The Walking Exclamation Mark

My favorite part of eating lunch is Bryant Park is watching all of the proper execs in their dry cleaned and pleated pinstripes take off their gleaming galoshes and cashmere socks and lay, expensive suit jacket, gelled quaff and all, back flat on the grass. They get wrinkled. They get dirty.

And they don't give a ^%$#.

It's lunch break, and that's the beauty of it. It's half-time. You made it through the first half of the day, the worst is over. And being in a little patch of green, I mean--- I'm not even talking central park here. This is just the New York Public Library. But to have this clearing space amid the endlessly obnoxiously jutting towers of midtown--- it's quite an experience. One I don't mind repeating every day.

It's been sunny lately. I spend the whole hour shoes off and face up, trying to stay out of the pale. But i've already lost the summer tan. And that's the first sign. Winter. It's-a comin'.

I wonder what fall will be like in Europe this year?

SO I picked up my passport and Jamesi's (Jessies nickname) passport. They are done. They are beautiful. Today was probably the happiest day i've had in a few weeks. One month to departure. I feel like a walking exclamation mark.

Ohhhhh the world is so big and so round and so shiny.

I'm so excited to discover it.