absolutely nothing

Sundays. Gorgeous days; Sunny. 54 degrees.

What have I done today? Absolutely nothing.

I still have to unpack, do laundry, return messages (getting to 'em if you sent me one), find an apartment… I'm going to stop. I don't want to think about the rest of it because right now, I am enjoying my last day of doing rien.

In a completely unrelated note, those not in New York should know two things:
1. it was 70 degrees here yesterday, which seems a bit disconcerting to me.
2. the city is impossibly crowded on weekends, especially unusually temperate ones. Let me explain :

Last night, my roommate/friend Chris joined me for dinner at Lil' Frankies with a lovely couple I know. It was early, a time when most people have not yet begun to think about dinner.
There was a half hour wait for a table.
Time easily passed with a nice bottle of wine at the bar, but that's not the point; the point is that the restaurant was already teeming with people.
While enjoying some sinfully delicious fresh buffalo ricotta and olives (I could dedicate an entire blog to food and fill it with egregiously overused adjectives), the room literally exceeded physical human capacity.

After dinner, I took Chris to meet four girlfriends at another party for my friend Andrew at Sweet Paradise (if you're from Fairfield, I am referring to Runkle. It was his birthday yesterday so drop him a line). It only took twenty minutes before the place was packed beyond recognition, causing us to relocate despite the excellent new wave tunes being played.

We went to the Back Room, Tim Robbin's take on a speakeasy which I love, both for its crowd control policy (they are good with the door) and its 25 and older policy (attracting a different crowd than some of my other haunts). It became apparent while walking home from there that it might have been the only establishment not splitting at its seams and spilling into the streets.

We made one final stop to say hello to another familiar bar, 151, only to find it almost incapable of entry.
At that point I gave up and went home.

The moral of the story is: if you want to go out in the city, stick to weeknights. If, however, you find yourself out on a weekend, be sure to take advantage of the brilliance involved in the naming of some of our fine NYC stores.