Only two days left...

I spent pretty much all of today shopping for and then cooking what I hope will be enough food to last me for at least a month. I'm freezing it, by the way. No need to fear food poisoning here. I'm a trained professional. Actually, I only got about half way through what I wanted to make, so I'll have to continue on Sunday.

For all of you who are so anxious about the celebrity sightings, I saw Whoopie Goldberg yesterday coming out of a little Italian meat shop down on Bleeker street where I had stopped for some bread and to chat with a friend of Steve's at a fish shop there. Interesting I guess. I have no real impression of her except that she's pretty much exactly what I expected and looks exactly the same. Soon after this, while trying to avoid butt-head Jake (Jodi's ex-boyfriend) who was in town on tour and wanted to go out and party, Richie and I went with a friend of his to the Grey Dog coffee shop, where Richie used to work. Now if you want to see celebrities, this is the place to go. Not that I've ever seen anyone here, but whatever. Apparently others have seen the Olsens and various other downtowners like Kate Hudson and Drew Barrymore. The only person I see with regularity is the bald guy in the neighborhood with an amazingly huge white bulldog. And he's not famous at all. But he does have a nice dog.

I'm trying to fill up the rest of my time off here hanging out with various friends and doing last minute housekeeping chores that I won't have time for later. Like buying books. Last night, after having a couple of (free) glasses of a very nice cabernet sauvignon at the grey dog with Richie, I made the horrible mistake of going to the Strand bookstore. Strand has quite an extensive selection of bargain books, and the best thing is that they not only have the classics and remaindered books that no one else wants, but they even have new books for cheap. So I bought three.

And one last final thing. I don't know if anyone's read this or not (I'm assuming not), but they've just confirmed sightings of the ivory billed woodpecker in Alabama. Before last year, the last confirmed sighting of an ivory billed woodpecker was in 1944. They were assumed to be extinct. So this is quite miraculous and I'm very excited about it. But then again, I'm a nerd.