fuhgedabadit

This is now officially the Lisa&Conor in NY blog, for a while anyway.

Thanks for the posts, those of you who have put stuff up. Sorry it's taken so long for us to do so.

So how is everyone? I keep imagining that there are all sorts of shenanigans going on in Edinburgh that I'm missing out on. Well? I hear you've had your summer already; hope you enjoyed it. I was jealous to hear that people had been out on the meadows kicking a football and each other. It's been wintry here ever since the second day after I arrived, so there hasn't been much in the way of outdoor activity. It even snowed a couple of times over the weekend. Not very heavily, and it didn't stick, but still. It's April. Come on.

What have we been up to? Hmm.

We've been to a couple of really good pubs - or 'bars', if you will. We were in one on Monday, with Lisa's ex-flatmate, which is on the premises of an old hairdresser's. It's called 'The
Beauty Bar'. The gimmick is that they didn't actually renovate or redecorate the place. They stuck some beer taps in; otherwise it's just a dimly lit, abandoned hairdresser's. You
can sit along the wall under those ridiculous big hairdryers that look like helmets. There was also a cool place called McSorley's. It's an Irish bar, as you might have guessed, but
retains the nice elements of being an Irish bar - i.e. sawdust on a bare wooden floor, surly barmen, decor and fittings that might have been arranged by a blind person - and little of the cheesy stuff. They serve only two types of beer - dark and light. They're brewed by the pub. For some reason a pint comes divided between two half-pint glasses.

Of course, pints here are smaller than at home. Annoying.

Also, the decent bars are concentrated in a few small areas, well downtown from us - the two I mentioned are down on the lower east side. There's not such a thing as a local pub here. The closest we have is a Dominican-run diner that happens to be open late and serve beer.

We had our friends Clare and Simon, and their (now our) friend Sherlyn over for dinner on Sunday. (I went to college with Clare, back in my undergrad days. She's now working here, doing fMRI studies; Simon does similar stuff.) It being Easter Sunday, we thought we would serve part of a dead lamb - part of its leg, to be precise. So we stuck that in the oven and roasted it. It was great. Much wine was also consumed. Clare and Simon are well into their wine, so had
brought some really nice stuff. Clare also had made a chocolate and Guinness cake. It was a beautiful thing. An enjoyable night was had.

Things I have seen

- Morris dancers in Central Park. Why? They weren't English, either, they were locals, so it can't be dismissed as some homesick expats engaging in their bizarre national sport.

- A car chase. Seriously. One block from our flat. It wasn't a very exciting car chase, to be fair. There were two unmarked police cars trying to get another car to stop by flashing their
lights (they had one of those flashy-police-lights placed in the front window). He wasn't stopping, so one of the police cars accelerated in front of him and then braked, forcing him
to stop. At this point, anticipating an exchange of gunfire, I fled in the direction of the flat. I can only assume that the cops just shot the bloke.

- Mad people on the subway. Lots of them.

Things that haven't happened

- Being mugged. Actually, everyone is so friendly it's ridiculous. The area we're in is very working class and mostly Dominican and black, but I feel less nervous walking around than I have sometimes felt in Edinburgh or in Dublin when there were drunk/dodgy people around.
The other day I was in our local 'laundromat'. Apart from being conspicuous by the shade of my skin, which was considerably fairer than that of anyone else within ten miles, I also
clearly had no idea how to use the machines, or how laundromats work anyway. Everyone was falling over themselves to help me. A nice lady, whose expression suggested that she had me pegged for a harmless retard, pretty much did the whole thing for me.

Having said all that, I was taking a walk on my own one evening last week, and decided to head east, towards the Bronx. It was kind of nice for a while, but then I got onto this run-down
side-street - and here 'run-down' means seriously run-down - vacant lots, dingy buildings, bars on windows. There weren't very many people around, but those who were there didn't seem like they had much to do. I turned around and walked back.

- Doing touristy stuff. We do intend to. But it's also kind of nice to just live in a place, rather than feel like you're visiting it.

We'll be back in Ireland as of Saturday week, for my (remaining unmarried) brother's wedding. His friends are not renowned for their restraint, so it should be interesting. We'll be back
here on 30 April, I believe.

That's about all I can remember for now. Keep us updated about how you're all doing.
We'll lash some photos up v soon.

Oh and by the way, have I mentioned that our apartment building is a former residence of Duke Ellington? Cop that.