Snowy New York Valentine

 As I write this, I am getting used to being back in Arizona after a five-day trip to New York last week. We flew up there last Tuesday, to JFK, and stayed through Sunday at the Hilton Midtown on 6th Avenue. The occasion was a conference for Jessica's work at a natural supplements manufacturer.  So the hotel was paid for by the company.

It was the first time I'd been back in the city in five years, and the first time I've stayed in Midtown maybe since...forever. Wow, I can sure understand why people like that part of town.. We had some good food, although we slummed it on Valentine's Day since every restaurant was booked. Instead we grabbed hot dogs and onion rings from the cart outside the hotel. Seventy five bucks!

I worked during the week from the hotel room, taking short breaks to walk around the vicinity, including an obligatory visit ot Trump Tower, which I hadn't visited since 1989. 

On Saturday we enjoyed the freshly fallen snow with a walk through Central Park up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art---Jessica's first time. It was a wonderful way to spend our final full day there, after our work obligations were done for the week.

All in all, a great experience. I saw nothing of the degradation and troubles that have befallen the city lately. We both anticipated a return visit for next year's conference.

I was impressed by how much Times Square had changed.Way more pedestrian f riendly than the old days. It really feels welcoming.It felt much cleaner and more alive from the old days, thanks to modern video screen technology. It was like looking up at a 100 giant smartphones playing videos on the sides of buildings. The ads featured musicians I had never heard of. Who is Zara Larsson? No idea. It felt good to be ignorant with such trends. I couldn't get used to seeing "2024" as the year up by the famous New Year's ball (see very top right corner of the screen).  I feel like this is not real, that real time stopped sometime in the last century, and we are living in some kind of parody of time.

We arrived at JFK on the day before Valentine's Day (Shrove Tuesday, as it happens) into a snowstorm. IIn Phoenix the night beore, I half-joked with Jessica that our flight was going to be diverted and we were going to be stuck overnight at the Cleveland Airport. Or Louisville. We both busted out laughing when the pilot came on and announced we would be landing temporarily in Indianapolis until the snow cleared. "Here we go!" we thought. But the plane took off again after an hour and by the time we got to FJK, everything was clearing out fine. We got a cab up to Midtown and hundered into the next few days of cold chilly weather, which was nice to experience. A chance to wear warm clothes. On Saturday, delightfully, we got a second round of snow, just to stop everything off, and this made our walk up the Met Museum through Central Park a wonderland. Children were sledding like in old paintings that we later saw at the Met. It was Jesssica's first time in the Park. Of course we stumbled upon "Alice in Snow" as seen in this photograph I took.