Be a Part of It

I was in New York City last week for a breathless round of wine and pasta meetings. It was my fourth visit there, and I felt like I'd arrived at a new level of familiarity with the city. I walked the streets at breakneck pace, ploughing my way through crowds, hailing taxis left and right, just to show I that I could. In my black trench coat, you'd have taken me for a native New Yorker, right up until I'd come to a crosswalk with a blinking hand, and stop short, like a good Canadian, to the great irritation of the surge of jaywalkers behind me. Sorry about that, New York. I'm just not going to follow you blindly into traffic. How do I know what kind of day you're having?

My schedule left hardly any time at all for sightseeing (or as New Yorkers call it, standing in the goddam way). Or shopping, which was just as well, since I'd converted all my spending money to carbohydrates my first night there. It wasn't until my last day that I realized I'd be without any photographic evidence whatsoever of my trip, and got busy snapping. I give you the highlights:

Central Park

Museum of Modern Art

The Empire State Building

F.A.O. Schwarz

Thanks to my friends at Cool Mom Tech, there is corroborating documentation that it wasn't all a dream. It's also thanks to them and their sponsors that the kids weren't the only ones who got cool souvenirs from my trip. Patrick, Ultra-Dad in my absence, got some very nifty tech gadgets.

Me, I suppose I'll always have these three extra pounds to remind me of a very exciting, whirlwind time.