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"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"

-Satchel Paige

Sitting here in our very expensive room at the Abbey in Peekskill, NY, about to drive the 1+30 down into Manhattan for my birthday.

This hotel isn't as great as I remembered the last time. They advertise a pool, but it's actually at the apartment complex across the street. In November we didn't care, but yesterday it would've been a welcome amenity. There's no place to sit outside without baking in the sun. The restaurant served us spoiled mussels that we sent back--I've only done that a couple times in my life. I felt badly for the mussels.

The room itself features a couch hide-a-bed, which I found rather surprising at this price. I picked a relatively less expensive room after grumping over the $100 "resort fee" they tacked onto the room charge. Note there is no tennis, golf, pool, water amusements, or anything else besides some nice old architecture.

And to top it off, this morning our espresso machine apparently airlocked, meaning no morning Joe until Peg looked up the issue on her phone and used her mechanical prowess to get it working.

Time for me to hose this old meat bag off and head into Peekskill for a bagel and more coffee, then into town for the day. The agenda includes taking the subway to our old neighborhood to look at apartments and sigh a lot over days gone by, then to a fine French restaurant in Midtown for a birthday lunch, then a tour of the Penn Club to decide if we want to join, or if they want us as members. After that stroll through high cotton we'll brave the Lincoln Tunnel for the long, long drive through late afternoon traffic back to Corning.

Onward.