Eating chocolate cake from a bag...

...with Roxxie, of Girl Jock fame, sitting outside Cafe Doma on Perry Street, huddled over cups of tea like the Little Match Girl as the wintery winds whipped around us. The crocuses were regretting their eagerness for spring right about now, but inside Magnolia Bakery it was sugary-warm as always. Being a savvy former West Villager, I quickly steered Roxxie to the best thing in the house: the little squashed-looking flourless chocolate cakes, which are fresh and moist and very chocolatey, and umpteen times better than the suck-ass cupcakes. Roxxie got my West Village trifecta: tea and champagne at Turks and Frogs (where i had to go to pick up the bag full of seeds and garden info that I'd left there on my last visit), dinner at August (which was suiting the weather with Eastern-European Jewish grandma food: kasha with wild mushrooms, beef borscht with barley, and chicken in a pot), and more tea and those chocolate cakes snuck from the bag at a table at Doma. We talked about all the things people we knew from San Francisco used to do at parties. Naughty things. Things that New Yorkers don't do because they are too busy discussing real estate. Not that all the crazy people aren't moms and/or dads now, but still. We are rich in stories, and friendship.