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Miracle baby came to meet me and my colleagues and we ended up at the Brasserie thanks to someone’s tip that restaurants around New York City were having a special prix fix menu. All of the ramped up energy I had from not sleeping caught up with me by the end of the meal though and I felt like crawling home to my hotel. But my niece and I rallied for one more drink if for anything to say we did (or at least to hear my niece say, “It’s Tuesday” in response to the lively standing room only crowd in the bar and then I sprinted up to my room to crawl under the covers and finally to sleep, perchance to dream. I woke to the sound of fire trucks early in the morning and just rolled over and said, that’s enough, never again Renaissance Hotel! At least the fire alarm hadn’t gone off, only the lights and sirens this time.

Later, I thought about my 22 year old niece beginning her adult life in New York – how wonderful is that? But I must admit, at almost 52, my thoughts are home on the bayou, to quiet nights and lazy walks along the bayou. New York has it all – if that is what you want – sometimes you want the opposite of all, you want just enough.

We walked around Union Square today to take our meeting outdoors. It was snowing heavily but had just lightened up to a nice snow – a mild snow – and it was actually quite beautiful as we walked through Union Square passed the Ghandi statue and over to the Di Fiore Marquet Cafe, which looked like it could have been in New Orleans or France. Last night I went to bed with too much on my mind and then after no sleep I thought this day would be a wash out but it went quite well considering all the obstacles to its success. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

A guy walking by offered to take our photo and someone said, “Who says New Yorkers aren’t friendly?” Indeed.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing my niece while here in New York now that she has moved to the big apple – youth, I have a touch of envy and yet couldn’t imagine moving to New York at this point in my life. But the best thing is to looking forward to meeting someone who honestly appreciates you and you them.

January 25, 2011

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   You can come out now. It’s safe. This means that whatever you’ve been trying to forget about — in vain, judging by the quality of your sleep — will finally become no more than a distant memory. For now, do yourself a favor. Let go of the anger and resentment you’ve been feeling, once and for all. And what finer way to do that than by taking yourself out for a nice long ride — to visit someone who actually appreciates you?

I usually stay at a Kimpton Hotel, or at least I have been for the last decade when I travel to the east and west coast, but then I recently changed to the Bowery Hotel in NY and it was nice discovering a new area and it made it seems as if all those years midtown near Times Square had kept me from really exploring the real side of New York. This time we were all put up at the Renaissance Hotel (a Marriott brand) on Park Avenue. At dinner, a colleague said that last time she was there the fire alarm went off at 3:30am and we all laughed knowing how much we all need our sleep when we are on business travel.

At 3:30 this morning like clock work I was thrown out of the bed by the blaring fire alarm and a voice over from the security of the hotel saying they were investigating a fire, next thing fire trucks arrived with red lights the only think visible in the shadows of the night through the curtain. As I lay there waiting to see if we were going to have to plunge to our death a la Rault Center or World Trade Center, the fire trucks left. I crawled back in bed and my heart was beating like a Russian racehorse and then just when I was calming down the alarm went off again this time with the security saying, “It’s okay, there is no fire, it was a busted water pipe due to the weather, but all the elevators are locked.”

To them this must have meant we were all okay, but for me to know that in a room where the windows don’t open and the elevators now locked, I lay in bed thinking about everything from the guy whose leg was split open (a story told at dinner) to that image of the pregnant woman jumping out of the Rault Center in New Orleans – a hotel that I later went to work for to try to repair its image.

In the city that never sleeps, neither do I.

They say that if you are always preparing for the worse, you spend a lot of time stressing about what might not happen. And I must say I was prepared for New York to be colder than cold and actually it is cold. Like in if it is in the teens here it is probably equal to 40 degrees in humid New Orleans. So while I came packing like a Russian peasant (all the clothes I could pack) I didn’t need them as much as I thought I would.

In this short and simple Aesop’s fable, a scorpion, who couldn’t swim, asked a frog to carry him across the river on her back. The frog hesitated, saying, “I’m afraid you will attack me.” But the scorpion pointed out that it wouldn’t be in his interest to do that, because, if the frog died in the water, he would drown. So she consented.

As they were half way across the water, the scorpion suddenly whipped up his tail and stung the frog hard. As the poison spread through the frog and she began to sink, she whispered, “Why? Why did you do that, when now we must both die?”

“Because,” the scorpion replied sadly, “it’s in my nature to sting. I’m sorry.” As he spoke, they both disappeared beneath the water. The moral of the fable is that we can’t overcome our nature, even if it works against our interest.

Tonight President Obama addresses the nation and let’s hope tops on his list is a serious proposal to address gun control. The thought that a mentally deranged person who got kicked out of a community college (of all places) because he was unstable was able to buy not just a gun, but a semi automatic gun that could hold a clip carrying 32 bullets it pure and utter nonsense. Absurd. Goes down in the ranks of the stupidest thing I possibly have ever heard in my life.

Do something about it: sign this petition.

I don’t have the type of clothes that New Yorkers wear so I’m taking just about everything I can put in the suitcase. Sigh. Big Frozen Apple here I come. I got an email from New York saying “get ready for COLD” – cold? I’m cold here at 50 degrees.

Jack LaLanne died at 96 years of age yesterday – I grew up watching my mom exercise to his morning program. Rest in peace Jack. He said about exercise:

“It’s a lifestyle, it’s something you do the rest of your life,” LaLanne said. “How long are you going to keep breathing? How long do you keep eating? You just do it.”

There were a lot of things we could have done today such as go see the production of Goodnight Moon at the Jefferson Theater in Westwego, but instead we chose to walk to the park and play on the swings, catch a football game in the big lawn, eat a banana nut muffin in the cafe and then go to the sculpture garden that I forget is free – for godsakes – and it was wonderful. It’s beautiful outside and I’m enjoying every inch of it, as a matter of fact getting ready to prune my roses, because tomorrow I’m headed to no man’s land – New York – where it will be 7 degrees tonight, which to me is not even a temperature, 7 degrees – what sort of nonsense is that? I can’t even begin to figure out packing as I don’t have clothes for 7 degrees nor do I want to.