Date Nights

Given that we have the luxury of DINK (double income, no kids) at this point in our lives, Shawn and I are able to do a bit of dating still, or at the very least we go out. New York is a city, the city, whatever, and if we put forth a little effort we can usually find something to do. (However, that's not to say we always do. We spend plenty of nights at home.)

Friday night we had tickets to reasons to be pretty, a new play on Broadway. Shawn bought them as part of our anniversary celebration (1 year and 2 weeks - woo!) from the NYU discounted tickets sales office.

Get this - we were in the front row. Before you say "ooh la, la" realize that the front row is AA, meaning it's actually a row stuck in front of the real front row. And we were basically just below the stage and looking up the actors' nostrils. BUT it was a very cool way to see the show, even with a little residual neck stiffness. We felt "in" the action. It was really tremendous.

The play itself was great, probably one of the best I've ever seen. The story was great, the acting was great, even the scenery was great/clever. I would highly recommend it if you're in NYC, although be prepared for foul language, particularly in the first scene, which opens on a lovers' quarrel. Whoops - looking at the site, today is the last performance, so we're lucky we saw it when we did!!! I definitely will follow the career of the main actor and see if he stars in anything else. And I want to look into reading some of Neil LaBute's other works. The NYT review of this play is a good read.

Last night we stayed closer to home. The World Science Festival is in NYC this weekend, and there was a lecture about 2 blocks from our building (slowly getting into the swing of things - THAT's how people in NYC refer to their homes - not 2 blocks from my apartment but from my building).

We didn't have tickets (who plans? normally I do!), but the website said there were stand-by tickets available and to get in line at about 7:30. We walked over at 7, planning to get a quick bite beforehand and then get in line. There was already a line 30 deep, so we just got in line, hoping we could get in. The line grew behind us - there were probably 80 people total, in line for a science talk! And that doesn't include the 800+ who had pre-purchased their tickets!

Then it started to rain. Not heavily, but still. And no one left the line. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there! So there are science enthusiasts in the world/city. I actually was pained by the conversations going on around me though - a poor attempt to describe Schrodinger's Cat included.

The program started and THEN they started letting people in to purchase tickets for the seats remaining from the no-shows. We were literally the last two they let in, and we didn't get in until almost 8:30. That's an hour and a half I spent standing in line for this talk. The people behind us were probably really disappointed (they of the Schrodinger's Cat talk). And what was worse, there were a lot of empty seats inside! (At least another 15 or 20, not to mention standing room if they'd wanted to do that.) The talk lasted until 10 pm, and it was interesting enough (the idea of multi-verse instead of just one universe). Even all the talk of that possibility doesn't shake my belief that God did in fact create it, as well as create us humans and our ability to figure stuff like this out. It really is awesome, in the true sense of the word.