Rainey Blogs on Some Days

Something I miss by living in New Jersey is the opportunity to watch a storm blow through. Right now as I write this on Labor Day weekend, I am in Leesburg, Florida (near Orlando), sitting beside a screened in patio and pool at my father-in-law’s house. I am protected from the rain by an overhang. The rear of the house overlooks a cow pasture. Hues of dark and light gray clouds bulging with water are moving across the sky just above the pasture. The crackle of lightning and the subsequent thunder in the distance remind me once again about nature’s power as the wind hisses through the trees and drops of rain, at times heavy and at times light, make disappearing circles in the pool. There is a raw beauty I love in a storm. I am mostly unaware that I do not often get to watch storms. When I am in Florida, a rain or storm blows through nearly every afternoon, sometimes just taunting us with a threatening sky that does not deliver any rain, and at other times a downpour descends from the ...

Recently I picked a little French restaurant in the NoHo section of New York City for us to go to on my birthday called Le Philosophe . It turned out to be quite an ironic choice, albeit an accidental one. Earlier in the same week, I had attended my daughter's middle school soccer game in Haledon, New Jersey. I arrived in the second half to find our team well ahead and to find the other team with two players on the other wearing Islamic headscarves, including the goalkeeper. (I am uncertain if there is any connection to the headscarves and our soccer victory.) I do not recall thinking to myself, "Well, if we were in France, I don't think they would be doing that!" although earlier in the year I had read the first chapter of a book called Why the French Don't Like Headscarves , which is about the ban on Islamic women from wearing the hijab , or headscarves, in France. I guess it turns out that having a secular society doesn't necessarily correspond to havin...

My wife and I finally broke out of our routine about three weeks ago on a Monday night and went on a date to see a one-woman off-off Broadway show called “ Grapefruit ,” which was about a woman's experience with a tumor the size of one of those special fruits. The sobering subject of the play notwithstanding, I was reminded of why I love to live near New York City. While driving into the city on the West Side Highway, I finally was stopped at a traffic light for the first time in the 50s and looked over to my right to see two guys riding on a bicycle built for two. The person in front sat on seat that was the normal height. However, the rear of the bike had been modified so that the seat for the rider in the back was about six feet in the air, meaning the rider was sitting high in the air pedaling away. I had never seen anything quite like it, and the only thing that could have made it better would have been if the one in back had been wearing a Roman gladiator helmet with ...

Today I'm eating lunch out again since Marcia gave me $25 yesterday and told me to start doing it. It's hard to bring your lunch when the temperature is only in the 20s and your lunch sits in a vehicle all morning, leaving it nice and chilled by the time you eat it. So today I get to splurge on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Yesterday I ate at a Subway. Today I am at the Elim Cafe located on Lexington Avenue between 64th and 65th streets. The temperature has been freezing cold this week, and the problem with both restaurants is that each has small seating areas near the front door. On both days, I've been getting blasted with arctic air each time someone comes in or leaves. This is made worse by the way New Yorkers come in and out of a restaurant, acting as if they are all somebody . ( I know, some of them are.) You can see this in the way they fling the doors wide open and strut in, as if every one of them is Brad Pitt or Angeline Jolie. It would be nice if people wou...