Best Saturday Night Ever?

Two weeks ago I had to go to DC to coach one of BU’s moot court teams at a competition. Said competition was over by Saturday afternoon, and after spending the afternoon walking around and visiting with an old friend, I decided to camp out in the (fancy) hotel room, get takeout, and watch TV. I really, really like staying in hotels. Also I was coming down with a cold.

Anyway, I went out, found thai food, and came back to start flipping channels. I got to TNT and it appeared that something terrible was on. Something terrible and maybe Japanese? Oh, no, wait! I had happily stumbled upon The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. YES. As any thinking person knows, the final chapter in the F & F series comes out this week. I KNOW! The first two were very entertaining, but I’d skipped Tokyo Drift on account of it seeming totally unrelated to the other two, and lacking the fine acting spectacle of either Paul Walker or Vin Diesel. But now that it was on TV and I had nothing better to do, I decided to watch. And I would like to provide sort of a “liveblog” of what I saw.

The below was written in an email while watching the movie, and only slightly edited for you:

I missed the first 10 minutes but it seems Slackjaw, our hero, is in Tokyo because his dad is in the Navy? People keep accusing him of being an Army brat and he keeps denying it, and then we got a shot of his dad in a Navy sweatshirt. See what they did there? Not really? Me neither.

Slackjaw was eating lunch, and then a sassy black dude befriended him and took him to an underground race at a parking garage. Slackjaw hit on this dude’s girlfriend and then that dude, who is apparently yakuza, was a dick, so Slackjaw decided to solve this problem by agreeing to race him even though he has no car. But wait! Then some other yakuza dude (I am going to call him Candy because he is always eating candy) said Slackjaw could borrow his. This turns out to be a bad idea, as Slackjaw does not know how to “drift” and totally he smashes up Candy’s car.

Slackjaw got home and his dad was mad. “Are you racing? Answer me!” His delivery was WAY too intense. Also for some reason, this is the “last stop” for Slackjaw, and if he gets kicked out he will go to jail? Unclear why.

Candy has decided that Slackjaw can pay his debt (from wrecking Candy’s car) by being his driver sometimes when he goes out to collect money for the yakuza, and also by being the person who has to get the money from people. Some hilarity with a sumo wrestler in a sauna ensues.

That other yakuza guy (Angry Face, that’s his name) is pretty mad that Candy is having Slackjaw do this.

Um, now they are all at school? Sassy friend, Slackjaw, and the girl, anyway. Is it a school for 30 year olds? It must be.

Heart to heart between Candy and Slackjaw. “I have money. What I need around me is trust and character. And one car in exchange for finding out what a man’s made of is a price I can live with.”

Thank GOD. Candy has agreed to teach Slackjaw how to drift. He learns in what appears to be one training session lasting 3-5 hours.

Heart to heart with girl! “I realize now, outsider or insider, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is going after what you really want.”

We just heard the boring story of how Girl learned to drift. Also I think she’s British? And we learned that Slackjaw got his first ticket the day he got his license, and then won his first race the next day.

Uh oh! Angry Face just showed up and started beating the shit out of Slackjaw, I guess because he was hanging out with his girl. Also, we learned earlier that Girl’s mom died when she was two and Angry Face’s grandma took her in (for some unknown reason). So they grew up together, but now are dating. Gross.

Ohhhhh! Girl is trying to break up with Angry Face! Apparently he has changed. Oh! He just accused her mom of being a whore!

But then I guess he let her go, because here she is at the garage where Slackjaw is.
Angry Face’s actually scary Yakuza uncle just showed up to check on business and grab his cash money. He looks like a 20s gangster. And apparently Angry Face’s partner is stealing from them, and he failed to catch it. Yakuza Uncle just gave the WHOLE “for want of a nail” speech. In Japanese. Slowly. With subtitles.

Oh! The partner is Candy. Ok.

Oh! Fight! Angry Face pulled a gun on Candy, and some quick thinking by Sassy Black Friend distracted him long enough for Candy to knock the gun away. Now they are in a car chase through the streets of Tokyo.

It appears that “drifting” is accomplished using the same maneuver you would use in Kart to get blue sparks.

