Weekend Snapshots

We left for NYC on Friday afternoon.  Upon arrival, we checked into our hotel and then walked around the city just window shopping and people watching for a while.  Stopped into Davidoff because my husband needed some cigars. I've been to lots of cigar shops with my husband.  This one had the biggest selection I'd ever seen. In the huge humidor room, the steam was visibly coming through the humidifier, there were boxes upon boxes of cigars from all over, and a cool looking modern bull sculpture (as in Wall St. bull and bear). I took several pictures.   

After buying cigars we headed to the Peninsula Hotel which has a rooftop bar with a great view.  I took many pictures of the city from above - horn-honking yellow taxis, masses of people, buildings, skyline - tilting the camera at several different angles in an artsy-fartsy attempt to capture the essence - - wild and crazy camera angles for a wild and crazy city. My Kir Royale arrived, ruby red on the bottom, glistening drops of moisture clinging to the glass.  I took some closeup shots of it.

An adorable little girl, about 6 years old or so, was there with her family. She was enticed by the view and climbed up on a chair about 20-30 feet away from where her parents were sitting, in order to peer over the wall.  It was a bit scary because she was so small and so high up and she could have fallen - in either direction.  Her mother handled it very well.  She didn't panic, just walked over and calmly put her arms around the girl.  They both quietly looked over the wall together, intertwined, arms hugging the neck of the other, cheek to cheek.  I took a picture of them from behind, surrounded by skyscrapers, blue sky and fluffy clouds. 

We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant, Del Posto's.  The lobster risotto was fair, the filet of sole was wonderful.  The next day we went to see US Open tennis.  I took some pictures of the players, trying to catch them mid-serve, in the air.

Seated a couple of rows ahead of us was a woman in her early 40s who was a Bo Derek clone - an absolutely gorgeous creature. She was dressed like a 24-year old: See-through white lace shirt, white bra beneath showing through, tight bell-bottom jeans and extremely pointy shoes with razor-thin, mile-high heels. She was with a guy who looked like a cross between Richard Belzer and Ric Ocasek, if they'd starved themselves for several months. His thinning hair was arranged in a pageboy hairstyle.

She was all over him, her arm around his back, hand inside his shirt caressing his pale bony shoulder.

At one point, I noticed that she had both of her feet up on the ledge in front of her.  One shoe was on and one shoe was off.  Her exposed foot was squashed into the shape of the shoe like a bound Chinese woman's, and she had a huge, painful looking red bunion. I took a zoomed-in picture of the beaten up foot next to the elegant, sexily shoed foot and thought about the things we women do to look beautiful.  I gave up on painful shoes a few years ago.  No tight Jimmy Choos for me - if your feet aren't comfortable, there's no such thing as a good time, as far as I am concerned. But sometimes, I look at elegantly high-heeled women and feel envy.  So, the picture said a lot about me and her and women and fashion.  Not exactly sure what, but I know it was saying something...      

That evening, we went to dinner at Buddakan. Corn dumplings, scallion pancakes and more. Yum.   Husband thought the air conditioning was turned up too high.  Complained of feeling chilled.  By the time we were in the taxi for our ride back to the hotel, he was shaking uncontrollably and feeling warm to the touch.  We hurried up to our room, I gave him some advil, he jumped into bed and I threw all the covers on him and then threw myself on top in an effort to help warm him up. We had a horrible night's sleep, but he thought he was feeling somewhat better in the morning, and so we proceeded to do what we'd had planned and went to see another day of tennis.  However, he began to feel worse by mid-day and we made the decision to leave earlier than planned.  We took the subway back to the city, got our bags and cabbed to La Guardia in time to make the 5 pm shuttle.

I was worried about husband, sleep deprived, also I had been worrying over daughter starting school the day after Labor Day.  Would she like it?  etc.  Being all frazzled, I left my camera in the taxicab and didn't realize it until we were going through security at the airport. It is, of course, lost forever.  Camera, telephoto lens, wide angle lens, close up lens, density and polarizing filters - all gone. Cigar humidor pics, gone.  NYC pics from above, gone.  Mother/daughter pic, gone.  Tennis player pics, gone.  Bunion pic, gone. 

A picture not taken by me

Husband felt better enough to go back to work yesterday, but is still under the weather with some..er...uh...abdominal difficulties. He has promised me he will call the doctor today and he made me promise him that I would buy a new camera and "get over it."

I see that they've come out with an updated version of the camera I had before with newer and better features.

Daughter says she "doesn't hate" her new school.  Husband's fever is remaining down. I think he's going to be ok. I am going to order a new camera.

I will soon be taking pictures again.

Oh by the way, there were a few other things on the lost camera's memory card which to my chagrin, I realized might end up splashed all over the internet. A few weeks ago, I had some surgery and was on pain medication. Daughter, only too happy to take advantage of my narcotic induced exuberance, snapped a few pics. If you should happen to come across, in your internet wanderings, any pictures of a middle-aged woman in a fuzzy pink bathrobe, wearing a doofy smile and walking like an Egyptian, that would be me. 

Comments

[soccerdad]

The same thing happened to us in Israel in 2003. We had bought a digital camera for the trip and my wife left it in the cab the first time we travelled. Fortunately we found an office depot in the north and found a very good HP camera that lasted a year.

(We also did not lose as much equipment as you did, still I think I can say, I feel your pain.)

[DRaftervoi]

Call the cab company. It's a long shot, but I would not keep goods that were left behind. That's too close to stealing. Once, Terri and I found several hundred dollars of gift certificates in a book at Tower Records. We turned them in to the store manager.

[Shirl]

oh Gail. What a post. Your facility with words brought the pictures to us. And we'll be on the lookout for that woman on the internet!

[Gail]

SoccerDad: The crape myrtles are looking so beautiful, I was going to take some pics and post them. Hope the new camera arrives before the blossoms fall...

Draftervoi: I reported the loss to the NYC taxi commission and called the two police precincts where drivers are supposed to give in lost items. They haven't received any lost cameras.

Shirl: Thank you!!

[DRaftervoi]

Good. If they don't turn up immediately, they're probably lost forever, but at least you gave people the chance to do the right thing. You are a better person for having given them that opportunity. Spiritual enrichment is worth more than a camera.