Brunch Crew

I've probably written about this before but here goes.

Jersey City finally felt like home to me last year after I met my neighborhood friends. It all started with my dogs and the dog park, and then branched out from there.

I am not sure how the weekend brunch thing actually started. It was almost a year ago and a group of us started going to brunch regularly on Saturday or Sunday depending on schedules. Whoever can make it shows up. Sometimes people bring new friends to introduce to the group.

We sit around and shoot the shit - catch up on each other's lives and things going on in our little corner of the world. I think I lost this kind of community for a long time and I am glad to have it back. In Salt Lake City, it was easier to do this... I had next door neighbors in a small enclosed community where you saw each other every day. Here, where everything is so fast paced and less social, most people I know don't even know their neighbors - even if they see them every day. It was a nice change to be able to find these kind of friends here and to really feel like you belong to a neighborhood.

This picture is the majority of the brunch crew - eating at Beechwood Cafe on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Stone Street after Work NYC

Stone Street after Work NYC, originally uploaded by quimerizar.

So this is our regular hang out for after work in the summers in NYC. The street is lined with bars and each bar sets tables out onto the cobblestone for their patrons. The entire block is always packed with people... Lots of men in suits, working women, and then the gold diggers that come to find a husband. It is a popular Wall Street hangout since it is conveniently located about a block away from 'the street'. A typical afterwork scenario goes like this.....

A group from work strolls over to Stone Street and into the first bar on the street that looks enticing. We all order a few drinks. The boys - pictured here - have a few drinks then start to meet some of the lovely ladies that have come out for the evening. They lie to them and tell them they are international equities traders and all kinds of other lines and the girls believe them. The rest of us sit back and watch it all happen and enjoy the show.

Maggie and I decided to try this once just to see how it works. We were at 230 5th Avenue (a nice bar) after work one night a few weeks ago. We ran into some guys at the bar who wanted to talk to us. We figured that telling them we were traders would probably have a reverse effect for us ... so we tested it out. About 45 seconds after we lied and told them we were traders, they left. Poor guys and their egos - fun to watch.

Water Main Burst

Today was a typical Saturday... cleaning the house and toolin around. I had all the windows open in the house. I love to do that, especially when I clean. I have these big windows with long white curtains and I love to watch them blow in the wind. It reminds me of one of those advertisments for a hotel with a balcony in a tropical destination - some woman in a flowy skirt standing in the entry way looking at palm trees and the ocean. ANYWAY (wow, talk about digression).

So I was cleaning and I heard the police come by outside on the street in their car and they had their speaker on. They made multiple announcements to "The residents of Jersey City" about how it is unsafe to drink the water and to stop drinking it immediately. No teeth brushing, nada! Thank god I had a giant thing of spring water in my fridge.

Not thinking too logically, my friends and I decided to go out to dinner in Hoboken. Why we thought that the water would only affect the residences and not the restaurants is beyond me. We finally found a restaurant that was serving - they had cleaned their veggies earlier in the day and hadn't run out yet. It was a good dinner and the funniest part was that we could not order water to drink...so we were all FORCED to drink some liquor :)