This is the longest, most boring car chase ever. It involves a lot of drifiting, and Slackjaw’s and Candy’s cars are getting pretty messed up! Oh no! Candy just got hit by an unrelated car, HARD. His car flipped. over. Oh shit, it just exploded! He didn’t look good before that happened so I suspect he is dead. Slackjaw and Girl are running away.

Angry Face was waiting for them at Slackjaw’s house, and when Slackjaw and Girl got there, pulled a gun on Slackjaw and tried to make Girl go with him. Slackjaw’s dad showed up in the nick of time and pulled a gun on Angry Face. But then Girl went with him anyway. Slackjaw’s dad wants to send him home but: “I’m responsible for this mess. I gotta do this. Can you understand this?” “Please do not redo my mistakes.” Uh, then Slackjaw walked away. Hey! Thank your dad for saving your LIFE!

Duuuuude, Slackjaw showed up at Yakuza HQ with something for Uncle! Oh, he is returning the money Candy stole. And he is apologizing. For embarrassing himself along with Angry Face. Hee! He is offering a “peaceful solution,” specifically, a race that will settles things once and for all.  The loser will leave town! For good!

For SOME REASON Slackjaw’s dad is helping out with this insane idea by giving his son a Viper car body to use. You know, since Slackjaw wrecked his car as part of the chase that also killed Candy.

I am tired of this Bones commercial.

Dangerous race on curvy road commences. Slackjaw pulls ahead. Angry Face tried to run him off the road.  Kids with cell phones are lined up all down the road shooting video and apparently streaming it to the people waiting at the finish? I don’t think phones work that way, guys. Maybe in Japan? Ok, this race has been on for like 20 minutes. Oh! Angry Face just went off the road, hard, and over a cliff edge. As Slackjaw went around the next bend, Angry Face’s car nearly fell on Slackjaw’s. There was some slow-mo. Uncle says Slackjaw and Girl are free to go. Having learned no lessons, they are hanging out back at the garage where they usually race.

Some was has turned up to challenge the new “Drift King”! He knew Candy! So they will race. Hey, it’s Vin Diesel! Hi!

Fin.

Book Meme

(Stolen from the blog of a friend.)

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. The meme works thusly:

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE. [Ed. - Ok, my underline button went away, the shortcut for it is not working, and I don't feel like editing the HTML to get it there so I am not doing this one.]

The List:

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
   
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible [Ed. - ALL of it? No. Much of it? Yes.]
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I got 60. Granted, I read some of these so long ago I could not tell you a single thing about them, and thus they should probably not really count.

Should I be More Worried?

Hee, those of you who know me are, right now, screaming, “Please sweet Jesus how could you worry MORE?” But I meant specifically in the context of the election. Last night, as expected, Hils won South Dakota, Obama won Montana, and Obama got the few remaining delegates he needed to clinch the party nomination.

Time out to note that I am just drinking my coffee, so this is not going to be some great masterpiece of political discourse here. Or even a coherent essay. Just words.

Ok, so I have a lot of thoughts. The funniest thing that happened last night was that on CNN, tiny, tiny Larry King was talking to various heads about Clinton and her not-concession speech (she’s sleeping on it? I guess?) and Lanny Davis (he of the petition to make Obama pick Clinton for VP) was talking about how Clinton is just the bestest that ever was and her speech was awesome and she’ll totally concede when Obama has the nomination, etc.  All the while behind him, teamsters were loudly and casually breaking down the stage and chairs and whatnot.  Mmmm, obvious symbolism.

As for the whole VP think, I do not want Clinton as VP.  She and Obama differ too greatly on how to effect change.  People decided (not by a lot, granted) that they want to see what this new guy can do, and bringing Clinton doesn’t really work with that.  Also, she is pretty mad, you know?  I’d be concerned that she would still try to have her way and be the boss.  Arianna Huffington got all fired up at one point, pointing out that if you bring Hillary Clinton on, you of course also get Bill, and now you have to deal with them both.  And, let’s face it, Bill has been kind of a baby.

