Food Trucks

One of the best parts of living in NYC is the food.  Delicious, fabulous food everywhere you go with every imaginable type of cuisine.  Seriously, there is a Tibetan restaurant here.  One of the many awesome things about food in NYC is the food trucks that bring tastiness around the city.  One of my absolute favorites is the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck.  I highly recommend the salty pimp!

But NYC has more than just ice cream on wheels.  Every 15 feet there is a hot dog cart or a halal food vendor, there is the wonderful Waffles and Dinges, and there is even a Tabasco themed food truck I've seen a time or two before.  My favorites are the gelato truck and the Italian sausage truck.  Talk about tasty!

I think NYC was just made for pregnant women, what with all the delicious food that brings itself right to your home or work!

GLBT

Woohoo!  As some of you may know the state of New York legalized gay marriage.  I am so glad to live in a state where, when my baby grows up, they can truly marry anyone they love regardless of gender.  I didn't think I could be more proud of my state...until I rode the subway this morning.  When I got on the train today I saw this:

This is an ad encouraging gay and lesbian couples to adopt children and open their homes to foster kids.  Within days of the announcement that gay couples can officially marry in NY they are encouraging them to help children who are in need.  I love living here!

Top Ten TV Shows Set in NYC

Here is a list of my top 10 favorite shows to be set in New York City.  Let me know if you feel like I left something out!

10. Night Court
I totally thought this was ridiculous growing up, but it turns out that the court system in NYC really does run 24 hours a day.

9. Law & Order
Law & Order has several variations that have been set in NYC (Criminal Intent, SVU, etc.) and all of them have been just fabulous!

8. The Jeffersons
Much like George and Wheezy we recently moved on up to the East Side and we love it here.

7. All in the Family
I heart Edith Bunker!

6. Friends
This show was awesome but it gave me a very poor understanding of apartment sizes in NYC.

5.Seinfeld
Why...do they always...eat...at that diner?  I've been there and it isn't the best diner in their neighborhood.

4. Sex and the City
One of my favorite shows ever!

3. The Cosby Show
Ah, Bill Cosby.  Your penchant for salty, fatty food and love of jazz stay with me to this day.

2. Sesame Street
Everything's A-OK here!

1. I Love Lucy
This is quite possibly my favorite TV show of all time and, if I'm honest, a big part of the reason I moved to New York in the first place.  As a little girl living in a run down little house in Texas (my family moved up to bigger and better as I got older but we started out in a pretty cruddy house out in podunk nowhere) I would watch reruns of I Love Lucy and marvel at how awesome life was in NYC.  Considering one of my favorite movies at the time was also The Muppets Take Manhattan I feel like I was destined to end up here!

Off Broadway

On Friday we went to see a show at an Off-Broadway theater.  The show was called The Sphinx Winx and it was kind of adorable.

It was a musical misinterpretation of Egyptian history, with Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony and a host of other characters.  It would have been better with a larger cast and a slight script rewrite, but it was otherwise pretty cute.

I've been crazy busy lately so I haven't had much time to update the blog in a while but I will be updating it more frequently here in the future.  Tomorrow is my birthday so hopefully I will have some new stuff for you soon!

Fleet Week

Yes, it is that time again.  Walking through the city in the early summer heat you begin to hear what sounds like Barry White music wafting through the air.  You notice your hips swing back and forth seductively without any conscious thought or effort.  You suddenly have the urge to buy a push-up bra and you don't know why.  Yes ladies, it is fleet week!

Or it was last week at any rate.  This is the time of year when the men and women of the US Navy dock in NYC and run around town in their delicious uniforms, being all sexy and patriotic.  There is nothing quite like spotting your first sailor of the season, like when you see the first birds as the snow begins to melt away in the spring.  I, of course, am married and pregnant so fleet week is simply appreciating the view for a while.  I'm sure my husband would feel the same way if NYC had a large breasted underwear model week.

For your viewing pleasure, ladies and gay gents, I have taken pictures of a few of the sailors as they wandered around the city!  I mostly have shots from behind, partly because I respect the fact that they may not want their faces posted all over the internet and partly because the best part of a sailor is his rear end, so enjoy!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

You know what's awesome?

Museums.  Art.  Historical artifacts.  Musical instruments.  Central Park.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has miles and miles of incredible art and artifacts from almost every possible source.  We took my parents last weekend when they came to town and they were simply floored by the amazing things housed in this museum.

Below are some pictures of items found in their Egyptian section.  Some are are decorative jars, some are mummies and sarcophagi, others are actual buildings brought over from Egypt that you can walk into and view the hieroglyphics.

From the Egyptian section we went to the sculpture garden, which is actually one of my favorite places in the whole museum.  They have dozens of sculptures as well as stained glass throughout that is all phenomenally gorgeous.  My favorite piece is the gold statue pictured here of Diana the Huntress.

The last stained glass image is by Louis Tiffany (as in Tiffany's, the famous jewelry store) and is one of the most gorgeous pieces of art I've ever seen.  The picture is sideways because I couldn't fit enough of the image in the camera viewfinder and still have it be recognizable the other way.  When you stand in front of it the colors swirl in such a way that it is almost impossible to believe it is glass.

