Ah Yes, November...

Wouldn’t the first weeks of January 2019 be a great time to look at things from November 2018? I thought so, too!

November got off to a wild start when one day I was checking Instagram and saw that Grace and Dave were across the street from my work at the Nintendo store so I ran over to say to them a surprise Hello. Social Media, you made this possible!

Took an early morning Inwood Hill Park hike with Ned one early morning. This is actually Inwood Hill Park Hike #1 of 3 for November.

Some after work photo walk photos:

The night after it opened, I went to the new Momofuku Noodle Bar at Columbus Circle with Tara, Dallin and Colette. Absolutely beautiful restaurant, struggling service, lagging back of house, food mostly largely unremarkable. This seems to be the story of the Momofukus in general these days. Great company, though!

The big November thing was Emily came out for Thanksgiving. Night #1 we started with dessert at Morgenstern’s and then had dinner at Emily’s. Not Emily’s house! But the pizza place called Emily’s.

Then Thanksgiving itself! Started with cooking and hanging at our house and finished with the big dinner at Ned’s!

Friday morning I went with Emily to Daily Provisions for breakfast before heading into work for the day.

After work I met up with the sibs at the Nintendo store, headed down to Superiority Burger, also went to Otto’s Tacos, and then walked down to the Seaglass Carousel.

Saturday morning, before Emily flies back to Chicago, one more Inwood Hill Park hike lead by Ned.

Ok, just a few more things: that Saturday I joined Victoria and Logan for lunch at a GREAT new-ish place in Brooklyn called Win Son. And one Sunday night I made my own Hot Chicken and now I feel unstoppable.

Haunted Housewarming

You might want to call this a Halloween Party and I get why you would do that, but really I wanted to have a housewarming and my available Saturdays were getting closer and closer to the 31st. So I had a Vampire Party. Right before Halloween.

Here is mostly everyone:

And here’s just about everyone individually. Or in small groups. Plus a scary vampire cake that Heather made:

It was a good party and if you want to come help unstick all the bats from my wall you can. Maybe that will be my Christmas party?

Let Me Catch You Up on a Utah Trip

One weekend in October I flew out to Utah on a Saturday night, getting in late, but not too late for Del Taco. I spent the daytime of the next day with Kristen’s family, admiring the basement they live in now and the progress of the remodeling of their real house

Kristen’s family did me the gigantic solid of taking me down to Salt Lake so I could try Pretty Bird, which I found to be absolutely excellent. Like, stupendous. Better than absolutely any chicken sandwich in New York, that’s for sure. I ordered their hot chicken as hot as I could and it was hot but not as hot as I’d hoped. It’s ok. It was still delicious and the fries I found to be beyond compare as well. Five stars to Pretty Bird! (or as one niece called it, “Chicken Bird”, which is a great name, too)

Post-chicken we went to the mall and Rachel talked her folks into renting some Bird scooters. Behold, me about to be very daring.

Now, the big reason I was out there in Utah was for our friend Carol’s wedding reception. YOU WOULD THINK I’d have a lot of pictures from this party. But nope! YOU WOULD THINK I’d at least have a picture of Carol in her wedding dress. Nope! I was just too busy enjoying the party and being reunited with all sorts of good folks to remember to account for it. Well, please believe me that it was good. And see here an out of focus picture of the venue, the cake, some of the dinner (yes, Don Joaquin catering in the house), and the Lymans, who came up to see me and meet Carol. I think eventually some very high quality pictures of this party will emerge online. Somewhere.

The next morning I woke up in Park City. What a crazy night I must have had!

On the way home I checked on Grandma’s and refined my perfect In n Out order (cheeseburger animal style, hold the lettuce and tomato, add raw onions [so, yes, raw + grilled onions are on this burger]—this is the way to make In n Out not just palatable but actually very quite tasty)

I made it back to beautiful Highland in time for a little bit of church and then a quick trip to the Sizzler before flying back to New York that afternoon. No more red eyes for me!!