Meeting up for dinner in White Plains

 

It seems like a long while since I've been to a dinner meetup - even though I was at one as recently as last week.  But then, my short term memory isn't as good as I'd like it to be these days. 😉

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As usual, I prepared for my meetup by finding a nice dress to wear, and refreshing my makeup.  (Do I ever go anywhere as Mario anymore if I can avoid it?)  Then it was off to La Bocca in White Plains.  Although I've been to meetups with this group before, I had not yet met tonight's organizer.  (I don't have much to say about her, as she is a pleasant person who I'd like to get to know better as a friend.) The conversation at the table flowed like water, as there were enough different topics for us to chat about without becoming awkward.

But I've neglected the most important past of the meetup - the food!

La Bocca is a mildly upscale Italian restaurant.  Being in Downtown White Plains, this restaurant likely has a high rent.  So it has to recoup that expense in slightly higher prices than I'm accustomed to be paying for Italian food.  But the food is worth every cent.  I had the Octopus Salad as a starter, consisting of various greens and thick, tasty tomato slices with several cooked octopus limbs on top.  Yum!  My main course was Chicken Scarapariello.  And it was served without bones.  YUM!  The only drawback to this place is the parking.  If one doesn't know White Plains, there is almost no on-street parking.  Instead, there are quite a few municipal parking lots squeezed in between office buildings which one must use.  This can be confusing for people not familiar with the area.

All too soon, our group finished dinner, and we were on our way home.  I figured that I'd register for some new meetups when I got home, and found out that I was taken off the wait list.  I am now scheduled for several more over the next two weeks, including one in NYC for its restaurant week.  (I won't say much about the NYC restaurant, save that it is known for a steak named after the restaurant.)

As you can guess, I'm looking forward to eating with nice people again....

 

 

 

 

 

Another lunch with RO

 

Around 30 years ago, my late wife and I found the above book at Barnes and Noble.  Living reasonably close to the city as we did, we'd make regular pilgrimages to Manhattan's Chinatown and the one that was developing in Flushing to get a good Dim Sum meal.  If there was a good Chinese Restaurant, we'd move heaven and earth to get there.

 

At the time this book was published, we had several definitions for the quality of Chinese restaurants:

• Local - The food was edible, but we wouldn't go out of town for it.
• Acceptable - The food was decent, and worth going one or two towns over to dine in the place.
• Good - The place was an hour or more away, and well worth the effort to eat there. (I miss The Little Bear near Woodstock, NY.)
  
• Very Good - The place was outside the region, and a must visit when in the area. (Empress of China - San Francisco, CA)
  
• Excellent - The place is on the other side of the globe, and a bucket list must visit.

Needless to say, we never had the chance to get to the last category of restaurants.  My wife had a friend where she worked who could tell us great places to eat when in China.  But she died before I had accumulated enough money to take this kind of bucket list trip.

 

 

I'm still willing to go to the ends of the earth for a good meal.  And today, I had the chance to revisit Qin Dynasty in Parsippany, NJ.  Qin Dynasty is an unassuming place sited in front of the Red Roof Inn on Route 46.  There is nothing special to recommend this place, other than it was a convenient midpoint for RO and I to get together.

 

RO and I have eaten at this place several times before, and we always have several plates of Dim Sum.  Today, we tried one of the dinner dishes along with our usual order of Dim Sum.  And it was up to the quality of the joints I often visit in Manhattan.  I can also say the same for their Dim Sum - it's good, and worth eating when in the area.  But I wouldn't schedule a special drive to get to this place, as RQS and I know better places for Dim Sum closer to home.

 

Yet, you might ask: Why do I recommend this place?

 

The answer is simple.  There are few enough decent places which have a wide variety of Dim Sum on their menus, and this is one of them.  One can find the standard offerings such as Shu Mai, Pork Buns, and soup dumplings.  But this place also has things such as duck filled dumplings and peanut filled dumplings. And I usually try to order something new at every meal.

