had was terrible: a $55 special of truffles with seafood/cheese risotto. The truffle was ok, but the seafood consisted of an overcooked shelled lobster claw, which I ate, and a mush-looking but undercooked risotto, which I didn't eat once the truffle grated over the top was gone.

The coffee was merely acceptable. The dessert I got was nice, an assortment of small portions of 4 or 5 different desserts, most of which were sweet and good.


If I went again with Noam or someone else who loved the place, I would get the escargot again, and dessert (maybe a souffle, since Noam's of chocolate peppermint looked delicious), but would get a salad instead of a "real" entree in between.

( After dinner, we visited the Palms Casino before going to the Wynn Casino. )

We all went over to Caesar's Palace and enjoyed riding the curvy escalators in what I thought was an enormous upscale shopping mall




( ...until I realized that the multi-story tower was only part of the shopping complex! )

Please let's pretend it's still 2008, so I can finish posting the signs that I have.



( more from Siegfried and Roy's habitat at the Mirage )

If you click to enlarge it, you'll see that the sign on the right advertises "Tao Bistro" with "spiritual dining" and the one on the right advertises "Tao Nightclub" with "religious nightlife."


Um, ok. What branch of Buddhism involves counting down New Year's Eve with Mistress of Ceremonies Carmen Electra and a bunch of go-go girls?

( To 'Venice' )

Sunday early evening, the four of us went downtown to the Fremont Street Experience. The older casinos were there, and Fremont Street for 2 or 3 blocks was covered by a giant canopy. This was supposed to protect us from the hot sun beating down on us. We found that it worked just as well to protect us from the 45 degree Fahrenheit drizzle.



This was the Las Vegas I heard about when I was younger!

( Many pictures behind the cut. )

We did not go into Tropicana or eat any legendary lobsters, but we did go here:


( Inside the MGM casino )

Unfortunately, we did not have time to see the Faire Midway. We rushed by cab past New York New York (not NYC, despite the Yellow Cab)...


...to Bally's, where we joined Noam and tmcay for the Sterling Brunch. Andrew doesn't eat meat at all, and I don't go out of my way to eat meat or poultry, but there was a pretty good selection of seafood there, including caviar, and some very fine salads and pickled vegetables, as well as the traditional hotel buffet brunch items and an extravagant selection of cheesecakes and mini-pastries.

Amazingly, we were able to walk afterward, and we all started walking south to Paris, which Frommer's designates as having the best fake indoor sky in Las Vegas.

( Paris and more... )

On to Saks Fifth Avenue, directly across from Rockefeller Center. The first time we did the walk, about 20 years ago, we went upstairs to, iirc, the ladies' coat department where there was a small little-known window that gave a spot-on view of the tree. We haven't been up there since then, and I don't know whether that window is still accessible to the public. (We also saw a fabulous Xmas tree on the 2nd floor of Gotham Books on Diamond Row, and we went to the bookstore for several more Xmas walks even though they never had the tree again after that.)


The Saks Fifth Avenue windows this year feature scenes from NPL member Mr. Tex's latest children's book, A Flake Like Mike, about how long ago all the snowflakes looked the same and fell all at once in a WHOOMP instead of gently flaking down, until Mike decided to be different. The sign on the window says that if you buy the book at Saks, they will donate $2 to St. Jude's Children's Hospital.

( From Saks Fifth Avenue down to Lord & Taylor, behind the cut )

Nothing so remarkable about wet paint? Well, earlier this week, the MTA in its typical wisdom decided to repaint the yellow banisters on the stairwell from the Euclid Avenue-bound C train to the corner of Fulton Street and Rockaway Avenue -- all at the same friggin time. I know I do the reverse commute and it's exit-only on the Euclid-bound train at that corner, but still, they couldn't do one side at a time? I had some choice words for them as I hobbled up the stairs without the aid of a bannister.

