The highlight so far has been giving my wife a quick peck on the lips outside a Japanese bakery, and having a passing preteen boy turn around and gape at us. Bet he wasn’t expecting lesbians on Fifth Avenue!

This weekend I biked 19 miles around Manhattan, got my second paw print at Fine Line Tattoo, did not get to meet Alan Cumming, had a treat from Coldstone Creamery because I’d biked so damn hard, and walked two miles from the tattoo shop to my friend’s house. Not in that order, of course, although the biking did come before the tattooing. I was pleased with how little the tattoo hurt, probably because the artist was very nice and kept me chatting the whole time. When I got home, my iPod had finally arrived, albeit with a Firewire cable instead of a USB cable like it was supposed to have. Fortunately Levi, who lives near me, has a spare cable; his is for an iPod mini but this website seems to indicate that a mini cable will be compatible with a 3G iPod; we’ll see…meanwhile I do have a Firewire port at work so the iPod is charging. If the cable Levi has isn’t compatible I will probably just pick up a Firewire PCMCIA card on eBay.

I learned something last night: I cannot drive in New York City. Specificially, I cannot park a car in Manhattan. We had parked for the week on a street with a school, so the signs said “No Parking 8am-6pm School Days.” The kids have been on vacation all week, but this morning they returned to school so we had to repark the car last night. I agreed to do it, and I set off in the dark and rain to attempt to park the car. To summarize: it didn’t work. I was scared of the cabs that kept getting beside and in front of me, I couldn’t keep track of one-way streets, people kept wanting to walk in front of me, I couldn’t figure out where to find actual valid parking, and - worst of all - I couldn’t defog the windshield except for a tiny halo around the bottom. If I hadn’t been so frazzled by the rest of it, I would probably have figured out that the air system was actually pointing at my feet and not at the windshield at all. But everything all put together left me rather freaked out, and I had to park in front of a fire hydrant in front of C’s building and run upstairs to say “I can’t do this! Come help me!” (I’d left my cell phone with my purse, which I hadn’t brought with me.) I think that if it had been daytime I might have been okay, and if it hadn’t been raining I probably would have been fine. But that combined with the usual hazards of city driving just pushed me over the edge, so I’m not keen to try it again anytime soon. The only thing I do trust myself to do is retrieve the car and park it in front of the building for loading purposes…anything else would scare me.

Ack! I left my laptop bag at home before driving up to NYC for an extended weekend. Inside the bag were two very important things: my laptop, and my meds. (Those who know me know that these are equally important to my health and overall well-being.) Various options have been discussed - I could just go home after the cat show tomorrow; I could have my meds sent by overnight mail (about $20 via USPS), have the laptop sent, etc. The choice I’m going with for now is to have my meds shipped overnight via USPS. I have access to my friend C’s computer (when he’s not using it) and I have my Sidekick, so that should keep me reasonably well connected despite the feeling that I’ve left a body part behind. Everything I do is stored on that laptop, so computer-based plans I had for the weekend - graphics work, more video blogging - are shot. But I’ll manage.

That said, though, if anybody reading lives in NYC and has a laptop they can lend to a trustworthy geek who is in town through midday January 3rd, please drop me an e-mail…

The department where I’m working today has signs posted about a trip they’re organizing in May (on a Saturday) to New York City. The “luxury motor coach” departs our office building at 6am and returns at 11pm. The signs suggest that you can spend the day in NYC doing whatever you want…see a Broadway show, go shopping, anything! The charge for this privilege? $45.

I saw that and couldn’t help laughing. My wife and I go to NYC all the time because we have good friends there and because we keep hearing about all these little boutiques that we want to visit. We pay $35 for a round-trip Greyhound ticket between New Carrollton, MD (which is on the metro system) and the Port Authority bus station at 8th Avenue and 40th Street.

The signs do mention that movies, muffins, and orange juice will be provided…but if you ride a Peter Pan bus (they’re partnered with Greyhound now) then you get a movie anyway. So apparently they’re charging ten bucks a head for muffins and orange juice! Plus you have to follow their schedule, and drive out to your workplace (which, unless you live on base, isn’t near anybody). I’m sure the seats on the “luxury motor coach” are bigger than Greyhound’s, but you’re still on a bus. With co-workers.

No thanks. This just isn’t a value-added proposition to me!

