We had a wonderful time. But are we ever tired! And here's what it was like. Pat and jeanne

We started out at graduation in the morning. It was hot! Pat and jeanne attended the reception separately, the heat and the poison ivy sent jeanne to her office. We turned in grades, and went home to pack. We're sorry that we missed some of you, but maybe we can find a time to take pictures later. Jeanne's got some academic gowns in her office.

We got to the airport early, with hardly any traffic. We should have known that foretold trouble. Pat upgraded her ticket upstairs. Arnold upgraded ours downstairs. And the first thing Pat told Arnold when we got upstairs was how much it cost; except that they charged Arnold $40 more! So off he went to get them to change it, and as the plane readied to take off, YOU GUESSED IT, RIGHT?, Arnold was nowhere in sight. Talk about field mice and bad timing! Even cool, laid back jeanne, finally went for the ski patrol. TWA announced over the loudspeaker just what jeanne asked: " Arnold, get your tush (though jeanne used a more colloquial three-letter word) on the plane!" Just then, Arnold arrived. Forty dollars richer, but late as the mad hatter.

We settled down to a fabulous ride to New York. It was a new plane, with lots of room!!! and special cassettes of any movie we wanted! Arnold and jeanne watched American Beauty and got depressed. Pat watched Cider House Rules and missed the ending! She chose that moment to doze off. So much for wonderful planes with lots of choices!

There was a little turbulence. Pat's wine glass and Arnold's little bottle of bourbon went flying across the cabin. Pat looked up all those passages that say that turbulence is the most dangerous factor in flying. jeanne took two aspirin. Arnold gleefully asked for another little bottle.

Arnold had thoughtfully arranged for a car to take us into New York City. And there the driver was waiting for us! But the luggage wasn't. We were so tired after watching movies all night, we got lost three times looking for the luggage thingamajig. Finally, the luggage started down, forty minutes late, with a driver waiting! One by one we dragged over the suitcases, except for the shoe bag. No shoes! They lost our shoes, and Rasmussen's Critical Theory jeanne had packed in with it, and paint, and the Spice Girls purse jeanne always takes everywhere. And the red Oillily boots! Oh, horrors. Arnold kept saying, "But they only lost our shoes. That poor woman in white didn't get a single piece of luggage!" Relative deprivation, Sociology 101style.

Arnold went to make a luggage report. And the driver waited. And there was no place to sit down, and it was like 5 a.m. Arnold came back to get another piece of luggage, so they could be sure what it looked like. And off we trudged to the hotel.

The hotel. It was the one we stayed in when Arnold ran his second Ney York Marathon. Not the same room, overlooking the course, a little room, somewhere in the dungeons of Central Park South. Arnold's credit card wouldn't work. TWA had made some kind of mistake when he fixed that $40 goof, and now said he'd spent a thousand dollars. He howled like a banshee. But no one was around to fix it. It was only 6 a.m.

The air conditioner in our room didn't work. It was hot! They promised to fix it. Arnold and Pat went to FAO Schwartz Toy Store after making jeanne promise she wouldn't go back to sleep. Reluctantly she stepped into the shower, which produced a drizzle unwilling to rinse off the soap, once she managed to find the soap, which made everything so slippery she near crashed again, even without racing to get under the garage door. Prudence prevailing she reached up to turn off the shower with its miserable drizzle, at which point it came on full force, hot as Hades, and refused to budge when she tried to turn it off. She switched from shower to spiggot, but still couldn't turn off the gushing. As the tub filled ominously she grabbed a towel, staggered out to the phone and suggested they send someone quickly before the second flood. A wonderful man came, tried to turn it off and couldn't. Then he clobbered the handle, and it moved! The water was off.

He left. jeanne sat down to the New York Times. Arnold, of course, wanted to know why I was sitting there in the hotel's robe. He laughed as hard as when I tried to get my briefcase out from under the garage door and landed on, well, whatever it was I landed on. That'll teach him. The water wouldn't drain out. So we went down for a coke to wait for the plumber/savior to return, and fix the water, air conditioner. We came back; nothing fixed. Then room service showed us that all we had to do was lift up a metal piece that had no visible means of being lifted up, and the water would drain out, which it did. The drained out water did not make the air conditioner work. It was very hot.

Arnold called TWA and they said they had our shoes. They would be delivered that afternoon. And off we all went to the Metropolitan museum, where we had our first experience with New York taxis that have been modified to prevent the killing of taxi drivers. They've added a divider that takes up three or four inches of the back seat room, and leaves no room for even my "little" feet. Pat was so horrified she insisted on walking back to the hotel. Sounded like a plan, until Arnold started to hurry us along because we had to meet his cousin for dinner! Sheer will power got me back to the hotel, only to find his cousin parked outside on Central Park South, or West, or whatever, waiting for us! But I had a fabulous lobster at Gallagher's Steak House. I know, I know, I was supposed to eat steak! Pat had fish, too.

Sated, after huge desserts, we dragged ourselves back to the hotel, where, YOU GUESSED IT! NO SHOES! "But," wailed Arnold, "they were supposed to deliver the bag this afternoon." Well, at least they straightened out TWA and Arnold's credit card, and our room was paid for. We weren't going to have to sleep in Central Park! But we might have to go barefoot in the park.

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