New take on New York

OK, Judi has backed off some from her rather sour opinion of New Yorkers today thanks to series of positive interactions with strangers, including:
- A worker on the Delaware Avenue reconstruction project in Albany who with little prompting told us all about the project and how long it was likely to take.
- A charming couple in the Delmar Friendly's restaurant who looked on with delight as we admired their babies.
-- Another customer who warned us against sitting in a booth with a sticky floor (I was giving her a high-end tour of the region yesterday)
-- Two talkative and high energy appliance-delivery people who were bringing us a new washing machine and gave her a chance to show off her Spanish and declare how different Mexican and Puerto Rican accents are.

So the scorecard remains mixed on Albanians as it probably is in most of the country. I think the theory that small-town people generally have more time to be sociable and friendly is on the money. It's a density issue, not regional one, I suspect.

In other news, today was the sixth and last chemo treatment of this regimen. For the first time the nurse had trouble finding a vein and I got poked a couple of times before a different nurse, my old Red Sox friend Judy, found a usable one. Otherwise it was routine. My friend Ron Royne, himself a cancer survivor and chemo vet, sat with me and helped pass the time.

It's onto Boston next week for a checkup and then hopefully somed big doses of radiation the chemo resumes. I can hardly wait.