Labor Day weekend, as seen entirely through promotional photos

Another year, another Labor Day, am I right, readers? I enjoy the four-day-weekend (at my company I had Friday off as well), but I find it a little bittersweet as it signifies the end of summer Fridays. Thanks to having today off and some shrewd personal day taking I won't have to face the dreaded five-day-week until late September, but I already don't like where this is headed. On the plus side, Labor Day also heralds the coming of autumn which is my favorite season in New York. (I'd say it was my favorite season anywhere, but I grew up in a place without seasons, so I don't have that much of a frame of reference.) Autumn means the joys of baking, pumpkin everywhere, apple picking, cardigans, and not having to pay to run the AC all the time.

But enough about fall. I spent the last weekend of summer relaxing and enjoying the beautiful weather. I feel like this weekend was a repayment for last weekend's rain and being forced indoors. Per the usual, I didn't bring a camera along for any of my relaxing, but instead of I'm going to google the places I went and see what images best replicate my experiences. My new photo blogging philosophy is best summed up as: why bother to take photos if someone with a better camera and a degree in design probably already did?

Cool Haus is an awesome ice cream sandwich place that apparently has locations in New York, Austin, and LA. The New York location is right by the temporary roller rink under the Highline, but I think this place is the real draw. You can pick both your cookie and ice cream. The sandwich at the top of the second column probably best approximates my choices which were (for those playing along at home), cookie: oatmeal raisin, ice cream: balsamic date and mascapone. I also tried my friend's sandwich (which was most like the bottom entry of the center column seen above). She had strawberry ice cream with the cookie of the day which, on this particular day, was potato chip.

It's weird choosing a promotional photo for this one, since the new section of the Highline park has now been open a month or two. But this really it has it ended up looking, other than the people and grass being a little less animated. It was such a lovely day that for the first time ever I walked from one end of the Highline all the way to the other.

This photo diverges from my experience sitting on the grass in Hudson River Park in the following ways: 1) When I was there, it was closer to sunset, 2) He doesn't appear in this picture, but when my friend and I were there, there was some sort of kite whisperer--this old man who gave kites to all the children in the park. He made a pretty impressive display with kites and streamers. It's a very zen-like activity, kite flying. Even more zen-like is just laying on the grass and watching other people fly them and not having to worry about accidently getting entangled with some novice's tacky cow kite.

I sincerely doubt this is the actual make and model of my boyfriend's parent's grill, but I am quite certain the food we (er, I contributed by chopping vegetables) made was just as tasty as this appears. Also, we didn't waste our time with chicken wings.

Okay, so this one isn't really a promotional photo. But the only photo I could find advertising the annual 30th Ave Street Fair in Astoria (!) was a thumbnail. It's like they don't even want to promote it. At any rate, I didn't really intend to go to this so much as it was in my direct path to the grocery store. I consider it a personal triumph that I passed 3 mozzarepas stands and 2 funnel cake booths and still came out unscathed. (By "unscathed," I mean I only purchased kettle corn which is about the only fair food one can eat without hours later being reduced to a quivering pile of powdered sugar and regret.)

The rest of the weekend was either spent working on my books (for which no promotional photos yet exist, although I was sorely tempted to make a cover mock up for the Jimmy Wales bio using this image) or enjoying an excellent dinner in Brooklyn with friends (promotional photos really should exist for my friend's fantastic lasagna). I suppose not all experiences can be so easily marketed. At any rate, I hope you all had very happy Labor Day weekends and are looking forward to fall as I am!