Pickles...from the surface of the sun!

Friday started off in a big way…..wait I mean drunk way. Ali stopped by and we finished half of the new bottle of rum my old roommate Jordan gave me after returning from a Caribbean vacation. We then met Josh down in Union Square before heading off to Brooklyn. Josh was meeting up with a college friend who also happened to be his New Years Eve make-out. We didn’t venture more than one or two stops into Brooklyn because the group was at a club in Williamsburg. We ended up walking a good portion of the neighborhood since we were drunk and completely lost. The best was taking advantage of the view from the waterfront. Okay the rum caught up to me, and I don’t remember the club (but I was told I tried to dance….horribly!). Anyway, I am told that Ali and I hopped on the subway back to Manhattan.

Saturday morning came all too quick. I promised to meet my running friend Aimee for brunch. She and a few other friends ran the women’s only 10k race in the park. She said to meet her around 10:30am. I warned her that I most likely would not be running since I like to sleep in on Saturday (oh and party all night on Friday). At 10:00am, I rolled out of bed, threw on the nearest articles of clothing and headed out the door. I made my way up to the park to watch the finish. After watching completely defeated women cross the finish line (you know the ones that are panting, whose running is nothing more than a shuffle, and they spend much of the race walking but decide to sprint the last 50 feet to the finish line because of the encouraging crowd, then they practically collapse) I figured she had already passed (she and I run at the same moderately slow pace but we hardly ever stop to walk).

I dragged my feet to the brunch place a few (or 10) blocks away, and thought it would be brilliant to market personal scooters to severely hung-over people. I finally found a supermarket that sold Gatorade so I could start nursing myself back to health. Okay those who have been in the same state know that two comforting things are Gatorade and food (usually greasy). Well the brunch place would not open until 11:30! Are you kidding me? I am ready to start devouring my own hand or at least busting open the front down! I begged Aimee to pick one of the hundred other brunch places in the Upper West Side but one of the girls in the group insisted on this place. Ugh! To make matters worse, the picky girl waited until 11:30 to show up as if she knew the place would not open until then even though the agreed meeting time was 10:30! Well when we were finally seated, I was quite the unhappy camper. All of the girls were like “oh it is soooo funny you are soooo hung-over, must have had an exciting night, well I went to bed early so I could run 8 minute miles in the 10k race…etc”. Yeah sooooo funny indeed until I put my fist in your mouth! Okay I was cranky but thankfully not violent. The waiter picked up on it and made sure to be hovering with the unlimited mimosa pitcher! Yeah one good thing about this Cajun place is the free unlimited mimosas from 11:30am to 3pm. A few alright dishes later and we parted ways so I could go back to bed.

I didn’t get much sleep because my friend Dave called and wanted to hang out. Neither of us had an agenda, so we just walked around Union Square and the Village. The highlight was discovering this random street corner where the building almost came to a point. You may have seen the Flatiron Building (the real skinny building at Madison Square park), but this building was much more extreme. The building housed a line grill diner that I would have sampled if not completely stuffed from brunch. We took a closer look and they actually used the small point to store cups and plates, etc. Ah the hidden gems of the city not found in any tour books.

On a final note, I have some advice to share….never ever heat up a pickle in the microwave. For dinner, I heated up the remaining half of my po-boy sandwich from brunch (I make a habit of saving half of my restaurant meals because 1. they are usually too huge to eat in one sitting and 2. I cannot cook to save my life, but microwaving is easy enough). Well the sandwich had pickles on it. I guess the juices in the pickles heated up and retained said heat. When I began to chew on the sandwich, the roof of my mouth was scorched by the pickle! I tried to move the hot item around and proceeded to burn parts of the side and my tongue before spitting out the hunk of food. I had to roll ice cubes around my mouth for the rest of the afternoon and it still felt tender/funny two days later! Damn you pickles!