It's a beautiful day...

The parental units visited last night through this afternoon. Lots of impromptu fun starting with breakfast at Spring Street Natural Market with my cousin, then a romp from Soho up Broadway to Union Square stopping on the way in Grace Episcopal Church to hear Bach meditations on the organ. Apparently, it's every weekday from noon to 1pm. Pretty cool. Then, we shot back over to Brooklyn because my cousin hadn't seen my place yet, my mother wanted Brooklyn style pizza and I wanted to show them my view from Sunset Park. The pizza, by the way, was excellent. A little joint facing Sunset Park called Pizza by the Park Pizzeria. I'll be going back, plus, they deliver. Sweet.

This afternoon, after cleaning up a little, I went into the city to meet Karishma back at Union Square where we sat for a bit in the grass, just thinking about how great it's going to be living in the city now that it's warm out (I'm thinking Botanical Gardens and Bronx Zoo next week already). Then we strolled down to Astor Place looking for a bite to eat at this Japanese place (it was that or dim sum at a place on 14th street but Karishma won paper rock scissors). Unfortunately, it was too crowded so we agreed to wander back in the direction of the dim sum place and see if we didn't find anything cheap on the way. Eventually winding up back at the dim sum place we opted to try it out and I'm glad we did. Karishma had been before once and had said it was cheap and good. She wasn't kidding. $1.99 for 5 fried pork and cabbage dumplings, Miso for $1.99 and a sesame pancake sandwich with roast pork for only $2.99, bringing my total to $7 and some change for a pretty substantial meal.

After the meal, I expressed a desire to go to a dive bar and, on a whim once I spotted the L train stop we decided to hop under the East River to Williamsburg to hit up a place that Karishma knew. Not quite College Hill (Greensboro, NC) but it was a pretty okay vibe for a while. The louder the music got, the more I wanted to leave so, when we finished our beers, we hit the pavement again and wandered until we wound up back at this little French bakery called Fabiane's and sat for a while eating a pretty awesome chocolate cake and pondering different techniques for making eyes at people without being obvious.

I'm really finding that I actually kind of love this city. From the architecture in Soho and up and down Broadway to the hoards of people all out doing the same thing on a day like today (that being enjoying the weather) to the fact that I can just wander into a church and hear random organ music in the same day that I eat really good cheap dim sum and take a train under the east river for some good old fashioned dive bar fun. It sort of keeps things interesting. Even if I do have to live in Sunset Park for at least a year, half an hour away from work and on a block with some of the dumbest #@$%#$^%s in the world (they were loud again last night for no reason), and even if I do have to scrounge to get by until this stupid recession passes and I can get enough work to make ends meet until the composing career really takes off.

Even if I feel unfinished or incomplete in some areas of my life right now, I'm content. It's not even just because I can enjoy myself for free in the city. I'm aware that there are things that I want now but that if I spend my life wanting everything to be just perfect then I'll never get to enjoy all of this stuff that's happening now. At least not fully.

So, with that, I should go. I'm getting up at 8:30am tomorrow for work at 10.