Gay Rainbow Bagels, Ducks of the United States and Walking Fah Dayz

This is my first, truly MCT-free Monday this year. Yes, technically I had a few unbooked weeks but in reality, I was still on the clock, but today, I was free as a bird! And oh boy, did this bird fly.

I started the day with cheesecake. 1am cheesecake basically became 2am cheesecake but wow, it was worth it! A+ work from Mr. Jas Spencer! Ryan and I then stayed up until like 4am talking which was pretty crazy considering all of the plans we had for the day. (Also, talking that long for us is literally nothing which is funny because we typically spend a lot of our time talking about nothing!)

I was awake four hours later to carpe diem some stuff. I got out of bed with a little more gusto than Ryan did. He took a little poking and prodding to get going but luckily he had me and I am always game for a challenge.

Spinach on the left/Jalapeno on the right. Rainbows everywhere

Yesterday, Ryan told me that he doesn't go to Brooklyn. He just doesn't according to him. Five minutes later, he remembered that there is a store that makes rainbow bagels and it's one of NYC's latest food obsessions and of course when he looked up where it was, it was in Brooklyn. He needed to get over his aversion to Brooklyn because I needed a rainbow bagel! Now, I'm made of rainbows, so eating rainbow colored food is a tricky situation for me because it may or may not be cannibalism... Getting to Brooklyn and finding bagels wasn't that hard but making a decision about what to get was. The rainbow bagel was a given but they had so many different types of cream cheese! Cream cheese can obviously make or break a bagel. Ryan and I decided to order two bagels with different types of cream cheese and split them so that is how we both ended up with a rainbow bagel with jalapeno cream cheese and a rainbow bagel with spinach and artichoke cream cheese. Ryan had voted for the jalapeno (not that I took any real convincing) because that would make it a spicy rainbow bagel and we're both spicy rainbows (which brings up, once again, the cannibalism question). It was rainbow heaven. Basically my tastes buds got to ride a friggin' rainbow. We didn't have anything we wanted to do in Brooklyn besides stuff our faces so we got back on the subway after breakfast for more adventures.

We went to Union Square because there was a Barnes and Noble there. Now, you're probably thinking, why, with everything there is to do in New York, would Thomson and Ryan possibly want to go to Barnes and Noble?! I demanded that Ryan take me there because they have a promotion called "Blind Date with a Book." The books are wrapped up so you can't see the cover and you simply pick one based on the description! He got one last week and I needed to have a literal adventure in choosing a book and a figurative one in reading it. After a drawn-out debate with myself (this is not a swipe-right/left Tinder situation here, I'm making a serious commitment!), I went with Indie Rom-Com. I identified with it because it talked about Chicago and millennials and I'm a millennial with plans to move to Chicago! From the moment I opened it later in the day, I knew I'd made the right choice because before I even read the title, I saw that the book cover was pink. It's a book called Office Girl and I read the first 30 pages to Ryan while we hung out and we realized that this book could not be more perfect for me. The description of the main character basically could have been a description of me -- down to the mismatched socks I was wearing -- so now I'm even more excited to read it. We also visited The Strand and it's 18 miles of books because we're super nerds.

Next we walked to Big Gay Ice Cream, which is a real place, I kid you not. I don't know why it's called that but it's sort of become a local legends. I ordered the Salty Pimp and yes, I actually had to say that. It was vanilla ice cream, dulce de leche, sea salt and chocolate dip and it was amazing. I ate it in what was probably the most unattractive way anyone has ever eaten an ice cream cone (they don't do cups but they do have little trays and after a few licks, I probably got myself a tray and deconstructed my cone from there) but I was a very happy clam.

Next Ryan took me to walk The High Line which gave us the opportunity to think about life and come up with different plans on how to destroy slow walkers. For those of you who do not know, The High Line is a park that is 30 feet above the street level on an old rail line with river and city views. And yes, I stole that description from Google but they did a much better job describing it than I could.

Actually, Ryan took this pic

And then we were hungry again (to be fair, we'd done a lot of walking without eating much at all), so Ryan decided on Melt Shop. Let me tell you, the boy knows me well, because Melt Shop is a grilled cheese restaurant. Once again, we decided that our best option would be to order two different things and split them down the middle! So it was the three cheese (which, of course, had three cheeses) and the big skinny (which had lots of different things in it, so I don't know why they called it skinny). We also ordered tater tots, which they gave some other name, but they were still tots. Very delicious tots with garlic Parmesan on top, but tots.

At this point, I realized that I had probably taken more pictures specifically for this blog in a singular day than I had in the past three weeks. Civilization will do that for you.

Ryan and I then killed time by riding the elevator at the Marriott. (Shout out to the Marriott in Indianapolis because that was still the best hotel I stayed at on the road).

Ryan then took me to dance class at the Broadway Dance Center. Little Thomson would have died if she'd had the opportunity to go to a dance class in NYC and the only real difference between Little Thomson and Present-Day Thomson is that I'm taller now. I didn't actually die (although I did get my butt handed back to me) but it was a pretty wonderful experience!

After that, I needed to find some grub before I went to Ryan's place of employment. Ryan suggested I go to Bare Burger where I promptly ran into a DSU grad. Not anyone I was ever particularly close with, but small world. Bare Burger has a lot of different options for the meats you can get. I'm currently in the process of reintroducing meat into my diet to ensure that I can safely eat it in Central America, so I had a lot of options here. I went with the Fire Quacker. In case you couldn't guess from the name, it was a duck burger. It was comprised of duck pepper jack cheese, pickled jalapenos, red onion, spinach, tomato and habanero mayo on a brioche bun!

When I was all done with my dinner, I headed over to Ryan's place of employment, Don't Tell Mama. I was not just going to Don't Tell Mama to visit Ryan, but also to meet a friend. Yes, I have friends besides Ryan! Ms. Caroline Casey is a living legend. I should preface this by saying that when I went to college, everyone commented on how tall I was and blah blah blah and it is true that my college friends are all very short, but in high school, I was the little one. At 5'9", I was the runt of the litter. Caroline, like my other dear friend, Mandy Belscamper, is six feet tall. Caroline has always had a personality to match. We were both basically adopted by the same all-boys high school and kept each other sane through our junior and senior years. I, however, haven't seen her in years so we had a lot of catching up to do. Honestly, it was like nothing had changed. We ordered Shirley Temples because we're adults and I cannot imagine a better way of spending the evening. The duck burger was also a good choice for dinner because Caroline's catchphrase in high school had been "Ducks of the United States!" (Don't ask me what it means, I'm not sure that even she knew).

After we said our goodbyes and promised that there would be more hellos, I took the subway back to Ryan's all by myself! There was a lot of walking involved in today and I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow, but it was all worth it.