So I'm a little over a month in to my Manhattan residency. The apartment is coming along -- I'm still waiting for my new couch to arrive, which is making the living room feel a bit incomplete, especially since I'm waiting to see how it fits before I decide about a few other storage/shelving units I think I'm going to need. But my morning routine is starting to feel a bit like an actual routine and not like each morning is a new adventure in remembering where my shoes are.

After years of avoiding buses unless I had to go to LaGuardia, I've discovered I actually kind of love the bus system. Of course it helps that 1) I'm a lot closer to several bus routes than the subway and 2) I usually only take the bus when I'm not in a hurry, so traffic delays don't bug me. That said, I love the M31 which leaves practically from my door and takes me very close to Boyfriend's and Columbus Circle (more specifically, the Whole Foods therein).

I've not been real impressed with the grocery stores around here. Sunday evening I actually made a salad (I know!) and discovered the olive oil and red pepper flakes had not survived the move. (Sidebar: I swear I saved one of those bottles of olive oil -- this is exactly why when I cleaned out the cabinet in the old apartment there were four half-empty bottles in the back.) So where did I find these fairly standard ingredients at 8 pm on a Sunday? Not at the (incredibly crowded) Food Emporium up the street. (OK, they had olive oil but only the really, really expensive kind.) At the Duane Reade. (This is a drugstore, for my non-NY readers. The one on my corner happens to have a small grocery section.) I'm actually going to the Whole Foods to save money, most of the time.