grading schmading...must finish NYC posts!

saturday in NYC was a busy and yet fantastic day! we had a lot planned, so we got up at a reasonable hour and got ready for the day. on my way to one of the bathrooms, an elderly lady was

peeking out her door saying in a new york accent of some variety: "excuse me....excuse me...are you the maid?" i opted to not answer that question, partly because i was tired and mostly because i figured that yellow pajama pants and an orange striped shirt couldn't possible be confused with a maid's uniform. i'm pretty sure shelley and i spent the rest of the day saying that phrase. :)

first on our agenda was finding some breakfast. we opted for bagels with schmeah and coffee. mine was del

icious!! cinnamon raisin with blueberry schmeah. yumtastic. shelley got an egg bagel with whitefish salad. i was skeptical, but she let me try some and it was really, really good.

after we were full of bagels, we jumped on the subway and headed to the staton island ferry. it turns out the ferry is free and it provides excellent views of manhattan, the statue of liberty, and ellis island. it was also a fun ride! it's going to be hard to put this into words, but it was also amazing to see the statue of liberty. i wasn't expecting to be as excited about it as i was. maybe because i've been spending so much time in my race and ethnicity class recently talking about immigration, but there's just something special and majestic about her. see for yourself.

lady liberty

ellis island

the big apple

kate and shells freezing their asses off

:)

the ferry ride was about 30 minutes, so when we got to staten island, we jumped on a ferry going back to the city, because we needed to get to times square in time to see AVENUE Q!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is one of my favorite musicals of all time (and probably the same is true for shelley as well). i've been listening the soundtrack for something like 4 years but hadn't seen the show so i was THRILLED when shelley informed me that it was going to be playing off-broadway. i literally almost shrieked in my office upon hearing that news but managed to restrain myself. we hustled to find the theater for the 2:00 matinee. we made it with time to stop at the lobby bar for a $9.00 glass of wine to enjoy during the show. (and no, it wasn't magic wine. it was quite good...but not worth $9.00 probably.)

the show was everything i hoped it would be. i knew the music, but i didn't know many of the plot points that connected the songs, so it was great to finally know why nicky was homeless and what happened with kate monster and princeton. i was so happy to be watching a show that i loved with shelley in new york city that i kept getting all misty-eyed. i'm a total cornball sometimes. during intermission we decided not to buy anymore $9.00 wines, but shelley did procure us two cups of ice which made drinking our mini-baileys a lot easier. :)

after the show, we were starving so we went to an upscale mexican restaurant that we noticed on the way to the theater. i had two of the best fish tacos i've ever had in my life. and we got yummy/fancy margaritas. yum!!

after drinks and food, we wander around times square more. we located one of my favorite things in the world, which was a tim horton's coffee shop. i learned about tim horton's when i was in montreal for a conference and was really glad we found one in NYC. i got a coffee and actually shelley paid for it because they wouldn't take my $20 bill because it was too large. um...

then, in our wanderings we located a cupcake shop that was featured on sex in the city. it's called magnolia and i will say it was worth waiting in drizzly rain to get a cupcake. plus it went perfectly with my latte!

our next stop was bourbon street bar and grill, which is a restaurant that claimed to have the spiciest bloody marys in the city. we tried them out and they were, in fact, quite spicy. i would say spicy enough that it was necessary to imbibe a hurricane afterwards. :)

we then walked back towards our hotel, stopping along the way to shop for souveneirs. our destination was actually a bar called cactus jacks. we were on a quest to see the texas a&m football game, and cactus jacks is the NYC aggie hub apparently. it wasn't exactly easy to find, but we did eventually get there. we had a fun time despite the fact that NYC aggies weren't very friendly to us and that the ags played a sucktastic game. we coped with both situations by drinking beer. (at one point NYC aggies were mistakenly drinking our beer as well...which i guess was inadvertently generous of us, though it would have been nice if they would have bought us a beer to make up for that. whatever.) aggies lost the game and shelley and i got a bit loopy on beer and shots. fortunately our hotel was not far away. we weren't quite partied out though so we went back to stag's head, got some food, got another beer, and then made our way back to the Pod so we could get some sleep. it was a really full and fun day!

the next morning we had to pack up and say goodbye to each other and to NYC. i jumped on the subway and headed back to JFK...realizing at one point that i wasn't on the train that i needed to be on, but luckily i rectified that situation without issue. :)

i'm so glad that i had this opportunity. i declared 2009 "the year of kate" back in january, and in so many ways it has been a phenomenal year. this trip was definitely a part of what has made this one of the best years i've had in a while. :) and 2009 isn't over quite yet, so who knows what else to come!

p.s.- thanks shelley for an awesome time. love you lots. are you the maid?