Asti's New York Holiday

Asti arrived in NYC on wednesday afternoon. I had a somewhat hectic day cleaning house before she arrived. But, even with a slightly delayed flight, her cab picked her up and she was soon here. It was great to see her again. She is gloriously attractive, as always and witty as ever. Since she was tired and starving, we grabbed a cab to my favorite Chinese/Sushi restaurant on Broadway and 101 street.I phoned Andrew before we left the house so he could meet us at the restaurant. Perfection! The food was drop dead wonderful.

We had delicate gyoza and 3 kinds of sushi for starters. Then we had crispy beef with orange flavor, sublime general tso's chicken, and beef chow fon for our mains. I should have taken a photo of the platters. They are huge slightly off round plates with vegetable flowers decorating some of the absolutely best chinese food I've ever eaten. Their general tso's chicken is truly sublime. And this is the ONLY place I ever eat chow fon, they make it so well. Usually I can only barely contrain my shudders even looking a chow fon. They also make the crispy beef with orange flavor correctly here! It's tender, juicy, rare slices of steak with a crispy sweet/hot coating. Oh man, this was such a perfect meal - and the company and conversation were as excellent.

After the meal we stood outside under the awning for a smoke break. Andrew and I were mourning that in a civilized city we could smoke in restaurants and linger over after dinner coffee but not in NYC any more. I said it was a pity there were no cafes with outdoor seating (and an awning to protect from the rain) where we could go for coffee and dessert and a smoke and just sit and chat because this evening was just so nice, much too nice to end it now. And praise be, Andrew said...let's go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop! So we grabbed a cab and were soon up at 113th ST and Amsterdam. In a giddy fit of indulgence Asti & I had double espressos and Andrew had a hungarian coffee (mountain of whipped cream on top). They also picked out about 6 dessert and we settled into a comfy little outside table with our goodies. We must have spent 3 hours sitting there in the cool moist night, sipping coffee, smoking, and talking. It was past midnight when we finished and waved down a cab back to my house. I loaded Andrew with a few packs of cigarettes since I refuse to support NY State's tobacco extrotion tax and after a bit more chat, we called a cab to take him home. Then Asti and I unwound a bit and finally got to bed.

What a terrific evening.

Thursday was a bit of a nightmare. Asti successfully dropped off her laundry, found a nail/wax/massage place and had some well deserved pampering, and made it back in time for us to have a late (1pm) breakfast of vegetable and chedder omelets. Then she phoned her hotel to verify check in time and address. And that's when the nightmare started. The company admin had neglected to make a room reservation. And of course, for reasons no one seems to know, there are NO decent hotel rooms available in NYC this weekend for under $500/night. Most places in fact are totally sold out. It was a genuine comedy of errors. I finally located a room for her at a rather posh east side Omni hotel but it was almost double the price she wanted. Her boss came through and said the company would cover it- afetr Asti waged suitable psychological warefare. So late Thursday evening she cabbed over to the hotel, checked in, and surrendered to luxury and room service for the night.

I slept very late this morning. I'm suddenly terribly anemic again and weak. So Asti's call at 11:20am woke me up. We arranged to meet about 1pm for lunch - so I had time to run out and retrieve our clean laundry. I dropped mine off a thew house and zoomed down to the hotel. We did the Carnegie Deli fora classic NYC lunch, pastrami on rye and Dr Brown's diet celery soda. What a hoot that place is. Then a stroll over to Lindy's for coffee and cheesecake (1 slice shared) in their lovely little outdoor area. Lot sof great people watching ops. Finally Asti wandered off to get cheap discount tickets to a Broadway place and I took the subway back uptown to my neighborhood and walked back to the house.

Firefox

I updated to Firefox 1.0 (preview release) ie They really, really, really wanted to release 1.0 FINALLY! but....they weren't confident enough to stand behind their work so they hedged their bets and called it "1.0 preview release" so if it's really fucked up or everyone hates it they can claim it's not really the REAL 1.0, it's the preview.

Umm, funny but we used to call that beta and stick with a 9.something release number. When we go to v1.whatever it's because we've drawn the line, taken a deep breath, and presented the item as The Real Thing. Of course we'll issue further releases as we correct bugs, add new features, etc.

So what's with the weasily 1.0 preview release nonsense.

Anyway I downloaded and installed it. Frankly Firefox is crap without the extensions. Loads of potential that's NON-FUNCTIONAL without the extentions tha put all that potential to actual use.
We'll see how it goes. If they don't open up a load of utility extensions real soon I will just go back to SlimBrowser.