But people seem to want me to think that the party is badly divided, and that we need Clinton to be VP to bring it together.  Feh.  I just don’t feel that it is that badly broken up right now, but maybe that’s just where I live and who I know.  Certainly, Barack isn’t going to hold a grudge and be mad that he only secured the nomination by a few delegates.  I do think that we need Clinton to basically tell her people: “Ok, I lost, now you have to get behind this guy, ok? It’s really important.”  And I do worry that she will be petty and not do that without the VP nod.  But only for a bit; I have to believe that in the end she knows it is more important that Obama beat McCain than it is that she pout about not being on the ticket.  Still, the longer she refuses to bring her people over because she is hoping for a consolation prize, the more intractable some of those Clinton supporters will become.

I just find it difficult to believe that there are Clinton backers SO PUT OUT by her loss that come fall, they will not vote or they will vote for McCain.  Really?  I mean, I guess that dude in West Virginia who thought Barack was a Muslim and Michelle was an atheist (which does not compute) and if elected, Obama would put too many “coloreds” in White House jobs…yeah.  So that guy is probably out.  But things just don’t feel all that fractured to me, maybe because Obama seems so likable, I can’t imagine people not getting behind him.

Apparently, though, I am supposed to be worried about the party.  But I’m not.  So.

Shut up, Dove

Um, hi! Yeah. So…what have you been up to? I don’t want to write an update, not really. I quit my job that I did not like, had two excellent months off, got a new job that I do like, and here I am!

I keep these Dove dark chocolate piece thingers at work, because sometimes after lunch a just want a little tiny bit of chocolate, you know? I don’t even like chocolate that much, but whatever. They come wrapped in foil, and on the inside of the foil are what I believe to be “inspirational” messages (oh, wait, they are apparently “PROMISE messages,” caps decidedly not mine).

Today’s PROMISE message is “Go against the grain.” I frequently am ordered to “Go to my happy place” or “Smile at someone today.” Sigh. YOU smile at someone, Dove.

Oh dear. In searching for a list of these messages on the Internet, I came across the following, and it made me sad. Allow me to make you sad, too: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080324002112AAiQFNp.

You’re welcome.

Seven Things

I was tagged by Monquito to reveal seven personal idiosyncrasies. I also really need to do a “real” post, because there has been a lot going on, but I thought this one was pretty fine.

1. I am a little afraid of the phone. This is separate from my general dislike of talking on cell phones. I mean I don’t like calling to order pizza, and I hated having to call clients when I was an attorney. I don’t mind it when I get calls, I just hate having to make any kind of non-personal call. I obviously manage to do it despite my weird hate.

2. I cannot do any kind of gymnastic action more difficult than a somersault. No cartwheels, no handstands, nothing. I just never learned.

3. Until about a month ago, I had not driven a car at all for over 4 years (and in the 3 years before that, I’d only driven a handful of times). It had gotten to the point where I had a total psychological block about driving. Not even really about driving, but about parking, or having to drive down a narrow street or something like that.

4. I am pretty scared of bugs, but I am not scared of mice or rats or snakes. I will pull a snake out of a swimming pool, but I will not kill a bug if anyone else at all is around to do it. Especially if that bug is above my eye level. I think they will jump on me.

5. There was a fairly long stretch of time in high school when I wore blue lipstick. And my love of shiny, bright makeup has continued, though I try to keep it less insane. But I owned about 40 colors of nail polish at one point, and I own (and occasionally wear) bright pink eyeshadow.

6. I love musicals. Love them. Love seeing them, love listening to the soundtracks, love singing along. I think it is just great when people burst into song for no damn reason.

7. I do not like eating ice cream out of ice cream cones. They get soggy and they don’t taste good when they are soggy, and they leak and I have to eat my ice cream too fast. Don’t like them.

I am going to pass on tagging anyone else to do this, because I always feel a little bad tagging people. But it was kind of fun, other Internet people, so do it up if you so choose.

Tock

I got a new clock for Christmas. I have wanted this clock forever (BEFORE it was featured in any of those magazines, even!), and my mom finally bought it for me.

