Since Mexico

Somedays you wake up and realize you haven't blogged for a month and a half because you blogged so hard a month and a half ago. So let's start getting a little caught up on what's happened since Mexico.

I had a two day layover in Chicago on my way back to New York. Among other things, we celebrated Columbus Day, went to the Vienna Beef Hot Dog factory restaurant (a true museum of real Chicago culture), ate tacos and a torta right after that, and I booped the nose of a deer statue.

I got back to New York just in time to go to lunch with Eliza and Andrew, who both happened to be in town, and to sit in on an important business meeting Andrew had. And to take Andrew to spend $50 on next to nothing at Atla.

There was a church thing where I was supposed to take everyone's picture, but then the orders changed to "take a few pictures, whatever" more or less, so here's the results of that

One night I went out to Brooklyn to see Nicolas Jaar. It was good. He had a single neon tube for the occasional lighting effect. He just made bleeps and bloops on his consoles for the first 25 minutes before he played anything with a beat and it was 50 minutes before he played anything I recognized (and I consider myself a fan) but he played for over two hours, there was just a long warm up before he really started hitting us with the jams.

But as far as concerts go, the big deal thing was the Imagine Dragons organization, via Marilyn and the Reynolds brothers, hooked me up with tickets to their sold out show in Brooklyn. I took Arthur and Erick from tutoring. It was a little tricky figuring out our ticket situation, we spent some time at the VIP entrance (which smelled very nice) but eventually got in the show and we had some pretty nice seats but then Brandon hooked us up with passes to the GA area in front of the stage and, yep, those were even better!

There was a night of Chinese food out in Flushing. You can count on me not being late to dinner in Flushing.

And then another night I went to Fuku for their Chimek chicken feast with Jeff, Michael and Tessa. They helped me decide to go to California the next day.

So the next day I flew out to California. It happened to be Halloween. I went to Cher's Halloween party. I just wasn't very picture-takey on the trip, or in general, since my Mexico trip. I really wore out my picture finger on that trip. And my posting-finger.

The next day I had lunch at Mom's Tamales and Mariscos Jalisco, then I met up with Lucas at Kismet for snacks, and then I ran over to dinner at Night + Market Song, but here are just pictures of snacks with Lucas. If you're headed to LA, or perhaps live there, I certainly do recommend eating at Kismet.

The next day I went to the Gene Autry Cowboy Museum and I had a real good time learning about cowboys, California, Western art, and cowboy tv shows and movies. They also had a big exhibit about playing. You know, toys and games and stuff. Nice to see Guitar Hero made it into a museum!

Then I got lunch with our friend Collin at a Thai place near Disney he had been curious for me to try, and I'm glad he did, because it was quite good and quite charming.

Now, I'm pretty disappointed in myself for not having pictures of anyone or anything else (like, say, Grandma or her new car) but then the next morning I flew up to Utah and got lunch with Cindy and then she took me to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum. Which was great. But I certainly would have been bored if I went there when I was, say, 11 or 12. I'm very glad I waited, it was worth it.

Then we went to the Salt Lake Cemetery to see this one crazy tombstone.

And you know I did a lot more stuff in Utah and ate at a lot of places but really I didn't take any photos, I guess I was having too much fun? But here's a picture of Andrew from when we went to Provo for Don Joaquin's and then went to the Provo Bakery.

Back to New York! One day I went to Christie's to see the DaVinci painting that was going to auction (and would fetch $450 million the next week) along with many other works of art soon to be auctioned. I really liked it there, it's my favorite museum now because everything has a price on it and that really helps me like them more.

There was a trip out to the Jersey Loews. No pics of the theater, but here I spy friends inside Boulevard Drinks enjoying hot dogs.

The next morning Carol was in town and we had lunch at Hart's in Brooklyn, just moments before it became very famous. Looks like I didn't get any pictures of Carol! But Carol took my picture in front of the Elvis/Smiths mural in Chinatown. Looks like the Elvis side of the mural is a smidge more popular than the Smiths side.

Visited Andy (no pic!), saw more art,

And get this: the Lymans live by me now, and sometimes we go to Harlem Shake! (it's happened more than once!)

Visitantes. Dia Cinco.

Well, we woke up Sunday morning and it was the last half day of our trip. Mom had located a ward meeting a short walk from our hotel at 8am, so we walked on over. I don't recall what was in the breakfast buffet that morning, looks like I didn't get a picture. But look how empty the streets were at quarter to 8!

It was very good to go to Mexican church, I had forgotten about the clean smell and prevalence of linoleum in Mexican Mormon churches. And that you have to bring your own hymnal in Mexico. And that the Mexicans will be very eager to share their hymnals with you if you haven't got one.

After church we made our way through a few neighborhoods over to Ave. Reforma. Among other places we passed the Mexico City Ripley's Believe it or Not and Wax Museum. I'd visited there once on my mission. There was a gigantic line there as it was opening. Glad to know it's still doing great business. We went into a supermarket, too, just to see what was up.

The Reforma is a grand avenue stretching from the center of Mexico City to Chapultapec Park and on Sundays it closes down to cars and opens up for pedestrians and cyclists. This is a very metropolitan thing, to close down your streets and let people ride bikes up and down them.

And then we walked the whole Reforma in the other direction to get back to el Centro and gave the Centro one last walking around.

We had one last meal at a nice little fonda (actually, it was pretty big) where all the food, from the orangeades to the sope to the tacos to the cubana, were quite big. Our waiter was nice enough to cut us off and tell us we had ordered enough. He knew their food was big!

More of our last little walking around...

At Mexican McDonald's they were selling 10 peso soft serves with Oreo cookie cones. Look out, Ample Hills! McDonald's is coming for you!

One last pair of tacos? Why not?

Back to the hotel and off to the airport

And after some sitting around, off we go! Adios Amigos, thanks for a great time! See you all again soon.