Over the July 4th weekend, I headed off to New York for some fun in the sun. Amanda had already made plans to visit her best friend Ramona over the same weekend, so we took the same flight out. The flight was fine, if not a little foodless (100-calorie Oreo snack packs??), but since it was on Southwest, we had to fly into Islip, i.e. IslipintodespairbecauseI'minthemiddleofnowhereonLongIsland. Because of the bizarre Long Island Railroad schedule, we had to wait around for a couple hours at the Ronkonkoma station for the train to come. In the meantime, I bought 3 Munchkins and an iced coffee and tried not to let my brain leak out of my ear. A train ride and a few subway mishaps later, we were finally at Ramona's.

She made us a yummy pesto dinner and we spent the rest of the night hanging out and playing with her adorable dog, Alba.

Friday after lunch at a Thai place near Ramona's, Amanda and I headed to the American Museum of Natural History where we met up with Kahn. Afterwards we made a stop at Levain Bakery for what were seriously the Best Cookies Ever. Now I know I use the phrase "Best ____ Ever" pretty much constantly, but this time it's serious. The best cookies I've ever had, and well worth the $3.50 (!) each.

For dinner we met Moo and II at Vespa, which was good, but a little pricey. I had very tasty gnocchi for my main course, and finished with a dessert of kiwi sorbet.

Around 12pm the next day, Moo, II, and I headed up to East Hampton via the Hampton Jitney busline. The ride up was fairly uneventful, except when one of the Jitney employees told me to be keep it down because I was talking too loudly.

The rest of the day, or pretty much the rest of my time there, was spent trying to decide which leisure activity to partake in: eating, napping, reading, swimming, croquet (really!), going to the beach, watching a movie, etc. It was a full house, so I slept on a mattress on the floor, crack house-style. That is, if crack houses were in East Hampton and had swimming pools in the backyard.

I was especially excited to be there because it had been a full 7 months since I had seen Bug, who had recently celebrated her 2nd birthday. Let me say that her cuteness has only increased with her age. She is extremely talkative now, but her brain has developed much faster than her motor coordination, so she's at that age where she has a huge vocabulary and a lot to say, but can't always pronounce it. At dinner one night, she wanted to know what everyone's favorite animal was. She tried to say, "What's your favorite animal, Auntie Sha?" but it came out as, "Wha your fav amo Auntie Sa?" Fortunately, PP and YGB are well versed in Bug-ese, and were always available to provide real-time translation.

I also got to spend some time with the rest of PP's family, including EP's and Oz's new baby boy. He's also very very cute, and often has a very serious look on his face. I also saw EMA and RM, whom I'm pretty sure I haven't seen since their cross-country road trip, when we had a nice tapas dinner in Mountain View.

Saturday and Sunday were pretty relaxed, with a lot of hanging around the house. Saturday night we went to the beach to watch a fireworks display, which was very cool, except that the glowsticks YGB bought for Bug leaked on my hands and made them smell funny. Sunday morning we went to the beach and played, or shall I say "played" some football, which was fun.

Monday morning, YGB, RM, EMA, EP, Oz, and I got up at Early-o'-clock to go deep sea fishing. I've wanted to go for a long time, but I was worried that my motion sickness would get the best of me, so right when we got up, I took some Dramamine and hoped that it wouldn't knock me out. We went out on the Blue Fin IV with Captain Mike and First Mate Dennis around 6:00am. At our first stop, Dennis showed us the fine art of "jigging", or moving the lure in a way that will attract the fishies. After a while of unsuccessful jigging, RM finally got a bite and eventually reeled in a big ol' sea bass. I believe my words were "Holy crap!" when he pulled it out of the water, as I'd never fished for, um, fish that big before. Eventually, all of us caught at least one fish. The final count was: RM - 3 sea bass, YGB - 1 sea bass and 2 blue fish, and 1 sea bass each for the rest of us. RM, besides catching the most fish, also caught the largest, with his heaviest weighing in at 17-lb. He was, you could say, getting jiggy with it.

Back at the dock, Dennis and Mike cleaned and filleted our fish for us, and we tried some sea bass sashimi from our fish, which was actually very tasty.

Even more exciting than bringing home around 100 pounds of fish was the fact that nobody puked! Knowing my family and our history of x-treme motion sickness, this was indeed something to be proud of.

The rest of the day was spent lounging around and exploring the town, and YGB drove me to the airport the next morning so I catch my flight back to California.

I arrived in the afternoon and had just enough time to stop at home before heading to Peter's for their July 4th XTravaganza barbeque. It was good times and good steaks. Mmmm....

All in all, another successful trip to Hamptonia. Pictures....ah, who am I kidding?

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