Sniffle, sniffle

I've got a bad cold today, and decided not to go to work. Although my nose is running, I'm sneezing, my eyes are watery and I'm coughing, I feel like a lazy blob just sitting around at home doing nothing but sleeping and watching TV. Every once in a while, I'll wake up from a nap and feel that I'm all better and ready to go to work, but within a few minutes, a sneezing/coughing fit will hit me, and I'll want to fall back asleep.

On a happier note, an old college friend sent around a mass e-mail to wish people a Happy Chinese New Year. I hadn't heard from him in eons, and e-mailed him to see how he is doing. Turns out, he's living in NYC on the Upper West Side right across the park from me! With that, I'd officially doubled my pool of friends in New York.

Catamount

I've just gotten back from skiing at Catamount in the Catskills. Today was a really warm day for skiing. The sun was out, the air was calm, and it was so warm, that we barely needed to wear a jacket even. Unfortunately, this didn't equate to ideal snow conditions. The slopes were really icy. The Boy and his friend both brought their own snowboards, and I rented skis again. I might decide to buy my own skis for next season. The skis I rented at Catamount were the crappiest skis I've ever used. The blades were so cheap and dull that they wouldn't catch anything.

Although the Boy and his friend weren't too fond of the slopes here, I really liked them. It's true that there weren't a whole lot of options, and we skied/snowboarded down the same slopes over and over, but I thought they were fun slopes. We went down intermediate slopes the entire time. What I like about these slopes is that they are generally wide and don't have huge stretches of straight down drops. There's a lot of twisting and turning, and some short drops followed by flatter (sometimes bumpy) trails. I thought it was easier to control myself and my speed with these kinds of trails. Also, when I did gain a lot of speed, I was more comfortable with it, knowing that the drop would soon level off. This allowed me to try to develop/improve on my skiing techniques, rather than use my usual snow-plow stance the entire way down for fear of gaining too much speed, leading to a complete and utter loss of control. One of these days, I'd like to make a graceful, controlled descent down the mountain with my skis constantly parallell to eachother, rather than look like a scared, clumsy little girl whose skis are constantly running into eachother.

Another Bachelor Night

Last Monday, my friend came over for another episode of the Bachelor. After watching this two hour special, I remembered why we swore off of this show before. It's retarded! It's so obvious who the Bachelor will pick-the prettiest girl, provided that she isn't such a bitch that the other girls rip her apart. This round of the Bachelor has a likeable, absolutely knockout brunette competing among x other girls. The Bachelor is soooo in love with her that many times, it seems like he's competing for her attention. In the last episode, when the Bachelor is still around all of the other girls (who might as well not even be there), he has a birthday cake ordered for his beloved brunette and pulls her into a private room to celebrate. No matter what she does or says, the Bachelor hangs off of her every word, while the other girls are just one slip-up away from being knocked off the show. I'm not sure if it's the editing, but you don't see too much of either the Bachelor's or brunette's personalities. But, I'll still watch the show...for my friend, of course.

Skiing at Camelback

After a weekend of incredibly crappy weather, MLK day was bright, sunny and calm. The Boy and I woke up early and gave the ski thing another shot. The car ride from Manhattan to Camelback was smooth sailing. The temperature was still pretty cold, but we had a great time! The Boy and I started off on the easy/intermediate slopes to warm up. He was using his brand new snowboard, and I rented a pair of skis. After getting comfortable on the easy/intermediate slopes, we decided to try a black diamond. The Asp (name of run) was a pretty icy straight down drop. The Boy tumbled down the entire mountain. After seeing most of my fellow skiiers and snowboarders tumble down, too, I decided to just sit down in the snow and take a ride down the mountain the safer way. We stayed off of the black diamonds after that and did several fun runs on the intermediate slopes before going home. Finally, a nice end to an otherwise crappy weekend!

Ruined Weekend Plans

Last weekend, my plans kept getting ruined by the weather. Saturday was pretty crappy. It poured heavily most of the day. The Boy and I had reservations that night for Cafe Boulud at 8PM. We got all dressed and tried to catch a cab to the restaurant. All of the cabs were either carrying people or off duty, so after trying unsuccessfully to hail many cabs and getting soaked in the rain (umbrellas were somewhat useless), we gave up and went to a "gourmet" Chinese restaurant nearby instead. I was in a pretty pissy mood for the rest of the night.

Sunday was extremely windy. The Boy and I woke up really early to go skiing. When we got to his car parked a couple of streets away, all of the doors were frozen shut. He had to carefully pry the front door open so as not to break the handle. Then I climbed into the car and had to push all of the doors open from the inside. They were frozen pretty tight. Several bodyslams later, I managed to help open the remaining doors. I left the Boy to scrape all of the snow off of the car.

