Friday Morning in Park Slope: Breakfast in the Backyard of the Seventh Avenue Starbucks

After getting our flu shot at the Rite-Aid by Methodist Hospital on Seventh Avenue this morning just as the store's pharmacy opened, we walked down to the Starbucks to have our breakfast -- oatmeal and iced tea -- in their pretty backyard.

Friday is our only day off this semester in our six-day, seven-class, four-colleges schedule, and we're grateful for it and are particularly grateful today was sunny and mild enough to have our breakfast outdoors.

Soon, as the cold weather approaches, doing this will be just a memory.

Sunday Morning in Mesa: Breakfast at Dobson Ranch Park

After going to the nursing home to see our mom for her breakfast, we drove west on the Superstition Freeway to Dobson Road, where we lived just south of the freeway from August 2000 to May 2011 at 1651 S. Dobson Road

and went to the Starbucks next door to our old apartment complex (it was called Quail Creek back in the day) to get iced tea, oatmeal and the Sunday New York Times

which we took down to Dobson Ranch Park

for our own breakfast.

The ten months we lived here were a difficult time in our life and we often came to the park for solace.

We first were here in June 1998, when we were staying with our brother, who had a little bungalow originally built for residents at Mesa Lutheran Hospital across the street (it's since moved). On Thursday nights they used to have free park concerts at this area just outside the Dobson Ranch Branch of the Mesa library, and we had a nice time.

Usually when we lived here in 2000-01, we would head for a bench after we went to the library

and would read one of the books we'd taken out.

That year we were teaching Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7:30 a.m. at Mesa Community College's campus at Arizona and could walk over the freeway at Dobson to Southern Avenue.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings we'd make the short drive to Arizona State, just over the border in Tempe. We'd often come to Dobson Ranch Park in the afternoons when it was nice.

This morning it was almost deserted

except for a few of us early birds.

For a long time we've been grateful for Dobson Ranch Park being here.

Thursday Morning at Lincoln Center: Breakfast on the grassy steps of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Lawn

It was sunny and pleasant at Lincoln Center just before 8 a.m. today when we took our oatmeal and iced tea from Starbucks to the grassy steps of the sloping Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Lawn.

The lawn, just south of the new Juilliard School building on Lincoln Center's north plaza, forms the top of a restaurant, Lincoln.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, "It was forced to close just two weeks after opening last June because of mysterious brown spots that turned out to be dehydration caused by irrigation problems. It reopened about a week later and stayed open until November."

They've fixed whatever problems the lawn had, and the grassy steps were lush and so pristine we felt a little guilty sitting on the third step with a police officer or security guard the only other person in the facility. But he just smiled.

The Kentucky bluegrass is held in place by geoweb cells as well as its roots. It may look worse for wear later in the season, but this morning it made for a gorgeous spot to have an al fresco breakfast before giving a final exam at a great metropolitan Jesuit university. We're just sorry we missed the puppets from War Horse, who were around the other day.

Sunday Morning in Stuyvesant Town: Easter Breakfast by the Oval

We were so excited to see the sun actually come up this Easter morning that we got out of the house by 7 a.m. after exercising to Classical Stretch on NYC-TV and took the L train a couple of stops to First Avenue.

At Starbucks we got a free iced tea thanks to our Gold Card rewards and bought some oatmeal with dried fruits and nuts and took them over to Stuyvesant Town, where we found a comfy couch just waiting for us.

Actually we sat at a bench by the Oval, which will open to residents in late May once the grass is all grown in beautifully.

One of Stuy Town's many officious gray squirrels came over and threw us for a loop when he asked to see our ID.

Luckily we have pull with this kindly one-of-a-kind black squirrel, who gave us permission to hang out. What a pal.

We'd put up a statue in his honor were there not one already.

On our way back to Brooklyn to get ready for church, we admired the cityscapes painted by fifth graders decorating the Oval Study.

We're grateful to Stuyvesant Town for letting us trespass. It won't happen again. Definitely not.

SALUGI AT STARBUCKS by Richard Grayson now available at Amazon Kindle Store

Richard Grayson's Salugi at Starbucks is now available at Amazon's Kindle Store for 99¢.

Here is the promo material for the 124-page $7.99 paperback edition from Art Pants Company:

In this quartet of stories about late 20th century gay relationships gone awry, Richard Grayson's young male characters are always looking in all the wrong places. As The American Book Review wrote:

"They are young gay men trying to survive in a hostile or marginally accepting world. They conduct themselves with manic cheer. They possess a grace and courage that have to substitute for the acceptance and love that most people look for. Their successes in this sphere are meager; their disappointments, many.

Yet, despite a seeming similarity in their drives – and palpable coincidences of character and action – Grayson rarely palls. His young men are imbued with a sweet, endearing nuttiness that serves both to energize and individualize. He depicts our cyberspace and e-mail age, so convenient for rapidly dissolving and re-forming associations, invariably against a backdrop of the search for sincere love and the deaths that ravage gay men and their partners."