Saturday afternoon

We did a lot of walking Saturday afternoon. We started by walking down to 59th and 5th in order to have a late lunch at Mickey Mantle’s. After that, we had an errand to run. Jen had to drop off some keys at her bosses apartment, so we made our way toward West End. On our way, we came across a Barnes and Noble and could not resist going in. It was incredibly crowded inside, with long lines (but the lines moved quickly) and after a bit of browsing, I picked up Jack McDevitt’s Chindi. I’ve never read anything by Jack McDevitt before, but the premise of this book looked so interesting, I decided to start it right away. Once we left the bookstore, we ran our errand and then caught a taxi back to Jen and Jason’s.

A few hours later, we headed back out. I had to stop at the Gap to get some nicer clothes (I didn’t bring any with me) because we were going to a pretty nice place for dinner. That place was August in the West Village. It was a nice place and the food was pretty good. But it was not quite what we expected. I ordered the beef stroganoff and it turned out to be beef stripes with a side of potatoes with a cream sauce. Very good, but not what I had in mind. Jason had marlin and Jen had a pasta which had some fish in it that she hadn’t expected. The milk chocolate gelato for dessert was very good.

After dinner, we took a cab back to 86th and 3rd in order to see if we could catch a showing of Rocky Balboa. We got there at the perfect time, picked up our tickets, got our seats and did not have to wait long for the show to start. And a good show it was. In my opinion it was better than all of the Rocky movies except for the first two. I really, really enjoyed it and think it was a worthy conclusion to the series.

During the previews to the movie, there was a preview for a drama adventure film about a woman who turns into a werewolf. At the very end of the preview, the title of the film was announced: Blood and Chocolate, and I kid you not when I say that the entire theater burst into laughter. The movie was not a comedy, but the title was so completely ridiculous that no one could take it seriously. It was the worst titled movie I’d come across since Snakes on a Plane.

The evening ended in a good mood after seeing Rocky Balboa.