Compare and contrast

Duck fat potato pancake vs. walking 4.7 miles. Yes, I am schizo. (But y'all love me anyway, right?)

My friend Sam had a hankering to go back to Spitzer's Corner -- for their short rib burger. Me, I had my eye on the duck fat potato pancake. Mmmm... Luckily, I remembered to record this event of concentrated evil, er, I mean -- yumminess before I inhaled it entirely. As you can see, it is essentially a deep fried potato doughnut, presumably imbued with cholesterol du canard. All I know is that it was damn tasty!

So it being a tardy Sunday brunch (and Sam's other friends being spectacularly late), he and I drank our way through a bellini and a glass of wine (me) and, uh, various beers I don't know b/c I hate beer (him, naturally), before the end of the meal. [hic!] My descent into arterial suicide was completed with Eggs Spitzer, which involved a big ol' dish of scrambled eggs & Italian sausage (and other ingredients I forget and which obviously didn't make an impression). Yes, it was all very appalling healthwise, but oh so worth it.

And since I woke up this morning STILL full from our friend Marci's dinner last night of spinach pasta w/ chicken thighs & veggies (and salad, and garlic knots, and wine...[burp!]) well, I thought I needed to do SOMEthing today before I completely congealed into a lump.

So after work tonight, I ducked into the ladies room for a quick change into gym-type apparel (and a short prayer that I didn't run into the Senior VP on my way out). I had decided to walk up the Hudson River Park to 42nd Street since it was a beautiful, balmy, non-humid day in the 80s.

For those of you who are not familiar with it (or at least never knew its name), HRP is the pedestrian/bike path that runs up the west side of Manhattan along the Hudson River. Large portions of the route are planted with pretty shrubbery etc. to buffer the strolling/rollerblading/running/cycling folks from the lovely (not) West Wide Highway.

The sunset photo here is courtesy of my (probably soon-to-be-replaced) cellphone, which did okay, except for the odd black dot in the middle of the sun. Since the spot showed up in several of the shots, I assume it was just too much for my li'l ol' cameraphone. Still, the leftover pilings make a cool shot, no?

According to Google maps, my little jaunt was 4.7 miles. No wonder my feet hurt. Despite my sore feet, the rest of me did okay. (I think -- ask me again tomorrow) And oddly enough, some musician/legal videographer tried to pick me up on the M42 crosstown bus. I think of this as the equivalent of trying to pick up someone at the gym, where you feel oh so fresh (i.e., is he desperate or nuts?) Since I did not find him at all appealing, I did not give him my number. (Had he been interesting, however...)

Speaking of appealing, Le Engineer and I are going out tomorrow night after my weekly session with my Pearl of Wisdom. (I found out he has a PoW counterpart, which could explain why he seems so well-adjusted... so far.)

I am entirely comfortable with leaving the plans up to him, since (A) his choice of Alta, the tapas place, was yummity, and (B) I dragged him to (what turned out to be) the insanely trippy HK movie w/ Lau Ching Wan this weekend. It did give us lots to talk about afterward though :-) and it was by no means bad, just... extremely mindbending. Plus, since it was from HK and not Hollywood, there was no guarantee that any of the characters would survive, which DOES make the entire proceedings more engrossing. (I'm still vaguely tempted to see the war elephant movie however...)