Yesterday, after waking up earlier than intended, we headed out to Brighton Beach to get our beach time in for the long weekend, and for me to take a dip in the open water in preparation for MIMS. Boy was that water icy. But despite it taking about half an hour for me to ease myself in to the water, I did a swim down the beach and back. I really hope that it warms up a bit in the next few weeks, because I definately won't have the luxury of taking as much time on the day of the race.

Saturday morning, after going to swim practice (my first Saturday practice in over a month), I stopped by the farmer's market at Borough Hall and picked up some very nice plants to keep the beautiful Japenese Maple that my parents gave us as a housewarming gift company. I would have picked up more if it weren't for the delimma of how to carry them home. Unfortunately, when I went out on the deck this afternoon, they didn't look quite so pretty, but thankfully a few glasses of water seemed to perk them up. We'll see how long it takes for me to kill them for good!

Prepartions for graduation on campus gone awry

This past weekend was my five year college runion. The weekend didn't start off to a great start - the Mass Pike was closed and for anyone who's driven to Boston before, it ain't easy to get to Boston without the Pike. All in all, it took over 7 hrs to get there. But then there was dinner at Redbones and pool and bowling at Jillians for a friend's birthday to make the day not seem so bad. Saturday I took Sam through campus, caught up with my old swim coach and some teammates, reunited with roommates, and of course, survived the awkardness that is a reunion. Some some good friends that I'm glad I was able to catch up with, despite not having kept in touch, and saw many more where there really just wasn't that much to say, but hey its what I expected.

+ Photos from the trip

You know what I hate? When you write a whole blog post and then your computer freezes so that you can't post it. That's what happened to me last night, which is unfortunate because I was so excited to have our internet working at home. Unfortunately, the nice brand new wireless network card that Sam got me as a return to NY present tends to make my computer freeze. I had returned using the USB wifi device that is semi-broken, but thought that magically the new card would stop causing problems at the new apartment. Sadly, no. If anyone knows how to solve this problem, by the way, advice would be welcome.

Anyway, back to Mother's Day. A few weeks ago, I asked my parents to come over for dinner for Mother's Day, figuring by then we'd be unpacked and in ship shape condition. But sure enough, when last weekend rolled around, there were still boxes unpacked and the whole apartment needed to be cleaned due to the moving aftermath. And I was busy all day Saturday playing frisbee (we won a game! I didn't play as well as last week though, probably in part to being the only woman at the first game and having to play every point), so that left Sunday for late spring cleaning madness.

But the apartment looked great, and dinner turned out wonderful too. I tried out a couple recipes from Mango and Curry Leaves, a beautiful cookbook that Sam got me for the holidays. It was my first time making anything from the book, and it turned out great and sooo tasty. And for dessert, I made a recipe from the newest issue of Gourmet. It didn't turn out quite as pretty in the picture, but enough that my mom insisted that I take pictures for the blog. I think I need to work on food photography and not be so eager to eat right away.

After dinner, we headed over to The Perch Cafe, where a friend of Sam's, Mike Petrosino, was playing his regular Sunday night live jazz gig. His group was great and we all ended up staying out too late, but it was worth it. Go check him out if you're in the area.

Off to Boston this weekend for my 5 year college reunion. Should be interesting, and a good excuse to get up to Boston and hang out with friends.

I had every intention of writing up a detailed description, with photos, of the rest of Jazz Fest, but life gets in the way some times. We went to Jazz Fest on Friday and Saturday, at tons of yummy food, both at the festival and at The Praline Connection, Cafe du Monde and Clover Grill, enjoyed a lot of good music, and got very dirty on Saturday due to strong winds at the fairgrounds and stronger winds blowing rain every which way later in the evening. Sadly, our grand plan of picking up some muffulettas from Central Grocery to bring on the plane failed because Central Grocery is closed on Sundays, but otherwise, we got in most of what we had planned. Oh, and if you do want to see the photos, they are over here.

Since we got back late on Sunday, it feels like I've barely been home. I volunteered at the Tribeca Film Festival last week, where I got to see parts of many movies, but wasn't able to use my free vouchers for anything since almost everything was sold out by the weekend. And over the weekend, I also served my first work shift at the Park Slope Food Coop, and spent all day Sunday playing frisbee up at Tibbett Brook Park in Yonkers. I'm looking forward to next weekend, where I actually get to sleep in one day! And maybe actually help get out apartment in shape.

We planned our flight so we would get to New Orleans right around lunch time, around 1pm. We didn't plan on the second leg of our flight sitting on the ground in Miami for two hours. But we didn't let that stop us. As soon as we dropped off our bags at our hotel, we headed straight to Felix's to get some oysters in a half shell and an oyster po boy. Only to find it closed with plywood in the windows. Health Department hadn't given them clearance to reopen yet. With Acme closed for a private party across the street, we wandered around for a while and ended up at Antoine's Remoulade. We were still able to get our standbys, but it just wasn't the same. After lunch, we wandered through the French Quarter, purchased some straw hats to protect us for Jazz Fest, and met up with TJ, Sam's friend who was in town for the fest as well, and eventually made it out to Jacques-Imo's for dinner. Sadly, the line was longer than we had remembered (3 HOURS!) and the food, while good, was not quite good enough to justify a 3 hour wait.

Despite the quarter generally seeming empty, and the uptown area around Jacques-Imo's looking a bit rundown, the city looked pretty good.

So this is what I saw through the window as I was leaving my house this morning.