Merry X'mas

ok, just to show that my life does have a softer side, and this is WAY overdue, i just wanted to share christmas w/the fam

and christmas dinner at the pseudo-fam's, Debs' house:

old ties

recently got a chance to meet up w/1 of the attorneys i worked for prior to starting law school. He's an alumni of BLS and was in Brooklyn for work so he sent me an email to meet up at Saul's for drinks. plus, when it comes to eating and drinking he has impeccable taste.

1st off, i got totally lost on the way over b/c Saul's is located on Smith St. between Dean and Bergen which is a total of 4 blocks from Feil Hall but Egg and i were chatting and discussing and ended up walking all the way to Union Street (which, if you don't know Brooklyn Heights geography, is pretty far south from where we intended to go). we finally get there and sit w/Ross and Lisa, Saul's wife, and have a glass of champagne and just do some catching up. Ross, who's a huge oenophile so naturally he'd brought his bottle of red, something from the Arejos vineyard circa 1998. phew, it was so smooth and delish and i'm scared to think of how much that 1 bottle cost. we all started w/a scallop appetizer in a curry lemongrass broth. the scallop was super tender but the surprise was the last bite. i took my last bite and got a huge burst of citrus, which totally shocked me. Egg had the exact same experience and we discussed the ingenuity of creating such a dish. yum yum.

i, stupidly, had eaten before we'd met up b/c i figured it was 9 pm and maybe Ross had already eaten but no no. he let Egg and i taste some of his squaw and i started salivating hard core. Ross chastized me for eating before meeting w/him and i just commented that Egg actually hadn't eaten and, voila, Egg got his own plate of squaw served w/a side of risotto. i kept picking at his food b/c it was so good. finally we ordered dessert and i got Baked Alaskan for the 1st time, which was overall very good even tho i think i could do w/o the meringue part on top (i've never been a big fan of meringue. does that make me weird?) and Egg's molten chocolate cake was divine.

so, got to enjoy a great meal at a place i probably couldn't afford on my usual law school salary (being sarcastic here) and the place was cozy w/amazing food. the fact that it was packed on a random tuesday night is a testament to how good it is.

and so it begins...

it's restaurant week again in NYC. went to Megu w/Gohm, Chow and Tina for my 1st Restaurant Week dinner. initially i thought their prix-fixe menu was kind of week. no options, no choices. just a yuzu caesar salad, kobe beef steak smothered w/black sesame and ginger and spicy tuna roll. however, we did notice during non-Restaurant Week Megu offers a prix-fixe menu of $80 which is actually a great deal. it offers a choice of any hot/cold appetizer from the menu, any soup, any salad, any entree and dessert. too bad for us they weren't offering it during Restaurant Week.

Tina and i both got the prix-fixe menu and Chow and Gohm ordered a la carte. Gohm got hamachi carpaccio which was good, the fish tasting very fresh. the yuzu caesar was surprisingly really good, but that might've just been b/c i was pretty hungry considering it'd taken us about an hr to decide what to order. Gohm and Chow both ordered the scallop foie grais (so so so good), really tender and the foie grais sauce is amazing. the kobe beef was actually really yummy and Gohm ordered saikyo miso chicken which was decent. Chow's lobster was the best tho. the few bites i had were very flavorful but still moist. yum yum. for dessert i've actually forgotten exactly what we got (i know, what a travesty! my favorite part of the meal! i don't know what that says about Megu's dessert...) but i think it was a molten chocolate kind of dessert and something w/green tea. o well, the dinner was overall good and the atmosphere was very nice, and service was pretty impressive (w/a few slip-ups). i think it was most fun due to the company.

it's all kosher

so Gohm and i had another productive saturday a bit back. always, momentous, so had to write about it.

the previous night Gohm and i went to eat at Chiyono and had an very satisfying home-style Japanese dinner. the food is very impressive. we started w/gyoza and a soba salad. the pork gyoza was so light and full of flavor and the soba salad was light as well, but hearty at the same time. the seasoning on the soba salad was so flavorful but still light. i really liked it. afterwards Gohm got the ground pork katsu which came out in 3 small patty-like portions served w/an amazing salad and i got a egg-battered cod which came w/potato salad. both entrees were, again, amazingly light and the only qualm i had was that the cod still had small bones in it. what surprised the most was that initially we both felt we might need more food, not feeling the heaviness that comes w/a filling meal but w/in 20 minutes after finishing our entree we both had the an amazing sense of fullness. overall i really liked the meal and its originality.

the next day we met w/Chow and Tina to go see Children of Men. omg. amazing movie. the themes are so current dealing w/present-day issues and to see those kinds of themes presented in visual imagery is so affecting. unbelievable and while i would love to spend crazy time discussing it, don't want to present spoilers to such a good movie. just definitely go see it. and don't get mislead by the trailer, while yes, the movie originates w/the idea of infertility of the human race, it goes into such much more. the loss of innocence in world w/o children, the combative aspect of human nature and what can bind that race together, hope and despair, inhumane treatment of ppl, segregation, interment camps, current immigration issues... so much. my mind was completely abuzz after the movie.

