It's the busy spring season, which means I had to wake up at around 7 yesterday to be in the city for a 9am tour. It was a great group with tons of energy from Wisconsin and I was excited about taking them on an extended walk through central park; the first time I've been able to do this this year. They were a choir and did a really lovely rendition of star spangled banner for a jazz saxophonist who was performing in the middle of the park. Afterwards they were excited to go through Harlem, which is really hard to make interesting. I've always thought I had enough material to make it cool for kids who are interested, but this is rarely the case. The most you can do is make rural American students feel guilty about not knowing African American history. This applies even to the engaged Music groups. I ran out of content halfway through. The same thing happened as I came down the East side of the Park, and that's when I really started sweating.
Nonetheless, when I finished at noon, they were so grateful to have me as their guide and I recieved a tip from the company as well as a cash tip from the tour leader and another small cash tip from another parent in the group. Somewhat bewildered, I got some really heavy thai food and an equally heavy pumpkin spice square from a bakery and ate lunch in Central Park. My next tour was at 2 so I had plenty of time to chill, play GTA: Chinatown wars and even take a nap if i wanted to. I guess I spent too much time hunched over my nintnedo ds because i didn't feel particularly relaxed when 2 rolled around.
This next tour was a 3 bus move for a 2 hour tour, which is a pretty cramped amount of time with late afternoon traffic. My Dad was the lead guide, meaning he was supposed to have all the information, but he didn't have any. I connected with the group leader who was frazzled, running half an hour late and wanted to see everything. I told her we would have to time for Central Park and maybe a bit of 5th avenue before going their 4pm dinner reservation at planet hollywood (you know a group has poor planning when the only dinner reservation they could get is for 4pm).
The kids were from Richmond, Virginia, and generally, dicks. Making gay jokes and siren noises to passing joggers and bikers they were pretty damn immature and I'm glad i wasn't with them for longer than 90 minutes.
I went home and decided to take a nap at about 6pm before a relaxed friday night. Maybe I'd go see a movie. I woke up at 10:45 with 3 missed calls from my girlfriend. Terribly upset, thinking that I was mad at her, with some miscommunication about an idea that we were going to hang out, she suggested that we shouldn't see each other any more. I was quick to realize that she was in a bit of an emotional fit that had little to do with me and more to do with chemical cycles and the fact that the electricity has been shut off in her apartment for the past two nights. I told her to come over.
When she arrived, she apologized for overreacting and brought beer, cookies and leftover indian food. We watched bits and pieces of the last two Matrix movies and slept in.
Punchline: you know its a recession when you're picking up chicks because you have electricity at your place.
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