Bagel with Schmear (NYC)

Firstly, let me just say how impressed I am at NYC's ability to dig out after a snowstorm. When I stepped out early Sunday morning (in W's snow boots) to go to church, not only were all the streets passable but the majority of sidewalks were clear as well, though I certainly didn't envy the people having to dig their cars out.

I attended mass at Epiphany Church, a shamefully ugly place for such a thriving community, i.e. four daily masses and five on Sunday!, just around the block from W's place. Unfortunately, I had a time getting there because I walked four blocks in the wrong direction before getting that dreaded sneaking suspicion.

Afterward, I asked one of the ushers to recommend a bagel place and he raved about Ess-a-Bagel just around the corner further south. Delicious scallion cream cheese, if I may say, and the bagel itself had a certain something that none of the other bagels in my life have ever had. Growing up we had those grocery store refrigerated bagels in a bag, sad little things. In due course, I would encounter various combinations of bready, lumpish, like-a-rock, and jaw-breaking chewy, rarely the coveted crunchy exterior and chewy bready interior. This bagel was exactly that, if you can believe it.

The internet wasn't much help in getting flight information, so I'm glad I arranged to go to the airport early to see for myself. After bidding farewell to a still sleepy-eyed W and R, I was spirited away in a packed SuperShuttle, which cost me only $13. (In KC, I doubt they can regularly fill it so well, so a one-way trip costs about $45.) The line that greeted me at LaGuardia was a real shocker: it stretched down one side of the airport, around the corner, and back up the other side in a J-shape, probably a three- or four-hour wait by my estimation, considering there were only three people at the (American Airlines) counter. Since I had no bags to check, I walked directly to a vacant self-check-in kiosk and proceeded to security, where I learned from a woman in front of me that that line was for the poor souls that got their flights canceled the day before, a line which she had only just been liberated from. Later, as I was sitting comfortably in the waiting area of my gate, chatting with a Long Islander headed for Miami, I would see some of those people being interviewed on CNN. Anyway long story short, both my flights, LaGuardia to O'Hare to KC, were on time, but filled to the brim (unlike on the way out).

Afterword: Drew and the girls fared pretty well while I was gone. I talked to the girls on Saturday and Sunday, and they reported being "mostly good". Drew said Z didn't seem to miss me at all, but BB took my absence rather hard, not sleeping well and crying for me in the night. In fact, she talked with me the longest on the phone, usually one-word answers, unwilling to let go the phone, poor thing. They were all asleep by the time Drew picked me up from the airport, so it was only the next morning that I could see their excitement: G was happy; Z wasn't as clingy as I expected, like it was just any other morning; and BB was ecstatic, though not clingy either. It's good to be home, in any case.