Yesterday, Mrs Stevie insisted we get up at the crack of breakfast and go into Manhattan for a "fun day".
As part of this mandatory NYC-ing we rode the special "holiday train" on the "F" line subway, which was made up of 1930s-era green cars like we saw in the transit museum when Paul the Australian visited some years ago. Naked light bulbs, ceiling fans, "wicker" chairs etc. it ran from 2nd & Houston St to 96th, then back. A suprising number of passengers were in period drag too. It was all very annoying because I was not in period drag.
We then sampled Ukrainian food from one of two side-by-side Ukrainian restaurants Mrs Stevie was familiar with1. The food was excellent (borsht, perogies).
Mrs Stevie told me the one we were in had the better food, the one we weren't in had the better ambience. I opined that the ambience of both might be improved by interposing a Russian restaurant that constantly encroached on the bin-and-dumpster space, but Mrs Stevie was not in the mood for biting political commentary couched in an epicural metaphor, and used harsh words, and things might have gone very badly for me except that this was when she discovered that she had lost her special metrocard2 and we now had to go to Penn Station in order to have the card disabled and the money refunded.
This did not go well, which I took to be excellent news for me, redirecting her rage from me to the utterly useless MTA Customer Service person who took ten minutes fiddling around to say "I can't do that, you need to call 501".
Mrs Stevie dialled 501 and discovered the number did not exsist.
Internal nuclear blast alert screaming, I suggested3 that she google "MTA Customer Service" while we sat in the LIRR waiting room, which she did.
Navigating past the dense-as-depleted-uranium complaintbot she finally managed to engage a human, who promised all would be well, and Mrs Stevie celebrated by "suggesting" that we go for some more "enjoyment", made possible by the fact she still had her OMNI card4 for the subways.
As we were about to leave I noticed that a man who was sleeping in his chair across from us had dropped his wallet on the floor under his chair. Mrs Stevie went into Public Force For Good mode, used my cane to recover the wallet and shook the man's leg, saying "Sir, you've dropped your wallet".
Rip van Snoozle showed no signs of waking, so Mrs Stevie nominated me to make a more forceful attempt and possibly suffer the consequences, which I did by shaking the man's shoulder and repeating the Good News delivered by Mrs Stevie a moment before.
The man twitched, but showed no signes of waking, so Mrs Stevie placed the wallet, and a card that had fallen from it, into the crook of the sleeping man's arm and we left to the snickers of the two dozen passengers who witnessed the whole thing. "Let's hope it's his wallet I muttered, thus re-re-directing her ire back where it belonged.
Then she made me go and see the tree at Rockerfeller Center.
Which involved a trip on the 'A' train. I tapped my OMNI card and walked through the turnstile, but Mrs Stevie did not follow using hers. I leaned over the passenger-proof railing to enquire as to the delay.
"They've deactivated my OMNI card" she snarled. "I'll bet it was that idiot in the booth."
This should have been an obvious consequence of course. Give any New York low-level official some power and the choice of two sets of documents, that worthy will, by the dint of not paying the slightest attention, action the wrong one 100% of the time. I once had an auto insurance policy canceled by the same careless incompetence. I digeress.
Mrs Stevie went to buy a new OMNI card and load it, and joined me so we could ride the subway to Rockerfeller Center, or nearly.
Actually getting there involved walking through the slough of Christmas-crazed humans on 5th Avenue.
I endured about a half hour of being crushed, trodden on and being tripped up by morons, keeping my spirits up by my usual technique of uttering manly moans of despair and the occasional, completely justified wail of "Why me?".
After 15 minutes of this Mrs Stevie was moved to deliver one of her witty rejoinders, and snarled "Shut up idio..." when someone cut across her by the expediant of trampling over her foot, thus redirecting her coffee-fueled ire5 away from your humble scribe.
Finally we were at the tree, and I staggered over to a low marble wall and sat down. Mrs Stevie was about to remonstrate with me, but i deployed my "Exhausted and sore-wounded husband" face, backing it up with a feeble wave toward the tree and some sobs of utter exhaustion, and with her trademark sigh of exasperation she stomped off to enjoy the Xmas Atmos chez Rockerfeller Center.
That item on her card punched, she demanded we find somewher to sit and drink coffee for a bit, before the evening's ents at The Town House theater began, so we made our way to 43rd St by subway, and settled in at the Brooklyn Diner for some more ambience and nourishment.
Mrs Stevie chose some apple pie and ice-cream backed by two Steamhammer Lattés,™ and I had a strawberry milkshake as I was still full of borsht 'n' perogies.
Then we walked up the street to the Town House, where we experienced The Prairie Home Companion Christmas Show. I found it most enjoyable, except when Mrs Stevie mistook my closing my eyes in order to experience a more "radio-like" atmosphere for common-or-garden sleep and began poking me "to prevent snoring" 7.
And thence we rode back home via LIRR. By some wierd suspension of the Law of Long Trips on Mass Transit a train was just about to leave when we got to Penn Station, so we were not required to spend the usual hour in the waiting room. It was midnight as we alighted onto the platform of Wyandanch station.
I grabbed a quick cuppa and went to bed.
- Veselka↑
- loaded with mucho cash in anticipation of much subway riding↑
- from a safe distance↑
- Replacement for the older Metrocard system↑
- Mrs Stevie drinks far too much coffee. I date this back to the time I almost dropped a tree on her car, shortly before I accidentally killed the lawn with weedkiller6 and after I set fire to her grandfather's dining table while demonstrating my model steam engine. I've pointed out that the tree missed the car by inches, the lawn grew back, mostly, eventually, and the table wasn't new to start with, but these arguments are all water off a duck's back to her↑
- In my defense it came in a package not disimilar to that in which the lawn food was sold↑
- A base clumny. I do not snore. I would have noticed by now if I did↑
