I woke up to pouring rain at 5:30 this morning. Oh yippee. I hate driving in the rain.

I know Dee is already pissed off at me, because I told her that I wanted to leave by 7:30. This isn’t just my early-bird tendency, it’s the fact that even leaving then wasn’t going to get us into the city much before noon.

I hate to waste a day.

So leadfoot-moi got us to New haven and the train with about a half hour to spare (there was no rotten traffic to speak of – lots of cars and trucks but it all kept moving), so this gave us time for a Dunkin Donuts stop.

Thank goodness. I was in desperate need of coffee. I grabbed a muffin as well.

Dee got some sort of huge bagel sandwich.

Anyways, we made the 10:08 train, which got us into the city at 11:30.

Taxis were a challenge. Michael had said that they were becoming more and more difficult to find, and it took us nearly a half-hour to get one. They have a new system outside of Grand Central Station, there’s a certain queue that you have to join to get a taxi, but every taxi that went by was full.

Obviously people were going a couple of blocks up to grab them, avoiding the queue. Of course Dee won’t walk that far. She especially won’t walk that far if she has a suitcase in her hand. This also ruled out taking the express subway to Times Square, which is what I would have chosen to do if I’d been alone.

There wouldn’t be any subways this trip. Not with Dee at least.

We finally did manage to get a cab, and it was driven by one of the best drivers I’ve ever experienced. He didn’t mess around at all. He took the most direct route to the hotel and did all he could to avoid the obvious traffic jams.

A rare breed, let me tell you!

Our room was actually ready when we got to the hotel. And it was damned ugly. And small. One of those places that if you opened the door you broke the window.

The air conditioning was not the best either. Which was going to be the pits in that the temperature was about 90 degrees and there was 90% humidity. You felt as if you were breathing through soup.

So I unpacked all the clothes I had bought, which were far too many for the number of days we were going to be there, and tried to pry Dee off the bed so we could go and check for tickets to other shows.

It was after noon so to her this just meant finding something to eat.

We stepped out of our hotel onto 8th Ave., took a left, and ran into John Lithgow. Dee was cracking up that we’d been on the street for two minutes and had already seen someone famous.

I insisted that we go and check the ticket desk at the Marriott Marquis first, to see if they had any Lion King tickets (they didn’t), then made her go to the Visitor Center in Times Square to check for the availability of tickets with "two-fers". There was nothing that we wanted.

This did not bode well for cheap tickets.

Next, we had to stop and get lunch. I had a burger, but realized later that I shouldn’t have bothered. I wasn’t all that hungry and I shouldn’t eat just for the sake of eating. I did manage to drown myself in iced tea.

We ate at "Friday’s" and I was struck by the difference in prices. I’d had lunch with my mother at Friday’s yesterday in the town where we live, and everything was at least four dollars cheaper. I know New York City is notoriously expensive, but I don’t think I’d ever done a direct comparison before.

This restaurant was right in Times Square, so I suggested that we walk to the Lion King box office on 42nd Street to see if we could get anything there. This was only about a three-block walk.

I thought Dee was going to collapse.

I should explain that Dee is about five feet ten inches tall and weighs over three hundred pounds (at least that would be my guess). Now I am also over weight by a good eighty pounds, and am about 5’8" tall. But I am apparently in much better shape. I take long strides when I walk and tend to keep a good pace. I think her steps are about the length of what an Oriental subservient woman used to have to take after her feet had been bound and she was trailing after her husband.

This meant that I have to keep stopping so she can catch up to me. This is not easy to do in the crowded streets of New York City.

So the box office trip was a bust, we could get tickets for a year from now. I don’t think so.

On the way back we went to the Warner Brother’s store, where I discovered that they now have Harry Potter clothes. Unfortunately they were only kid sizes, and even though Keith is only ten, he wears adult sizes in t-shirts and sweatshirts.

I did get key chains for both Keith and Matilda, they have their names on them and Bugs Bunny dressed like the Statue of Liberty. Key chains seem to be the thing for kids to hang on backpacks these days.

The street had become even more crowded and police barriers had been set up outside the MTV Studios, which face right onto 7th Ave. There were huge crowds of kids screaming and waving at Carson Daily, so they could be on TRL.

I got a kick out of it, Dee was irritated.

