In which I travel for twelve hours and end up right back where I started from a week ago.
I got up at seven this morning (that’s FOUR in the fucking MORNING Pacific time, my babies, but WHO’S COUNTING?) and met my car in front of Jake’s condo at 7:20. Arrived at La Guardia twenty minutes later, checked in at American Airlines and then shambled through security.
Flew to Chicago. Ate a burrito.
Flew to Seattle. Ate a cheeseburger with no burger and extra cheese. (I didn’t order the extra cheez, they just made it that way.)
Flew to Walla Walla. Ate a slice of apple pie.
Kissed my dog. Reset the time zone on my netbook and iPod Touch and realized it was five, not eight. Uploaded and titled and tagged much of the Bodacious New York Vacation Set.
Am truly dead tired, and not entirely sure that I’m glad to be home. Had so much fun in the city, even when it was pretending to be Portland and rained all over me, that leaving was a letdown the comforts of home have failed to assuage. *insert non-age appropriate emo sigh*
In other news, I regret to inform you that I have to re-relaunch Operation: Quit Smoking. Again. (Further experience indicates that perhaps the nicotine-replacement faction is right.)
In which your intrepid narratrix is really quite far behind with her material.
zOMG, I have so much to tell you! But I don’t have time to do it properly, so here’s a brief recap:
Wednesday night, Deboka and I went to her neighborhood pub and watched the Yankees game and talked. Thursday I went to the Metropolitan museum of art and ate Indian food in Manhattan… and then Deboka and I went to her neighborhood pub and watched the Yankees game.
Friday we went out for foule mudamas for breakfast, and then I packed and went to meet Vuboq. He and I stopped for a leisurely meal and margaritas, then went to Jake’s where we dropped our luggage. Then we took the train to the theatre district.
We saw David, world famous blogger at Someone In A Tree (link is potentially NSFW ’cause there’s occasional pix of near-nekkid menz), in Brigadoon, then joined him and the cast at a nearby pub after the show. Jake showed up, too. So much fun!
Well. Then it took five trains to get us home, but we made it eventually.
Today there was some sleeping in, followed by an excursion for brunch. En route, Jake got a call: his grandmother had passed, and he had to go be with his family. Vuboq and I found food and bloody marys.
Now, two hours of down time. Tonight, the Halloween parade in the Village and meeting up with a few more NY bloggers. Tomorrow at the asscrack I’m taking a cab to the airport and flying home. Such a whirlwind weekend!
Pics and anecdotes to follow… when I get home.
In which it’s Day Two, and much of Day Three. Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week!
Slept in. Hung out with Deboka and talked and had tea. She went to write a paper, I got online to upload images and read and write. (Not as much wi-fi as I’m used to around here, so I was out of the Twitter loop almost entirely.)
Deb went to school, and I finally got hungry and got cleaned up and went out.
Later, my friend Steven (Derby) from college sent a car for me and I went to his house to visit. My driver had no idea where I was going, and spent the half of the trip he wasn’t telling me about his wife and his lack of sleep talking to Steven about how to get there. “I know Brooklyn, but not Queens and not Greenpoint,” he said. (Greenpoint is in Brooklyn, so no, he doesn’t know Brooklyn.) And “I left my GPS at home.”
I had such a great time at Steven’s. I sat at the island in the kitchen while he and his partner nibbled on dinner, I got the tour (very cute apartment), I met the mini-mini daschund, I had cocktails, I listened to music in Steven’s studio. Fantastic people, fantastic evening, fantastic time. Around midnight I threw myself out because I knew my host had to be at work in the morning. He called me a car that dropped me at Deb’s door.
I went for a walk. It was midnight and raining, but I needed some exercise and to think. And I had an umbrella in my purse. And I’m on vacation. I got my feet wet. I pondered what it means to be “too hard on yourself,” because Steven said it to me – on the subject of my singing – at least three times. Clearly he was trying to get a point across. But what? Am I too hard on myself as a vocalist? He’d also said, “You’re making it too complicated” a couple of times, and I do know what that means. I’ve always done that. It means, The solution you cognized and rejected fifteen minutes ago as being too simple? That’s the one you want.
