They are shooting a movie in front of our building....

On Monday we were told we had to clear out all the cars. The name of the movie is Priority Rush. It's about a bicycle courier who is hired to rush a letter from Columbia down to Chinatown and they are going to film the trip thru the streets of Manhattan. It stars that kid from Third Rock from the Sun who was the youngest child. Of course, he is grown now. The first shot is right in front of our building.

The Guggenheim................

Today we went to the Guggenheim. Their major interior spiral space was devoted to an exhibit about contemporary photography. Andy Warhol and his buddies like Maplethorpe, etc. Basically, Ed and I don't know a thing about this genre. We had out cassette, we listened, I guess we learned. In the side wings were the old reliables that the Guggenheim owns, the Picassos, Manets, Renoirs, etc. Those are our old buddies, also the Chagells, Kandinskys, etc. The museum has been restored recently and looked very good. There is a bus we take from up on Broadway that turns East at 110th Street and goes along the top of the park and then turns south on Fifth Avenue. It's the #4. It's a very convenient bus.

Wicked and Sardi's

Today Ed won the lottery for tickets to Wicked. This show is sold out for the rest of the summer but every performance they award 23 tickets to people who put their names in a basket. We tried once before but didn't get tickets. Today, they called Ed's name right up front. The regular price of a ticket is $135 but our tickets were only $26 a piece. The seats were in the front row which I'm sure were not the most optimum seats to observe all the special effects, but they were still great. The show has the most amazing costumes and special effects. Unbelievable how much talent is coming out of our high schools and colleges. So many wonderful, strong voices. As a result of obtaining the cheap tickets, we decided to go to Sardi's for lunch. That was very nice.

Friday night we went to Le Perigord

This is a french restaurant close to the U.N. frequented by diplomats (and perhaps spies) but definitely a mature crowd. No worries about the small portions here. The presentation was not as exquisite as at Gordon Ramsey's but these waiters were very friendly and jolly. The food was good.

Gordon Ramsey's restaurant.................

It is Restaurant Week in NYC. We have scheduled 4 restaurants in the next 10 days. Last night we went to Maze, which is Gordon Ramsey's restaurant in the London Hotel. I thought it was very nice; the portions were small but that's okay with me. The decor was very contemporary and cold. They were nice but basically I felt that they were just tolerating the Restaurant Week people.

The Letterman Show

I so wanted to get out of the hospital because we had tickets for the Letterman show on Tuesday afternoon. We broke our necks getting there on time because I had a clinic appt. in the morning after just leaving the hospital the evening before. I have decided that the popular things in NYC are the things to avoid; e.g., the Statue of Liberty, the Letterman show, etc. Because these very popular events require crowd control and crowd control is not fun. In any event, through no fault of our own, we ended up with the worst seats in the house and couldn't see Dave's head. I should have stayed in the hospital. The main guest was Kristen Chenowith who is starring in Promises, Promises. She grew up in Florida as a Southern Baptist and also a cheerleader. She is only 4'11" so she was always at the top of the pyramid. She told a story about how they dropped her while she was doing the splits on the top of the pyramid and she called it the crotch buster. She said when it is going to rain she always knows because she can feel it in that bone. My son, Walker, watched the show and he said they bleeped that entire discussion. It was interesting because Dave made some gaffs and I'm sure they fixed all of that too.

Four days in the hospital....................

So what did you think when there were no posts for almost a week? That we had slowed down. Oh, no, it was Janet spending four days in the hospital around the corner for atrial fib. That may have been the most interesting part of the entire trip. I was the only white patient in there. It was quite a cross cultural experience. My roommate must've had a stroke about a month ago because I gathered she only started talking last week and when the drs. questioned her, she didn't know her name. However, as the days went by, I actually think she was faking parts of it. The hospital was filthy and the aides talked on their cell phones all hrs. of the day and night. Finally, on the second night of complete bedlam out in the corridor, I got out of bed, dragging my heparin IV with me, and demanded to see the head nurse. I pointed out that our room and bathroom were filthy and showed her the proof. She apologized and a half an hour later a young black kid arrived with a squirt bottle and a Swiffer and swiffed around a while and then left. From then on, every time I saw a dr. I said "this place is filthy" and they all said: we know. So now I'm out and hopefully unscathed. There are no pictures.