September is one of the (if not the) best months in New York. Like the flip of a switch, the weather turns for 90+ degrees with 100% humidity to 70-degrees with lower humidity and less rain. It’s a beautiful month to live in the city and wow did we make the most of it.

RECAP OF THE MONTH

As I wrote in last month’s post I finished August and began September in Riverside. After three great days of eating, relaxing, and eating some more I flew back from LAX to JFK and had only a few days with Jenn before she boarded a flight to Long Beach to spend some time with her Dad before a work conference in Long Beach. While Jenn soaked up the sun in California, it was a weekend with Frasier and I. We tried a half dozen new food places for delivery, took more walks than I could count, and gave Jenn updates every hour or so on his well being.

On September 11th a few weeks before Frasier turned seven months old we had him neutered. I dropped him off first thing in the morning and at the end of the day, I took him home with his nice plastic cone of shame. I’ll never forget how out of it he was. I could tell he was trying to wake up but it just wasn’t happening. It wasn’t until about 8 PM that night that he really became fully cognizant of the cone and the surgery. Luckily Jenn was on her way home and arrived at our apartment at 5 AM the next day after taking a red-eye back from Long Beach.

His recovery started out perfectly. He was up and about in the next day or two and was fine at home without the cone. Unfortunately towards the weekend and the start of the next week he began to throw up after most meals. We took him to the Vet who wasn’t too concerned and changed his diet but told us if he continues to throw up to bring him back in. Well, Frasier in his infinite ability for perfect timing decided to throw up a couple of times right as the vet closed. We then rushed him to the 24/7 emergency Vet a couple of blocks away who ran a multitude of tests and couldn’t find anything wrong. Through the week he seemed to start to get some energy back and by the weekend he was back to about 90%.

Frasier in the waiting room at the emergency vet.

On Sept 19th Jenn and I celebrated our ten year wedding anniversary. Although we chose to actually celebrate it on Saturday the 21st. I was able to surprise Jenn with a bouquet of flowers and a photo book I had been working on for a month that captures the first ten years of our marriage. On Saturday though before we dropped off Frasier to be boarded Jenn took him uptown to 90th street to join fellow Labradoodles from Lewis Manor including Frasier’s sister Zelda for a romp in the park. From what I hear Frasier did incredibly and had a blast.

After we dropped off the little guy for the night, Jenn and I saw the movie Downton Abbey and then got ready for our celebration dinner at Eleven Madison Park a three Michelin star restaurant, and considered to be one of the best in the world (rated #1 in 2017). We arrived at 6:45 PM to our reservations that I made back in July (they sold out within a minute for the entire month) and were whisked away to the back corner of the restaurant where we had a corner table that overlooked the entire restaurant. We then were greeted and wished a happy anniversary by what felt like everyone in the place and then presented a box. The box was for our phones, and the idea is that they wanted us to enjoy the experience without any distractions. After taking a few photos we both had our phones whisked away and we spent the next four hours enjoying one of the most amazing experiences of our life. Each of the 10+ courses was expertly crafted and built upon the previous. Jenn stuck with ordering wine a la carte while I had their wine pairing which meant nearly 10 glasses of wine. The meal ended at close to 11 PM when we were given some Brandy and some chocolates and taken back to the kitchen for a tour that I had requested. I couldn’t think of a more beautiful and memorable way to celebrate ten years together.

One of my favorite memories of September happened on the Thursday of the following week. I had been reading the NY Times (like I’ve been starting to do more and more) and found an article about a new French pastry shop, Barachou, that just opened in the Upper West Side. I told Jenn it was only a 20-minute walk so we got Frasier and took him on his normal river walk and then onto the streets to the shop. It ended up being about an hour of walking but the pastry puffs were to die for and made for such an amazing and unexpectedly nice weekday evening.

As the leaves began to turn and the month came to a close we had one more Michelin dinner to go to, this time we chose to go to Cosme a Mexican restaurant in the Flatiron district that has been getting a ton of buzz including being named the #40 best restaurant in the world. Although I’m not sure it deserved that high of a ranking it was an unbelievable meal. The highlight was the duck carnitas (their signature dish) which was an entire duck with fresh tortillas that made us both swoon over every bite. I think I might have had a dozen tacos before the night was done.

We ended the month having a really nice dinner party in Brooklyn with one of Jenn’s colleagues and going for a second brunch at The Penrose in the Upper East Side. We took Frasier for an excursion to The Met and the Apple Store on 5th Avenue where we picked up Jenn’s new iPhone 11 in Red (I got my iPhone 11 Pro Max earlier in the month of course) and finished the month with our new Sunday routine of bathing Frasier. It was an unbelievable month (one of the best of the year), and it makes me even more excited for what the rest for 2019 has in store for us.

TV WE WATCHED

By far the show of September is Succession. It’s one of (if not our) favorite shows of the year. It is so brilliantly written and acted that like Game of Thrones we cannot wait for the new episode each week. We did wrap up the third season of The Good Place which I still consider to be one of the most clever shows on TV and watched Undone a new show on Amazon that’s premise was great but the execution left both of us sort of confounded.

BOOKS I READ (OR LISTENED TO)

What a month for books (skipping Robopocalypse) with two of my favorite books of the year. The Goldfinch which was one of the most mesmerizing, page turning, beautifully written novels I’ve ever read. I just adore The Goldfinch even if the movie flopped both critically and commercially (I’ll see it when it comes out digitally). The other book which I’m not done with yet is The Testaments by Margaret Atwood which is astounding in just how phenomenal it is. I never thought there was a need for a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale but she wrote one and half way through its brilliant.

MOVIES WE WATCHED

This month is all about two movies for me. Booksmart which is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen all year and Downton Abbey which was such a beautiful, simple and lovely movie to go see over a weekend. Neither of these movies will probably make my “best movies of the year” list but I’m so glad I saw both of them. The other two movies Godzilla King of the Monsters and Between Two Ferns were quite forgettable.

THEATER WE SAW

We sadly did not see a show this month. More to come in October!

GAMES I'VE BEEN PLAYING

As the leaves change so to do the games I’ve been playing. I assume next month this list is going to have a lot of different games (not all sports) on them but now the new batch of sports games are out so most of my month was playing the latest Madden, NBA 2K, and FIFA games.