Delayed Gratification

Well, it’s another busy start to the work week for me here in New York. Hope you had a lovely weekend. Mine was was quite low key, lower key than I would have liked if I am honest. I spent the day on Saturday cleaning my apartment and then met Nigel and Azniv at 7.30pm for dinner at Agave on 7th Avenue South. I haven't seen either of them in a while so I was looking forward to us catching up as usually we hang out for hours nattering away, so I was most disappointed when, with dinner over by 9.15pm, Nigel announced he was heading home!! Um....okay!! You're heading home at 9.15pm on a Saturday night???? 9.15pm!!!

Was it something I said??

He was just tired apparently, but I was quite disappointed that my Saturday evening was going to be cut short. Had I known he planned to leave so soon I would have suggested to Azniv in advance that she and I go on for coffee after dinner - she doesn't drink so she wasn't interested in going to a bar - but she'd literally just had one at the end of her meal when Nigel said he was heading home, so she and I headed home too. Thinking back on it I should have just gone to see a movie, I’m bursting to see that new French thriller Roman de Gare and this would have been an ideal opportunity, instead I watched Graham Norton on BBC America and then tumbled into bed.

Not to worry, I suppose it was a good thing I had an early night since I had to spend a good bit of Sunday in the office finishing up odds and ends that I wouldn't be able to get to on Monday, due to a last minute trip I had to make to see a client in Philadelphia. Things are so busy in work at the moment; it's almost all I can think about, [although Catweazle is staying top of mind due to frequent emails and texts ;-)]. We have an urgent project with a quick turnaround for Chief-Client-Bigwig-Top-Banana as a result of last Thursday's meeting with them in New York. On top of that I still have to complete my existing deliverables and prepare a presentation for the conference I'm going to in California next week. Don't feel too sorry for me though honey bunches, I have the lush fest with Emma and Debs to look forward to since we'll be living it up in wine country for a few days post conference - if anyone has good recommendations for Napa Valley vineyards I'm all ears - followed by an evening in San Francisco before flying back to New York the next morning. No uncivilised red eye flights for us ;-)

A few weeks after I get back from Napa I have a long weekend of fun and frolics in South Carolina planned with Catweazle - I know, I am a total slapper, date #6 and we're already at the stage of romantic mini-breaks ;-) I'm really looking forward to it - no, not just for THAT reason, honestly, minds in the gutter - it should be a fab trip, not just because I will get to spend time with Catweazle, that goes without saying, but because Charleston is a city I've wanted to visit for years following a brief trip to Savannah and Hilton Head in 2002. Our visit also coincides with the famous Spoleto Festival - I know, I'd never heard of it either - which is supposedly fab!! I couldn't visit and not check out the festival so today I bought us tickets to see "Monkey: Journey to the West" which the festival blurb describes as “an inspired marriage between the arts of ancient China and contemporary Western popular culture, Monkey: Journey to the West is a dazzling adaptation of a 400-year-old classic of Chinese literature. In Monkey, a cast of more than 60 Chinese opera performers, gravity-defying acrobats and martial arts performers animate the fabled peregrinations of the Monkey King in a heady mix of adventure, mystery and magic.”

All well and good, but what really tipped the balance for me was that Damon Albarn - love Blur and Gorillaz - wrote the music, ‘an exhilarating mélange of east and west, pop and classical’ and his Gorillaz collaborator, Jamie Hewlett, is "responsible for the fantastical visual concept of the show which includes animation and literally hundreds of enchanting costumes."

I saw the Gorillaz perform at the Apollo Theater in Harlem a few years ago and they were superb, so I'm really thrilled to have tickets to see the Monkey thing. It's certainly something to look forward to as I keep my nose pressed to the grindstone this week.