I had a fantastic weekend! Friday night I went to dinner and a movie with Joy. We ate at a place called Serafina's. It was good Italian food....we got 2 pizzas and shared and they were really good--more like authentic Italian pizza. They were really rich, though! We saw "Borat" after dinner. It was pretty funny, but definitely went overboard a couple of times!
On Saturday, I met Joy and another guy I used to work with, Stan, for brunch in the East Village. We ate at a place called the Sidewalk Cafe. It was good food and a great price for their brunch which included mimosas-- yum!! The weather was really nice so we even sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine for a couple of hours! There is another restaurant on the street called 7A and I'd also like to try it out-- it's really popular for brunch as well.
I spent most of the rest of the weekend volunteering for the New York marathon! It was an experience and I had a lot of fun! Saturday night was the Barilla Pasta Party for all runners. It was crazy...trying to feed 37,000 runners! I was put on dessert duty which was definitely the worst job. The runners would eat in this huge tent that was added on to Tavern on the Green for the event. Then they would be sent out the exit where they got a goody bag and lots of free pasta and food and other items and then they would just get dessert to go. We were outside serving Italian Ice! It was already cold enough, but having to handle the little tubs of Italian Ice made my fingers turn purple! It was kind of miserable. But, I enjoyed some of the people I worked with and I got a free t-shirt, some cookies, and a pasta timer out of it! I do love free stuff! Actually, it brought back a lot of memories from when my old roommate, Deanna, and I used to do races...we ran the Honolulu marathon together, but also did many 5k's. I think we were both pretty driven by the free stuff, though. We would leave with bags stuffed full of bananas, bottles of water, yogurt, etc.... Some weeks, it was our main source of grocery shopping, I think! So, when I saw people coming out of the Pasta dinner with huge black garbage sacks full, I could relate! It was fun.
Then, Sunday morning, I volunteered at the drink station at mile-24 in Central Park. It was a great location to be! I was a Gatorade girl and it was quite a process. We had to set up tables, hang banners, then mix and pour the Gatorade- lots & lots & lots of Gatorade! All the Gatorade mixers got these huge ponchos to wear because it can become a sticky mess-- I thought they were hysterical! We also wore plastic medical gloves and one girl I talked to some said it was "just like Grey's Anatomy!" She was really funny to talk to. The most exciting part of the day was seeing Lance Armstrong run by-- he looked great! We also had fun figuring out the best technique for the Gatorade "hand off". See, the runners would go by so fast that they would often knock the cups right out of our hands. I quickly figured out a way to hold the cup to help ensure a good catch...I still lost some, but it did work pretty well and other people began following my lead!
Sunday night I had my first opportunity to try out a new chruch, Redeemer Presbyterian. There are 2 churches in the city I've been most interested to try and Redeemer was the only one that has evening services, so that worked with my marathon schedule. It was really good-- the pastor seems like an excellent preacher and very wise so that was refreshing for me! But, it is a HUGE church and I wondered how difficult it would be to get involved and meet people there. I think there could have been 1,000 people there tonight and it was one of 4 services today. I am going to try out the other church next Sunday...it's a church plant and they're still averaging only about 100/week. The pastor there came from Lake Pointe in the Dallas area and I've been told that it's where "all the Texans" go to church. I know a guy I went to both high school and college goes there and he seems to like it and I've heard excellent things about the pastor through some Lake Pointe people. So, we'll see how that goes!
Here's some pictures from the marathon!! It was hard to get the runners though so I missed getting one of Lance...sorry!
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