Tuesday, August 19, 2003
And return I have!
I am back from my sojourn on the Cape, and was it ever good times! It's supposed to be about a two hour drive from my house to the house we stay at on the Cape, give or take a little. I'm not certain how long a drive it was on the way there, but it was most assuredly a good sight longer than two hours. This was due to the massively gridlocked traffic which greeted us as we attempted to reach our goal.
But we are not a family to be deterred! The fact that the road we were on only went in one direction did not influence us in the slightest. No sirree. We would have trucked on irregardless.
Eventually we got there. It's a very nice house, almost a pruriently nice house. Directly on the water (we're talking a 'private beach' type of 'on the water'), and a lovely place even without the opportune property placement. Thusly, we spent much of our time on the Cape sitting around. Out on the deck, inside with the doors open for the sea breeze, etc. I read four books, started a new comic, and did two fairly involved 'real' sketches (one in pastels, and therefore bad. the other one's ink and came out tolerably).
For dinner that first night (Friday) we went to this restaurant called Lucious Louie's which my father, for unfathomable reasons of his own, calls Lucious Lips. He calls it this every single time we drive past it, without fail, which drives my brother completely conkers and, therefore, amuses me. The food's pretty good, but we had to wait for*freaking*ever before we got seated.
So I mucked about with my cell phone. It turns out that I can check my email from my phone. Presumably I can respond to it too, but I didn't bother. It is very hard to type things out on a phone keypad. I discovered this because I went onto AIM with the phone and tried to have conversations with Jess, Corey and Kate simultaneously. Didn't work particularly well, and my loverly language and mannerisms were all shot to hell by the necessity of shorthanding it.
Ugh. It pains me to speak like an illiterate, because I know that I get extremely fed up extremely quickly with people who pepper their IMs with such ridiculousness. It's one thing to abbreviate (S'scott instead of Swampscott, and the like), and it's one thing to twist english to your own evil uses if that's your mode of speech (thusly, somesuchathing, and the like). But it is quite another to consistently use '2' for 'to' or 'too', to say things like 'wz^? s.o.s.h', or, perhaps most heinously of all, to use such phrases as 'i h8 u', 'sk8r boi' in seriousness. If you are not using these phrases with the express purpose of mocking them, you deserve to be taken out back and shot repeatedly.
And then your bullet-riddled corpse should be boiled. And then fed to ravening sharks. And then the sharks should be cut into little pieces, and people should take the pieces and burn them. And then jump on the ashes. And then maybe shoot whatever's left, just to make sure the point is well taken.
But! I digress.
The next night was my parents' anniversary (23rd, I think), so we had a fancy dinner. Chillingsworth's, you know. Exceedingly fancy, exceedingly delicious. Ridiculous number of courses. Very small but very flavorful portions. That sort of a restaurant. Anyways, it was a very nice dinner, very pleasing to my palate. But I had to dress nicely, which is always a shame.
'Course, I hadn't brought any particular accessories or anysuchthing, so I just wore the same necklace I always do. Alas, my mother called me on this.
Mom: You really broke out the fancy jewelry for this, huh?
Me: Um. Er. It's my necklace.
Mom: It's a headband.
Me: But I like to wear it as a necklace.
And it is, in fact, a headband. At least, that is it's intended purpose. But I like to wear it as a necklace. It's like a black choker thing, only, being a headband in all technical ways, it's much more comfortable to wear. And we all know my first rule of wearing-clothing: Comfortableness. Right-o.
That night there was the most impressive electrical storm I have ever seen. It started around 11:00, 11:30, and continued until well past 1:30, by my account. Usually, in the height of a lightening storm, you get flashes of lightening and cracks of thunder maybe once a minute. And usually you don't even see the actual fork of lightening itself, you just see the flash.
This was continuous lightening, every second, during the hours mentioned above. Continuous. Flash flash flash flash flash. Continuous rumble of lightening, with crackles whenever something hit particularly close to shore. The forks of lightening were ridiculously visible. For someone with a fear of thunder storms, this would have been the one that left them crouching under the bed, clutching a blanket around their head, rocking back and forth, murmuring wildly to themselves about penguins with fedoras on.
