My Fourth Month as a New Yorker

Whew. October was one busy, crazy, wonderful month. Especially after my rough September, October was a total gift filled with more fall delights than I can even possibly recap. There is something I love about all the seasons, but if I had to pick just one, fall would edge ahead due to its amazing weather, crazy colorful leaves, apple cider and Halloween-related activities.

At the beginning of the month I made fun of my friend Katie for saying that all of her weekends in October were already booked, and not soon after the same thing happened to me. Some things didn't end up happening, some last-minute plans were made and suddenly it's November and I've officially been a New Yorker for four whole months. Add that to the two months I spent here in the winter, and I've now been in New York for more than half of this year.

Here's how I spent some of my fourth month:

I visited Randall's Island for the first time and went to the saddest fall festival I've ever seen, spent a gloomy Sunday at Rockaway Beach, impulsively bought candy corn and ate it for breakfast, had the most amazing vodka sauce pizza from Rubirosa, cannoli from Little Italy and saw the Poe exhibit at the Morgan Library.

I spent two days pilfering the free samples at the Martha Stewart American Made event, stood five feet from Martha Stewart while she shared packing tips and I tried not to die of happiness, my uncle came to visit and we went to pick up eBay purchases from a guy who lived with the most amazing view of Manhattan, then we went to the Japanese garden show at the New York Botanical Garden and finally saw the Four Seasons sculptures up close.

We wandered through the Haunted Pumpkin Garden at the NYBG and took a tour of the beautiful grounds, I went leaf peeping in Central Park and found the most amazing tree, had my first street nuts of the season, took a work field trip to New England and had an enormous bed and fancy suite in the cutest little inn all to myself.

I went to a free Architecture Week lecture about Grand Central Terminal (and will never look at the building in the same way again), found our way out of the Amazing Maize Maze at the Queens County Farm and rewarded ourselves with apple cider and an apple cinnamon doughnut, Mozart took a liking to my end table crate and we shared a lot of special moments (as always).

We took a day trip to Sleepy Hollow including a stop at Washington Irving's Sunnyside, the gorgeous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the Rockefeller's Kykuit estate which overlooks the incredible Hudson River Valley, and gawked at more than 5,000 pumpkins at the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze.

November should be a little calmer, although I have a few things already on my calendar: a Cat Power solo acoustic show (!), a weekend visit from my friend Brianna and of course Thanksgiving-related festivities including the Macy's Parade and balloon inflation. I'm also excited for all of the Christmas festivities to begin, and my December is already starting to fill up with seasonal delights.

I'm totally grateful that October's weather has been so lovely (i.e. we're basically having a drought), but I'm actually hoping for a lot of snow this winter. Everyone I know seems to be dreading winter in the city but I say bring it on.