The perfect day in New York

Marc Maron: "The perfect day is, if the weather's right, to just walk around all the downtown neighborhoods and feel it."

Amen.

Yesterday was a Perfect Day in New York City.

The weather was more than right - 60 degrees, bright and sunny.

I had been down with something worse than a cold but not quite as bad as the flu for more than a week, had worked straight through it (me at the office on Wednesday: "No, I'm not having a heart attack, thanks for your concern, I'm sweating like this because my fever just broke") and had finally turned the corner on Friday and started to feel better.

Saturday, Carrie and I spent a leisurely couple of hours in the park with the dogs, and bought lavishly at the greenmarket (New York State apples! Artisanal cheeses and breads! Sweet potatoes, leeks, onions and garlic! Carrots that actually tasted like carrots, with dirt on them and everything!)

After lunch, we went our separate ways, she to get her bicycle repaired and ready for the winter, and I to shop for a replacement for a pocketknife I'd lost somewhere a month ago.

My wanderings took several hours of brisk walking downtown in the gorgeous early fall weather, and involved culinary stops along the way for items as varied as Dean and DeLuca coffee and dirty-water streetcart hot dogs.

I was feelin' it. It was amazing.

And the lovely coda to the day: at four o'clock, as I was heading back to the house, I called Carrie on her cell phone to see what her ETA was... and we found that we were less than six blocks apart on Fifth Avenue.

We walked home together.