Light Horse Tavern, 199 Washington St., Jersey City

Pat and I have lived in our current apartment for almost a whole ten months, so clearly it is time to think about moving, right? SIGH. I never set out to be a drifter. Before Pat and I moved in together, I owned my house in the 'hood in DC for seven years. Then I moved four times in six months. Now we're considering moving again.

And we really like our current apartment. It is marvelous, with high ceilings and huge windows, in a building with character and nice staff, in a great location convenient to 4 subway lines, and it is plenty spacious for two people. But of course, in a couple months we'll be three people. And we could save a boatload of money by heading across the Hudson. And there are the darned boiler noises which wake me up usually several times a night, and the maintenance staff seems confounded by this.

We spent Saturday touring four apartment buildings in Jersey City, and particularly liked one called The Pier, which sits, go figure, on a pier. Being in the building was very much like being on a cruise boat. It is hard to weigh the trade-offs of moving there. Pluses include saving money, getting more space (and excellent views, by the way), and being more convenient to Pat's family. Minuses include negative reviews of the building online (it is hard to know how much weight to give those), moving at all, trading known problems (boiler) for unknown ones, and being in totally lame, boring Jersey City rather than Manhattan. We would still be just a four-minute PATH ride or eight-minute ferry ride from Manhattan, and we can't expect to take much advantage of being inside the city anyway once the baby arrives, but as Pat points out, it will be that much more of a challenge when we do want to take advantage, if we're across the river.

I don't know.

Anyway, in the course of our exploration, we had dinner at the Light Horse Tavern, and it was great. Pat had actually been to this place once before, for a work dinner. Our very friendly waiter told us that the new chef had been there just 2 days and was quite ambitious, including offering a special of lobster tempura atop duck l'orange atop a....heck, I can't even remember anymore -some sort of mushroomy pancake-type thing. I was willing to give it a whirl and was relieved that it was not as over-the-top as it sounded - just a great (basically non-orangey) leg of duck under a welcome chunk of battered lobster and atop a tasty carb base, also with some sautéed spinach. Yummmmmm. Pat was also pleased with his meatloaf and mashed potatoes. He also had a great parsnip soup that I ate a lot of, although the shrimps in his shrimp cocktail were fairly measly - the only negative worth noting.

I'm not ready to give Jersey City a rating yet but the Light Horse Tavern gets two thumbs up.

Amelia's Bistro, 187 Warren St., Jersey City

I still have alarmingly few friends in New York, so it is with sadness that Pat and I had a sort of a goodbye dinner for his fun coworkers Jen and Brian last night. They are moving to London. Which means there will still be opportunities for us to see them, but they will not be part of our small crowd of New York friends any longer. I sigh wistfully, but obviously we wish them the best, and they deserve it.

For this dinner I made my first ferry crossing of the Hudson River, to Jersey City. It was cool. Much cooler than a subway ride. The ferry ride back, after dark, was particularly cool because we got to admire the lit-up New York skyline for 8 whole minutes. Quite romantic for Pat and I and the ferry's one other passenger at 9:40ish PM.

Amelia's Bistro is a neighborhood favorite of Jen and Brian. It was Monday Lobster Fest, which meant a $20 whole lobster for Pat (normally $25). I wanted lobster but also wanted pasta (still feeling nauseous at 16 weeks of pregnancy, which is not the way it's supposed to work....grrrrr), so I got the lobster fettucine. It was satisfying, although I wish the sauce had had more flavor. Brian and Jen both had the fried chicken, a previous winner for them, and we all enjoyed an appetizer of funky mozzarella sticks with some sort of meat wrapped in a kind of an eggroll wrapper, sort of.