NYC Rambles

A number of friends and family expressed surprise at my jetting off to the big apple for just a weekend. NYC is great and fantastic and fabulous and exciting and all that, but I had a cheap direct flight, know my way around pretty well and had friends to stay with and visit. So for me it wasn’t really a huge expenditure of time, money or energy. It was more just a chance to go visit some friends for a long weekend.

And I had a great “weekend.” It started off rather rough with a red-eye flight Wednesday night, but I arrived to a city that was sparkling with sunlight and spring was out in the dramatic, overwhelming, voluptuous, decadent way that the Northeast does so well. I definitely got a good deal with not having to endure the wicked winter but still getting to enjoy the mass quantities of tulips, daffodils and other bulb-type flower surrounded by trees bursting with cherry blossoms. And all of this was emphasized by a gorgeous 78-degree day.

I celebrated my arrival in the city that never sleeps by taking a three-hour nap in the middle of the day (red-eyes wipe me out.) I awoke slightly groggy but got myself from my amico Sanguine’s upper East-side apartment into the glorious central park where I did a few laps around the famed reservoir, followed by a nap on the Great Lawn. Sanguine got home from work just as I was getting out of the shower and he took me out to a very lovely dinner. He actually took very good care of me all weekend while we ate out, played in the park, watched mindless TV, went for ice cream, went to the gym and more.

Friday morning found me at a Jivamukti yoga class – yeah!! The teacher I was going to in Philadelphia taught Jivamukti yoga and since leaving I’ve not been able to do a Jivamukti class. With one massive center downtown, an additional studio uptown and a related center in the Village, NYC is the heart of Jivamukti yoga. What I like about Jivamukti is that it is very spiritual, integrates the physical practice with your mind and spirit and the classes tend to be really fun. For example, today (I actually ended up doing two classes while in town, one Friday morning and another this morning) we did a partner asana (pose/posture) where one person was doing downward dog (hands and feet on the floor, making a V-shape with your body) while the other person did a forearm stand (like a handstand but on your forearms) and then from that position went into a backbend until their feet balanced on the downward dog partner’s back. Doing all this gives the forearm stand person a kick-ass strength, balance, stretch pose while also helping give the down-dog person a deeper stretch! Fun eh?? Maybe that doesn’t actually sound like fun to you, but I find it quite great. For more info on Jivamukti, visit the link on your right!

Friday night I got to see my most favorite modern dance group – the Stephen Petronio Dance Company – perform two band new works (appropriately, for my trip, titled “Bud” and “Bloom”) as well as an older piece set to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The work was very different from past pieces, but quite gorgeous. Stephen happens to be a dear friend, which you may think influences my opinion, but I have seen a ton of dance in the last 20 years and feel I have a pretty good degree of objectivity. If you have the chance to see anything they perform, I highly recommend you go for it. You can check out more info on Stephen’s company in the link to your right.

That already seems like enough for a long weekend, but I also did some more dallying in a gorgeous new-to-me part of the park called the “Ramble” for its rambling paths, ponds, streams and birds, spent a night and part of a day North of the city at Stephen and Jean-Marc’s (his hunny bunny) farmhouse in the Hudson Valley, gave a couple of massages, got to have brunch with my dear friend Sarah, met her new hunny bunny and ate and ate and ate and ate all sorts of yummy things at all sorts of wonderful restaurants. It is hard to say what the “highlight” was. At so many points during the weekend I felt like “this is the highlight.”

It is interesting how easily I slip back into this Northeast life of mine. And how seducing it is when I visit it for a weekend that is so fun and beautiful. But as I sit here in the JFK airport (taking advantage of their free wireless) I am looking forward to going home.

Laptops, Shut-Eye & NYC

In recent years my computer and internet access has been limited to whatever I was/am provided with at work or my parents' house where I've been house-sitting for the last few months. Despite the internet being my primary means of communication and how I find everything from directions to movie times to tax info to gifts to plane tickets to roommates to cars to you-get-the-picture, the limits haven't been all that arduous. In fact, it has been rather nice to not be tethered to a computer. However, I'm about to return to the world of independent living by moving into an apartment of my very own and will be sans home computer or work computer (what with being a massage therapist my "office" doesn't come with a computer) so need something.

And what with me being so wayward and wandering, I went and got a cute little laptop and am now able to lug it with me far and wide and waste hours and hours online. I just got it a few days ago and spent a big chunk of my day yesterday setting it all up just in time to lug it with me to the grand metropolis known as New York City. A good thing too as I had to sit around at the Sacramento airport for a good 7 hours waiting for my flight. During my hours and hours of waiting around I realized that the Sacramento airport is extremely uncomfortable and boring. Much more so than other airports. What it has going for it is that it small and easy and takes about ten minutes from getting dropped off at the curb to getting to your gate. Unfortunately I had about 40 times that amount of time. My flight wasn't delayed or anything, I just had to get there that early because my brother was flying out to Portland before sunset even while I was scheduled on the red-eye. Jet Blue likes to call the red-eye the "shut-eye." Isn't that cute? So yes, I spent hours wasting time online last night at the airport and am now nestled in a friend's apartment where I should be napping (there wasn't all that much eye-shutting in the shut-eye last night) but instead am being lured into the ethers of the internet by the existence of ten different wireless networks to choose from while sitting in this apartment.

But now it is time for a nap so I can venture out this afternoon to run in the park, wander about and be all rested and ready to play with my friends this weekend.

Rain Rain Go Away!

I still hold firm to the belief that rain is nice because when it is raining it isn’t snowing. The point here being that I don’t live in the bitter, bitter Northeast anymore and even when the weather here is “bad,” it doesn’t compare to the soul-killing winters of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, etc. and this princess likes that she doesn’t live in those parts anymore.

But to get back to the point, rain can be nice and the winters in California are also nice, but there is a limit to what one can stand! It has been raining and raining and raining and raining for weeks and weeks now. I’ve had a hard time finding confirmation of these outrageous statistics but some have told me we have had 150% of “normal” rainfall this year. I’ve also been told that March was the wettest March ever. I don’t know if they measure that by rainfall or number of rainy days or what, but it definitely has been quite a while since we’ve had a dose of sunshine. I need my Vitamin D! And they say April is going to be wetter than March was. :( Right now the ten-day forecast has ten solid days of rain with one little lonely “partly cloudy” day in the middle. And this is after the weeks of constant rain we’ve had already.

In spite of the rain I went for a walk yesterday. Just about every street had substantial streams coursing along the gutters (with several containing standing water perfect for hydroplaning), picnic tables were in the lake several, streets had standing water, not a soul was found playing outside and all sorts of other rain related misery was strewn about. We can’t plant anything and the ground is so saturated I don’t see how it will take any more water. And then there is the bit about the hill behind our house. Let’s just hope the engineers and the erosion control stand up to this serious test. And don’t even mention tennis, biking, running, swimming, camping or any other fun outdoorsy activity. I’m a total pansy – I love playing outside, but don’t like it when the weather is unlovely. I want it lovely again!!

On the plus side, water supply is always an issue in thirsty California so I guess the rain and snow pack are good on that end. And the sound of the rain is quite soothing – particularly up in my studio where it pounds on the skylights and lulls my clients into sleep. I still want it to stop though, and soon!