my weekend ...

... lovely chilly but clear sunny days. Saturday I did indeed hit Woodbury Common. Not my most impressive number of bags to date, but I did treat myself to the super-duper new Bose noise reduction headphones at exorbitant cost. I deserve them (I think!). The usual suspects were on the bus with me on the way in and out - disgruntled UK tourists, Japanese visitors looking hopefully for someone with a yellow hat or big flag to direct them around, plus some Eastern Europeans just to spice things up a bit. I was back in town by about 3pm. Then spent some time on the phone catching up with friends, before heading out to meet up with other friends for dinner. We had some drinks first at the Flatiron Lounge on w19th, waiting for our table to be ready at Boqueria a couple of doors down. Boqueria is a fairly new tapas restaurant. It was OK, but not fantastic. The paella was very salty, and most of the tapas very small servings for the price. But the patatas bravas was some of the best I have ever had. Dessert was a let down - there are 6 options, 4 of which revolve around different combinations of either custard or icecream (ie stuff that freezes or keeps in the fridge). The only two menu options which would be freshly prepared (ie the doughnuts with chocolate sauce or the cakey style one), they were out of - at 11pm on a Saturday! Very unimpressive I thought. But a few glasses/bottles of Spanish red made it all worthwhile. Back out for a few drinks afterwards and then I happily wandered home in the wee hours.
Sunday I watched some of the marathon, and was treated to some classics of American commentary. At one point one of the commentators was going through the women's names in the elite pack of runners, and came up with the following gem: "Hlladya, Petrucopska, Delos Santos... where are the Smiths and Jones's??". There was an awkward silence before his fellow commentator piped up: "um, its an international race and those are international names". Cringeworthy really. There was lots of focus on Deena someone (the US woman in the elite bunch) for about the first half of the race. When she dropped off the back of the pack and ended up finishing 6th, there was not a lot of coverage until the end when they cornered her and instead of congratulating her and saying well run, the questions were more along the lines of "so where did it all go wrong today?". Funny stuff. Then there was Lance-cam. Not only did Lance Armstrong have to run the whole race with a TV camera next to him recording every grunt and drop of sweat, but they also constantly compared his rate per mile to that of the male winner! He had said he wanted to finish within an hour of the winning runner, so at least he achieved that if nothing else. Otherwise you could imagine the questions at the end "So Lance, where did it all go wrong?". No mention of course of the achievement of finishing his first ever marathon with a camera shoved in his face.
So I spent more time in the gym watching the marathon on the TVs, which was amusing in that for the first time all four treadmills were full all morning, with people running, watching other people on TV running. I couldn't work out if they just had not got a start for the marathon, or whether it is like when Wimbledon is on in the UK, and suddenly you cannot hire a tennis court for love or money with all the people suddenly playing! Then I went and spent more money at Virgin music - their net value will have to increase with the amount I spend there. Quiet evening after that getting ready for work again today, and starting to get my apartment sorted out ready to move shortly!