Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Today is JC's 14th birthday. Wow. I would say he couldn't possibly be that old except that he is taller than I am now, and his voice is changing.

Yesterday I took him to New York City to see Spamalot on Broadway. It was the one thing he wanted for his birthday. This was precipitated by the fact that it's closing on the 18th, so we had to get a move on. And I was able to get matinee tickets for Friday, which just makes it a much easier trip, in my opinion (no late night subway rides!).

We took the PATH from Hoboken and got to the city about noon, and just picked up fast food for lunch. Then walked down to Times Square. In the snow. Yes, just my luck, it was about 30 degrees, windy, and snowing. I will say it was fascinating to see all the variations on winter gear - everything from sweatshirts to full-length fur coats. And lots of different kinds of hats. We got to the theater area early, and since we hadn't gotten much for lunch, treated ourselves to pretzels from a street vendor. Nothing like a hot pretzel on a cold day, especially with mustard. We got to the theater about 30 minutes early, and there were already lines like you wouldn't believe. And very few signs indicating the difference between the lines - I had to ask a security guard. Seemed like we waited a REALLY long time for the line to move, but once it did, we were inside. Which wasn't a LOT warmer than outside, but not windy or snowy.

(As an aside, if you buy tickets for a show, either get them mailed or emailed to you. There was an insanely long line for picking up tickets, and then you had to get in another line to wait for the doors to open. Even though it wouldn't have made much difference, as you have reserved seats, it still would have annoyed me to wait in TWO lines.)

The theater was MUCH smaller than I anticipated based on the online map. But our seats were fine (not fab, but fine) and except for the tallish guy in front of me, we had no trouble seeing. And I didn't see any empty seats. And the show? The show was very Monty Python, plus a little raunch because they didn't have to tone it down for TV. Clever and funny, and very well done. Yes, we saw Clay Aiken of American Idol fame, he didn't stand out as any better or worse than any of the other performers. And kudos to him (and the rest of the cast) because many of the roles required a significant suspension of pride.

JC enjoyed it (except perhaps for the parts where he was kind of embarrassed), and I bought him the cast album. I enjoyed it too, even the raunchy bits, because I got all of the jokes, and JC didn't. Which is ok. Glad I didn't bring Rachel, though.

We walked down to Rockefeller Center afterwards to see the tree, although JC seemed underwhelmed - he was rather cold at that point. And we took a while figuring out where to have dinner. He wanted Red Lobster in Times Square and I said, "no way." We have Red Lobster in Bridgewater, at least pick someplace we can't go to at home! We ended up at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, which had a large waiting area and lots of interesting stuff to look at during the wait. We sat next to Ringo Starr's drums from the mid-60's. Cool.

And then we walked back to the PATH station and went home. Completely uneventful, and a good time was had by both.

This morning we found out that JC's best friend slipped on a patch of ice and broke his leg last night. There's always something.