here's the first installment of my NYC trip. i didn't really take many pictures, but i'll put up the ones i did get.

i got up friday morning, and sara picked me up in her car at 7am. we needed to be in dayton by 8am, so that her dad could take her car in to get an estimate on some damage, so to meet him by 8 means we leave early. we arrived at his place and he took us over to her mom's, where we each promptly napped a few hours. i slept particularly well, apparently, because while i was asleep, (a) a new refrigerator was delivered, (b) the furnace guyts banged around and power drilled the crap out of something, (c) some sort of wild animal was scrabbling about in the attic space, and (d) the wild animal wrangler was searching for said wild animal.

no problem for me, though: i slept through it.

the three of us made a lunch stop at Friendly's, where we did not have a reese's sundae. then on to the airport, where we got our boarding passes, emptied our pockets, removed our shoes, and waited for the lady to look through my backpack. she couldn't tell what was in it with xray machine, since i had SO MANY METAL OBJECTS in there: discman, palm pilot, spare batteries, watch, cellphone, etc. sigh.

then began the Time of Long Waiting (tm). our flight, due to the inclement weather, was delayed by an hour, so that by the time we arrived at laguardia, we were behind schedule. we didnt really have a schedule, mind you, it was just the principle of the thing.

the original plan (which was somewhat ingenious) was that eddie (see pic, stolen from a website because i never got to take one of him the whole weekend) left a spare set of keys and a copy of my ID nextdoor at a business, the Polish Gazette, which has someone there 24 hours. theoretically, this would free him (and his roommates) from needing to be at his apartment, where we'd be staying for the bulk of the weekend. this was good, as eddie would be working that night (and, as it turns out, nearly the entire weekend).

however, the flaw in the plan was that the polish gazette actually lost his keys (and, presumably, my id...), so when we landed an hour late, i had a message on my phone from eddie explaining the situation, and that his girlfriend stockton (who is one of his four roommates) would be at home when we arrived.

we took a cab to eddie's apartment in williamsburg, and stockton let us in. we met tobias and anna, two more of eddie's roommates. they're german, and i found out later that anna was high school friends with one of my favorite german rappers, ferris mc. small world.

stockton was quite helpful, despite having worked solidly for a few days with no sleep. she loaned us her keys, gave us maps, and recommended a few vegetarian-friendly restaurants for us. we ventured back out, with another cab, since we weren't ready to tackle the subwayon an empty stomach.

only a few minutes later we were eating at vera cruz, a great mexican restaurant on bedford. as the review says, it was very nicely priced, and quite good. i got vegetarian enchiladas, and sara got a vegetarian burrito. both were great, though sara likes her food to be a bit less spicy.

satisfied, we walked along bedford, just enjoying being in new york city. it being friday night, the hipsters were out in full force, really reminding me that a lot of the rockers in cincinnati just want to live in nyc. then again, so do i, so i guess i shouldn't talk.

we stumbled on a cool coffee shop called The Read, where david and i had sat enjoying the coffee and mocha back in june. sara and i sat, me with my mocha and her with her hot chocolate. i flipped through the village voice, mainly checking for must-see shows that weekend. there weren't any, but i definitely had wanted to check.

the read closed at 11, so we were back out, ready for the subway this time. it was really very simple, just two stops on the L train, but you never know. we did it just fine, buying 7 day passes so that we wouldn't have to worry about it again all weekend.

once back at eddie's, we opted to stay in, as we were quite tired from the trip. we met keith, eddie's 4th and final roommate. he was, as all of the roommates were, quite nice, and we chatted with him for a while before crashing out.