This Labor Day afforded me the opportunity for a weekend in NYC to escape the drudgery of my prison-styled dorm room and cafeteria food. Unfortunately, getting there was an adventure in itself. Being the cheap bum that I am, I had ordered tickets from a Chinatown bus company online. Little did I know that saving those extra bucks meant getting totally lost in the middle of nowhere just to find the bus stop. And when the bus finally arrived an hour late, the driver wouldn’t even let me on, saying there was a mix up. I ultimately had to shell out $20 to another bus company for the ride. Despite the fiasco, the weekend trip was definitely well worth it. On Saturday, we spent the afternoon window-shopping in Soho, followed by dinner in K-town with an old friend, and … dessert on the West side. We went to Coney Island on Sunday, mainly to buy yet another aquarium mug for Melody’s collection, but also for me to fill in that missing piece of my childhood, when I enviously watched my elementary school classmates chow down on original Nathan’s hot dogs and cheese fries during a field trip to the famous (but now ghetto) Astroland theme park. Unfortunately, it’s just another one of those things that I had always wanted as a kid, but now that I can actually afford it, it’s no longer the same.