New York, New Y-Oh crap, it's still raining.

I have just today gotten over a terrible cold that I got last night, one day after returning from my "vacation" to New York City. And by vacation I mean "some old friends were moving a friend into Astoria, so we crammed into a minivan and drove to New York to stay for a weekend." Here is a quick play by play.

THURSDAY NIGHT: Preparing Snacks. I buy a bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos and bake a batch of M&M cookies for the car ride. Both were great decisions.

FRIDAY MORNING: Awaiting pickup in Pittsburgh. While waiting, clean up the garbage outside that some animal got into, clean the litter boxes, pick up some cat vomit, and play with the dog. Finally the ride shows up and I cram into the purple minivan.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON: We make a detour to Delaware to pick up a fifth friend. It rained pretty much the entire drive. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware...every state looks the same when the sky is gray and shitty. But there's corn in Delaware.

FRIDAY EVENING: We go through New Jersey. As gray as the sky was, it was even grayer in New Jersey. There is no color in New Jersey. Just gray and orange. (That's a tan joke).


We make it to New York. We play "Empire State of Mind" over the car radio as we enter, because we're SO ORIGINAL. It was funny at the time. 12 hours in a car and everything's either hideous or funny.

We finally reach Astoria and move our friend Anielle in. She actually has a pretty nice apartment. Actually, all the apartments we saw that weekend were nice by New York standards. I usually rate apartments based on "how much more comfortable is this apartment than the car?".

We do a bit of driving around. Our team splits up into two separate apartments (one in Brooklyn, one in Astoria) and pass out for the night.

SATURDAY MORNING: Our original plans to rush a Broadway show were scrapped when we realized we just didn't move fast enough. But that was ok, so we went to have brunch instead. We found a nice little restaurant called Five Points that served fantastic brunch. I had the sausage eggs Benedict (as delicious as it looks), my friend Mara had what was essentially egg lasagna, and my friend Jack had a BLT that he raved about for the rest of the trip. A triumphant breakfast, to say the least.

After brunch we set out to find Roni-Sue's candy shoppe, a place I'd read about in a book that has really unique truffles and chocolates. It took us a while to find the place, but it was well worth it when we did. I bought chocolate covered bacon and a truffle with White Russian inside. No regrets!

We then took a brief timeout at a little park. You could do nothing in this park. No skateboarding. No ball playing. And my favorite:

"No Loitering".

In a freaking park. I guess we broke the law?

SATURDAY AFTERNOON: We go to an H&M store so people can shop and I can walk around aimlessly. While there Mara decides she's going to throw up. So I take her outside to find a restroom. We eventually succeed in finding a little shop/Chinese buffet where she makes use of the bathroom and I buy a Vitamin water. Mara decides she wants to take a nap, so we retreat back to our friend Helene's apartment. I read my Kindle, and then also take a nap. That may sound like a waste of vacation, but really we were just happy to be out of our towns.

SATURDAY EVENING: We go to a nice Sushi place, J.J.'s something or other. I never had sushi yet I got a giant box of everything. I like the chicken and the little rolls and the dumplings. The meats were hit and miss, and I actually liked a tiny bit of Wasabi. After dinner Mara, Jack, and I were in charge of fetching the big minivan and bringing it back to Anielle's apartment. It took us at least an hour to find a parking spot. I finished off the Doritos that I rediscovered on the floor.

SATURDAY NIGHT: Jack and I decide we're not done with the day so we go explore the Astoria area. There are a few clubs and bars around, and we eventually decide on a place called Los Margaritas. Upon grabbing a menu, Jack reads the first item and says "Let's just split a pitcher of margaritas and get drunk right here." I agreed.

The waitress dropped this off at the table and then we literally didn't see her again for two hours. It was an awesome time though, just drinking outside in New York City in the middle of the night.

We eventually succeeded. We managed to relocate the apartment and stumbled inside, laughing hysterically and waking up a totally not amused Mara. Whoopsie.

