Thursday, September 09, 2004

The Midnight Special

So I've been piggy-backing off of my neighbors wireless intenet connection(s) for the past year, but I think that the free-loading has finally been put to a halt, but I'm not sure what the cause is. In any case, this, along with the fact that I'll be on vacation for 10 days starting on Thursday, means a shortage of blogging for the next few weeks. But, I digress....

The 3-day weekend came, and it is now about to leave. For you internationals out there, today is Labor Day. Friday night was pretty mellow, my former roommate Alan and his girlfriend came by and I cooked us some organic dinner, though it was a bit late by the time we sat down and ate (gotta love the traffic at 9:00pm on a Friday night coming into the city!!). I made a pitstop at my favorite gourmet grocery store, a mere block down from my apartment, and picked up an organic whole chicken (3-pounder), and whipped up some organic brown rice, cooked in free-range chicken broth and saffron. I didn't realize that brown rice takes a bit longer to cook (like, 40 minutes longer), which further delayed the full meal. But the chicken, treated with some oranges, rosemary, and onions, turned out quite juicy and quite tasty. Happy (free-range) chicken makes happy consumers :o)

Saturday, I was in for a treat. Jennifer Pitzen, who some of you may remember as my baby-sitting employer for my last two years in high school, was in town for the US Open Tennis Tour. I haven't seen any of the Pitzens for at least five years, probably more like 6 or 7 years. I used to babysit their three daughters, who were all in middle-school or elementary school the last time I saw them. Now, one of them is a year away from graduating college, the second is in her second year of college, and the baby of the family is entering high school. Unreal! So I spent the day with Jennifer, Rachel (the middle child, who is attending American University in Washington DC), and a few of Rachel's friends. I don't follow tennis, but it was pretty fun to see a top rated player like Agassi from the second row in the stands.

Saturday night was my former roommate Alan's open house, or "trying to think of a reason why we should go out", party. Well, we went out. We headed downtown to a cool hotel lounge called the Church Lounge, which was a pretty hip and pretty swank place, the type I don't frequent too often. After about an hour there, we walked down the street to S.O.B., a Latin dance club. Being the night before Brazilian Independance Day, I had high expectations for the atmosphere and I wasn't let down. We all had so much fun that we ended up staying until almost 4:00am! I got a chance to show off my moves (or lack-of) and get some cardio exercise on a weekend!

Sunday was the Brazilian Independance Day street festival in midtown, which was crazy! I gotta say, those Brazilian's sure do like to have their fun. There was lots of music, food, Capoeira (which is sort of like a martial art, sort of like dancing), and tons of Ronaldo jerseys.

After running errands, Sean and I met up for a movie (Wicker Park, which I highly recommend), followed by a trip down to Brasserie Julien to meet up with one of his acquantinces. It's a pretty cool French restaurant with good wine and a cozy atmosphere. They show old black and white French movies on two television sets set behind the bar. I was highly distracted by what was behind the bar, and I'm not talking about the television sets ;o) ...

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