cw: death, cancer, grief
I lost one of my closest friends to cancer last week. Our friendship did not really exist in the context of a group, like many of our friendship do, and I haven’t known who to comfortably talk to about how I feel about this loss.
So on the off chance you find a chance to read this blog post in Heaven in between check-ins on your loved ones, here’s everything I’ve been wanting to say since you passed. It doesn’t feel real that you’re gone. I miss you so much.
(Previously, on NYC 2017, we enjoyed some Manhattan fan favorites, a cultural festival that shut down several city blocks, and a great Broadway musical.)
Labor Day rolled around and, after sleeping in a bit (necessary after our strange ritual of watching lat night movies during our stay…), we headed out for lunch at Momosan Ramen (review). I didn’t realize this until we sat down, but this is one of Chef Morimoto’s restaurants. (I don’t follow celebrity chefs at all, so I am often very oblivious about their restaurants and never recognize them in my friends’ excited photos.) They were offering a sake flight and the waitress looked intimidatingly too-cool-for-school so we decided to go for it because the restaurant is technically Momosan Ramen & Sake, despite the fact that I don’t really drink and I definitely don’t really drink sake. I only lament that they weren’t serving the Peking duck baos during lunch, as I could see a roast duck literally dangling in front of my face as I ate, but when I asked what deliciousness I could order to acquire it, I was told that duck was only on the dinner menu.
From there, we decided to walk the High Line from beginning to end, since it is one of our favorite spots in New York (and one of my favorite spots of all time) but we’ve always started walking from somewhere in the middle. We quickly realized that walking the High Line on a weekday evening is very different from walking on a weekend during daylight hours, as the park was crazy crowded. It was also still very warm out, so the many ice cream, paleta, and gelato vendors were doing really well up there. I swiped a yellow watermelon + mint paleta and it was oh-so-refreshing.
I held back from getting any ice cream or gelato because I actually wanted us to get ice cream in Chelsea when we finished walking the High Line. We first walked past Dominique Ansel Bakery, which I learned was selling their Japan-exclusive Crème de la Corn only during Labor Day weekend. Our timing was pretty perfect, because it was the last day they were serving this treat in New York and they were about to open the ice cream window. (By the time we walked away with our ice cream, the line was very long.)
Caramel and corn soft serve was a novel and interesting flavor experience that I liked! It was a different kind of summery taste that wasn’t too sweet, and the actual corn was very delicious. (It is grilled and then glazed with soy sauce and butter! So yum!) That was a fun and unexpected detour, since I honestly did not think I would be able to make it before it ran out. But on to the ice cream I planned for! I wanted to try some of the other ice cream flavors, but we had more ice cream plans ahead of us! From Dominique Ansel, we walked a few blocks to Van Leeuwen Ice Cream. There was a line wrapping around the corner shop but we didn’t mind waiting because it was kind of a perfect golden afternoon moment. That part of the city is quiet and residential, we were approaching golden hour with warm, golden rays of sunshine filtering through the brownstones and the trees, and we were about to eat ice cream after having just eaten ice cream. The ice cream itself wasn’t as sweet as the idyllic moment we enjoyed walking to the shop but it was still very yummy.
There was no way in heck we were going to not visit Joe’s Pizza (review) while we were in their neck of the woods. Joe’s is one of my favorite places to get a New York slice and is one of the few establishments I revisit nearly every time I come back to the city, if for no other reason than to see if the wall of celebrity faces has been updated while biting into that perfect crust + sauce.
Bellies full of pizza and ice cream (honestly, why do we front so much as though children’s birthday party menus are beneath us), we strolled over to Washington Square Park for our annual sit and chill there. It was cooling down, golden hour was in full swing, there was music and laughter and doggos. And this time, I didn’t even run into any rats, it was pretty blissful.
From there, it was time to meet up with my old friend Elvin, so we headed back uptown to meet at Socarrat for tapas and paella. I got to finally meet his girlfriend Emily (after years of us missing each other during my visits) and we had a lot of laughs together over food.