 

Luckily, I can go to Aberdeen in White Plains, NY and have a good variety of tasty dishes there.  But if I'm near Parsippany, I'll try to visit Qin Dynasty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Catching up with things at home

 

Today was another do-nothing day.  I might have done a little bit of putting away stuff, but not enough to say I did much.  

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I woke up today with only one thing on my schedule - a "Tea" meetup in White Plains.  (Think of: English Breakfast, Earl Grey, and China Black, not the herb my generation also called "Tea".)  So, I lollygagged for most of the day, save for putting travel related items back in their storage bag.  When 5:00 pm came around, I showered, shaved, and dressed to go out as Marian.  As I was starting up my car, an acquaintance called to talk about many things.  (I had missed her call this weekend, as I was in-flight to JFK.  I just wonder what happened to the message I sent her, saying I was in transit.)  This kept me busy for most of the drive to the meetup.  

When I got to White Plains, I had a little problem finding the tea parlor.  But I found the place in time to have a savory danish and a serving of iced tea before we moved over to Playa Bowls next door.  Our motley crew kept up the conversation started in the tea parlor.  (One woman asked whether I had been to the LGBT center nearby, and I mentioned that they are constructing a building of their own in the heart of White Plains.  So I know that she probably read me, yet treated me as just another woman.) We talked about some of the meetup groups in Westchester, and noted that the leader of one of the groups (a leader that couldn't deal with me being transgender) was a bigot, and that her group wasn't worth being in.  (This feeling was echoed by others at the table.)  Hopefully, I will be able to meet these people again soon, as we all "clicked" together.

All too soon, it was time to go.  So I decided to make a run to Wegman's to pick up some food for the rest of the week.  Shortly after I loaded my car, I saw some lightning.  By the time I got home, it was raining hard enough to have me leave two 12-packs of soda in the car.  At least I got home safe and sound - and ready for tomorrow afternoon at the dentist....

I went to a meetup, and the meetup wasn't there.

 

This will be a short post, as I'm too tired to think about much right now.   As I've mentioned, my circadian rhythm has been "off" for the past few days, and it's more likely to see me awake at 3 am, than 3 pm.  This didn't matter much on a day when I had nothing scheduled (like yesterday), as I could stay in my jammies and get something tasty from the refrigerator.  Today, it mattered....

As much as I wanted to be awake by 9 am, I didn't get out of bed until noon.  This didn't matter, as I had a meetup scheduled in White Plains at 7:30 pm.  So, around 6 pm, I started to get ready to go out as Marian.  Using every short cut I knew to save time, I was out the door by roughly 7 pm.  Arriving in White Plains, I parked my car and went to the scheduled venue to be with the meetup group.  Well, there was no one there.  I sent texts to the organizer, but received no response from her.  Something is fishy, as we are friends from outside this group, and I gave her no reason to be out of contact.  Even stranger, the original post for the meetup vanished, and no messages were sent out to notify anyone of the cancellation.

This was frustrating - I wasted 90 minutes of my time to be with people who weren't there.  Since I know I'm not losing my mind (at least, that fast), I know something must have happened, such as a cancellation due to the cold weather.  So I'll ask the organizer about this the next time I get the chance to see her.

Hudson Valley Restaurant Week

 

I wasn't planning on going to a meetup tonight.  However, I ended up going as a space freed up at the last minute - and I wanted to try out a new restaurant.

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Normally, I wear some kind of tunic and leggings when I go to work.  However, I wanted to look a little nicer when going to an upscale restaurant.  So I went home and stripped, then put on some stockings and a dress before going out again.