The alarm clock I used growing up was a very simple and harsh affair. I still have it but I keep it in the living room – it’s a small black box with a silver face, and you set the alarm by turning a little knob to the approximate time you want and pulling out a metal pin. It goes off with the worst sound I have known. I don’t even know how it produces this harsh, insanely loud buzz. You have to push the pin back in to stop it, and there is no snooze.

In law school I bought a very ugly sort of faux-future-looking thing, silver, digitial, with a radio and various “soothing sounds” available to wake you. I’ve been using the church bells, and they get progressively louder if you ignore them, which is hardly soothing at all. This clock served its purpose just fine and I likely wouldn’t have bothered to want to replace it until I saw The Twilight.

Seriously, it looks so much better in my room than Silver Future Clock, I can’t even tell you. The four-minute snooze is admittedly short, but I used to not snooze at all, so I think that’s ok. The bell is loud and a little startling, but not painful. I love the lit dial; when I turned off my light it gave off a very dim, very warm light (though I can see how the light from the dial might not be ideal for insomniacs or creatures of the night).

I think my favorite part though, the thing I didn’t notice until I put my book down and shut off the light and was falling asleep, is that it ticks! I find the sound of a clock ticking off the seconds very soothing, so long as it is pretty quiet. This was just at the edge of hearing. Had I not been utterly unable to fall asleep for other reasons entirely, it absolutely would have lulled me.

Warm Christmas: Part 2 of definitely not going to be 7

Merry Christmas! I guess I’ll recap the last few days down here – the clubhouse hasn’t really been open today or yesterday, hence the lack of posting. If this gets posted today, it will be because I brought the laptop over and sat outside to get the signal. (Note: Obviously, this did not get posted on Christmas.)

Christmas was really relaxed, actually. We had to take my brother to the airport in the afternoon, so we just took it easy. The rest of the family went to Animal Kingdom; we went to Waffle House and saw Walk Hard. Not a bad day, all in all. It’s nice and quiet in the house right now since it’s just a few of us, but everyone will be back from Disney soon, and then it will be very, very loud again (we are up to 15 people, two of which are babies and three of which are big, loud, brothers). (Oh wait! They just called, and my younger uncle and his wife are coming back, because they have normal amounts of energy/tolerance for Disney, but the rest are staying until it closes. Even though they went to bed at 2am and got up at 7am. And have two babies in tow. Man.) We do have a tiny Christmas tree, so there’s that.

We did a few presents Christmas Eve. Or rather, my dad’s two brothers’ families had presents for the rest of us and we slackers just took ‘em (I won 6 bucks on the scratch ticket I got from my aunt). My youngest uncle made us all lovely wooden pens, which was very nice. We had a really quiet yummy dinner of pre-made stuff from the supermarket (turkey, ham, various casseroles and stuffings). We’ve had a lot of pie. Like, a lot of pie – key lime, sweet potato, pumpkin, and peach thus far.

The bulk of Christmas Eve, before we did all that, we spent in Tarpon Springs, a village famous for being the largest producer of sponges in the US. It was founded by a Greek guy back in 1902, so everything is Greek – the food, the street names, the people. We had an awesome and ridiculously huge Greek lunch, and went out on a boat for a demonstration of how it used to be to go sponge-diving, complete with the guy dressed in an actual, old, 172-pound diving suit. It was actually pretty neat. I have photos, but not a card reader, so I can’t post anything til I get home.

Sunday, we took the fanciest tour money can buy of the Kennedy Space Center. It. Was. Awesome. Nature was a much larger part of the tour than I thought. You get on a bus and they drive you all over NASA’s land, stopping along the way to let you get out and take photos. So this drive goes through the nature reserves that are part of the complex, and we saw alligators, wild pigs, dolphins, turtles, and a ton of different birds, including creepy black vultures. Super cool. All of the NASA building are so 60s, because they are big into reusing stuff, so it all still looks very Apollo 13, which is sort of disconcerting. We saw the building where they assemble the whole shuttle setup – the orbiter, the fuel tank, and the solid rocket boosters. I will post the pictures, but the building is INSANELY huge. The Statue of Liberty can fit inside, upright.