Half-jokingly, I asked “Where to for dessert?”, fully aware that I had just eaten ice cream at two different establishments. But dessert is no joking matter, and we found ourselves walking to Serendipity 3. Despite having heard about this famous restaurant for so long, this was my first ever visit! We were way too stuffed for the famous frozen hot chocolate, so we tried to get the least unhealthy dessert we could manage and wound up with a very fruity sundae. (They let the 4 of us split one dessert because the restaurant wasn’t too crowded, but ordinarily they have a minimum spend amount per person.) It was very yummy, despite the fact that I was eating mostly whipped cream most of the time because the lemon ice cream I was looking forward to was hidden on the other side of the bowl. I don’t know if I get the hype about the Tiffany lamps, which just made the entire restaurant look really kitschy, but I watched Serendipity for the first time fairly recently and it was pretty magical to be there with good friends and a super duper full belly.
We parted ways from Elvin and Emily and slowly ambled our way back to the hotel. It was a beautiful night, and we weren’t quite ready to leave New York, even though we had another adventure waiting on the other side.
Do you have go-to ramen / pizza / ice cream places in the city? We always stop by Joe’s, and our fondest ramen memory is of Ippudo because that was our first-ever ramen experience! I don’t know if I have a go-to for ice cream yet.
Do you like Serendipity 3? I knew it for a long time because of the Babysitters Club (it was Stacy’s favorite!) and then came to know of its rom-com fame (Kate Beckinsale is a beautiful goddess walking among mortals). I have been trying to plan out a NYC rom-com guide blog so let me know if you’d be interested in that!
Hello, it’s been a while! I am recovering from my short hiatus, a bunch of travel, and the news cycle, so let’s just jump right into it:
Ben and I spent Labor Day Weekend in my home city of New York for what has become an annual visit. The trip began as they always do: in Union Station in Washington, DC where we finally bit the bullet for some pre-lunch meu Bojangles. (Previously, we always hesitated to get Bo’ because our bus always leaves before the breakfast menu ends, so we weren’t able to order the dinners. I recently tried to boneless Chicken Supremes and discovered they are super tasty and easier to eat on the go! So we were able to enjoy delicious fried chicken after all.)
During the bus ride up, we discovered that the dinner plans Ben’s college friends made were earlier in the evening (the original reservation was before we even arrived), so we immediately caught a cab to our hotel, spent forever checking in, and took another cab to dinner, where our reservation was pushed back because half the group was also running late. (Review: One UN New York hotel)
We had a great time at dinner at Natsumi Tapas (review), catching up with old friends we hadn’t seen since last Labor Day or since graduation, and celebrating a recent engagement in the group. (It’s a group of Ben’s friends from college, and they are trying to make it a tradition for us to hang out every Labor Day weekend in a different city. We were invited to visit New York to celebrate the engagement, and Ben and I had already planned to be there for that weekend so it all worked out!)
From dinner, we split up to get ready for a night at the club before reconvening to pregame. The pregame was not what I was expecting at all, from how I remember pregaming with this crew back in college. Upon walking in, a terrible instant-film photo was taken of me and we were sat down to play Avalon: The Resistance, which is a super fun game that is kind of like Mafia but set in Arthurian legend and with no dying, aka everyone can keep playing to the end. Before we knew it, it was time to head out to Hotel Chantelle, where our friend once drunkenly tried to chill with Jeremy Lin. He got thrown out of the club for harassing him, but he clearly had a good enough time to come back! (I hated the DJ though, as I mention at length in my review.)
In my bad-DJ-induced late night crankiness, I decided that if I had to endure such bad DJing and have had to pay for it, I deserved a dollar slice of one of my favorite foods of all time: New York-style pizza. So, in the rain, after going back and forth about whether or not I actually should go out for pizza at 2am, Ben graciously accompanied me to get dollar slices of pizza a few blocks from the hotel. We trudged back to the hotel, in the rain, holding cold slices of pizza, which I ate real happily while watching The Help on TV.
I didn’t take that many photos on day 1, but I started playing with the 1 Second Everyday app, so here’s a few seconds from this day!
Where would you recommend for clubbing nights in Manhattan? I’ve never really gone clubbing before Labor Day weekend, but I hope if I go back I get a better DJ!
