I'm really not shallow, I just prefer the stuff you can take home

Well, as you've probably surmised from my absence, we've been having a dandy time here in New York City. I've done a lot of shopping, and while EPI has been off doing civilized cultural things like picnicking in Central Park with his daughter and going to the MoMA, YT has been ... um, shopping.

I realize that having spent such a large portion of my time here raiding the shops may make me seem terribly superficial; however I assure you I'm actually very cultured. For as one of my aunts used to say, what are department stores other than museums exhibiting the wares and artifacts of our modern civilization? In other words, the Museum of Natural History or Bloomingdales are essentially the same thing, apart from the fact that one has old stuff behind glass, while the other has stuff that you can examine and try on. [Incidentally, this theory also applies to boutiques, and American Apparel, not to mention my new favorite store, UNIQLO.]

So I currently have a lot of modern artifacts stuffed into shopping bags, made doubly satisfying by the fact that all of them cost about half of what they'd cost at home. So - very practical, too. In fact, I figure that with all the money we've saved buying clothes and stuff here, we've pretty much paid for our ticket already. Something we may wish to note for future reference .

This is not to say that I haven't seen any old stuff, mind ... spent about half a day at The Met and about ten minutes inside the Guggenheim [they're renovating, so hardly any of their galleries were open]. Also, we've gone out for dinner a lot. Last night, for instance, we had a great meal in an Indian place called Leela Lounge ... the food was great and the ambiance also, until around 11pm when they started clearing away all the tables all around us, leaving us stranded in the middle of the dining room like some forlorn island in the middle of an ocean of, um, floor [you can see how cultured I am, I'm even coming up with clever metaphors]. Turns out there was a private party moving in, of which we uwittingly became a part [we still had wine left in the bottle, so they couldn't very well kick us out] and part of the occasion was a book launching. We sort of got talking to the author by accident and had a very enjoyable conversation about writing, publishing, agents, and so on, and felt very cosmopolitan while we were at it.

So anyway, on the whole it's been great. This evening we went to see a musical ... hedged our bets and went for Spring Awakening, which had won the Tony for Best Musical and which was well done as expected, but really nothing to write home about [or blog about, for that matter]. We then took in the spectacle that is Times Square at night, along with about a million other people, and despite the fact that I consider myself a worldly sort of person who's been around a bit, I still stood gaping at the sheer audacity and size of the billboards around that place. Makes you feel so small, somehow. You know? In a humbling sort of way.

As for the weather - HOT today, just the way we Nicelanders like it, at least for a few days before we head back home to the rain and storm, which is what they're having back on the ice cube as we speak. About 15°C [59F] currently.