Curious George Moments

If you've ever watched the Curious George TV show on PBS, you might relate to this a little. I like C. George pretty well because the background music is relaxing and not all hyper. Although George could use a little more supervision than what The Man With the Yellow Hat gives him (and you'd think the Man would have learned by now to watch that monkey), he's not disrespectful or belligerent, just unsupervised.

Anyway, it looks to me like George might live in NYC. There was an episode where he went looking for the source of some jazz music. Tuesday, we found that jazz music.

We rode into Manhattan with Paul. We went all the way to 168th street. That area is called Washington Heights. I had never been that far north before. We picked up this stroller for Heather Dy. It's a Phil and Ted's, probably the most common stroller you'll see here for a family with more than one kid. P & T's are everywhere here. I see several dozen a day. But in Dallas, you might see a couple of Phil & Teds per month, maybe more if you hang out at North Park.

So I found this brand of stroller at a good price on craigslist and we ventured WAY up to Washington Heights. Most everything I knew about NYC before we moved here I learned from TV. Washington Heights was mentioned on an episode of CSI NY once. I was expecting it to be a hip, funky, gritty sort of place. Maybe it is. All I care about is Starbucks (corporate, not licensed) and there was one across the street from the train stop so I was elated. We got the stroller and headed back south to Whole Foods at Columbus Circle.

Whole Foods was packed. There were about 100 people in line. But they have a good checkout system. Everyone seemed to act like this was normal, to be 75th in line at Whole Foods, so I went along with it and we were out of there in no time. Hannah asked what we would do next. Hmm, I thought about it. We could go home to do school and then go to the "squares park" (there are square tile things on the ground, so Hannah calls it the "squares park." But Central Park was right there.

I keep educational materials in our stroller backpack so we can do something productive while riding on the train. Paul says our stroller is a bit bag-ladyish, but it takes the place of an entire mini-van and it's contents. I asked Hannah if she wanted to do her schoolwork at the most famous park in the world that day. Of course she did.



Here's where the Curious George moment comes in to play. There was this 2 man jazz band playing at Columbus Circle. Their music carried over much of the park where we were. It was this great little soundtrack for our day. What fun.



Hannah got a GIANT pretzel and was gnawing on it while listening to jazz and chilling in Heather Dy's new stroller.




Homework, or in this case, parkwork is done. It's time for the tire swing! If you look in the background, you might notice a clump of people way back there. They were taking hula hoop lessons from this purple velvet pants wearing guy with hula hoops, African drums, and a boom box. There was a tiny kid, I mean little, who could hula hoop for days. Velvet pants man is what I call a hustler. Some might call him "self-employed." He is not quite a street performer. He doesn't show off for tips, he teaches folks who want to learn, how to hula hoop and they tip him if they feel like it worked. Just one of the many crazy things I've seen here.