1.15.05
I walked into Starbucks’ today and while I was waiting for my overpriced cup of sugar and caffeinated goodness, I noticed a guy sitting in one of the comfy-chairs reading Guns, Germs, and Steel. That’s the book I’m reading for Tutorial, so I did something I rarely do (but wish I did more often) and went over and struck up a conversation with him about it. He’s reading it for fun, likes it, but sees my point that Diamond tends to repeat himself unnecessarily and is a little too hung up on trying to prove that the development of cultures is completely independent of race. I think that it’s not necessarily fair to base it all on race, but the fact that that’s been the dominant theory for...well, forever...lends it some kind of merit.
Anyway, I’m sitting in Starbucks’ reading this book across from the guy who’s also reading this book, and it’s kinda amusing, but not really. As I’m reading, a group comes in and takes seats at the table behind and to my left. It was a group of a mother, three girls ages 12-14ish, and a boy no older than 8. And they start talking, and they’re chatting in Southern accents that I’m damn glad I don’t have, but it was kinda nice to hear over my shoulder. And they’re talking loudly, so I’m enjoying the accents for about five minutes, and then they start talking about the differences between ‘going out’ and ‘dating.’ Loudly. In an increasingly grating Southern accent. While I am trying, in fact, to get some reading done. Half an hour later, I looked at the guy across from me and said ‘I have to go,’ and left before the Southern couple behind me had reached any conclusion. I don’t really need a conclusion, though, so I didn’t feel guilty hauling ass out of there as fast as Bradley would take me.
Since I got home, I’ve considered NSLC/Passages scheduling, considered Ramen (which I probably am gonna make in a moment), talked to people and fallen to the level of watching figure skating because yes, Virginia, there is nothing else to do in your capital city. I was gonna go to a hockey game with the Carter, but she bailed for Mark, which I can understand fully. So I’m here. Watching the Jets/Pitt overtime. Because the boys got me into football this break, in the absence of hockey. So that’s happening.
I realized earlier today that I haven’t updated since that brief one at Alex’s a few days ago. I didn’t cover the last few days of my trip up there. I can’t, however, tell you exactly when I cut the entry off, because LiveJournal has suffered a major concussion and is currently displaying only a white background with black text as they sporadically update on the results of a massive power outage. Oopsies.
Fortunately, my adventures in Stratford were remarkably similar Saturday and Sunday. We slept until threeish in the afternoon, scrounged up something to eat, hung out until five or six or so, and then went to a random friends’ house for poker or Halo or DDR or both. Friday night was Evan’s, Saturday Baxter’s, Sunday Aaron’s, and only one person who reads this knows who those people are, so there. I lost $15 of the $25 I’d won on Saturday night, Alex made me watch Moulin Rouge, and Sunday we watched Robin Williams’ standup and then played Halo. Lots of Halo was played overall, in fact, and I’m glad my XBox hasn’t fallen into disuse over the break. In fact, it probably got more love in the last few weeks than it got all semester. At least until Rob discovered I had it.
Monday, though, kicked some kind of ass. Since we didn’t go to Vermont, we decided to go into the city for my birthday, and it was probably a lot cooler than Vermont...if by ‘cooler’ I really mean ‘more fun.’ I’m not a big skiier, and most of my New England friends are, so when I go, all of the people go off and do their black diamonds and I fall down the green circles and it usually isn’t social or fun. So staying in Stratford was preferable, especially with the New York City tacked on the end.
So Monday dawned bright and clear – and I know this for a fact ‘cuz I was up at seven to take Alex’s mom to work so we’d have the car to get to the train station. (7am comes early when you’re up ‘till fourish chatting the night before. Still, it was a conversations I greatly enjoyed and it was worth it.) At the station, I was trying to coordinate with Adrian about when and where we’d meet, so I was sending him a text on the platform. I heard Alex say something about ‘hmm, is that a [insert name of train here that I don’t remember] and I heard the horn blast and suddenly a fucking rocket train from hell blasted by me, blowing me back a few steps and scaring me nearly to the point of tears. Little-known fact about Erin is that she’s irrationally terrified of trains. So this wasn’t just me-being-startled-by-a-swiftly-moving-and-unexpected-object. This was one of my personal demons, and I swear, I almost cried. I was shaking for the next half hour or so, and when we got off at Grand Central (after meeting Emily on the train, woo!) I couldn’t get away from that thing fast enough.
