Houston, We Have A Problem

via
Houston, I believe, is the baby of whatever family it's a member of. I know this because each and every time I step foot off the airplane and into Houston territory, there's a solid wall of thick humidity hitting me with such force like it's jumping up and down and waving frantically, "HI, I'M HERE, DO YOU REMEMBER ME?! HELLO, HI, I MISSED YOU!!"
(As the baby of my family, it's something I'd totally do and so this is simply me relating.)
Houston, or actually the Houstonian suburbs really, is not my favorite place in the world. It's hot, it's humid, there's not much to do 'round these parts.
Except... except... Exfriggincept.
I went into four Gap's in a .0001 mile radius in NYC trying to find these black scalloped shorts, and was told that it would be mission impossible because they now only have "fall stock." Well. SORRY. I went into my hometown Gap for a mere two seconds, and saw - layered ten deep - a stack of the very shorts, and at more than 50% off.
Houston - 1.
My hometown mall also has the only Forever 21 in the world that doesn't overwhelm me, even though it's the size of an overweight mammoth's dwellings. It's probably because I've had the floor plan memorized since the day it opened.
Houston - 2.
The radio presets in the car(s) are just the way I like them: country, country, country, Top 40, country.
Houston - 3.
I am able to wear my outfit of choice (read: those ratty T-shirts that come free with trying at anything) while doing my activity of choice (read: absolutely nothing).
With minimal judgment. 
(Minimal, because my parents' new hobby as of late has been asking me why I haven't showered yet; Minimal, because also they have to love me even when my answer is 'will you let me live my life okay thanku.')
Houston - 4.
Catching up with best friends of middle school yore and slurping up iced coffees as the heat gravity melts the condensation into puddles on the rain-washed tables, and having it not be so different from how it was four years ago, except conversation topics like dress code khakis and Xanga and like-likes have turned into grad schools and leases and relationships.
Houston - 5.
Really good water pressure in the shower, two-ply toilet paper, all the pillows in the world to hoard, not having to swipe my own plastic ever, getting chauffered around, all my favorite foods hot 'n ready when I go downstairs, and all my Harry Potter books in one place.
Houston - 50.
Mom and Dad, and occasionally the sister too, sitting next to me at the dinner table.
Houston - 3,993,048,203,948,039,203,984,092,384,093,824.
And that is why, Houston, we have a problem.

my natural habitat – perhaps I identify with cats a smidge.

4

I'll Be There For You And Brunch And TV Shows // #CCTakesNYC, Part IV

Before we get to anything else, let's start off with a bite to eat and some pretty drinks to sip.

I might have an identity crisis otherwise. You know how I am.

No, but actually - last Sunday, I forced us to roll out of bed, into semi-acceptable clothes, out the door, and straight to a table for brunch. We decided on Cork 'N Fork, which was a few streets down from my apartment and not too busy - essential criteria for the starving.

Where to begin. I loved this place so gosh dang much that I up and registered a Yelp account just so that I could give them five stars. It was the little tapas place that could, y'all.

We started off with drinks. A Bloody Mary for her, and a pretty little sangria for me. Both were delicious. I'm not usually a fan of Bloody Mary's, but this one had quite the kick which I felt made it adequate. My sangria, on the other hand, was more than quite alright in my opinion. But here's the cherry on top: the drinks were complimentary with brunch.

We ordered two plates to share. The first - a Rancheros Scramble. Flavors to the roof, and then some. Loved, loved, loved this - and we absolutely demolished the amazing potatoes on the side. Still can't stop thinking about that plate of wonder.

Our other weapon of choice was the Avenue C Tapas sampler. Included were the stuffed avocado with pico de gallo and a poached egg on top (um, yes), the spanish tortilla you see in the middle, and the end-all-be-all: the spinach croquettas - spinach croquettes and parmesan regiana with aioli.

To quote Cassandra, "I would murder for these croquettes."

I more than highly recommend this place if you ever find yourself in the East Village. I know we'll be going back again at some point.

