The NYC Conundrum -- It's great. It stinks.

Couldn't sleep. Taylor turned off the AC and it's hot in here. Screw conservation, I want my air conditioning. So instead, I'm writing to you, dear reader.

The Big Apple----

For this past three day Labor Day Weekend, Taylor and I went to the actual BIG CITY, New York City! We stayed right at Times Square in a type of hotel one can only call "expensive cheap hotel". Neither Taylor nor I have ever touristed in NYC, so it was all new. I mean, I didn't discover anything truly new. We were in Manhattan. It's in the movies, on the news shows, in pictures. It was like visiting a place after having studied about it in school. No wait, it wasn't _like_ that, it WAS that.

We went to the fantastically wonderful play SPAMALOT. If you're a Monty Python fan, you should be feeling jealous right.....about......NOW.

As I mentioned, we didn't discover anything new. I mean, how would you discover something new in a place where about 10 million people have been before you? I could say "I discovered myself" or something cheesy, but it wouldn't be true. That being said, there is one thing for which the texts did not adequately prepare me. This fantastic, vibrant, stimulating city STINKS to HIGH HEAVEN. I mean, HOLY HELL, this place really fills the snoot. It's mostly piss smell, seasoned with dumpster stink and a side of simmering sewage. Penn Station smelled like the barf brigade came through right before we got there. And our cheap ($100/night) hotel room smelled overwhelmingly of urine and lysol. Taylor kept telling me to stop thinking about it. She suggested I try moving the earplugs (cheap, noisy hotel) to my nose. Either way, I wouldn't be able to sleep.

So, besides the stinky factor, we walked for MILES and MILES all over Manhattan and:

• We saw all those places you see on TV, and now Taylor is pointing them out every time they show up on TV: "We were there, oooh, there too. And there!"
  
• Saw a bunch of pigeons
  
• We saw a dead ringer for Taylor's grandmother at South Street Seaport (also saw a few chili dogs...) and stalked her like papparrazzi. That was funny, for us at least. She started looking nervous after the fifth time Taylor ran up next to her and I took a snapshot.
  
• Ate at some great diners.
  
• Saw pigeons.
  
• Got together with my old friend Khiang in China town for dim sum with half of the population of Manhattan all stuffed into one giant room.
  
• Watched some rats running around. They don't look so scary. Not like the dive bomber pigeons.
  
• Rode in a taxi and experienced 0 - 85 in 1/2 a city block. Asked the taxi driver to let us out BEFORE we reached our destination, figuring our odds of survival were better.
  
• Saw skywriting (really cool) but couldn't properly read it because the tall buildings blocked the view.
  
• Saw those green newsstands like Seinfeld has in his show.
  
• Got chewed out by a homeless (i think) woman for not helping her get her cart up over the curb (I thought she wanted to be independent. I didn't know).
• Saw more pigeons
  
• Got attacked by a woman with so many rings that she cut my fingers when she walked by and scraped me with her multi-caret jewels
• Paid $24 to go up the Empire State Building, but Taylor found 5 pennies up there, so really $23.95
• Have I mentioned pigeons?
  
• Learned too many personal details about a guy talking on his cell phone on the train back.

Then we came home. Well, back to DC, which now seems like a small town. And we washed ALL our clothes....in HOT water.....right away.