Mixin’ it under the Moonlight

It’s been a little over a week for us in the city and, all in all, things have progressed pretty nicely.  The apartment is set up, we’ve (somewhat) found our bearings, and we were able to accomplish some small victories during the course of the first week (see: Trader Joe’s, Frank the Painter, etc.)  We can’t say that things feel totally normal yet - but reality is starting to sink in a bit that this is not a huge road trip and is actually our life.

Not surprisingly, the biggest obstacle still remaining is for us to find a group of really solid friends.  It’s something we were able to do both in college and in Durham, and we’re hopeful that strong relationships are right around the corner in NYC.  We’ve been able to connect with a few familiar faces during the first week but can’t wait to many new people in the months ahead.

(As an aside, the past week has been pretty awesome for Tracy and me to have tons of quality time together - and there’s been plenty of QT to go around!  It seemed that often in NC we were caught in the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day grind with both of us going 100mph.  Surely this time will come in NYC, but we’re enjoying the slower pace too!)

We’ve felt a little like this before - during the first few days at UNC before we met the many folks who became our best friends.  I can distinctly remember my first week on campus, sitting at my desk in Teague Dorm playing Tiger Woods golf on my PC while my roommate, Furnas, was on Instant Messenger until his fingertips bled.   For hours we sat in the same room in silence (save for the IM sound effects and “Tiger SHOT”).  At some point, probably when we got hungry, we decided to leave our cocoon and head out to the real world.  The rest, as they say, is history - before long we had more friends than we knew what to do with, and the next 4 years flew by.

Flash forward to today and the idle timewasting tools have changed (Facebook and the Olympics are the current culprits), but the feeling is somewhat the same.  That’s why we were very excited, and to be honest a little bit anxious, to get an invite to a rooftop party last night on the Upper West Side.  We were invited to the shindig by Ricky, a friend of our mutual friends David and Erin, who just moved back to NC from Manhattan (and bought our 2004 Accord!)

The evening was a ton of fun.  We mixed and mingled while eating burgers and other cookout goodies on the 5th floor rooftop overlooking the city.  It turns out the vast majority of the other guests had some connection to the South - I think we had half the ACC covered for alma maters.  It wasn’t long before we were able to make connections with our new friends via the name game (“no way, you know Tyler Ray!”)  Before we knew it, the clock was striking midnight and we began to head home - not in Cinderella’s carriage but the cross-town bus - which actually isn’t too shabby.  We capped off the evening by grabbing a late night slice of pepperoni right across from our apartment at the Hot ‘N Crusty, which doesn’t boast the most appetizing name but actually is quite tasty.  All in all, it was a fantastic Saturday night, and a great start to what we hope will be many new friendships in the city.

(Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pics at the rooftop party.  The above is a Picascco from the Museum of Modern Art - we went late Friday afternoon.  We’re not the biggest fans of modern art, but thought we’d take advantage of the free Target Friday night promotion which is available during the summer months.  Perhaps one of the more enlightened blog readers can explain the majesty of works such as the above, which was actually one of the best we saw during our trip.  The MoMA isn’t going to get our highest recommendation, but at least we can say we’ve done it!)