in your world, you shall know me by another name...

You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men?

For the first time since...1996, I believe, I took a day-trip to New York City and had a near-disastrous time.

Now, granted (for those of you who are familiar with the original "Disaster: New York City" Trip), it wasn't anywhere near as disastrous as that winter when Alex, Andy, and I piled into my auntie's car (without her permission) and headed down to see Adam. I ended up ripping the engine out of the car on a wonderful pothole (from which I could've sworn I saw liquid hot "magma" bubbling up), getting grounded for life (a term I am still serving), and crashing on Mark, Jordan, and Allie's couch. For a week. 800 dollars later, and having my family come down to "rescue" me from the City EN MASSE,  I say, F my rotten luck...!

No, no. This was far less bad-off from that. It was even less disastrous than the now-infamous "Three Hundred Dollar Weekend", which, though it occurred in New York City, was actually slated to be a road trip back to Syracuse--and therefore, can only be considered Divine Intervention, not rotten luck.

After much digression, our story begins as such. On Wednesday, as per our usual wont, Tammy and I sojourned to the Bull N Bear Pub, joining our chums Sarah and Mike, Bill, Dave, and Jim Lokay for Karaoke night. Unusual thing, Lacey was there, too! Yay! During my sterling rendition of Living On A Prayer by Bon Jovi, the owner of the bar came in at Mike's behest, and booked the band on the spot. We are currently in negotiations for the dates, but it looks like August 5th is our Downtown Debut!! Beers all around, three cheers for me.

All this was a cap on a brilliant day. I had a marvellous interview with Sunny 102, and it looks like I may get and take that job within a week. We hung out for a little dinner and a couple beers with some of the News 10 Now gang, including Kevin and Tasha, who are expecting their first as well...And Troy, too. The reason for this was to comisserate the splitting up of our News 10 family, which we were reminded of by a very funny video involving, in some way, shape, or form, all of the employees. It was great to watch it...but in the end, it made us all sad. Ron got up and made a speech, and for the second time in my career (of 15 years now!), the General Manager of a station I worked for got choked up and emotional. (The first time was the "Death of The Z", as Ryan Raffensberger vailiantly attempted to be strong as he announced to the rest of the Z89 staff that we'd gone bankrupt, and would face some very big challenges in the years to come unless something radical was done. Most of you reading this already KNOW where that went....)

I digress again. Summation: Wednesday was a very good day. And at some point during that day, Tammy and I decided to go see a show in New York City...it would be her first. On Thursday, we woke up very late, and I called to reserve the tickets. Front row orchestra for Rent. 8pm. We hit the road at 2:30pm, and I called Meredith at about 4:30 to see if she wanted to meet us for dinner. This would be the phone call that did us all in...She suggested somewhere in Hoboken. Terrific! I haven't been there in some...4 years? Suddenly, it was like we hit rush hour traffic heading Outbound from New York...but we were heading INbound to Hoboken!! I was getting mad. at 6:30, we were on US1&9, at a dead standstill. Tammy said we won't be able to make dinner and the show....I got pissed off at her because, she's a girl, and for some reason, girls can't get it into their heads that I don't like to be talked to when I am on the phone, which I was at the time trying to find out where Mer was and where she might want to eat.

We landed along Washington Street--home to the infamous Bahama Mama, where Chaz and I witnessed our first Bar Fight on Charles's first trip to the City--and drove around looking for a place to park for 15 minutes. Finally, we thought about pizza, but in New York, and New Jersey, all pizza places serve sandwiches and calzones and other good stuff. Sulky Tammy, already mad at me for being mad at her and not listening to her, starts yapping at me again about how she can't eat pizza because of her stomach--but I was still on the phone and got MORE irritated by her continuous jabbering at me while I was on the phone; besides, I was shooting out ideas, not deciding on a place. I just was getting into a time crunch and wanted to meet up with Mer and didn't necessarily even WANT to eat. Oh, did I mention Tammy is pregnant, and I'm an ass?

Since we happened to be right on the corner where there was a pizza shop, we sat in there and waited for Mer to park. Tammy felt better seeing other food in there, besides pizza, so she ordered and went to the bathroom.

Sadly, Mer didn't get there until ten after 7...which ended up really sucking, because she drove all the way in from South Jersey to spend literally 10 minutes with us. She pointed out a parking garage, because we had since abandoned our plan to drive right up to the theater; the Holland Tunnel was ridiculously backed up for NO reason I could see. Well...it was now 7:25pm. We were supposed to be in New York at the THEATER in 20 minutes. As I pulled into the garage Mer told us about, I noticed a sign that said: THIS GARAGE CLOSES AT 10PM.

Oh, crap.

Fortunately, there was a spot literally across the street, and that was across the street from the PATH station. We parked, locked the doors, pulled her wheelchair out, put her in it, and RAN. The train didn't leave Hoboken until 7:50. There was no way we were going to get there in time. I got really irritated, mostly at myself, because I should've listened to my wife. I should've known better. I lived there for 2 years--more than enough time to know that this will always happen. Tammy started getting angry with my irritation, and said something about not seeing a show half way through (as is customary if you are late to a show, you usually have to wait for intermission to sit, unless they can seat you before).  I was plenty angry with that, because I wasn't going to waste all that money (no refunds!), but I said, we'll be ok. We got to 33rd Street just after 8, took the elevator up to Herald Square, cut down to 8th Avenue, and hauled ass to the Nederlander, making it in 10 minutes. We walked 8 blocks. Well, I walked, she was in her chair. :o) There were so many people, though, as usual. I never noticed them before, because I could just assimilate. Not so easy to do with a wheelchair. When we got to the Box Office, the manager was VERY nice, and extremely accomodating...we ended up missing the opening number, but Tammy caught on quick. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and at the end, we got autographs from Roger and Collins. It was very cool.

Disaster averted.