Sunday, November 15, 2009
A fleeting night in the glimpse
Long time friends for the moment. Goodnight means a month to five years. This is the expat for life. I don't know why I tried to fight it because this is the life for me. I'm an expat in my own land. It is hard to say goodbye when you know it could be for years. Procrastinate as you may, he needs a she and you need the sleep. Same as it is. What am I doing here? Moving through life tasting it all. It slips by and each new experience is a balm and the draw. I can't imagine a better taste! The flavor is life and it's always new. Why not? For I am but a shrew. Would there be any value to write something that only I could understand... and only now in this moment? Probably not. Who do I see? Who waits too? Brown coat w/4 buttons and orange Vitamin H2O, black winter hat, thin black glasses, greenish blue slacks, dark brown shoes. White pitchy sweater. Becoming very abstract, my thoughts. Thoughts I cannot express. Well then, they shall be savored.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Metuchen
Winding down from what was a gorgeous weekend.
Last weekend was Halloween and was also quite nice. My team played in a tournament on Ward's Island and we went as Mario characters. I was originally going to go as Thwomp, which was cool in its obscurity, but really lame as a costume, so I ended up as Wario. Brandy made my purple overalls and this really great hat so I definitely had one of the best costumes at the tournament.
The night before the tournament, a CS friend of ours, Jeremy came in from Bethlehem, PA. Since he was going to take 278 to Staten Is anyway, I decided that I should take the train to Metuchen and ride into the city with him. I'd never been, but Metuchen turned out to have a really cute downtown and I found this cool bookstore where I picked up what is definitely on track to being my favorite cookbook. It's a sauce cookbook written by this guy who studied chemistry at UC Berkeley before spending ten years as a chef in France. The book is really well done and his style of writing works really well for my scientific mind. I have been spending a lot of time just randomly opening pages and reading. So while I was making this fateful purchase, Jeremy ran into some traffic on the highway and made the ridiculous decision to get off the highway in NJ without a map. Not sure what possessed him to do such a thing, but it did lead to me spending a lot more time in Metuchen than expected.
More later when I have the time.
Last weekend was Halloween and was also quite nice. My team played in a tournament on Ward's Island and we went as Mario characters. I was originally going to go as Thwomp, which was cool in its obscurity, but really lame as a costume, so I ended up as Wario. Brandy made my purple overalls and this really great hat so I definitely had one of the best costumes at the tournament.
The night before the tournament, a CS friend of ours, Jeremy came in from Bethlehem, PA. Since he was going to take 278 to Staten Is anyway, I decided that I should take the train to Metuchen and ride into the city with him. I'd never been, but Metuchen turned out to have a really cute downtown and I found this cool bookstore where I picked up what is definitely on track to being my favorite cookbook. It's a sauce cookbook written by this guy who studied chemistry at UC Berkeley before spending ten years as a chef in France. The book is really well done and his style of writing works really well for my scientific mind. I have been spending a lot of time just randomly opening pages and reading. So while I was making this fateful purchase, Jeremy ran into some traffic on the highway and made the ridiculous decision to get off the highway in NJ without a map. Not sure what possessed him to do such a thing, but it did lead to me spending a lot more time in Metuchen than expected.
More later when I have the time.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Cars
Over 95% of all murders since 1975 occured within 1,000 feet of an automobile. If that isn't damning evidence against cars, I don't know what is.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Busy as usual, I am updating here mainly as a form of procrastination. I think I may have had a bit of a burn-out this week. I had been a bit stressed about the insane amount of work and I basically relaxed that a bit this week.
On Tue I came back to the City early in order to go to this discussion about the pros and cons of green roofs versus other less costly and intensive "green" uses such as water retention and painting white to reflect heat. I got to Bowling Green to encounter a mystified guard and another dude who had also not read the email saying that it was postponed until Nov. I was excited to have the extra time to get some work done, but then I didn't do shit until 10. I intended to get up the next morning at my regular time to get the work for my class that day done, but not surprisingly I slept in. I ended up finishing during class.
