"Last Best Hope for Peace"

I have a wonderful girlfriend. I know I've said that many times, but it's not the sort of thing you can ever say too much. She got me breakfast in bed this morning. Fantastic. Today was the last day of her conference, was the day that EPA was coming down from Philly to meet up, and was also the day that a massive peace rally protesting against War on Iraq was taking place around the UN (and in loads of other major cities around the world).

I cashed some travellers cheques at the hotel's front desk on my way out - we'd been needing to cash some for a few days and had just kept forgetting to call in at a bank to do so. In the lift on the way down to the lobby I had the brainwave of asking our hotel to cash them, and lo and behold... up to $50 per day per room, but that's nothing to be sniffed at.

Penn Station is more like a regular train station than Grand Central. It has a more hectic feel to it, and lacks the grandiose decor. It was also very busy. I'd arranged to meet Andy by the cop stand at one end of the main concourse. There was one problem with this. The cop at the cop stand. If ever there was a stereotype fat New York Cop, it was he, sprawled in his cop chair at his cop stand. You see, given that there was a major Peace Protest going on, the concourse was filling up with protesters gathering. And being your stereotype hard-nosed right-wing cop, he was muttering comments about them. Just gritted my teeth and tried to ignore him.

When Andy (EPA just sounds rude and impersonal, I've decided) showed up we headed off to the ESB, because I wanted to check out this comic shop again. I know I said in my last entry that the comic shop was next to Starbucks, but that was a fact I was not yet aware of. I just remembered it was opposite the ESB. Even with this small piece of knowledge, it took two laps of the ESB's block to find the damn place. Sometimes I am so crap.

We must've spent half an hour to an hour in the comic shop. I came out with the most recent compendium of The Onion, which included its fantastically spot on satirical coverage of the 9-11 tragedy, and with the green Green Lantern t-shirt I'd spotted the night before. If Andy bought anything, it wasn't anything important, LOL.

Next up, Times Square. Toys R Us, for starters. They had purple lightsabres in stock today. Now, seeing as these lightsabres were of the variety that making clashing noises when they, well, clash together, where was the point in getting just one. I was getting a purple Mace Windu lightsabre, that much was certain. It also seemed obligatory to get one for Alison. The only decision to make was which one? My first choice would've been a Yoda one if they'd had one, because I know Alison would've loved that. There were regular "Jedi" lightsabres in a variety of colours, but they weren't quite the same. The only other two available were Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi ones. Since both of these were blue, the choice between them was made on the basis of which had the cooler looking handle. Andy and I unanimously decided that Anakin's looked cooler, so that was what I went for. Andy managed to resist the lure of Star Wars Lego and PS2 games (although we both saw an XBox game that looked just fantastic - Burnout 2 if I remember correctly).

In the Virgin Megastore Andy stocked up on Talk Talk CDs, and I flirted with the idea of buying X-Men 1.5 on DVD. Given the amount I had already spent on trivialities that week, I decided in the end that I could just as easily order the DVD from Play as buy it now, and would probably get it for a similar price.

We detoured via the hotel to drop of the lightsabres and pick up my conference pass so I could go see Alison to make arrangements to meet up with her after her conference finished. Obviously dropping off the lightsabres also involved me taking mine out of the box and testing it. Some things you just gotta do.

After going to the trouble of fetching my pass, then leaving Andy on his own downstairs in the Hilton while I snuck up onto the conference levels to find Alison, it turned out she was actually downstairs in the Hilton having lunch. We bumped into her on our way out, made arrangements, then realised we were ourselves in dire need of lunch. Once again, Pret in the Rockefeller Center came to the rescue, providing us with so-so bread products, and the most fantastic New York Cheesecakes either of us had ever tasted.

The one place in Manhattan that I had thus far not seen was the UN Building(s), and given that this was the last full day there, I wanted to try and get there today. Bad plan. Very bad plan. Readers will have noticed that I've already mentioned the anti-war protest twice in this entry (skimmers may have to go back and check :-)), including one mention of where it was. Yes, that's right, the UN. Now, if this hadn't have been my last day in Manhattan (and the day that Andy was visiting) I might have been inclined to join the protest. I didn't for one minute expect the protest to make the slightest bit of difference to Mr Bush, but in spirit I was there anyway.