Below are some images from the American Art section of the museum, which is mostly gorgeous furniture that is nicer than anything I will ever own.

From there we went to the Guitar Heroes exhibit which was incredible but didn't allow pictures.  I managed to sneak in one or two anyway but I will respect the museum's request by not sharing them with others.  The guitars were beautiful though and I highly encourage you to go see them before the exhibit moves on.  After that we moved to the permanent musical instrument exhibit and saw a ton of beautiful items, including some instruments that the museum really doesn't know much about.  A few of them are the only ones of their kind and we don't know how they were played or who created them.  The gold drum pictured below actually belonged to Ringo Starr!

The last place we visited was the weapons display.  There were swords, guns, suits of armor, and all sorts of other weaponry on display.  Even after all of these things we still only saw a fraction of the museum.  One of the things that I love about the museums here is that you can visit them over and over again and see something new every time!

The Case of the French Pervert

This weekend a news story broke about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French head of IMF who sexually assaulted a maid in New York before attempting to flee the country.  As it happens, when he was brought to the courthouse and arraigned I happened to be in the area with my parents who were visiting for the weekend.  It was a media circus!

There were press there from all across the globe and several people who just happened to be walking by that stopped to sit on benches across from the court and watch the scene unfold.

As it turns out the NYC court system runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so there were judges available immediately to arraignment.  The show Night Court was based in NYC for a reason!  As the case has unfolded it has been kind of surreal to know that I sat and watched as he was going through the court system.

I know this particular post was not long or informative, but I'm working on one hell of a post to put up this weekend so stay tuned!

Amor Cubano

This weekend my mother-in-law came to visit for Mother's Day.  And not only was it Mother's Day, but it was also the final day of obedience school for the puppy!  She aced her test and graduated with flying colors.  We are such proud dog parents!  To celebrate we went out to dinner at Amor Cubano, a lovely Cuban restaurant in our neighborhood.  (Well, we went and the dog stayed home with a special chewy as a reward.)  The empanadas are to die for so we absolutely love going to dinner there!

They have live music, delicious food, and a friendly staff.  Their bread is phenomenal and all of their entrees are scrumptious.  If you are ever in the neighborhood I cannot recommend them enough!

This Was a Heck of a Week

As some of you may have heard, President Barack Obama paid a visit to my fair city yesterday at Ground Zero to honor the memory of the victims of the terrorist attack on 9/11.  This visit was especially significant because, as I am sure everyone across the globe is aware by now, on Sunday Navy SEAL forces found and eradicated Osama bin Laden.  Below is one of the most famous photographs to come from the event, the president and his staff in the situation room watching the mission.  This particular photo was taken by Pete Souza (the White House photographer) and I specifically got it from The Huffington Post.

I work a few blocks from the Ground Zero site but was unable to go and see the president speak as I was working at the time.  I would have liked to have had the opportunity to go and be a part of that crowd but work must come first.

I've been somewhat confused for the past several days and not really sure how I am supposed to feel.  On the one hand, our public enemy #1 is now gone and we have gathered an overabundance of intelligence information that will help keep our nation safe and secure.  On the other hand, is it ever really okay to celebrate the death of a person, no matter how evil?  But on the third hand are there just some people who provide no value and use a surfeit of resources who serve no purpose in this life?  And even still, on the fourth hand my sense of patriotism pushes me to celebrate because of the benefit to our country and the closure this brings to all of those who lost loved ones to terror attacks those many years ago.  But on the fifth hand, as a pregnant woman I can't help but wonder if Osama has a mother that is mourning his loss right now.  I have to stop myself here though because I have long since run out of hands and am pushing into Vishnu-like territory.

No matter what, this has been an incredible couple of weeks, historically speaking!  Prince William married Kate and Osama bin Laden was taken out by Navy SEALs.  This is going to be one of those weeks you tell your kids about when they get into the more advanced history classes in high school, kind of the same way everyone knows where they were when Princess Di passed away or when JFK was assassinated.

Connecticut

This weekend we went to Connecticut to help out my husband's aunt.  She is selling her house and needs to get it cleaned and organized before buyers start coming through so we went up and helped her do some cleaning.  Well, my husband helped clean.  I cooked and watched the dogs all day because I'm not supposed to lift anything heavy since I'm knocked up.  We had a good time and the dog had the best weekend of her life apparently.  She got to ride the metro-north train out to CT and make a ton of friends.  Everyone on the train thought she was adorable and wanted to say hello.  Then when we got to his aunt's house she got to meet her dog, Splash.  Splash got her name because the house is right on the beach.

They played all day long on Saturday and then for several hours on Sunday morning.  We took them out on the beach and they ran and played together like long lost best friends.  We only got pictures of them inside and on the deck outside though.

They had a great time!  We aren't going back out to CT for a while though.  It is always a bit draining to head out of state for the weekend, especially when the baby is sucking up all of my energy.