On Wed I did stay late and get work done, but that was the end of my productivity for the week, besides what I did at my regularly scheduled work. Thu I met up with Eric at Burp Castle and had one too many delicious beers. A CS friend was having his birthday party at Brooklyn Bowl, but by the time I left the Castle, Brandy had gotten them to relocate to Diamond, a bar we just discovered quite close by on Franklin. They have really good beer, which is always a prereq for me. Also a great backyard, discovered a couple months too late. We had a pretty good time hanging out with some CS friends we hadn't seen in awhile, including Seth, Luba, and Nelson. I also got to speak Spanish with a Mexican girl, who is from an hour outside of Tijuana. Apparently there are a lot of Poles there!
I overslept on Fri and thoroughly expected to get to work about an hour late. As luck would have it, the 9:01 express was delayed until... the moment I got there, and I caught it by Indiana Jonesing through the closing doors.
Tao, a member of the Grey Till, was having a gathering at Peculiar Pub in the Village since he had finally acquired his master's degree in math education. I arrived at Penn Station at 9:23, dismayed at the fairly heavy rainfall. I had my bike, and by the time I got to the bar I was completely soaked, save the parts covered by the raincoat. Brandy's timing was perfect as she walked up to me while locking my bike. Peculiar has a huge selection of bottles from all over the world, at quite reasonable prices, <$5 for most. They also had the most friendly door guy I've ever encountered. Everyone was completely sloshed by the time we arrived, and most didn't stay much longer than our beer, and neither did we.
Yesterday we got up late morning as usual. We typically have the same routine on Saturdays when I'm around. We get up at leisure and then stroll to the park to drop off the compost and peruse the farmer's market. We then have a nice big brunch at home with all the goodies before I get to work or whatever. This week the compost group was doing a fundraiser and I was the lucky highest bidder in the silent auction, for which I was rewarded with an apple and pumpkin pie. We also picked up a huge fillet of blackfish, which I managed to turn into a quite delicious dinner. Actually, fish is insanely easy to make.
I worked on the Portland case study for awhile, but did not get nearly as much done as I would have liked, so here I am working on it again. John invited us out to a loft party in Bushwick and we headed out around midnight. The L train was running a shuttle bus so we caught a cab, musing on how nice it is that we can now reliably catch a cab in Brooklyn. As a late coming gentrifier, I do not recall the days when that was not possible. Nor do I recall the days that my landlord describes when the guys at the factory where he worked down the street would walk to the train in pairs or groups to not get robbed. Things change so quickly, so is the way of the city.
The loft was in this amazing old factory. It was shockingly homey for a loft, although apparently the resident had lived there for 10 years. The huge living room had these great old factory windows that covered most of the wall and opened wide to let in tons of fresh air. The view of Manhattan was also pretty spectacular. We had a good time at the party and were refreshed by the fact that the crowd was actually older than us. Most of the CS parties we go to are filled with early 20s travelers. Not that it's bad, but sometimes it's nice to be around older revelers. It also would have been a dream for me if I was single since it became very heavily weighted to one sex by the time we left: the correct sex. John stayed on and surely had a good time.
Today, not too much has gotten done. Brandy was feeling a little low due to the glass of Vodka she gulped before we left last night and she only made a small, but delicious breakfast. The weather today is absolutely gorgeous and we are currently enjoying what may be the last day of open windows and flooding sunlight. I am attempting to work while Brandy paints. Eric commissioned her to paint a life sized velociraptor. He is coming along nicely, but will surely be accompanying us in our living room for some time yet. After breakfast Brandy recalled that today was the last day of the season that the Greenpoint Rooftop Farms would be open. Loving the excuse to get outside, we hopped on our bikes and rode up there. The farm is on top of an old factory in the far northern part of the neighborhood, near to the couch where I crashed during my first week in NYC two summers ago. It was really cool to see all these beautiful veggie growing on top of a factory in the middle of the city. I am definitely beginning to be more enamoured with this city and all of the amazing creative people here. It's a pretty crumbly old city, but that makes it kind of a canvas for creating whatever you wish. (I think I stole that from someone, but not sure).
Now back to cycling in Portland, which I still miss deeply.
Here is a link to a page that contains several interesting videos about local food purveyors.
http://www.vimeo.com/6137263
The one that will come up first is about this woman who has begun turning underutilized Brooklyn back yards into working farms. There is a video about an oyster farmer out on Long Island, a local bread maker, some urban beekeepers, a guy who works out at our CSA farm, etc. I think there is actually one about the rooftop farm.
