Showing posts with label airplanes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label airplanes. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The Big Schlep

In which your humble narrator goes to the big city, eats pizza and bagels and discovers that there are a hell of a lot of playgrounds in Manhattan.

Apologies for the infrequency of postings of late. The end of the term and its accompanying flurry of work and a recent trip out east have left little time for writing lists of stuff that irritates me. 
Child #2 rides the subway
Child #1 looks out over New York Harbor

Wife-a-roo, and Children #1 and #2 and I flew to New York last Wednesday. Wife-a-roo had a job interview with some sexy research outfit doing even sexier research than she usually does. Since they paid for her flight and we had access to an empty apartment courtesy of one of her investment-banky cousins,* we decided to make a trip of it.

Both children were surprisingly good travelers. The flight out was completely without incident except for when Child #1 was informed that he would have to remove his shoes in the security line. This prompted an on-the-floor screaming (and sock-footed) fit much to the delight of our fellow travelers behind us waiting for their own chance to do the TSA tango. Calm was restored on the other side of security when Child #1 was re-shod as he choked back the tears of rage and humiliation of having to go sock footed in public for 1.5 minutes.

We stayed in Manhattan near Gramercy park for two days. Wife-a-roo had her interview which went well. We saw an old friend from college. We ordered freakin' awesome takeout.

On Friday, Wife-a-roo's father drove down from ye olde New Hampshire homestead to meet up with us. We had lunch at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the village. Then we piled into his ancient Volvo and went out the Mid-town tunnel to the Long Island Expressway to go stay for a couple of nights at the North Shore Home of Wife-a-roo's aunt.

A brief note on Wife-a-roo's family and their relationship to cars. They kill them. Dead. Grandpa's Volvo has 323,000 miles on it. The air-conditioning is kaput. It was 90 degrees and humid on the L.I.E. outbound on a Friday afternoon. Then the car overheated.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

My Kingdom for Some Earplugs

In which your humble narrator wishes that the damnable flying machines would cease flying over his home.





This is a good representation of what the upward view from our house looks like every 3-4 minutes right now. The Metropolitan Airports Commission is reconstructing one of the parallel runways at the airport which means that they're using the transverse runway (which they normally never do) all the time. The transverse runway points pretty much directly at our house.

So until October 30, (or whenever they actually finish this project) we get to add constant jet noise to the near constant Ethel Merman impression that Child #2 is cultivating.

This morning I dreamed that I woke up with cotton stuffed deep into my ears and had no idea how it had gotten there. Do you suppose that means something?