The Importance of Friends and A Tasty Belgian Wafel

Hello LilyOnTheLam.Com Readers:

I woke up this morning after a fabulous night at Ciro's Speakeasy.  They have a tasty new menu that I will be writing about soon.  I turned on my computer and found that my page view counter for LilyOnTheLam.Com had hit 30,000.  Now there are websites that have more page views than this in one day, but for my "little blog that could" I am very proud to reach this number!  

Thank you to all my readers around the world.  France has displaced the Netherlands in the #8 slot for most readers of LilyOnTheLam.com by country (thank you Blogger.Com Stats!).  Obviously five years of French classes in my youth have caused this to happen.  Merci Bien, La France!  Now that the Olympics are over, I challenge the countries of the world to compete in number of readers of LilyOnTheLam.com.  I'm sure I can dig up a gold medal somewhere!

My partner in crime for my evening at Ciro's Speakeasy was the Glorious Nicky G who has been working in Tampa Bay on an extended assignment.  Nicky G and I have not lived in the same city since 1844 (yes, you read that correctly - we're vampires - old vampires) and so it's been quite wonderful to hang out with him on a regular basis as if he lived here.  

I have started my campaign of why Glorious Nicky G should move to Tampa and have elicited the help of any one and everyone around me.  That's why last night our fabulous Ciro's Speakeasy waiter Richard was given the task of giving a speech on why Nicky G should move to Tampa.  And he did it well!  Good service and speeches on demand - well done, Ciro's.  (FYI - If you'd like to read about the October 2012 revised menu at Ciro's Speakeasy, please click here.)

Side Note:  Now Ciro's Speakeasy is a darkly lit bar/restaurant, but in the dim light our waiter Richard looked a lot like the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  So much so that I spent the evening pretending Joseph Gordon-Levitt was giving us tips on the best gin to drink and extolling the virtues of Art In The Age's Root Liquor (soooo tasty!!!)  In my world, it is perfectly logical that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is my waiter.  Of course in my world, I usually have a couple cocktails under my belt at all times. ;-)  Richard (or Joseph Gordon-Levitt in disguise) also told us that vodka did not appear on the drinking scene in America until the 1940's.  Who knew?  I love a bit of education with my cocktails.    

Side Side Note:  Speaking of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, have you checked out his pro-artist, open collaboration production company website HitRecord.org?  If not, you should.  I recently purchased several items from the HitRecord.org online store.  I fell in love with a postcard that had an image from a UK artist who is calling herself Wirrow.  If you go to Wirrow's website, there is a quote that says: "Wirrow is not the name of someone who is not invisible."  If you want to give yourself a headache, ponder over that quote a few more times.  

I also purchased several t-shirts from HitRecord.org.  One of the t-shirts is for a friend, Miss LM who I will be writing about a little further in this post.  She loves Joseph Gordon-Levitt and she loves supporting smaller enterprise over larger, so I figured an item from HitRecord.org is a win-win gift.  Plus I am pretty sure if you purchase an item from HitRecord.org, Joseph Gordon-Levitt will serve you cocktails personally.  I could be incorrect about that though ... might just be last night's tequila talking.

If you're looking for other great UK artists, check out one of my absolute favorites - Nancy Farmer.  I have several of her Medusa series prints.  They are sitting in a tube waiting for my lazy, lazy arse to get them framed.  Hmmm, maybe I should redecorate my guest bathroom in a Medusa theme?  

Another great UK artist is a LilyOnTheLam.com reader, the lovely lady behind IsisImaginings.com.  Now I am not saying reading LilyOnTheLam.com will increase your artistic ability, but Kirsten is uber-talented and reads my blog ... so obviously I had something to do with her talent, right? ;-)  

OK back to the main blog post at hand ... I had lovely cocktails and delicious food with Glorious Nicky G last night.  The theme of our conversation could best be summed up by the following quote from Albert Einstein:

"Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."  

If you read my post from yesterday, "Why It's Not A Good Idea To Get Drunk and Then Go To The Asian Dollar Store" you will know I have been doing a lot of soul searching recently.  I have been judging my "fish self" unfairly and my conversation with Nicky G helped put me back on the right track.  I am grateful for his counsel, his friendship and his company in Tampa.  I am also grateful that he will be moving to Tampa soon.  (If I say it often enough, perhaps it will come true!)

I try to write "profound" blog posts when I reach certain page view milestones, such as when I passed 20,000 page views I wrote: "20,003 Reasons To Be Happy On A Saturday ... And How I Inadvertently Slept with a Neo Nazi."  I wasn't sure what I should write about for the passing of the 30,000 page view mark.  Should I write about the time I had sex in the Voodoo Museum in New Orleans?  Hmmm... no, I'm going to save that one for the Million Page View Mark (so start clicking away, readers!)  I have lots of wacky adventures, but with the events of Ciro's in my memory I thought I would write a little bit about friendship and what people bring to my life.

