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, then made me go and see the tree at Rockerfeller Center.
Which 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 ire2 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 Broooklyn 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" 4.
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↑
- 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 weedkiller3 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↑
