July 7

  The days are starting to back up on me and now I'm writing retroactively about two days, when I can hardly keep track of everything that happened to me just today -- oh no! I think it'll be okay, since I plan on filling out the posts with details and pictures once I'm back in Kisco, a move I'm both dreading and awaiting. While it'll be nice to get back to a town I can afford to buy groceries in, Kisco simply doesn't have great museums or bars that are also bowling alleys.

  Yesterday I tried a few letterboxes, went to the Metropolitan Opera box office, and went to Central Park. Naturally, it was hella hot. I think I was 2/5 on the 'boxes, but there's still loads more to investigate next time I'm here. I'll write more about this when I get the pictures, since the Park was pretty much an all-day action packed venture.

  At the MO, you can get cheap student tickets the day of a performance. Taking advantage of the fact that I still have my VU i.d. and look about eighteen years old, I got a ticket in the orchestra section: right on the floor, basically, and this is in a building with five floors of balconies and a "standing room" section in the back -- yes, this is a venue so popular that you can buy a ticket that doesn't even have a seat. There are three rows of rails in the back; if you get the back row, I doubt you can even see. That popular.

  Student price was $25, whereas that section usually sells for $90. Oh heck yes. There were no opera performances this week (I think they're done til fall), but the American Ballet Theatre was doing "The Sleeping Beauty" so I jumped on that right away. Going to see ballets is one of my top five favorite things to do. If I were rich, I'd do it every night. It's a portal to another world of exciting music, dazzling costumes, and feeling just grown-up enough to pretend you belong there. As things have been going, I think I've seen one about seven years if not less often. Which isn't great, but that's how it is.

 Anyway, around 5 I rushed home from the park to get ready for the show at 7:30. I hadn't brought any nice clothes, but luckily my stop at the Goodwill my first day in Manhattan had been productive. I bought two dresses and washed one in the sink in preparation for the night. Hurried over on the subway and jumped in my seat seconds before the lights dimmed.

Chandelier in the lobby.

  Long story short, it was wonderful. All ballets I've seen are good, but nothing can compare to the artists (and funding) available to a world-class establishment like this. Each of the four acts had a scenery change, and when the curtains drew back people in the audience would literally gasp at the scale and skill of the staging. At one point there were fireworks onstage to signal the approach of the evil fairy. The dancers -- holy moses. American Ballet Theatre is a really well-regarded company and the leads in this production were simply astounding. Even the lesser players were just shockingly good. I remember specifically when the Bluebird character (a male dancer) did a short solo piece at the wedding scene that was just incredible (you could hear murmurs of 'oh my god' and people holding their breath as he executed eyebrow-raising jumps and incredibly difficult sequences): when he finished, people jumped out of their seats and yelled "Bravo!"

  That good.

  Obviously I couldn't take pictures of the production, but here is one I found from the finale wedding scene.

  Imagine that, onstage, in front of an audience of four thousand people. I laughed, I cried, I was amazed at the kind of artistry the human body proved capable of -- in short, I had the time of my life.

  On the way home, I stopped at Times Square for a few minutes, since it was on my way and I didn't know when I'd be here at night again. Whoa -- square is not sufficient to describe it. Maybe in the day time, but at night when all the lights are lit you can see it stretching away for miles in every direction. it was like Oxford Street in London (actually, almost exactly), but I was paranoid and overdressed so I didn't venture too far.

  Today I went to the American Museum of Natural History (again a twin of a London establishment). I had only meant to go there for the morning, but it quickly became apparent that this thing could suck up your entire life. Four floors of dinosaurs, models, meteorites, and flashbacks to every anthropology course I ever took.

  Some highlights:

Life-size blue whale model.

 Hominid evolution tree! Fond memories of anth...

Cast of Lucy fossils

Model of Sipan archaeological site in Peru

Reproduction of an Easter Island head, although all the kids 

insisted it was a character from "Finding Nemo"

"It's a dino 'sorus line'!"

10 points for anyone getting that ref.

  Although unlike London and Washington, D.C., museums here do cost money, so far everywhere I've been has a "suggested donation" price only. Which means you can just pay what you're able, with no stigma attached. This is the best idea I've ever heard. Overwhelmingly, people (well, tourists) seem to pay the recommended price, but it's a nice option for people like me who could buy a week's groceries with the money it would cost to enter this museum regularly. I paid less than 1/4 the suggested price for this museum, and it was perfectly fine.

  I stayed there all day, and of course had to come home and die afterwards. I had planned to go to another museum, or to the beach (a city where you can visit a museum and a beach in the same day -- NY, I will never leave you), but the constant running around is taking its toll and I'm developing some impressive heel calluses that will be difficult to explain.

  On the subject of complaints: my boss's cat. What initially seemed to be a normal sweet cat is driving me nuts. She won't eat her food which I put out at great personal risk (I hate cat food so much it's unreal) and will undoubtedly make it look like I wasn't taking care of her. She sleeps on the bed with me, but walks around (on me) in the night and jumps on and off in an effort to give me a heart attack at 3 a..m. If I try to pet her to placate her midnight restlessness, she turns around and bites me and leaves a mark. While this undoubtedly seems like normal cat behavior, I would like to point out that this cat has no teeth.

No teeth.


  They got them extracted or something because of some infection, and now this no-teeth cat has to have its food watered down and uses its handicap as an excuse to act like a total rat bastard towards me. I tried really hard to fake her out tonight by brushing her and talking cat-talk, but to no avail. There's no garbage disposal, so you have to dump the uneaten cat food in the toilet to get rid of it. I thought I would be okay with this, not really being a squeamish person thanks to a stint in a YMCA kitchen, but it is effing gross and I'm beginning to suspect batcrap crazy as well.  Just eat your food, cat. How hard could it be? It's not organic and contains meat. Give me another week here and I'll be eating it.*

  Tomorrow I'm going to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, another destination I've always wanted to visit thanks to Dear America and similar books of my childhood. And then... the Tragedy concert in Brooklyn. Huzzah!


* probably an exaggeration