Sweet Blog o' Mine

Mawwiage

As much as I wanted to do that bit from The Princess Bride at my sister's wedding tonight, I am restraining myself. She's much more grown up now, but this is still one of my favorite pictures of her. Congratulations to Katie and Pete! Looking forward to celebrating with you this weekend.

Double Bridge Weekend

This weekend's theme was restoration.  Friday night @cocktailspirit and I went to a yoga class, which was exactly what I needed after my busy week.  After a quick dinner, I spent some quality time on my couch catching up on my DVR.  Saturday I slept later than I thought was humanly possible, then met Bill for dim sum at Red Egg.  Afterwards, we wandered around Chinatown and the Lower East Side, then decided to continue over the Williamsburg bridge.  Once we got to the other side, we rewarded ourselves with a tipple or two at Dram.  On a side note, Dram's new food menu looks great.  Have to return at some point when I'm hungry. 

Sunday began with laziness and the NYT, then I headed to Maharlika for brunch with @selenawrites and @libationdiaries to support our friends Enzo & Noel, who are involved in this great pop-up Filipino brunch spot.  The gorgeousness you see above is the Eggs Benigno: lola mahal's home-style pandesal, thinly sliced housemade spam, calamansi hollandaise and kamote fries (more brunch photos here).  Selena and I decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and walk off brunch by walking downtown and over the Brooklyn Bridge.  Afterwards, I went home, did some writing, and watched the Oscars, which were only bearable thanks to Twitter and a Vieux Carré.  Oy.

All in all, a lovely, relaxing weekend.

Tradition

For many years, my friends Augie and Lauren used to have us over on New Year's Day to eat vats of mac & cheese, drink white Russians (a.k.a. Caucasians) and watch the Big Lebowski.  Once they had kids, the tradition slowed down, but last year I watched it up in VT (sans mac & cheese, unfortunately), and this year, I decided to make some mac & cheese, even though I didn't have the movie handy.  Luckily, a friend invited me over and sure enough, he owned the movie.  I toted the mac & cheese over and a tradition was restored.  Next year, I'll make sure I've got all three crucial elements, but this was a good start.

Words of Inspiration. Sort of.

Heard this the other night at Vandaag. And it's been stuck in my head ever since. I found it impossible not to whistle along!

Weekend Wrapup

An excellent and fairly well-balanced three day weekend, I'd say!  Friday night started with a quick stop at a birthday celebration for @Lincolnwrites, then on the Red Hook express for dinner at Fort Defiance with @livethelushlife @mysteryaction & @shotsandcuts before heading to Sunny's for Jill DeGroff's art show, where I met several folks in person I had only interacted with via email and got to catch up with a few folks I hadn't seen in a while, which was great.  After that was my first-ever live band karaoke!  Makes me miss being in a band.  Sort of.

Saturday was a relaxing day on the couch before heading out to Bill's for a dumpling-fest with John, Jimmy and Wallace -- we made three varieties of dumplings, all quite delicious, and finished off with Asian-flavor-inspired gelato and sorbettos from Il Laboratorio del Gelato.  The rest of the photos are here.

Sunday included a much-needed trip to the gym before the LUPEC NYC new member brunch, a surprise afternoon at Clover Club with Jordana (and Katie) in front of the fire, and a birthday dinner of squash soup, chicken liver pate, pork shoulder over polenta with roasted veggies, and a green salad with beautiful watermelon radishes at Jeanne's.  A lovely day/night in Brooklyn.

Monday I had lunch with Mom at Pearl Oyster Bar, saw Youth in Revolt with Rob Y., then home for a quiet domestic evening of mac & cheese and laundry before heading to bed at a decent hour in preparation for the busy week ahead.  Ahhh. 

Hot Date

It seems somehow wrong how excited I am about the hot date I have with my couch, a home-cooked meal, and Up on Nextflix tonight, especially since it's likely that nobody else is joining me. Sigh.

Random Thoughts for Today

- I hope this weekend's weather report is wrong -- I really need a good beach weekend.  If not, I suppose I'll get a relaxing getaway weekend nonetheless.
- I like packing for trips, but am always afraid I'll forget something important.
- I'm enjoying Top Chef Masters, although the judges are much nicer to the contestants than on regular Top Chef.
- I still love doing interviews but hate transcribing them.
- I'm very bad at estimating how much pasta to cook, but that always means good leftovers.
- I already need a nap.
- I still wish I could work from bed, especially on a crappy raining day like today.  Easier for naps.

It's A Bird, It's a Frog, It's . . .

Every day on my way to work I pass a billboard on the side of a phone booth for the movie version of Underdog.  What this means is that the theme song (which I absolutely love) is stuck in my head for at least an hour -- or until Hold the Line pops back into it.  If you haven't listened to it in a while, I highly recommend it.  And you might want to check out the a cappella version from Scrubs.

Weekend Wrapup

Started off the weekend with a farewell party for Teddi, who's moving off to Seattle for 6 months.  As much as we all want Teddi to be happy, we selfishly want her to hate Seattle so that she'll come back to NYC.  I'm going to put her in touch with Geek and his family, who are living out there and can keep her company and show her around.  After that I went to see Neko Case with Doug.  I hadn't seen her before and neither of the people who had promised me a CD came through, but despite that, I enjoyed the show (and still would love a CD).  Following the show, we went to Cafe Grey for a drink and a snack.  We got extravagant and ordered a foie gras crostini, which literally took 45 minutes to come out after we had placed our order.  The bartender comped it, which was generous, and really the best way to handle the ridiculous delay.  After that, off to Otto for a nightcap with Roopa.

Saturday I spent some time purging papers and whatnot (the continuation of a process of purging paper, clothes, and other crap living in the back of my closets), had a great workout, and then headed to Rob's for raclette (a.k.a. melted cheese-fest).  After a major cheese overdose, I slept like a baby.  Woke up Sunday to draft a post on Gothamist (only to be trashed by our lovely commenters, who seem to have nothing better to do), then read the paper, threw in a couple of loads of laundry and headed to the gym.  Met up with Jenn D. to catch up a bit, then met up with Augie, Lauren, Rob, Sara, and the little one (wearing the hat I knit for him), for dinner at Morandi.  Can't say I loved it -- the things I liked the most (fried artichokes, meatballs, gorgonzola crostini) I can get at Gusto (where Chef Jody Williams formerly worked), and it was more expensive than we expected for what we got.  I took pictures with my fancy new camera, but haven't loaded up the software on my computer yet, so haven't managed to get them off the camera yet.  Finished up the night watching the Oscars with Rob and Sara before heading off to bed.

Burgers Galore

After a very long day on Friday, Jenn came over for dinner.  We shared a good bottle of wine, some olive tapenade from my night with Ted Allen, and I made what was quite possibly the worst pizza I've ever made.  I'm going to blame it on the fact that I didn't let the dough sit out at room temperature long enough, although it could have just been me.

Despite the rain on Saturday, I mangaged to go to the gym get a haircut, do some errands, watch Mean Girls, and eventually made it out to the Burger Bash.  My favorite was the green chili cheeseburger (pictured), but I also tasted the Motz burger (named after George Motz, burger documentarian), the Guber burger (with peanut butter -- odd), and the butter burger (a.k.a. coronary on a bun).  Pics are up on flickr.  I'm looking forward to visiting Water Taxi Beach on a sunny day sometime -- they've got a great view of the city!

Today I met Mom & Stephen for brunch at Prune (after the gym, of course), and I've thrown in a couple of loads of laundry, etc.  All in all, a fine weekend.  Now, a quiet night in to gear up for a hectic week.