Personally, I felt like applauding. I mean, Someone, Somewhere, was putting on one hell of a show, and it seemed only appropriate.
nature's own magnificent bug zapper
The next morning was suitably cooler, and it rained fitfully all day. We were supposed to go on a Seal and Bird Watching boat tour, and we got as far as sitting on the boat, but it was not to be. The captain of this worthy vessel was on the radio with some of his colleagues, debating whether or not the weather called for a cancelation. The woman he was speaking with over the radio said that the Coast Guard had called in to say that there was a 'massive' system moving towards us, and that Bourne had been 'smashed' by it, and that she couldn't remember a time in the past when the Coast Guard had called them, so the situation must be absolutely grave.
On this recommendation, the trip was called. Everyone went back to the little office thing to get refunds. The family ahead of us asked the woman if they should go into Chatham, to see what there was to see, but she told them in no uncertain terms that that was in the path of the storm, and that they would do much better to go straight back to their hotel and stay put. Evidently, the Storm of the Century was tearing that end of the Cape to little tiny bits, and it would better to stay out of the way.
My family had a craving for fudge, and my mother had a thought that the nearest fudgerie was in Chatham. Storms be damned! We wanted fudge! We would not be gainsaid! Not even by the evil weather gods and their determination to wipe Cape Cod off the map! No family of cowards, we. When we get on the scent of fudge, it would take more than a mere earthly atmospheric disturbance to turn us away.
We went to Chatham, where it was quite crowded and the fudge was quite good. The sky did nothing more than look sullen and spittle a minute bit. Chatham, it transpired, was utterly free of anything even remotely resembling storminess. Presumably Bourne also survived their brutal battering at the hands of a few fitful drizzles.
Then it was Monday and we drove home.
That hardly seems to cover the time we spent there, but, as I said, there was a lot of sitting about and reading/drawing/getting mildly sunburned going on. There was also a good deal of eating in, and eating out, and going out to get food to eat in. A good trip, by all accounts.
Tonight I went to see SWAT with Jess. There's not too much that can be said about it. It is exactly what you would think it would be; that is, it's an action movie with little plot (and the little that exists is utterly unimportant and probably should be ignored). No one, however, would go to see this movie for the plot. You go to see it because it's a fun movie where things and people get shot at and usually shot up. It's a fun movie where people use silly dialogue that's so bad it makes you giggle. It's a fun movie where LL Cool J takes his shirt off, and it's a fun movie with a lot of Colin Farrell in it, and this is a Good Thing.
A good movie to see, in short, if you like to see Colin Farrell, or Big Guns and Things Exploding, or if you like to see both. Appeals to both the ladies and the gentlemen that way, see. It's a movie you don't have to think about at all to see, and, quite frankly, it's probably much better if you don't think at all while you're watching it.
Just sit back, watch things explode or get shot, watch Colin being his very attractive self. This is all that you need to do.
For actual movie merits, this would get maybe Two Paws up, probably more like One or One and A Couple of Claws but Not All the Claws on the Paw. For sheer, mindless entertainment value, it's going to get Three Paws up. Don't go into it expecting a cinematic masterpiece, but go if you're in the mood to be simply and uncomplicatedly entertained.
Things Which Are Good About Going to College So Very Soon:
-University of Michigan football games
-new levels of sweatpant/tshirt-wearing joy
-meeting lots of people whom I have *not* known for at least six years. So fresh and new and whatnot. These people have no preconceptions, other than what they will undoubtedly immediately think when they see the hair
-getting new Mac laptop computer (this one has me obscenely excited)
Things Which Are Bad About Going to College So Very Soon:
-having to use communal bathrooms
-chemistry classes
-leaving the crowd of people whom I have known for at least six years and usually more. What if no one gets my humor there? Who will be sarcastic with me at movies and with regards to passerby and life in general?
-having to share my stereo
There's more of each, but those are the salient points as they stand right now.
I am off to bed like an evilly hitchhiking, trespassing, overly aggressive zebra mussel.
I dare you to get that joke.
1:35 AM
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