(I have a weird brain. I wonder what would have happened if I’d been educated by people who were good at education. Would I have turned out brilliant?)
When I woke up this morning, the apartment was empty. My phone revealed that if I could get to Deb’s school by eleven I could get awesome Chinese medicine action at deep discount but it was a quarter ’til. I got dressed and went out.
I decided to go out to Coney Island and take pictures. Yeah, it was raining, but I thought it wasn’t going to get that bad
It got that bad. I got off the train, walked around, took only a couple of cell phone pics to prove I’d been there, got drenched, and went back to the station.
When I got back to Deb’s neighborhood I stopped and ate. More falafel!
Got ‘home,’ de-drenched (I was freakin’ SOAKED from head to toe) and promptly took a nap. Now it’s seven and I think it’s stopped raining. I may go out for dinner, maybe see if there’s a movie I want to watch. My coat is still wet, and the shoes I had been wearing may be ruined, but I have a down vest and my Birk knock-offs so I should be alright.
Tomorrow I’m thinking will be museum and/or little India day. Friday will be VUBOQ! and Jake! and I’m soooooo excited to see them, plus maybe meet some other NY bloggers IRL on Saturday…
In which I dive into my vacation in earnest.
Sunday I got up at the ass crack and showered and dressed, and G’ma graciously drove me to the airport for my 6:50 flight to Seattle. The flight was as short and uneventful as always. (I like Horizon Air.) At SeaTac, I had a breakfast sandwich at a Wolfgang Puck’s. It cost ten bucks, but the eggs were good.
The non-stop from Seattle to Newark was too long; the flight attendants did three entire beverage services. I did not get my requested window seat on either flight (although on the Horizon flight my long-legged seatmate swapped with me so he could stretch) and sleeping perfectly upright doesn’t really suit me so I napped only briefly. The captain landed us at EWR an entire half hour early, bless him, but it still seemed like I’d been in that center seat between two sleeping men for sixteen hours.
Grabbed my bag, deplaned, followed the signs to Airtran. Eventually got to airport station, caught a NJ Trans train heading toward Manhattan.
Deboka met me at Penn station and took me to her place to drop off my luggage. The F went out of service six stops from her own stop (it was Sunday night so I guess they decided to do maintenance) and we had to take a bus to her neighborhood but we got there eventually.
Then we went out for garlic pesto fries (I wanted something greasy) at a pub with the game on (Deb’s a hardcore Yankees fan) and talked our faces off.
It was AWESOME. I slept like a dead person on a nice futon with lots of down pillows. IN BROOKLYN.
Monday: got up and bathed and dressed and went out for Peruvian. Got Deb’s errands run – laundromat, dry cleaners, paper products – bought giant chai lattes, stopped by the apartment, then went into the city to meet her BF and BFF for an early dinner at Olive Garden at four.
Brooklyn looked so much like Brooklyn that it started to do some kind of self-referential loop in my head and practically seemed like a caricature of itself; I felt almost as if I were on a soundstage rather than a real place because all my previous experience of this place is through media… but then we stood in line at the corner Rite Aid for ELEVENTY HOURS to buy a freaking package of toilet paper because they have no competition and don’t have to offer anything resembling customer service and I snapped out of it.
At some point during the early afternoon, I started having PVCs (arrhythmia) and trying to have a panic attack. I kept having to consciously relax and breathe and get the fuck out of the interior of my body and start interfacing with MY FUCKING VACATION IN NEW YORK.
Despite my pushing the turnstile instead of stepping into it, and having to be buzzed into the subway by an attendant who could tell I was a tourist, we got to our four o’clock early and I spent half an hour getting the five-cent tour of Deb’s school. (She’s studying Oriental medicine.)
We sat at Olive Garden for a long time. The conversation was wonderful. (I love Deb’s friends. They’re seriously beautiful fucking people. I’ve never had so much fun at an Olive Garden in my life.)
We left to see Love Child. As we walked through Times Square, I told Deb I was trying to have a panic attack. She allowed as to how I didn’t actually strike her as being about to die, which relieved me, but I did keep having annoying PVCs. They’re scary. I don’t like them.
