9.26.09

Today was almost too awesome to convey, but I'll try.

To begin, the weather is GORGEOUS right now. The leaves are changing a bit, the air is slightly chilly (light cardigan and jeans weather) and the sun is shining. I love fall.

We started the day with breakfast at Alice's Tea Cup on the Upper West Side. While there, I got to eavesdrop on some girls who went to Elon, drink a pot of autumnal darjeeling tea, and eat half of a pumpkin scone and half of a gingerbread apple scone. Awesome.

We left Alice's and walked up Columbus Avenue to the post office so that I could mail my Fall Food Swap package to my partner, Becky. Who should we run into but Jack McBrayer (Kenneth Parcell on 30 Rock). AWESOME. Someone else had us to take his picture with Jack, so I did that and then Jack held the door for us all to go into the post office.

I basically got way too excited over that encounter and he was so chill and unassuming that I didn't even tell him how funny I think he is or how excited we are for the new season. Oh well. Happy Saturday, Jack!

We left the post office and walked across Central Park to The Met. We walked along the route for the New York Road Runners Mile Championship race and that was really cool. We got to see the Seniors division compete and we watched the Women's 20somethings warm up. Those girls were FAST!

We spent a couple hours at The Met (we're members, so we can go whenever) and notably saw a bunch of Roman and Greek ruins and, Nathan's favorite of the day, a pistol cleaver. No, really. We have a picture.

Left The Met, walked back down Central Park for 20ish blocks and hopped on the train to go to SoHo. We were walking to the Gizmodo Gallery to see an installation on digital design. While walking, we passed an independent bookstore that advertised John Krasinski would be holding a reading and discussion session that evening. Whaaaat???

So we hopped over to Gizmodo since it only happens once a year and spent an hour exploring REALLY cool digital design. Check out the site - we saw the mud computer, 3-D Etch-a-Sketch, pancake machine and singing Tesla coils. Nathan played Beatles Rock Band with a bunch of little kids and this awesome moment of community developed when everyone in the room starting singing All You Need Is Love.

So after an hour of that we headed back to the bookstore and were the last people to get seats to hear John. He did several readings from "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and then had a Q&A session where, thankfully, everyone asked him about that project and not The Office. He seemed really, really cool and was super chill and funny.

We left there and headed to the West Village for some amazing noodles and then wandered around the Village for a while before settling in at a Starbucks (I promise we tried a few independent places first that were all super crowded) where we laughed and told stories about people in high school and read comedic writing out loud to each other.

We then hopped on a train and listened to a "This American Life" podcast on the way home.

Perfect day? Yes.