a friendly face

My movie buddy/friend decided to spend time with me to celebrate the retirement. He was concerned that the day might have been difficult and I'd need to see "a friendly face". Although the day had been nice so far, I could always use a friendly face. He brought me a retirement present - a bubble gun I'd mentioned seeing a kid playing with - now I have to get batteries.
Since we'd gone to a movie on Monday, we had to think up something else to do. So we parked the car, went to Grant's Tomb - the ranger let us in! My friend walked to the top, near the dome and looked around - it was a spiral staircase ... I stayed on the ground level. It was very cool - I hadn't been inside since I was a kid.
We then walked back to the car and since we were facing west, waited for the sunset - sometimes there's a great sky show - last night wasn't one of those times. As we were watching the cars on the West Side Highway, we talked cars amid other topics.
We went to the East Village to check out a new Kosher restaurant - the food was good, the prices great, the neighborhood ROWDY. We walked around the block before coming back - there are TONS of restaurants there - I can go back and sample.
We found an interesting bookstore - only window shopped as entering one of those places can be devastating to the wallet. We found a Japanese market - on the second floor - OMG, it had EVERYTHING in it - cosmetics, food, toys, condoms, cooking pans, dishes/bowls, chopsticks, frozen food, fresh food ... I bought some seaweed, a soup mix and a pesto mix. Even the snow pea pods were less expensive there. We're clearly returning to that neighborhood - there's even a movie theater nearby, so we have NO excuse.
A wonderful way to cap the day!