X-Men Trilogy

Forgive me Fast Food Nation, for I have sinned.

It wasn't entirely my fault, I'd rather deflect the blame to the location in which I was at noon this morning and the lack of organic, high-class culinary options in the Bronx. Last night Melissa finally had her housewarming (roughly two years after moving in) and New Roommate party at her nice pad up in the BX. It started and ended really late and a handful of us chose to stay up there for the night - errr, morning..... and we were famished by noon on Sunday morning.

Part of the reason for Sean and I staying up there was that we were having an X-Men party on Sunday morning that arose because the three of us really wanted to see the new X-Men movie and it was playing at the cheap theater by Melissa's pad. So, we woke up at 10:30, popped in X-Men 1, followed by fast-food ordering and eating, and X-Men 2 (and napping - imagine Justin napping during an action film :-/ ) shortly thereafter. That brought us to about 2:40pm with X-Men 3 starting at the theater at 3:00. Talk about a lazy Sunday!

Saturday consisted of submitting myself to my regularly-scheduled torture session at the orthodontist. Actually, it's not all that bad, but my teeth were actually pretty sore for once after getting a couple brackets on the furthest-back teeth in my upper jaw. My mouth is amazingly different from what it was back in January. In three weeks, I get the arch-expander taken out finally and start planning for surgery number deux. More on that to follow in a few weeks....

After the ortho, I did a little shopping at Zara and then started getting pumped up about the impending World Cup (starts Friday, June 9th) by stopping in my local soccer stores to check out jerseys and shoot the breeze about the games. I am like a little kid right now, so giddy about the games. I've already blocked my calendar off from 9:00am - 5:00pm every weekend day for the next few weeks. I've got a list of bars showing the games and plan on going to a different one for every day, including a place in BFE, Queens where the local Czechs will congregate :o). I'll be watching the Czech v. Ghana and Italy v. USA games there in a few weeks. After shooting the breeze there, I stopped by the soccer supply store to see if they had any new Pumas for me to investigate and, lo-and-behold, they did. Me and this guy with an England shirt on both tried on a pair in the same size and both walked away satisfied customers with something along the lines of these babies (mine are darker blue like my old ones):
Mom and Dad were out last weekend for four excellent days. As always, we did more than I have time to write about, but a couple of new noteworthy spring-time activities that I hadn't done before included heading over to Brooklyn to walk through Brooklyn Heights and along the Promenade, which has the best view of New York City as far as I can tell. On Monday, Central Park beckoned us and we rented some bikes at a nearby store and cruised around all of the park for a few hours to enjoy the wonderful weather, sites such as the castle, Strawberry Fields, and the roller-dancing area that I frequently admire. The weather was fantastic for the weekend, unlike their last trip out here where it was cold and wet the whole time.

Naturally, we did more than enough eating during the weekend as well. The big meal of the trip was 'inoteca, where we were joined by Sean and Melissa for some wonderful Italian small-plates and wine. We also did Carnegie Deli after watching The Producers for the first time, where we were fed a ridiculous, ludicrous amount of pastrami and roast beef, which was preceeded by a wonderful brunch at Diner 24, which is next to the recently-deceased Rue de Crepes. They had these ricotta cheese and poppy-seed pancakes that were to die for. Gotta investigate that recipe online!

J. Riley, the grain of the evening is hulled barley!

And a niece (and sister!) picture for the masses: