Major motion. Pictures!
Jun. 17th, 2009 05:02 pmI'm recently home from my fifth straight day on the road, with a sixth, suddenly complexier, day to follow for most of tomorrow. Today's could have been phoned in, literally, but courts and counsel are still stuck in the mid 20th century when it comes to shit like that. I did get to see some nice clients, though, and that's all good.
Meanwhile, the pics are in from the first two days of my adventures from over the weekend:
The first night was at my niece's in Connecticut, with her big sister and her two daughters visiting her:
Hello Mudda, hello dawtas. Note the Baby Wall behind them; I saw that at my younger niece's house last fall when I visited, and knew there and then that her alarm clock was going off and she'd be preggers within the year.
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And as you can't quite see, she is:) This was one of the few moments the grrls let her sit still long enough to actually get her poor swollen feets up.
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Another of Brianna, my older grand-niece (shut up and get off my lawn). Yes, she's THAT irrepressible.
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And one more of the two of them, reined in only by the Anonymous Hand of Doom.
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The next morning took me to points south, on a Hudson Line train into Grand Central Station. The 12:27 from Poughkeepsie, Beacon, Croton-Harmon and 161st Street-StadiumWhichMustNotBeNamed actually came in here:
Ya! Ya! Track 29! Und kin I giff u un shein?
(The actual inspiration for "Transylvania Station" is 8 blocks down and several over, and its Track 29 nowadays isn't nearly as beautiful as this is.)
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The original windows of the main waiting room of Grand Central, which I, and dozens of other dumb tourists were taking pictures of. Ironic, because for most of my life they were covered up by the Kodak Coloramas that were intended as Insta-magnets for dumb tourists such as myself.
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Moments later, one of my longest-tenured citizens of LJ Friendland arrived-
There's May, hanging out below the sombrero'd sock monkey on the wall of Blockheads on Third Avenue, as we caught up over burritos and smiles.
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But eventually May
And her good friend Ray
Hit the parting of the Way
at 42nd and Lex
(sorry- the poetry is contagious)
And I decided to catch my return train from its 161st Street stop near where my team was playing. Into the subway I descended, eight blocks up:
It was comforting to see that good subway grafitti art is still in fine form despite the Giuliani/Bloomberg Quality of Life initiatives. I didn't even notice the nose ring given to Mrs. Soprano by the artist until Eleanor pointed it out to me.
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By the time we crossed over into the Bronx- the second time, I finally remembered, that I've set foot in that borough since our oldest sister lived there until the early 1970s- the Mets had already, essentially, been and gone:
Losing pitcher Johan Santana (l.) accompanied by injured companion Jose Reyes (7), and followed by useless offensive stars Carlos Beltran (15) and David Wright (5), slink off into the crowd heading for the 3:55 to Poughkeepsie after the drubbing had already reached 11-0 Yankees. (It wound up as a 15-0 final by the time I made it back to my car.) As soon as I saw the score on the television above the ticket window, I resolved not even to step over the threshold into this belly of the beast. There are other pics of The Stadium(s), old and new, but I'll save those for the baseball blog, methinks.
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Right. Another long one on tap for tomorrow. Then Friday will be blissfully homebound. Too bad I acquired a wicked cold in one of my assorted stops, which has so far made me sneeze more times today than I did in all of 2008. And I can't even take Zicam anymore, now that Obama is continuing his evil effort to destroy all of Limbaugh's sponsorsā»
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Date: 2009-06-18 05:12 pm (UTC)I love Grand Central. Both times I have visited NY, I have enjoyed just sitting and taking in the architecture. I also had a very nice run-in with a homeless man there, who was very interested in my accent.
Very sorry about the cold. YUCK.