My Birthday Week started with a quick trip to New York on Monday and Tuesday – being sure to be back in time for the big day on Wednesday. Diana has often commented on how heavy my suitcase is when I travel with an extra pair of shoes and keep the shoe trees in them. She attempted to remedy that with my first gift on Sunday night – lightweight shoe trees and a start of the week card.
When I opened my work bag on the plane on Monday morning I found that an interloper had snuck another card and gift inside. A perfect snack was nicely wrapped – caramel filled M&Ms.
On the flight I watched the movie “Breathe” and really enjoyed it. The story is of Robin Cavendish (played by Andrew Garfield) and his wife Diana (played by Claire Foy of “The Queen” fame) and their refusal to give up in the face of Robin being stricken with polio at the age of 28. Robin is confined to a wheel chair and given months to live and not permitted to leave the hospital ward. With the help of an inventor friend they develop a wheelchair with a portable breathing apparatus and spend many happy years traveling abroad, raising their child, and helping other patients.
The work dinner that I had arranged for Monday evening was canceled and so I made a trip up to the Jazz Standard where the Mingus Orchestra was playing. As I was walking from the subway stop to the club, I noticed that I was close to the Flatiron building. This is a well known New York landmark that I hadn’t seen yet – so a quick detour seemed in order.
Upon completion in 1902, it was one of the tallest buildings in the city at 20 floors high. The building sits on a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street. The name “Flatiron” comes from its resemblance to a cast-iron clothes iron.
The Mingus Big Band has won several Grammy awards for their live recordings at the Standard and so I had high hopes for the sister orchestra. Unfortunately, the show was very disappointing. The sound was great as usual but the musicians appeared to have come together minutes before the show and seemed to be sight reading music for the first time. There were clearly several very talented musicians in the orchestra – particularly the guitar player and French horn player – but the overall effect was very underwhelming. Oh well, it passed the time on a Monday evening just fine.
I was staying at a new hotel this time called the Downtown Association. This is an old private club in the Wall Street area that recently added 20 guest rooms. The bar/clubhouse is like walking into an old style, private club and I enjoyed it very much. I was entertained to find a picture of the Flatiron building on the wall just outside my hotel room.
Tuesday was a full work day – breakfast meeting, long sessions, and a late flight that got me home just in time to celebrate my birthday and find some nice treats waiting beside the bed.
I had work meetings most of my birthday but did hear a lot of early morning activity in the kitchen and then caught sight of the start of a pavlova in the oven.
After work finished, I was relaxing on the couch and listening to music when some surprise guests showed up for dinner – Patty and Brent. They brought one of their typically humorous cards.
McD, with an assist from Brent, put together a delicious birthday dinner – steak, scallops, mushroom medley (featuring an array of very interesting varieties), and Wahba risotto. All followed by the delicious pavlova birthday cake.
The observant amongst you may have noticed the “Keith’s Spirit Concoctions” barrel lurking in a few of these pictures – that was one of my excellent gifts from Diana. It was accompanied by a book of recipes for barrel aging cocktails. I’m priming the barrel now before experimenting with my first recipe – thinking that’ll be barrel aged negroni.
On Thursday I finished watching a movie on Netflix that had caught my attention. “The King of New Orleans” follows a taxi driver, Larry Shirt, whose passengers are the city’s tourists, socialites, musicians, housekeepers, bizarre characters and reporters. One of those passengers is Bobby Cohn, a Harvard student home from school and in the midst of a personal crisis. Larry and Bobby develop a bond that ultimately survives Hurricane Katrina and is strongly based on a love for the city that they both call home. This was one of those quiet and unassuming movies with a big heart that I enjoy.
The other big news this week arrived on Thursday. Diana is most likely going back to work – the details are all being finalized.
McD had a great idea on Friday afternoon – why don’t we go up to Adriatica and try out the happy hour at Gregory’s restaurant (there are only a few more Fridays before she’ll be back to work)? Who could argue with that suggestion? Gregory was relaxing when we arrived and we quickly put him to work cooking up some of his excellent mussels and a side of lobster risotto. Joe (our waiter at Gregory’s for years) took great care of us and we learned that Lydia (Gregory’s wife) shares the same birthday as I do.
I loaded my birthday CDs (an excellent annual tradition by McD) into Penelope for the drive to our workout on Saturday morning. Diana did a fabulous job of selecting songs to remind us of the concerts we enjoyed in the last year. Check out the retro vinyl record looking CD.
Apparently my 54 year old brain hasn’t deteriorated too much yet as I was able to set a new crossword record at our coffee break after our workouts – much to Diana’s frustration.
