Bout time.

I had one of the best weekends I've had in a while this weekend. It was all the right parts relaxing and fun and interesting, and different.

Friday night I went to Jen Brown's apartment in Brooklyn and had a great time at our Olympics-themed shabbat dinner. Although there was much more Olympia than Shabbat, thankfully. It was great to see everyone, and it was fun to be those loud obnoxious kids on the subway on the way home.

Unfortunately on Saturday I had to go back to New Ro for the afternoon to start the task of cleaning out the Gumdrop. My dad's planning on moving out some time in June or July. No one's happy about it, him included, but it's time, so we're doing it. A lot of my stuff from when I was a kid is going to get donated to hospitals and stuff, so I feel good about that, but I don't really want to leave the house. It's been good to me, and it will feel wierd not to have a real home base. But fear not, Captain Fantastic already has a new home at Sean's house, so Elton and I won't have to be seperated. Anyway, come this Spring there will be a fantastic opportunity for everyone to buy my old stuff at a tag sale. In the meantime, feel free to drive by on the weekends and see what we've thrown out. This past week we enjoyed carving up my bat-mitzvah sign-in board and tossing it out the attic window and onto the driveway below. Anyway, the process of moving out is going to suck, and I haven't really dealt with it, but c'est la vie.

Onto happier parts of the weekend, Saturday night I went uptown to Eli's housewarming party. It was quite an adventure to go up to Harlem alone at 11 at night in a blizzard, since I'd only been to his apartment once before, and it was not in white-out conditions. But the party was a lot of fun. Olivia was there, who I hadn't really seen in years. We have a lot more in common than just a less-than-thrilling ex-boyfriend and it was great to hang out and catch up. And play a thrilling game of ridiculous scrabble. When she and Eli walked me back to the subway at 3 am and we spent 15 minutes on the corner of 116th and Frederick Douglass Boulevard talking to just about everybody who walked by. We were told the merits of pot over cigarettes (it costs you less in the long-run, according to the old philosopher) and got an impromptu concert from someone who I swore was a dude until the end of the concert when she introducted herself as Josephine. Rock on, Josephine. All in all, I give Harlem two hearty thumbs up and look foward to returning there soon.

Of course by the time I left Eli's, it had been snowing for hours, and there was a good 3 or 4 inches on the ground. I crawled into bed with S and when we woke up at ten there was at least a good foot on the ground. This of course called for an adventure. After a lovely filling breakfast at Manatus, we went on a trek to SoHo. Normally a ten minute walk, yesterday it took us easily 45 minutes. We tried to go to the Puma store to buy awesome jeans, but the store, while fully staffed, was locked. So we consoled ourselves at Vosges and drowned our tears in vials of exceedingly expensive and delicious hot chocolate. I also got him a valentine's day present. because eventhough I think Valentine's day is a load of hooey (ha! hooey!) I always enjoy an opportunity to get him something that he enjoys, and maybe even is tasty. So that was fun. We went back to the apartment and watched Coffee and Cigarettes but discovered that it was a much better movie to nap to than to actually watch. But I love naps, and I rarely get to have a co-napper since S isn't much of a napper, but I think in this case mono worked in my favor. So we napped for a couple of hours, hung out and basked in the glory of the TiVo, commiserated about the misery of canker sores, ate burritos and went to sleep. All in all, a great weekend.