A Brooklyn New Year's

Ok, let me just start by saying that in order to update my winter vacation in America in some kind of coherent fashion, I'm going to split up New Year's weekend from all the rest of it. And I'll do New Year's first. Oh, and I'll be posting all of my pictures from the trip on my fotopage some time this week (mcurran.fotopages.com).

So, Friday morning Sarah and I hopped on the road down to the Big Apple. Katie and Michelle were coming separately in Michelle's car. Destination: Emily Burton's fantastic Brooklyn apartment. By some miracle, Michelle and Katie were pulling onto Emily's block right as Sarah and I were hauling our stuff to the apartment. We immediately headed to a Thai restaurant for dinner where Alan (horray!) met up with us and Jonathan Safran Foer and his wife were seated next to us (and SJ swooned over the heart shaped rice).

After a brief power nap and a power-dolling up session, we headed into Manhattan for a birthday party for some chick Emily and Sarah went to college with and to bar hop arount the Lower East Side. The highlight of my night was not the beers or even the Mango Martini (which was beautiful) but the amazing drunk eating we partoook in after the bars.
Exhibit A: CUPCAKES! Where else but in NY can you find cupcakes at 3am in a coffee shop next to a bar??

Exhibit B: Next door to the coffee shop was a BURGER PLACE. Anyone who knows me knows that I can eat a burger pretty much any time of the day including immediately after a cupcake at 3am. Here's Sarah and I street-eating, love it!


I hate to think of what amazing food might have been available had we continued stumbling down that street...




The next day was New Year's Eve. During the day, Katie, Michelle and I had pizza at a nearby pizza place then headed into Rockefeller Center so I could take pictures for my students and to just be tourists.

Michelle, Katie and I (and snow!)

Saks 5th Avenue

St. Patrick's


When we headed back to the apartment we began the juggling act of 6 girls and one shower which surprisingly went off without a hitch.

We had two parties to attend and lots of boy-shopping to do, so at 10-ish we headed out to our first party at my dear old friend Dave's apartment in Brooklyn. What we found was a verifiable Canandaigua Academy Reunion including Darrell and the Molisani brothers. The only non-daiguans were Emily, Sarah Ford and Tom Conroy. Kinda creepy actually. To get things going, we started playing The Year 2005 In Review By Numbers Game where someone would say a category and everyone would say their resepective numbers.
For Example:
Number of times I puked: 0
Number of countries I visited: 7 (counting Japan. America and Guam separately)
Number of boys I smooched with: 12 (I won that one)
Number of weeks SJ was unemployed: 32 (or was it 34?)

Here are some photo highlights from Dave's
This is my favorite picture of the night

Look at those shoes!

S. Mo and A. Mo

Dave & I

2006 glasses, hell yeah


We headed out to party #2 with enough time to scope out the boy scene before the ball dropped. This party was held at an apartment belonging to Emily and Sarah's friend's boyfriend's friend or something. Whatever, the apartment was sweet and there was free booze - all I ask, really. The party was hopping but alas, the boy to girl ratio was not in my favor so my big midnight excitement was when the whole countdown thing ended and I noticed there was no line for the bathroom, snatch. Good thing I smooched A.Mo before we left Dave's place...

And here's the blackmail from Party #2
hot hot hot

Me & Kit looking scandalized

My boyfriend for 2 hours, Justin

no caption needed

The girls and some baditude


Around 1am, I was chatted up by that lovely boy, Justin, who I learned was raised in Tokyo until high school. He was cute and interesting (finally!) so we ditched the party for a cigarette and when the girls came down we decided to head out to a bar. Things are a bit blurry at this point but I recall yelling to some girl in a window, giving away my 2006 glasses, having a Brooklyn Lager and a conversation in Japanese. Soon enough it was bedtime for us all and the gals and I stumbled back to Emily's place.

New Year's Day felt like 5 days rolled into one, but not in a bad way. First Sarah, Michelle, Katie and I went to brunch (hangover burger, check); then Michelle left; then Katie, Sarah and I spent the day in Joey's bed; I showered (they didn't!); Alan came over with beer; Emily came home from work (she's a trooper); Dave came over with more beer; we went to a Mexican restaurant and drank margaritas (we are champs) and we went into Manhattan to check out a bar Dave told us about. It was totally intense.

Monday we drove back upstate. On the way we stopped at Memories for a little photo shoot. 10 points to anyone who can figure out what's wrong with this picture


Overall, the trip was totally kick ass. Thank you all for making my New Year's so much fun!

Happy two-thousand-scandalous!