Weekend Wrap-up: Aww, how I love the weekends! This weekend was set to be a good one too because my friend Adrienne from college moved to New York (officially NJ) last weekend! Woohoo, another duck in the city. We caught up for Shake Shack earlier in the week to catch up, but she was making a trip back in the city for the weekend to stay with us. 

Friday night after work we headed down to Soho to meet up with my roommate and one of her friends at Von for drinks. The atmosphere reminded me a lot of a Portland bar and it was a nice place to sit down and chat with friends. If you could get a seat that is! It was pretty hopping for the after-work scene. On our way back to the Upper East Side we stopped by at another bar that my friend Donna was at to say hi. The cold kept us from wanted to wander too much though and once we made it uptown and into my warm apartment there were no signs of leaving. Instead, we had a lower key evening watching some tv and went to bed at a decent hour. 

Saturday marked a day of a little shopping! I finally caved and opened a Chase bank account in the city because only have one Key bank location in the city has been difficult since there are so many places that are cash only here. Those atm fees can add up too! So it was time. After I opened accounts earlier this week I got something in the mail saying you could get $125 for opening a new bank account with Chase so I stopped by the one nearest me to see if that could apply to me since I just opened an account and sure enough it did. Woh hoh! So, we took a little trip down to Union Square and for once I actually got to buy a new outfit! It was awesome! I do kind of miss shopping every now and then.. so this cured my shopping bite. As you are probably wondering why I have a picture of a microwave.. I have exciting news! Adrienne and I took Scooter out for a walk and there was a microwave outside our building. Me, being me, I thought it was a good idea to drag it upstairs (Thank you Adrienne since I was still a cripple) and see if it worked! Sure enough it works perfectly fine and after a good cleaning our kitchen had made it back to the 21st century! YES!

Our microwave excitement couldn’t last all night though because we had plans to get ready for! Our night plan included heading down to Alphabet City to Ace Bar to meet up with some of Donna’s old friend’s from college. The bar was absolutely packed so we ended up meeting up with some of Adrienne’s friends (and fellow ducks) that just moved to the city Friday night! More ducks in the city is never a bad thing I would say! 

Sunday was all about football. Playoff games baby! Green Bay took down the Bears, but the game that really mattered was the Jets, Steeler game at 6:30. Unfortunately, it was another let-down like my ducks.. They put up a good fight in the second half, but not good enough. Bummer.. I’m going to have to root for the Packers though because the one NFL team I can’t stand is the Steelers.. Superbowl ‘06 flashbacks running through my head..

Aww, well despite a sad Sunday funday it was a great weekend. This week is going to be great too because.. dun, dun.. ALL OF MY SHOWS ARE BACK ON!!! Can you say Gossip Girl tomorrow night?! I’m beyond pumped!

Something I’ve been playing with the idea for awhile now has been joining a gym here in NYC. I get my fair share of walking and stairs in every day, but thought I’d enjoy being able to take different work-out classes especially in the dead of winter right now where I am minimizing walking outside as much as possible.

So I decided to try out New York Sports Club (NYSC) because they have locations all over the city, a great class selection, and are one of the more reasonably priced gyms in the city. One of the girls at work decided to try it out as well and found out they were having a special that knocked off the initiation fee of joining with 1 free month and then your trial fee applied to February. So, a pretty good deal! Especially because gyms get you in the initiation fees New York being no exception. Since I’m all about saving money too it was the best option to take advantage of the deal if I was serious about adding a workout regimen to my routine. It’s not a New Year’s resolution or anything.. just something I’d like to get back into a little now that I’m not working two jobs. So I joined!

My friend from work and I chose our first class for Wednesday night called Total Body Conditioning. Considering I haven’t been in a gym.. in.. well awhile, I was a little intimidated by the name alone, but decided to hit the ground running. When they say total body conditioning they are not messing around either! The class ended up being really great, but a lot of weight lifting which is something I never do. It was good because I never do it, but during the class I was just imagining the soreness that was going to result. No pain, no gain though right? 

It’s Sunday evening and I can finally stretch both of my arms straight again! The class definitely kicked my butt, worse than even I expected. Once I get back into it I should be good to go in a couple of weeks though! Or so I hope.. I’ll keep you posted.

I’m starting to think someone got the full moon wrong on the calendar for this month after Thursday night’s dinner! Seriously, I think Wednesday was definitely a typo.

Chris and I decided to meet up after work to check out a place he wanted to go to for dinner called Pig Heaven. His brother heard about it on the news and it’s in our neighborhood so it was definitely something that needed to be checked out. 

We got dinner a little early for New York standards so there were only a couple tables that were being used in the restaurant when we got there. After checking out the menu I decided on Sesame Chicken and Chris decided to give their ribs a shot. We got dumplings as an appetizers and had started eating them as the scene that was going to take place momentarily took its course. 

We were at a corner table and the hostess sat a scraggly looking women at the table right next to ours. My seat was facing her table so I got a good look at her. She sat down and fiddled with one of her two cell phones sitting on the table before she was served a martini. You see strange things and people in New York on a daily basis that you would think you’d start to become desensitised to the strangeness, but human behavior has always been a fascination of mine so I’ve only become more observant of it. 

Something seemed out of place about the woman, but I was so hungry and focused on our dumplings that I let it slip my mind. That is before her daughter rolled into the restaurant like a train wreck. She was another scraggly looking woman. She had bleached blonde hair with very grown out dark roots and she looked as though she was not completely together. She sat down at the table yelling about some necklace she got for free at some store. I soon figured out that they were a mother daughter pair and the mom tried to get her daughter to speak quieter after she had drawn the attention of everyone at the restaurant. 

What happened next still blows my mind. The mom had ordered noodles with some kind of peanut sauce for the daughter and after looking at the dish the daughter demanded it be sent back because the sauce had been made spicy instead of mild. The waitress returned to the table with a new bowl of the dish and the daughter took one look at it before also demanding a new one because the presentation was not as good as the first one. She then started screaming at her mom, “How could you do this to me?” in reference to the dish and on the verge of a breakdown she started crying at the table still screaming. By this time Chris and I were looking at each other in disbelief. Was this really happening? 

What was even weirder to me was the mom kept saying, “Make them how we like them” as if she was a regular there. The madness continued and Chris looked me in the eye a couple of times asking if this was for real or if we were on some kind of reality show. It was THAT crazy. The restaurant manager came over to the table to try and calm the daughter down about the meal, but didn’t ask them to leave or anything. Again, I think this had to do with the Mom being a regular? I’m not entirely sure. All I can tell you is she was screaming the whole time! It’s a shame too because the food was great! The sesame chicken was one of the best I’ve had and Chris’ ribs were cooked perfectly with a delicious Chinese BBQ sauce.

No producers or cameras showed up on the scene though so I’m going to have to say we weren’t on any reality show but the scene was literally straight out of a MTV’s boiling points episode or What would you do. I think we might just have to add them to the take-out restaurant list and not dine-in after that experience.

Chris has caught the 16 Handles bug as well and wanted to stop by there on the way home from dinner too. I was too full to get any, but there will definitely be repeated trips there in my near future.

To wrap up our interesting evening we passed Tom Selleck walking down Second Avenue! I’m telling you, it was a full moon kind of night.