My husband, who has seen a midtown Chinese acupuncture doctor weekly for over a decade, came with me yesterday to the Chinatown acupuncture doctor. There was a small store in front selling 100s of Chinese herbal remedies, then a small non-enclosed room (as in a walk-through aka railroad apartment) with a desk and 2 chairs and at least 50 plaques on the wall, from the very estimable to the ridiculous (in the Who's Who of Business one year), and then a narrow corridor with 3 small rooms with sturdy small beds that were like massage tables, with the hole for when you lie face down. The walls were very thin, as were the folding doors, and I could hear moans from one man getting a massage in one room. In the back was some storage/staff space and a small restroom with a Department of Agriculture & Markets hand washing sign over it, which was odd since I couldn't find anything there that would require our inspection, until I realized that Eugene, the inspector who referred me to this doctor, might have given it to him. Or perhaps it was another patient... the doctor mentioned that a very nice female food inspector visited him before, but I couldn't tell whether she was visiting as an inspector or as a patient.

Andrew came into the treatment room with me, because I started getting very tense and nervous when the doctor started putting needles in my hip. The doctor decided he didn't want me freaking out, so he said no electricity in the needles. "Instead we do cups. Then some massage therapy. Susan will come." He lit some herb or something with a match and used the flame around the edge of a glass to warm it up and then suctioned it to my right ass cheek. He said occasionally during this whole process, "Good girl," which reminded me how embarrassed I was at being a baby about this, given that millions of people have gone through this over hundreds of years, but didn't make me feel that much calmer. I could only feel 1 or 2 of the needles, but I felt every cup, and the 5th one, on the lateral part of my right hip, hurt so much I told him I couldn't tolerate it. Andrew said, oh that spot got very dark immediately, which means you need it there, so just relax, but I couldn't take it. The doctor decided that was enough, and he departed with, "Good girl. Not moving girl."

After about 20 minutes, a woman came in and said "I am Susan." Andrew left to get out of her way, and she took out all the needles and cups. The massage she gave was unlike any I've had before, not so much soothing (although there were soothing parts) as practical, involving only my lower back and my right ass cheek, hip, leg, and foot. Her touch varied from very soft and gentle to very hard pushing on pressure points to a few chopping motions and wiggling all my toes VERY vigorously until the knuckles popped, which felt bad during it and very good afterward. Sometimes she hurt me, but it was a hurt I could control. I don't like lying there face down with needles and glass all over me so I can't move without risking breakage. At one point in the massage, she stopped to put on rubber gloves and I was afraid where she was going with that, but it turned out to only be so she could use baby oil.

When she was done, I breathed a sigh of relief, or only a half-sigh, because she then said, "You get cups again." 4 or 5 more suctioned glass cups for another 5 minutes or so, then the doctor came in, took them off, pressed in a few spots, and said I could get dressed. "Drink water. Lose weight." I was there for over 90 minutes, and left with some oral herbal pills that look like tiny cannonballs, take 9 of them 3 times a day, and some herbal patches to put on my hip when I go to sleep instead of using Tylenol. Andrew also got some cold pills that he's had before and some digestive pills that he hasn't. All together it was under $160, which is phenomenal. A NYC natural doctor outside of Chinatown would have charged about 3x that for a first visit, with that much time spent, and with stuff to take home.

I go back Thursday afternoon, and Andrew said he would go with me again. Yesterday's lunch and dinner were the first two meals he's eaten in ages without feeling bloated afterward, and if that keeps up, he wants to get more of those digestive pills.

I felt well enough (about 1/4-1/3 reduction in pain while walking, though stairs are still a bitch) afterward to walk slowly with Andrew down East Broadway to his dim sum restaurant of choice, Golden Unicorn. Their turnip cakes are the best. We got there at a bad time, I think, very busy and long intervals between carts with scanty offerings. I'm glad I grabbed the turnip cakes as I was sitting down and the cart was leaving our area, because I didn't see them again until we left. Still, I was full on leaving, mainly because they serve the bamboo leaf rice packets only in pairs, and Andrew doesn't eat them. One of the carts offered some good-looking General Tso's chicken's feet. I'd never seen chicken's feet prepared that way, and it was the first time I considered eating them. We didn't get them, as there are about a dozen in a bowl, but I would have tried them if I were with a bigger, also curious group.

Tonight is a big TV night. The Amazing Race getting TiVoed in the living room while we go downstairs to watch The Simpsons, featuring Will Shortz and Merl Reagle and little Lisa in a crossword tournament. I have to go do today's NY Times crossword now, since it will be featured in the show. The icon today is from the NY Times website's puzzle page. Lisa as pictured is how I imagine ennienyc as a child.

