Shrimps

It's 8 o'clock on a Friday night, which would normally find me squirming with excitement for tomorrow's adventures. This one, however, finds me a little less eager, seeing as we senselessly booked our flights to Cinci for 6.05 a.m. out of LaGuardia. That means at 3-something before the sun rises, we rise. These are things for which not to be excited on a Saturday morning near the end of January! But it will be fine. We're packed, and I'm waiting on my thickly coated chili-garlic shrimps to arrive from Wu Liang Ye, our favorite and only Sichuan delivery place in the UES. After that, an early bedtime is inevitable.*So, last night we left work, jumped on the F train at 74th Street and traveled the distance down to 2nd Avenue in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Sharon was reading at her book's release party at a Bulgarian bar called Menahata on Ludlow, but beforehand, Craig and I took her suggestion and ducked into Panna II (see above photo) for Indian cuisine. We've definitely become intrigued patrons of Indian fare more recently, but we've got Baluchi around the corner, which is a New York City chain (who knows, maybe beyond NYC even) so what you get is what you get. But Panna II boasts best in its description of its food and decor (see above photo of woven webs of Christmas chili pepper lights hung from a low ceiling) and so we gave it a shot. Oh, it really was quite good. It's BYOB, and that was our first BYOB experience. We found a wine store around the corner before finding Panna II, bought a bottle of wine and what do you know? BYOB is kind of a treat for restaurant lovers who like a wine or beer with their meal, because it's sans the mark-up if you bring it in yourself! Then you can go a little crazy with your meal and order apps in advance of eating your main course! The food was good - tikka masala (sp?) remains my favorite, and the naan bread there was divine, just so warm and toasted crisp only at its curves and delicious overall, dipped in spicy green chile sauce or eaten as a standalone delicious bread bite. The thing I missed was the cool cucumber raita yogurt dip, which we usually get from Baluchi no matter what we order. I'm not sure why we didn't get it at Panna II. After our fun adventure there, we headed to Menahata. It was going to be probably a 10 minute walk to get there, but a subway ride would take us out of our way, so we braved it and man, did we brave it. It felt like negative degrees out there, with East River winds, I swear, slapping my cheeks, even though we weren't on the river, to speak. A co-worker described a bar in the neighborhood once to Craig, and we came upon it and happily ducked in for a Windmer (?) beer, which I actually liked better than Hogaarten (sp??) (I can spell many, many a word but not beer names, evidently) and in fact, the place was quite cool - the Piano Lounge?...after one beer, we headed to hear Sharon read. Menahata was easy enough to locate once we were on Ludlow. And her reading was fantastic, of course! She is ablaze with personality, she brims with intellect and beauty that shines from the inside all the way out. Craig dug her a lot, which overjoyed me, of course! We spoke a bit to her husband, who is an illustrator. We saw my old classmates Naturi and Tony and hung out with them a while, too. It was a really nice New York night - can't complain. Even our cab ride home was a ride, so to speak. The cabbie was a self-proclaimed comedian named Louie the Loser! He cracked some jokes and lessened the length of the ride from the Lower East Side to the Upper East Side substantially. And then we crashed and worked early this morning, of course.*Enter the green pants.
Last weekend when we were at Macy's and Lord & Taylor I found these great green pants. They were hanging on a rack titled "SALE" so it isn't like I shelled out full price for these (many if not most people I know and love wouldn't think me too smart if they knew the original tag and its suggested retail price and that I'd paid that whole amount for these - after all, they are green pants.) I fell immediately in love with these, and truthfully, I'm not a great shopper and nothing calls out to me when I'm in stores. I shop hastily, grabbing items that will look hopefully okay on me but who cares really, right? I just want to come across tidy and respectable. But these green pants, the only ones of their kind on the "SALE" rack, seriously spoke full length conversations to me. KB, come on, how many times do you get to wear such a great bright green, and on pants, to boot? Trying them on was like the same experience a car lover has when sliding into the seat of a hot rod - no kidding! So I bought them on a whim. And to date, I've been too nervous to wear the green pants. In part, that might be because my loving boyfriend has said the following with regard to these pants: "Are those sweat pants?" (spoken with disdain at the counter as I purchased them), "Where are you going to wear those? Around the apartment?", and finally, his first uttered simile that at least I've ever memorized for record's sake, "You're going to look like a lime ready to jump into a bottle of Corona!"So, tomorrow, and I can barely wait to climb into bed and dream of green-panted legs dancing, I'm wearing them to Cinci! That's right - KB in the airport in bright striking green pants. Of course, I'm changing into a dress for the wedding.*