On Tue I came back to the City early in order to go to this discussion about the pros and cons of green roofs versus other less costly and intensive "green" uses such as water retention and painting white to reflect heat. I got to Bowling Green to encounter a mystified guard and another dude who had also not read the email saying that it was postponed until Nov. I was excited to have the extra time to get some work done, but then I didn't do shit until 10. I intended to get up the next morning at my regular time to get the work for my class that day done, but not surprisingly I slept in. I ended up finishing during class.
On Wed I did stay late and get work done, but that was the end of my productivity for the week, besides what I did at my regularly scheduled work. Thu I met up with Eric at Burp Castle and had one too many delicious beers. A CS friend was having his birthday party at Brooklyn Bowl, but by the time I left the Castle, Brandy had gotten them to relocate to Diamond, a bar we just discovered quite close by on Franklin. They have really good beer, which is always a prereq for me. Also a great backyard, discovered a couple months too late. We had a pretty good time hanging out with some CS friends we hadn't seen in awhile, including Seth, Luba, and Nelson. I also got to speak Spanish with a Mexican girl, who is from an hour outside of Tijuana. Apparently there are a lot of Poles there!
I overslept on Fri and thoroughly expected to get to work about an hour late. As luck would have it, the 9:01 express was delayed until... the moment I got there, and I caught it by Indiana Jonesing through the closing doors.
Tao, a member of the Grey Till, was having a gathering at Peculiar Pub in the Village since he had finally acquired his master's degree in math education. I arrived at Penn Station at 9:23, dismayed at the fairly heavy rainfall. I had my bike, and by the time I got to the bar I was completely soaked, save the parts covered by the raincoat. Brandy's timing was perfect as she walked up to me while locking my bike. Peculiar has a huge selection of bottles from all over the world, at quite reasonable prices, <$5 for most. They also had the most friendly door guy I've ever encountered. Everyone was completely sloshed by the time we arrived, and most didn't stay much longer than our beer, and neither did we.
Yesterday we got up late morning as usual. We typically have the same routine on Saturdays when I'm around. We get up at leisure and then stroll to the park to drop off the compost and peruse the farmer's market. We then have a nice big brunch at home with all the goodies before I get to work or whatever. This week the compost group was doing a fundraiser and I was the lucky highest bidder in the silent auction, for which I was rewarded with an apple and pumpkin pie. We also picked up a huge fillet of blackfish, which I managed to turn into a quite delicious dinner. Actually, fish is insanely easy to make.
I worked on the Portland case study for awhile, but did not get nearly as much done as I would have liked, so here I am working on it again. John invited us out to a loft party in Bushwick and we headed out around midnight. The L train was running a shuttle bus so we caught a cab, musing on how nice it is that we can now reliably catch a cab in Brooklyn. As a late coming gentrifier, I do not recall the days when that was not possible. Nor do I recall the days that my landlord describes when the guys at the factory where he worked down the street would walk to the train in pairs or groups to not get robbed. Things change so quickly, so is the way of the city.
The loft was in this amazing old factory. It was shockingly homey for a loft, although apparently the resident had lived there for 10 years. The huge living room had these great old factory windows that covered most of the wall and opened wide to let in tons of fresh air. The view of Manhattan was also pretty spectacular. We had a good time at the party and were refreshed by the fact that the crowd was actually older than us. Most of the CS parties we go to are filled with early 20s travelers. Not that it's bad, but sometimes it's nice to be around older revelers. It also would have been a dream for me if I was single since it became very heavily weighted to one sex by the time we left: the correct sex. John stayed on and surely had a good time.
Today, not too much has gotten done. Brandy was feeling a little low due to the glass of Vodka she gulped before we left last night and she only made a small, but delicious breakfast. The weather today is absolutely gorgeous and we are currently enjoying what may be the last day of open windows and flooding sunlight. I am attempting to work while Brandy paints. Eric commissioned her to paint a life sized velociraptor. He is coming along nicely, but will surely be accompanying us in our living room for some time yet. After breakfast Brandy recalled that today was the last day of the season that the Greenpoint Rooftop Farms would be open. Loving the excuse to get outside, we hopped on our bikes and rode up there. The farm is on top of an old factory in the far northern part of the neighborhood, near to the couch where I crashed during my first week in NYC two summers ago. It was really cool to see all these beautiful veggie growing on top of a factory in the middle of the city. I am definitely beginning to be more enamoured with this city and all of the amazing creative people here. It's a pretty crumbly old city, but that makes it kind of a canvas for creating whatever you wish. (I think I stole that from someone, but not sure).
