I’ve spent this past weekend up north, with Mark – my godson – and his family. I got there on Friday night, the usual way: driving with Roxy’s father from NYC to Waterloo (it’s a 10 hour drive, if you’re curious). I wish I could say we did more than sleeping, playing with Mark and eating, but that was pretty much all we did the entire weekend. Not that I’m complaining, of course, I enjoyed seeing my favorite Canadian family and my godson I came back with Roxy, Mike and Mark today – by plane from Buffalo to JFK – and they continued their journey to Seattle.

Adorable little scoundrel All the pictures can be found at the regular place.

The past two weeks have been packed. Almost every night I had somewhere to be, someone to see or something to do.

On Friday night I went to see an independent movie, the “artsy” kind. Or so it was supposed to be, because it didn’t move me much. The director tries to combine sexual psychology with horror elements, but it comes out a bit of a mess. Good thing I knew about the really gory scenes from before, otherwise I would’ve had a bit of a shock. Chaos reigns, indeed.

On Saturday I decided to pay Ethan a visit in Flushing, for more Debasaki and bubble-tea. Which would’ve been great, except for the pouring rain that started when we got there – it did rain all day, but not as bad as that evening. In conclusion, we got to the place – a 15 min walk from the subway – completely drenched. Later we dried (a bit) at E’s place, while watching Rock’n’Rolla.

On Sunday I took advantage of the sun and got out in the afternoon to take a walk and some pictures of Queensboro Bridge. In the evening I joined my friends and went to see Video Games Live.

Monday, Borderlands was released. Been playing it almost every night since.

Tuesday night I met with a classmate from primary/junior high school that was in NY as well. We’ve reunited by accident, as she was supposed to meet with one of my friends that visited me last month. That didn’t happen but at least I saw her last week and got to catch up on our former classmates. Surprising how many of them ended up here, in the US. Andreea, if you’re reading this, holla!

Wednesday night I went with Yacine and Ethan to an iPhone developers meetup, a tech talk about concurrency and threading in application development. It was pretty interesting, but the best part was that they gave us free swag for attending it: books, download coupons, notebooks.

On Thursday night I joined E and his friends for ramen (japanese noodle soup). After, more Borderlands.

Friday, Roxana celebrated her birthday at a small restaurant in Brooklyn. Afterwards we went to her and Slava’s place for drinks & cake.

Saturday I got up early to help Francis get his son to the doctor – he’s been having some problems with his eyes and he can’t drive. Since we were in the neighborhood, we met up with Ethan afterwards for dim sum. In the afternoon I joined Bogdi, Renee, Linh and others and went to Jersey, to Roman and Jenny’s place for a belated birthday party. It was a fun afternoon – and since it was Halloween, we got plenty of trick-or-treaters. Also, I got to put my camera to some use.

After we got back, late at night, I got to experience some Halloween of my own: I went to a costume party at Studio Square, the nearby beer garden. The place was crowded with zombies, superheroes, video game characters (a Scorpion, Sub-Zero and Jade from MK) and even some japanese school-girls. I tried to take some pictures there as well, but they came out too blurry.

I’ve spent Sunday resting after the previous nights. Watched Up and some episodes of FlashForward (which is very good btw) and uploaded pics from the party.

Finally, Monday night, while checking out Facebook, I decided to take out some information from my profile: namely the relationship status (I figured it was a bit TMI). Next morning I woke up to find “who’s the lucky girl?” written on my wall… Could be worse I guess, considering I took out also the “Interested in: women” part, I could’ve found “who’s the lucky guy?”

Seven more days until my friends get here.

I’ve spent the day cleaning up my place. Not that it was very dirty, but I do like to put extra effort for when I have visitors. Still, that didn’t keep some of my friends here (who know how my apartment usually is) from making fun all week of me and my “neatly organized, no mess, no dust, with everything in the room thoughtfully placed” home (direct quote from Ethan). Which might not be an exaggeration considering it took me 7 hours to clean a place that wasn’t that unclean to begin with. But hey, everything is sparkling now.

I’m checking the extended forecast every day now in order to form a plan of visiting – sunny days for walking the city, rainy ones for museums – but so far it changes every time I look. First there was sun next Saturday, then rain all weekend, this morning it was sun, and now there’s rain on Fri and Sat. So much for weather forecasting.

I’ve also started to fill up the fridge and pantry with all the necessities. Which would be candy, chocolate, ice cream and snacks. They used to raid my pantry when they used to come over back in the day in Romania so I’d figured I’d be a bad host if I wouldn’t give them the opportunity to do it again. I’ll probably regret this.