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Dec. 28th, 2006 01:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meanfreepathI just got back from spending the day in New York. It was a good day -- even a relatively productive one, compared to the past few, due to reading/working while driving. Saw maternal grandparents over dim sum in Flushing. Discussed my financial situation with my cousin Andy, who does that sort of stuff, and he reiterated ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rose_garden's advice to strongly consider opening a Roth IRA.
We also visited the sole surviving sister, of my godmother. My godmother was a wonderful lady from a second-generation Italian immigrant family, whom my father met through being active in his church when he was living with my paternal grandparents on the Lower East Side. She had 3 or 4 sisters and a brother, and now unfortunately only one remains, with the last one not so well in health. I remember hearing so many fascinating stories from them through the years -- things like their childhood memories of going to World's Fairs in New York during the Great Depression. Sometimes there are technologies I tend to take for granted that seem revolutionary to their generation. At some point this afternoon email came up, and the sister remarked on how remarkable it was to be able to communicate nearly instantaneously, remembering how with the first long-distance telephone capabilities between America and Italy, the signal quality was so poor that voices were hard to understand.
The sister has (I think) a somewhat younger niece who lives in the same building and often comes to give her a hand with things; she came over as well. It's a bit of a tradition, for as long as I can remember, for us to bring up a box of miniature Italian pastries from Veniero's at 11th St and 1st Ave when visiting their family. So we enjoyed those over tea and conversation.
This evening I went with my family to see Bellini's I Puritani at the Met. My dad had the absolutely insane idea of driving up to midtown from Chinatown and parking at a specific garage which he had carefully researched in advance for its low rates around 60th St. Despite an early start, we were ensnarled in traffic coming out of Lower Manhattan and again approaching the Lincoln Tunnel, to the effect that even after half-sprinting from the garage up to Lincoln Center we barely made it into our seats. To me, the aggravation and time risk of driving both up and cross-town through Manhattan will never be worth saving $10 or $15 in subway fares.
Nonetheless, the performance itself, starring Anna Netrebko as Elvira, was fabulous. Perhaps I'll write more about it later. Also, to my complete surprise, I ran into another Swattie: the third person injs20's and aridice's triple sophomore year, who had flown out with her father all the way from California to hear Netrebko.
It is really too bad that most of the weekend Met performances for the rest of the season are already sold out and are quite expensive to begin with: even student tickets cost $35 on weekends.
rose_garden's advice to strongly consider opening a Roth IRA.We also visited the sole surviving sister, of my godmother. My godmother was a wonderful lady from a second-generation Italian immigrant family, whom my father met through being active in his church when he was living with my paternal grandparents on the Lower East Side. She had 3 or 4 sisters and a brother, and now unfortunately only one remains, with the last one not so well in health. I remember hearing so many fascinating stories from them through the years -- things like their childhood memories of going to World's Fairs in New York during the Great Depression. Sometimes there are technologies I tend to take for granted that seem revolutionary to their generation. At some point this afternoon email came up, and the sister remarked on how remarkable it was to be able to communicate nearly instantaneously, remembering how with the first long-distance telephone capabilities between America and Italy, the signal quality was so poor that voices were hard to understand.
The sister has (I think) a somewhat younger niece who lives in the same building and often comes to give her a hand with things; she came over as well. It's a bit of a tradition, for as long as I can remember, for us to bring up a box of miniature Italian pastries from Veniero's at 11th St and 1st Ave when visiting their family. So we enjoyed those over tea and conversation.
This evening I went with my family to see Bellini's I Puritani at the Met. My dad had the absolutely insane idea of driving up to midtown from Chinatown and parking at a specific garage which he had carefully researched in advance for its low rates around 60th St. Despite an early start, we were ensnarled in traffic coming out of Lower Manhattan and again approaching the Lincoln Tunnel, to the effect that even after half-sprinting from the garage up to Lincoln Center we barely made it into our seats. To me, the aggravation and time risk of driving both up and cross-town through Manhattan will never be worth saving $10 or $15 in subway fares.
Nonetheless, the performance itself, starring Anna Netrebko as Elvira, was fabulous. Perhaps I'll write more about it later. Also, to my complete surprise, I ran into another Swattie: the third person in
js20's and aridice's triple sophomore year, who had flown out with her father all the way from California to hear Netrebko.It is really too bad that most of the weekend Met performances for the rest of the season are already sold out and are quite expensive to begin with: even student tickets cost $35 on weekends.
