Past and Present Unite

I'm super late with this post but better late than never! Right, Johnny Hume? ;)

I had one of the greatest nights in years last weekend. I swear, sometimes I get so overwhelmed in the best of ways when I think of what awesome people I know and have in my life. For the times when I'm down or I'm having a hard time keeping proper perspective, I think of certain people and I smile. Immediately I'll feel better and I'm just really lucky to know people that have the ability to help me do that.

Johnny Hume, or Jonathan as he demands to be called now (which I will never ever do), is a dear friend of mine from high school and one of those people that makes me smile. He and I have kept in touch over the years but very closely over this past year particularly. A few months ago, we got a date on the calendar for him to come visit and I was looking so forward to it! We'd joked so many times, as I do with my other close friends, about how he just needs to move to New York and be done with it. Well, guess what? He decided to say screw it and see what interviews he could set up here just for the hell of it. I kid you not that, in a time frame from early December to mid-January, the guy got an awesome job, found an apartment, is dating a lovely gem of a lady, and has officially moved to the city. I'm telling you right now that I'm still in total shock and words can't even describe how happy I am that he's here! The funniest part of this is that the dinner reservations we'd booked forever ago for last Saturday turned into a "welcome to the Big Apple" dinner instead of just him visiting! How freaking awesome is that. Johnny decided to reach out to Nat, another mutual friend of ours from high school that lives in DC, to see if he could join us and he totally came in town for our little reunion.

We all decided to meet for wine before dinner at a great new spot on Bleecker called Bar'rique. They'd just opened two weeks prior and what a fantastic little place it is! It was just so awesome to see Nat and to finally meet Johnny's lady, Cameron. She and I dove right into terrific conversation and I honestly felt like we'd been friends for years. That's always a wonderful sign when you meet someone new. :) She is a tremendous lady and there's an automatic kinship there simply due to how in love we are with food, ha! (Check out her and her sister's food blog here if you get a chance!) We drank delicious wine at Bar'rique for a bit and finally ventured over to Po which we all know I'm obsessed with.

Everything about our evening was amazing. The conversation, the wine, the food (of course), the genuine, true laughter and stories we shared; it was just terrific. It's so fantastic to bring my past and present together in such a meaningful way and to look ahead at all the fun yet to be had with Johnny officially in the Big Apple. Welcome "home", my friend:

Halloween Weekend with Brant and Susanne

First of all, it's November?!?! I'm in serious disbelief. Anyway...

My goodness, October was a busy month for me. It's fitting that I'd round it out with more guests, too. Brant and Susanne came up to visit again and what a nice weekend we had. They've come to see me several times since I moved here which is always so special. This trip was particularly great because we really just laid low. They wanted to be more like locals since they've covered most all the touristy stuff during past visits. I really enjoyed this visit for that reason which I'm sure most people would understand. ;)

We spent Saturday mainly walking all around town. The weather was just so gorgeous all weekend, albeit chilly. I brought them up to see my office and we did some shopping in several different areas of town. It was really nice to simply roam around with no real agenda. Just as a side note, we went into Armani Exchange in Soho and I've never in my life heard such loud music. I contemplated getting a six pack and just hanging out there since it was more of a club in that store than anywhere I've seen in a while. However, I did find a hat I've been wanting forever so yay for that! Anyway, a group of us had dinner at Po (just as tremendous as the first time I went!) and then it was off to Seafood's party. I hadn't gotten a costume this year because I had a race to run on Sunday morning and blah blah. It was supposed to be a low key Halloween but...it wasn't. Thanks to Camille's Halloween stockpile, I became a witch pretty fast so I was "accepted" into the party. :P It was so awesome having Brant and Susanne here to join in the fun:

Isn't she menacing:

Team Camps on the roof, weeee:

Stephanie is so freaking creative. She was a bed bug (and yes, made her shell out of fiberglass!) and Alex was the mattress. Genius:

Seafood did an awesome job with everything and I think Brant and Susanne were thoroughly impressed with his incredible apartment. I kept trying to describe it to them but saying it's a "quadplex" doesn't really do it justice til you see it. We were there for quite a while and then went for a few more beers at Highlands. We all had such a blast and, next thing we all knew, it was 3:30am. Um, I do not stay out until 3:30am. I sure didn't have a problem doing so Saturday, though.

Needless to say, I did not run my race on Sunday morning but I'm actually glad because we had a wonderful time walking through Central Park. The leaves were beautiful:

After that, we walked around the west side and stopped at a little Swedish cafe called Fika that Susanne knew of. It was fun to try some treats that she grew up having. :) How cute is she:

Argh, I do not know what's up with my camera uploading these weird, grrrr! Anyway, last but not least, we did our one big touristy thing of the weekend: Katz's Deli. Brant was set on getting a sandwich from there so we braved the masses and went. I swear, they have some insane operation happening in there. Finally after being squished like sardines in line, Brant got his dream pastrami sandwich and I have to admit...it was freaking delicious. I mean, look at that thing:

It was worth the $15. I'm going back to get one of my own soon.

It was another awesome trip to add to the books. I'm excited because I think I'll be home at Christmas while Susanne's parents are in from Sweden so I'm really looking forward to hopefully meeting them. :) We all know Christmas will be here before we know it, too...

PS -  Is it really November?!?!

I Love Po

This past Saturday was Allison's birthday and we all know how much I looooove birthdays. This year has been particularly difficult in a few areas for Allison so I decided to figure out something that would surprise her, big time. What better way to do that than to have mom fly up to celebrate?! I knew it would be such a special gift for Allison. Also, the fact that mom could join us for our annual birthday dinner tradition was just so fun.

My original plan was to have Allison over for some wine and cheese on the evening mom arrived but silly me never checked to see if Allison was free! She actually had a work dinner the night mom got in, ooops. So, I had to keep mom a secret until I could do a proper "reveal" the next day. Camille and I schemed and came up with a plan to take Allison for drinks somewhere very unusual where she'd find mom sitting there.

We decided on Raines Law Room which couldn't have been a more perfectly confusing spot for Allison. :) It's this great speakeasy that had the most amazing drink concoctions, even though one of Camille's did taste like beef jerky. When you sit down, there's actually a chain that you pull on the wall which is how you call your server over. It really was so unique and different. How fun are these drinks:

I love that antique champagne glass in front! I picture ladies from the 40's wearing long satin gloves drinking out of that. I swear, we could have stayed there all night! Allison was totally and completely surprised by mom and I was just so happy I could make that happen. :)

The real treat was Allison's birthday dinner. Holy crapola, in all my time living in New York, I've never had a dinner so good. Um, I've eaten at a LOT of places so I don't say that lightly. I took a friend's suggestion and booked a reservation at Po on Cornelia Street. I love Mario Batali and will take any chance to eat at one of his restaurants so I was probably more excited than Allison! When we got there, I loved every single thing about it - the simple decor, the small, intimate space, the music (Batali is serious about the music in his restaurants) - I loved it all before even sitting down. Though I could go into detail for days about each thing we ate, I will simply say that my white bean ravioli with balsamic brown butter blew my mind. I took a bite of it and actually had to stop chewing for a second because I was taken aback. It was so delicious, it would honestly be hard to describe. Mom had the linguine with clams and Allison had the spinach tagliatelle with ragu bolognese, both of which were amazing as well. It's been nearly a week and we are still talking about that meal. I actually made a reservation there yesterday for when Brant comes back to visit at the end of the month. Can I really wait that long?!

Overall, it was a wonderful birthday weekend for Allison. I was so happy to celebrate her and to do what I could to make her feel special. She deserved it and I can only hope she'll remember how great the weekend was for a long time. :)