Happily stuffed, I dragged Cassandra over to The Strand bookstore where we wandered around and pored over books...

and found a good mantra, as well -

Finding ourselves a little exhausted, we made a pit stop at Stumptown Coffee, my favorite little cafe in all of New York City. 

Continued walking...

Under the watchful guard of this little dude:

OK, now the real fun begins.

Both Cassandra and I love television so much that we're both pursuing careers in the entertainment industry. We fangirl like crazy over our favorite celebrifriends (what?), look forward to nothing more than an evening at home marathoning our way through our favorite TV shows, and have made many a friend simply by keeping our TV/computer turned on high volume and our dorm room door open. People tend to trickle in and stay for an episode or two when they hear the familiar notes of their favorite show's theme song playing.

(Ways To Make Friends, Loner Edition)

Anyway, a good number of shows are either filmed in or based on New York City. So we decided to go on a mini, self-led tour of our own with the help of our dear friend Google.

Let's see how many you can guess right. (Scroll to the bottom of the post for answers!)

Ready?

We'll start off easy. 

This is the exterior to which lovely lady's apartment?

How about a little clue?

Next up.

This is the exterior of what famous apartment?

A closer look, you say?

Here!

And, finally, this one's a toughie.

Who supposedly lives in this apartment complex, smack dab in the middle of SoHo?

A little hint for you. (And if you know her at all, that reaction photo is a huge hint for you.)

After visiting our pals, it was time to take a break at Dunkin' Donuts, go home, take a nap, grab some dinner at S'MAC (deeeelish mac and cheese), and then head to bed early in anticipation of her flight home Monday afternoon and my long day of work ahead of me.

Monday morning, I let her experience taking the F-train to work with me, and then we had some chai and my favorite turkey confit sandwiches at Little Collins for lunch before she made her way to Penn Station and away from me.
Once again, thanks for visiting me in the city that never sleeps (and yet somehow, that's half of what we managed to do), my besticle.
--
Quiz Answers:
A) Carrie Bradshaw / Sex And The City. Although this apartment exterior is in Greenwich Village, Carrie's apartment is technically supposed to be on the Upper East Side. $700/mo rent-controlled. Such jokes.
B) The FRIENDS apartment(s)! The actual show was filmed in a studio in LA, but details.
C) Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) from Castle. Although Castle is also filmed in LA. Fun fact - the 12th Precinct in the show is fictional, but they apparently are supposed to cover East Village / Alphabet City, which is where I lived. Cue the shrieks of joy when we found out! Thanks for playing!

10

SmorgasmicseewhatIdidthereburg, A Speakeasy, A Sunset & A Pretty Swell Life // #CCTakesNYC, Part III

Agenda Item #1: Today marks my last day at NBC, and the bittersweetness is coming on a little strong. I'm excited to see my parents and to take naps on a whim and to do nothing for a straight week except reach over to play the next episode of whatever I'm watching. But this summer at NBC has also opened my eyes to so many things going on in the media world that I've been thrilled to be a part of. (And there's also casually walking by Seth Meyers in the elevator bank and nearly literally running into Jimmy Fallon on my way to get lunch.)

Agenda Item #2: Last night, I Skyped one of my best friends from middle and high schools. He's been away on his church mission for the past two years, and it was crazy to see how everything and nothing have changed in this time. 

Agenda Item #3: SMORGASBURG.

On Saturday, Cassandra and I boarded the L train and let it drop us off right by Smorgasburg. For those of you who don't know, Smorgasburg is a food market hosted by the Brooklyn Flea. When it's in season, it's open every Saturday and offers a variety of New York food vendors for you to sample.

I know you can read the sign. Sorry.

Cassandra made a beeline for the corn-on-the cob, her favorite. It was grilled and smeared with butter, lime, cayenne pepper, and cheeeeeese of course. She finished it in like seconds, so I'm assuming she liked it. I, on the other hand, was obsessed with the mango lemonade we got from the same stand.

