Aug. 10: 2 Broadway Shows Today

"How to Succeed in Business" started at 7 this evening and we just got back to the hotel now; it is one long show. But more about that later.

Bob went to the Bronx Zoo today so I sent the camera along with him. He was impressed with the stained glass at some of the subway stops. He was also impressed with the zoo which had very large areas for its animals. The zebra enclosure was so large that he never did see any zebras! Crystal and Rob, you can see that he didn't get as up-close-and-personal with the giraffes here compared to at Busch Gardens.

While Bob was at the zoo, I went to find tickets for a matinee. Then I went to Macy's (yes, Glenda, I was shopping for you!) Bob and I met up and had lunch at an Irish pub. I included this photo in the hopes that you can read the politically incorrect signs behind Bob.

I got matinee tickets to "Catch Me If You Can." It took awhile to engage me, but by the second act, I was really liking it.

Tonight we went to "How to Succeed in Business." I hate how these twirpy young movie stars think they have the capability to perform on Broadway. That's like a shop student thinking he can do physics. (Gosh, I hope Monty reads my blog.) Back to that twirpy movie star ..... RELAX, Elizabeth and Katie, I was totally JOKING. Daniel was great as was John Larroquette. It was the most humorous of the musicals we have seen and the audience went crazy over the whole production. Well done, Harry ... er ... Daniel.

One last show tomorrow night ("The Book of Mormon") and then it is time to say goodbye to NYC again.

Aug. 9: Pouring Rain

Bob and I made very good use of the subway system today as we spent time on the Upper West Side and Lower East Side. The first thing we did on the Upper West Side was turn left instead of right so we accidentally ended up in Riverside Park. If you look carefully at the photo above, you can catch a glimpse of the Hudson River. A very nice New Yorker set us straight and gave us a hot tip to look for peacocks behind St. John the Divine Cathedral. As we headed to the cathedral, we saw these dog walkers; my favorite dog in the pack was a shaggy thing who is mainly hidden from view to the right of the two standard poodles.

We were on the Upper West Side to see the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, an Episcopal cathedral, which is the largest cathedral in the world and is yet unfinished although its cornerstone was laid in 1892.

This photo that Bob took of me in front of some of the faux doors gives an idea of the scale.

We went behind the cathedral, based on that "hot tip" and found peacocks wandering wherever they wanted. Notice that the white one has particularly good taste as she stayed close to the Mercedes.

From there we made a quick stop at Lincoln Center as I was really hoping I could get one ticket for the Royal Shakespeare Company's "King Lear" tomorrow afternoon. The only ticket available was $250 so I sadly turned away. We then came back to Times Square and caught these men changing a billboard. Now that's a career choice we never mention to WCS students.

From there we went to The City Quilter but I resisted taking a photo since I do everytime and they all look the same. In proximity there was a flag shop so Bob bought a Spanish one which will hang proudly at Weyburn's Rotary meetings for a year as our inbound student is from Spain.

We then went to a Rotary meeting in the restaurant pictured below.

The club is the Rotary Club of Manhattan, Chinatown, and it is totally wonderful. Now I have talked about food so often in this blog that some of you might mistake Bob and me as foodies. We certainly aren't connoisseurs as Ross will attest, but I do have to tell you about this meal. I would have taken photos, but that would have been crass. First of all, there were 17 of us at the meeting including us, a financier from Hong Kong who travels to NYC often and does his makeup meetings with this club, and the guest speaker.

We sat at two tables and each table had about a dozen little bowls with various sauces in them. Each place setting had chopsticks although forks were brought out later. There were eight courses, each consisting of one dish and each served by a waiter from a center dish. These were the courses: egg rolls, barbequed pork ribs, shrimp soup, barbequed duck including the feet, a dish full of squid, octopus and other squishy seafood, pork with pineapple, Chinese greens which were a brilliant emerald, orange chicken, and then oranges with fortune cookies. Rightly so the club is very proud of its meals. They are also proud that they were the first Rotary club to have a female president.

The guest speaker was interesting as he is a Google employee and was there to talk about Google+ and other social media. When we mentioned we had been to "Hair" last night, he said, "oh, my roommate plays Claude in it." That really impressed me as it is probably as close to a celebrity as I will get on this trip.

We had a bit of a chat about Google as I used to teach about it in media studies. I thought I remembered that Google's mission statement is "be nice" but he corrected me as it is actually "don't be evil." Now isn't that practical and so much more sensible than WCS's one that is both meaningless and a run-on sentence!