In my travels and socializing, I have had the opportunity to meet a large number of people.  Some great, some amazing and some frankly rather shitty.  And sometimes I meet people who start out great and then morph into shitty.  I try to approach this sad fact with some zen-like calm.  I believe that the Universe sends us everyone for a reason.  Now I am convinced sometimes that reason is "Hey, we just thought it would be fun to kick you when you're down" but still that's a reason, right?  I believe that there is a lesson to be extrapolated from everything and anything in life.  The choice is whether to take the lesson to heart or ignore it.  

In keeping with a "Summer of Deprivation" mode that I am currently going through (and will blog about in the future), I cancelled my cable television.  For a TV junkie like me, this was akin to cutting off my arm and then smacking me over the head with it 24-7.  I always have the TV on for background noise and now my home is deathly quiet.  Is there a detox for BRAVO TV's Real Housewives junkies?  

While I am still jonesing for my favorite shows, I do find that in turning off all the background noise I have been able to listen to my heart and head a lot more clearly.  My brain cells have finally been focused on me, not whether Teresa and Melissa are ever going to get along on the Real Housewives of New Jersey!

My friend Miss LM (who will soon be at the Summer MixTape Fest 2012 in Hershey, Pennsylvania - a fact that makes me so jealous I could spit) unintentionally taught me a lesson this past winter.  Miss LM had been Tweeting with the Wafels and Dinges food trucks (@WaffleTruck) on Twitter.com.  We were going to be in New York City for a weekend and she was adamant that we had to stop and get a Belgian Waffle (or Wafel) from one of the Wafels and Dinges trucks.  Miss LM did not have to give me a sales pitch, I said "yes" as soon as I heard "waffle."  Wafels and Dinges has many carts and trucks stationed around New York City (because they are THAT GOOD).  Miss LM decided that we had to go to the Wafels and Dinges cart that was in Central Park for the day.  

Now before I go further, let me explain to you that Miss LM and I live in Florida.  Land of beaches and humidity.  Both of us grew up in the Midwest, so we are quite familiar with winter.  And that's why we live in Florida.  We are no longer hearty Midwestern stock.  Our blood has thinned in the sunny Floridian climate.  I want, no need, to wear shorts in December without getting hypothermia.  I love driving with my convertible top down all year round.  In Florida, we made be hopped up on bath salts and will eat off your face, but we'll be doing it in a tiny sundress with a gorgeous tan.  

So there Miss LM and I are ... two Floridians in New York City ... in Winter.  We are wearing approximately seventy-four layers of clothing each and are still freezing!  The city is blanketed in thick snow and we continue to get pelted with slushy sleet.  Instead of picking the Columbus Circle Wafels and Dinges truck, where we could order a wafel and then immediately turn around and go inside a warm building; Miss LM wanted to go to Central Park.  We had no location point for the Wafels and Dinges cart - all we knew that it was somewhere in Central Park.  I launched a tirade of "M--therf---er, do you know how big Central Park is?  We're supposed to be climbing snow dunes to find some waffle cart while I am already freezing?  Are you friggin' out of your mind?"  But Miss LM could not hear me - not only was her love for waffles drowning out anything I could say; the fact that my head was wrapped with two gigantic scarves in attempt to keep my face from freezing and falling off, made my speech sound like Charlie Brown's teacher.

                
So after a lovely morning at the Guggenheim Museum, we headed over to Central Park to play "find a needle in a haystack"- or in this case - "find a Wafel truck in a large park completely covered in snow in the middle of a mild snowstorm."  

After about 3 minutes, I wanted to give up.  My legs hurt from doing the "I don't want to slip on the ice" shuffle all weekend.  I was cold.  I was getting pelted with snow.  And we had no clue where this damn Wafel truck was.  But Miss LM would not be deterred, she was on a mission and by God she would discover America for the Queen!  Oh wait, scratch that, replace with: ... and by God, she would eat a wafel!

After what felt like six years, but was probably more like 20 minutes, I spotted a small yellow oasis smack dab in the middle of a white plain.  I started jumping up and down, despite the sad fact that I could no longer feel my feet.  Miss LM squinted in the distance at the little yellow blob.  "Do you think that's it?"  She asked me, not entirely sure we weren't hallucinating due to the cold.  I said if it's not, I am calling this mission OFF!  Miss LM looked at me with a smile that said "Excuse me, I'm the Captain on this Wafel Odyssey and you'll be following my orders.  But its's so adorable that you think you are in control here."  I started grumbling mutinous utterances into my two scarves and headed out toward the yellow blob.

I know logistically this is impossible, but it appeared as if we were 100 miles away from the yellow blob.  We walked and we walked and we walked and we walked ... and finally we were close enough to realize that yes indeed the yellow blog was not a mirage, it was the Wafels and Dinges truck.  Miss LM and I let out a shout like castaways spotting a yacht.  And then we walked and we walked and we walked some more.

