Crazy Weekend

THE tree
Originally uploaded by SarahorNicholas.

Nicholas and I had a pretty amazing weekend - filled with one extreme to the next.

Friday night was his law firm's holiday party. Nothing too extreme about it actually, pretty much the same thing as the last two years. It was held at the Mandarin Oriental, which is really fantastic. There was a cocktail hour, followed by a dinner buffet. I had like four courses between the seafood bar, the soup, salad and sushi, and the main course. Then, everyone mingles back out into the main forrer for dessert. This year was a little more festive because all the desserts had a holiday theme - eggnog creme brulee, sugar cookies, etc. After dessert, we did a little dancing but the big draw is karoke. I did my standard, "Something to Talk About," to lots of praise. Of course, it wasn't hard to wow the crowd since the guy before me sang "O Come All Ye Faithful." Needless to say, this guys did NOT know his crowd. We went home a smidge earlier then we usually do because we had a very early morning the next day.

On Saturday, we woke up at 4:30am and took the train to New York for a little holiday shopping. Unfortunately, our train was about an hour late but we still arrived at 9:45. We had a quick breakfast by Penn Station and then took a cab down to Fifth Avenue. We started at Henri Bendel, which was crazy fabulous withthe price tag to match. It was probably reflective that the first purchase of the day was for me. ;) We then made our way up Fifth to see the windows and do a little shopping in Saks. The highlight was the hot chocolate we had on the sixth floor at Charbonel et Walker - delicious!

Of course, the big event was across the street at Rockafeller Center. The tree was really gorgeous but the people were the realy sight. Apparently there was a three hour wait to ice skate! We walked back up Avenue of the Americas to FAO Schwarz, which had a line down the block to get in. Luckily, it was really really fast and we made our way in within three minutes. It was such a scene inside but definitely fun. Kids playing the huge piano from BIG and stuffed animals as far as the eye could see. What made it even more fun was we have a niece and nephews to buy for this year - even if they are a bit small. ;)

After FAO, we took at cab to Soho for the Pearl River Market. Basically, its anything you can think of and then some. We got lots of awesome stocking stuffers. We then did some shopping at the Holiday Market at Union Square. Again, crazy crowded but we made a final dent in our list there. We took a small break for Mud Coffee (highly recommended by Rachel Ray) and relaxed while enjoying the view of the Empire State Building.

We met my friend Lindsey and her boyfriend for dinner at Elmo. Lindsey is a writer and is utterly fabulous - particularly because she featured me in her new book! We had a really great meal filled with even better conversation. By 9:15, we were back on the train home! It was quite a whirlwind but worth every second. I've always wanted to New York at the holidays so it was definitely a dream come true.

The extreme Saturday filled to the max with activity was followed by an extreme Sunday filled with absolutely freaking nothing (or as the Sweet Potato Queen's say "doing jackshit"). I didn't get out of bed till around 10:30 and didn't get out of my pajamas all day! I know what you're thinking "Sarah, staying in your pajamas all day is extreme!" (Well, you're thinking that unless you're my mother who has made the all-day-pajama-binge an art form - I learned from the best!) But the sad part is that is not the extremeness I'm referencing.

Here goes nothing...

Yesterday, Nicholas and I watched twelve hours of Battlestar Galactica...not counting the ten webisdoes online. That's right.

TWELVE HOURS

And I'm not ashamed either because that show is freaking amazing! I kept hearing all about how great it was, how smart it was, how it was the BEEEESSTTT. So finally i was like FINE I'll watch! So I put Season 1 on the Netflick list thinking I'd try it out. That was two weeks ago and we're already four shows away form being caught up with season 3! (Of course I sucked NIcholas in along the way - we only have one TV after all).

And really everything they say about that show is true. I mean I don't even like sci-fi that much (except Harry Potter and comic book movies and Lord of the Rings and...ok I'm stopping now) but this show is more political then anything else. It is very much post-9/11 and really asks important questions. How far are we willing to go to be safe? Or to get information from terrorists? Recently, they had a whole storyline about insurgency and occupations. Oh and they have their own version of the f-word! "Fracking toasters!" I mean it is truly amazing. Needless to say, I highly recommend it. Just set LOTS of time away if you start ;)