SUNDAY MORNING: Brunch again. I forget the name of this place, but I had an omelet with French Fries in it, so ha.

SUNDAY IN GENERAL: We drove. We drove for hours and hours until it didn't seem possible we'd ever get there. But we did. As long as the car ride was, I was with some of my favorite people in the whole world and that made it so much better.

So that was my little vacation. Monday I was late for work, and then got the beginnings of a cold. Tuesday (this morning) I couldn't get out of bed because I hurt so much. I don't know what happened, I must of touched something gross on the subway and then touched my mouth. Oh well, New York New York!

Thunderstorms, Fallen Trees, Mace, and a side of home fries.

It's been quite the weekend for me. Having a lot more time off than usual I decided to make a trip to Morgantown to visit my best friend Mara for her birthday. Since my little deathrap died, I had to rely on my parent to take me from Pittsburgh to my little town o' Moundsville.

Little did I know that in addition to me, a ROUGH summer storm was also heading for Moundsville, and many other towns near it. I got home on Friday afternoon. After a day catching up and eating ice cream, we were going to go visit my cousin. However, before we could leave, the storm struck. Wind blew trees everywhere and eventually, as is the case, our power went out. When the storm subsided we tried to leave, only we didn't make it very far as there were trees down all over our lane. My sister and I moved some of the smaller trees out of our way, but our uncle eventually took his trusty chainsaw and tractor to clear the larger branches.

Our neighbors, however, won the contest for biggest tree lost. This giant pine tree next to their house fell over, not blocking the road but still quite an impressive sight.

Someone's going to have an AWESOME Christmas though.

So the power was (and, as of right now, is) still out. My relatives all resort to using their generators. I run over to sleep at my grandparents house (I need a fan sound to sleep...I'm a princess that way). Saturday morning my dad and I set out to get a generator from my cousin. We went into town...Dad's truck needed gas. There are about 5 gas stations in town. Only two of them had power. We had to wait a while.

I was yelling at people. "EVERYONE PAY AT THE PUMP, IT TAKES TOO LONG OTHERWISE!"

Finally we succeeded and shortly afterwards my sister and I abandoned ship to Morgantown. After transporting her bed (my old bed) to her new house I met up with Mara and her boyfriend Nate. We had some wine and headed out to Downtown Morgantown. First stop was bdubs; I needed to get some chicken in me. There we met up with our old buddy Jack and we headed to Vice Versa, Morgantown's gay bar.

Our plan was to go bar hopping, but we're kinda lazy people so we stayed at Vice. Plus, Captain Morgan is my friend. We eventually learned there would be a short Strip/Drag show. I don't have any pics or vids of the stripper Kennedy Morgan (sorry, loyal fans) however I took some video of the Drag show. Because the drag queen, a Molly Belle Cummings, did a number to 4 Non Blonde's "What's Up?" which is like my favorite worst song ever.

 

So, a bit more rum and a little dancing (I dance like Elaine from Seinfeld. Seriously, people left.) and we eventually decided to go home. Except we couldn't, because apparently the police were macing people right outside. So we had to wait a bit. Eventually we made our escape. 

The next morning, Mara and I headed to brunch at one of her favorites, The Golden Finch. I had eaten there before, and it was delicious then. I had banana chocolate chip pancakes, but this time I went for something cheesier: an Italian Ham omelet.

Their presentation was better, I had already dug into this mess.

It was a delicious omelet, with all sorts of veggies mixed in with the ham and cheese. Also got a side of home fries with onions, some toast, and a little fruit. Although I've only eaten there twice, I would strongly recommend hitting it up if you're in Morgantown, it's a great little place.

 

 

The interior of the Finch.

After breakfast, Mara and I decided to see an early movie. The movie was Rock of Ages. We didn't like it. I wrote a rather harsh review about it. And then, a nice truck ride back to Pittsbugh.

So yes, that was fun times, no? And I expect them to continue. I'm seeing Magic Mike tomorrow with some friends (keeping in the stripping theme of late) and Friday going to a Pirates game. Can't wait!