We picked up our tickets at will call. After nachos on a bar patio next door, we went into the theatre – great seats! second row! – and during conversation right before curtain, I began to have something of a personal meaning-of-life epiphany. Then the lights came up and I got sucked into what turned out to be a really great show. (And we only had to pay $4.50 for tix, because Deb’s a member of some club that gets her cheap seats. Bitch is hella cool, yo.)
Afterward, Deb took me to Don’t Tell Mama, a cabaret club. I love that place! So much FUN! I want to fucking work there: the staff consisted of a piano player and three singing bartenders with wireless mics, and they spend their shift doing show tunes and pop songs, with customers sitting in every few songs. An awesome, 60-something French woman did La Vie en Rose, a younger wannabe stage starlet did a hilarious and possibly original song about her gay boyfriend, a guy did some Oklahoma! numbers operatically, I did Skylark (pretty badly – I’ve never actually sung it before in my life) out of the standards book. I met two awesome chicks from the next table and the actor G. W. Bailey. One of the bartenders bought me a drink. It was a really, really fun place. I mean, if you have to tend bar, you might as well get to sing while you’re doing it. In New York. In the theatre district. Srsly.
We finally left the club and headed back to Deb’s neighborhood. We had omelets at a greasy diner at two in the morning and continued to talk and bond and communicate. I wasn’t in bed until after three. Fun, deep, intense, WHOLLY SATISFYING night.
Although my tummy was a little pissed about the late-night diner food. It was all, Um, hello? Why are you acting like you’re twenty-eight? Those Whirl-soaked eggs weren’t strictly necessary, thank you very much. I’m trying to work down here. Quit it.
In which there’s local news.
“Red Monkey downtown lounge opening Saturday. Ten TVs, a disco ball, VIP lounge, food, drinks and great vibe. 25 W. Alder.”
(3:52:19 PM) DslVelcro: hmm
(3:52:56 PM) mushlette: Ten TVs and a disco ball.
(3:53:00 PM) mushlette: WTF
(3:53:06 PM) DslVelcro: wonder what that is like
(3:53:20 PM) mushlette: it’s not even open yet and it’s confused about what kind of place it is
(3:53:33 PM) mushlette: Ten TVs = sports bar
(3:53:38 PM) mushlette: disco ball = hipster club
(3:53:45 PM) mushlette: both = Iowa
(3:53:51 PM) DslVelcro: lol
But zOMG, the menu [pdf] has portabello burgers on it! And caprese panini! And the place is on the very block I work on!
I’m totally going there ASAP, because no one loves disco balls and TEN GOBLINBOXES HANGING FROM THE CEILING IN CAGES as much as your intrepid narrator.
In which my eagerly anticipated and long awaited NEW YORK TOUR 2009 is nigh.
Luggage? Well, I didn’t buy a new case like I’d threatened to, but can use the carry on-sized rolly case at the house; it’ll be adequate and it’s smaller than the one I own.
Hair color? Check, I have an appointment after work tonight to get my roots done. Nails? Yeah, they look pretty trashy. I’ll go get a fill on Saturday while my laundry’s in. Will probably shave, too, just to feel cosmopolitan, even though no one will see.
Money? Well, turns out the band still owed me for a gig, so I collected on that today. I won’t be arriving in NY with quite all the extra padding I’d hoped to, but I’ll be fine. (In other words, I’ll be able to buy VUBOQ plenty of drinks on Halloween, and that’s really all that matters!)
Saturday I’m going to sleep in, then do my laundry and pack. (I’ll clean my room, too, so it’s nice when I get home. I really think that’s an important part of travel: making sure the home you return to is clean and welcoming.) Sunday I fly out of here at seven in the morning for a whole week away from my house, away from my job, and out of my routine.
Turns out that Deboka – oldest of friends and most righteous of women, with whom I’ll be staying for several nights – called me to confirm and organize the night before last, but I didn’t notice because I sometimes don’t look at my phone for two days. Gotta call her tonight.
