I had a birthday.

Sometime in the past month or so, I celebrated my 23rd* birthday!  It was a great weekend, and I've been meaning to do a post for awhile now, but with November just being busy in general and the holidays coupled with my general laziness, I'm just getting around to it now.

On my actual birthday, we had reservations at Landmarc at the Time Warner Center (courtesy of Marc Murphy, the owner, which was probably the most exciting part for me), and the dinner was great.  Marc must have told them that it was for my birthday, because they brought over the dessert sampler AND cotton candy after Marek and I were done eating.  We ate all the cotton candy, and I ate the creme brulee (so good), and we took the rest home.  It was a very good meal, and I cannot wait to go back.

Before dinner we had some time to kill, and so we stopped by Bouchon Bakery, which is right next to Landmarc.  I got a few bouchons, and Marek got some monster pastry.  The bouchons are so delicious.  I won't even tell you how many I've had since my birthday, but let's just say it can't be healthy.

The weekend before my birthday (which was on a weekday), I was fortunate enough to have a whole bunch of my friends make the trek down to New York so we could celebrate together.  We got together Saturday afternoon and went to Shake Shack (I love Shake Shack), and then had reservations later in the evening at Virgil's BBQ, but I messed up the time, and in the end, we ended up eating at Chevy's instead.

After that, we got a private room for karaoke, which was so much fun.  We had to kill some time at a nearby bar, and I finally got to try a Guinness...yuck.  I've always loved doing karaoke - I used to do it every week my senior year of college, and one thing that New York has going for it is plenty of karaoke!

Jeremy and I like to sing duets together.  We like to sing together as Boomer and Chief.  (If you get that reference then we should be friends if we're not already.)  Here we are singing the song from "Aladdin" together, which, surprisingly enough, is one of the most requested karaoke songs.

After karaoke some of us went to the bar a couple of doors down and had a couple more drinks.  I had a Shirley Temple, and the bartender made it with Coke.  When I pointed out that I asked for a Shirley Temple, he said it had been so long since he had made one that he had forgotten what was in it.  Really?

Another thing I like about New York is the public transportation, especially given how late bars can stay open.  We headed home around 2:30 AM, and it was nice to stay out late and spend some time with our friends.  Jeremy ended up giving Marek and his brother piggy back rides, so it was an interesting end to the night.  Very entertaining watching Jeremy shoulder both Marek and Pawi at the same time!

The next morning I was really excited that Friar Chris came and met up with us for breakfast.  He is living in New York, too, but this was the first time we got to see him since we all moved down here, and I was glad he was able to come up when our whole group of friends were visiting.  We all went to this diner near our apartment (Marek and I are trying to make it "our" diner where we always go).

After breakfast, our friends from home headed back, and Chris, Marek, and I went to Central Park.  We walked around for a bit then went down to Times Square to people watch for a bit.  I took full advantage of the nut carts that day!  I love those things.

It was a really nice weekend and birthday, and I'm glad I got to spend it with so many friends!

*You don't even need the asterisk to know that's a big, fat lie.  However, I've been told that if I start early and say it often, it'll eventually catch on.

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Friends, Family, Football

(Writer's note: I've been meaning to write this for two weeks now.  Whoops.)

Not to get all super cheesy on you (oh wait, YES), but do you need anything else in life?  Maybe french fries and ice cream, but really, there's not much else.  Oh, and cookies.

A couple weekends ago I got to escape NYC for DC.  I headed down Friday afternoon, leaving at oh, pretty much the worst time possible.  The trip was supposed to take about 4 hours.  It took 6.  I hit traffic in almost every state I drove through, and I'm not even going to talk about the traffic heading into Dupont Circle.  I stayed with Airport Chris (the titular Friend).

It was nice to get away from NYC for the weekend, and I'll just say that I had a really fun time on Friday and Saturday nights, and just leave it at that.  (We went out both nights.)

Here we are at "The Loud Bar" in DC.  Being a non-local, I always defer to the locals to pick where we're going, and this was a bar we went to the last time I was in DC, in August.  It's not a bad bar, but it's really loud downstairs...hence, The Loud Bar.  And here we are at the bar.  See?  Lots of fun that weekend.

On Friday night, I told Airport Chris that if I gained any weight on the trip, that I was going to blame him, and I have to say, he took his responsibility very seriously - especially considering it was said half-jokingly, and I completely forgot about it the next morning.  This means we walked a million miles on Saturday (but luckily didn't have to walk over the hill the Washington Monument is on, phew), and I wasn't allowed to get any Krispy Kreme donuts. :(

Here's Airport Chris and his roommate.  I was super excited to finally get to meet him!  He is a very nice guy.

If you remember our last trip to DC, you might remember that I utterly failed at taking pictures with a serious face (and at the same Loud Bar, too!).  Apparently everyone can do it but me.

More pictures outside the bar.  We stayed until the very end, way way past my bedtime.

On Sunday, we got a quick breakfast, and then watched some football.  Airport Chris introduced me to the Redskins' fight song, which I never even knew they had.  It's long.  In the afternoon, I headed down to collect Marek from the bus stop, as he came down that day.  On the way back, we stopped by Krispy Kreme and Marek got himself a dozen original glazed donuts, lucky.

After the end of the Patriots game, we headed out to Maryland for the Colts/Redkins game (titular Fooball).  We went with my cousin Kate (titular Family), and we all drove out (since Marek and I were heading right back to NYC after the game).  FedEx Field is very nice - for all of our trips to Indianapolis, there is something so authentic about an open air stadium.

Kate and I both wore our Peyton Manning jerseys (because he's the best)!

The game was the Sunday night game for the week, so the sun was setting as we made our way to our seats.  We got seats up in the highest section, so had a long way up to go, but it was fun.  Plus, any time you're walking uphill, it really helps tone your butt!  Here's Marek waiting for me and Kate to stop taking a billion pictures of the parking lot and the sunset.

Like this one.

And this one.  (If you look at this bigger, you might be able to see DC and the monuments waaaay off in the distance.)  It was a very pretty sight.

Here was the view from our seats.  They were very high up, but very good.  We had a nice view of the whole field.  We had a bunch of Colts fans sitting near us, and some really annoying Redskins fans (who were asked to leave by security, ha!).  And they really did sing the fight song...amazing.

Here's Kate and I after the game, celebrating the win.  As we were heading down, Peyton Manning was walking off the field, and all these Colts fans were gathering around the tunnel, cheering for him.  He even threw some of his stuff to some of the fans, what a guy!  He seemed to appreciate all the fans who were waiting for him.

After that, we headed back to our car, and just sat there for a little bit, waiting for the traffic to die down.  The drive home was pretty brutal...I was already tired from going out two nights in a row (that's what happens when you get old, go to bed at like 10 every night, and hardly ever drink), and wanted to get home early to try to find a parking space.  We finally got home around 5 AM, and were able to squeeze in a few hours of sleep before starting work for the day!

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