Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Still working on finding a photo site for the art gallery, although I'll admit that I've been doing so rather half-arsedly lately. I've other things to do. Such as packing towels and the like into big cardboard boxes, and worrying my little mind over what will be leaving my current abode later this month, and other such goodness.
The fact that I can't bring all of my books is causing me no end of mental anguish. Well, obviously I couldn't bring all of them, since I have an unreasonably large number (picture an entire wall of my room, plus various piles on the floor), but surely I could bring the ones I am most likely to reread over and over again. Like the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series, and Ender's Game, and all those Dumas books, and maybe a couple of Heinleins, and Catch 22 (which I read at least twice a year, and usually more often), and the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and my Sherlock Holmes anthologies (painfully addictive), and Corelli's Mandolin (which was such a good book and such a bad movie that the two media are almost ridiculous in their disparity of quality).
I should have underlined all of those titles, but I'm far too Slothful to type in all the little html tags necessary for that.
So. Went to New York this weekend. With Jess and Steph. To visit Leslie. The train ride out there was pretty good, we managed to get one of those little end things where there are 4 seats facing each other. We got bagelish goodness from Au Bon Pain beforehand, and I had an Asiago cheese bagel, which was surprisingly good. All soft and cheesy and whatnot.
The people sitting next to us on the train had two little girls, and they were going all the way down to DC. I did not envy them their journey. We, of course, were speaking loudly and animatedly on various subjects during the trip, but they seemed more mildly amused by this than annoyed. Which, you know, is nice. Anyways, about one or two stops before we were getting off (so we'd already been on the train for upwards of three hours at this point), the father sort of looks over at us and says, "So, I heard you're going to Michigan?"
Um. Yeah. "Big school, huh?" Yeah, it is. "So you ladies heading into New York?" Yeeaahhh... "Going into the city?" Um, we're visiting a friend. "Ah. And of course you won't be staying up late." Uh, no, of course not. Do we ever? Ha ha ha. Then he went back to sleep. Vurry strange.
Then we got to Leslie's house, after getting sort of lost in Stamford (I think) and having to ask directions at a convenience store. Which made Stephanie very uncomfortable, even though it was high noon and a public place. Although, to give her a little credit, we had just passed a town sign (you know, like parking hour notices) which read:
Drug dealers!
You will be prosecuted for dealing here!
Etc. etc.
Yeah, it was a bit strange to see. Not something we have here in good ol' S'scott. *shrugs*
We met lots of Leslie's friends, and reached the opinion that they are Cool Personages. We met Andy, her main squeeze, who is a male of the particularly attractive variety. He was also an eminently nice guy, and he was exceedingly considerate of us po' li'l outsiders. For instance, we were hanging out at a house with a bunch of people none of us knew, and Leslie had to go to someone's house to get something, and he had to go outside for something, but he stayed inside with us until Leslie got back so we wouldn't be all abandoned and whatnot. Right decent of him, it was.
We also met her buddy Natalia, who was very cool and seemed amused by my sarcasm which was, perhaps unfortunately, in rather rare form while we were there. We met Andy G., who was not Leslie's fella, but another gentleman of the name Andy. He was humorous and told stories very well. We met Nicole, who is going to Cornell and is therefore WoahSmart in my books. She was nice. We met Parjay (I butchered the spelling, but I haven't a clue) who was very funny and tolerant of Stephanie when Stephanie got going. Which she did.
But that's sort of another story, and probably one which shouldn't be related over the Internet.
I think we met some other people, but those are the ones I can recall. I've got a mind like swiss cheese, and I know it.
So the first night we all hung about at this other girl's house (Sarah something or other). At one point during the night, Sarah's evil crony-girl Lucy locked the fridge. It was strange and uncouth yet amusing. I mean, who locks the fridge? It's not even as though people were raiding it. I think someone took a can of soda out. Ooo, such evilness. But this girl breezed in, scolding left and right, and locked the fridge. Everyone reacted to this with two parts shock and one part hilarity.
There was music, and people were forced to dance the Cotton Eyed Joe, which I hadn't seen done since the last Bat/Bar Mitzvah I went to. It was frenzied. Um, then people had really serious but really, really loud conversations, and other such strangeness ensued.
We ended up staying awake until around 4:30 or 5 am, which made it a good 22-23 hours awake for me. It was an especially interesting evening, and all sorts of things both glorious and hideous occurred, and I had to be all responsible and whatnot. Over and over again. Thank cats Jess has got a level head on her shoulders even in the face of such insanity. Right-o. I think you should ask one of the participants in person if you want more detail, it's not exactly blog material.
Next day we went into the city. It was vurry vurry hot, but we managed to have good times. We went into the Village and checked out the neato little shops. Then we went into Soho and did the same. We walked past a Thai restaurant and I saw a cat in the window! I made us stop in front of the window so that we could stare at the cat and commune properly with it. It was a very nice little brindled tabby sort of cat, and it would rub the window when I put my hand up to it. Yeah. Cats rock.
Then we had dinner at the Olive Garden, because Stephanie absolutely insisted that we do so. The wait wasn't too bad, for Times Square. Walking to the restaurant was beastly, however, because it was already hot and muggy out, and there were twenty billion people milling about in the streets. Ugh. Not my cup o' coffee. But the dinner was good.
Then we went back to Leslie's town and stood around with some of her friends, trying to think of something to do. Eerily familiar, it was. When it comes to suburbia, I guess things really are the same all over. Then we went back to Leslie's house and had snackage, because we had had an early dinner, and it was about six hours later. Then blessed sleep. Leslie's house is very nice to sleep in, because they keep it deliciously cool. Jess and Steph seemed to think it was a little too cold, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Then we came home. The traffic was horrendous, and we very nearly missed our train, which certainly got the ol' adrenaline pumpin'. Then the only place we could find three seats mostly together was all the way in the front of the train, in the 'Quiet Car'. No cell phones, no loud noises, no prolonged conversations. Jess and Steph ended up sleeping. I finished reading Oliver Twist. Good stuff, that. Dickens is so much more fun to read on your own, as opposed to reading it in class.
My family went to the Lowell Spinners game that night.
that's them. you know, lowell, spinners, textile mills, all that historical jazz
I like the Spinners games, it's very informal baseball, and I can doodle all I wish. They were giving out free visors that night. Which turned out to be a good thing, because soon after we got there the skies opened up and an absolute deluge of rain came down. The visor kept the rain off of my glasses, which was nice.
So, we had ballpark food, and we stood around to see if the rain would stop. After a bit they called the game, not because of the rain, but because the tarp had gotten stuck and they hadn't been able to get it over the field. Thusly leaving things in a rather muddy way. We took a peek before we left, and the dugouts were literally underwater. Anyone in them would have drowned. It was funny, 'leastaways, to me it was.
But I got a nice free visor out of it!
Today I did absolutely nothing but sleep, which was good because cat knows I needed it. And I started listing up the personal effects which I wish to take with me to Michigan. Relatively speaking, there's actually not that much. Mostly artsy things, like my art markers, a couple of sketchbooks, a lap desk, and the like. Fun-ness.
And that is that.
12:25 AM
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