Basically it was mango juice with lots and lots of mango pulp, and a subtle tinge of tartness from the lemonade.

But we shan't dawdle when more food's involved. Next...

A porchetta sandwich. Really, really, really good. The meat was so flavorful and perfectly cooked. I bow down.

But the best part about Smorgasburg? The views. I mean, look at this!

(I mean, the New York skyline's pretty cool too, right?)

Moving along...

Cassandra decided on a crawfish tostada, which she kindly let me steal bites from. As a crawfish lover from the Gulf of Mexico region, I will say that this is one way I've never seen crawfish be cooked before. But I like it! It's meatier than tilapia, but I don't love shrimp very much, so I think it's the perfect seafood taco for me.

The sliders stall caught my eye, and so I went and got myself a meatball slider. Yum!

Finally, we polished off our palates with a maple doughnut and a maple lemonade, and said a mental 'thank you for letting me love you' to Smorgasburg.

We spied a bridge far off into the distance, and made our way over to it, thinking it was the Brooklyn Bridge, neither of us really processing that it looked nothing like the ol' BB and we were geographically nowhere close to it at all.

But we were in Brooklyn, and here was a Bridge, so it's gotta be, right?

Not right.

But we were too lazy to make the trek allllllllll the way over to the other side of town, so we decided to walk the Williamsburg Bridge instead.

A little grungy, a little edgy, a little artsy, the Williamsburg Bridge was definitely a fun walk. My only qualm was that the fencing went all the way up, so even though there were spectacular views of the entire skyline from the Freedom Tower to the Empire State Building, it wasn't actually documentable.

And also, it was quite a walk. We had to walk half the bridge before even getting on the bridge, and so by the end of that whole adventure, I was hoping that this actually in fact worked:

Harrryyyyy, is that you?!

Needless to say, I think the teleportation workers were on strike that day, because try as I might... we could only rely on our own two legs to get us home. And a little bit of a fuel from a White Russian cupcake, but whatever.

After making a pit stop to get boba and almost falling asleep on the bench, we went home and climbed up to the roof to get some fresh air and Jeni's salted caramel ice cream.

Oh, these self timer pictures. Totally natural!

Totally.

Not. Staged. At. All.

----unpictured: a napful interlude----

At 3pm, we had used both of our phones to call in and make reservations at Please Don't Tell because the phone line was so busy. Please Don't Tell - the worst kept secret of the speakeasy scene. And thank goodness we made those reservations because when we arrived, the wait was more than two hours.

Slightly gimmicky place, but a lot of fun.

It's hidden inside a hot dog joint (more on that later). You go into the phone booth, pick up the phone, dial 1, and wait for them to tell you what to do (HELLOOOO, IS THIS THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC?).

A few sips of a very expensive drink, and a great chat with a lovely couple sitting next to us from my hometown in North Carolina later...

To the hot dog joint - Crif Dogs - next door!

Happiness is a sausage wrapped in bacon surrounded with sour cream and avocados.

I should hate myself for loving every single bite of this, but actually... I'm pretty proud. Such a good hot dog. But Cassandra said she wanted pizza...

And I'm glad she did, because my Hawaiian pizza was bomb.

And then I said, "want an Insomnia cookie?" Of course, she replied! So we went and shared a soft, doughy snickerdoodle - my favorite.

At this point, it was like, there's so much shame involved already, why don't we just go with it and turn it up one more notch? 

What's wonderful about best friends is that when talk turns to dreams, it's really no holds barred. The kind of person you want to fall in love with, the career you'd ultimately like to have, the places around the world you'd give anything to see. And Cassandra and I have had many a conversation about all of this, so when she said, "hey, want to know another one of my dreams" - I knew it'd be a good one.

"I've always wanted Chinese takeout in NYC."

Girlfriend never lets me down.

So then we ate subpar grease and sodium (my mom is going to kill me for eating not-top-notch Chinese food) while watching Enchanted, and you know... in our own way, we did live happily ever after. At least, so far.

8