Paper copy of flight itinerary? Check. Copy for G’ma? Yup. Even printed out the names and addresses of the people I’m staying with for her, because it’s old school and she’ll dig it. Confirmation email for the theatre tickets? Check. Better get a little cash to carry. Better make a pile of electronics chargers too, so I don’t forget anything when I pack.
Contact lens solution! Damn. Need to buy a bottle because I’m nearly out. Maybe a small toothpaste, too. My toothpaste tube is probably over 3.4 ounces. Does the limit apply to toothpaste? I hate being delayed in security; it’s such a pain in the ass. Better go check.
Weather! Pay attention to the weather. Isn’t it maybe gonna be raining this weekend? An umbrella might not be an inappropriate article to slip into my suitcase’s external pocket. Probably don’t need a coat, should be able to layer.
Vacation is so, so close. I’m so excited I could just pop! One and a half days left of work. One day of laundry and packing and last minute details. An early wake-up the next day, and then? AND THEN?! Dinner in Brooklyn, bitches!
In which I love my new job because they give me benefits!
I started here at the ol’ ISP/CLEC three months ago last week, which made me eligible for not only the first health insurance I’ve had in a decade but also free DSL! Free!
My dry loop was delivered by Qwest today. Oh yes it was.
I got to sit with the engineer while he set up my connection on the DSLAM (card 24, port 6!) and built my connection onto the router.
When I get home, I’ll need to tone the pair out of the apartment back to the demarc and connect it to the new loop, and then program the modem and plug it in…
…and then? And THEN I should have a FUCKING ROCKIN’ SOLID SEVEN MEGABIT PER SECOND FEED INTO MY HOUSE, ONE THAT DOES NOT GO THROUGH A QWEST DSLAM!
Squee!
In which I’m suffering today from the remnants of that most terrible and respected of hang-over symptoms.
I put in a day’s worth of overtime on Saturday. Afterward, I really wasn’t interested in going to the party I’d been invited to, but I figured that I’d really kick myself later if I didn’t go. It was the very first party I’ve ever officially been invited to in this town.
After a disco nap, I took a shower and dried my hair and went. (Note that I did not mention eating any dinner, because I didn’t.)
When I got to the party, there was a band rockin’ out in the living room and people all over the place. (And I knew a whole bunch of them. I’m a local! I recognize people!) Becca took me straight to the kitchen and poured me a double.
Before I’d finished it, I was singing. Did a short set with RB and Rocket and that cute accountant bass player. Got a fresh drink when I got off the bandstand.
Danced. Smoked (oops). Chattered. Had a good time. Drank another drink. (Note that we’re somewhere between 6 and 9 shots at this point.) Belatedly started eating bread. Pissed off some chick from the band. Apologized, because I hadn’t intended to and had no idea what had set her off. Showed some people my tramp patches, which required me to lift my skirt to my waist in back (which seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time). Had a great ol’ holler with some musicians. Abandoned the drink I’d been carrying around but not drinking and got a glass of water. Had a really intense conversation about nothing with a chick I met through Teh (now Ex-) BF. I threatened to crash in the guest room, but after more bread and another glass of water, I decided to drive home. It took another half hour to actually get into the car because I was having so much fun chatting with the last few stragglers at the party, who were all musicians.
I made it home and into bed.
Sunday I woke up on time with an aching body and a pounding head. I drank a glass of water. At ten, I got up and made myself a piece of toast and an egg and ate watching an episode of Doctor Who. Then I slept until four.
Today my back and neck are utterly screwed up from spending too much time in that damn old bed, and I still have that vaguely stressed feeling of embarrassment and unease. It’s not like I blacked out — I mean, I remember the entire evening and didn’t do anything wrong — but I feel like I stomped on a bunch of adorable baby puppies or something.
While it seems that the moral is ‘fun has a cost,’ I ain’t stupid: I know that only an idiot drinks a bunch of vodka on an empty stomach. Sheesh.
In which I indulge in a little pre-vacation bitching. Don’t even read this, my babies! Save yourselves! Run away!
Feet
I sit cross-legged in my office chair. This is because I am, by nature, a floor-sitter and I don’t really like chairs. Sometimes when I sit like this my feet go to sleep.
Right now my feet are asleep.
