Today I
have smiled a lot – mostly at minor mistakes I have made. This morning I decided I better get on with
seeing some of the places on my list. Then I remembered that just about all the
museums and art galleries are closed on Monday . Smile 1. Nevermind, plan B.
Last night people had said that Central Park
is particularly pretty at the moment. That would be good. Firstly I went to breakfast
as part of my research project ( fancy name for justifying eating out) of seeing how many restaurants in my block and only crossing 1
road I can eat at. There are no places in my block where I can have breakfast,
so I had to cross 1 road this morning. I went to this place called Good Enough
to Eat last year. It is described as 'New England
country' with quilts on the walls, pictures of cows and hens and ‘wholesome
home-cooking’ to match. ( As an aside, last night none of the other people
around the table knew what a ‘chook’ was.
They said in NY there are only chickens or hens, never chooks).
Yesterday when I walked past this café, there were about 20 people lined up
waiting for a table. This morning I arrived at 8.25 ( it opened at 8) and got
the last table. By 9 there were people waiting out the door. I had an omelette
filled with smoked salmon and cream cheese. Like last year, I thought – I can
make this. But I would never serve this much to 1 person. Last year I had a cappuccino
for $4 and it wasn’t very good, so this year I had ordinary coffee at
$1.50 and free refills. It seemed to be
one person’s job to walk around filling people’s coffee cups. I won’t go there again. Smile 2.
I decided
to try the buses. The subways are great at getting you quickly around, but you
can see interesting things from buses. I caught one this morning, but only for
a few stops and went into the park. I remembered that last year several times I
was not paying attention and ending up going in the wrong direction because of
the curvy paths. Sure enough, smile
3, I lost my bearing. I wanted to go to
the visitor’s centre to get a good map. I asked someone with a pretzel/nut
stand. He could not understand my English ( I wondered if he understood anyone
else’s). Smile 4. ( Not a mistake, but still smile-worthy) Next
I asked a guy in shorts walking his dog – probably a local. He had no idea.
Smile 5. Next I was walking next to a
grandfather pushing his grandson in a stroller. The little boy was saying
‘Mama’ the old man was responding in Italian, ‘she is not her’ . I said to the
little boy, in Italian, ‘but your grandfather is’. He, the grandfather, did not speak English.
We talked for about 10 minutes in Italian – he lives in Bari
The
wireless connection in this room is dodgy. It is very intermittent on my tablet and there is a cable I can use for the laptop. I will get the owner to look at the wireless ,
but he is away for a few days. He said yesterday that they sometimes have
problems with it. I wanted to buy a webcam so that I could use the visual part
of skype on my laptop. So I went to the
shop I had been recommended and bought one. I took off a layer of clothing
because it had significantly warmed up. At the bus stop, there was a cold wind
whistling around the corner. Smile 8. On
the way back here on the bus I read the sign that said you must exit from the
central door. Oops, I thought. That was what the driver muttered at me as I got
off at the front earlier. Smile 9. On
the way home I stopped at the local library. Susan had given me her card to use. I did not ask if that was
legal because I was fairly sure it was not. Anyway, I found a DVD and took it
and the card to the desk. Apparently the card had expired. The desk lady asked me if I had anything on
me that had my permanent address. ‘No’ said I with a straight face, suppressing
Smile 10. She checked out the DVD for me anyway.
I got back
here , opened the webcam box and remembered that I have no way of reading the
CD with the software. My old laptop has
no CD drive. I tried hard for smile 11 but it was a very grumbling smile.
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