Saturday, we went into New York to see a show. Hoshi was wearing her brand-new Jersey plates, which we had finally gone and picked up earlier that morning at the DMV. It was strange seeing her in that sickly yellowish color grade instead of the strong DC blue and white and red. But ugly as the NJ plates are, they do manage to give us a sense of "belonging" here. Because now when people randomly honk at us for accelerating at a normal rate instead of immediately hitting 60 from a dead stop (we can't all be like some blondes), we understand that what they are saying to us is: "Hey, Brother. Fellow New-Jersian. Look, I'm sorry to seem rude, but it's out of the utmost respect that I must give you this little toot of my horn, and beg of you, kind sir, to let's please have a move on, shall we?" And not: "Get out of my way you ridiculous foreigner with your out-of-state plates or I will drive over your ass and you will hurt mightily." It's a subtle difference, but I hear it now, and I get it. And I feel the love.

Since we were heading up-town, we took the Lincoln tunnel. Our other trips into the city had been via the Holland, so this was new territory for us. We had a Google Maps printout along with C's Blackbery Navigator. But all our modern navigational accoutrements couldn't anticipate a road closure on the other side. We were supposed to take this particular ramp that would take us to the West Side Highway via 42nd, but when we were delivered out of the depths of the tunnel into the city, we discovered it was tragically blocked off for no apparent reason. Just these menacing orange cones standing in our way between here and there. And the really frustrating part was that we could see clearly that if we had gone through the right-most tube of the tunnel, we would have come up exactly where we wanted to be and would have had no problem entering the ramp. But having gone through the left-most tube, we couldn't cut over. Or rather, we could. It was possible. It's just that these cones were in our way. Funny the influence that cones have over our driving, isn't it?

Okay. No problem. We'd just resort to our instinctual "city sense," you know, the kind that naturally develops after four years of driving around Washington DC, with its strange two-ways that become one-ways or that dead end altogether, only to resume a couple of blocks later, and the circles and diagonal state streets intersecting the letters and numbers at random places. With C navigating and me driving, we'd be good. If by "good" you meant taking a series of "gut-instinct" turns only to wind up on a one-way stretch of pavement that took us straight back into the Lincoln heading west into New Jersey. There was no passing "Go." No collecting $200.

I guess if you wanted to put a positive spin on all of this, you could say that we enjoyed our trip through the Lincoln so much, we were willing to pay another $8 to do it all over again. Back on the Jersey side, even though there were more orange cones indicating to me that I should not, under any circumstances, cut back over to the east-bound lanes, I had no more patience for their senseless warnings. And so I cut across anyway. Because I had no doubt that if we continued on our current trajectory we might wind up in Pennsylvania. And I was in no mood for a cheesesteak. I felt I might have a harder time getting away with a cone-crossing move now that I had local tags. Because one advantage of being a foreigner is that people are a little more forgiving of you, even if it's with an attitude of "you poor sod, go on, then." But nobody said anything. Not even a honk. I really don't think it matters what you do on the road here, as long as you do it quickly and decisively.

So we paid our $8 and went through the tunnel again, this time going through the right-most tube, and we finally made it to the Upper West, and even found street parking, which was a bonus. And while I'd love to tell you that all of this effort was for some Broadway show like Avenue Q, or Wicked, or Grease, that shit just ain't the truth. The truth is that we were heading to Symphony Space to see 5 Centimeters Per Second, which was showing as part of a "Children's Film Festival" there. C is on a mission to make me an anime fan. And I have to admit that this series of three short films went a long way toward that goal. It was definitely my kind of story, laced with just the right blend of tragic longing and melancholy. Makoto Shinkai is a master at making the viewer ache along with the characters. The final film in the trilogy was a little disappointing, but the first two were great. Here's a trailer, though the narration is kind of bad. One reason I liked it so much was that Shinkai loaded the film with all of these visual details of Japanese culture. Weird little things like the hand rings in the subway, or the water bottles, or the coffee machines. And it all really brought back our trip from last year.

After the show, we met up with Kelly and her friend, walked around central park a bit, and then stopped for dinner at a grill where I ordered Shepherd's Pie and Guinness in honor of St. Patty's Day. And while we did manage to do the Lincoln in only one trip on the way back, we couldn't help but experiment with an alternate route back to our house, which wound up taking us way out of our way and through Newark. Unfortunately, the best way to learn your way around a city is to get lost in it a lot, and we still have a lot of learning to do.

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