Technically I’m no longer in New York, but this is more of a wrap-up than anything. So I think I left off with Sunday morning?

Sunday I started a little late, but that’s a little indicative of nightlife in New York: one doesn’t wake up to early. So I went out. I had decided that I wasn’t going to take any public transpo’ anywhere, no cabs, but then realizing that I wanted to go up to the AS UWS that it would be a hike. So I trained it up there, did a great BOH tour and then ventured to 5AV and did a most excellent tour there, led by an Expert. #geekawesomeness!

From there I took Franklin’s advice and headed to ViG 27 which is an awesome lounge bar on the east side. There I had delicious cilantro gimlets and black raspberry cosmos.

Heading back to Chelsea Inn it was time to do some reassessment and from there I decided to watch a little tv and then pass out. Maybe I missed out on some unique NYC stuff but at least I got a full nights sleep out of it.

So what did I get up to last night?

Getting into town a little later than I anticipated put a damper on things; by the time I was settled it was time to go out and I didn’t have much assimilation time. No worries.

I decided to start my night by going to the AS at W14 and they showed me BOH! They didn’t even ask for credentials which I thought was a little odd but chalk one up for honesty.

I stopped at a street truck vendor and got a $2 beef taco it was so good I had to go back and get another to stash in the room for later (one beef, one pork). Then I ventured out for some nightlife: Gym Bar, G Lounge and Ty’s. I had thought about recreating the blargcrawl from a couple of years ago and then decided to go visit the local joints. After these couple of spots it was about 1:00 or 2:00 and I know that’s early for a NYC Saturday night but I had been up for 20 hours and going on six hours of sleep, twas lullaby time.

So what to do today? Definitely a stop at Record Runner since they’re closed tomorrow. High line? The Met? AS UWS?

Well I made it here. There weren’t too many delays with Amtrak after we got north of Balmer, hon. Still, arrived over four hours late. The sun is just starting to lay itself down on this island as I walk to my hotel. I decided to walk because I was so happy to be getting off of that train that I didn’t want to get on another one. The walk was only 15 minutes.

After checking in I make an inquiry into my new neighborhood to find some New-York-hotel-staples: apples, bananas, nuts, bagels, cheese, juice and vodka. Eating breakfast/lunch in the room, as well as having walking around food, and doing a little frontloading is always more economical. So now I’m decompressing a little before going out into my Saturday night.

I’m staying at the Chelsea Inn, a place I’ve never staying before. I usually stay on W 83rd but this will be much closer to everything (most things) I’m here to see and do so I took a chance. My room is cute, clean on the 2nd floor with a view of the street. And inexpensive plus free breakfast from Nana’s Treats shop in the English Basement!

I would be doing a liveblogging of this but since WordPress isn’t playing nice lately, this will have to be the way to input it.

When I travel to New York City I am more than happy to take of the super-inexpensive buses that provide round-trip service. They’re not that bad; the biggest nuisance being cramped for space (leg room, personal space). Train travel is referred because of its spaciousness plus the ability to walk to the club car or even use the bathroom with relative ease.

The tickets I got for this weekend’s trip were pretty outstanding. I had a $28 voucher and price for one-way was only $49. So instead f spending $40 for a bus roundtrip I spent $72 for my roundtrip tickets thinking it would be a little more comfortable.

Mistake.

My train was scheduled to leave Union Station at 9:25 putting me into NYC at 12:45. Pretty good, right? I’d have the entire afternoon to enjoy.

Due to electrical problems on the overheads from DC to NYC there were outages all up and down the line. So we ended up not even leaving Union Station until the time I was supposed to be arriving. Then there were more delays at our first two stops. I might be able to make it to the city before the sun goes down but I’m not putting any money on it.

And the cafe car is almost completely out of food. I had planned on eating lunch in New York once I got there but since I’ll be on this train until almost dinner time I had to get whatever slim pickings they had left. You would think they would refresh the club car in Baltimore or Wilmington or something. Very poor service and a bad day for Amtrak in my book.

After last night’s instant cocktail party at Dick & Kitty’s I woke up this morning a little haggard-feeling. Thankfully I woke up with plenty of time to hit the snooze bar for an hour or so and then slag my way to work (both jobs). But at least Metro worked on my side and the trip isn’t wasn’t the usual weekend nightmare that it is.

I missed out on evolve’s art opening today so that kinda sucked. But I had a good day at work(s) so there’s that.

Is this 100 words yet?

Tomorrow is another busy, full day. So tonight is straight to bed when I get home, gotta be at 5:30ish.

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What did I do on my “Saturday”? I first woke up around 7:00 am but then was able to fall back asleep until around 11, which was really nice. I finished watching Monday’s episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race and then physically got out of bed.

I lumbered around until Apple’s press conference came live where they announced iPad 2. It has some really great features; you can view the keynote here.