It was so cold and windy that we couldn't defrost the windows. It was hard for the Boy to see, but we weren't going to have the weather ruin our plans again. About halfway to the ski resort, we stopped at a local WalMart to buy some window washing fluid with antifreeze. The 40-50 mph winds were so strong that I couldn't even get the hood of my jacket to stay on. It kept blowing off. We weren't even walking straight anymore. I looked up at the sky and the birds were flying crookedly and gaining no ground. They looked like little airplanes in testing chambers, flapping their wings wildly, but going nowhere. The winds continued to pick up until we were blown down to the ground. At that point, we decided that if we couldn't stay up on our two feet on the ground, there probably wasn't a good chance of us staying up on skis and snowboards, so we turned back and went home.

Another weekend day ruined!

Return of Bachelor Nights!

When I was living in LA, a graduate school classmate got me hooked on watching the Bachelor as comic stress relief from our ultra-competitive daily studies. When we became roommates a year later, we turned the Bachelor into a roommate bonding event where we would laugh at and criticize everyone on the show over wine and cheese. After watching enough episodes to notice a pattern of repetition and predictability in all of the contestant's cheesy sayings and confessions (it doesn't take too many episodes to figure this out), we turned the show into a fun, interactive, weekley drinking game.

After watching the last Bachelor with Jen Scheft, it was so horrible that we swore off of watching the show ever again. But we're both in NY now and couldn't resist reinstating a bit of LA nostalgia. Thus, we've returned for another round of getting drunk off of the Bachelor.

Before the show started, we went out for sushi at a place called Ichiro in the Upper East side. My friend was craving a place that mixes different ingredients together into creative rolls, which is exactly what Ichiro does. It's not the most authentic way to eat sushi, but the fish is fresh, and the rolls are tasty and fun to eat.

After dinner, we went back to the apartment armed with leftover sushi and the hefty remains of a bottle of plum wine. The first episode was already drama packed. My friend and I assessed each girl that walked out (too old, too young, too ditzy, cute, gorgeous, likeable, etc.). High drama ensued after the bachelor chose who to keep and who to drop. One of the girls that got dropped threw a huge tantrum, screaming about how her eggs were going to rot and questioning the bachelor on his motives (which, in her mind, should have been to chose a girl solely for reproductive purposes)!

The Bachelor to us is what football is to guys-an opportunity to get drunk with friends, shout, laugh and watch a bunch of crazy people run around on TV.

Chelsea Market, MOMA and Dinner

The Boy unexpectedly dragged me out of bed at 9:30AM on Saturday morning. Normally, I like to sleep in until 11AM, so I was quite cranky. As a consolation, he made me a very delectable scallion-tortilla omelet for breakfast.

Next, we were off to explore the Chelsea Market (featured on Emeril) out in the Chelsea area. The place kept us entertained for a couple of hours. I sampled brownies and cupcakes from the various bakeries, green tea gelato from a gelato store, corn chowder from a soup place and other breads and prepared foods.

After our appetites were completely ruined for lunch, we walked around to get a feel for the area before hopping on the subway to check out MOMA on the East Side where I had my very first real star sighting. I was on the top floor checking out the photography ( I think) when the Boy came running over to me and asked if I'd seen Uma yet. Huh? Uma Thurman's on display? The Boy then grabbed my arm and led me over to the stairs to get a second opinion on whether or not it was really her. The huge crowd full of gawkers surrounding her (which I now became a part of) should have tipped him off. Yep, it was her - tall, blonde, and talking on her cell phone as she made her way down the escalator. Aside from seeing Uma Thurman, the coolest exhibit was an animated Toy Story exhibit where the artist put a bunch of still Toy Story characters on a wheel in various positions. Then the lights turned off, and the wheel would spin around until you could see a cartoon of character movements under a strobe light. It was such a simple concept, but it had everyone just completely mesmorized.

By now, I was getting very sleepy, so we went home and took a nap before meeting the Boy's friend for dinner in the West Village at an Italian restaurant called Bellavitae. We'd actually tried first to get into the Spotted Pig, a hot new restaurant in the Meatpacking district, but they don't take reservations, and the wait at 7:30PM was at least 2.5 hours. Anticipating that this might occur, the Boy was smart and made an 8:15PM reservation at Bellavitae. The food was great and the prices reasonable. There were four of us, and we split about seven appetizers (small portions), each ordered an entree and shared three bottles of red wine. We were at the restaurant for hours before the Boy and I stumbled back home.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2006! Yesterday, I got back into New York in time to ring in the New Year. The Boy cooked me a nice dinner of lamb chops and mashed cauliflower, accompanied by glasses of Asti Spumante. Normally, I don't like the taste of lamb, but the Boy managed to season and bake it so that the flavor was irresistable. Afterwards, we walked about 15 blocks, checking out the bar scene and what everyone else was doing, as we made our way over to Payard Bistro for dessert. We got there just a bit too late. They had just wrapped up their dinner/coffee/dessert hours and were now beginning the transformation into a New Year's club. So, we walked another 15 blocks back, and the Boy made a giant cookie topped with ice cream for me instead. We turned on the TV and watched Carson Daly host the yearly Times Square event (happy that we weren't standing out there in the blistering cold) until the ball dropped and the new year was here.