Great Fire burning

I can't believe the last time I wrote in this blog it was snowing - and not just snowing but a huge blizzard.  Today it was 96 fucking degrees out, and I had to alternate running errands and going to the gym with just staying home and having a lie down.  Thank God the air conditioner has been holding up, or I would have been completely freaking out.

They've just opened a new restaurant and a new wine bar, both on Dyckman street, in the past few weeks.  I checked out the restaurant, "Papacitos", and was pleasantly surprised.  I read online that the service was crappy and the food just run of the mill, but the food was actually pretty good.  Not a lot of healthy choices, but once I'd scraped the "Oaxaca Cheese" - (I didn't know Oaxaca was known for its cheese) off of the grilled corn on the cob, the chicken mole was moist and fab, and the guacamole was absolutely perfect in my opinion.

Guacamole is the perfect food if you're on a diet - as long as you don't eat it with corn chips.  I know that sounds weird, but that's the way I live my life lately.  If you just dive into the guac with a fork, it's just as nice, and all the fat is the good (monosaturated) kind.  Unlike the vile over-spiced mole at chains like Chipotle, this was perfectly spiced, cut with just enough lemon, and full of red onions and tomatoes.  And mole sauce is just as legal - there's no fat in it at all, just a load of flavor, and it goes great with chicken of course.

When it's this hot, eating is the last thing I want to do, and when I don't feel like eating it's newsworthy, trust me.  The hood is very much a ghost town, and I love that about July 4th weekend.  I can get into any restaurant I want to go to, the stores aren't crowded (unless you're stupid enough to go to Macy's which is always tourist central), and even the movie theaters are empty.  Unfortunately, this is probably the worst weekend for movies I've ever seen in my life.  We have the requisite selection of kiddy movies, all now in 3D.  Pass.  Then we have the latest Twilight movie, which provides the perfect combination of execrable dialogue, paper-thin characters, and the horrid grey-wash cinematography that seems so in and hip these days.  And let's not forget Robert Pattinson, the romantic hero character who's dark, poetic, troubled, and virtually humorless - he'll be fucking up an entire new generation of young women by fixating their burgeoning libidoes on the emotionally unavailable young men in their lives.  Great.  Thanks Stephanie Whats-her-face.  They should send her their therapy bills.

And then there's "Cyrus", which stars the guy I think of as "The other fat guy."  Please.

I was thinking of bagging the gym this morning in favor of walking down the West Side Highway - but then I checked the temperature and, at 7 AM, it was already almost 80 degrees.  Forget that.  Air-conditioned gym for me.  I've lost two pounds this week, which is great - except, with temps in the 90's for the rest of the week, it's probably all water.  Oh well.  I'll take what I can get.