i heart ny, eat a whole loaf of ezekiel bread, & more happy new year blablablaing!!

-> don't mean to sound sacrilegious, but after flying home yesterday from nyc & going straight to a great gig & then waking this morn w/this weird feeling of surreality & opening my mini fridge hungry & wondering blearily what the heck i'd find & seeing not just ezekiel bread, but coffee already made in there, i knew there was a god!!!... today i've done nothing but eat nearly the whole load of ezekiel, read a dumb book (wishful drinking by carrie fisher, recommended by mom & angie, neither of whom are alcoholic, as funny, but i thought it was just sad!! - so full of self-loathing!!), unpack, & look @ pix from my trip.
-> THE TRIP! i was gone for 7 days & yes, what a trip! feel like i'm still there a bit, tho i'm happy in my little house, & it's swell not to be freezing anymore!!
-> these are some things i loved about nyc:
1. central park!!! was there every day, exploring & walking (broke it into quadrants, pretty much, & explored a different area ea day), tho the day i was to run around the famous lake, it froze, then the next, snowed... if i lived in nyc, i'd be in central pk 2-3x a week!! what a wonder; what a treasure; what a gift of the city to its people!!!
2. the rockettes!!! after watching the somewhat corny but magnificently produced christmas show at beautiful radio city music hall, w/its magical sets (especially the numbers w/the toy soldiers & where they seem to drive around the theatre district, & the gorgeous creche/nativity scene w/blues & & pinks & purples & live camel & sheep, even!), lighting, & dancing, i realized if a) i'd grown up a "normal" girl; & b) in nyc; c) i would've wanted to be a rockette! a rockette gets to dress up & be whatever she wants, accompanied by all her rockette sisters, & she gets to learn all these cool dance steps that must be a tremendously fun workout & she gets to be pretty & fun & innocent yet alluring all in one!! i want to be a rockette!!
3. the upper east side markets, filled w/friendly, down-to-earth people & your coffee made up just how you like it (they say "milk & sugar?", then fix it for you before smartly brown-bagging it up) & delicious cheap fresh food, like an egg sandwich on a kaiser roll for $1.50!!
4. new york pizza!!! folks say ny pizza is better bc of nyc's municipal water system: it's sweet, clean water. i thought, bull! how can mere water affect how food tastes?!? so the 1st place i went to have a slice, the italian owner, when asked why the food in nyc is so much better, replied w/o a hitch, "it's the WAWDUH!" i gladly ate crow cause along w/it came delicious nyc plain pizza w/just sauce, a little cheese, thin, slightly crispy crust... now the problem is that bc of that pizza, along w/the water-boiled then baked ny bagels i enjoyed, i'm RUINED & CAN NO LONGER ENJOY EITHER IN CALIFORNIA!!! (fortunately, w/my sieve-like memory, i'll only be ruined for a few wks at most...)
5. christmas lights & decorations everyplace! what a festive, magical place to have gotten to be over the holidays!
6. walking about 10 miles a day! (tho took the subway quite a lot, & cabs a bit less...) it felt great to explore everyplace on foot. went as far north as 112th st in harlem, as far south as greenwich village, as well as east & west sides;
7 all the cute & beautiful & wonderful dogs being walked everywhere, tho i wondered how those dogs lived, w/no yards & no real place to stretch their doggy legs... a dog is such a lovely & loving creature, & to see so many added to the yuletide cheer.
8. steam heat in the hostel rm, reminding me of my old 1920 apartment in bako... i love steam heat! -and along w/it, a really hot shower, wonderful after a cold, cold day.
9. the man ray exhibit @ the jewish museum!!!
10. the hostel rm, w/its cozy crawl-space futon bed, which you climbed a ladder to reach;
11. the sign at the airport when i flew out on christmas day: "FLIGHT 1225 TO NORTH POLE: Limit one reindeer per passenger"
12. walking in the cold xmas night, looking for a bite to eat, cozy while bundled up, w/festive people walking their dogs (i waited for them to 1st say "merry christmas," in case they were jewish, cause why be the presumptuous gentile?)... then watching saturday night live christmas & the office on tv in my hostel rm (i don't have tv, so this was a real treat!)
13. reading malcolm gladwell's outliers one night, w/its particularly fascinating chapter about pilot semantics & something called "power distance index" & another about why some people fail/are unhappy despite genius intelligence (i have many friends like that!!)... this slim book, a quick read, has much thought-fodder!
-> things i didn't like:
1.  THE WEATHER!!! good lord, i've never experienced brutal cold quite like that, even on the motorcycle trips thru colorado i used to go on! one day, it was 16 degrees & then an arctic front & windstorm blew in, painfully penetrating any coat layer, & suddenly it was way below zero!! @ times square on new yr's eve, i thought i was gonna croak from the cold... then it started sleeting!
3. the stress of having to change rms @ the hostel, tho all worked out bc i got into a better rm w/a view of 73rd st, even, so when it suddenly snowed dec 31, & when firewks were shot off from central pk that eve, i got to see it all!!
4. accidentally erasing my 1st set of pix!! crap!
5. crazy crowding @ the museum of natural history... the place was overrun by holiday mobs, insanely packed!
6. the scheister restaurant owner near times square who jacked up the prices on his food to rip off people trapped w/in the ball-drop barricade ($25 for soup, two cookies, a roll, & hot chocolate!), then not just closed his bathrooms to the public, but blocked the door w/a frigging pastry cabinet! what a jerk!!
7. this pop song about new york that @ the time i thought uninteresting & now can't get out of my head &, worse, don't know the name or artist of!!
-> anyways, that's enough for now. later i'll try to write about our awesome show last night w/rev horton heat. i got home to bakersfield from new york city at 5:45 pm yesterday & was at the show at 7:15. whoopee! what a day! what a week! what an experience! :) hope you, too, have had a holiday adventure, whether you went on a sojourn or stayed right at home. feliz ano nuevo. :)