I transitioned birthday week privileges over to Alicia on Friday evening. She’s 18 this Sunday! Diana took us to dinner at Perry’s steak house on Saturday evening to celebrate since there are plans to attend the local McKinney Memorial Day concert on Sunday night. Alicia enjoyed being pampered with a candle and rose petals, tuna tartare, a special steak and desert trio.
Poor Diana has been very busy this week trying to accommodate all the birthday plans and as usual she rose beautifully to the challenge.
Here’s a Ray Charles instrumental that I found this week when looking for Humble Pie’s “Black Coffee” and enjoyed:
And here’s some excellent John Coltrane to round out the birthday week post:
routine activity was dinner with Patty and Brent on Friday night. The food was amazing as usual with smoked pork and chicken and an excellent sauce for the pork. They were celebrating their wedding anniversary on Saturday and so we picked up some funny gifts at the Groovy Coop in downtown McKinney after coffee on Friday. Patty loves cats and so this towel seemed appropriate.
This week started in Nashville and finished up with Campbell’s graduation in San Diego – a very busy and proud week indeed.
The group activity on Tuesday night was a pool tournament in a hall just off the main Broadway strip. My partner and I won our first two games and were in good position for the playoffs but quickly lost to some real hustlers.
We landed in San Diego in the early afternoon, checked into the hotel, freshened up and headed out for dinner. I chose a place called the Wine Vault and Bistro on India St from some online research and we were both very happy with the choice. The restaurant is only open Thursday through Sunday and has a very inexpensively priced three course dinner and wine pairings on Thursdays. I started with a sausage and black lentil appetizer, then a roasted cauliflower dish (keeping the vegetarian theme going), and finished with a mille-feuille dessert. Each of the nine choices had a separate wine pairing and so we selected based as much on the wine as the dishes. We learned that most of the regular customers were on a wine tour of Italy and so signed up for the tour mailing list.
Starlite had great cocktails and food in a beautifully designed retro atmosphere. I enjoyed a buratta and ratatouille dish to keep the veggie theme going.
Campbell and Molly met us for dinner at Craft and Commerce in Little Italy – just across the street from Harbor where we had met them for brunch on our previous visit with Kris and Cat. We sat outside and were warmed up by a small fire pit in the center of the table which seemed like a bit of a liability. Again the food and cocktails were very good. I had a mushroom and buratta tart to finish out my vegetarian weekend. My Dad would not have appreciated the very crispy carrots and other vegetables.
On Wednesday night I tried out a new jazz club that I heard about from a gentleman at the table next to me at Dizzy’s a few weeks ago for the Christian McBride Big Band show. The Jazz Standard is located at 28th and Park Avenue and an easy subway ride from the Wall Street area. It’s in the basement beneath the Blue Smoke barbeque restaurant and is structured as a supper club similar to Birdland. They had a number of my favourite whiskey drinks on the menu and I paired that with a yummy shrimp etoufee.
pianists since the bebop era. He taught piano and keyboard harmony at Rutgers University for over 25 years and now teaches at Juilliard. Some of his best albums were recorded with Stan Getz in the late 1980s and I highly recommend “Bossas and Ballads – The Lost Sessions”. I was very fortunate to have decided to investigate the Jazz Standard on the week when Barron was playing. Here’s a Brazilian themed song he played – I really wasn’t in that bad a seat but recording is highly discouraged and I needed to be stealthy with my phone resting on the table.
her trip there with us. This was a funny experience – after two complete tours around the store and asking artists manning booths about the stand Anne had been at and getting no help at all I caught sight of one of the items in a display case with a name on it. Consulting the website told me that the stall had been a one week only “pop-up” store. I was able to order online – what a lot of detective work for what I thought would be a simple purchase.
The band was the Eric Reed quintet and I enjoyed them very much. The music was quite similar to Kenny Barron the night before but with more slower, lyrical and emotional content. I really enjoyed one of Reed’s compositions named “Wish” that he wrote after the death of his father about all the things he wished he could still discuss with him.
On Friday morning I headed out for a leisurely breakfast (trying to follow the Jazz Standard coaster advice) and was amazed at the backwardness of the trash bags stacked up on the sidewalks – apparently Friday is trash day in the Wall Street area. It’s also interesting that it’s acceptable to dispose of small appliances with regular trash.
Detectives bookstore. All of the books that we picked up seemed either a bit too out there or too depressing. The only one I found that sounded appealing was one that Diana reminded me we had bought on our last visit and I haven’t read yet. We moseyed across the street to Boulevardier and watched the Kentucky Derby (neither of our picks won) and enjoyed their amazing tartare (complete with quail egg).
crossword, and pool time. I put a new tablet stand that Amazon had just delivered to good use in watching the New Orleans Pelicans versus Golden State Warriors basketball playoff game by the pool.