It took me a few minutes to find a parking spot near the restaurant in White Plains.  No, it wasn't that crowded in that area of town.  It was because the streets had me going way out of the way to effectively go half a block in the wrong direction on a one-way street.  But once there, I met the group and sat down to have a nice dinner.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned the name of this place.  The food was good, but the service was inattentive.  They simply did not have the staff to maintain a pre-covid level of service, and it showed in our post-covid environment.  There were several times that we had to ask the wait staff for help, and even then, some tasks were left incomplete.  The one I noticed most was when the waiter filled the water glasses of 3 people, leaving the 4th with an empty glass. I was also affected, when the wrong dessert was brought to me. Then, when the desired dessert was delivered, I didn't get a fork with which to eat it.  I ended up using my spoon to do so.

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Although I had signed up for another meetup tomorrow, I bailed out on it.  I have enough things to do that will have me eating out.  So why add more calories to the waistline?

Shopping at the local mall. Boy, how things have changed!

Lately, I have needed to go inside several malls to do some shopping.  Gone are the days where the mall was busy most of the day.  Now, if you're "lucky", you might bump into a single shopper while walking aimlessly in the mall.  No, it's not that bad, but it seemed that way when I window shopped in some local malls.

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Years ago, the White Plains Galleria was busy from the moment it opened to the moment it closed.  Abraham & Strauss anchored one end of the mall, while J.C.Penney anchored the other.  At lunch or dinner time, one could not find a seat in the dining area. Each and every storefront was rented out with goods available for sale.  Today, the two anchor stores are gone, and the mall's owners are covering up vacant storefronts to keep the few people shopping at the mall from doing the rest of their shopping online.

White Plains is not alone in the decay of the modern mall.  In Kingston, NY, the Hudson Valley Mall is effectively vacant, with all of its major anchors gone.  (I don't want to include Target here, as it is off to the side, and easily severed from the rest of the mall.)  In Yorktown Heights, NY, the local mall lost its Sears, and is in danger of losing Macy's.  There is only one store that I patronize there (Ulta), and I'll bet that it may break its lease (along with other stores) if/when Macy's decides to shut down.  Danbury, CT is doing a little better, as at least two of its anchor stores survive.  But in JC Penney,  they have carefully hidden vacant space no longer being used inside the store, pruned in-store stock to the bone, and made one of the two checkout counters into a general customer service area.  This makes me think that this store may soon be gone.  Will any of the remaining tenants want to stay after that?

However, it's not just the big malls that are hurting.  Local strip malls are hurting too.  When I first started to commute to a job in Westchester, I passed by this strip mall.  All of the storefronts were rented out during the first few years I worked at the bank.  I'd stop by in the morning, pick up a buttered bagel at the bakery, a newspaper at the stationery store, and drop off my shirts/suits at the dry cleaners.  In the evening, I might pick up some fruit and veggies from the small market there and then go to the butcher shop a couple of doors down.  None of these shops are there any longer; most of the storefronts on this property have been vacant for years.  I wonder how the owner pays his taxes on this property, as I don't see the restaurant (not in photo) doing enough business to cover all property expenses.

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Several years, I wondered why someone might sell off a commercial property.  Today's real estate market has given us the answer.  In an era of informality, we don't need much formal wear or the places that service those garments.  In an era where fresh food is delivered to the house, why shop at a small market when you can either have it shipped to your door from Whole Foods, or go to Wegman's to pick out the foodstuffs yourself?  In an era where one reads the daily newspapers online, why stop into your local store for your newspapers or magazines?  

I expect that many shopping centers will be repurposed in the near future, some of them bulldozed for a small number of big box stores (as happened in Poughkeepsie), or to develop new housing projects.  What do you think is going to happen? Do you think this process was accelerated by the pandemic?

 

I could have stayed in and do nothing, but...

 

A necklace.  Not one that would be worn by a pretty woman, unless she was King Kong's large size companion.  Given that it is holiday season and FH is still in the picture, I figured that she deserved a holiday gift.  So I bought her handmade necklace and earrings thru Amazon.  Unfortunately, I couldn't give her a gift without getting her daughter a gift as well.  So I had to get dressed and go shopping today.

