Spring Trip
It is official—barring some unforeseen incident, Lauren and I will be visiting New York and Boston in May! The plane and train tickets have been purchased for our trip May 4-11. In New York, we will be staying with Lauren’s friend Elise and her husband Justin in Harlem. I would be nervous about staying in Harlem, but in ’07 I wandered through town by myself in a Twins jersey and lived to tell about it. Apparently it’s much safer these days than us Midwesterners are led to believe.

Amongst our New York plans are taking in a Mets/Giants game at CitiField, visiting the Seinfeld diner, eating at some authentic ethnic restaurants, and seeing if Sal’s Pizzeria from Do the Right Thing has reopened. We will be there for four nights before taking an Amtrak train up the coast to Boston where we’ll stay three more nights. The train ride will allow me to check Connecticut and Rhode Island off my list of states visited. We plan to catch a Red Sox/Twins game at Fenway and do some other historical freedom-related touristy things. Luckily we got in on some amazing prices for flights and train tickets so the trip shouldn’t be outlandishly expensive.

Oscar Nominations Out
I was interested (though not nearly as much so as Jason) to see this morning’s Oscar nominations. Of the ten Best Picture nominees, we’ve seen four—True Grit, The Social Network, The Fighter, and The King’s Speech. We also have plans to see 127 Hours and Inception this week. All four of those movies we’ve seen have been excellent candidates. I would be happy to see any of them win, though if I had to pick, I think Social Network was probably my favorite of the group so far, by a hair. I won’t make any other predictions until we have seen all the nominees.

Other
• The long drought from our Eating in Minneapolis blog is over as Lauren has really picked up the pace on her blogging lately! I think you may be very surprised to see the review I gave Toby Keith’s, if you haven’t already.
• I am giving a shout-out to good friend Luke Katuin’s food delivery business, FNS Delivers, which is open for business and delivering food from any restaurant in Eden Prairie. I will be joining the FNS team shortly to do some restaurant reviews for Luke.
• There continues to be strong interest in getting a podcast, possibly live, on the web in the coming days or weeks.
• This Saturday is Lauren’s birthday celebration/my bartending event at Moose on Monroe’s in Minneapolis. The fun starts at 9pm with me making drinks for my friends on our free $200+ bar tab! Sounds like we’ve got a good sized crowd lined up already.