In a New York Minute...

So...some details per Scribbler's request.

First, let me address how "lucky" we were to see the Mermaid Parade. If you've never seen it, I'll give you a minute to go to Flickr and look it up. Go on.

It's sort of like Mardi Gras, but on a much smaller scale. Near the ocean. And ya'll, I am so over Mardi Gras it's not even funny. First of all, I hate crowds. I avoid NIOSA like the plague because I'm just not into being smashed up against 300 other people and being forced to go where they go. So there's that. Then, the whole boobie thing...look, I don't mind seeing a nice rack, I mean, what guy doesn't, but there were some people in this parade that should have kept their shirts on. Should have put large winter coats on.

Yes, it was campy and stupid and funny, but I'm trying to wrangle a very hot, tired and uninterested two year old, along with my hot, tired and uninterested self and wife, and it just wasn't for me. At least I can say that I saw it.

The worst part of the whole thing was trying to get out of Coney Island. We watched the parade from the boardwalk, which is where we thought it ended. Ahhh...nah. I actually started on the boardwalk and ended on the street that we needed to cross to get back to the subway. Guess which street we couldn't cross?

In between leaving the boardwalk and getting to the non-crossable street, Juice and I hit a t-shirt shop and left Peanut outside with my father. When we came out of the t-shirt shop, Peanut had fallen asleep in her stroller, and was dangerously close to falling out. My father's knee was keeping her in her seat.

I picked her up and we proceeded toward the train, only to find out that we couldn't cross the street. We were told to walk up a few blocks to where the parade ended and cross after the end of the parade. No problem, right?

Wrong.

We got to the end of the parade route without any problem, then came to a screeching halt. Nobody was moving. It seems that in their infinite wisdom NYPD had placed metal gates at the end of the parade route. The proprietors of the Cyclone roller coaster also had gates by their entrance to keep the line for the ride separated from the crowd. In between these two sets of gates was enough room for two people to pass. About 500 people were trying to pass through from both direction. This made for a lot of pushing and shoving and flaring tempers, all the while I have a sleeping two year old getting increasingly heavy in my arms and on my shoulder.

After about 45 minutes, we finally made it through to the other side (about 20 yards total) and onto the train platform. It was a very bad experience, and had it been my only one in New York it probably would have tainted the entire trip. But it wasn't, and it didn't. On the train ride home, I heard another aggravated person say "500 cops and none of them were doing nothing! Mermaids should fucking die!"

Now, for the wedding...and this is where the title for this post comes in.

You would think that being a New York wedding, I'd have some story about how beautiful it was and how everyone looked amazing in their dresses, and whatever. But it wasn't like that.

In fact, it was over in a New York minute.

We met my sister and her fiance (now husband) at City Hall in Manhattan around 9 Friday morning. They went in and filled out the paper work, his brother and I were witnesses. We went into the waiting area, which had an amazing view of the Brooklyn Bridge, but the windows were too dirty to get a good photo. About 20 minutes later, the justice came in and got the first couple. Two minutes later, they came out. About 30 seconds after that, we heard the justice shout from the other room, "SISTAH AND B-RAY!" In we went.

"Is there anyone here today that knows of any legal reason why these two should not marry? Let them speak now or forever hold their peace."

"B-Ray, do you take Sistah to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

"I do."

"Place the ring on her fingah to signify your intent."

"Sistah, do you take B-Ray to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I do."

"Place the ring on his fingah to signify your intent. By the power vested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride."

And just like that we were done.

We went and had breakfast at a genuine New York diner, then spent the rest of the day being tourists.

The reception was at a historic house next to a park in Brooklyn that evening, and there was plenty of food and drink. Peanut came up to us around 10 PM after dancing the night away and said "I go nigh-nigh." We knew she was ready to go. She never asks to go to bed. So we got a car and headed back to the hotel.

No big deal, right? But they didn't spend very much at all on the wedding, and had a great time in a totally "them" sort of way. Who am I to judge?

Back home, in one piece.

OK, so maybe I don't hate New York so much. It's a lot like Chicago...just bigger.

We had a really great time while we were there, with only a couple of minor pitfalls. Peanut had a fabulous time hanging with her grandparents, and we totally threw her schedule off. Most days she just crashed where ever she was when she got tired enough, since we were usually off doing tourist things during her nap time.

In our 5 days, we walked the Brooklyn Bridge twice, saw the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, took a double decker bus tour in the rain, then the sun, then the rain, and hung out in Central Park, and walked more miles than I ever care to count. Oh yeah, and saw my sister get married (which was the whole reason for the trip in the first place).

Everywhere we went, I was surprised by how kind people were. We had no less than 5 perfect strangers strike up conversations with us. Of course, all of the conversations revolved around Peanut, but still...it gave me a really good feeling about the place.