Do you like the 1 Second Everyday app? I had a lot of fun with taking tiny clips and letting an app string them all together for me. If you like this format, please let me know! It’s a really different way for me to document versus taking photos.
Happy first day of August! Can you believe we’re in the home stretch of summer already?
I realized I haven’t really checked in about what I’ve been up to since AwesomeCon. (Vlogs are coming… I think…) So let’s get going with just a bit before July started!
I had the opportunity to go to the Hirshhorn for their new exhibit, Ai Wei Wei: Trace at Hirshhorn, on the opening day just a bit before the museum opened to the public thanks for the lovely HM. (Fun fact: She also was responsible for my first ever Instameet, which means that she is responsible for me getting involved with the Instagram community at large!)
The exhibit consists of two main pieces:
It’s a great exhibit and I highly recommend stopping by to see it when you visit the Hirshhorn!
This was my first-ever baby shower (outside of one for our account lead at work) and it was a lot of fun! Gretchen is the Yelp NoVa Community Manager and it’s been so great being on the NoVa team since I moved to this area. Her sister and sister-in-law, Jen and Taylor, did such a great job with the decorations! My only regrets were having her registry gifts sent directly to her house (I showed up with just some little trinkets for her to enjoy because in my head, I didn’t want her to have more stuff to bring home? This was kind of a silly thought) and then dropping the clothespins for the game down my front and not realizing I should have won. Oops! It was still a great time and a great day to celebrate Gretchen and her incoming little one!
The National Building Museum has their summer installment up and it is Studio Gang’s Hive. I got to attend a fun Daybreaker where I was able to do yoga AND dance in the cool PVC pipe hive. It was an extra treat because Ben accompanied me, since my usual Daybreaker crew was unable to make it to this one and I really really wanted to see The Hive.
The evening after Daybreaker, I had a great girl’s night with my friends. We haven’t had one like this since… December? We had Annie’s pro photobooth setup, delicious snacks, a BUMPIN’ 2000s summer dance jams playlist playing, face masks, and Monopoly Deal, a surprisingly addicting game.
sweetgreen is a popular salad chain that started out in DC and for the past few years, they’ve had a big concert/festival up in Columbia, Maryland. This year, they kicked it back to their roots, with the original sweetlife festival being a block party in DC. The weather was pretty great, if a bit hot and balmy, so I ate a lot of gelato. (Thank you Dolcezza!) There was great music, there was a fun photobooth with vegetable props, and lots of yummy food. It was really great spending an evening with my friends at maybe the hippest event I have ever stumbled into. (I kept looking around thinking someone would realize I was not cool enough to be there…) It was a night to remember for sure.
I got to see my friend Devika’s beautiful house and meet her super kind mom and meet her super nice friends. It was just a low-key, really nice party at her house, I’m so grateful for my friends and for her (and her nice mom).
I’ve been seeing photos online for years of people frolicking in fields of sunflowers and I finally got to see them in person myself! The McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Center plants fields of sunflowers every year to attract wildlife, and I was able to visit twice in one weekend. On the Saturday, the clouds overhead looked extremely ominous, so we tried to take our photos fast. Suddenly, the wind picked up and, despite it being a really hot and humid day, the air temperature very quickly dropped and got comfortable. I didn’t have much time for relief because it then started pouring, and we stayed in the rain for just a while longer, soaking in the sight of the blooms in the storm before running to the car.
We went back the next day with Ben’s parents and got some nice photos in the sun. I did miss that cool summer storm breeze, though, and the crowds were significantly bigger.
My brother is interning in Delaware this summer, so my dad and I visited him this past weekend. It was actually my first time going to Delaware as the destination and not as a state I pass through on my way to/from New Jersey. It was a lot of fun to see my brother and to watch Girl’s Trip, despite it not being a good, er… family movie?
My dad had a friend who invited us out on his yacht, so I got to enjoy a truuuuuly beautiful day on the water. The weather was PERFECTION and I really enjoyed being on the water, it remains one of my favorite things in the world.
With that, I am looking forward to August! There is more summer fun coming up and I am trying to stay in the summer mindset in September, since it’s always hot for most of September anyway and the autumnal equinox isn’t until the last week of September anyway!
