Best Weekend Wrap-Up

It's Sunday night, the weekend is drawing to a close. But a few things happened this weekend and some photos were taken so, hey, I'm going to share them with you.

First and foremost, Big News: My buddy Bryant and his wife Candice (also a buddy) came and visited New York this weekend. We had dinner at Galanga and reminisced about those three years of Law School we shared. It was really great, seeing Bryant, talking about stuff, I wish the Smiths had never left me.


At dinner I gave Bryant a present. The present was I returned his Elder Maxwell book that I borrowed two years ago.


The Smiths came over for a minute to check out my roof, and then they were gone.


By the way, here's their blog.

Friday night Collin and I went to Jeff's house in Brooklyn and watched Disney nature movies from the 50's or 60's all night. Might not have been in high definition, but these little masterpieces could go head to head with Planet Earth any day. There, I said it!

Saturday I quadruple booked my obligations to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. First off, that night was to be the Union Square 3rd Ward's Fall Social. They needed people to make chili for dinner so I decided it would help me to grow and mature if I cooked one of the pots of chili, so I signed up to provide and then emailed my mom for a chili recipe. Mom sent me am extremely self-assured narrative recipe for a chili that she promised me would do the job...so I spent the morning shopping for my ingredients (I went to a proper butcher to get myself some freshly ground pounds of pork and beef and the experience was so satisfying [I just love working with people that know what they're doing] that I think I'm going to start buying a lot more meat and all of it from a real butcher, nothing wrapped in plastic anymore) and cooking it up. I've never cooked anything for 4 hours before. This is what the chili looked like during the first hour.



But in the afternoon I had to take a break from the chili warming because I had signed up to be a fake-investigator for the Stake's Youth Mini-MTC Day in Harlem. It was a fun experience, seeing all those youngsters dressed up with their missionary tags and such, prodding each other to do all the talking, assembling as best they could their doctrinal knowledge, and, when at a loss for knowledge, making up some pretty good stuff (for example, did you know that now that we have the Golden Plates, we're trying to find the Bronze and Silver plates as well?)

While wandering about the Harlem building I discovered where the stake has been keeping the Joseph Smith statue that used to be downtown by the river. It's just in a corner of the parking garage, minding its own business.


While the young missionaries did a pretty good job, this other Church on Lenox Ave seemed to have a pretty solid foundation itself.


Back at the house and a few more hours of simmering later, the chili was ready for its first tasting. Collin accepted this task with a great sense of duty and responsibility. Observe...



And then it was off to the ward party. Shortly after I got there this pot of chili set off the fire alarm. But we never figured out exactly why. We could see through the pot's glass lid that it was full of smoke, but when Sarah and Mike and I took it to the patio to investigate, everything looked fine in the pot. Sure, it smelled a bit like a campfire, but nothing was burnt or anything. Mysterious.


The party started at 7 and if you got there later than 7:30 you probably did not have any chili because it all got gobbled right up.


I almost forgot to try my own chili. I must admit, Mom's recipe was a good one. I'm not necessarily a cook, but I'm good at doing exactly what a recipe tells me to do.


Dave's Guitar Hero was at the party and we made it look so fun that Bishop Cropper and his wife (Julie) tried it out. This was thrilling to us ward members, you know, to have our authority figure playing trying out our favorite game, but it's not like our bishop is some cranky old man.


Also noteworthy: Jules played her first Guitar Hero songs that night, too. And she took right to it.


But the major activity for the Fall party was the pumpkin carving.


Ace went to work and started carving up pumpkins like it was his job. He completed two rather creative pumpkins. The first was fanciful...


The second, a little gruesome. Just a little. (but points for imagination, no doubt about that)


Others:




Kim's work. She's got her own little pumpkin tool kit, she doesn't kid around with this stuff.



And that was the weekend. Or at least some of it.