Absence...sweet sorrow...etc.

Sorry for my absence the past week. I left thursday afternoon for my triumphant return to New York City. I stayed the weekend because me and my friends were having our annual fall tradition known as Friendsgiving. Essentially, it is a pot-luck get together of everyone of our friends. We started this tradition in 2008 and have done it each year since. It has actually caught on quite a bit.  People actually think of it as an important tradition already. It's nice to keep up with these kinds of things as we get older. Each year there are more and more couples at events like this and sooner or later those couples will turn into marriages, and those marriage will then have children...which will limit our ability to do these kinds of things. We need to get them in while we can.

I take the bus down from PA on thursday afternoon and meet my buddy Chris with whom I was staying the first two nights with. We're driving around as he finishes up some work in the lower east side and I find a perfect example of why I love New York City and in particular the lower east side. While parked on the corner of 2nd avenue and 5th street, as Chris takes a phone call, I crack my window to get some air and notice a fella facing the wall. This is what makes NYC great...it's 4:30 in the afternoon, still pretty light out and he's just pissin on the side of a building (I think it was a restaurant) right there on the corner where everyone going in every direction can see him. He wasn't drunk and he wasn't homeless...he just didn't care...god bless him. This, however, wasn't the best part. As I'm watching from the car a young lady walked by via the sidewalk in between myself and the vigilante bar pisser. She, of course, takes notice that he's pissing on the wall and can't help but look. Now, the VBP might be willing to piss in public, and full well knows people will see him...but he doesn't want to be made to feel insecure about his corner-store urination. Still peen-in-hand he starts screaming at the girl "DON'T YOU WATCH ME PISS. WHA-CHOO LOOKIN AT!" Once done, he zipped up, and followed her around the corner to continue reminding her how out of line she was in looking at the guy pissing on the wall in the middle of the day in plain sight. God I love NYC.

Then on Friday there were two things on the agenda. I have an interview - a REAL LIFE LAWYER INTERVIEW - about which I will blog tomorrow. Second, we were having a cocktail party with all our friends. Sort of a pre-friendsgiving night out. Us fellas decided to suit up for the occasion. Let's just say the night began as an adult party with well dressed men, tasty hors d'oeuvres, and fine conversation. However, at some point things changed and it became a raucous drunken festival of sorts. I say "at some point" because I unfortunately blacked out. I was drinking Old Fashioned's the entire night, and was unable to turn down the sugary shots the ladies were doling out.  I am actually quite upset that I allowed myself to get that drunk...I had had a tough day...but I didn't want that to happen. While I was told I held myself together and behaved, it is still embarrassing and I don't want it to happen again. I'm not fucking 22 years old anymore.

My Yams are top left

Anyway, so the next day is Friendsgiving. I wake up after four hours sleep and can't walk or move my head without feeling nauseous. So, when we arrive at the house we were eating in, I took a three hour nap. I felt better when I awoke and went on cooking my candied yams. 8 yams boiled for 40 minutes, mashed, combined with 4 tsp of butter, 1/3 a cup of high fructose corn syrup, 1/4 a cup of maple syrup, 1/4 a cup of brown sugar... topped with a bag of small marshmallows and baked for 40 minutes. Didn't turn out too bad. Nothing spectacular, but a good interpretation of a thanksgiving classic. The food was good. Only a couple of us really know how to cook, but somehow each friendsgiving we pull it together and each make one good dish.

Next I moved on to Daves where I spent Saturday and Sunday night. We went out to a place called Libation on Saturday to meet up with an old family friend of Daves who is clearly and completely in love with him. I was told, by her, how they were best friends in the whole world at minimum 317 times (comedy rule number 1: prime numbers are funny). Despite this she was a really nice girl and it was entertaining hanging out with her. After taking the out-of-the-way route of cabbing her home from the nexis of the universe aka 1st and 1st, all the way up to 91st street, we found ourselves at the McDonalds in Murray Hill (mid-thirties and 3rd ave for my out-of-towners) for a late night snack. We should have been there all night. I've never seen so many beautiful and friendly girls in a fast food restaurant. And it wasn't as if all 12 of them came together and that is easily explainable. There were about 3 different groups of entirely way too attractive for McDonalds at three in the morning...girls. And they were friendly, and witty...and one was slightly racist (see this tweet). It was odd.

So that was my weekend. I'm sad it is over and I won't see my friends or my city for several more weeks...probably around New Years. I'll talk about my interview tomorrow.