From there we (Bob and I, not the Google guy and I!) went to the Tenement Museum where we had a tour booked which told of two families living 50 years apart in the tenement. It had been raining a bit when we went in, but when we came out 90 minutes later it was pouring. It was a deluge of 1.5" and it compelled everyone to want to be on the same subway as us. Nothing like being crowded in with a lot of wet people dripping wet umbrellas around you. Bob and I will admit that we were also wet people dripping wet umbrellas on those around us.

By the time we headed over to "Lion King" the rain had stopped.

Even with damp clothes, it was a wonderful day.

Aug. 8: But It's NOT a Dry Heat

We took the subway down to the Lower East side today and had lunch at Katz's Deli which has been around forever.

No, Jocelyn, I didn't order the tongue sandwich and, no, Rob, I didn't order the $11.10 bologna sandwich.

Instead, I ordered the turkey on rye which was entirely too big ... delicious but too big.

Some of you are old enough to remember the movie "When Harry Met Sally." The fake orgasm scene was filmed at Katz's and they have this sign above one of the tables:

Now that isn't interesting or funny by itself, but I found it hilarious because of the woman sitting below the sign. I snuck her photo. Does this make you grin at least a little bit?

We then caught a subway to Coney Island. I was thankful for the ocean breezes as it is very hot and very humid here. I overheard someone saying that he found the heat worse here than in Texas. Bob and I had gone to Coney Island when we were here in November and the photo below is a memory of it.

Bob suspected Coney would be busier in summer. Bob is usually correct and so below you can see how busy Coney Island is on a Monday in August. It was another great place to people watch.

I discovered a Harry Potter exhibit two short blocks from our hotel. It was mainly costumes and props from all movies. There were a few interactive parts to the walk-through as well. It was so well done and I was particularly interested in the costumes ... the fabrics, the lace, the buttons were great to see up close. The kids touring through the exhibit were much more interested in the wands and Dobby. Hagrid's clothes are massive; it's hard to believe they were made for a real human.

Tonight we went to "Hair" for the wonderful price of $37/each and then, as an added benefited, our seats were upgraded. Yahoo!

We have lots of good things planned for tomorrow, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow night to find out what.

Aug. 7: New York CIty!

We got to New York City after safely stowing the van in long-term parking at the Newark airport. For 5 days there it will cost us the same as it cost for one day's parking in Manhattan last time we drove. We're getting smarter as we get older.

We are at our favorite hotel, the Edison, but we don't have the view we had other times. Our window looks out to another wing of the building.

We got matinee tickets to "Sister Act" and evening tickets to "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." Each was so much fun and both had appreciative, warm audiences. We're looking forward to the rest of the shows we have booked.

There should be some amusing things I could say about today for, after all, it was a great day, but the truth is I am tired and my brain has quit for the night. Maybe more tomorr........zzzzzzzzzzz.

Blue Ball and Intercourse

We drove from Ohio to Reading, Pennsylvania today in rain all the way, lots of rain. We stopped in Lancaster County to visit two train museums, both of which were of great interest to Bob. Here he's pointing to the train he had as a kid.

We went through two towns with interesting names. See below.

The two towns are about 8 miles from each other. I love this part of the world. Farms are close together, many of them Amish farms. So many have stands selling vegetables and flowers. There are lots of lovely, old brick homes and my head just swings back and forth trying to see everything. Meanwhile Bob does a little swearing about the narrow, windy roads with horses and buggies and children on bicycles. I just tune him out and continue to enjoy what I am seeing.

We stopped at a Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant. Jocelyn, they had sauerkraut and pork on the menu. Well, I didn't pass that up and had very good memories of Mom while I ate it. Bob and I chuckled at some of the foods that classified as vegetables in this restaurant. You can see that below.

Bob and I are so pleased that we can get two extra days in NYC. We'll be there tomorrow so we will add some extra shows to our schedule. Elizabeth, I checked out "War Horse" on the internet and, indeed, it sounds good. We phoned the Edison and were able to book the two extra nights there ... tomorrow night for $139. $139 to be 30 seconds from Times Square: priceless!

Aug. 5: Quilt Gardens + Ohio State Fair

Bob and I are at this campground east of Columbus, Ohio. We are under tall trees and fireflies are flickering about. That's idyllic but the sounds aren't. Across a little creek from us, the campground is playing a very noisy movie in an outdoor pavillion. Most of you know how hard of hearing I am, and I can hear all of it clearly. Shouldn't a campground sound of babbling brooks and meadowlarks?

This morning we were in Indiana in Amish country. We understand that the Amish don't own phones although they don't see it a sin to use them, just to own them. We saw a young man driving one of the buggies and texting. Either he was Mennonite, not Amish, or he was sinning! It gave us a laugh. It's neat to see that businesses have hitching posts right along with parking spaces for vehicles. Friday must be wash day for the Amish as farm after farm had wash on the line.

