2008

Happy New Years! I am not usually a big fan of New Years Eve to be totally honest. I usually spend most of the planning trying so hard not to get my hopes up with a party or whatever other events are planned in fear of total disappointment. I mean I just feel like there is a lot of pressure placed on the evening to have the best night ever. Eh, well this year I went with my general theory that if you spend the night doing something small with some good friends then you are bound to have a good evening. New Years Eve always reminds me of this one year where I had driven to Rochester and spent the evening with my good friend Petey and Jeana and had the best night that I can remember. Petey had made a delicious dinner for us and we headed to old familiar places like Luxx and just went around between different areas but anywhere I went I felt completely happy and with good people. We always joke about re-creating that night each year. Maybe someday it will happen. This year I spent it at a friends house with good friend, coworkers and ex-coworkers and Kristen D. was my date since Eric was working at the restaurant until just after midnight. I’ll admit I was a little bummed out on that he wasn’t there for the midnight kissy face but he came shortly afterward. We stopped by B61 on the way home and saw the usual friends hanging out in the neighborhood. It was a late late bedtime but a whole bunch of nothing was done the next day, leaving plenty of room for many many naps.

My only “resolution” really was to keep going to the gym and maybe start new exercises to get muscles for my arms. That’s about it, other than the on going quest to take better care of my body now that I ain’t no spring chicken anymore.

What else did I do on my 4-day weekend? Well, Friday was pretty quiet at work so my 2-day work week turned in to a 1 and a 1/2-work week. Oh but don’t worry there was enough time in the week for another one of my co-workers to get engaged. Now 50% of my dept is planning their wedding, yikes! So after being told we should leave early Friday because nothing was really happening in the office; Alex and I headed downtown to go see Sweeney Todd. It was a good movie, but man was it a little too gory. I didn’t expect it to like that at all. I liked it for the most part but the constant singing did get on my nerves, yea I know it was a musical movie but I can still have my own opinion on it.


Then I ruined a good night of watching a good movie like Sweeney Todd by watching a completely awful movie like Gus Van Sant’s Last Days which is allegedly the last days of Kurt Cobain's life before he kills himself, worst thing ever was changing the character who was supposed to be Kurt and giving him the name Blake. Yuck are you serious! The movie stars Michael Pitt which we are convinced lives in the neighborhood since I always see him around the corner to the bakery we live above. Believe me I wouldn’t recognize him at all except for the fact that he looks like he belongs in Williamsburg with the hip kids by his appearance. That was the only thing that caught my attention when I saw him in the neighborhood. Anyways, after getting some Dub meat pies (I was in the mood after Sweeney Todd, if you have seen the movie you know the correlation. I got a veggie curry so no need to worry about what was in my pie), Kristen came over and we subjected ourselves to about 2 hours of awfulness. I would not suggest you see this ever.

Saturday was spent running errands and then having a quiet night at home again where I was in bed pretty early, I didn’t mind it. I was pretty worn out from attempting to go back to spinning class both Saturday and Sunday. Two days in a row was fairly rough when I hadn’t gone in about 2 or so weeks. But I got through it and had a chance to play with my shiny new heart monitor that I had gotten from my dad for Christmas.


Sunday, we got up early and Eric made some French toasts for breakfast before he went to work for the day to get the menu ready for the New Years Eve prix fixe at Second Street. So after my spinning class I got myself pulled together to meet up with Caitlin and her boyfriend Jeff to do some museum-y things. That’s another mini-resolution that I got a good head start on: do more NYC type things but you know the free stuff or the cheap stuff. But I do realize that I need to see a lot more of the city that I have lived in for the past 3 1/2 years. So we headed to the new museum, it was all right. I wasn’t too impressed with the exhibition that they had. Maybe I will try it again when there is another show. P.s. if you have an id left over from college use it. The price is $6 instead of $12.
Then we headed to the upper west side and I went with them to Levain Bakery. Now I am not a big cookie or desert person (although my recent sweet tooth has brought me to eating copious amounts of rice pudding). Well I decided that if we came all the way to try what has been rated the best cookie in nyc that I might as well give it a go. It was so so delicious; I was only able to get through about 1/2 of my dark chocolate and peanut butter piece of heaven. My only complain was the lack of beverages available, they were definitely needed after the indulgence.
We headed to the American Museum of Natural History, which we only were able to spend about 45 minutes but I have already decided to take a sick day when Eric has the day off and go spend a cold wintry day running around the museum for hours and hours to see everything it has. It wasn’t terrible but weekends at museums are a little much!


All in all it was a pretty great 4 day mini vacation. Now time to get back to it….