Business was done, and it was done in New York and then a train to Boston. I met up with my old friend Dunkin’ and thinks rolled okay.

In NY, I stayed at the Grand Hyatt right next to Grand Central Station where I could look out the window at Cipriani, where Cosmopolitan was apparently having a party for all of Jessica Simpson’s boyfriends.

(Jessica Simpson banged Common? What? You heard it here first.)

Here’s my view, pre-Simpsonization:

My room at the Grand Hyatt was pretty cool. One detail I forgot about living in NY is that you have to be aware that in one of those thousands of windows looking at you, someone’s waiting for your pants to come off. I was calmed for a second when I looked at the Grand Hyatt from the outside and noticed that the windows were mirrored, but I did notice that I could see through the windows if people had their lights on at night. I’m not sure if I changed pants between seeing the mirrored windows and then seeing the light on behind the mirrored window, but hey, free show, whatever.

After all the necessary meetings were out of the way, we headed through Grand Central Station to catch a subway to Penn Station. I totally used my “It’s like Grand Central Station in here” joke as we dodged New Yorkers left and right. Everyone stopped and applauded, it was awesome.

We, my biz partner and I, took the Acela up to Boston, which actually does stop a few times and isn’t a straight shot from Point A (Penn Station, NY) to Point B (South Station, Boston) but it was a lot faster than the standard trains that seem to stop every ten minutes.

We got out at Back Bay, and walked up Commonwealth Ave (Comm. Ave to the locals) and found the Eliot Hotel at the corner of Comm. Ave and Mass. Ave. I’m not sure what period piece film I entered into here, but the doorman swooped up all my bags and gave me way-too-respectful smalltalk lines like “beautiful day today sir.”

This hotel was super awesome, I had my own friggin’ livingroom and separate bedroom,

and the honor bar was actually a walk in bar! Too good to be true. What’s the catch?

I’ll tell you the catch: Mind crushing middle of the night headache.

I don’t want to dis this place at all, because everyone was awesome, and if it weren’t for the headache and the fact that winter exists in Boston, I’d move in permanently. But God. Damn. I think it was the fumes from the heater, or the fact that the heat just made the air super dry, but I had no alcohol at all that night, (no really I swear I didn’t. Yes I did eat at PF Chang’s for dinner but this was way worse than any MSG hangover, besides, no actual Chinese people work at any PF Chang’s so they don’t even know where to get MSG) and I had tons of water as I always over-stock my hotel room with bottled water.

I got up about 4:30am, hoping that the convenience store across the street was open and had the greatest pain reliever that ever was: Excedrin for tension headache. It’s in the purple case. It’s awesome. Trust me.

Unfortunately, the convenience store was not open at 4:30am. Not. Very. Convenient. Pour. Moi.

I headed south on Mass. Ave au pied (that’s on foot, I have no idea why I just switched to French, I’ll bring it back now) and found the Store 24. They didn’t have the purple Excedrin, as I call it, so I went for some Aleve. I threw four of those down with two giant bottles of water and flipped on the TV where I caught part of Dan Abrams’ new show. As I explained to the GF last week, I like when Abrams is all straight-talking news guy, and I like when he’s all snarky columnist/answers guy in Men’s Health magazine, but this show attempts to combine those personas, and I can’t sit there and watch him try to throw in his opinion about the news he’s reporting. Just get a blog man.

Hey, PS, what’s the deal with the hotels having the High-Def looking TV’s when they don’t have HD service? This is the second time in a month I’ve stayed in a hotel where everyone on TV’s head is squished so the hotel can cheapskate it’s way into filling up the whole screen and letting their patrons think they’re watching HD TV. Listen, I know tech-savvy people generally can’t afford to stay at your hotel, and by the time they can you’ll have it all worked out, but a few of us are sneaking through the cracks a little early, on the company dime, and we’re calling you out. I’ve made it my mission to switch these tv’s back to 4:3 resolution so there will be no more Hollywood head squishing.

My headache was pretty much gone by the time I had to get up at 8am, and this hotel is awesome, except for that heating thing and the faux HD tv, and maybe the fact that if you had sex in your hotel room everyone else in the hotel would be able to hear you, no I did not have sex in this hotel, but yeah you totally could if you did. So uh, stay here when you don’t need to put the heat on, maybe from like May-Augustish. It’s good.

After 4 days in New York and two days in Boston and Wenham (Wenham? Yeah.) it was time to fly home. God damn that flight sucks. This is maybe my 5th time doing it in a year and a half and it’s f’n awful. Ouch. Especially when you get stuck with the window seat and the Chinese kid with his cartoon video games doesn’t want to sit next to you so you stress about having to climb over him when he passes out listening to whatever it is Chinese kids listen to in their from-the-future-iPod-type-machines.

I landed, I took the next day off, I went to the beach.

I officially have no idea how people can live in the Northeast and not in Southern California. I’m glad though, because traffic is bad enough.

Kissing the LA ground,

J

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