Throat
The vague itchy-tickle behind my left tonsil is still there. It’s been at least 36 hours since I noticed it. My throat seems to be a little phlegmmy.
Let it be known that IF I GET SICK RIGHT BEFORE VACATION, I WILL BE ROYALLY PISSED OFF.
Back
My bed is torture. My neck hurts, my back hurts, my muscles hurt, my arms hurt, my hands hurt… constantly. It’s a mess. Yoga doesn’t fix it.
I really need to get off of those 50-year-old totally sprung twin mattresses and on to a foam-core futon or something. Srsly. This situation is off the chain.
Brain
I like my job, but it’s slow. Not a lot of call volume, and only occasional projects. I’m working O/T on Saturday. I will probably watch Netflix vids most of the day and knit on my socks.
Happy Ending
The good news is, though, that I’ve survived my probation period at the new job and have just this week signed up for HEALTH INSURANCE and a DRY LOOP DSL!
And I got paid! I now have all of my NY money stashed. (I just need to stay the fuck out of it for the next nine days.)
And I finally got my swap package finished and mailed out; that’s a bit of stress off my mind. (It took me three months to finish the woman’s slippers; she sent me two cute purses and a camera strap back in August! I’m such an asshole.)
In which I try to explain my travel needs.
A few people have given me light-hearted shit about being able to ‘just take a week off and go to New York,’ like travel’s a non-essential behavior and I’m somehow lucky or greedy.
Well, I’m not. Looked at from a certain angle, my life could easily be described as shit. I happen to choose to spend my money on travel rather than other things because I need change to keep myself from going totally batshit.
I think “normal life” is cloying. I don’t want to think that, I just do. I can’t help it. (My gravestone will say, Familiarity bred contempt. Hah!) I need to run off and do something different every so often or I can’t pull off normal life with any degree of, ah, normalcy.
Normal life is boring. When I’m bored I disengage, and when I’m disengaged I sleep a lot and drink a lot. Which, as you know, is not really a worthwhile use of a life.
I’ve realized that I’m happiest when I’m dealing with new input. If I can get out of town once or twice a year, then I can deal with my 9-6 life, I can deal with sending off a third of every paycheck to my debt reduction program, and I can deal with mundane shit like laundry and cleaning the tub and doing the same stupid things day after day after day.
There, yeah, I said it: it’s stupid shit. Get up, bathe, eat, dress, work. Get off work. Eat dinner. Fuck off for a few hours. Go to bed. On the weekends, clean all the things dirtied during the week. Rinse and repeat. Suddenly six years have gone by! What’s the fucking point? Seriously.
C, writer of a blog I read, has suddenly gone off to the Middle East to be a civilian contractor. He’s living on a military base. I can’t stand how cool he is for having decided to go do that.
It also makes me jealous. He’s getting to work and travel at the same time. Since I never managed to get my shit together I don’t have the documentation to sell my skills that way. (Am I getting old enough now to have what they call regrets?) It’d be so cool to make money in different places all the time! I’d like to try getting sick of change for a change. That’d be a new one!
I’m also jealous of her; she, another blogger I read, was, like me, all boring and stable and mildly depressed. But then she broke up and has been footloose ever since. Every time I check up on her she’s somewhere else, and while she’s always broke she is also always grateful. Change is good!
I found a traveling support/hardware deployment job on Craigslist, but it’s based out of DC and requires top secret clearance (because the actual installations take place in government offices). I wonder if I could pass top secret security clearance? (Maybe. Hard to say. I’ve done a bunch of shady shit in my life, but none of it ended up on my permanent record.) [Actually, I’ve never really done anything shady. Just drugs. I just wanted you to think I’m interesting.] Of course, other than having a decade in tech support under my belt I don’t have any certifications that would make me an ideal hardware installation candidate… all I have is maturity (ahem) and an unfettered availability to travel. I wonder if that’s a salable commodity?
In other words: BASED ON THE COMPLAINING IN THIS POST, GUESS WHO NEEDS HER GODDAMNED VACATION ALREADY?!?!
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* I talked about wanting to be a flight attendant here.
VSCO
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4 random books from my Library!