We also saw the launch pads, including the pad where the Atlantis is sitting, all ready to go in January. Even from a few miles away, which is as close as people can go, it was very impressive. NASA has preserved an original Saturn V rocket, the kind that was used to launch the Apollo capsules, and has it suspended horizontally along the length of the building, about 20 feet off the ground so you can walk under it. Holy Crap. I have never seen anything so huge, apart from, you know, buildings, that was built by people. I can’t even begin to describe the scale, and I don’t know that the pictures will quite convey just how ridiculous it was.

That’s my time in Florida so far! There is a lot of driving, which is annoying, since I’m not used to driving so much and it’s not very scenic. It is very, very flat, and alternates between modern, “classy,” California-style strip malls (stucco buildings done in carefully different facades and warm, bright colors), and rundown, neon, pawn-shop filled strip malls. We drove by over five Hooters in the less than two hours from here to Tarpon Springs yesterday. We did finally find a Starbucks.

Still Warm: Part 1.5 of 7…ish?

So I am in the “clubhouse” in this little housing development we are staying in, because the wireless is here. We think we may be able to find a place back at the house where we also get it, so if we can, I’ll be writing more tonight, but if not, I just wanted to say a little bit more about yesterday, our day of Never-ending Travel.

I posted from the Tampa airport. Eventually my brother did arrive (I was right, through Atlanta) and we went down to get a cab to take us to the Tampa Amtrak station. Well this cabbie REALLY wanted to drive us all the way to Orland, for $120. Admittedly, that is less than it should have cost, but it was only $22 to the train station then $18 for us both on the train, so… And also, as we explained to the cabbie, we 1) did not know where we were going in Orlando, 2) we did not have the gate code or house keys, and 3) no one else’s flight had arrived yet. He spent an additional 10 minutes trying to convince us.

The Tampa Amtrak station was awesome, in a totally post-apocalyptic, insane, loud, hilarious way. We had 2 (!) hours to kill there, and there was not a lot going on. The building itself was cute, in an old-tyme train station kind of way, with seats that look like pews and high ceilings and molding and whatnot. The men working the counter were amazing, just shouting out order and instructions and yelling about everything to this HUGE line of people. Pretty remarkably chaotic, given that a grand total of 4 trains goes through Tampa each day, always at the same time. They were posted on a bulletin board.

The outside was the best part though – all cracked concrete platforms, rusted rails and even more rusted platform shelters. Everyone just kind of crowded onto the platforms while the counter guys got in golf carts and drove up and down each side of the platform beeping maniacally, forcing everyone far from the edges and into the middle. The platforms weren’t raised, which became a huge problem when the train arrived. Literally everyone was disembarking (it had come from Miami and was going to Orlando and beyond), and nearly all of them were OLD. Really old, and they were not having an easy time climbing out of the train, down the very narrow stairs, with their luggage. One at at time. And no one could board until every last old person was off of that train, so they were trying to keep the flood of people back from the door, but these people just kept inching up, cutting in line, poking around. My brother and I were laughing so hard, we could barely stand it.

The train ride was a hoot, it was a slightly scary-looking collection of people that got on. And it was not scenic – maybe the most interesting thing we saw was a farm and heavy equipment graveyard.

Today was a big improvement, but I’ll likely write about that tomorrow!

Warm Christmas: Part 1 of 7…ish?

I don’t know if the villa has wireless, so this may actually be just Part 1 of 1.

I’m in the Tampa airport, waiting for my brother to arrive. Of course, I have no idea what airline he comes in on or what time he gets here. 11-something, as I recall. It’s not a direct flight and I don’t remember where he connects from, so that isn’t helpful (my money is on Atlanta, I’ll keep you posted). I was there when he made the flight but failed to mentally note it. And then failed to really pursue that information later. So given that, the Tampa airport does have this to recommend it: all terminals are connected to a central building with tables, shops, crap food, and free wi-fi. He has to come through here, so at least I know where to be.

