home again. it's grey and warm here in the south. nothing like the bitterly cold but bright blue day i spent in new york yesterday. it was in the low 20s. luckily, the breeze stayed rather minor. i don't think i could have stood 24 degrees and a stiff breeze from the hudson.
my last day and a half were divine. friday night, we met up with a good friend from vet school and had dinner at a spectacular, small, cozy, and "inexpensive" (for new york) italian restaurant in the village called piadina. the food was absolutely exquisite. we began with corn polenta smothered in melted gorgonzola. i had a salad of bitter greens covered in thinly sliced pears, parmesan cheese, and almonds with a light sweet balsamic dressing. the main course was luscious. garganelli pasta in a light cream sauce of green peas and ham. dessert was the italian restaurant standby of tiramisu and espresso. for 3 of us to eat with an appetizer, 2 salads, 2 entrees, dessert, and espresso - it was $65. that's dirt cheap, by new york standards, and the food was absolutely amazing. afterwards, we visited the slaughtered lamb pub in on the corner of spring and ... some other street, and i had too many beers. we made it home around 2am. i also had a near miss on the subway. there are no public restrooms in new york city. a dangerous combination with my hamster bladder, consumption of too many beers, and being 30 some odd blocks from a bathroom i could use.
yesterday, myself and my friend roamed soho and the street markets for christmas gifts. we wound up in brooklyn momentarily, by accident (took the train the wrong way). it was a rather serendipitous accident, because the train came out on the manhattan (i think) bridge right around sunset. i got to see the brooklyn bridge and the statue of liberty and the manhattan skyline. it was a lovely sight, and a much needed rest for my feet.
we spent the whole day out and finished off by eating at the moonstruck diner - one of the many fantastic diners to be found in new york city. the food was great, as usual - but i still blanched at the $40 pricetag attached to a meal for 2 in a diner, of all places. gotta love the cost of living in NYC. we both collapsed early (9pm!!) because my flight was out of newark at 9:05, meaning my cab was coming at 6:30.
newark is about what i imagined - as is new jersey. flat, marshy, smoggy, ugly. of course, i only saw a tiny bit of NJ on my way to the airport, but it was kind of what i imagined / saw on the sopranos. my flight was excellent, surprisingly. i flew continental - which had muffins and juice and free blankets. my entire row (3 seats) was also empty on the newer jet - and so i had all the room i could want. my palms only sweated lightly on take-off, and otherwise, i felt fine.
so now i'm home and back to responsibility - starting with my animals needing various amounts of care (litterboxes, etc). tomorrow, i go back to work. i'm on days through sunday, so the 8am-6:30pm shift.
i'll be around with interesting cases to post, i'm sure.
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The time to see New Jersey is March, and the suburban NYC area is ugly, year round. But there are beautiful parts of New Jersey too. It is the Garden State.
When I was a truck driver I sometimes got loads of glass bottles from the eastern past of southern Jersey, they gave perfict sand that makes high quality bottles, like medicine bottles. So, next time you look at a glass medicine bottle, think beautiful pine forests near the sea shore in southern New Jersey.
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