Into the Wrong Place

Heading into the city today and we’ll be heading in early as the first meeting is for 11:00AM and it’s a two hour ride in and that means we were scurrying around at 7:30AM getting ready for the ride over to the station. Going to the city no longer seemed like such a nifty idea this morning.  Outside it was pouring.  “Hey, do you guys have some umbrellas we can borrow?”

The ride down uneventful.  I wasn’t in a “quiet car” but I couldn’t quite get it in myself to converse aloud on the call I had that was schedule for this time.  I used the text window and typed my suggestions.  It just didn’t seem right to yap aloud, even though I had the whole three seater to myself.   

My younger daughter and my wife were heading down town to the World Trade Center.  I was heading up the upper west side.  My wife suggested we head to these places together.  I tried to explain why this was not advisable in using the comparison of Beijing geography.  Soon, I had them off in the cab and I was in mine, with a guy who was yelling with a chum in a language I couldn’t quite place.  Crosstown traffic was brutal. 

Later my phone died.  I hate my phone.  I must buy a new phone.  I was going to on my birthday.  I’ve been fifty-two for four months now.  Perhaps next year.  It dies.  It dies all the time.  It goes to 31% and dies.  It dies when you desperately need it like I did this afternoon when I plodded ahead to where I thought I was supposed to meet someone and went into the wrong place instead and charged for while until it decided to auto update the software and by the time I was back on, the meeting , two blocks away at the correct place was already thirty minutes passed the starting time.  And I’d missed it. 

But I was in a hot restaurant.  So so my sisiter confirmed.  “ABC Kitchen. Hot.  Get a table there.”  I was at the bar.  No one was there.  But they wouldn’t give me anything.  “Only when your party completely arrives."  So I brutally defended the three bar stools I had as the population went from one to three hundred over a twenty three minute period from 4:55PM to 5:17PM.  And I think it was worth it because even though my wife was tired and my daughter was only so interested at first, they became enthralled, watching the busy bartenders and the place filled out to maximum capacity.    

Wednesday 7/25/18