JoAnn and I used the barely-a-couple of hours of daylight after 5pm on Tuesday to walk around downtown Rochester. The Rochester tourism table at the convention had included a flyer with 3 phone numbers for 3 walking tours. You call from your cellphone and input a credit card number to get charged $5, and then you have access for the next 24 hours to call that number from your cellphone, punch in a number and hear information about that stop on the walking tour.

The flyer said where to start for each of the 3 tours, so I figured the recording on the phone would say "now turn left and walk..." as a museum audio guide would. However, the recording said "Number 2 on your map..." Uh, what map? (I checked with the tourism lady at the table the next day, and she knew nothing about any map. I must be the first customer they have had for the service.) Fortunately, I had a generic downtown map, no stop was more than 2 blocks from the one before it, and JoAnn and I were good at figuring out what they were talking about. The only thing was that we kept having to click the next number, listen for a sentence or two, and then hang up and walk to the next spot before calling back and listening again from the beginning of that stop.

It's actually a good thing that there was some brainwork necessary, because the walk itself was pretty damn boring. Apparently, most of the character of the downtown neighborhood was torn down when the city decided it didn't like having a lot of industry around the Genesee River, and they tore down the working buildings to build the convention center area. For the remaining buildings, the tour mostly gave what type of architecture it was and who the tenants were over the decades.

( Three interesting things on the tour, behind the cut. )

Sunday the 14th I took a nearly 8-hour train ride to Rochester NY on the shore of Lake Ontario in order to represent my coworkers as a delegate at the annual convention of the Public Employees Federation union. It was supposed to be a 7-hour train ride, but we had some delays.

I got in just after 6pm and checked in at the Clarion across the street from the convention center. If I were willing to share a room, I could have stayed nearby at the Hyatt for free, but I wanted to have my own room and, since that meant I had to pay for the other half of the room, I went for the cheaper place. This was the view from my room during the day:


And from a ballroom in a similar spot on a lower floor at night:


saphir23 called me soon after I got to my room to say she could be there to pick me up at 6:30. I said I needed until 7 so I could register for the convention and pick up some dinner to take to her house, since she and her husband Harry had just eaten at his mom's house. Unfortunately, there was nothing open within a 3-block radius of the hotel except for the hotel restaurant, and I didn't have time for that, so I was a ravenous grouchy bear when they picked me up. They drove out of their way to find something open on a Sunday evening in Rochester, and I ended up eating supermarket pizza. It was a special pizzamaking section in Trader Joe's and did not taste bad at all, especially considering it was made in a supermarket, but it wasn't something I'd go out of my way for. Oh wait, I just did.

( Pictures at Saphir and Harry's house behind the cut )

We all had a great family-style dinner at Good n Plenty (not fam.Squonk/Cecil unfortunately). The desserts there aren't anything special, but that's ok, because there's no room for them. The buttered noodles alone were worth the all-you-can-eat price.

I would love to do a day trip at Philly Con with an early morning maze visit (they open at 10) followed by lunch at Good n Plenty. I guess breakfast would be on the bus on the way down, although Cherry Crest does sell watermelon and cookies and other foods that could pass for breakfast.

Most of us visited the petting zoo at Cherry Crest after dinner.

You can find 3 pictures of the baby goats and chickens here

( More animal pictures, sunset pictures, and a bit of narrative here )

Andrew and I decided to get some supper by ourselves Friday night; everyone else had already gone. We pulled into a driveway just after 8pm that had Amish BBQ and looked like a Burger King. We figured we'd skip that. There was also a diner. We missed the hours on the sign and were turned away inside as we salivated over what looked like delicious food on other people's plates.


Next door was this place; it looked fun but we wanted supper before everyone else closed up. (I mean, what place advertises breakfast lunch and supper, and then closes at 6pm every night but Friday? Almost everyone in Lancaster County, that's who!) We went back later and bought jam and pickled veggies, managing to get there before *they* closed. The flashing lit-up windmill was, as Crackhead Bob would say, dotally dawsome.


A few miles up the road, we found a place with a pile of trucks parked outside. It was a small diner, a little smoky ("we don't have a non-smoking section"), but I had a very nice cheese and mushroom omelet for dinner.

