Welcome to NYC!

I promised my sister Michi that I would dedicate this blog to my first 100 days in NYC...then, (you) and I can assess my progress thus far...let's hope we're all more generous than Fox News in this endeavor! I have to start with a few days in this post...I will keep up daily from here on out! DAY 1: Saturday, August 18th We dropped Peanut and Puck in NJ, and rolled over the George Washington Bridge into upper Manhattan for the first time. Rolling is an accurate verb here - it cost $12 to creep across this short span. Then, we dropped off two more cats, Paco and Cookie, at Paul's house (thank you, Paul!) and proceeded to make our way to Aisha's 5th floor walk-up in Harlem. Whew! In the process of parallel parking it, Josh (and this is a critical point) hit the car behind us, and scraped the bumper.I got out of the car, and was approached my an incredulous bystander..."yo, dawg!", shaking his head, arms raised in the anger embrace (you know - arms stretched, perpendicular to their torso, palms open, and the gesture looks like an invitation to a hug if you ignore the expression on the anger embracer's face?) He was calm, and didn't speak beyond that. His friends on the stoop were laughing like hyenas, and let us know that he just got this bumper replaced last week...Josh was sweating it, and trying to figure out what to do...he didn't want to exit the car. I said - "NO INSURANCE - we are doing this with cash..." The anger embracer was very calm and reasonable, and we paid him $300. We were briefly worried that we REALLY got fleeced until he quickly got into his car and drove off - whew! At least we were somewhat extorted by the right guy! (I think he could have buffed out those ELECTRIC BLUE marks from the paint off our rented SUV...) We unloaded and I laughed all the way through moving our possessions upstairs. Everyone was very welcoming, open and holding doors, introducing themselves, and saying hello to we rumpled FL urchins. Josh admitted that if I had hit the car, he would have been irritated...I was happy to pay $300 to have things go smoothly! We had more energy than we predicted, and decided to drop the SUV off at LaGuardia early, and as we drove away, freshly showered and unpacked, a neighbor who witnessed the fender bender cheerfuly yelled "Drive Carfeully!" Welcome to New York!