I saw Hugh Jackman yesterday! We were walking along the Hudson River park area and we passed a small group of men, one of whom I knew I recognized but couldn’t put a name to. He was speaking, but I didn’t recognize his voice either. After he passed, I asked A if she had recognized him - she said no, and then “do you mean the Aussie?” That’s when it clicked for me - Hugh Jackman! I know he’s in NYC because he’s starring in The Boy From Oz. He’s only the second celebrity I’ve stumbled across in NYC, following seeing Boy George a couple of months ago.

Oh. My. GOD.

I just saw Boy George!!!

I am in New York for the long weekend (went to the American Girl store again and got stuff, too!), and around 11:30pm we decided to go out for a walk. We walked along the river, and sat around under Pier 63 (with the Manhattan Kayak boats). After a while we got bored and headed back toward home. Before turning the corner onto C’s street, we went to duck into the corner deli.

And following on my heels was Boy George! C went to the soda cooler and asked me if I wanted anything, but I was too busy jerking my head in Boy George’s direction and making insistent noises indicating there was something to see. He had gone directly to the counter, and bought something from the cashier. He was with a girl about half his age, and she bought something too; after his purchase he went outside to wait for her. It was definitely Boy George; I got to see the tattoo on his neck.

Holy shit!

Not much is happening today. We’re over at :R:’s place right now, having just spent some time in Central Park. I’m going to get on There for a while. We’re taking the bus home soon, and we won’t be back in time to watch Sue Thomas, which I really wanted to see this week. I’m trying to get either A’s parents or my parents to tape it for me.

I don’t think I mentioned this before, but when I was in NYC in December we visited the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop (see also the DigitalCity page). A wanted to go to a perfume store that was just down the street, so she wasn’t as interested, but I could have spent a long time in there! They had a whole wall of used books and I could have spent a lot of money in there. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford to buy a bunch of books (or drag them home on the train), but I wanted to support the store anyway, so I got a t-shirt with their name and establishment date on it. It was awfully expensive for a t-shirt, but it was worth it to me. I’m looking forward to warmer weekends when I can actually wear the shirt!

In my excitement about the earrings, I forgot to mention that I went to American Girl Place yesterday. A and I both went there while waiting for my earrings to be set, expecting to find the long-block-long line to enter we’d encountered on the 29th, but there was no line at all. Unfortunately we had already spent so much time in the Gotham Book Mart (including petting their large orange tabby, Pynchon) that we didn’t have enough time to look around AG Place together. We wanted to pick up a commemmorative shirt for Felicity and the corresponding outfit for Coconut, but the shirt we wanted was out of stock on the first floor. A went back to the jeweler while I trekked through hundreds of little girls and their families in search of the right shirt on the third floor (with a stop at the Coconut display along the way and picking up the Cupid accessories to give to A for Valentine’s Day). On the third floor, I waited while a cashier promised to send someone else to check in the back for me, and I waited and waited…but it turned out they didn’t have that shirt after all, so I had to get a different commemmorative t-shirt for Felicity. That was okay, and I headed back down to the main American Girl collection on the second floor. (Keep in mind that the store is overflowing with people, and it’s broiling hot in the crowds under the lights. Every move I made caused ten beads of sweat to appear on my brow.)

In the main collection area, I snapped up Josefina’s Christmas Outfit because A has been wanting it for a long time. I next went to the Felicity counter, which was much smaller than any of the other sections because she’s been not-quite discontinued by Pleasant Company. A has almost everything for Felicity, because her grandmother gave her the complete set many years ago and there haven’t been very many additions. I didn’t recognize the traveling gown, though, so I prowled the shelves looking for it, to no avail. Just as I asked an employee about it, a mother piped up behind me that she was looking for it too. The employee went into the back to check, and the mother and I chatted about Felicity - from what one of the sons said to the daughter, I gathered that the girl is only just starting to collect Felicity. The employee came back out saying she hadn’t found any, but somebody else was calling downstairs to check. I continued chatting with the mother, all the while thinking in the back of my head “if there’s only one left, it’s mine - I’m the one who thought to ask for it!” But the employee came back saying they were all sold out, and that they would be getting a complete merchandise shipment tonight and might have it then. (I think I’ll go back this morning!)

Dismayed, I went back downstairs to the first floor to seek out whatever I could find to make up for not getting the Traveling Gown I wanted so much. It turned out the only thing I could find was Coconut’s Kitty Costume, which is just adorable.

Okay, enough writing! Now I’m spurred to go back and hunt down that traveling gown. According to the Felicity page at the Complete Guide to American Girl Collecting, her stuff is very valuable so maybe I’ll try to pick up a few more things just for the resale value.