A Very Bagel Special

Hello all.

I am swamped at work and haven't had time yet to tell you about my fabulous weekend with M and A, who visited yet again from Worcester! They are such great friends, and always bring thoughtful little gifts. This time they brought me hot fudge from Friendly's, which is one of my favorite things on the planet and hard to come by in NYC.

M, who did have time to write about our fabulous weekend, has allowed me to utilize her as a guest writer for the second time.

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The other NYC story

On Sunday, we had big plans. We were going to have brunch, go see the new, free art installation, go to B&H Photo Video, and go to SoHo to buy the lamp that The Husband and I found last December but thought was too expensive. Little did we know that lamps are really expensive, and usually boring. The brunch part was wonderful, but the plans began to go a bit sour on the way to the art exhibit. For although it was only 54 or so degrees outside, the wind made it feel like 20 or something. Plus, I was wearing tall boots because I had on brown pants that require heels. (The Doktah advised against getting them hemmed; she said I should just wear heels. Curse her.) These boots are actually pretty comfy as heels go due to the chunkiness of the heel, but it turns out that I should not wear them two days in a row if I'm doing a lot of walking, because chunky or no, heels are heels.

So we schlepped over to the art installation on very painful ankles (well, I was the only one with painful ankles), and it turns out the art installation was not free. We paid anyway, if only to get out of the cold, because the damn thing was right on the water and the wind was making me miserable. I was not dressed for the weather at all. But it is a temporary structure, so it wasn't much warmer inside. The exhibit consisted of a long hallway of painting after painting of Tibetan people with elephants, birds, or leopards. Each painting was individually quite beautiful, but after a hundred pictures of people with closed eyes posing with elephants, it begins to get repetitive. Plus the fact that every single person had their eyes closed really started to get on my nerves. It's like they were saying, "Oh, look at me, I'm so spiritual and communing with this elephant. Don't you wish you were as deep as I am? Look, I'll meditate right now. Meditating is like second nature to me. Ohhmmm....." At the end of the hallway was a looped film of the same images. The artists had obviously made the film, and then used it as the model for the paintings, so it was even more repetitive. And the film was run in slow motion, to really drive home the deep spirituality of the subjects, which did not add to my enjoyment. And did I mention that it was cold in there? And that it wasn't free?

OK. So we ended up having to skip B&H because things just took too long, and wound up in SoHo where, luckily, the lamp was still for sale, and for $10 less than in December! So we bought it, and asked for one in a box because we had to drive back to Massachusetts with it. It came in a really tall box, and when we hailed a cab to go back to Brooklyn, we discovered it would not fit. Since the L train to Brooklyn was not running, we were forced to walk ten minutes more in the freezing cold on sore ankles, carrying a very cumbersome tall box, and catch the J train over the bridge and then wait and wait for the shuttle, which turned out not to be a "shuttle" so much as a bus because it stopped a lot.

The only thing motivating us was the thought of the awesome bagels we were going to buy from the best bagel store ever, 4 blocks up from Leah Lar's apartment, and then the thought of eating said bagels in the lovely, lovely warmth of the apartment. And also the bathroom.

So The Husband and D headed back to the apartment to get our stuff all packed up, and Leah Lar and I ordered the bagels. I ordered 1 toasted pumpernickel bagel with garlic and herb cream cheese, and 1 toasted sesame bagel with the same cream cheese. Leah Lar ordered 1 toasted everything bagel with plain cream cheese and 1 toasted wheat bagel with garlic and herb cream cheese. I ordered first, and several minutes later the guy who took my order said, "You wanted 1 pumpernickel and 1 sesame, right?" Right. "You wanted them toasted, right?" Right. "You wanted garlic and herb cream cheese, right?" Right.

So when we got back to the apartment, we found the following 4 bagels: 1 toasted everything with plain cream cheese, 1 untoasted wheat with plain cream cheese, and 2 untoasted sesame bagels with olive and red pepper cream cheese. I'll give you a second to go back and check what we ordered.

So D was golden, because they got his right. And Leah Lar was disappointed at the lack of toasting on her wheat bagel, but her order-taker had told her there was no more garlic and herb cream cheese, so she was prepared for that. But as for me and The Husband, I guess my guy was just toying with me with all the double checking.

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Incidentally, I would like to point out that as we were leaving the bagel shop, I said to M "I have a very bad feeling about our order." I just had a bad feeling. And I was right, dammit! I am mad, but not mad enough to never order bagels there again, because they are fabulous bagels when prepared correctly.

I'd also like to add that the structure that housed the exhibit is a nomadic museum constructed mostly out of recyclable and reuseable material. Very impressive and regal.

Here is information about the architect:

http://www.time.com/time/innovators/design/profile_ban.html

I didn't like the exhibit. One photo, fine. 100? Not fine. It was a redundant collection and really distracted from the museum.

Here is the link to the exhibit:

http://ashesandsnow.org/home.html

The fact that it was freezing didn't help. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed it more had the weather been better.

This is M's account of Sunday. On Saturday night, we saw a play called After Ashley that features Kieran Culkin (who I thought was amazing; M and A didn't think so and M was bothered by his hair), Anna Paquin (who we all agreed was unbearably bad and was trying real hard to act) and the guy who played Miles on Murphy Brown. I really liked the play, although I felt that it only scraped the surface of the themes it tried to explore.

http://www.vineyardtheatre.org/AfterAshley.html

M told me this weekend how to make these links clickable, but I've already forgotten. Sorry, readers, for making you primitively copy and paste these links.

After the play we went for drinks at Antique Lounge, which is lovely because it is three blocks from my apartment and because they give you animal themed snacks, such as Goldfish and Animal Crackers, in martini glasses.

We were going to have ice cream with Friendly's hot fudge afterwards, but because we are old, we went to bed instead.

Stay tuned for the futher adventures of M and A in NYC!