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It's been a while since I have been outside my apartment as Marian.  So I took the opportunity to go out in female presentation for the last chance I'd have this week.  As I was leaving the apartment, I saw a box on my landing.  After checking who it was addressed to, I dropped it in front of my neighbor's door.  She opened up her door while I was in front of my mailbox, and her cat escaped.  So I ended up chatting with her for a sec before leaving.  

I could have driven to the Westchester Mall in White Plains.  But I'd rather not pay to park in their lot, even though it would cost me more to cross the bridge and shop in West Nyack.  And I think this was the right choice, as I was able to find a parking spot very close to the entrance and I was able to get FH's daughter her gift within 10 minutes of my arrival.  So I took the opportunity to walk around a relatively empty mall before driving home for the night.

Around 9 pm, I finally decided to make my crock pot lasagna.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, some might say), I was not going to be able to have it for dinner.  As a result, I ended up taking the lasagna out of the crock pot around 1:30 am, putting the lasagna into storage containers for future eating, and then into the refrigerator to be eaten over the next few days. (I had a little nibble, and it was something that will get better when reheated.)  Knowing me, I will likely have cooked too much.  But I'll know this for sure in a few days.

 

 

Another meetup with the Fun Time Friends

I had two things on my docket for today, and I almost forgot the one I wanted to take care of the most....

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When I got up this morning, I didn't feel fully rested.  Instead, I felt like a battery that was charged to 90% of capacity, but needed a little more juice to bring myself to full alertness.  For a change, I awakened before 7:00, and was out of the bed for the day before 8:00.  If my 7 hours of sleep could be counted from the time I put my CPAP mask on, I'd have had a full night's sleep.  But I didn't start falling out until 1:30 or so, and that was reflected in how I felt.

Taking it easy all day, I didn't start to get ready to do a volunteer stint at the LGBT center until 2:00.  This meant that I'd get to the center around 3:30 for my shift.  And today, my tasks were a little more interesting than usual (but not much).  First, I had to do a Powerpoint slide, a flyer and a couple of calendar updates for an LGBT related movie to be shown next month at a community theater.  Once done with that, I checked all of the LGBT Center's resource website links, making sure that their site contains only validated links.  This took up the better part of my 2 hours there. And then the alarm pop-up came on my phone - I had a meetup scheduled in Southport, Ct. for dinner - OOPS!  I almost forgot that!!!.  So I walked over to my car, started to play some tunes, and off to dinner I went.

When traffic is running smoothly, driving from White Plains to Southport takes about 35 minutes.  However, if one is dealing with rush hour traffic, the drive can take 3 times as long. Tonight's drive took only twice as long - and I got to the restaurant shortly after 7:00.  I remembered this restaurant's location from years ago.  It is the former site of the Southport Brewing Company, a brewpub that an ex-girlfriend and I used to frequent a few years ago.

Parking my car and entering the restaurant, I noticed that there were no seats available at the table in the background of the above picture (where the meetup's hostess was sitting). So I sat down with the ladies at the table in the above picture.  It was a pleasure being treated as one of the ladies, and even more of a pleasure when the hostess came over and greeted me very warmly.  (If I were presenting as a male, I'd interpret this woman's physically warm greeting very differently.  But I digress.)  She makes me feel that it is worth the effort to come to this group's meetings, as I know she remembers how long it's been since I've been around to one of the group's meetups.

Service at the restaurant was very slow.  We didn't have our orders taken until 8:00, and didn't even have food until 8:45 or so.  For a busy night (this was Fairfield County Restaurant Week), they didn't staff the place well.  And by the time we were finished with dinner and paying our checks, it was coming on 9:45.  Even our hostess was unimpressed with the place, and will likely never schedule another dinner there in the future.

Leaving the restaurant at 10:00, I called GFJ for the ride home, and we chatted for the next hour.  As much as neither of us had a lot to say, it was good to know that there was someone on the other end of the line who cares for me, someone to keep me company on a boring drive home.  She is the reason why I said in one email: "There are some things I want more than transition." Hopefully, GFJ knows that our relationship is that important to me....