Father's Day Weekend

I didn't blog over the weekend so I could have some fun. On Saturday, Richard and I went to Bed Bath and Beyond on the Broadway and 65th Street to buy more things to make our apartment comfortable. The main item on the list was a waffle mattress topper. It's pretty awful when you can feel the springs in the sleeper sofa poking your ribs while you're trying to sleep! We also went to Staples to buy a printer. I had an upcoming, all-day interview that required me to print multiple copies of lesson plans and I just knew it was going to be a headache to find a place to have things printed. We had planned to get a new printer upon our arrival anyway, since we gave our old one to Alli. I wanted some Mexican food for dinner, so we went to a place I had found online called Chevys. It was really good Tex Mex, which is much more flavorful than standard Mexican food. It was very much like what I grew up eating in Texas--El Fenix! When my mom and I came to New York together many years ago, she flew in from New Mexico and I flew from Montana, I read in the Delta Airlines magazine that the son of the owner of the original El Fenix restaurant in Fort Worth, TX had opened an El Fenix in Manhattan. One of the first nights that mom and I were here, we went there, just to get that familiar taste. As soon as I moved here last week, I searched online and can't find it. It must not have survived. After dinner, we went across the street to Madame Tussauds. I haven't been to a wax museum in years, but the one I remembered had the figures behind ropes so that visitors couldn't get close to them. This was entirely different. You walk into a room of very still "people" at a dinner party that look very familiar. I wouldn't say that all of them looked exactly like the celebrities they represented, but they were pretty close. It was fun posing with the wax figures.

Lighten up, Johnny!

I'm cracking myself up!

Sunday was Father's Day. What Richard really wanted to do was to ride this insane speed boat called The Beast. We can see it from our apartment, coming and going on a frequent basis. It makes very fast trips to Liberty Island and back all day long. The passengers never leave the boat. We just went to a spot on the Hudson that was close to Liberty Island, took photos with Lady Liberty in the background, then sped back. The driver did something really radical at one point on the way back--he turned the boat very sharply and rapidly in one direction, and then the other direction. The second time we turned, everyone got soaked! I don't know how much the women on board appreciated it, but it was fun.

One World Trade Center