Padron | johnozed

It’s Monday and it’s a weird Monday. Some people are back at work, some people have off from work, and then there’s me. I could have stayed home but no I went to work. At first when the alarm clock went off at 6:00 I got out of bed, made some coffee and poured some cereal then I asked myself, ‘What am I doing?’

I knew hardly anyone from my company would be in and decided to go back to bed for some more sleep. No need to deal with the rush hour rush this morning. I turned off the alarm on the cellphone as well as the alarm clock and slept another hour or two.

Felt good, like I needed to sleep more. A different world at 10:00 than at 8:00. Walked down 42nd street surrounded more by tourists than office workers.

Got to the office, saw an email from Steve who I used to work with. He got married in September and went off to the Greek isles for his honeymoon. When he came back he found out that he was unemployed.

He is still able to use the office for whatever tasks he might need for looking for a new job. His wife gave him a gift certificate for the Cigar Inn, a new cigar store with a nice plush lounge in the back.

Steve asked me if I wanted to join him and I said yes. After creating about one hundred new files for the year 2009 and doing whatever odds and sods needed to be done I walked over to 52nd Street and Second Avenue where I met Steve outside.

We chatted with the owners before walking into the humidor. Steve left everything up to me since it seems I am known for smoking cigars. I tried to keep things on the cheap end and selected two Padron cigars.

Steve brought a bottle of Glenfiddich which is allowed and we got two glasses from the proprietor and we sat on very comfortable furniture and drank and smoked and shot the shit.

He’s unemployed now and felt he could sit there all day. I still had to show my face at work after a few glasses of scotch.

Steve and I finished up after a little over an hour and made plans to do this again next week, this time I’ll get the cigars. He can still bring the scotch though.

Got back to the office, nicely buzzed. Vivek was in and looking boyish. He’s going to be a dad in nine months. He told me to keep it a secret, but Steve told me while smoking our cigars.

I was only stopping by to pick up my stuff before heading to the Path train. Vivek said if I was in the neighborhood later this week to let him know so that we too can have some cocktails.

After all that I was on the Path train heading home, reading the John Lennon biography, which is quite good so far. Low key evening on the cards for tonight.

I told Vivek that I’d probably be off for the rest of the week but I may stop by. I don’t plan to get up at 6:00 tomorrow morning, in fact I just turned off my cellphone alarm just to make sure.

Just got back from a visit to McSwells where I had dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Paterson, as well as Meghan Taylor Mastro and the daughters Lily (mine) and Ruby (Jim’s). Almost wasn’t able to pull it off.

You see I was at work and as the day crawled along I just started feeling bad. Not ill necessarily, but more like feeling blue. I left the office around 1:30, no one was in really and the feeling in the office was ‘so what?’

So I walked across town, enjoying a Padron, listening to Girl Talk and still enjoying it. I left two voice mails for Bill and a text message but he didn’t get those until I was home, putting the kibosh on meeting up with him for a few minutes outside his building. Plus it was too cold to socialize outside.

I was home for a little while when I heard from Meghan. She was coming to Hoboken with Lily and Ruby and the Paterson’s. The Paterson’s are actually Ann Boyles and her husband Pat Paterson.

I explained how I was feeling and said I would try to make it after I took a much-needed nap. The nap definitely did the trick, deep sleep for almost two hours. Cleared my head of whatever malaise was troubling me.

It was almost interrupted by phone calls but I wisely shut the ringer on the phone off. It was dark when I woke up and mere moments after awakening, Meghan called telling me that she and the girls were walking up to McSwells to get some food.

I had to stop by the library to pick up Philip Norman’s biography of John Lennon and Sarah Vowell’s new book, The Wordy Shipmates. Quite timely since I finished the New Yorker already, finished Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine a couple of weeks ago, and though I took Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, about Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet out of the library I’m not as interested in it as I was when I first ordered it.

After trying not to break my neck on the unshoveled ice I made it to McSwells where Yo La Tengo where eating dinner before their third Hanukah show. Ann met me at the door since she saw me on the sidewalk walking by.

She still looks as adorable as ever and still the same Ann Boyles I knew way back when, still funny to be around. Pat Paterson, her husband is a really nice guy who I might have met before when he worked for Dreams So Real and Guadalcanal Diary among others back in the day.

Despite the last time I ate at McSwells I gambled again and ordered a burger, which was fine. Ann didn’t have problems with her burger but I think Meghan and Lily and Ruby had issues with their orders, as did Pat with the flavorless fish and chips.

After dinner we did a quick walk by the river, around where Maxwell House used to stand. They’re all condos now, no more big neon sign with a coffee cup, and no more ‘good till the last drop’.

Got some great pictures of everyone, the only who was missing was Jim who was minding the Guitar Bar. We walked back down Washington Street, Pat finding some thrown away stilts that he did a credible job of walking on for a couple of feet.

Alas, I had to head home and write this, they continued to collect Jim from the Guitar Bar and head back out to Glen Ridge. It looks like I will be going out to visit on Saturday and it seems quite possible that Bill will join me, so Ann will finally get to meet the man in my life, as I just met hers.

So here’s to Ann and Pat and Meghan, Lily & Ruby, and of course, Jim. Cheers!

And I said hello to Ann Boyles on behalf of bhikkhu and Harpy. She responded in kind.

There were some fairly large pics here, but not any more.
I’m still using Bill’s Mac and can’t figure out how to rotate certain pics. If you know how, please feel free to fix them and send them back to me so I will repost them. Can’t seem to use xnview on the Mac you see. Made everything easier….

well actually I went to my PC and loaded the pics onto a flash drive after ediiting on xnview on my PC….