Kristin has been away from the internets for 36 hours. (Which at this point is more like 40, since she brought it up right as we were sitting down to eat.)

Sushi was had, Buffistas were seen, Kristin's birthday was toasted! Now back to packing...

Sweetie, I know you like to get a jump start on things, but the F2F is still, like, months away.

I had an indescribably wonderful time hanging out in NYC with the Buffistas. Especial thanks goes to Trudy, who hung out with me Monday before dinner and all day Tuesday. She also took me to get a (OMFG!cheap!andgreat!) manicure on the Upper West Side and then on to see The Gates in Central Park, which was amazing. I have about 40 pictures from wandering around which I will upload once I have my compact flash reader back again (which won't be until at least a week from Sunday).

It was so great that so many people came out to sushi on Monday (despite my poor directions and inevitable lateness). I loved getting the chance to see everyone and to hang out for a bit. After dinner, a few of us headed through the (extremely cold and torrential) rain to a great little dive bar and played what may go down in history as the Worst Games of Pool Ever. Wow. We were bad. We actually divided our teams by determining who was "bad" and who was "disgustingly bad". The high point of the game was when we were all distracted by the tragedy of the woman in what looked to be a cheap Halloween bellydancer costume who came into the bar plopped herself on a stool splayed wide open, and then had other people take digital pictures of herself. Yes, I said that was the high point. However, we had a great time and laughed a lot at our atrocious games.

It was wonderful seeing you!

I won't be online reliably for some time. I plan to keep up in this thread as best I can, but I will have to skip all the other b.org threads when I get back, so if anyone is looking for me, please drop me an email. I will be trying to check it at least a few times next week.

ETA: Vortex, sorry I didn't get back to you until today. Backsent.

SPAMspamspamspamSPAMspamspamspam to add...

Why yes, Spamalot is in previews now in NYC and there are tickets available...mostly for Monday and Wednesday nights in early March...anyone want to come with me?

ETA: And if early March is too soon, the regular show opens on the 17th (Quote from TDS from Eric Idle: "We figured it would be best to open when everyone was already drunk.") and goes on from there. I would love to meet a whole bunch of people if you're interested. It is a tad pricey...but Holy Grail!

And it's good!!! Go see it!!!

I'm thinking now I might look into one of the last two weeks in March--I'm going to have to poke around a bit more for tickets and see who else is interested. I may need to just buy a ticket, announce the date, and see if anyone else shows up! I'm totally (tentatively) psyched.

There wouldn't be a show on Sunday 3/6? Becaus eI will be in NY for a wedding that weekend and I know SUnday is as yet unscheduled.

I just checked, -t. Bummer! No, no show on the 6th. You can get more details and pull up a calendar of dates if you follow the link from their website (I'm linking you to the low bandwidth site to avoid the loud noises on the high one: [link] ).

Thanks, Kristin. Looks like it won't happen for me unless I change my flight.

Dear lord, we're going to be surounded by actuaries at the NOF2F. The Society of Actuaries spring meeting is there on May 23-24.

I wonder if I can get my company to pay for my already purchased tickets? Of course, that would mean I'd have to stay another two days and actually go to actuary meetings...