Chris and I just flew home from New York City. Man, our arms are tired.
(Sometimes a bad lead is better than no lead at all). This is a long post, but there is a goodie at the end, so bare with me.

Work obliged me to be in NYC Wednesday. Then Chris followed on Friday, so we could spend the weekend exploring the city. It was his first time. We spent a lot of time walking the borrows and exploring Irish pubs. During 1 day, he had baked French onion soup at 3 different locations. The man knows what he likes.

It was hard being away from the boy, but it was time well spent for us grownups. It’s the first child-free vacation Chris and I have had since Bren was born. We spent most of the time missing him. Lucky for us and for Bren, Framma came in to stay with him. I think they had a grand time. Framma said her mission was to give the boy whatever he wanted to avoid any tears. Bren enjoyed the Framma spoiling.

Chris and I tend to attract odd conversations no matter where we are, NYC was no exception. Here are few funny stories and a song that we made using an application called “Songify” that ties the stories together.

In Times Square there are hawkers of all varieties, people selling rides on busses, tickets to shows, and also pan handlers. One of these folks was yelling out in their best James Brown voice, “Help, the homeless.” Chris thought this was great. To my great embarrassment and amusement, he spent the rest of the weekend calling this out all around the city.

We were eating a late lunch at the Central Park Boat House, and started doing a bit of people watching. We especially like watching other parents, checking out the gear they used like strollers and backpacks. While watching one such family, they past us and the mom had a sour look on her face, then the father said to Chris in a very heavy French accent, “What are you looking at bastard!” It happened so fast, and with such a thick accent that we didn’t register what he said until after they were gone. Needless to say, we found it quite hilarious and began saying it to each other for the rest of the evening.

Back in Times Square, I’d say the best sales folks are the guys selling tickets to a comedy show. I’d heard them earlier in the week and thought they had a great pitch. It went like this, “Hey, do you like to laugh and drink?” Of course, the passer by would say yes, which gave them an opening to talk to them about buying tickets. So, one afternoon as we were walking by, they asked me, “Hey do you like comedy?” Not wanting to engage with the man, I shrugged and said, “Not really.” He had a great come-back, “Whatever, I’m not your therapist.” Superb. That one goes in the books.

Last, again with the hustlers, Chris had a really effective way of getting them to back off. As someone would approach us with a sales pitch, Chris would say in a very low Mega death voice, “Walk away!” That goes in to the song too.

So, long story for a short song here is our NYC mix. Enjoy! We sure did.