Politics as Usual

Mike shows me a Web site that is designed to help you choose who you're going to vote for.

Me: it tells me i should vote for kucinich
Me: wasn't expecting that
Me: 95.92%
Mike: uh oh. you better change your mind to start better suiting the band wagon
Me: oh? which bandwagon am i supposedly on?
Mike: knowing you? well. i'd say obama for you....let's see...
Mike: young?
Mike: yes
Mike: female?
Mike: yes
Mike: jewish?
Mike: yes
Mike: NYC?
Mike: yes
Mike: works next to the times? mouth piece of the left?
Mike: yes
Me: lol
Mike: that's an obama supporter.

Firewalls Be Damned

Mike and I are able to video chat, finally!

Busy Busy

SOOOO-freakin'-BUSY!!!!

A lot has been going on, needless to say. Grad school has me going mach 3 at all times. Very little sleep going on over here. It's beginning to pay off, I think. I got my first freelance story published in Chelsea Now. Hooray! Hopefully there will be many more clips to come. I'm working on a story now that I hope will end up in a paper somewhere. I will link it if it does.

Gram came into the city yesterday and we had dinner at Carnegie Deli, which was appropriate, as we went to Carnegie Hall for a show after. Brian Stokes Mitchell, Mr. King-O-Broadway himself, gave a concert to benefit the Actors Fund. There were a bunch of guests, including Reba McEntire and Phylicia Rashad, who were both great.

In the midst of my grad-school busy-ness, Mike came to visit for the weekend, which was a blast. We went to see Chicago (which is now starring Brian McKnight, who knew?), ran into some Albany peeps in the Village, chilled in Central Park, etc.

Mike and I had Ethiopian for lunch on Sunday.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

After keeping his winter hair for like 6 weeks longer than he would have otherwise (because I loved it so), Mike finally reached his breaking point and needed to go bald. Or, at least, really really short. On Saturday, the humidity was really unbearable (he was soaked after riding his bike for like 3 blocks, haha), and we were going to go for a nice long ride in Grafton, so before we headed out, I had the supreme honor of taking the clippers to his mop. Feast your eyes on this:

BEFORE: Shaggy Mike

AFTER: Happy Shorn Mike

"That's a Lot of Foof"

I got a new bike! Now I can actually go mountain biking on my brand-new Gary Fisher Marlin instead of trashing my poor hybrid. Mike and I went biking in Grafton on Saturday to break in the new addition. So much fun!

Me: I got the boy version of the bike because the girl version looked too foofy.

Amie: Too foofy for you?
Amie: That's a lot of foof.

Tuesday Night

We went out to celebrate last night, and got caught in the rain like three different times. We had dinner and drinks at a couple of different places on Lark and stayed out far too late for a school night. But it was a lot of fun and totally worth my exhaustion today. But I can tell you--I will be in bed by 10 tonight. :-)

Standing under an awning waiting for the downpour to pass.

Weekend Wrap-Up

(I'll start from Thursday since I haven't blogged in a while.)

On Thursday we went to the opening of a new club called Ballinger's downtown. It's a very large, well-decorated club with various floors and a huge outdoor patio, which will be great for the summer. Unfortunately, the building it's in--and the location of the building--has not proven to have much success in terms of attracting a crowd. It's perched on the corner of a street on a steep hill, and there's very little (if any) foot traffic there. We'll see how it goes. The opening was fun, though--we had some drinks and wandered and mingled. Then we went to Justin's for some late-night grub.

Here's a photo of some corner seating at Ballinger's.

Friday was dining-guide production day, which is always a merry ride to hell on wheels. Once that was done, I went to the gym and then home to relax for a little while before going to hang out with Nate and his brother Trevor, who was in town from Buffalo to hang for the weekend. Mike joined us later, and we went to the Fountain for a yummy midnight snack.

Saturday was spent sleeping for the most part--then a nice long walk in Washington Park with coffee because the weather was beeeautiful. Saturday night mimicked Friday a bit in that it resulted, ultimately, in me, Nate, Trevor and Mike eating pizza again. This time it was at DeJohn's, and the ceiling began raining on us before we left. (We learned that the dishwasher on the second floor was the cause of the downpour.)

On Sunday, we left the house at around 12:30 on a mission to find lunch. A stroke of genius pointed us in the direction of Cohoes to get some "real Texas barbecue." Unfortunately, it turned out that the BBQ joint was closed on Sundays, as is everything else in Cohoes, we came to realize. We finally ended up at Bob's Diner in Watervliet and we ate a very average but satisfying lunch. Later, we took a motorcycle ride up to the mall and walked around a bit, contemplating dinner, which we had at Moe's. It was my first time eating at Moe's, and it actually was pretty good. The rest of the night was spent relaxing and watching the tube.

Here's Mike having a grand time washing all the bird crap off his car on Sunday. :-)

In conclusion, a very good weekend was had by all.