At this point the iced tea had decided to make itself known again, so I suggested we go back to the Marquis where I could use the restroom and Dee could cool off. We could also check with the ticket broker again.

There was a different woman at the ticket desk (the first one had been kind of snotty), and she said, "Oh I doubt it but I’ll call", and lo and behold! Two tickets for the Wednesday matinee!

Of course the price was enough to choke you ($138, the normal ticket price was $95 and there was a 38% surcharge). But this was the only way we were going to ever see the show, so we’d just have to not go anywhere pricey to eat.

We were both in the state of shock that we’d managed to get the tickets!

We had just about enough time to poke around in some of the theater stores that were along the way as we headed back to our hotel, but neither of us bought anything.

We cleaned up (well I cleaned up, Dee napped) and got changed for the theater and dinner. Then we got a cab (yawn) to take us to the restaurant called "Jekyll and Hyde, which is at 58th and 6th.

This is a "theme" type of restaurant. The façade of the building, which is sandwiched between other buildings, is decorated to look like a spooky place. Gargoyles and skeletons and stuff are scattered around. To get into the restaurant you are greeted by a "mad scientist" and led into an elevator. Then a screen pops up and there’s an interactive dialogue between the cadaver type guy who appears and the mad scientist. The ceiling of the elevator starts to close in on you.

The finally let you into the restaurant which is supposed to look like the interior of a castle or haunted mansion. There are three floors to the place, and each floor is decorated in a different way, to resemble a banquet room, library, dungeon etc.

There are paintings on the walls of evil figures from history and fiction (Rasputin, Jekyll and Hyde etc.), and the eyes move. As you have dinner there is a television screen that had spooky guys come on to tell bad jokes, and then the statues move and talk. We were right near a huge statue of Zeus who rotated and had eyes that glowed red. There was a Sphinx on the wall that spoke, and a cadaver type guy who played the organ.

Dinner was unremarkable, and I had a mandarin orange salad. It was huge and hard to finish.

It was an interesting place to eat. Kind of like being at Disney.

Dinner finished we need to grab a cab to Lincoln Center. Once again this was not easy. We ended up walking a block to Central Park to see if we could grab one there. It was still a challenge but we were eventually successful.

There were a couple of New York Cows on parade there, one was Madam Butterfly the other Mozart> I’m really enjoying these cows. There were a couple in Times Square as well.

Tonight’s show was "Contact". It won the Tony for best musical, Karen Ziemba won the Tony for best featured actress and Boyd Gaines won the Tony for featured actor.

And to all of the above I ask, "WHY??"

I really disliked this show, although Act 2 saved me from total hate.

Act 1 consisted of two separate dance segments, one of a woman dressed in garb of the 1800’s frolicking with two men, while she was on a swing. I didn’t get it. The second segment was about a married couple in an Italian restaurant, and he’s a total jerk. Sao while he goes back and forth to the buffet she has fantasies about the waiters and about killing the husband. Karen Ziemba was the woman.

I thought the whole thing was stupid.

Act 2 was better. This was Boyd Gaines as an account executive who is depressed and thinking of killing himself. Who then has this fantasy about dancing with a woman in a bright yellow dress. This is a segment that anyone who watches Rosie has seen. They dance to "Simply Irresistible" by Robert Palmer.

The choreography was great and interesting to watch, but that’s all the entire act was about and it lasted for about 45 minutes. It saved the show but…ick.

If you’re going to New York I’d say don’t bother with this one. And I love dance and musicals. But this did nothing for me. Dee was even more lost than I was.

It took ages to get a cab back to the hotel and Dee really irritated me about this. She kept flagging cabs that were occupied and was getting more and more irritated about it. The thing was that she didn’t want to walk to a better spot to try to get one. I was getting totally pissed off at her. It wasn’t as if we needed to go anywhere.

When we did get a cab he started to take us on a joy ride, so I told him to drop[ us in Times Square. Dee was pissed that she’d have to walk.

And of course it started to pour. It was downright Biblical.

We finally got to the deli that’s attached to our hotel and stopped for coffee and cheesecake. I really don’t like that place, but it was convenient.

We got back to the room and just sort of collapsed. I was exhausted, but then again I’d been the one who did all the driving.

Dee took a shower and we called it a day. I think I fell asleep in the middle of a conversation.