New Yorkers

So January is almost over, and I haven't written a blog in like 3 weeks. When I don't write anything for that long, the result is that I have a million thoughts to blog about. How do I possibly write down everything I've been thinking about? How do I organize my thoughts so that they are readable and not confusing? I feel the pressure to write everything as quickly as possible, all in one really long paragraph. Well, I won't. Because that's hard on a person's eyes, and frankly, it would probably be really hard to follow. I said that I have a lot of thoughts, not a lot of organization to my thoughts.

So I'm forcing myself to categorize my "thoughts" into blogs by topic/event, and if I get a chance to write them all, then I will. If not, oh well! First topic/event----we went to the city again last weekend!

Justin had a reception through an organization from A&M undergrad last Friday night in Manhattan, and I jumped at the chance to go to the city again. I know this is dumb, but I'm starting to feel like NYC is my city. It's the closest fun place to go, we know the drive pretty well now and can pretty easily work the train system to get in and out of Manhattan. I think that the drive/train commute is totally worth it to spend a weekend in such a fun place!

Saturday morning, we met my oh-so amazing friend Tarra for brunch. It was a great little place down by NYU, I think it was called Five Points, that served excellent brunch...and very fabulous-looking Bloody Mary's on two of the tables near us. I promised her she'd be featured on the blog...so drumroll please, here she is in all of her fabulousness!

Tarra pointed us towards Broadway where we would spend the next few hours shopping, and frankly, I was literally in heaven. Justin was a great sport and let me shop in any store I wanted to go into. I definitely don't consider myself a shop-aholic. I don't even conider myself to have a shopping addiction, which I would think is an accomplishment after living in Dallas for the last 5 years of my life. But I DO enjoy browsing styles, comparing sale prices and finding bargains for things I need. I'm in no way a trendy dresser with a taste for designers, but I LOVE to look at them. And truth be told my friends, the Ithaca mall does not provide much, if any, opportunity for looking. We turned off Broadway onto Canal street...mainly for the experience. And oh, an experience it was!

After shopping, we went back to the hotel to thaw out and get ready for dinner. We found a southwestern style restaurant in the West Village called Agave. It was perfect, and I fell in love with that area of the city. No tourists, no bustling around. And I had some enchiladas that were, well Southwestern, which is not exactly, but is close to Tex-Mex! Here's Justin, trying to find the restaurant on the map before we left the hotel...he thought it was so funny every time he pulled out that map, because I would immediately get embarressed. This time, I made him figure it out in the hotel room instead of down in the subway.

After a perfect dinner, we headed over to Cafe Wha? for a fun night of live music, dancing and sangria! By the end, we were dancing with everyone from our table- which included two brothers from Brazil, a couple who most likely just moved to the US from Russia and a bachelorette who's getting married in India next month and her best friend. Our story of Texas-transplants living in upstate NY sounded so boring.

If you've never heard of this place, picture the best wedding band you've ever heard and multiply them x10. Also imagine a dark room underground with as many people crammed in as possible with a ceiling that's 2 feet too low. The 9 person band was amazing, and I was pretty sure that Ludacris was playing the drums and the two guitarists pictured were Rod Stewart and Andre 3000.

Fun weekend in NYC!

I have to say, that one of the highlights of the weekend for me was attending Sunday morning service at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. What an amazing morning of worship!