Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Well, my computer is back and more operational than it was before. Sort of. Suffice it to say that I apparently have to use Internet Explorer to get online right now, as opposed to Safari. I frelling hate Explorer. Gah. It may be that another journey to the Mac store is in my near future.
Things are somewhat more interesting around here now that more people are home from college. And when I say 'somewhat', I actually mean 'several hundred times'.
For instance, a couple of nights ago Jess and I decided to drive aimlessly around, as we do when we're completely bored (i.e. nearly every night here). We did the usual Swampscott-to-Marblehead-Neck-and-back route, and then decided that a run to 7-11 would liven things up. Or, at the very least, it would supply us with enough sugar to make things appear livened up.
As we exited the car, we were blessed with a most startling sight. A young gentlemen, perhaps a few years older than us, was standing unsteadily on the sidewalk near 7-11. He had patchy facial hair, enormously saggy leather boots, and what appeared to be an oversized, dirty paisley (!) cape draped over his shoulders.
Upon catching sight of us, this apparition lurched forward a few steps and asked us, in what can only be described as an extremely drugged-out voice, "Do you know This Girl?" This Girl, obviously, is not what he said, but I'll refrain from reporting the lady's name herein, since she might not appreciate being associated with such a character as this. Then again, she might. She is a young lady in our grade who had graduated with our class. I'm not sure where she's at college.
In the interest of safety, we denied knowledge of This Girl. The fantastically-apparalled fellow then creepily asked, "Do you go to Swampscott High?" This we also denied, since in all truthfulness we no longer go there. "My name is Tim," he then said. "If you see This Girl, let her know I'm waiting for her." This really loses some of its humor value since you can't hear his voice through this blog, but I assure you that it was really quite spectacular.
When we came out of 7-11 he was taking large swigs out of plastic gallon jug of water. He had also made a coatrack out of a street sign. He had hung up a Marblehead sweatshirt on a coat hanger, a pair of shoes tied together at the laces, and just as we were leaving he removed his many-colored cape and was hanging that up too. We backed out of the lot rather quickly so that our hysterical laughter would not be apparent. Sometimes humanity is truly too awesome for words.
Later that night we saw two oppossums (or possibly the same oppossum twice)! Very big and very white and very, very, very glorious.
My mother and I went up to Plum Island recently to do some birding. It was great up there. We saw lots of shorebirds (mostly lesser yellowlegs, but also one killdeer which is one of the cutest adult birds ever and was literally a foot from the side of the road) and lots of warblers (about a million yellow warblers, a Wilson's warbler with its cute little black yarmulke, a blackpoll warbler which we at first thought was just another black and white warbler, and a Magnolia warbler which I'd been wanting to see forever and finally got to see!) and a couple of terns, a swan, a bunch of great egrets, all the purple martins in their purple martin houses, and more swallows than I had ever seen in one place at once. Literally swarms of swallows.
In short, it was a damn good day for birding at Plum Island.
Yesterday nothing much happened. We all ended up at my house ('we all' being me, Jess, Corey, Kate, Steph, Matt, and Noah) where we did a great deal of nothing. We looked through my pictures from school until it became pretty clear that the only one actually interested by this was me. Then we moved into the den to watch Corey's animation and his short movie (both hilarious and very well done, although I have to profess a preference for the animation, which may actually be one of my Favorite Things Ever). We also listened to Matt and Noah's tale of their documentary-making.
Then Kate went to drive home and blew a tire, so she had to leave her car here overnight and then hang around with my mother this afternoon waiting for triple-A to show up. Sorry, Kate. We all hope your car gets better soon.
Ah! In case you don't live here, or if you live in a very deep hole, you might like to know that gay marriage is now legal in Massachusetts! WOO YAY! I am, needless to say, extremely happy about this. All of the footage on TV looked just lovely... I kind of wanted to head down to one of the town halls to see all the happy people. Most of these couples had been together at least 10 years, and I think the statistics the Globe got showed that the majority were in their 40s. Clearly they deserved the right to get married.
You would think that anyone just watching these people get their licenses, seeing how utterly overjoyed it made them, would accept gay marriage as a good thing. I'm not going to get into the argument here, because it would take up way too much room and, quite frankly, just thinking about the people who try to say it's 'wrong' is making me angry. And as I'm in a tolerably good mood right now, I'm going to stop thinking about it, lest it makes me irreparably pissed off.
Provincetown looks like it would have been a lot of fun to be in that day.
Matt and Noah had been in Cambridge and Boston filming all of this for a documentary they're making. Apparently they had some mild adventures and got some really good footage. We'll wait until they've got it all edited together, and then we'll see what there is to be seen.
Today I went out to lunch with Noah. Naturally, he made me go to Friendly's. That has got to be the single most depressing restaurant crowd I have ever seen. We were literally the only people in there who were under 60 and over 5. But Friendly's is Noah's obsession, so eat there we did.
We then jaunted over to Waldenbooks, where I was strong and resisted the urge to buy anything, despite the fact that I saw several things I wanted. I WILL NOT BUY MORE BOOKS YET. Honest.
After that I drove him to the train station and waited in the car until his train showed up, so he could head back to Providence to move out for the summer. I am still marvelling at the fact that people can get to and from their colleges with such ease. I mean, cripes, if I want to get back to school I've got to either set up a plane ticket (which cannot be done very easily, or cheaply) or else I've got to drive about 12 hours. Everyone else can either hop a train or drive 40 minutes and there they are. Evil buggers.
I also got a haircut today (whoop de doo. infinite excitement) and watched some of the Swampscott/Marblehead tennis game with Jess. Both our brothers are on the team, and we know some of the other kids who play. They all lost, but hey, everyone loses to Marblehead. In tennis. We habitually kick their ass in football.
I got two new CDs... another one by Paris Combo, which is much the same as the others I have (i.e. french jazzy lounge singer goodness). I also got the Franz Ferdinand CD. Good stuff! I am enjoying it thoroughly. They play one of the songs somewhat often on FNX, and apparently they're rabidly popular in England, so I was surprised that people hadn't heard of it. Check 'em out, kids. They're highly listen-able.
Well, frell, this is long. Goodnight, cher reader.
9:26 PM
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