My Easter Weekend

[I started writing this two days ago but have gotten slammed lately with incredible amounts of work and unable to finish. I apologize for the un-timeliness.]

Friday night, I met up with my friend NM for dinner, and we were joined by my much-younger cousin who's a senior at West Point and one of his buddies. After dinner, three more much-younger guys joined us, and by the end, NM and I were really feeling the 16 year difference in our ages. It's hard for me to specify exactly what it was that left me feeling "old" about the conversation, but I was grateful to have camaraderie when NM turned to me as we left the bar/restaurant saying, "Wow, I feel OLD!"

On Saturday, I took advantage of the sunshine and rode my bike up to Central Park and back downtown. It's about 18 miles roundtrip. The weather looked beautiful, but it was actually a bit chilly, and although I wished I was wearing more than short-sleeves and bike shorts, I didn't want to turn back. So I kept moving and enjoyed seeing all the blooming trees in Central Park. There was a lot of pedestrian, roller-blading and cycling traffic to dodge, and the return trip was into the wind. I was sufficiently exhausted when I got home, but I did go out to meet some colleagues from work at an event in Tribeca that evening.

Sunday began with a great service at church, where we sang all the familiar, traditional hymns and had an egg hunt for the kids. Returning home, I crashed, falling asleep on the couch for a couple hours until my mom called. I felt drugged, so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open. But fortunately she woke me, because I had been invited to a piano-violin concert at a friend's in the Upper West Side.

This is a new friend, introduced to me over email by my cousin-once-removed. They went to university together many years ago, and at a recent family wedding, this cousin and my mom (first cousins) caught up. Because this part of the story is already too long, my cousin reached out and said I should absolutely meet his friend and his wife, who were fascinating, dear people. He is a professor of English, and she is currently on a grant in Italy, although I didn't catch what she's doing. The concert was fantastic: both instrumentalists are very talented and in sync with each other. Afterwards, my host served bouillabaisse with many kinds of seafood I don't usually eat! The flavor was delicious, but I'm a bit squeamish about texture and usually avoid squid and mussels, both of which were plentiful. I couldn't refuse, so I ate almost everything -- I couldn't do the little squid that looks like a mini-octopus. But I enjoyed the visit and conversation around the table immensely.