Jon's Knit Blog

Busy Busy Busy, with Lots of Roses

Busy is the upcoming weekend. The Half Blood Prince, and the Chocolate Factory, which I may actually even go see. Not to mention dinner with my sister tonight after work, which is not just work, but a three-ish hour long computer training session (We're getting a new program to keep track of our hotel rooms. Joy.). Oh, and just a regular weekend full of work. (If you're keeping track, I work Friday through Tuesday, though this week I also had to work (well, a training session) on Wednesday, too...)

And tonight, I saw a heck of a lot of roses being flung at a rather remarkable woman. Amanda McKerrow is was a wonderful dancer with American Ballet Theatre, but tonight was her final performance. She danced Giselle beautifully, but the curtain call was an incredibly special moment. McKerrow was a dearly beloved figure in the ballet community, and the ovation she received was just... well... does it sound cliche to say "You had to be there"? She got so many roses, both from everyone onstage and from half the audience, who flung bouquets over the orchestra pit. Perhaps the most lovely part of it was when the chorus of dancers, in their Wili costumes, processed around Ms. McKerrow and each one presented her with a single white rose. Of course, the drop-dead gorgeous Ethan Stiefel brought her a huge bouquet as well. She heaped the roses on the stage; if they hadn't taken half of them into the wings when they (briefly) closed the curtains, the stack of flowers probably would have been as tall as she was. It goes down in the list of memories I'll never forget.

After the ballet, I got to speak with a 911 operator, though I don't think she was nearly as nice as Rachael would have been if I'd been on her line.

Why did I call 911, you ask? Well, I didn't, really. I called 311, which is NYC's number to call for "non-emergency" city issues. See, there was a mega-pothole (maybe even a sinkhole? I'm not sure what the difference is) on the 65th Street transverse across Central Park, and it was causing major traffic problems. I called the City to report it, and the 311 operator felt (and I didn't disagree) that the police should be informed to help avoid an accident. The 911 operator basically said that directing traffic isn't the police's job (really?) and that they didn't need to be bothered by this. The 311 operator, the taxi driver and I all disagreed with her, but what the heck, I don't want to be on a 911 operator's **** list, and she did have my cellphone number given to her. Anyhow, that's what you get for trying to be a good samaritan these days. Hope that the 911 operator was a bit more courteous to the people behind us who undoubtedly got into an accident due to this pothole.

Anyhow, with all this crap going on, and the fact that today was a day off devoted to sleeping late and then being not much more than a cyber-surfing vegetable, aside from a few short moments of productivity when I got my laundry together and sent it to wash and fold, and when I set up my new iPod which did come, yay!, not much knitting has been going on. Hopefully I'll be able to get a little bit of knitting done tomorrow night, but it depends on how tired I am after working eleven hours and then having dinner with the sister. Not to mention the fact that I'm only going to get about six hours of sleep and I'm not a very nice person when I don't get a full eight...

PS: Can you believe that I've had hits from people at navy.mil and parliament.uk? Wowsers!