I recently spent five awesome days in New York City, with a side trip to New Jersey for an Oscar party/poker game, attending my first View Askew vacation of the year. This vacation celebrated the one year anniversary of my first VA vacation where I actually connected with other people from the message board. The whole weekend centered around the NYC Comicon, which my lazy ass refused to get up early to go to, so for me the weekend centered around the surrounding events and meet-ups as well as just relaxing with friends. The trip started off at dinner at Junior’s, a restaurant near Times Square with some of the best cheesecake I ever had. I went with Crystal, Ed, Adam, Joe and Nicole and even though I was exhausted from taking the red-eye the night before, I still had an amazing time.

The next day, Brett and I decided to do some sightseeing and head downtown to Ground Zero, a site I haven’t been near since 1999. While we were there we went to the visitor’s center and got to see some artifact’s taken from the fallen World Trade Center. An interesting and emotional experience to say the leave. After that it was time for dinner at Virgil’s, Adam’s favorite BBQ joint (again in Times Square) and where he takes everyone when they are in NYC. Diners included Jon, Dom, Crystal, Nicole, Gavin, Adam, Joe, me, Brett and Matt (needing to be different by kneeling):

As with every event, the fun really happens at night, and this event was no exception. After catching up on sleep the next day, we all head off for the evening’s events at a bar called Stitch, where we had the Taming of the Askew, which was basically a fancy name for a night of drinking and debauchery. I’ll refrain from posting the more scandalous photos (not that there are any, of course) and stick to this tame one of Nicole and I.

Again, a full day of recover was required before heading to New Jersey for my last night on the East Coast. The night was meant to be spent playing poker and watching the Oscar’s, but somewhere in the night I forgot all about poker in favor for Oscar fun and lots of wine drinking, as can been seen by the wreckage Ming is looking through:

And the causes of said wreckage: Amy, Matt, Shane, Jen and me (note the glass we are using as an ashtray and the plastic wine glasses, we are so classy):

All in all, it was an awesome weekend from which I’m still recovering from lack of sleep. Check out all the photos on my Flickr page.

And yes, I’m working on another installment of the series I’ve been writing. I just need one more day to recover.