Baseball, Bugs Bunny, Brotherhood, and Broken Glass. . .

We ended our week in New York City (Manhattan) with the Mets game against the Brewers and Bugs Bunny. The poor Mets lost four in a row against the Cubs in Chicago and lost again at home against Milwaukee. The Mets was our 12^th game, 18 to go. CitiField is a beautiful baseball stadium and we had seats in the wheelchair section (we had no idea until we got there, so apparently you don’t have to be handicapped to use them). We got them because they were on the Press level and those have been some of our favorite seats. Randy had a normal seat but I got a plush armchair that I could move around to get a better view (and we had nobody in front of us!).

Brief Aside: We are in Bath, NY, as I wrote this and watching the news about all the tornados and drenching rains that are inundating Texas, Oklahoma, and across the South. Since we live in what we call a “Tornado Sucker” AKA “motorhome” we are grateful that we left that area a month ago but still worried about all the weather that is destroying parts of the Midwest—that we are yet to travel through! We will be in the St. Louis-Kansas City-Denver area that is the heart of tornados in a few weeks.

OK, back to our real world of Bugs Bunny! If you have never heard “Bugs Bunny at the Symphony” you are missing a real treat! George Daugherty has been conducting various symphony orchestras while Bugs Bunny cartoons play on a big screen above the orchestra. Bugs was, for many of us, the first time we heard classical music. I, for one, did not realize I was hearing opera (The Barber of Seville), classical music (Hungarian Rhapsody #2), and Irish folk songs (Those Endearing Young Charms) when I watched Tom and Jerry or Pepe le Pew or Bugs. What a kick! The New York Philharmonic playing Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung at Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Center and us watching Wily Coyote and the Roadrunner trying to do away with each other—doesn’t get much better than that!

Plus we had dinner at a great restaurant (The Smith) with Jilly Pfifferling right across the street from the Lincoln Center so we could just walk over after dinner. So, who is Jilly? Many years ago, Randy’s cousin (this will be a trip of meeting/re-meeting/visiting relatives) Bob married Melinda, they moved to Australia, and they had Jilly. Jilly went to college in Massachusetts, went to grad school in New York, and now works there in an auction house (both her degrees are in Renaissance Art). Who better to advise us on where to have a great meal and, by the way, catch up!

All that more than made up for the $60—that is no misprint, $60!—taxi ride to get to the restaurant. We made the mistake of asking the hotel doorman to get us a cab. He got us a cab, all right, but an unregulated cab. Randy is a native New Yawka, he should have known better than to get into a cab with no meter. But it was probably worth the $60 just to be part of the thrill ride that is a New Yawk taxi ride. The entire time (30 minutes) he was on the phone. In a foreign language. In between sentences and sometimes while he was actually talking (as opposed to listening), he was honking the horn, weaving, making rude gestures, and missing other vehicles by mere centimeters. He managed to get us to the restaurant undented but on the other side of the street so we had to negotiate Broadway on a Friday afternoon. Two martinis later and a wonderfully delicious meal, we reluctantly headed to Bugs Bunny et al.

Got to meet some cousins and re-acquaint ourselves with some other cousins whom we hadn’t seen in about 45 years at Randy’s father’s brother’s daughter’s daughter's house! Absolutely no idea what THAT relationship is, but it’s probably some kind of cousin-removed. Anyway, had a fabulous time. Jeanne (the father’s brother’s . . .) and John opened their house to 13 people and she cooked a fantastic meal (tenderloin steaks!). Jeanne cooked and entertained. John served beer. We had a great time!

This is Jeanne who did all the work! Randy's father's brother's son's daughter.

The whole fam damily

John (who handed out the beer) and Jeanne who did everything else.

Dennis (on the right, Randy's father's brother's son) and his son, Jimmy.

Dante, Randy's father's brother's daughter's daughter's son.

Natalie, Randy's father's brother's son's daughter's daughter.

Ryan, Randy's father's brother's daughter's daughter's son.

Jeanne and John's Rhodesian Ridgeback, lying as they do, across the normal path, just waiting for someone to trip on them.

Randy

Melissa (on the left, Cristina's daughter and Randy's father's brother's daughter's daughter's daughter) and Natalie, Randy's father's brother's son's daughter's daughter.

Are you as confused as I am with the son's daughter's daughter? Cousin relationships are SO confusing. Luckily, ours are very nice! and they have great beer!

Got our car out of hock at the hotel and headed to pick up the motorhome. Suffice it to say (any more and I would have a stroke), Camping World will NEVER get our business again. We had called the Kingston NY Camping World from Atlanta to make an appointment for an oil change. When we picked up the motorhome, they had not found the time over 17 days to change the oil. Or get to any of the other items either.

Now that we have done all the baseball parks in the South and the East and the Northeast (the Mets were #12 and Toronto will be #13—hope that’s not unlucky for the Blue Jays!) we have a few days to do touristy stuff. We went to the Corning Museum of Glass for our second visit (last was in 2011 and they have added a whole new exhibit space), hence the “Broken Glass” in the title: one of their best shows! EVERYBODY does glass shows, how many do Breaking Glass shows?

What I wouldn't give for a martini set like THIS!

This was a collaborative project. The artist and a lot of African women wove 1.5 million glass beads on one MILE of fiber to create this.

Different heat signatures with low-E glass and non-low-E-glass.

She's been a glass blower for 11 years.

If you look closely you can see where the high water mark was in 1972 at the Glass Museum.

 Tomorrow we will go to Niagara Falls, the following day to Rochester and the photography museum (think Kodak and Rochester for those of you raised on digital photos!), then a night away from the motorhome in the Marriott that is physically part of the Blue Jays ballpark. We could have had a room from which we could watch the game!—Well, that was the plan. I just realized that the Blue Jays play on FRIDAY not Saturday so our plans are truncated. Stay tuned!