I read somewhere that since Amish women cannot express their individuality through their clothing, they do it through their gardening. That seems quite true as the floral beds on the Amish farms are stunning.

I was going to include many more photos from Amish country in this entry, but unfortunately photos are uploading very slowly on this campground connection so I've omitted many.

The county we were in has quilt gardens at various spots where the flowers make a quilt block. Perhaps you can recognize the pattern of this one. One of the problems with them was that they weren't built up into slanted beds and they didn't have viewing stands to get a good view. A few of them had signs that said, "Mother Nature has damaged this bed." It was fun driving to the various locations to see them. There were also quilt blocks painted on sides of buildings and those were listed on the same map so we saw many of them.

The state park this one was in was incredible ... a working flour mill, a fishing pond, and floral beds maintained by the local garden club. The floral beds had a section that was all dahlias from ones that had flowers two inches across to ones that were a foot across. All were stunning.

We stopped at Yoder's Store in Shipshewana which has everything from hardware to groceries to clothing to quilt fabrics. Its brochure says they have 12,000 bolts. I don't think they were all out, but there certainly were thousands. Jocelyn, they had Scrabble fabric! I was so excited.

And then we drove over to Columbus, Ohio for the Ohio State Fair. Had my uploads been faster, I would have included a photo of the sand castle that represented the fair and I would have included a photo of their synchronized tractor show. Yes, folks, they had six old tractors doing synchronized formations and it drew quite a crowd.

They had a junior competition for decorating toilets. Here's the blue ribbon winner.

The fair had a life-sized cow and calf sculpted out of butter. One of the signs listed the sculptors and one was a Bob King.

The sign mentioning Bob King amused me, but another sign horrified me. Read this:

Just how do they recycle it? Do they serve it to their students?

Not only did they have the butter cow and calf, they had a chocolate pig and piglets made from 500 pounds of chocolate. Fairs tend to bring out oddities.

There were some different foods at this fair and we limited ourselves to trying one, the deep fried buckeyes. Buckeyes, for those of you who don't make them at Christmas, are peanut butter and icing sugar centers covered in chocolate. The roast beef sundae sounds weird but we figured if you took the cherry off the top, it would be shepherd's pie in a cup.

There were some beautiful quilts at this fair. A most beautiful and poignant one was one that a woman had made to commemorate her mother who had Alzheimers. Her mother had loved art and loved to paint so the quilt had images of her mother's art plus art she loved.

The fair had so much more. There were civil war re-enactors who even included Abe Lincoln and there were not one but two HO model train
displays. We didn't run out of things to see and do.

Aug. 4: Favorite Things: Fairs, Food, and Quilts

Today we hit the first of the state fairs we are visiting, and what a fair it is! Everyone who lives in houses for blocks around spraypaints lines on their lawns and charges $10 for people to park on them. I kept looking for someone who spray painted lines on their gardens, but that was too extreme for these entrepeneurs.

The price was right for the fair. If you brought two canned goods for the food bank, your admission was $2 instead of $9.

We have been to a lot of fairs including the Stampede and the Sydney Royal Easter Show and we don't think we have seen a bigger, busier fair especially at 10 a.m. on opening day. Colin, Bob looked around and grumpily asked, "where are the show bags?" That's an Aussie idea that should cross the ocean.

Vanessa, the next photo is for you. You know "Ski the Fish," "Slide the Pig"!!

And now on to the most important component of any fair: the food. At the Weyburn fair, elephant ears are about as exotic as the foods get. Here, elephant ears are passe and barely get a blink.

We were cautious eaters selecting the deep-fried cheddar nuggets as, after all, you gotta eat cheese in Wisconsin. Yum! But look at the other foods. Two obliging ladies and their children had bought the deep fried butter/krispy kreme burger/chocolate covered bacon on a stick combo and were happy to let me photograph it.

The quilts at the fair were beyond wonderful. I believe you have to win at a county fair before your quilt can be entered here. The quilts are all hung so that their bottom edge is ten feet from the floor so that no sticky fingers can touch them. I agree to the idea but it made photographing them difficult.

I loved this first one, but someone must have taught a class as there were a few identical ones.

Jan, notice that even prize winners can use yoyos!

And here is the standout of the show! You can see how many ribbons it one and it deserved everyone of them. It was a birthday quilt with stippling everywhere making the images pop out. There were embellishments on top of embellishments. It was definitely the crowd pleaser.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog. We are in Amish country and this northern Indiana area has flower beds designed as quilt blocks.