In my last week in New York I did...

Some stuff!

First, as y'all know, I got to spend some quality time with this cute cat. 

Then, on the 4th, we took the 7 train all the way to the end and got to eat delicious "Nouveau Chinese" (I read the term in a magazine) food. Spicy! And cheap!

We wandered around a food court after, and found this DELICIOUS Shanghai-style dessert place. Those are palm fruit (?), basil seeds, mango, bananas, and lychee nuts.

And we went visited Louis Armstrong's house in Queens! Which is open on the 4th because he told everyone that was his birthday (he didn't know when it actually was).

For our last patriotic event, we went to the Socrates Statue Park in Long Island City and watched the newscast of the fireworks on the Hudson projected onto a screen, with music over it. Yeah, it wasn't that great. But avoiding the crowds was nice.

On Saturday the 7th, we went to Fire Island for the second (and final) for me, and played frisbee in the 90+ degree weather.

Finally, on my last full day in NYC, we got ginormous shakes in Park Slope.

And now I am at the JetBlue terminal in JFK, waiting to board my flight. There was, of course, a very tearful goodbye with Ari a few hours ago. But with any luck, I'll be seeing him in Indonesia in like, 5 months. That's not so long, right??

I (don't) like to move it

This past Saturday, Ari and I had to move out of our apartment in Brooklyn. This was not something either of us actually really wanted to do; it just happened because I'm moving to Indonesia to teach English at the end of August (and I'm moving back to California next week), and Ari can't afford to pay rent on the place himself (and it's a one bedroom, so the whole finding-another-roommate idea is out).

Packed up the night before moving.

In additional to leaving our really nice apartment, Ari had the bad luck to lose an apartment he thought he'd secured, and was unable to find another place in time. So everything we have has been moved into storage.

Our beautiful storage space. Everything we own in one tiny room!

Ari stands for scale.

Sorry, this has turned into a rather whiny post. I just wanted to document what we've been going through over the past week or two.

The great thing is, July is the time when everyone goes out of town for vacation! So right now we are cat-sitting an adorable cat named Bug at my friend Nick's place, and after that, we've got another friend out of town for four days. It's not ideal, but we'll take it!

Yes, she looks a little evil in this picture. But she is a sweetheart, I assure you (except when she starts licking your face in the middle of the night with her sandpaper tongue...).