Perfect birthday!

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Sue In The City

(BTW – how relevant that my 200th post should be today?)

Birthdays are generally a big thing for me. After all, it’s the one day a year that’s all about me, where calories don’t count and where I have the right to demand that things go my way! It’s the perfect day and it only happens once a year.

This year is no different – except for one glaring void…John’s away on business all week. We first figured out that he’d be gone over my birthday about three weeks ago and my two days of (mostly) solid crying did nothing to help ease the burden of guilt that I laid upon him for deserting me on my special day. Milking it with tearful eyelid flutters and long, sad sighs did nothing to make it easier on my beloved, either! After a day or two, though, I got over it and told him not to worry about it. This trip was a super important one for him and I was not going to be a complete spoilt brat. After all – I’m only turning 29. If it was the 30th, it would probably be a different story!

So life carried on as usual, I sent an email around last week to a couple of New York friends to ask them to join me for dinner this evening and decided to make the most of my alone-in-New-York-birthday. I figured I would just amuse myself.

Fast forward to Valentine’s Day (this past Saturday). John cooked the most delicious breakfast, surprised me with the sweetest card, my favorite perfume (Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb) and a beautiful bunch of flowers. Still basking in the glow of V-day-inspired romance, I got a little suspicious when, at 4pm, he hadn’t gone grocery shopping yet for the dinner he had promised to cook me. When I asked him what his plan was for this romantic dinner, he shrugged and said that he had all the ingredients he needed. ‘Mmmmmmmmm….’ I thought. At around 6pm, John said that he had been hiding the fact that we were actually going out to have dinner somewhere special. Yay! ‘Wear something nice,’ he said.

I slipped into a slinky black number and donned some high heels for the occassion. We hopped in a cab and ventured downtown to the East Village where we were dropped off at Supper, one of our favorite restaurants. ‘Perfect’, I thought. That was, until we descended the stairs down into the basement.

SURPRISE! I walked into the private room and had almost all of my favorite New Yorkers in one room! Including my ex-Cape Town-flatmate, Sam, who had flown in from Miami for the party. In Sam’s words, I ‘cried like I was on Oprah’! The evening went from amazing to beyond as we had dinner and I had time to chat with everyone and figure the pieces out – John had organized it all without me ever having any idea! – and then, the highlight…a Magnolia Bakery Red Velvet Cake with my name in frosted icing! Could it get any better?

Yes it could…after dinner we left the restaurant for a short walk and ended up at a Kareoke bar we’d been to before, where we spent the rest of night belting out all the ’80′s favorites, including some key Dirty Dancing numbers, and John’s special performance of ‘Can’t Touch This’! Perfect, perfect, perfect.

This morning has been truly special too – I’ve had phone calls from friends in London, Windhoek and Cape Town and have been truly spoilt with all the emails, Facebook messages and sms’s. Icing on the cake of the day (so far) – another beautiful bouquet of flowers from John and one from my mom – all the way from Namibia.

I must have done something right to deserve all this. I am so tremendously lucky.

Loving the opera

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Sue In The City

Without a doubt, one of the highlights of our December trip to Sweden was going to see Tosca at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. During one of the breaks we enjoyed champagne in the Gold Room – a magnificent ballroom, entirely covered in goldleaf – including all the walls and the entire ceiling! Elaborate mirrors reflected into each other, making this hall seem never-ending.

We were lucky enough to have seats in one of two ‘boxes’ (the other is reserved for the Swedish Royal Family, who unfortunately did not attend the same show as we did) – and one of the notable facts of sitting in a ‘box’ is that it is easier to be seen than it is to actually see! That said, the opera is mostly about the music – enjoying the harmony of a full orchestra merging with the magnificent voices on stage. Aside from the ocassional mini opera my parents dragged us to in Windhoek when we grew up, this was my first true opera experience. One I will always treasure.

Here in New York I have befriended a Metropolitan Opera employee and it seemed that my lucky stars were aligned last night as he offered Annie and I complimentary tickets to go see Eugene Onegin. While the scale of the Met is beyond any other opera house I’ve ever been in, the same gold-leaf was present on the ceiling, upholstered red velvet wall panels and exquisite crystal chandeliers gave a soft, comforting grandeur quality to the massive space.

And the opera? Oh…the opera. I think I’ve fallen in love with the hard-headed Eugene and his barotone voice. Actually, I think I’ve fallen in love with the opera in general. What can be better than having people with incredible talent perform live…just for you? And nothing can beat having had this experience in two of the most incredible cities in the world? I’m a lucky girl. (Sung in mezzo soprano tone, by the way…)

Embracing the cold

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Sue In The City

When life in the city gets to you, sometimes it’s time to just get out. And that’s exactly what we decided to do yesterday when we finally went cross-country skiing with Outdoor Bound, the same company I went hiking with in Fall. We once again had the best day, met the most interesting people and both John and I are now Outdoor-Bound-Hooked.

We got up at 6am (on a Saturday morning that equates to one of the biggest sins, right?) and, after buying a couple of bottles of water and some ham/cheese sandwiches for lunch, we took the train down to 72nd Street where we met up with the rest of the group. Fifteen of us squeezed into the van and set out towards the north of Manhattan, ending up two hours away in a beautiful area called the Catskills. Pure white snow, frozen mini waterfalls and silence that was deafening greeted us as we pulled out of the cozy vehicle and lined up to try on our rental boots and get the right sized poles and skis. After a quick intro session, John and I took off on our own and I was lucky enough to get a personal tutor session with a semi-professional cross-country skier (John completed the world’s longest ski race with his dad a couple of years back, so he knows all the tricks in the book). It didn’t take me long to get the hang of it – transferring my weight with a little bounce in between, using my arms to help propel and taking long, slow strides. It was awesome! All the fun of regular skiing, without the fear of the dreaded downhill. I loved it.

Of course I fell – countless times – but it was always with a big laugh and usually ending up with snow inside my jacket (or pants or shoes!), then getting right back up and carrying on. We ended on a rather difficult course with loads of uphills (how do one ski uphill? you might ask…with difficulty, I’ll tell you!) and the invariable downhills where I mostly fell my way down or skid towards the bottom on my butt. One particular uphill totally got the better of me and I spent about 10 minutes flat on my belly in deep snow, trying to wangle my body around and untangle my long skies, all the while, trying to minimize the amount of snow making its way into my ski jacket!

The highlight of the day was definitely when we got to a little barn where they kept huge tubes that you use to sled downhill. John and I squeezed our butts into one of these and yelped our way down that hill about five or six times, laughing till I almost cried. We got home around 7.30 last night – utterly exhausted, but feeling more alive than we had in weeks. Sometimes all you need to remind you of how fabulous life is, is some time in nature. Get the exercise endorphins flowing, inhale some clean (if cold!) air and use those muscles…your mind will thank you for it.

Today my butt, thigh, arm, back and neck muscles hurt and I have a headache from landing particularly hard on my sitting bones on one of the many tumbles I took, but I feel great. And I once again have decided to love winter. (Ha ha ha – of course we’ll have to speak again on Wednesday after the big storm that is predicted has hit us!)