Saw some cool placards being carrying when we encountered the march on our attempted journey to the UN. The best was "God Bless Hysteria", which was topped only by the "Regime Change Begins At Home" that I saw in Penn Station earlier on. The most interesting thing was that there was a march in the first place. What we'd heard in the news was that the march itself had been banned, and only the initial rally at the UN was being allowed. Well, either someone had a change of heart or the march had just happened anyway. Either way, there were lots of cops about and lots of roads cordonned off. I gave up on the idea of seeing the UN today and decided that it would have to wait until tomorrow when Alison and I picked up the hire car for our drive to Ithaca.

A block or so down was Grand Central Station. We decided to head there. Things were a little tense there as the march was in that area at the time. Some of the cops looked like they were just waiting for an excuse to lay into the protesters, others seemed to have a more relaxed attitude to it. Still, around the station was the point at which we felt we were closest to getting caught in a Situation(TM).

Oh, and I forgot to mention the pro-war protesters (or Pricks(TM), as I dubbed them). Now, granted that some of the anti-war protesters were clearly quite naive of some of the realities of the situation from the wording of their banners, but the Pricks(TM) really took the biscuit.

In Grand Central Station Andy pointed out the Discovery Channel store, which I had been hitherto unaware of. It wasn't quite as funky as The Sharper Image (the gadget shop at the South Street Seaport), but it still rocked. Andy got this funky LED metronome clock thing which is just one of the coolest clocks I have ever seen, topping the flat LCD one I saw the previous weekend. It was $80 though, and chronometry did not feature in my list of target buys.

On our way out of the store we saw a hand-held massager that was distinctly phallic. One end of it was about the size of a squash ball, at a guess. I picked it up and muttered "I don't even want to think about that." A voice behind us said "You do." I turned and looked and it was a young female shop assistant who had spoken. She nodded and grinned, and the look in her eyes said "Oh Yeah". Andy and I left with the distinct feeling that she had intimate knowledge of the device in one of the non-advertised ways it could be used. When I told the story to Alison, however, she had a different interpretation of the incident, suggesting that the woman had been making assumptions about myself and Andy. That kinda ruined it, but I'm still fairly sure the woman was referring to her own extra-curricular activities.

It was now time to meet Alison back in Penn Station. More specifically, in the Starbucks in Penn Station. The three of us sat and chatted until it was time for Andy's train, reviewing our various purchases and the like. Once Andy had left, Alison wanted to do some shopping in Grand Central Station, so we headed straight back over there. After that I took her to FAO Schwarz (the toy shop mentioned in Thursday's Entry). She enjoyed it every bit as much as I expected, although she was disappointed that the famous piano-in-the-floor from Big was covered over by their Simpsons display.

We were then planning to pop into Tiffany's, but sadly it was closed. We headed back to the hotel for a brief rest. And our first lightsabre duel, LOL. Alison is a bloody vicious dueller, I can tell you. Those lightsabres may be toys, but that doesn't mean to say it's okay to hit someone in the nads with one. Ow.

Dinner was at one of the Europa Caf�s in the area (the one opposite Carnegie Hall). Of all the meals we'd had, for me this was the worst, in terms of both the quality of the food, and the service we got. Still, for the most part that isn't much against the place, as everywhere else had pretty much been outstanding. My main gripe was that I prefer my food served hot rather than lukewarm. Quite offputting.

Finally, we made our last trip to Times Square. We made a brief stop at the Internet Caf� so I could remind people that would be expecting me to be in touch (ie, my parents) that we were heading off to Ithaca and that it was an unknown quantity in terms of internet access and cellphone coverage.

The Grand Finale to our touring of Manhattan was a ride on the Ferris Wheel in Toys R Us. Very childish, and very much us. But also cool. As we left Toys R Us there was a brief poignant moment in realisation that part of our trip was coming to an end. On return to the Hotel we packed, and had a number of other lightsabre duels (which were a little less violent than the earlier one). And then that was that. Our last night in Manhattan.