How I Spent My Half Birthday!

9:30am Woke up earlier than planned sans blaring alarm.

10:55am Began walking Luckey across town to 1047 Amsterdam Avenue.

11:41am Arrived at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine with Luckey. Stuffed him into oversized handbag.

12:04pm Jo, Will, Luckey and I went on an architecturally amazing tour of the biggest cathedral in the United States. We went up the north side stairs--the equivalent of 12 flights of stairs: a dark, winding, spiral of stone.
124 feet high and 601 feet long. Pictures to follow.

1:15pm To our sadness the tour ended but not without mad camera snapping by Will and Jo--Luckey and I were happy to be targets!

2:30pm After Jo scored a Hungarian pastry from the Hungarian Pastry Shop across the street, we sat for a while in the garden beside the church and people watched.

2:45pm Will stopped in his apartment to pick up his Talk to Me sign and we headed up to the Columbia campus to sit on portable seats in the hopes that people would talk to us.

3:30pm A rousing game of Who will more people talk to? ended. Jo & I vs. Will & Jason--the girls won of course but the guys had longer, arguably more interesting, conversations. Jo and I hopped the 1 train to Chelsea to check out art.

4:15pm We arrived at the Paula Cooper Gallery on W. 21st Street to view Sophie Calle's exhibit entitled Take Care of Yourself. Her quest for closure from a bad break up led to her asking 107 specific women to interpret/perform the break-up e-mail. I especially liked that the letter was signed X!

4:45pm Failed to hail a cab on 9th Avenue despite our best efforts. Boo!

5:35pm Arrived very late to my own half-birthday party only to be told that the bar I had chosen for BEING dog friendly was in fact NOT. Frazzled dash down the block revealed Hop Devil--a bar previously visited with Indra post dirty laundry reading in late March. Yay!

6:00pm Finally relaxed after sending mass texts to everyone I had invited to ensure they were aware where the had moved so they and their dogs could come through.

11:45pm After many, many Jack & Diets as well as random birthday shots, Luckey and I crawled homeward.

Amazing weather. Great friends. No food all day. Loads of drinking. All of this made the walk from A to Astor feel like a 2 minute endeavor even with a bagful of puppy--