visiting spencer & courtney

It's always so much fun visiting our friends Courtney and Spencer in New York. They like to show us a good time. And they like to do the same kinds of things we like to do when we have the day off—like eating yummy meals at nice restaurants, walking around and going into shops, and having dance parties in the living room.

We took the train in yesterday from Katonah, dropped our bags off at their place on St. Mark's Place in the East Village and went to grab lunch at Jane. I got an arugula salad with dried cranberries, roasted pumpkin seeds and blue cheese and a glass of viognier. It was the perfect Saturday afternoon lunch. They have really good french fries at that restaurant—they cook them with rosemary, just like my mom's roasted potatoes.

After lunch we walked around, went into shops, waited in the bathroom line for 25 minutes at Starbucks. Yeah, that's right, 25 minutes. Checked out some more shops and then stopped in for a drink at Lolita—a chill bar with some pretty snazzy light fixtures and a good soundtrack. They were playing Arcade Fire the whole time we were there. We were totally into it.

We came home for a while. Had some drinks. Courtney told us about her new exciting job. Spencer and Colin played music. We danced a little. And then went out. We sort of forgot about dinner. So before bed we got pizza slices at Strombolis. It was the perfect New York night.

This morning Colin and I got up and walked to the Porto Rico coffee shop a couple blocks away. It's very small. Only a couple of people can fit in there at the same time, because the whole back of the shop is taken up by big burlap bags full of coffee beans. The place has got charm. Last time we were there it was pouring buckets and buckets. But today the skies were bright blue and clear, so we sat on the bench outside the shop, drank our coffee, and watched the styley people walk by.

One guy carried a boom box that was blasting rap music. It seemed a little early for that. Col said, "I bet he pressed play right when he woke up." (The guy was totally jamming.) I said, "Maybe he never turned it off from last night."

A gorgeous French couple ducked into the coffee shop. I always get a funny feeling in my tummy when I hear people speak French. The woman had a great outfit on. A guy in rollerblades skidded to a stop right in front of us and dashed in to get a pastry for breakfast. (I'm liking this coffee shop more and more). Rollerblade man dashed out as quickly as he dashed in and almost got hit by a car as he rolled into the street. A woman was buying a bagfull of chocolate-covered espresso beans for her daughter who was going off to school. There were more people, but I'm too tired to write about it.

We got brunch with Spencer and Courtney and then we went into a second-floor toy shop called Toy Tokyo. Colin bought four more metal robots to add to his collection. We'll need another shelf to hold them all now.

We're back at the apartment. Courtney's reading in the bedroom. Colin and Spencer are watching Return of the Jedi. And I'm at my computer. We're eating skittles to take the edge off breakfast. And that's that for now. Maybe I'll just take a little nap...