I am in New York

Standard

Actually I’m in a Starbucks on the upper west side, near the American Museum of Natural History. My wife and son are meeting me here and then we’re going to see some dinosaur bones and maybe some of the guys who hassled Ben Stiller that time. Starbucks! Ubiquitous meeting place of the phoneless.

We’ve been here less than 24 hours and already my son is asking about rent in the city. I think it’s safe to say that he likes it, although it requires a little more walking than he’s used to.

My wife is absolutely stunned by how clean and nice the city is. We’re staying downtown, where her old stomping grounds were, and she just keeps saying “It’s changed so much! My god, I’m old aren’t I?”

Me, I just had lunch with my agent at (checks card) the dici–a place that loves big knives and lower case letters. My food was really good, even though the humidity took the edge off my appetite. But omg rare beef with sweet peppers! I’m happy. We talked about a lot of interesting things and I have a ton of thinking to do. More on that later, maybe.

Still haven’t had pizza yet. (See first paragraph about >24 hours) There’s a little place near our hotel that looks like it would be nice to try, so we can sample some Real New York Pizza(tm). What’s the name of it? Sbarro’s, I think. Can’t wait!

(Just kidding, New Yorkers, I swear. I know Sbarro’s is airport pizza.)

Anyway, this morning we did the tourist thing and went to the top of the Empire State Building. It was a challenge for my wife to have been a New Yorker for so many years and now play tourist (and that place is highly concentrated tourist time) but I eased her through the experience by exclaiming things like “So many tall buildings!” and “The trains run under the ground!” and other things sure to make locals think we’re cool.

We’ve ridden the subway several times; as I’ve told my son, the sights and sounds are soooo recognizable from a million movies and TV shows. Just about anyone in the developed world knows the NY Subway sound. That weird metallic EEEeeeEEEeeEEEEE! we always hear.

My family has joined us, so I’m logging off. Hope you guys are enjoying your week.