guest more guests

this weeks theme song: 'be our guest' from beauty and the beast (is that right?) this week the manalastas' hosted more guests. it seems that february is the time to be out in the big apple. the first guest liked to shop a lot, so we took her to china town for lunch then to famous soho for shopping. that was my cousin ann. i was amazed that she was able to rack up a $2,500 shopping bill so fast. well i guess when you got paper to burn - burn baby burn.

then the next guest came into town. he liked to drink a lot. so we decided to drink a lot, bar hopping from pete's to galaxy then to mcsorleys (thanks for the tip panos, great bar). you may have remembered him from our wedding either break dancing on the dance floor or passing out at the dinner table at 7.30. his name's christian.

our next guess liked to hump a lot. so we turned the lights down low, played some smooth jazz and left him alone while he got his mack on. he liked to hump. he liked to hump a lot. his name's louie

when he wasn't humping, he liked to stare at me while i watched tv...

and while i was taking care of business...

he even tried to stare at me while he was taking care of business (but he couldn't quite turn his head all the way around).

i guess you can say we had one more guest. winter. it finally came. the snow came down on central park and covered the pond. winter even came to union square. we californians finally discovered a real winter .

and come winter season, so does the lenten season come. the forty days and forty nights before easter in which we show penance and forgivness to our God. (see mom i went to ash wednesday). i actually went to mass at 7am and wore this all day. at first i thought it might be weird to have the ashes on my forehead all day, but as it turned out, there were a lot of people who had it on their forehead as well. and true to catholic practice, i gave something up. sweets. candy, chocolate, cookies. it's going to be a long season.

WE HELLA HEART VISITORS!!!

Happy Birthday Judy!!

The past week was very eventful for us. We had back-to-back visitors staying at our apartment. The first to arrive was Judy and her husband, Tim, from Virginia Beach, VA. They arrived Sunday night, the same night at Judy's 30th birthday!!! So we surprised her with a homemade box cake (which was Mike's idea, who was also the same person who ended up eating the whole cake after Judy left!).

Judy and Tim

The next day, we went to have dim sum at Oriental Garden, in Chinatown. The food was yummy. They even had a few interesting things that I've never seen before and which I cracked a million jokes about (how can you not??)...

Taro ducks (Tim claims Judy just wanted them because they were cute :))

GeoDuck Clams (clams with an elephant snout,
Judy claims to have gone GeoDuck clamming before...I dunno Judy...)

Before they left that night, we brought Judy and Tim to have korean bbq at Yakiniku Juju...so good!!!
So after Judy and Tim left that night, our next visitor arrived about an hour later...my friend Jeff (aka The Poofster). Boy, did he have an experience getting to our apartment from the airport...so to calm him down, we offered him a shot of Jaeger and he gladly accepted :)

Poof arrives!!

Here Poof, relax, have a Jaeger shot

The next day Poof and I went to eat lunch at Iron Chef Morimoto's new restaurant, Morimoto's. It was Restaurant Week in NYC, so some restaurants were offering a pre fixed menu at a discounted price, Morimoto's was one of them. The lunch came with soup, salad, and an entree. I ordered the Angry Chicken and Poof had the sushi. We also ordered a carafe of cold sake. Yummmm, the meal was sooo good. Besides the food, the other highlight of eating at Morimoto's was the toilets. I swear the toilet, besides warming your booty, had a remote control with about 7 options.

Carafe of sake on the left, so fancy!

Later on that night,

we gave Poof some beers

and he decided to try on my new purse.

The next day we decided to check out Ground Zero and the World Trade Center Memorial Museum. The museum was a really amazing place, containing lots of information, artifacts, and photos related to 9/11. I think it really touched Poof and I and we left with a better understanding of 9/11.

Ground Zero

finding my machismo

after a couple of months of being in the city, confined to museums, theatre, operas, ballets, fine dinning, trips to bed bath & beyond, and even a couple of re-runs of sex in the city, i realized i was missing my machismo, and in dire need of a healthy dose of testosterone. with laurie away for the weekend back home in sf, I called dr. manansala (my cousin joey). he recommended the perfect prescription for my deficiency with a trip to rhode island to visit him and his wife nina. this week's theme song, will be up to you, you can choose from either the theme song from top gun, or eye of the tiger, or any other song that reeks of machismo.

it just so happened that joey's buddy dan, who lives in long island was heading out to ri for the day, so we woke up early saturday morning hopped onto the i-95and headed for the ocean state. zipping along at a rather speedy pace in his sporty sti, we made it from city to country in a little under 3 hours.

we reached their sprawling 3 bedroom, 3,000 square foot house sitting on 25 acres a little before lunch time. the house was impressive, very spacious with a lot of amenities, however in much need of new paint (the aqua green living room and the purple hallways just didn't do it for me). after the grand tour we headed out to east greenwich to say hi to joey’s parents and to meet up with his buddy eric.

quick bio on joey – it’s always fun to visit joey, he and his wife recently finished (or should be finishing within the year) med school and all of the related internships, fellowships and battleships, leaving him and his wife with a ton of disposable income in which to feed his unceasing appetite for toys. boats, cars, bikes, guns, you name it, he’s got it. not only does he let you play with all his toys but he encourages you to, very generously i might add as well. aside from his toys, his humbleness, humor and kindness always makes the trip out to ri worthwhile.

well, enough with the mushy stuff. we were here to shoot. so we loaded up joey’s 4x4 with his 12 gauge, and headed out to the shooting range. we got to the shooting range and i was introduced to clay sporting which is played on a course (kind of like a golf couse). this course consisted of 14 different stations, with 2 clays coming out of ‘clay shooters’ which would fly through the air, in which we’d have to shoot down. each station presenting itself with a different challenge each time. having never fired a gun before, i wasn’t to sure of my ability and didn’t quite know what to expect. but at the end of the day it was fun, even though i wasn't much of a john wayne...

but more of an elmer fudd...

…dan in full form kicking the s*#t out of those damn clays…doesn’t get more machismo then that.

joey with his trusty 12 gauge and me with my official red ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and 'this thing', which tells time. i didn’t shoot my eye out.

…after showing the clays who’s boss, joey handed me the keys to his ‘commute car’. his 2005 awd porsche 911 turbo. with a smile across my face, i took the keys, the porsche, and a sense of wild abandon to the open road. keeping the rpm’s a hair below 7,000, I pushed the car through long straight-aways, wove through the small country roads, and let out the repressed machismo inside of me

and after a long day, what other way to best quench a hunger and thirst but with some steak sandwiches and a couple of cold ones (WOA BEER!)…at last, i had found my machismo…