Update... Sept 13, 2006

Yes it is time for an Update… I really have been so busy, I haven’t been able to get one out. Where has the time gone? That is what I am asking myself. I am sure you are asking “Where have you gone, Martha?” For those of you who call me Martha. If you don’t call me Martha, feel free to insert the appropriate endearment or heckling nickname, I don’t mind.

Well, since you asked I will tell you where I have been, and where I am going. Here goes!

Well, for most of you that know me well, you know that I love New York City. I love to visit, love to shop there, love to eat there… wouldn’t mind being buried there… would they make room in Grant’s tomb? May have to start that little petition soon. Anyway, my friend Angela had never been to NYC… so we decided to do a quick weekend up there. This was I think my fifth trip to the big city, but I hadn’t been there in a while so I was more than due. We both took Friday off of work and headed up to the Big Apple on Thursday night. Ok, so you know I cant go through a 3 hour plane flight and not make a friend. I cannot sit next to someone and not know who they are, so I struck up a conversation with the 60+ year old lady sitting next to me, and Eureka! She is a native New Yorker. Jackpot!!! She told us of some restaurants to go to and some things to see. She was great. She told us how she and a girlfriend graduated from college together in Texas and immediately left for New York, no plan, no ideas of how they were going to make it… just drove up there. I loved this idea. Where was she when I was graduating? This sense of reckless abandoned has never really come over me… well unless you count a few unsightly decisions in college which I wont recount here, but other than that I have never done anything so unplanned. So unscripted. So unbelievably adventurous and stupid at the same time. I think I am one good drunk evening from winding up in New York.

Anyway, we land and get to the hotel. I thought our room was going to be the size of toothpick box… not a matchbox, because those can get too roomy, and I looked at Angela’s suitcase and sighed. It was the biggest suitcase I had ever seen. It was big, it was red… it was Big Red. I had a duffle bag. That is all I had, one duffle bag, one girl, one weekend… we all fit. Angela had brought with her the largest suitcase currently being manufactured. Imelda Marcos called, she wanted her suitcase back. So looking at this suitcase, and thinking of the hotel room that was going to be “Barbie-sized” I was wondering how we were going to fit it in there. But we walked in to our room, at the Radisson on 32nd and Broadway, and it is enormous (by New York standards). It has two full beds in it!! And a whole desk, with a mirror. A bathroom that you could actually walk into with hitting a fixture of some kind. It had a closet with and iron and ironing board! It was a mansion, a mansion on the 14 floor (which was really the 13th floor b/c they didn’t have a 13th floor). I loved it. It was decked out in Maroon too, what a bonus!

So, we head out for dinner… Ruby Foo’s in Times Square… recommended by my new New York friend from the airplane! It is so bright in Times Square at 10pm that Angela actually said she thought it was daylight. Trust me my eyes were hurting…it was bright people, and impossible to get a grasp of. There were advertisement for everything you could imagine and somethings you wouldn’t imagine. You saw posters for plays, ads with P. Diddy, Jessica Simpson promoting her new album, and then when you were starting to see the theme or at least establish one in your head, you saw an ad with a plain looking man promoting the NASDAQ. Interesting. There was no rhyme, there was no reason, there was just space and all of it was up for grabs… place your ad here!!! Anyway Ruby Foo’s is your basic South Pacific stop… if you want Japanese, they have it, Thai, they have that too, Vietnamese… do you see any dogs around? We stuck to a more Japanese menu… got some sushi, some dim sum, and I forced Angela into the Eggplant side dish. This was a side dish made of eggplant but they were stirfried and then drenched with a peanut sauce… I am sure a staple in most asian homes. Now, I am a fan of eggplant parmesan, my mother makes some great eggplant parmesan… but see outside of that dish you don’t hear about eggplant. This vegetable has been type cast and is now only appearing in one dish. But here comes those crazy Japanese, and they plucked it out of obscurity and made a whole dish… starring Eggplant! I had to try it. I had to make Angela try it. Drum roll please… we loved it! It was phenomenal. So, if you find yourself in Times Square… swing by… order the eggplant… tell ‘em Martha sent ya!

Anyway the trip was great. We ended up seeing “The Drowsy Chapparone”, or if you ask Angela it was “The Drowsy Chaffeur”… I am sure that is more of an off-Broadway production. We did the Staten Island Ferry… when I say “did”, I mean rode. We ate in a rotating restaurant 48 floors above the city, while drinking a bottle of champagne, and eating things dipped in one of those chocolate fountains! Yahtzee! We went to the World Trade Center site. We ate in Little Italy where we ended up dining with a wonderful women and her nephew (I make friends fast). We went to St. Patricks. We went to Serendipity. We went into Central Park. All of this in the rain. It rained the entire trip from start to finish. We just grabbed umbrellas and kept going. We looked like drown rats most of the trip. There were times that I just wanted to dry off… but it was New York and you cant let the rain, snow, or taxi cab drivers slow you down. It really was a great trip… I don’t think it could have gotten any better.

The following weekend, Labor Day weekend… was a weekend in Houston. Will have to put that one in the next update. J

I am heading out for Hawaii tomorrow… so Aloha!

Peace, love, and eggplant,
Martha