The good thing about waiting a few days to write about my trip is that it allows me to shed all the useless details in favor of brevity.
Had I written about the trip right when I got back you would have been treated to details like “the guy standing across from me on the M60 bus was wearing a maroon sweatshirt. He had a graying beard that looked like it had missed a trim and I felt like he swayed his hips more than necessary every time the bus came to a stop” or “The Israeli guy we shared a cab with would not stop talking. Seriously. I’m sure that in the scheme of things he was not talking too much, but at 1am, nerves scraped bare by a day of errands, packing, air travel, layovers, long bus rides and hotel reservations given away, the last thing I needed was a cranky, talkative dude with no zen patience killing my already tenuous grasp on the whole concept of zen patience!” or even “The veal had the potential to be THE B3ST V34L EV4R, a light lemon butter sauce that sang of high citrus and sweet buttery sin, perfectly cooked linguini that held tight to that sauce and filled your whole mouth with it, but it stopped short. The veal was tough. Tough. Cut thin, beaten thinner, breaded and sautéed, it should have melted in our mouths. It should have been the savory equivalent of a hot fudge sundae. How could it have been so tough? So chewy? It makes no sense. The only thing I can think of is that they found some free range, surly teen veal to slaughter and serve up to us.”
So lets do this bullet style for brevity (pkoo pkoo pkoo)

• If ever you are to fly somewhere, see if Midwest Airlines will fly you there! Super comfortable seats, everyone is pleasant (EVERYONE even the ticketing agents) and they serve you 2 fresh baked, still hot from the oven cookies on each flight. Almost every flight lays over in Milwaukee so on any given trip you can get at least 4 cookies each way. In doing the math, it seems I consumed 8 cookies on my trip. 8 cookies!
• The M60 bus from La Guardia to Manhattan had little roaches on it. I was upset.
• The New York City transit system could stand to learn a thing or two from little old Minneapolis. All the buses here take dollar bills. All the transfers work from bus to train and back. A 2 hour ride ticket means 2 hours in any direction, you can transfer to the bus or train, you can go somewhere and then ride back home as long as it is within 2 hours.
• They gave our room away even though we called to confirm and told them we would be late. They sent us somewhere else, that place was not as nice. The next day we went back and claimed our room. It all made me very tired.
• We went to have breakfast the the Key West Diner on Broadway. This place amused me to no end. Many of the dishes they served were labeled as “Famous in Key West!”. I don’t quite remember the mozzarella/basil/sausage/tomato frittatas in Key West from my visit there, but it was still rather tasty.
• No one knows what an Americano is in New York City. Every time I asked for one people responded with confusion.
• I brought the wrong shoes for the wedding. Within blocks of the hotel I had blisters growing on my feet. This shoe choice was by far the stupidest thing I’d done in years.
• the wedding was absolutely beautiful. Yes, beautiful, but I’d forgotten how boring Catholic weddings are. It didn’t help that the priest had a thick polish accent and tended to mumble.
• people please, stop with the 1 Corinthians 13:4 at weddings. Yeah, we know that love is patient and kind and doesn’t envy. You need to find the bible passage about dividing up dishwashing duty and forgiving late night under-blanket farting.
• The groom was a friend of David’s from college. After the wedding we met up with Josh, another of David’s college friends and his girlfriend, Tricia. We decided to take advantage of the 2 hour space between wedding and reception and go drink.
• The reception was also lovely. Open bar, all manner of tasty finger foods, open bar, giant cheese tray, 80’s cover band, open bar, sharing a table with the Polish Chris Noth, open bar and lots of wine.
• Danced and danced and danced. When I first heard there was an 80’s cover band I groaned. I was so wrong. Can you think of a more beautiful moment than 100 half drunk gen x’ers singing “99 Luftballoons” all together? Can you? No, you can’t.
• A drunk middle aged man with a pony tail grabbed me and yelled “I wanna dance with you!!!” I said “OKAY!!!” and we were off. At the end of the song he tried to spin me but mostly he threw me and since I had no shoes on my stockinged feet just flew out from under me. Then he jumped on me. It was not until the next day that it occurred to me that maybe people had seen my fat ass and my underpants. I didn’t care.
• I was part of a “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” conga line.
• I caught the motherfucking bouquet. Boo-yah.
• The after-pary was at Plan B in the East Village. This was about 827,659 blocks away. Both of my feet blistered something fierce and every step felt like it was on crushed glass on the surface of the sun. There was no way I could wear my shoes. Ever the gentleman, David let me wear his giant, flipper-like shoes.
• that girl you saw on the subway platform in run pantyhose, smeared make-up and falling hair? With the wilted bouquet of roses? Limping shoeless? That was me.
• if you aren’t careful you will end up in Queens instead of the Upper West Side. You will normally think this is an adventure, but on this night you only want to cry.
• we got to bed around 5am, we stayed in bed until after 1pm. Theoretically I would have liked to get up early and go see the sites, but fuck that.
• We limped our way up to Broadway to get some breakfast and discovered a street fair going on. Huzzah! Food booths and cheap scarves and face painting and a white guy playing the blues and irregular underpants going for CHEAP!!!
• Later that evening we met with Margaret from my cooking group and her friend, Marcel. We ate delicious Italian food (though the veal was a bit tough) until we could not even roll out the door, then we had ice cream and espresso.
• After room lounging we agreed that we had not gone to see anything touristy. So, at 12:45am I got out the subway map and we decided to head down to Times Square. I’ve been to NYC a few times and except for one drive through in the afternoon, I’ve never actually been to Times Square. It had the same effect on me as watching tv. I stood there, mesmerized by the bright colors and flashing lights, not a thought in my head. It was big, and super clean and there were cops everywhere. There was nothing at Time’s Square that wasn’t somewhere else, I imagine seeing an Applebees or Bubba Gump Shrimp Palace brings a certain level of comfort to the scared Midwesterner.
• People often tell me that Dunkin Doughnuts makes the best coffee on the planet. THE BEST COFFEE!! They lie. That shit was nasty.
• The entire trip home was uneventful. I ate my cookies and read my book and generally behaved myself as was expected.

There, updates. Woo. That’s what I did in NYC over the weekend.
**EDIT** David confirmed that the Israeli guy was not talking too much, it was just me. I need to work on my patience.

I know, you want a full report about my weekend.
I’m too damned tired to write anything, that’s your report. Too damned tired.
I’ve eaten spaghetti two nights in a row now because I am physically drained. We moved constantly, we saw and ate and did and danced until our feet fell off. It was a wonderful trip.
Wonderful except for the moon sized blisters on my feet.
I will post pictures soon and give you a blow by blow of the weekend. For now, however, the jackass dogs need a walk.

Off we go, to the big, windy apple!
Clothes are washed and packed, addresses are written down, maps are in the bag.
I’d hoped to post some photos before I left but time has started to battle against me lately. We’ll have a photo explosion when I get back.
Before I go, let me leave you with this thought…
I’ve reacently discovered (in the fine print) that Wells Fargo has the right to go into your house at night and anally rape you. When they are finished they will assess a finance charge and debit your account. You don;t even have to be a Wells Fargo customer to get this treatment, they’ll still do this to you and then submit the finance charge to your bank. Crazy.