I need you more than whoa

So Lady Gaga really needs to enunciate more clearly. Listening to Artpop playing loudish on the car radio, with the occasional interruption from the maps app telling me how to get home from wherever, I really couldn’t tell what it was.

More than gold? More than goal? (World Cup reference!) More than dope? More than Dole? (mmm tasty canned pineapple rings!) More than whoa? More than low?

Apparently it is “More than dope“.

Anyway! Great fun yesterday, which was M’s b’day. We decided, daringly, to go into The Big City rather than just to some Mall or other familiar space. Brunch on the Upper West Side, at a sidewalk café even!

Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your taxi.
(photo: Little Daughter)

And little stores, some yarn-related and some not, and the wilds of Central Park, and the Guggenheim Museum.

(The Italian Futurists seem to have been mostly sort of wannabe-Fascist assholes; who knew? The work itself was probably daring and transgressive at the time; today it would be sort of meh.)

And we rested (and recharged my phone; the one thing I don’t like about the Nexus 5 is how battery-poor it is) at work, and then went and met the little daughter (yay!) at this amazing little tea-and-pastries-and-macarons (which I now know have basically nothing whatsoever to do with macaroons) place in Soho, and walked through a buzzing-with-energy Soho evening to the subway and came home.

Whew!

Oh, and there is the interesting Case of The Two Very Similar CDs, but that will have to wait for another time and/or possible world…

Expedition

So for the little daughter’s birthday we went into New York City (again! just a few days after last time! probably some sort of record for us!) on the train, and took the New York City Subways down to SoHo (the area South of Houston Street, whence the name), and idled patiently about while said daughter indulged her unaccountable taste for clothes shopping (even though, as I pointed out, she already has clothes).

Whilst idling about, the little boy and I went to the Opera Gallery New York which had some fun stuff to look at (I do not remember seeing the comfortable-looking sofas in that one picture on the web site, or we would probably have sat in them; unless they were part of the art). And then later M and the little boy and I all went over to the Evolution Store, which also had fun stuff to look at, much of it consisting of the remains of dead things.

After all that when we were hungry, we wandered around Little Italy a bit looking for a restaurant, and the little daughter’s telephone told her about one called “Peasant” that was nearby, so we went there.

It was very good!

They did not have the Razor Clams (which sound dangerous anyway). I had the Risotto with Veal Sauce; or at least I think it was risotto. For some reason I always forget what risotto is, and I may have it confused with something else. Sort of like arugula and that other thing. But anyway, it was very good! And the waitress was absolutely adorable (maybe about the little daughter’s age? I am a terrible judge of such things) and discussed in depth the terroir of the available by-the-glass wines, and the composition of the various sauces, and so on, at the slightest prompting.

M and I had a nice light red; the little daughter had a somewhat heavier Primitivo. Since it was her 21st birthday, we all noted that this was her first taste of alcohol, and then laughed uproariously (since she’s been in college for three years and all). We skipped dessert at Peasant, and stopped at Zero’s Grand Central (we’d checked on the way in and determined that they’d be open until 2am, which was far later than we needed them), and picked up a small red velvet cake (mmmmm) and a little fruit tart, and when we got home, happy but exhausted, we used our last dregs of energy to sing Happy Birthday and have cake and take pictures of candles being blown out and all.

I am not posting any pictures for some reason, but M has posted a number of historical little daughter pictures in her lovely and much less ironic-sounding post about the birthday.

A great time was had by all, and we are very proud and extremely astonished by this grownup that we have somehow produced. It will be very restful now that she will be taking care of all of her own affairs, although we hope she will allow us to give her little bits of advice and aid now and then.

hee hee.