sixty-five hours in NYC

Ripping myself away from The Boy for the first real time, I headed out to New York City for a few days this past weekend. It was for a work thing*, with a little free time tacked on at the end. I'm going to remain mysterious (i.e., not bore you) on the work part, but here are some highlights from the other part:

• For my Jane Austen nerds: a wonderful exhibition of letters and other documents at The Morgan Museum (thank you, Kristen, for the tip!)
• For the cartographic nerds (myself included): Mapping New York's Shoreline: 1609-2009 at the New York Public Library. I accidentally walked into this one and it was really interesting.
• Insanely delicate, delicious pizza: Posto, 18th St @ 2nd Ave. Had a really fun dinner here with two really fun ladies, after the work part of my trip was done. Haven't laughed that hard in ages. The food was amazing, too.
• Picked up a bunch of spices at Penzey's, including 4 meat rubs for Toby (b/c that's how we roll for Valentine's Day). For myself, I picked up Charnushka (aka nigella sativa, which I also plan on growing this year), Aleppo Pepper, Zatar and something called Kala Jeera (described as exotic, flowery and slightly camphoric--wha?!). Spice experiments ahead.
• Joe coffee! My god, it's good to have really good coffee in NYC. I started each day with a perfect Americano.
• Dining options in the basement of Grand Central Station. Right below our hotel, and really great. One stand-out was Hale and Hearty Soups. Coming soon: Magnolia Bakery.
• On the flight back home (Virgin America--awesome), finally watched Julie & Julia (meh... good enough) but really liked 500 Days of Summer. (Thanks for the rec, Robin!)
• Coming home. Jacky was already in bed, but it was such a relief to be back under the same roof. Missed my little love.

* This is what we call "work" in the toy industry:

Yep, always this fun. Kind of like that movie "BIG" :)