Wonderful weekends

No matter what goes on during the long and onerous work week, my weekends in New York have been and continue to be splendid. Life seems so easy on those two glorious days, which have been ridiculously beautiful in terms of weather.

Take last weekend, which started out with a swim in the Marcus Garvey pool two blocks from my house. New York City pools are free for all and I've been taking advantage of the lap swim from 7-8:30 PM, mainly because Irene keeps asking me to accompany her on her triathlon training workouts. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't be doing any physical activity, so thanks to Irene! The weekend continued with a lie-in til noon, after which I filled holes in the wall left by the previous tenant because I wanted to. I also spent an enormous number of the reamining 36 weekend hours in Central Park. Saturday I laid out on a towel and talked to my friend Lauren on the phone, while Sunday afternoon was spent riding a rented bicycle around and around the park with Irene on during triathlon training session. Past weekends were spent at the beach and today I chatted up Carolyn while slurping ice cream and shopping on the Lower East Side, who I hadn't seen since she came through Iowa last year for Arlington Days.

Carolyn and Irene at Lenox Avenue's Sette Pani bakery, where the food's great and the service is...not so great.

My weekend nights have also been filled with a smattering of dinners with friends and late night discussions or board game playing. Last weekend included the discovery of the latest greatest dessert place--Black Hound. Irene and I were heading to a dessert bar called Chikalicious (terrible name, but we'll overlook that because they serve multi-course desserts--no real food to be had at this establishment) and we walked past Black Hound, a bakery. I was drawn to the rows and rows of cakes-for-one in the window and we spent a good 20-30 minutes in there before we decided to skip Chikalicious and buy ourselves cakes to eat at home instead. Who could resist something as cute as these cakes? Mine was reminiscient of the delectable cakes in Austria...light, sweet and hazelnutty, but not too overpowering. Irene's (with the bees) tasted exactly like a Mozart Kugel, for those of you who have had one--marzipan galore!

Tonight I am sitting in one of the front windows to catch the wireless signal on my laptop, breaking out in goose bumps every time the cool wind blows in. The view is good from where I am. How's yours?