culture vs. nature

A brief overview of my weekend, if you will:

Friday night

Excellent date with Australian Frank. 'Nuff said, mate.

Saturday day

Excellent museum date with my friend Sean. (Ladies, Sean is single and I highly recommend him. Go ahead, check him out. I'll wait.) We went to the Met to see the shark (who we affectionately now call "Sharky Shark") and ended up checking out the whole museum. My favorite? This one:
We hit the modern stuff, the furniture, the weapons (did I mention Sean's a prop master?), the tapestries and (my favorite) the benches.

After all the culture we could stand, we headed to Chinatown for an Adventure Dinner. There was a place Lisa and I had discovered last summer during a Taste of Chinatown and I tried to go there once for dinner but discovered it was nothing but a junky little take-away place. Doomed to repeat history once again, I sighed heavily and turned to go, when Sean said, "Uh, Kate, there's a staircase here that says 'Open.' Do you want to see what's in the basement?"
I agreed, but only if he would go downstairs first.

And boy were we lucky! What a find! Go to Sanur! It's on Doyers Street and it's AWESOME! Sean ordered Assam Stingray (which is wikkid bony) and I ordered ginger and scallion crabs -- which came in their shells!! Totally a little hole in the wall, but the most adventurous dinner I've had in a long time!

Sunday day

I got a call early in the morning from Lisa, who asked if I wanted to come with her and RJ and Max to check out a cabin RJ was interested in LongSomething Manor, NY. (Longacre? Longfellow? Longmeridian? I forget.) I said, sure, why not, I love car trips, and we headed out the door.

LongTripFromHome Manor, while cute, wasn't much to write home about, but it was nice to be out in the country, peeping at the leaves and catching a smidge of nature.

I think this photo sums up how the local kids probably feel about living in a place where the sidewalks roll up around 3pm on Sunday:

After lunch and tea, we headed back to the city, stopping along the way at a store whose billboard announced itself as "Memories: Possibly the Best Store Ever. GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!"

And back in the day, I can see why M: PtBSE might have been a hit. Full of knick-knacky goodness, it must have died a little on the inside when eBay came on the scene. Because they were selling things like porcelain booties (which I happen to force my brother-in-law to collect by giving one to him at every gift giving occasion) for $9.95. (They're worth about a whopping 99 cents.)

By the end of the weekend, I was exhausted, culturified and naturalized. (And I had small cuts all over my hands from trying to eat crabs in their shells. Good god that's a pain in the ass!)

Lather, Rinse and (as often as you can) Repeat.