Josh joined us for dinner before the play and we got a corner table at Ollie's, one of my favorite Chinese restaurants and one neither Josh or Liz had ever tried. We had a light dinner of cumin-spiced beef and green beans dry-sauteed with garlic and caught up with our goings-on (I haven't seen Liz since Rocky Horror and Josh since we saw Thor 2 a few weeks ago). After dinner Josh said goodnight and we found a photo booth in the lobby and had fun making faces - Liz is obviously much better at this than I am. This picture always makes me smile!
On my day off Kacey came over and we made a plan for lunch and some wedding gift shopping in Chinatown. I took her to a Shanghai restaurant I've been to before for soup dumplings, a first for her. Counting Puck on Sunday, that's two people I've introduced to soup dumplings in a week, one of my favorite things to eat. All throughout the day we talked at length about our plans for finding a place together with Becker, our needs and expectations, and ideas for the future.
After lunch we went to the Chinatown bookstore for Kacey to pick out a chop for herself and for Chris as a wedding present. We looked at several and picked out a pair of them, plus a container of red mudpack ink for stamping. We took them to Victor Pei's engraving shop where I got Emily's chop done, but Mr. Pei wasn't there, so I'll have to get them done at a later date and present them before the wedding.
We walked up to a new grocery store I'd discovered to look at the bewildering variety of fresh seafood and pick up a few things - a new teapot and strainer for me, a rice bowl and mochi balls for her, and some dan-tah (egg custard in a flaky pie crust), my favorite Chinese dessert, from the on-site bakery. We made our way back to the apartment so Kacey could get ready to go to Becker's office holiday party and I started cooking dinner for me and Katie, who arrived shortly after Becker and Kacey left for the party.
Katie and I had dinner and watched "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" - Katie had read the book in high school but had never seen the movie, and of course, it's one of my favorites in book and movie form. We'll continue our Humphrey Bogart marathon next time. Afterward we headed down to the Skylight Diner for MMMM and got to catch up with Beth, Kiwi, Ilan and Stan, plus met a few new people. Ilan showed me Stan's wedding dress - they're getting married in October and it promises to be a very interesting themed wedding. We left the diner about 1 a.m. and said goodnight in the subway station as she headed back to Brooklyn and I went home.