Finally, we reached the Wafels and Dinges truck - in all its beautiful yellow glory.  A more beautiful sight has never been seen in all of humanity.

Yes, I realize this is a cart not a truck - but I was oblivious with hypothermia

There was a group of young foreign teenage girls ... OK in retrospect maybe they were from Nebraska ... and they were chatting up the Wafels and Dinges man, taking pictures and video (???) of the cart.  They were also rabidly talking about what color pants they had recently bought.  I stood behind them rocking back and forth, desperately trying to restore blood circulation in my frozen appendages.  I would like to tell you that I am a calm, patient woman.  I would like to tell you this.  Unfortunately, 75% of the time I have the inner resolve of comedian Lewis Black.

Here I am, standing in the middle of Central Park, 98% of my body frozen and all I want is a freaking wafel.  Instead I have to listen to the inane chatter of a line full of teenage girls - who have already ordered and received their wafels - and now are just blocking all access to the Wafel truck.  Listen ladies, here's your life lesson - don't stand in the way of a cranky, old woman who walked 900 miles in the snow and is now suffering from hypothermia.  I glared at both them and the Wafel guy until he shouted out to come over and place an order.  Thank you, thank you, Wafels & Dinges man!  I navigated my way through the sea of potential Nebraskan-Netherlanders and finally reached the holy land ... if you consider the counter of the Wafels and Dinges truck to be holy. 

Miss LM wasn't sure what she wanted to order.  I was pretty sure that this would be my last meal before becoming the Little Matchstick Girl and freezing to death on the pavement.  Knowing that your death is upon you, your decision-making skills spring into action.  I ordered the "de Throwdown Wafel" - the waffle that beat Chef Bobby Flay on the Food Network's "Throwdown" television show.  It is a wafel covered in spekuloos and whipped cream.

If you're like me, you may be thinking "What the F is spekuloos?"  Basically it's like Nutella but instead of chocolate and hazelnuts its a thick, rich, sweet spread made from gingerbread-type cookies.  If you have ever flown Delta Airlines and had their Biscoff Cookies, spekuloos spread is made with similar cookies -- a ginger, cinnamon-y, homey flavor in a rich, delectable, melty spread.  (Biscoff cookies sells their own spekuloos spread.  Trader Joe's also sells a spekuloos product called Cookie Butter.  Trader Joe's version is decent, but it is no where near as good as Wafels and Dinges' spekuloos.)

In my normal cynical manner, I would now like to launch into a tirade about how Miss LM dragged me through the frozen tundra of Central Park, causing me to lose seven limbs in the process due to hypothermia and then at the end of our mission the waffle was only "ehhh - so - so."  But I can't.  This darn wafel was one of the best things I had eaten in New York City the entire weekend.  Crunchy, crisp waffle smothered in melty spekuloos spread resting gently under two fat dollops of whipped cream.  Maybe it was the hypothermia talking, but it was one of the most beautiful things I had seen in my entire life.

  
Unfortunately, I had to remove my gloves to eat the Throwdown Wafel.  Within seconds, my fingers froze.  I stood in the winter wonderland of Central Park and tried to savor the wafel before my entire hand turned into a block of ice.  The wafel was sooooo delicious.  I was too busy shoving the wafel in my face to pay attention to what Miss LM eventually ordered.  But I do remember that she was equally as enamored of her delicious wafel.  

The long walk out of Central Park seemed much shorter with a yummy warm wafel residing in my belly.  Although the walk was still long enough to give me ample time to consider our journey into the center of the frozen wilderness in search of a wafel.  If I had not been with Miss LM, I would have never, ever, ever gone on the wafel frozen death march.  I would have been sitting somewhere warm but completely oblivious to the joyous bounty that is a Wafels and Dinges Belgian Wafel.  

For my blog post to commemorate 30,000 page views, the lesson I would like to share is that friends shine a spotlight on many paths you can take in this world - whether its advice on how to move forward in life (Thank you, Nicky G) or just information on a tremendously amazing, kick ass dessert.  The paths are not always easy ones and the rewards are not always certain or clear.  And then again, there are some people for whom you should not listen to or follow at all.  (Check out my blog post: "It's Not Easy Being Green.")  

There will always be difficult, challenging roads ahead of us.  Do we turn around, plop on the couch and watch "Real Housewives" instead of pursuing forward momentum?  Or do we man up, wrap another scarf around our heads and embark across the frozen wasteland even if we're wearing seasonly-inappropriate footwear?  Do we take the road less traveled?  Do we embrace what is difficult?  Do we rise to meet challenges or merely duck our heads in the sand hoping someone else will make our life's decisions for us?  (I'm still waiting to win the lottery, by the way ...)  

Sometimes the difficult journey itself is the reward.  And sometimes, just sometimes, there is a whipped cream covered prize at the end.

Thank you again LilyOnTheLam.com readers for continuing to tune in and read my blog.  I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.  Keep clicking those links and increasing that page view counter!  Happy 30,000 Page Views! ;-) 

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