Random Vacation Notes

I'm reading my ass off on vacation. First, I finished the piece-of-crap true crime book I was reading when we left Davis during our layover in Dallas and just left it sitting there on the seat when our flight started boarding. Maybe someone picked it up and started reading it, but I'm hoping security got nervous about something being abandoned in the airport and decided to blow it up right there where it was abandoned, like I saw done at the Paris airport many years ago. It was that bad. Then I started reading my book club book, which is okay, but then I was handed a stack of more appropriate beachy-type reads, so I've been plowing through them. Note: the first Ya Ya book, Little Altars Everywhere, is far superior to its celebrated sequel, Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, which was a mediocre book made into a seriously lousy movie. The Glass Castle is a pretty riveting memoir in the "my crazy and/or substance-abusing parents never should have had kids" genre, and guess what? I am finally reading The Da Vinci Code. I've been resisting for three years, but the time has come, and guess what? I'm enjoying it.

We've had our share of disasters this trip, including getting on a commuter train to Grand Central Station instead of our Amtrak train, and having to high-tail it on the subway from GCS to Penn Station, with all our luggage, to catch up with that Amtrak train. We did it, though. And the kids were troopers all the way. I love travelling with school-age kids. Everywhere we go, I see toddlers and pre-schoolers, and just think damn, I'm glad they don't stay that little forever! It is, in many ways, great while it lasts, but there are definite advantages to having that phase be over.

Can't seem to add photos to my blog right now, so I can't show you the cute caricatures we had done of the kids in Central Park right now, but suffice it to say, they are fabulous.

Also, I am pleased to say that, 28 years after my first visit, I still adore the Statue of Liberty. How anyone ever got up the energy to build something that big and that cool, I will never understand, but I salute them!