later, we all went out to dinner at Park East Grill, which is a kosher steakhouse. a novel idea, but the concept didn't play out overall. i had a corn salad appetizer, which was good and refreshing but not the usual expectation i have for corn salad. we also had generic lettuce cups as a group starter. Gohm and Chow ordered prime rib which was served w/mashed potatoes and they ordered an additional side of white wine sauteed spinach. i had the lamb chops also served w/mashed potatoes and Tina ordered 2 starters as entrees, beef skewers and mushroom puff pastry. Tina's pastry was salty and the skewers weren't anything better than usual, all the mashed potatoes were cold, and while my lamb chops were ok, Gohm seemed to have a lot of fat on his prime rib.

after dinner Gohm and i capped off our night w/drinking and card games w/Egg back at Feil in Brooklyn.

Cliche Law School Scandal

welcome back to BLS! which means final exam grades have been posted and a whole new semester of classes and briefs and outlining and...o man!! well, in order to tepper that fact SBA decided to have an event at Floyd's which was, as these things go, pretty fun i must admit. Even got Wifey to go out and Gohm to cross the Brooklyn bridge on a thursday night.

Adidas was pretty drunk before we headed out and came over while i watched Grey's Anatomy. At some point he started to harass Wifey and they were scurrying back and forth between my room and hers hitting and harassing each other. and i realized i'm back in school. like school, school; like college-school. i guess i thought it'd be different since everyone's older, but school just makes everybody a student again.

had a great time at Floyd's, ran into ppl i have classes w/and bonded and then we took Adidas to Happy Days Diner to get some food in him to sober him up and then headed home. Here's where the scandal comes in. Wifey ran into the Bobsey Twins while we were there and turns out Tweedledee was there w/her Civ Pro professor. who is around his 30s. and very hot. and the Bobsey Twins are reknowned for their "easy" morals. the next day rumors were abound that Tweedledee hooked up w/Mr. Civ Pro. and Wifey claims she heard a strange man voice in our apartment around the wee a.m. hours.

sigh, hooking up w/the prof? and coincidentally getting an "A"? that's just so cliche...

Gay or British?

i saw this title somewhere in a long time ago and i still think it's very applicable b/c it IS pretty hard to tell whether someone's gay or just British. it has something to do w/the way they dress and their mannerisms...

so Papoose came to visit me from the UK, or so i thought... he had flown to Chicago to attend a fellow abroader's wedding (wow, i still can't wrap my head around the fact that ppl my age are getting married). While i love friends visiting, especially someone as important a historical figure as Papoose, i like things to be planned. i hate spur of the moment (i know, i'm old now). i got a call from him on New Year's day saying he would be arriving in NY on the 2nd. after not hearing from him for 3+ months. then he asked me if he could stay at my place. what could i say? especially since he doesn't seem to really know anyone else here.

He and Rob showed up at my place around 10 pm starving and thirsty so we went to O'Keefe's around the corner and did $3 pints and caught up. it seems they've been having a ball showing off their British accents to all the dumbstruck American girls they meet (yes we are easily impressed by those British and Aussie accents). Afterwards we headed to Floyd's and had a few drinks before heading home to sleep. Pretty quiet night since nobody was back at BLS yet. The next morning they headed off to NJ to visit friends and family. and then i lost them for 36 hrs. yep, no word from them about what they were doing/when they would be back, and since they only have international cellphones i couldn't call them. so annoying.

Poor Bubs, Kir and Debs had wanted to see him too but since he was MIA Debs, Bubs, Wifey and i met up at Yakitori Taisho for dinner hoping he would just ring up and meet us while we were out but that didn't happen. either way we had a great dinner, even w/o Papoose. when i finally did hear from him it was the day before he was leaving and he told me he would be going to a show in Williamsburg for a friend's band which i just didn't feel like doing (plus i was pretty miffed) so they just picked up their stuff and headed their own way.

And that was my Papoose experience.

Happy New Year!

yea!! it's 2007!! wait, i'm not sure i'm so happy about that. i just feel older. and that means more things i've got deadlines to do before the summer hits... aww man...
anyways, Gohm made dinner plans to spend New Year's eve at Le Singe Vert. the food was fabulous, one of the better limited menus i've seen in a while. Debs and i opted to split raw oysters and an amazing salad w/goat cheese and smoked salmon which were fantastic and they also had options of lobster bisque and crabcake which Gohm got and i liked too. Entrees i ordered cod (i think) which was very good and Gohm got filet mignon w/fois grais (did i spell that right?). his was very good. overall i had a great time w/the people i was w/ w/o being overwhelmed and an amazing meal on top of it so i loved it.

plus, this was the 1st new year's where i had a designated new year's kiss. very memorable and romantic.

this is Debs' slutty New Year's balloon. it got w/everybody that night.

sometimes

sometimes i feel like a participant in a contest that i'm almost sure i'm going to lose but that i stay in anyways b/c, for some inexplicable reason, i still have hope that i'll win somehow.

