this weekend seemed to last forever...

i guess when you have an entire weekend and then two more days off that tends to happen..

saturday was ACHs party which i already wrote about and made a couple of new facebook friends from. ;) sunday morning cath and i promptly left for PA which resulted in a very fruitful visit to IKEA. that store is like crack to me.. i can't not buy something when i go there.. i really should just avoid the place completely but the blue and yellow sucks me in like a vacuum. anyway i obtained a soo cute asian inspired lamp for my desk at work, two plants also for my work desk and a lint remover. then cath and i ate dinner at the macaroni grill. later on we saw E,R & A..

monday morning cath and i woke up and both were puked on by auds.. we got lost taking her to "the snake pit" as cath so lovingly refers to the daycares. auds also was not wearing her eagles jersey like two of her other snake pit cohorts.. that is something she needs to wear on mondays when the eagles win. ****note to santa she needs a jersey for next season.****

after the drop off we drove to NYC to meet my cousin EH. we intended to find a place in chinatown that served some vegetarian dim sum, but were getting pressed for time and couldn't find parking in chinatown, so we texted EH to see where we were going to meet. incidentally we were lost in tribeca and he was literally just around the corner.. he had forgotten we were coming. ;) but he gladly returned his dogs and met us for a pint at his "kitchen" bubbys. i regret not taking any photos of him or our time.. :( he was well and had great stories to tell as always.. it must run in the family.

after our lunch at bubbys we headed up to our hotel in midtown. i shoudl have prepped cath ahead of time about what "valeting" our car would entail... but i honestly don't think that would have made a difference. she is a middle class "bag lady"... she can't go anywhere (even work) without 5 or so bags. and of course ona road trip she loads up.. this is what she had from what i can recall, also, try to imagine these bags contents all unpacked and strewn among the trunk, front and back seats... a purse; a mini purse; a diaper bagged size vera bradley with her "reading material" that i never once saw her read; a canvas lunch bag of sorts with her "snacks"; a backpack stuffed to the brim with clothes; a clear plastic bag that used to contain sheets; now contained 2-3 pairs of shoes; and a clear plastic bag filled with sweaters on hangars (which were also never worn)... oh and a magnum bottle of wine.

anyway... we pulled up to the curb and i jumped out and grabbed my bag, pillow and toiletry bag. cath first had to put on her shoes, then she ran to the back seat to furiously reassemble ALL her belongings into some sort of managable number of bags. the bell hop and i patiently watched her digging in the car like an ostrich with her head in the sand while cars and cabs buzzed by my car parked at an angle to the curb. that was until cath ordered "me" to hold her bottle of wine.. but i was not the closest so the bell hop had the pleasure. it was truely a sight! we had to stop 2 more times to repack her stuff into a more manageable arrangement.

the room and my parking cost the company over $400. i am not so sure it was worth it. i genuinely liked the room and the decorations and it was clean, but it was nothing spectacular, esp when we couldn't check in until 4, and had to be out by 11am.. that equals $58 an hour. you would think for that price they would have stowed our bags for free when we went sightseeing tuesday morning...

the dinner itself was spectacular. it was very similar to a very fancy wedding where there were 20+ best man speeches and a graduation ceremony thrown in for variety. there were famous people there and i was most impressed with luke russerts speech.. he injected some much needed humor to such a solemn subject by opening with "if my dad were here right now he would ask why we were doing this on a monday night with baseball playoffs happening and monday night football. i see everyone checking their blackberrys and phones for score updates.. you should have had tickers up here posting the scores..." anyway... i think i have a crush now. thank god my date knew all the who's who of news people and kept me updated on who we were rubbing shoulders with at the cocktail hour.

after the dinner cath joing SG and i for a nightcap at a local irish bar. we talked native american stuff and had a great time. :)

morning came too soon, and we rose as soon as our bodies would allow and set off to see FAO schwartz.. cath didn't care for the NYC subway system and didn't like to rehearse what we would do if scenarios as we waited underground for the train. she would be a goner, cause i would have rehearsed an escape plan. :)

FAO was a waste of time for me, but stepping outside the store was gift from god in the form of the coolest apple store i've seen to date. we went in a browsed and politely told all the sales people we were just looking..

then we treked up to the imagine mosiac in central park. i was not that impressed.. it looks just like all the photos.. it was a pretty day though,. so not totally a waste.

after that we took a cab back to our hotel and drove home. NYC is a great place to visit, but i'm always so happy to leave. i think that after my trip back to NYC next month i will be all set with the city for a couple of years. :)

here are the photos from the trip...