There was no game-playing when we got back. Everyone was tired from their day/week, and we just sat around and bullshitted for a while. Andrew went back outside to look at the stars and at the three cows in the field near the house who stayed up all night.

We ended up back at that early-closing diner for breakfast the next day, with JrMan and Sew Do I, while the others slept a little longer. After seeing what the restaurant had hanging on the wall, I was sorry I'd made the effort:


However, the breakfast buffet was very good and the coffee was excellent. Everything was cheap, too, which took away the pain of being proselytized. JrMan's father was brought up Amish, and left as a teenager; he and Sew Do I told Andrew and me stories about the family reunions and about the philosophies of his father and his father's family.

Back at the farmhouse, we spent some quality time with Dixie, the owners' dog, as we waited for the 10am opening of the maize maze.

The weekend of August 22, Andrew and I rented a farmhouse duplex (carved out of the owning family's home) along with JrMan, Sew Do I, Noam, Al De Suda and I a 5 minute walk from the Amazing Maize Maze in Ronks PA.

We knew we weren't in the city anymore when we saw live animals and signs like this:


They have ABM's in those silos? Crazy!

Andrew and I got to the farmhouse later than planned, but in time to see the cows come home:


The farm in between where we were staying and CherryCrest Farm, where the maze was, had a few other animals ( and there are pictures of them behind the cut: )

The last Monday evening (6:30pm) of every odd-numbered month, I meet with about a dozen other women (well, usually all women) from the Betsy-Tacy Society at the McNally Robinson Bookstore on Prince Street in SoHo. Oops, as of today it's the McNally Jackson Bookstore: http://mcnallyjackson.com/ Here is a picture of its bathroom: http://community.livejournal.com/doorwindowwall/345439.html Unfortunately, the picture does not include the chirping-bird recording that always plays there.

It is named the Violent Study Club after a book discussion group in the last Betsy-Tacy book. We discuss a children's book or two each time. Monday before last, we discussed Little Women, so today's sign picture features a Brooklyn store that Jo March would have liked:


( Click here to see pictures of the women who attended the July meeting. )

Sunday started off fine. I was awake in time for shower and breakfast (oh, screw the workout), and thanks to my fantastic extravaganza team, I picked up a small crossword book for my massage therapist, who does up to Tuesday or Wednesday in the NY Times and who loved Wordplay, and later got Willz to autograph it for her.

Willz told me later that after the awards/farewell, he was talking to Ai for several minutes while a man he'd never met hung off to one side. When Willz got done, the man approached him with a stack of books to autograph. The man had heard the NPR segment about Will being in Denver, and had researched where Will would be and driven down there in a hurry. At the end of their little meet and greet, the man leaned in and whispered something in Willz's ear.

( As Willz made people guess before he said what it was, you have to guess before you click for the answer. )

I grabbed some M&M's (nice chocolate provisions in the hospitality room!) and found Wheels; we had private space in one of the many comfortable main-floor meeting rooms that tmcay arranged, and solved Trick's cryptic without too much difficulty, once we stopped worrying about directions and just started solving the gimmick-free entries.

I could see the swimming pool from my hotel window (here's a view from early Thursday morning)

and decided to take a dip. Unfortunately, all the grownups I knew at the hotel were at the trivia panel, so I just stayed long enough to salvage a few calisthenics adapted from my land-based workout.

At 5 I met IRBS at the 5th floor cocktail hour and we solved Wombat's legendary cryptic with the red, yellow, and green pencils. It was a marvel of seemingly impossible construction, and I was glad that IRBS's sharp eyes caught the hard-to-find pieces of the final answers.

Dinner was in a spacious tent behind the hotel, not quite indoors, not quite outdoors, with a view of a fake but lovely stream that was perfect for all the wedding pictures that got taken there on Saturday. After dinner, I took advantage of the soft natural light to get some pictures of Krewe.

Willz, Avidan, and Charts

( About 30 more pictures of Krewe and their evening projects, here behind the cut )

I woke up earlier than expected and went to the 5th floor lounge, where the continental breakfast was served. I stuck to fruit, since I was meeting Noam for breakfast. I had a nice conversation with IRBS and her SO and a few others.

