The Other City

Tomorrow night I am off to "the other city," just that small town they call New York. I haven't been since I was a little tyke with a fading perm and my first pair of glasses. That was the summer my aunt and uncle took my brother and I to NYC, where we took many a walking tours, and I somehow managed to have the perpetual hiccups each time. Between the hiccups and flashes of embarrassment, we managed to do the whole laundry list of touristy stuff: carriage ride through central park, climbing to the tippity top of the Statue of Liberty (what a gal!), literary walking tours, ghost walking tours, Empire State Building, nights spent at the Plaza (when it was still that classic old Plaza!)...and my hunt for my then Hollywood crush, McCauley Caulkin. If you haven't figured it out yet, I was a pretty cool kid!

But seriously, I loved it. I told my aunt that summer that I felt like I had lived there in a past life, if such a thing exists. I loved walking the streets and watching the people, looking into their eyes and wondering where they've been, where they're going.

This trip it's work that brings me out east and friends await me in a quaint home in Brooklyn, where I'll stumble in early Friday morning after my red-eye flight. I'll fall onto a blow up mattress with my friend "Ricer" to catch up on sleep, while Betsy heads off to face the advertising world in Manhattan. I know these girls are the best of old friends when I can just show up so early on a Friday morning and simply sleep for a few hours before I explore. Josh will take the train in from Jersey for an afternoon of NYC surprises and familiar talk and catching up...only this time in a NYC coffee shop, or perhaps at a street corner as we wait for the light to turn.

If you don't hear from me for a few days, assume the city has snatched me up and entwined me in one of its thousands of tales. I'll be taking my pathetic work notebook (the reason why I am now working from home at nearly midnight on my personal computer; don't get me started on that one) so perhaps I'll squeeze in a blog entry or two. After a Monday morning business meeting in Manhattan, I catch a train with Asian Equation for Philadelphia, to return to the west coast for Halloween festivities (so festive, I don't know what they are yet).

Back to some late night number crunchin' and diet coke.