Knitting and a trip to Broadway

Really sorry to not have posted for two weeks at least. Seems that between caring for Veeka in the afternoons, the constant jobhunting, a lot of freelance assignments and multiple errands of one sort or another that I can't fob off on a spouse, my days fly by. I have included a photo of one thing Veeka learned to do in September and that was to knit. I can't afford after care at the moment, so I signed her up for four inexpensive knitting lessons at A Tangled Skein, the local yarn shop. Catherine, her instructor, was more than patient, as she usually does not take on students less than 8 years old. But Veeka is quite good with her hands and is becoming quite the artist so I am trying to develop that side of her.This past weekend was more eventful than planned; I got an assignment from the WPost to do a Style section story on Adam Bellow, a publisher of Harper-Collins' new conservative book imprint: Broadside. Fortunately the Mattinglys - longtime friends living near Baltimore - agreed to care for Miss Veeka while I was gone overnight so I left their home at the crack of dawn Saturday and took the bus (budgets are tight at the Post) to New York. I met Mr. Bellow at a restaurant on the Upper West Side and had the best time talking with him for several hours before we decided to call it a day. The restaurant where we met - the Metro Diner at 100th and Broadway was a place I'd visited a year before and really liked. That night, I knew I could stay at the hotel and catch up on my magazines or....see if I could get into a Broadway play. I headed down to the Gershwin Theater - which is across the street from Times Square Church - and stood in line for last-minute tickets to "Wicked."For those of you not in the know, "Wicked" is the story of Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West before Dorothy arrives in Oz - from the viewpoint point of Elphaba. Amazingly, I got one of the last ones and the seat was a beauty - four rows from the front, so the performers were nearly on top of me. I'd never been to a Broadway play and am not sure if I'll ever get back to one but it was one lovely way to spend a Saturday evening on a rainy October night.