{Thankful November} 12: Days Off

November 15th, 2011 | Rachel

Join me in the comments or on your own blog as I give thanks every day this month.

Weekends never feel like weekends anymore because I am usually scheduled to work.  My “weekend” occurs sometime in the middle of the week and may or may not involve two consecutive days off.  This week I was fortunate to have Sunday and Monday off, although all of Sunday was spent moving (see previous post).  That left Monday for relaxing before heading into what is sure to be a crazy week-before-Thanksgiving at the bakery.

As fortune would have it, Steve came back from the ship last night, so we were able to enjoy a much needed day off together.

We started with brunch at one of our favorite restaurants in the neighborhood, Community, where we sat outside because it was a beautiful 68 degree day (very strange considering we had snow two weeks ago, but I’m not complaining).  Without any plan for the day, we elected to walk south through the Upper West Side, occasionally stopping to run errands like dropping off something at the post office, returning my cable modem to Time Warner Cable, exchanging a pair of gloves that had a torn seam, and picking up some new sunglasses at Urban Outfitter.

After stopping by a juice bar to hydrate ourselves, we spent a couple of hours at the Apple store, which is across the street from a movie theater.  We thought it’d be fun to see a movie, but didn’t agree on anything that was showing (he wanted to see A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, while I wanted to see Puss In Boots).  We weren’t far from the American Museum of Natural History, and I had heard it had a cool planetarium, so I looked up what was showing there.  As it turns out, they were hosting a lecture on astrophysics — which is one of Steve’s favorite subjects — entitled “The New Universe and The Human Future with Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams.”  Looking back it makes sense that we ended up going to a lecture over a movie because the only thing Steve and I can agree to watch on Netflix are documentaries.

We still had a couple of hours to kill, so we continued our walk southward and ended up at Columbus Circle.  One of our friends had just gotten a job as a bartender at one of the restaurants there, so we decided to stop by and say hello (after browsing the cool kitchen gadgets at William-Sonoma, of course).  Turns out it was happy hour, so we drank a couple of half-priced fancy cocktails and had a cheese sampler while catching up with our friend.

The weather was still perfect when we left, so we walked up Central Park West to the museum, which was also hosting a fancy black tie reception.  We contemplated going home and changing into fancy clothes so we could crash the party but ended up just going to the lecture.  The speakers were a husband and wife duo out of Santa Cruz, California, and they spoke about the world in the context of the universe and used a lot of cool multimedia visualizations.  Steve ended up buying one of their books and having them autograph it.

The last stop of the night was all the way down in the East Village at Momofuku Noodle Bar.  We weren’t that hungry but still stuffed ourselves with steamed buns filled with beef brisket and huge bowls of ramen with pork belly.  Afterward, we walked over to Union Square to give all of that food some time to settle and then took the subway home.

It was my favorite kind of day off.  It started with only a few plans and open minds to whatever came our way and ended up being one of my favorite days with Steve in the city.  I now feel refreshed and ready for another day at the bakery.

Thank you, days off.

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