I have a beautiful girlfriend

My Girlfriend was here this weekend, and it was fucken glorious. I was so excited to see her that I hardly slept Thursday night. When I came home after class Friday morning, she was in my apartment, passed out in my bed after her redeye through Las Vegas. We had a fun girl afternoon of trying to decide what to wear, which was difficult because we were going from an architecture party to that hip-hop/dub show that I got free tickets to. Friday night was a typical alcoholic haze that started off with margaritas and free tequila (actually I think it was Tequiza) shots at Mama Mexico. The architecture party found us cruising with plastic cups of Budweiser and Oreos. Hmm. We had a great dinner at Cafe Habana in Nolita, which was exciting because I have heard about the corn on the cob there FOREVER and it did not disappoint. Decent margaritas there, too. Then we headed over to Motor City, this rockabilly bar with a sweet pinball machine.

We headed over to a friend's house to drink champagne on the roof and ended up getting stuck. Yes, stuck. On the roof. The door somehow shut behind us, and we had no way off the roof. Beauty was able to locate a friend at a nearby bar, Odessa, who came to rescue us. We threw him a set of keys and he heroically climbed up to the sixth floor on a bum ankle to save us from our stupidity. Or, rather, potential stupidity. I was volunteering to hang off the ledge and drop onto the fire escape. Ah, liquid courage.

Of course we had to escort our hero back to Odessa to buy him drinks and eat french toast at the diner next door. Around 4 I dragged my poor tired Girlfriend into a cab. Alas our adventures were not yet over, as we got stuck in stop-dead traffic on FDR and, after smoking a cigarette in the back and watching people get out of the cars to chill, I woke up Girlfriend and we ran inland to get an illegal cab back to Washington Heights. Never did make it to that show.

Saturday we went to the show at Randall's Island. We ended up walking across the Triborough Bridge to get there, which was cool. We found a joint on the way in, I got my free tickets to the show, and we spent the next six hours each occupying roughly one square foot of space and enjoying Les Savy Fav, Blonde Redhead, LCD Soundsystem, and Arcade Fire.
Each set was awesome. There were so many cute boys there that I became convinced that the whole concert was some sort of Hipster Vengeance plan to exterminate all twenty-something PBR consumers in greater New York. Why else would they have the concert on an island? And why were all those helicopters hanging out overhead? Very mysterious.

We showed up at Muffin and Keeten's place for dinner at midnight, exhausted and starving.

Yesterday we bummed around Williamsburg and championed another long day of drinking. After an awesome brunch at Juliette, a bright, laid-back little bistro, we went over to Rock Star bar where there was some kind of birthday party happening, and I got a huge $5 shot of Maker's Mark in a plastic cup. Did I mention you can smoke there? Awesome.

From there we went to another smoker-friendly bar, the Cyn Lounge at Bedford and 5th. It was fine but we were restless and hungry, so we found our way into the Charleston at Bedford and 7th. This place rules. You get an 8" cheese pizza with every $4 drink, so we ate about 7 pizzas between the five of us, and the bartender didn't give us a hard time for being drunk and hungry. The jukebox was full of Talking Heads, Joy Division, the Make Up, Donovan, everything. Highly recommended.

One more bar...Union Pool, also in Williamsburg, has a spacious outdoor patio, and a functional black-and-white photo booth, where Girlfriend and I took some of our only photos together.

I really, really love my Girlfriend, and I was glad I was only half-awake this morning when she left for her 8:30 flight out of JFK. The last time I said good-bye to her in August was so painful, I guess mostly because I didn't know when I'd see her again. I feel better about things now, because I worried that, like some of my past roommates, we would fall out of touch despite promises to the contrary. Having her fly all the way across the country to drunkenly bumble around the city with yours truly meant so, so much to me. And she didn't falter from her recent smoking quit, which was pretty incredible.

The best part about her visit is that I don't feel miserable like I thought I would. I feel happy and lucky to have such a beautiful girlfriend, even if she is 3,000 miles away.