July in New York (Part 1)

Tuesday, 8:00pm. Jackie and I have just dropped the girls off at my parents and we are headed to NYC. I'm going to a musical theatre conference at Lincoln Center and Jackie is going for a good time.

Jackie's nickname for this getaway is "Stitch-Head" because she chose the day before our flight to have a cyst removed from her head- and she's in minor pain.

As we near the airport for our 11:59pm nonstop flight, we both receive calls on our cells informing us that our flight has been postponed and would be leaving at 1:25am.

We check-in, had our bodies fully scanned and probed at security, get a Cinn-A-Bon and proceed to watch CNN replay the Michael Jackson memorial service 5000 times. After reading a newspaper, I try to fall asleep only to have Mariah Carey wake me up every time she sings.

As we wearily board the plane at 1:20am, I try to sleep while listening to my Ipod.

We stumble off the plane at 8:30am at JFK. The weather looks beautiful and we had planned on going directly over to Central Park to try to score tickets to 12th Night with Anne Hathaway and Audra McDonald. That was when our flight was landing at 6:30am- we decide to tell our cab to go there anyway. We hit Central Park West at 9:30am- only to find the line-literally- two miles long. I knew people started lining up at 5:00am for 2 free tickets (that aren't distributed until 1:00pm) so, after following the line a bit, we hit the sidewalk for our hotel.

At this point, Jackie is lugging our suitcase behind her and we walked from 92nd street to 60th. Jackie refused to use the subway "for my penance" (whatever that means)- although the plus was walking along Central Park West I got to meet Sutton Foster who was walking with her dog. She was very polite. We arrive at the Empire Hotel across from Lincoln Center and quickly realize that we are not dressed like the rest of the guests (and staff for that matter). This hotel was beautiful- and- having not changed our clothes from our flight plus having just walked over 30 blocks we were not looking our best.

I thought that we would just check our luggage because it was only 10:30 and check in wasn't until 2:00pm. Luckily, the guy had a king room available (the rack rate for this room was $700 a night- I paid $125 off Priceline) and up we went to crash.

The first thing I noticed about the room was that the shower was from the future. There was no shower curtain- or glass. It was open to the whole bathroom with a slatted, wooden floor (with the drain underneath). There was an overhead rain shower head- and a hand held water nozzle. I carefully disrobed in the room (the bathroom was too small to take off your clothes in), carefully turned on the water- and it blasted out of the nozzle onto the ceiling- arcing over the sink and pooling around the toilet. I could not for the life of me find the switch to turn on the overhead shower head- so I held the nozzle (with water blasting my head off) with one hand while I tried, vainly, to open the shampoo with the other hand (I ended up using my teeth). After the "shower", I went out to find Jackie asleep so I woke her in fury at the shower. I called maintenance and requested them to fix our shower- and fix the toilet that was leaking too (I couldn't figure out how so much water got around the toilet when I was far away in the shower- with no curtain, glass or door on it. I also asked for an ironing board. When the nice housekeeper arrived, I told her about our broken shower head- and she promptly hopped in the shower and turned it on correctly. I couldn't see the switch under the knob. I quickly mopped up the water around the toilet while she wasn't looking.

After that- we stumbled out of the hotel to do lunch and get our tickets for 2 shows that day. Our groggy adventure had begun.