Peanut and I were playing on a playground in Park Slope one evening, and Peanut happened across a one year old playing with her mother. The woman struck up a conversation with me, and said perhaps the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me (in her Brooklyn accent, which I will attempt to type here): "She's beeyoooteeful! Yooo gouys should have mooore keeds!"

In just four days I took over 300 pictures (I didn't take any the last day because we were already packed) and I'm sure about half of them were of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's an amazing structure, and we were total tourists when we walked it.


I think we're going to have to go back. To visit. Would I want to live there? Probably not, but I would definitely lose some weight if I did. Overall, it was a great trip, and I'll admit...my New York bashing before we left was just fear of the unknown.

I already hate New York and I'm not even there yet

We're leaving very early Thursday morning for our trip to New York. Having never been, it's a bit stressful. We are flying to Newark because that's about the only way we could get there directly from San Antonio without having a layover or switching planes. When you travel with a 2 year old, that's important.

My sister, of course, chastised me because it's difficult, at best, to get from Newark to Brooklyn. "If you had flown into JFK or LaGuardia" she says, "it would be much easier." Yes, except then we would have had to deal with our very energetic child for entirely too long in airports and on an airplane. No thanks.

So here I am trying to find the least expensive way to get from Newark (is it any coincidence that the airport code is EWr?) to Brooklyn. I thought I'd hit paydirt when I saw that PATH goes from Newark Penn Station to the World Trade Center. How easy is that? Then it's just a quickie cab ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, right? Yeah, not so much.

By the way, those of you from New York or who have been there before, stop laughing. Just shut up, already.

Here's the thing. Getting to Newark Penn Station (and by the way, whose brilliant idea was it to have TWO Penn Stations in the New York area?) from the airport is no easy task. You have to take an air train, then switch to NJ Transit, then finally to the PATH trains, and the fares for the two steps before PATH are significantly larger than the PATH fare.

If it were just Juice and I, it would be a no brainer because we could handle that. But trying to drag a toddler, dealing with said toddler, the stress of being in a new place, and dragging all of our luggage with us through three trains and a cab ride? No thanks.

So I just ponied up $150 (plus tolls and tip) for a car service to get us to and from the airport.

Part of me thinks they make it difficult and confusing on purpose so that the cabs and car services can bank in on tourist dollars.

Did I mention I hate New York already?

Credit schmedit

Who says the economy is in the toilet (or turlet, depending on who you're talking to)? Our family alone is boosting the American economy this summer.

We've gone from taking one very expensive trip to taking three expensive trips over the next 6 weeks.

We're flying to New York America's armpit, Newark International Airport next week so that we can then spend a shitload of money so we can be told to fuck off by a genuine New Yorker. Ka-ching.

The weekend after that, we're driving to Fort Worth for a wedding of a family friend that I've known since birth. Ka-ching.

A month after that, my parents have called together a family reunion at my Grandmother's will (she actually said "I'd like to get the family together one last time," and when the family matriarch says that, you do it.) which means that we will be flying to the midwest during the dog days of summer. Ka-ching, ka-ching.

And all I wanted to do was spend my three weeks off landscaping our back yard. Ka-ching.

I'm guessing that my credit card bill will be pretty damn high by summer's end.

Yeah.

So...wow, it's been over a week since I wrote.

It has been a busy week at work, and since my computer at work crashed early in the week, I haven't been able to get to sites I could normally get to. I've got privileges on my machine...not so much on my laptop.

And can I tell you what a total pain in the ass it is to go from working on two 19" monitors to one very tiny laptop monitor?

Anyway, it's been busy. And tense. And I really need a break, but I work through most of this month.

Peanut turns two on Monday. I can't believe it. It seems like it was just yesterday that we were in the hospital waiting to meet her.

We've been fighting the "yeah" fight at our house over the past month, because Peanut has picked that up as a proper way to answer affirmatively to our questions.

Of course, we don't want her sounding like a street thug quite so soon, and you know that "yeah" is a gateway word. They try "yeah" and like it, then pretty soon they're on to "uh huh" or just plain "huh?" and then it's straight to hell from there. Before you know it they're screaming "shit damn fuck!" in the middle of Wal-Mart and you're powerless to stop it.

So we're nipping it in the bud. Like now.

Juice and I have actually had to change the way we speak around the house, and I catch myself before I say "yeah" or correct myself and say "yes" whenever I do say it. Even at work, I've found myself doing it. Juice said she started correcting her students last week.

It seems to be working. Peanut is saying it less and less, and she's not playing the game anymore where she says it just to see what reaction she'll get from me. She learns pretty quickly, this little sponge.

Next week we're going to teacher her to roll over and play dead. The week after that it's "Stairway to Heaven" on my guitar.