Just Like Back in the Day...Well Maybe...

This last weekend, Terry-a and I had a sleepover! And what good fun it was. I made a great quiche, Marcus and us had some good dinner conversation, and then Terry-a and I headed off into the night. First we headed to the Bowery Hotel Bar...and then decided to leave when we were told we couldn't be seated because we weren't guests at the hotel. So we shuffled over to the standing room only, but eh...it wasn't worth it, and there wasn't any music...what's up with that? But still it was a cute place. After we walked over to Beauty & Essex, and found that there was a line to get in. I think we're way past waiting in a line to get in somewhere....remember those days??? Ha. THEN we headed over to The Living Room, which was totally low key, almost dive bar-ish, but not really, and that was the spot. I liked that place. We sat, and talked for a while. And oh how some things change, and some stay the same! For one thing, can everyone and their mother now call themselves a "DJ" which a little computer? I miss the days of turntables. Not to say that mixing with a computer is wrong, it's the mainstay now, and I appreciate that. I honestly had no idea about this (I felt like a dinosaur) until about a year ago I got some experience, which was pretty cool. Then a "kid" (I'll call him that because a lot of these people out look so young!!! And to think we were like that way back when!) was drunk or stoned and proceeded to ask us about how to keep a marriage going. It was great. Then some loud mouthed attention seeking guy walked it, and it was annoying, so we left. Then we pondered where to go next. I suggested Sutra Lounge, which we both think maybe used to be Bar 16 where we went a lot in college to dance to a friend of friend spinning hip hop...Sutra has the music, but without club attitude. But then we ended up in La Linea, there was dancing, which was great, with no attitude. But woah has hip hop changed. Some of it's awesome, a lot...not so much. Bring me back to the 90's and early 2000's! But good to know this place is there. Maybe with another DJ, the music would be better. I mean, hey---I was just happy to be out!!! I find between friends' schedules, less interest in going out dancing late (not by me...by my friends), and just getting more tired more easily, I don't get to do this much, unfortunately! Plus Terry-a was out with me, which was awesome. After that, we took the subway, and while waiting in the station for a long time, we were privy to the excessively dramatic conversation between two young guys speaking French, complete with one of the guys chain smoking, creating clouds of smoke in our faces, and him throwing cigarette butts into the tracks---hello littering?!?! It was entertaining in its own way. We finally got on the train, got off in TriBeCa, and headed to Bubby's!!! Which is open 24-7 most days, and has a midnight brunch menu. So we ate yummy breakfast at 2A.M. Yummy. And the vibe was great. It wasn't busy, the music was bumping (I wished we could have had some dancing going on there), and we were eating comfort food! So good, so right. Then finally after that we headed home. Then the next morning we met up with Grace and ate brunch at Lafayette. A nice place. I still contemplate whether I should have ordered the special that day---a coconut, banana, and chocolate filled croissant. I don't really like banana, but I love me some coconut and chocolate...maybe I could have made it work...hmm...and random, but I really liked the movie "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada", directed by Tommy Lee Jones. And a weird, creepy, but good movie--"Tony Manero"...about a guy in Chile during the Pinochet era who was obsessed with Saturday Night Fever...And then a guilty pleasure--"Chernobyl Diaries".

Miracles and A Festival of Food....Just the Way I Like It

Labor Day weekend has just passed. And it was a good one. Marcus and I had a bunch of stuff we were doing. Saturday we ate breakfast at Bubby's in TriBeCa---hubba hubba. I had biscuits, chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. It was so crazy; I was so full, but I kept going. Did you know that Bubby's is now open in Japan??? Who knew. Then we walked from our place downtown, over the Brooklyn Bridge, along the waterfront to Red Hook. Now I'm gonna take a tiny detour---it's 4 miles to walk there. And although that may not seem like a lot, I have to marvel at the human body. I had surgery this past Spring on my knee. And it's just so awesome that now I'm almost as good as new in that department. I mean, I still have a ways to go, but still! The day of my surgery I walked out of the hospital! No crutches or anything. If I just think about that--the fact that I had a doctor messing around in my knee joint cutting, prodding, and shaving things in there, and then I walked out, and now I'm walking 4 miles, that's awesome! That's the longest I've walked since surgery. And I remember post op, when I couldn't even walk a block without having to concentrate on every single step. Okay, so I digressed. So Saturday we walked to Red Hook, and ate crab sandwiches at Brooklyn Crab with friends and our God son. Great food. Then one of our friends had to go into IKEA, so we walked there, Marcus got some Swedish stuff from the food mart, and then we took a car home. THEN I napped, and we met up again with one of our friends and ate at Lafayette in Noho. Sunday, Marcus and I went to my parents' house and my sister Jennifer made graham crackers from scratch, and I brought Cadbury milk chocolate, and we made s'mores. This was a new experience for Marcus, so I'm glad he got to try what I consider classic Americana fare ahahaha. We also checked on our bee hive, and this season has not been kind to us. We saw our new queen thank GOD---now we only hope we can save them and they can make it through the Fall and Winter. We won't have honey most likely, but we don't care, we just want them to survive. We have thousands of little bees dependent on us, so I really hope this works. Then Monday (Labor Day), I asked, I mean begged Marcus to please go to Locanda Verde for breakfast. I don't know what it is, but I love eating at restaurants, and I LOVE breakfast and brunch, and I love Locanda Verde! So we ate there, then we watched "Closed Circuit", this political thriller that takes place in London. It was decent, nothing crazy. When we got home Marcus started patching up the holes in the walls of the second bedroom, because we recently got a new ceiling fan and some electrical outlets installed. Then we watched some episodes of "Orange is the New Black"--a great series. Tonight I am so excited, the third season of "Luther" is starting on BBC America, and next week Arsenio Hall comes back to TV! I used to love that show, I think he's really funny. Today I'm what I lovingly call "playing housewife". I get to clean our place. I love cleaning so much and I love being domestic. I wonder if this is a personality thing, or a female thing that's hardwired, or that I'm mostly a Virgo. Probably a combination. But I love vacuuming, sanitizing, doing laundry, and mopping...and I LOVE baking, bu that's dangerous because then I eat everything I bake, and that's not good...