Sudoku

Has anyone out there played Sudoku before? It's a logic puzzle with numbers that's really hot out here in New York. I went in Barnes and Noble the other day to see if they had any books for my trip that had puzzles to play and they had a whole table full of them! Here's an example of a Sudoku puzzle:


The objective is to fill in all the blank spaces with numbers. Each horizontal row must have the numbers 1-9, each vertical column must have the numbers 1-9, and each 3x3 cube must have the numbers 1-9. I'm totally addicted to this game now and even downloaded a version for my PC so that I can waste time in between doing productive tasks like watching TV and chatting with insomniac friends from Central and Eastern Europe and folks on the west coast. I bought a book with 200 puzzles of different ranges of difficulty for my trip, that should keep me occuppied!

The Brazil trip is the only thing on my mind these days. I am extremely excited by the prospect of going to another international wedding and I even prepared myself by taking some kids on Saturday down to the capoeira studios for a free lesson, just like I did last year. I got a kick (again) out of the music and got to use a bit of my Portuguese with the capoeira "players", as they refer to themselves. If I end up moving to the East Village like I hope to do, I am seriously considering enrolling in classes since they are great for strength, flexibility, rhythm, and coordination, something that I could use some help in. While some of the kids did cartwheels-a-plenty, I was busy trying to do a side-kick without falling over. So enrolling in the classes will either be a major embarrasment or will actually help me get some coordination. Most likely the former over the latter!

Friday night I went ice skating at the Lasker skating rink in Central Park. It was Veterans Day and I "worked" for the day before the German Speaking Club event at the ice rink. This particular rink is one of the city's best-kept secrets because the other rinks are all super-crowded, super-strict on what you can and can't do (no picture taking and no skating backwards), and cost about twice as much. Alan, Andrea, and I went and had a few happy hour drinks before heading up to Harlem to meet up with the Germans. Turns out that most of the German-speakers there were actually from Poland, which was interesting. I think I definitely have to go to those events every month, it's just too fun speaking German again and the ratios are good, if you know what I mean....

Saturday night, I met up with Sean, Natalie (his girlfriend), Cathy, and Cathy's friend from Westchester County for some Lower East Side fun. After realizing that we weren't going to get a place to sit for a few hours at the miniature restaurant Zucco (which held about 10 people max), we decided to try out Cafe Charbon, which is a place I'd hung out one Friday night sometime last year. I had a great Cous Cous dish and the others had authentic French food as well - hamburgers. Oh well, we al enjoyed the food and the atmosphere was nice with some DJ-spun music, dim lights, and a bar scene in the background.

After our mellow dinner, we were going to head to Welcome to the Johnsons for $2 PBRs before I realized that there was a lounge that I'd been wanting to visit right in our neck of the woods. One quick message to Google SMS and we were on our way there. To continue the French theme for the night, the place (called Verlaine) serves cocktails with a Vietnamese twist. Very interesting, very tasty beverages. We chilled out there for a while and talked before calling it an early night at around 1:00am. Not before buying a few cheap shots of something really really tasty (I have no idea what it was - thank the waitress!) for my cute neighbors!

J Riley, if you liked Office Space, I highly recommend The Office on Tuesday nights at 9:30 on NBC. Quite possibly one of the funniest shows out there in my opinion. I love it!