Great wknd

The weekend started Thursday with a night out at Heathers in the East Village -- so great to finally introduce Sarah to the "Losties" (a group of friends that started hanging out to watch Lost, but has become so much more than that.)

After a hectic day at IBM and the hospital, Friday Sarah and I treated ourselves to one of our favorite dinner places on the Upper East Side - Felice. Great Italian food! And ambiance that is unusually charming given its UES location. We drank a wonderful bottle of Italian red -- a neboliono? Anyway, we were both dressed up a little so it just felt special.

Yesterday was all about being social and enjoying being together in the city. We read the NYT on the sofa for a little bit and then headed to Cafe Orlin to meet up with Claire Shegog and Sarah Strahan for brunch, which was just delightful. We sat outside there for a bit more than two hours. The autumn morning chill disappeared as the sun broke through. Great conversation with some of my favorite people -- we have all got to spend time together more. And we will.

Then Sarah and I looked at a few apartments -- we're thinking of moving downtown-ish. We saw several places in the East Village -- some of which were pretty nice -- but we couldn't get past the feeling that we'd be moving into a dorm. All those tiny bedrooms crammed on top of one another and walk-ups etc etc. So then we went and saw a few places above 14th street but below 20th and I think we've found our sweet spot. It's just a little more grown up in the blocks east of Gramercy -- and there are definitely some places we could get into.

While we were in that area we met up with Erica Ash and her boyfriend, Lior (I might be spelling his name wrong). Also, met his chihuahua, York, who was surprisingly cute. Chihuahuas usually make me a little nauseous. Anyway, it would be great to live closer to Erica -- she's a good egg and we always have a nice time together.

We were going to go to Costco to do our big shopping trip for the month, but by that time we both felt pretty pooped, so we headed home and I cooked us pasta with smoked salmon in a cream sauce loosely based on this recipe. It turned out great -- first time I've ever made a cream sauce...yum. I also made asparagus as a side.

After dinner, Dara Moses (one of Sarah's long-time friends) stopped by for about an hour and had a glass of wine with us. It was really nice to spend a little time with her because I know how important she is to Sarah, and yet I've only really talked with her in noisy bar situations. After chatting for an hour I see why Sarah loves her so much...she's great.

After Dara left we watched Rachel Getting Married. I was expecting something better -- more cohesive, or something. I didn't love it, but I liked the idea of the cross-cultural, music-driven wedding they had.

This morning I wrote myself a to-do list so I wouldn't fritter away the day (or rather, so I would fritter more meaningfully) -- it includes things like "go to the gym" and "change the guitar strings" and "read and drink tea." So far I'm doing pretty well -- I even played my guitar for about 40 minutes, which felt great. It's been far too long. I printed out the lyrics to about 25 songs of mine since I no longer have them committed to memory...it helped me get through the songs.

So my tea is almost done and I read most of the "The Week." I guess that means I'm off to the gym now...