The weekend before last, Rudi and I I caught a bus up to New York City for the weekend. We arrived with just enough time to get down to our hotel, drop off our bags, and get back up to Broadway for a play.

The Lifespan of a Fact was in its second night of previews. Featuring only three actors — two-time Tony winner Cherry Jones, two-time Emmy winner Bobby Cannavale, and Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe — the show takes centers around, respectively, a magazine editor who assigns a star essayist’s piece on a Las Vegas suicide to a twenty-something intern for fact-checking. Armed with only the single sheet of notes that the writer has provided, the intern starts to discover the writer has “massaged” some of his facts in pursuit of a larger truth. It was well-acted and well-staged and if I did not love the ending, I did at least understand why it was what it was.

The show was put on at Studio 54, the famous nightclub turned Broadway theater, which was beautiful if slightly incongruous with its decor. The theater space itself is elegant, with ornate carvings on the walls and ceiling, but the stairwells and hallways have leopard-print carpeting. It boasted both a disco ball and a Tony in its entrance hall.

The next day, Rudi went off with some friends to celebrate the reason we’d all come to New York — Paul Simon’s final tour date. They had brunch and then went and got space right next to the stage, giving them a front row view of the show.

I do not love crowds, so I took a more leisurely approach to the day, taking in a street festival (way more cell phone accessories for sale than at D.C.’s street fairs) and then heading to the Green Market at Union Square, where I procured some snacks and bought some yarn from a wool vendor, Catskill Merino Sheep Farm. This is Saxon Merino Wool (175 yards of what they call sport weight and that I’d probably say is closer to DK) in the Blue Boy colorway.

After that, I headed out to Flushing, a neighborhood in Queens known for being the home of the Mets’ ballpark, the U.S. Open tennis facilities, and Corona Park, where both the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs were held. The show was good, but mostly the same as the other two we saw on the tour. He did bring a baseball glove and ball with him, since he grew up playing baseball nearby, and played catch with the audience. (On the third try, an audience member finally got the ball back to him.) His only special guest was singer Edie Brickell, his wife (wearing the red hat), who did the whistling for “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” He gave shout-outs to his high school and other landmarks. And he definitely got a little choked up toward the end of the show, as he realized he was ending an era.

On Sunday afternoon, my college roommate, Eri, came into the city, and we spent several hours hanging around the Financial District, where our hotel was. We checked out a merry-go-round on the riverfront and then ate some tasty bagels from a nearby shop for a late lunch, before Rudi and I had to catch our bus homeward.

Speaking of hotels, should you ever be looking for one in Manhattan, we definitely recommend the Wall Street Inn. The lobby was classic, the room spacious (even when not considered by NYC standards) and comfortable, and breakfast was included. While the front faces out on one of the city’s older winding streets, the back opens up onto a cobbled alleyway, which was filled with picnic tables from the local bars and restaurants, including a French bakery with award-winning croissants and delectable hot chocolates.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday asks which authors we’d love to meet. I’m fortunate to have both some amazing bookstores and the National Book Festival here in the city, so I’ve been able to meet many of my favorite living authors. I turn into a hair-twirling word-bungler around writers whose works I admire, giving me all of eternity to regret the interaction, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. If given a shot, I’d love to embarrass myself in front of:

1. J.K. Rowling
2. Toni Morrison
3. Jason Reynolds (I’ve come really, really close)
4. Katherine Paterson
5. Neil Gaiman
6. Brian Selznick
7. Naomi Novik
8. Erin Morganstern
9. Fannie Flagg
10. Rebecca Stead

(When I originally made the list, I accidentally put in twelve authors. It was hard to knock a few of them off the list, and I’d totally love to meet any of them!)

How about you? Which authors are you dying to meet?

My weekend began with a trip to the garden, where I spent time pulling out plants and trying to reestablish some order. The epazote is gone, along with at least one tomato plant that it had been providing support to. The crazy seven-foot-long tomatillo is gone, and I unearthed my first potato of the season in the process of yanking it out. The Sweet 100 tomatoes I grew from seed are still going strong and there are still more peppers to come. I need to get some greens in the ground soon or they won’t take hold until the spring and I should really harvest the basil soon, but the last big harvest I did went to waste, so I’d rather wait until I have time to make pesto.

I spent the afternoon in Georgetown, stopping by the library to exchange one book for another, and spending some time sitting in the sun before doing a little shopping. I bought work shoes (which I’m not fully convinced about yet), a pair of jeans (which Rudi tells me look good, but he might just have been trying to get me to leave the house without a second wardrobe change), and another bra (my third in a week).

Last night, Rudi and I went up to the Tenleytown neighborhood for their Art All Night celebration. We ate bibimbop (the restaurant was one of the stops), did the Time Warp with a band, and bought a painting of a D.C. bookshop.

My pumpkin mug full of tea and a slice of pumpkin spice kringle we bought at Trader Joe’s Friday night

Today included the farmers market, cleaning, two cultural street festivals (Turkish and Latinx), an hour’s worth of work, and the premiere of the tv show God Friended Me, which Rudi and I both enjoyed. I should have spent more time cleaning (my apartment has looked like it exploded thanks to all the recent floods and our moving stuff away from the problem area) or at least painted my nails so they’d dry while I read, but I didn’t. But my hot chocolate was tasty and the book — by an author whose work I’ve loved, but which didn’t appeal to me through the first few chapters — has finally picked up some steam.

A Turkish shadow puppet theater was one of the highlights of the festivals this afternoon. Known as Karagöz and Hacivat (after the two main characters), the tradition dates back 600 years and is passed on from puppet masters to apprentices. The puppeteer was not mic’ed, so he was really hard to hear over the music spilling over from the main stage, but as best as I could tell, this guy, Karagöz, came across this plant, drank from it, kept getting poked by invisible somethings, got pissed off and cut off all its leaves and them tried to yank the rest of it out. He’s currently sleeping off all the exercise. The bird, who, earlier flew off with a plant of its own (maybe the same plant), is annoyed by this and pecks at Karagöz before going off and complaining to a dragon who then summons some other flying creature who turns Karagöz into a goat. Hacivat shows up, also gets turned into a goat, gets turned back into a man, and then gets Karagöz turned back into a man. I’m glad I saw this after I did all the gardening…

October — filled as it is with birthdays and anniversaries (none of them mine), cider doughnuts, and fall foliage — awaits. I look forward to the beautiful things it holds.

We did not art ALL night, but we did art SOME of the night…