This evening I went out with some friends to Little Miss Whiskey’s Silver Dollar for casual cocktails. Afterwards we stopped by the under construction offices of Evolve’s new space on H St. It’s going to be a really cool office space and I can’t wait until we move in there.

I’m home a little earlier than I anticipated on a night I have between two days off but that’s fine. Tomorrow I’ve got a lot of chores to do and finish everything I was too lazy to do today. Thanks for reading.

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Here are some posts that, because of my mobile WordPress not working properly, I wasn’t able to upload at the time they were written. They’re from the vaults of two months ago.

Nov 28, 2010 1:50 PM

Sometimes it’s funny how much/little time & space actually change. For instance, I’m sitting here in Mr. Henry’s Victorian Pub in 2010, alone, inputing this copy on an iPad, whereas 25 years ago I was here with a table full of friends, drinking and smoking up a storm, listening to the 45s in the jukebox. Today the Internet jukebox is silent, smoking has been banned but I’m still having a cocktail. Because for me that’s what Henry’s is about: cocktails. Well, cocktails and good times with friends. I’m here at an unusual time ( 3:30 on a Wednesday) but the friends will show up later.

Fast forward four days…

Now I’m sitting in my new favorite coffee shop, First Cup Cafe. A random stop that I found here, and they just infirm me they’ll be closing in half an hour, so let’s see how much writing I can get in. First Cup is located across the street from where I looked to move (into Mira’s apt) a few years ago but didn’t make it past the screening process. So it could have been my neighborhood coffee shop but for now it’s one that I happened to drop into for coffee and a place to kill time.

Why am I killing time, you ask? For a number of reasons, actually. The first is that today is (another) Open House day at 1526 so, on my day off, I have to get out and do something. Luckily, Jim Darling was participating in an iPhone-only photography exhibit so I went and saw that since he was going to be at the gallery today. The gallery is Fathom Creative’s and there’s way too many personal references to go into right now about Fathom. Let’s just say I always wanted to work there.

After the exhibit I wandered down to the National Archives to do some genealogy research for my Dad. Since I’m seeing him in a few days I figured I should get this down since he asked me to do it several months ago. I find out they’re closed on Sundays so I will again be playing the role of FailureSon this year for Thanksgiving. Sigh.

I’m meeting with friends later and due to public transportation and needing to be out of the house, it doesn’t make sense to go home, hence the killing time wandering around, it feels like 1995 all over again, when I would wander around DC as a new transplant, maybe it’s time to listen to some Blur.

Now I’ve walked the few blocks to Logan Circle which is nothing like the Logan Circle I used to know. Boughie! And nary a homeless person in sight!

Dupont Circle. Now *this* place has definitely changed in the last 20 years.

And here’s another archive:

Dec 1, 2010 sometime in the afternoon

Today is another kicked-out-of-the-house-due-to-realtors day. Which really sucks because I’ve got an ad that’s due and I’d really like to be working on it right now. Sigh. Another hour to go.

I walked down to Jacob’s to get some coffee but they were too crowded and it was way too warm in there. So I journeyed on down to Sova, on H, and it’s pretty nice in here, sofas and chairs to lounge on but no free WiFi. But that’s fine, I’m using signal from the Biergarten next door.

WMATA, Metro’s official name, has been has been undergoing “scheduled track work” on all five of its train lines for about the last six weeks. This track work involves “one-tracking” which is where they will close one side of the track fir the work and the cars have to share the other side of the track, taking their turn one at a time. As you can probably guess, there are massive delays.

They have scheduled these track work days on the weekend as to not interfere with all the government workings commuting into the DC, as this was the reason the entire Metro transit system was built. Like most elements of life in DC, those who are not lawyers, politicians or suck-up lobbyists, our needs don’t really matter. So having to get to work on time during the weekend while having to rely on Metro is, needless to say, a great big pain in the ass.

So here’s my idea for a mobile app. It would be called “Made U Look!” and would function something like this:

Once the app was installed on your phone, your phone’s GPS would automatically register when you entered a Metro station. Maybe you would have to check-in manual but it would be cool if it did it automatically. It would also automatically check with WMATA’s Trip Planner page. After the inevitable numerous delays, when you exited the system your phone would again mark which station you are exiting from and communicate with WMATA. Then, it would reverse calculate how long that trip should have taken according to the Trip Planner and then compare it to the actual time you sat in the dark tunnel waiting for that goddamned train. As a bonus, you would be able to log into your Made U Look account and see how you rank with others who have wasted time for waiting for trains to see who has wasted the most time that week, month and quarter. Great idea, right?

Here’s your weekly gross-out. It’s getting better, but still can’t fully bend my knee. There’s a doctor appointment next Monday so maybe I’ll get some anti-inflammatory pills. And hopefully an xray on my right hand, which I really think is broken now because it stills hurts so much.