Storm clouds gathering.

The Doctor makes everything better. My day was fabulous, thrown into shambles because dinner was almost impossible to coordinate - a restaurant with a fetish for pork and shellfish with bread and milk everywhere - and then recovered with the Doctor. Because that's what the Doctor does.

My one speculation is that Canton's comment about ( getting cut for spoilers )

That's all I've got, really - anything I come up with will pale in comparison to whatever Moffat thinks up, from the nightmare fuel to the quip about "a planet called America." I'm just happy to be along for the ride.

Make your own adventures.

There's a stairway in a building in NYU that with a view straight down Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to Central Park. I ended up there at the end of the day, ready to rest before moving on to the evening. This was my first real Shabbos in a very long time, and I've missed having them. I can fit a lot into a day if I do it right.

I took the day off from the gallery so I could go to services. I wasn't really able to pull my focus in, but it was still nice to be there and participate in the prayers. The rabbi spoke about the idea of improvement and work, and I wish I could remember more since the topic's so relevant. In any case, I'm glad I went. It ended earlier than I thought it would, so I had an hour in my room to drink tea and read a book, and stop by Petco to cuddle an adorable rabbit up for adoption.

Then it was off to the MOMA to visit it for the first time since moving to the city. I passed a weird lamp bear that looked like a mouse from the front before getting to the musuem early and waiting for my brother to show up. Not that it mattered, even with the long lines out in the cold rain: volunteering at Ellis Island makes me a museum services staff member, which gets me and a guest free access to a lot of museums and organizations around the city. So we were able to bypass the lines and the need to buy tickets and just waltz inside.

The best part of it was going in with my brother, flashing the badge to the guard, and saying, "He's with me." Things like that don't happen nearly often enough.

We worked our way down from the sixth floor, just breezing through and commenting on how certain paintings are much better in person or how certain effects work or the general emotional effects of certain artists. Even the pieces neither of us much cared for were nice to see, since we had plenty of time to walk from room to room and linger when we wanted and move on when we didn't. The typeface exhibit was clever, and the crossbow was an unexpected delight.

When we were done with the museum we had plenty of time before we had to meet our grandmother for dinner. Both of us wanted a cup of coffee, and neither of us wanted to take the subway when we could walk - after all, if we got tired, then we could take a train. But until then, we decided to hoof it. So we walked almost fifty blocks down Sixth Avenue, plus a few to go across town in addition to the looping and turning to visit certain things. It'd stopped raining, but it was still overcast, that sort of featureless gray sky that stops fifty feet above the tall buildings. We were in the area of town where almost all the buildings looked alike and were built with a weird industrial machine line ethos, so we spent about two blocks wondering if we were in Brazil or Blade Runner. We still wanted coffee, but we didn't want Starbucks, so we kept going until we were in an area with independent stores where we wouldn't feel bad about giving anyone money. On the way, we remarked on a cluser of single-story buildings, the names of some stores, notable cars, whether there's anything beyond bed and bath, and stopped at a church that'd been turned into an indoor bazaar. No, really. I noticed there was stuff inside from across the street, and since neither of us knew what was over there, we decided to go in. Which is so New York, really. It's a collection of little upscale boutiques, all of which are charming in their own right, and integrated into the church's structure, which is awesome. The original stairs were in place, and nobody'd touched the gorgeous stained-glass windows. We were close enough to touch and had enough respect not to.

Farther down, we passed a public library that used to be a woman's prison, Stonewall Inn, lots and lots of magnolia blossoms, and I fed three pigeons out of my hands. We got to Washington Square Park and decided to walk through instead of going around, which led us to pass by a man with about eight pigeons climbing on him while they nibbled at the seeds he had in his hands and bag. I didn't know what else to do except walk over and ask him if I could try it. So he gave me some seeds, and one of the birds climbed into my hand to start pecking at them. I had on my long raincoat, so it was hard for it to get good purchase, but I kept steady and it kept eating. He gave me some more and I put that in my other hand, and two came over into that one. Their beaks are very purposeful, and don't nip at all - just a moment of small pressure.

Then we went up to the stairway and looked out over the city, seeing distance for the first time in a long while, and just sat there and enjoyed the well-earned view.