We met up with a friend of Emily’s in the terminal (which is awesomely decorated), a student in art school and a neat girl. She showed us around the city – through areas whose names I don’t know but that were delightfully decorated and entertaining. We had lunch at Lombardi’s, which is as good as they say it is. Lacking anything better to do, we met up with Adrian and saw the Phantom of the Opera movie, which was better than I expected, but I was underwhelmed with the two leads. Christine’s too young to have the powerful voice she’s supposed to, and the Phantom, though he had great resonance, wasn’t really as tragic or dark or brooding as I thought he should have been. Still, the staging was fantastic and I’d really love to see it onstage.
After the movie, which was crazily priced, we parted ways with Emily’s friend and found a sushi place which was great – although there’s not a lot of sushi I’ll turn down. We hit up a Starbucks’ (because they’re everywhere and I was sleepy), hopped back down to the subway (a train derivative that combines my other irrational fear – electrocution – in that lovely third rail), waited and waited and waited for our train, and made the theatre for Chicago with a few minutes to spare.
The kickass thing about the Times Square TKTS book (beside the fact that they gave me a button which I used to hold my purse together) is that you get half-price tickets for decent seats. We were sitting in the side set of seats, but we were also row B. Since it’s a theatre and not, you know, a logical place, we were fourish rows back...but still. I was within spitting distance of a Broadway cast. I could hear their voices without mics (and the feed from the speakers to my right was a bit of an annoyance) and I could see their faces without makeup and wow, it was incredible. The set was kickass too – just a bandstand. I think Alex enjoyed watching the band (and the bassist that played tuba) more than he enjoyed watching the show, but such is his nature. The props consisted of chairs and occasionally pom-poms or flow-in striplights. The costumes were all black. The lights weren’t fancy, but they were well-designed. I’d love to see it again – although I think there aren’t many shows I’d only like to see once.
After the show, we went to a diner where people who want to be on Broadway but aren’t work and sing karaoke and the like. The four of us ordered an ice cream behemoth of scoops and brownies and bananas and who really knows what else. And we ate it. (Except for the brownies, which were a little hard.) And Anjelica and Stacey showed up and it was cool to see them, however briefly. Adrian took a cab back to his car (‘cuz the kid drove into New York City, and the three of us got back on a train bound for home. We got into Stratford around two, went to sleep, and got up around eleven the next day.
I updated about my travel day home; it was an adventure. I covered every method of transportation except for boat. Planes, trains, and automobiles. Took the rail-creature of death from Stratford to New Haven, changed trains there (didn’t fuck it up! I rock!) took a train to Hartford, got picked up by Sandi, who kicks ass, and she drove me to the Hartford airport. Then began the great plane shuffle, I wound up in Richmond through Charlotte, and my bag wound up in Richmond through Philly, approximately eight hours later.
The following days have been, you know, days in Richmond. Hung out with Andrew, read a little, watched a ton of TV, had lunch with Eisenman (crazy, I know, went to Friendly’s with Keith and Kenji and Kitz and Kimmah and Megan, had my car stolen, got it back, played poker with the usual suspects on Thursday, made back half of what I’d bought in on the last hand (kickass), climbed a bit, hurt a lot, tried getting up early, failed, and now I’m here, wondering where everyone has gone and getting ready to play Rack-o, which I think would be lots and lots of fun drunk.
This will be posted in So There, because I’m trying to get dragoness.com back on its feet, and if I pay attention to it, maybe you will too. That, and LiveJournal’s down. So yeah.