New York

It's been a long time since I've posted, so I'll be breaking this up a bit...

I had forgotten how jaywalking is positively a competitive sport in New York. When we were there, I was on the street gawking at the way people lunged in front of taxis, dodged buses and generally put life and limb in danger regularly just to save a few seconds crossing the street. It reminded me that there's no yield to pedestrians law here, that's for sure.

New York is actually a much more hospitable place for children than one might think -- there are loads of fabulous playgrounds, since of course almost no one has a yard. This is the case in San Francisco, too, and probably all urban areas; cities put money into playgrounds because apartment dwellers need somewhere to go with their kids. Our friends Cass, Jim and Henry live near two great playgrounds in Park Slope, and we took full advantage of them.

We were in town for our friend Mayra's wedding, but we also got to see Jim and Henry for a day before they left for Lake George. Unfortunately we missed Cass completely, but Devon was thrilled to play with Henry (Jim, I'm afraid, was something of an afterthought). She had a total ball and pretty much copied whatever he was doing; if he was taking a bath, then she wanted to take a bath too, etc. When they finally left for Lake George on Saturday morning, she kept asking when she was going to see Henry again -- she just didn't understand that he was going away and we wouldn't see him again before we left. That was probably just as well, since I'm sure that parting would have been significantly more than sweet sorrow.

The day before the wedding we went to the American Museum of Natural History, which is just amazing. The fossil hall is especially fabulous; they have two full dinosaur skeletons, one of the Tyrannasaurus Rex and the other a Brontosaurus. Walt watched a time-lapse movie of the curators putting one skeleton together, and it took two years! Devon just loved this museum, although it's enormous and we only covered a couple of floors. The dinosaur wings were the biggest draw, but Devon was also (weirdly) interested in the hall of the evolution of man. There was a video of curators taking skeletons of Neanderthals and then building "muscle" and "skin" on them with clay to create a very realistic version of what early man might have looked like. She must have watched this video at least 10 times until I finally bribed her to leave it. After our Wizard of Oz experience, I didn't want her to start having fears about Neanderthal reconstruction too.

Mayra mercifully managed to get a babysitter for us during the wedding. I say mercifully, since her wedding was a full Catholic mass with much of it in both Spanish and English. I had only been to one other Catholic mass wedding, and all I can say is that they are really long. The one mitigating factor was that the weather was absolutely fabulous, so at least we weren't sweltering inside a church in Harlem; but that said, I won't be sorry if I don't see the inside of a church for quite some time.

Mayra looked wonderful; she had a special gown made for her in India. I think she was there on a business trip (she travels internationally for her work frequently) after she knew that she'd be married, and then had it made. A smart move, since it was both unique and undoubtedly significantly cheaper than anything she could buy here.

She and her husband, Brice, decided to have the reception at the Bronx Zoo, which was an inspired choice. We took Devon with us, and she absolutely loved it; in fact, when it was finally time to leave, she screamed bloody murder because she wanted to stay. They had cocktails in the gorilla pavilion, which was fabulous, because the gorillas kept coming to the window and interacting with the guests. They'd wave at people and peer in to see what was happening; the more I watched them, the more I saw how we share 98% of the same genes. It was uncanny how interactive they were with the wedding guests.

We moved to another part of the zoo for the dinner, and at that point, a mariachi band came out to serenade everyone followed by a Latin band. The music was lovely, and Devon loved it. I went out on the dance floor with her (and a lot of other couples), and we literally danced the night away. The only downside to the entire event was that it turned out to be much more difficult than we anticipated to get out of the Bronx; it took us absolutely ages to get a car (and most of the other guests seemed to have personal cars, so we didn't spot anyone else having the same difficulties).

It was a bit tough in New York, partly because it's New York and partly because we were having to go all over the boroughs. We were staying in Brooklyn, but the wedding was in Harlem (and then the Bronx) -- which is about as far away from Brooklyn as one can get. Then another night we went to have dinner with our friends June, David and Theo; they live near Columbia (again, far to the north of Brooklyn), so there was a lot of long back and forth. [Note: for the geeks among you, one of David's physics projects recently made the news for a discovery that was tangential to their project but really interesting.]

We did have a great time -- and I got an extra bonus, since Devon and Walt left the day before me for Florida, and I had a whole day in Manhattan to myself. I got so sucked into shopping at Saks (among other things), that I almost missed my plane on the way down to Florida. It made me wish that I had started shopping a lot earlier (especially given the state of my current wardrobe). There is just no comparing New York shopping to San Francisco shopping -- I mean, their Saks had 10 floors! Aaah.