What do you have planned for the rest of summer?
What are you going to miss about summer?
Hello and happy Friday! I have been a little bit low mood this past week, maybe from just being so busy and maybe from the transition from hot and humid to gloomy and rainy. (I haven’t seen the sun in almost a week, now…) But I’ve been doing a lot of fun stuff so I thought I’d share a bit of that here today!
This year, several of my friends and colleagues were recipients at the DCFemTech Awards, celebrating women in technology in the DC area and their work. It’s really inspiring to see so many women getting recognized and encouraged, and I am proud to work alongside them.
I was also able to see some friends from college that I hadn’t seen in a while, as well as get an ~exclusive~ after-hours look at the Washington Post headquarters and newsroom!
My first time attending a Daybreaker event was on my birthday back in December. I really loved the concept when I first read about it: early morning dance parties fueled by coffee, juice, and a love of dance rather than by sex, drugs, and alcohol, which aren’t my motivations for dancing.
This month, Daybreaker partnered with the Kennedy Center, one of my favorite institutions in DC and of all time, to put on a great dance party on the terrace. It was crazy hot and humid but I had an awesome time dancing with my friend Megan at her first Daybreaker. Both of us saw friends we knew and had an amazing time sweating and dancing before a Friday work day.
On Saturday, I mentored a hackathon for the first time! I worked with Think of UsThink of Us to help think of ways to make their website for parenting teens in the foster system easier and more appealing for people to use. It was strange being one of the more experienced developers on a team, considering I’m still not very confident in my skills yet, but it was fun to work with that team and I learned a lot about the resources that are available to parenting teens and their caregivers.
My friend Jen’s birthday was yesterday and I wanted to do something with her before she went out of town for her birthday weekend. We had talked about DC’s cat cafe, Crumbs & Whiskers, before but I hadn’t gone. I figured that even if Jen had gone a bunch of times, as an avid cat lover, it would still be a treat for me to take her to enjoy cats and pastries.
Little did I know that Crumbs & Whiskers has recently been offering Sunday yoga sessions. WITH THE CATS. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, even though I was frequently startled by how often I would find a cat where I was going to put my hand or foot. Those precious kitties were worth all the allergic sniffles I experienced, and I got a great yoga session out of it, too!
I also enjoyed a delicious brunch with Jen afterwards, and just remain so grateful to still be friends with this great girl I met at college orientation.
I recently won tickets (thanks BrightestYoungThings!) to EdibleDC magazine’s Eat/Drink Local, where I was able to sample so many delicious foods from local vendors all over DC. From local oysters to truffled gnocchi to blue (!!) cashew milk and an entire pizza, my belly was delighted to sample so many delicious foods and drinks from the area. I have been known to give the DC food scene a really hard time, but it’s because I know there’s so much potential and I want it to be better! It’s gotten so much better over the past 2 years and I can’t wait to see how much more it grows.
Did you know that the DC mayor’s office has a special division dedicated to Asian Pacific-Island affairs? It’s true! MOAPIA (Mayor’s Office for Asian Pacific-Island Affairs) has been putting on events all month for AAPI Heritage Month and I was able to attend Foodelicious Night, where 3 of DC’s most famous Asian and Asian-American chefs performed cooking demonstrations for us and let us taste it after! We had:
This was a really fun event because the chefs all had a lot of personality and prepared really amazing foods for all of us. It was such an incredible way to celebrate Asian cuisine in DC and how easily you can recreate it at home!
Last night, I met up with Don, Megan, and several of their friends for a birthday dinner to celebrate Megan! (Fun fact: She actually has the same birthday as Jen!) It was a lot of fun seeing some of Megan’s friends that I haven’t seen in years, or since her wedding last year, or just since the last time we all hung out. (Please tell me it’s normal to have trouble hanging out with friends at a higher frequency as an adult, it is very frustrating to me…)
It was a lot of fun to see everyone and to see Megan twice in one 7-day period!
It’s Memorial Day weekend in the United States, and I’ll be spending it resting, cleaning, and maybe checking out some online sales!
How will you be spending the (long) weekend?
How was your week??
Sip of Starrshine 