Tuesday

Work was, work. I am getting increasingly worried about the project for various reasons, including chaotic project management, changing course before the project has well and truly begun, and a reluctance to acknowledge that more good planning needs to go into the project. All the people involved are real technical whizzes, but, well, the status meeting yesterday was probably the most chaotic and unfocussed meeting I’ve ever been in.

The receptionist was especially good in getting me a desk for the entire week. When I went downstairs for lunch, I noted a chocolatier in the basement. So I bought her a box of chocolates in appreciation. She was delighted, and I felt good in showing my appreciation. More about this later though.

I went back to my hotel room after work, changed, and went up to Morningside Heights to visit John and then go to dinner with him and another friend, Jerry. John used to live downstairs from me when I lived in the Bronx. He is a priest, recently retired from the Archdiocese of New York and enjoying his retirement. I brought him a gift: a pamphlet that he’d asked me to get for him, and we met his cat, a lovely white cat with black patches on her back and ears. As is appropriate in Manhattan, we had a Manhattan each, and then took the subway up to 231st St. to meet Jerry and have dinner at the Piper’s Kilt, a restaurant that we used to frequent in the “old days”. Jerry was outside, smoking before going into the restaurant/pub/bar.

Jerry is also a priest, and my oldest friend–he was a college classmate at Columbia. He’s a few months older than I am, but I’m finding increasingly that as much of an old fart that I am, he is fartier. He has few close friends, I think, is pretty solitary, doesn’t read the newspapers and is ignorant about all sorts of news things that one would expect him to be interested in.

We got burgers and onion rings, and a beer apiece. John and I chatted about the “old days” in the neighbourhood, as one does. Jerry contributed, but in an old-farty kind of sour way. When I related my giving of chocolates to the receptionist, he said that no one does that any more for fear of being accused of being sexist or “coming-on to” the employee. Is that true in the US? If so, what tosh! The music was too loud, and I think he is getting deaf a bit, as he had difficulty hearing what John and I were saying, even though I was sitting next to him.

As I always do, I invited Jerry to stay with us in London if he wanted to travel. He said, “I have sleep apnea and sleep with a machine…I don’t travel much any more. Good for celibacy though.” Oh my.

John and I went on to a crazy bar in Inwood where the band was beginning to play–more noise. I had an Irish ale called Smethwick’s. It was quite good. We walked to Dyckman Street and took the number 1 train home. Whew!

HWMBO is on the plane to Singapore even as we speak. I miss him even more than I have already, because he won’t be home when I get back on Saturday. I am sad. I can’t wait until he comes back in February.

2 Responses to “Tuesday”

  1. rsc says:

    Nostalgia time. I lived in Inwood until 1955, and Riverdale thereafter; 231st St. was “my” stop from then until I graduated high school in 1964. The bars and restaurants of those vicinities, however, are something I know nothing about.

  2. mango_king says:

    Lately I have been making a concerted effort to be lee of an old fart – but it ain’t easy!!!