Xiaoniu 小妞

As I mentioned before Sue was scheduled to attend some Business Objects training in New York last week. For us that meant Emelia and I would be on our own for five days. Fortunately, I was able to take a few days off and go visit her and take advantage of a the “free” room. I was actually planning on taking Emelia with me, but after I thought about it further I think it would have been very difficult on me and on Emelia, although, I think she would have had some fun. In the end Emelia ended up staying for a few nights with Amy and Mike.

We went downstate the weekend before in order to bring Sue to the train station on Sunday. After that we were on our own. We had dinner and made our way home. For pretty much the entire week Emelia was way off schedule. I planned to put her in her crib on Sunday night, but she already knew things were not the same and was not having any of it. She really wanted Sue, but she wasn’t there. That started thing; she ended up sleeping with me. She did very well and was a good girl, which is not common for her when she’s with me. 

Monday went better than I hoped, but it was still crazy busy. With two parents it’s busy, but with only one all the burden was on me. Fortunately, I had everything ready Sunday night and was able to get to work on time. Tuesday was slightly worse since we woke up 40 minutes late, but we made it through alright. RIght after work I made my way downstate again. I made it in time to go to the train station and be in the city by 8. 

Sue was staying in the Hilton (55th and 6th Ave.) and I wasn’t too far away (Grand Central, 42nd street and Park Ave.) so I decided to hoof it up to the hotel. I was glad I did. The night air was warm, the streets were fullof people and I needed to acclimate myself to the city; I haven’t been there for a significant trip in years.

That night Sue bought some great food from Joe’s Shanghai Restaurant. We had some great soup dumplings: pork and pork with crab. Excellent. With those we also has Mapo Doufu and a dish that I don’t know the name of. The Mapo Doufu was great, but not too spicy. It was made correctly, unlike what P.F. Chang makes (they use fried tofu and the sauce isn’t right). The second dish would have gone great with some rice soup (congee); it was preserved snow cabbage with little bit of pork and dofu sheets. It was all great, but there was far too much of it. We ate way more than normal and couldn’t finish it all. We hate to waste food, but we over bought and the room lacked a fridge and microwave.

Wednesday I walked up through central park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I haven’t been there in years and wanted to finish off where I started. I spent a good three hours there and saw plenty of new pieces. The Giorgio Morandi display they had was a bit of a let down. Plenty of folks were walking around admiring and making comments about how great the works were, but I just didn’t see it. The pieces were still lifes and each was just like the last. One painting was of three bottles and cup. The next one was the exact same, except the cup was moved to the right. Oh well.

For dinner on Wednesday we made our way out to Flushing, Queens. We ended up finding a much faster way of getting out there than our usual route, but we still just made it in time to get in out of the rain and eat dinner. We had some great food at a small place that we always eat at when we go to Flushing. We had some kind of fish, a spicy beef dish, somthing else that was good and finished off with a pork and preserved vegetable soup. Hopped back on the train and made our way back to the room.

Thursday I made my way downtown. Having paid a donation to visit the met the day before and paid a hefty price to eat at the Met’s “cateteria” I was looking forward to a day where my only expense would be the train ride down. I ended up walking around Wall Street and made my way over to the South Street Seaport to see what they had to look at: nothing, but a couple of boats. Afterwards I made my way back to midtown and checked out all the expensive things at the Sony store that I can’t afford. Sue and I had a nice lunch from a local deli. I can’t even remember what I did that afternoon. 

Thursday night we made our way to Chinatown for a little shopping and to eat some more Chinese food. I was hoping to hit up a hot pot restaurant, but the one we used to go to closed. So, we ended up at Big Wing Wong for some wonton/noodle soup and veggies with oyster sauce. A basic, but tastey dinner.

Friday I made my way back down to Chinatown to finish up some shopping before making our way back upstate. I stocked up one fresh veggies, excellent beef jerky from the New Beef King, a newspaper and some congee soup (with a big crueller) from the Big Wing Wong. Sue and I met up for lunch a the Sony public place before making our trip down to Grand Central.

I don’t know if it was good or bad luck that when we made our way into the closest entrace to the terminal that the TV showing departures said it was 12:40 and that the train was leaving at 12:45. We found the track numer and literally ran through the place trying to find the track. I was loaded up with bags of veggies and a very heavy suitcase. Sue was packing a big baby belly and quite a few bags herself. We made it just in time to board the train. We actually walked on the train after the conductor and the train just then started to move out. Talk about making it in the nick of time.

I should mention that we were not in the main terminal. We took an entrace just up from the terminal on Park Avenue. We ended up boarding on the end of the train, on the complete opposite end from where the terminal was. I had no idea that that could be done, but it was our luck. The bad part of the trip was that we got stuck near Peekskill “in order to let south bound trains go by before we could proceed northbound”. After three trains and about 40 minutes of waiting we arrives in P-town late. Since it was the middle of the afternoon we took a taxi back to Sue’s parent’s place.

Emelia was happy to see us when she arrived and we were glad to see her again. I was alright with being away from her until I found out that she was whiny Thursday night. I started to regret the trip. In the end it all worked out and I got to get my New York fix on. It’s about a week later and we’re still just catching up and getting back on schedule.