Participatory Halloween Meme

> In honour of All Hallow's Eve, I'm inviting trick-or-treaters to my 'door.' Comment
> "trick-or-treat" to this post and...well, you know the drill. Treats can be anything that
> strikes my fancy (pics of fave actors or pairings, one sentence fics, graphics, a few words why
> I'm glad to have you on my flist, etc. etc.). The more "houses" to visit the more fun it'll be,
> so go ahead, open your journal and help spread the fun!

Not limited to Oct 31st, so if it's already passed where you are, or if you don't see this until it does, feel free to comment anyway!

Adventures in theater. And weather. And other people.

So, I've got an unusually good answer to the question "how was your weekend?"

As a birthday present for me, breadandroses got us tickets to see Daniel Radcliffe in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying on Broadway. The plan for the weekend was that we would leave straight from work on Friday, go up her parents in NJ for the night, go into the city on Saturday for lunch and the matinee, then meet her parents for dinner, then come home on Sunday.

The first hitch was that, when I was waiting for B&R a bit west of 30th Street Station, EIGHT police cars, a paddy wagon, and an ambulance passed me, and once she picked me up we found we couldn't go east past the station because all the police cars were blocking it off. (Subsequent research showed that some guy had snatched a purse at 22nd and Market, leapt into a car and led police on a very brief chase before crashing into a barrier at 30th St, and then stabbed himself in the abdomen. For those of you who don't know Philadelphia, let me explain that 22nd St and 30th St are even closer together than you might think because at that latitude 24th-29th Streets don't exist. Though there is a river.)

Once we got out of the city, though, we made good time and got to her folks' before her parents entirely expired of hunger.

The next morning, we awoke to snow. Heavy, messy, wet snow that instantly became slush on the ground. I had had grand plans of wearing a sixties-ish raspberry-colored dress but the weather made me shelve that plan in favor of gray tweed slacks, a black t-shirt, and a red cardigan. Which, as it happens, was just as well. [/foreshadowing.]

We caught a train into the city and had a lovely lunch of bi-bim-bap during which we dried off a bit before our next foray out into the slush and up to the theater.

( HOW TO describe the performance )

In the lobby we battled our way upstream to the bar to get the Broadway Cares cd, then pressed back out into the slushy early evening. The sidewalks were a bit treacherous and the wind was keen but there was less precipitation so we were only seriously damp from the knees down after walking down to Penn Station. We picked apart the show over some tea in a Starbucks and then were on our way to the NJTransit boarding area when PapaRoses called to tell us ALL THE TRAINS ARE CANCELLED.

"What?" we said.

"ALL THE TRAINS ARE CANCELED!"

We ran down to the nearest NJTransit screen and saw, indeed, that all the trains to their town were, indeed, canceled.

"Well, could you pick us up from the Trenton line?" B&R asked.

"Mm, well, the problem is, there are a lot of branches down on the roads. And there's a power line down on the car."

"WHAT?"

"Power line. On the car. We don't think it's live, but..."

"NO DO NOT TOUCH THE POWER LINE. We'll call some folks in the city and find a place to crash."

B&R and I looked at each other for a moment, and then she whipped the phone out again and called goat_girl. Who said she would be very happy to have us snowbound at her place in Brooklyn but she was just about to go into a theater for a show and would not be out until ten-ish; would we be okay for four hours? "Oh, yes, absolutely, and the trains might be back by then!" breadandroses said.

Then I had a little bit of an AAAAH!! because I was in Penn Station with NO KNITTING and NO READING MATERIAL and AAAAHH. But only a little bit.

( the next few hours )

At ten, goat_girl called and suggested we come meet her outside the theater she was at and we could take a cab back to Brooklyn. So we ventured out again into the slush and the wind and trekked eight blocks uptown to her theater. I was by this time not merely glad but EXCEEDINGLY glad I was wearing tweed trousers and sneakers rather than a dress, tights, and mary janes. We found goat_girl and she whisked us home to Brooklyn, where she supplied us with kitties to pet, an air mattress to sleep on, books to read, and PAJAMAS.

We slept like the weary wanderers we were, and in the morning goat_girl made us eggs and biscuits and wise counsel before we showered and dressed and set off into the beautiful cold sunny morning... well, noontime... to take the PATH to New Jersey.

We had to switch from the subway to the PATH in Greenwich Village, which is not a direct connection, and I took the opportunity to go to a specialty peanut butter sandwich shop that I have been interested in for going on two years. I got "The Elvis" - grilled pb, honey and banana (with option for bacon, which I passed up.) We also stopped in at a tea emporium I had read about, but left empty-handed because I was not impressed with their selection. Between House of Tea and Upton Tea Imports my tea snobbery and standards are... well... high.

The PATH went smoothly though it was unusually crowded... not so much with folks in our situation as with people making their way to Harrison, NJ for a soccer match. But finally, we made it back to the Roses' family residence only about 22 hours later than planned.