It’s not as hot here today as it was supposed to be, but it is humid, of course. I can feel it even from inside the airport. I haven’t spent a Christmas somewhere warm in a while. Pretty much since college, when I finally put an end to the alternating Christmas scheme (one year with mom, the other with dad, the other parent “getting” New Years), it’s been all-PA, all the time. I’m not super-enthused about the locale, and 7 days seems like an insanely long time to be somewhere like this, somewhere that I can’t get around myself (you can’t walk anywhere from our villa, I Google-mapped the hell out of it to check, and we’ll have a small fleet of rental cars that I can’t really drive anyhow).

They’ve really decked the place out, the airport. Seriously, from my chair, which swivels, I can actually see 34 wreaths. Maybe to make up for lack of environmental Christmas cues? So far, I’ve seen the biggest person I’ve ever seen in real like, balancing his laptop on his stomach. That kind of bummed me out. And I was starving, having gotten up at 4:30 to catch the first T to the airport (crossing my fingers, since that first T was only early enough to get me to Logan 45 minutes pre-flight…sorry, mom). But the only food in this central building is a TGIFridays, Taco Bell, and BK. Because of stupid Fast Food Nation I’ve been avoiding the chains (not because they are not delicious, and having worked at Dunkin I have a high tolerance for food prep…issues, but because they are wrecking shit up). But hunger won and I ate a little thing of crown-shaped chicken nuggets.

The airport was not as bad as I had feared it might be but it was like a freaking orphanage or something. This one is too, just kids on everything, falling over, screaming, being adorable/irritating, depending on the child. Lots of sullen looking teens, being dragged to visit the retirement communities housing their grandparents.

I’m also very impressed with myself because I managed to smash my puffy black coat into a flat mass and get it in my tiny suitcase upon arrival. Go me. Now when I open it my suitcase will be like a tiny, soft, slowly-exploding bomb.

Just saw the word “monorail,” so that Simpsons song will just replay in my head for 7 hours now.

Safe travels to anyone else making a journey this weekend!

Forgot to give this a title…there.

It being Christmas, and me making the command decision not to work so darn much for a bit, I’ve entered total (mostly online) shopping mode, and it is getting pretty ugly. I’ve been rationalizing it by telling myself that I should buy lots of presents for people this year, because I can this year, and I probably can’t this year. That part is mostly fine; I like buying presents for people.

But once I start doing that, I start buying other stuff, and once I cave in on one thing, I end up caving in on kind of a lot of things that it turns out I need to wear that first thing. Today, I bought a belt. Specifically, a belt that will be worn over a shirt. I know. But I have these super-soft long-sleeved t-shirts that I got for like ten dollars in San Luis Obispo, and I can’t really wear them because when I wear them over jeans, there is that weird thing where the jeans button is. You know, the thing where the corner above the botton hole sort of doesn’t lie flat, so if you’re wearing something thin, it pokes out a little. I guess this probably doesn’t happen if you are really skinny, your jeans probably don’t do that thing, but mine do, and I need a belt to go over that area. I suspect this is how the whole belth-over-shirt thing started. Damn jeans.

Way back in the late summer, I had tried on this skirt at JCrew, which is not there anymore, but it was wool, herringbone, and ADORABLE. I patiently waited for many months til it went on sale then bought it in both brown and gray. But then, that meant it was time, finally time, to get new knee-high black boots. I always have to get extended-calf boots, like half the Internet does from what I can tell, which is fine. But really, I only need a tiny bit more extension, like half an inch. But extended-calf boots give you at least an extra inch, so then the boots are a little too big. Even when you can order a specific calf size, since those go in full inches. But whatever, it’s fine, they look ok, and they zip up, which is really all I care about. To my credit, I did not then go also buy a pair of knee-high brown boots, and will endeavor to just get my sort of crappy ones repaired.

But then I bought some casual brown boots for tromping around in on weekends. I know.

This of course makes me sounds like a crazy person with 45 pairs of shoes and crap she doesn’t wear. I don’t have a lot of shoes, and I have been wearing all the new things I bought. I do, indeed, need to get rid of lots of old stuff that I hate. But really, I mostly wear jeans (mostly from the Gap) and t-shirts (mostly from Old Navy) and sweaters (mostly from both), so I guess I don’t feel too bad and buying more stuff. A little bad, but not too bad.