back from our nyc adventures

Nathan and I are back from our trip to NYC and we have the pictures to prove it. I'm feeling pretty tired, but I'm sure I can squeeze out both a proper post and a nap before The Amazing Race. I know you're all hungry for it, so here's some highlights from our trip:

Nathan and I decided to preface our trip by joining the paperchasers at The Lager House to see Voxtrot, my current musical obsession. I was in heaven, danced my booty off, probably made a bit of an ass out of myself by giving Ramesh a giant hug after the show and stayed up waaaaaaaay too late for our 4am wake up call. So late, in fact, that Nathan and I didn't wake up at all until the doorbell rang at 5am when our ride arrived to pick us up. Thank goodness we weren't driving ourselves to the airport - we would have never made it on time.

Miraculously, we made our flight and arrived in NYC - pajama clad and a bit tired - but ready to rock (if rock means nap in the hotel lobby for three hours while we wait for our room to be ready). It was clear that we were far too early for our hotel room, so we boarded a train to Brooklyn to see Matt's new apartment and the damage we were in for when we've have to help him move in the next day. While there, I encountered three of my favorite things:

My favorite building:
my favorite pedestrian crossing light:

and my favorite billboard:

The apocalypse is at hand! (You ain't just whistlin' Dixie!)

The next day we were properly rested and clean enough to go see Sweeney Todd. We had front-row tickets for the show, which - despite getting spat on a lot by the actors - was awesome. The actors could see us, and I often found myself getting the stare down while they sang about revenge killings and making pies out of people. Creeeepy! The show was awesome - easily making the list of my top 5 favorite productions ever. The staging was minimalist with the actors doing double duty as the orchestra, and the lack of a over-the-top set somehow made the whole thing all that more disturbing. Dad even got to be a part of the production - thanks to his bald head he was singled out and practically serenaded when Tobias sang "Pirelli's Miracle Elixer." It was hilariously awesome! We rounded out the day by eating some awesome barbeque at Spanky's and buying a lot of unnecessaries around Times Square.

We spent the next day moving Matt from his old apartment to his new apartment. Highlights include me and mom taking a terrifying ride in the back of a U-Haul, buying two cartloads of stuff at Target, me getting abandoned with two cartload of stuff at Target so everyone else could go buy a television, spending 30 minutes with a very nice homeless man until I got picked up from Target, dad nearly knocking himself out on the U-Haul door, and this spectacular view of the city from the roof of Matt's new place:


After that adventure I was too tuckered out to do anything else but sleep, however Nathan and Matt somehow mustered up the energy to suffer through and went bar hopping without me. From the sounds of it, things were crazed - Matt taught a prostitute how to dance (she only knew how to lead so he taught her to follow) and a Liverpool boxer taught Matt how to spar - but I was too much of a pansy to go out so you'll have to rely on you imagination since I have no pictures.

Nathan and I spent the next day wandering Manhattan. We got lunch in Little Italy, went shopping in Soho and got invited to a kinda creepy underground lair full of illegal handbags in Chinatown. We then headed back to the hotel to clean up for our jaunt back to Times Square to see Spamalot. Oh, the laughs we had. (Don't ask mom about it though; she fell asleep several times, which speaks more of the two glasses of wine she had before the play than to the play's merits.) We ended the evening, and essentially our trip, with a ridiculously large meal at Carmine's.

So that's our trip in a nutshell. We had a great time and my post was ridiculously long. I'd wrap things up with a quippier conclusion, but I've got Amazing Race to watch and no more Lenten fasting nonsense to interfere with my television viewing habits.

Rock.