hilariously shocked

so i've just had 2 hilarious incidents happen today that i feel i must share.

i had Con Law this afternoon, and since it's the beginning of the 2nd term, it's just sort of trudging along, doing the same old ho-hum, discussing Marbury v. Madison. you know, the usual. at the end of class, Professor Hellerstein begins talking about when he was practicing in the 60s and 70s and how outrageous a time it was and the impact it had on the legal industry. He had lawyers in his office driving those crazy tie-dyed VW bugs and getting arrested for carrying a roach to meet their client in jail. The most outrageous story he told was about how he and a bunch of lawyers and other activists of the doctor caliber went at midnight to a judge's house to get an ex parte order to allow him to enter Attica immediately after a riot. After they obtained the order they were on the road in one of those crazy VW vans when they got pulled over by about 20 state troopers. One of the van's passengers told professor that the troopers looked like they would search the van. The professor responded "so what?" and was advised the van had about half a pound of marijuana. luckily, the order the judge signed also stated that they weren't to be interfered w/on the federal highway so ultimately the state troopers ended up escorting him and the group to Attica while they carried the marijuana. Crazy.

after class, i went home and just chilled out, watched some Ellen and saw something even more incredulous. Lilly Capeheart, the lizard whisperer. Seriously, if you saw this you would've laughed too. she hypnotizes lizards. and she's a little kid. and then she puts the hypnotized lizards in hilarious outfits and scenes.

productive saturday

so i'm usually a big bum on the weekends, i'm not sure why. i just like lazing around and having no obligations/requirements/ deadlines. i'm sure law school's made me this way. which is why when i actually have a productive saturday, i've of course got to write about it.

on this legendary saturday Gohm and i decided to go out for brunch, already a big step up from the usual Bagel Bob's (which i love too, don't get me wrong, but i wonder if we would go as often if it wasn't right under his apt). we decided to check out something new and trekked over to Annie's which had received rave brunch reviews. when we approached the restaruant there was already a crowd outside and the hostess advised us it would be at least a 20 min wait. however, have no fear b/c those hostesses are all business at Annie's. If they call you and you're not there, they move right now so we sat after only about a 10 min wait. this place has an extensive brunch/breakfast menu and they mean business. they have everything any body could possibly want. varieties of pancakes ranging from plain ol' buttermilk to peach/pumpkin/berry dream and the same goes for their waffles. omelettes? french toast? you've got it. Gohm went for eggs benedict (although there was one version involving filet mignon that i was dying to try) and i got pumpkin pancakes, a poached egg and a side of sausage. for $3.50 the sausage side really isn't worth it but the pumpkin pancakes were really good, perfect balance of pumpkin and cinnamon (not too overpowering). Gohm's eggs benedict were ok but he claims Bar Tabac's is much better. the overall verdict for Annie's? i liked it. it had a nice comfortable atmosphere and the variety is very refreshing. it's a little pricey for brunch but eh, it's NYC.

after our brunch we headed to the eye doctor for Gohm to get an annual check-up. Gohm graciously let me in to the exam room while he got his test and i got to see him dodge the glaucoma test machine. hilarious. you ever see that episode of Friends where Rachel hates the eye doctor and keeps pulling away before the puff of air occurs during the glaucoma test? well, i had a very similar experience but Gohm's was even funnier. i've been forbidden to share it but let me just say that from the moment he sat down in front of that machine i was having trouble stifling my laughter.

later that night we went to Ithaka a Greek restaurant near Gohm's apt. this place was so so so good. we just popped in thinking it was pretty casual but the place was packed and we had to wait a bit before getting a table. however, completely worth it. we got keftedakia (seasoned meatballs)for appetizers, which were very savory and delish. as entrees Gohm got the grilled lambchops and i got arni youvetsi. omg. everybody should experience this entree at least once. it's cooked in a clay pot and filled w/orzo and tender lamb cubes all simmered in tomatoes. sort of like greek version of spaghetti. one of the best things i've ever eaten and will definitely be returning for. the place is a little pricey but the atmosphere is very nice, dimly lit and live music plus the staff was great.

i almost forgot to add the most productive part of the saturday. after dinner we headed over to Tin Lizzie and met up w/T for drinks. this bar is definitely starting to grow on me. 1st of all they do 2 for 1 specials from 8-11 on friday and saturday nights. plus they have the best guest bartenders. why are they the best? b/c they're totally clueless. when Gohm and i got there i ordered a bailey's on the rocks and he ordered a hennessy neat. after asking whether that meant w/ice, the bartender then said they may not have hennessy. Gohm pointed out the bottle to her and then said it's usually poured in a cognac glass which of course she didn't know. i explained it's like a wine glass but shorter and wider. she then proceeded to pull out a wine glass. we told her to put it in a regular short glass which she did, up to the rim. literally the thing was overflowing. then came time for the bill in which she wasn't very good at giving correct change or charging the same amount. she was an awesome bartender.