Punctuation "Overkill" — Vacation Recap, Part 1

As my sister and her husband and I were moseying about NYC last week, I saw at least three signs that I could have photographed and entered in The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

One sign used open quotes where there should have been close quotes, another used a hyphen like so: drive-way, and . . . I forget what the third one was, but I know that I pointed it out to my sister and we laughed about it. However, I didn't feel like doing all the work of digging in the bottom of my bag, turning on the camera, and waiting for foot traffic to clear so I could get my shot.

Eventually I will transfer the few photos I did take to my computer, and perhaps post one or two from Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash. I've been in a kind of post-vacation fog, though: sort of tired and meh. Not that this is too different from my pre-vacation fog, now that I think of it.

The vacation itself was pretty good.

• On Thursday we stopped by the Ink Pad, had lunch at Monster Sushi, and generally wandered around Greenwich Village for a bit. Oh, and checked out some stationery places: Print Icon, Paper Presentation, and A.I. Friedman.
  
  
• Friday morning was spent browsing small fabric, yarn, bead, and trimmings shops in the garment district. My sister picked out a lot of nifty stuff while I read the complimentary USA Today that I snagged on the way out of the motel lobby.
  
  
• The line at for the Empire State Building was massive — good thing we already did that a few years ago. Instead, we went across the street to Jim Hanley's Universe after lunch. I thought about getting the Spike puppet from the "Smile Time" episode of Angel where he and Angel turn into puppets, but they didn't have the Angel puppet to make it a set, so never mind. My sister thought about getting a Green Lantern ring for her husband, but since he chose to stay in the motel that day, he wasn't there to try it on and she didn't want to get one that was the wrong size.
  (He took Friday off because Thursday was too much for him. Evidently he has this thing about wanting to know exactly where he is and what's next on the agenda and exactly how we're going to get there — much like my dad . . . hmmm. My sister can't find her way out of a paper bag, so she just assumes that I know where I'm going and she'll just follow me and tag along to whatever I have planned. I have a general sense of the map and understand where I am in relation to the places I want to go, but I'm not following a set itinerary because half the fun of being in the city is looking around and finding random oddball stuff that never would have been on the list of things to do in the first place. He doesn't know me well enough to trust that I know what I'm doing, and I guess he didn't remember that my sister and I have done this type of trip four or five times already, so he was kind of antsy all day. So, he decided to spend Friday napping and poking around the Barnes & Noble at the Palisades Center mall down the road from the motel. Honestly? We didn't really miss him.)
  
  
• Thanks to Brave Astronaut for the tip about Dylan's Candy Bar. That was a fun place to check out.
  
  
• We also hit the Central Park Zoo, since we were essentially in the vicinity on Friday afternoon. My sister seemed to get a kick out of that, and it was her birthday, so I'm glad she enjoyed it.
  

I shipped all my souvenirs to myself at the office, and I'm not sure when those will arrive. I'll probably recap that later in the week.