December 7-8, 2012

This blog is getting to be a monthly post...hmmm.  Guess I must be really busy or too tired; the correct answer is usually the second choice.

Anyway, I began December by traveling to New York City to have dinner with Swanna, Sarah, and, from LA, Amanda!  An annual pilgrimage to New York, this particular trip is to remember the anniversary of the terrible accident that took Sam and Rhiannon's lives.  And what better way to remember it than to reminisce with his friends from the tracking group where he and Rhi met (I feel as if I know her well enough now to use her nickname).

The two days I was there were kind of yucky weatherwise - misty, but enough that I had to use an umbrella or have flattened hair.  After checking in to the Affinia Shelburne (a really nice hotel), I walked to Macy's, thinking that shopping on a Friday rather than a Saturday in December would find less crowds. Wrong!  However, the crowds are much less on the 7th floor and also in the Eileen Fisher section, where I found two lovely sweaters to take home - yay!  I also had lunch that day at Artisanal, where I had a delicious croque monsieur as I watched the soggy people enter the restaurant.  I also bought some prettily wrapped chocolates at Li-Lac Chocolates in Grand Central Station Market to take to dinner.  I do love being close to Grand Central Station! 

After a brief respite, it was off to Colicchio and Sons Taproom: Amanda knew the manager and so preferential treatment was part of the deal!!  Amanda and Sarah were already at the bar as I walked in.  When I ordered a beer ("I like Belgian style, sweet, higher alcohol content"), they both remarked on how specific I was, and so I became the beer expert for the evening!  When Swanna arrived, we were seated and began a lovely time with good food, good beer and good friends.  What we talked about I can't really remember, but these dinners are NEVER depressing - we share our good times and good thoughts about our Sam and his Rhiannon.  We were all excited to hear about Swanna and Christian's new house in the Catskills - what a lovely place they have.  Amanda's friend came over and chatted with us for a while, and we shared lots of food and drink.  It was decided that we should all try some flights of beer, so we chose a holiday sampler and some lighter wheat-type beers.  The service was so good that we kept having to tell them to let us keep our small beer glasses and not take them - we each had an empty glass and poured 1/4 of each of the flight beers into each glass.  And then we shared multiple appetizers and entrees - awesome!  The girls are such good friends with each other after 5 years - so wonderful.

Swanna and Sarah

All of the girls!

 After the beer tasting, the girls said that I should start a beer blog -  wow!  Guess I sounded pretty knowledgeable, but then again the place WAS serving a lot of Pennsylvania beers, and I had tasted most of them and knew the places of origin.

 We decided to try one dessert, but of course Amanda's friend wouldn't hear of that, so we had numerous desserts to try - all delicious. And we got muffins to take home.  I shared a cab back with Amanda after a truly wonderful evening worthy of Sam and Rhiannon's memory.