At 9:30 Noam and I left for breakfast at Dozens, a diner a block from the Denver Museum of Art. I had one of their "not an omelet" breakfasts: poached eggs over melted cheese over lightly steamed onion and pepper over cooked potato. It was quite good: healthier than my average vacation breakfast, and not far off from something I would cook on a winter Sunday.

I had planned to do a walking tour of downtown to get in my 4 miles, but the heat and humidity were like a slap in the face, and I decided to stay in the museum for a few hours and then drive back in time to get Noam to his panel discussion on trivia.

If you've been reading my Tuesdays off posts, you know I had to stop en route to the museum when I saw this:


We also saw this by the museum:

( Lots more art and some Big News, illustrated )

Just one image I forgot to post from the zoo: lorikeets


So, I finally got the car to the hotel parking lot, and on the walkway to the hotel saw...

Bunny!

I showered and changed, and met Treesong in the lobby for a trip to Sushi Den, which was touted by Frommer's as being perhaps the best sushi joint in the entire Mountain Time zone. Wheels was looking for someone to have dinner with, and came along. Oddly enough, there was an Indian restaurant on the same block that had just opened 2 weeks earlier, but we stuck with the sushi. The restaurant was all concrete and exposed brick inside, which may have been why it was incredibly loud, which may have been why we were the only people in the building above age 30. Despite how expensive it was (about $45 each, and none of us drank), the place was PACKED on a Thursday night, and for good reason. The food was as good as I'd hoped for -- the basics done flawlessly and some welcome innovation in the bento-boxy appetizer we shared. The hand roll of salmon roe was exquisite. Wheels worried about how to eat the hand rolls "properly" and I said screw it, I'm enjoying it.

We got back a little late due to the slow service and my misjudging the length of travel time, but each cloud has a silver lining:



A rose-colored lining, anyway: the sunset over the Rockies as seen from my hotel room.

I got to the ballroom a little after the favorite-movie introductions had begun, but not too late to chime in. (I don't really have a favorite movie, but I didn't want to waste everyone's time with hemming and hawing, so I said "Lady and the Tramp." Other contenders might have been "Caddyshack," "Groundhog Day," any Marx Brothers or Fred Astaire movie, or the video for "Chill Out" by Youth of Britain: http://www.youthofbritain.com/chillout/ )
(Ok stopped to watch the video. Back now.)

Then there was the icebreaker game. I generally hate icebreaker games, although at least this one didn't involve bird noises, so I took the opportunity to leave the ballroom and make the required familial phone calls. I came back in time to rattle off my set of questionnaire answers to a few people who got insanely happy over it, so that was good. It had been almost 25 years since anyone cheered my getting a bachelor's degree.

I teamed up with otherwise_nyc and Nomnomnom, who was still Byron then, for a very fun game of Hog the Glory. We didn't do well enough to brag about -- sorry teammates, I'm not great at trivia recall -- but I had a blast with this. Thanks, thedan!

After the games, I cosolved the Elfman/Kea puzzle with Treesong, and we got everything except the final answer. My head was swimming with sleepiness and not being able to think, so I went upstairs to the 5th floor lounge, where (iirc) jon88 (Coach), Jo the Loiterer, Manx, and IRBS were playing cards and where I was able to read email and my favorite websites until I felt able to get some sleep.

( A few pictures of Krewe taken Thursday night in the ballroom )

About an hour after arriving at the Denver Zoo, I ran into qaqaq, Litz, toonhead_npl, and bookishfellow (Codex). They were a really nice bunch of people to spend the rest of the afternoon with, and I ended up spending an hour more than I'd planned to be with them and the animals, as Litz gave me a ride back to my car. During this outing, dj_rose_red (Jypsy) sent me a picture of her new golden kitty, Lucas, from her cellphone. Check her lj for a link to a Flicker set of pictures.

All pictures I took of baby animals at the zoo are here

A gross picture of something in a zoo kitchen near their bird building is here.



I can't do all of Thursday in 1 post. I took dozens of pictures at the zoo alone. I'll put up in this post whatever I finish by 8pm and do more tomorrow.

( Many pictures of animals at the zoo. None of the humans in our expedition, due to someone's self-consciousness about sweat. )