Now back to cycling in Portland, which I still miss deeply.
Here is a link to a page that contains several interesting videos about local food purveyors.
http://www.vimeo.com/6137263
The one that will come up first is about this woman who has begun turning underutilized Brooklyn back yards into working farms. There is a video about an oyster farmer out on Long Island, a local bread maker, some urban beekeepers, a guy who works out at our CSA farm, etc. I think there is actually one about the rooftop farm.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Polish Pride
This week was pretty crazy since, not only am I insanely busy with school, but my friend Cameron was in town visiting from Portland. Luckily she has several other friends around, so she too was busy.
On Fri I caught an early train and met her on the L platform at Union Sq. While I was waiting for her I ran into both Joe, a CS friend, and Laura, our roommate from last summer. This was remarkable b/c I never run into people on the subway. I also met a guy on NJ Transit who works for the Project for Public Spaces, which is a local non-profit that works to reclaim public space from the car. I ended up chatting with him the whole way and will hopefully be going in there for an info interview in the near future. My commute turned into a rather social one indeed.
I took Cameron to Lomzynianka, our favorite Polish place, which is also right around the corner. Here you can get dinner for two for $12. We ordered way too much, and ate the same and so out tummies were heavy with grease when we went to my place for drinks. We sat up on the roof and had some good conversations about cities and transportation (Cameron is an avid cyclist) over a bottle of burgundy. She kept exclaiming all weekend about how great NYC is.
After the wine we went down to Barcade to meet some of her friends. Games were played and beers were delicious as usual. I got to a new level on Tapper, which I didn't think existed. I felt like a little kid again, giddy with excitement. As usual, nobody cared. Brandy also came out and we all piled into a couple cabs to meet some more of her friends in the LES.
Besides a couple of places, LES is a complete piece of shit, and tonight was no exception. We went to two terrible places and I stayed out too late, drank too much.
Sat I got up too late and spent about 6 hours working on trying to finish the cycling research study for John.
That evening we went up to 117th & 8th to a little party that one of the friends was throwing for Cameron. We had a nice time hanging out with her the last night, and her friends are fairly cool despite not being the first type I would think to hang out with. I mean, shit, dude had a plasma screen TV. On the ride home we got into this huge discussion about social engineering. We determined that it is pretty much a terrible idea, both politically and the potential for abuse.
Sunday I worked ALL day. I had to spend a couple hours trying to finish up the cycling study, which is now almost done except for a couple questions. The Polish football team must have done something good because there were Poles dressed in garb and honking horns all over the neighborhood all day long. I was not so annoyed by the honking because it was celebratory vs. being impatient assholes.
After the cycling work had to go through some documents that discussed greenhouse gas emissions inventorying and allocation for regions and come up with questions and thoughts on it for today. The weather was fantastic so we decided to take our work outside. After failing to make lunch due to the beans taking way longer than expected, we ate a quick salad and headed to the park to hang out for awhile. There were some guys tossing a disc, but I was able to control myself and got some work done. Eventually some kickball guy started blasting really shitty rap music, which was the sign to move on to the coffee shop.
I have decided that I quite like El Beit. Their tables are really nice (good size and height, stable) and the chairs are pretty decent. It also seems like there is enough turnover that I can get a good spot by waiting only a short time and then zone completely out for hours.
I treated myself to a Clover coffee since I had been good about not having coffee all semester. Alas it turned out to be a little overroasted and watery, but still nice to have coffee. On one of my many piss breaks some guy was locked in the bathroom and I had to get the manager. He seemed pretty embarrassed.
I stayed up pretty late working and am now rather tired and trying to stay awake in GIS class.
On Fri I caught an early train and met her on the L platform at Union Sq. While I was waiting for her I ran into both Joe, a CS friend, and Laura, our roommate from last summer. This was remarkable b/c I never run into people on the subway. I also met a guy on NJ Transit who works for the Project for Public Spaces, which is a local non-profit that works to reclaim public space from the car. I ended up chatting with him the whole way and will hopefully be going in there for an info interview in the near future. My commute turned into a rather social one indeed.
I took Cameron to Lomzynianka, our favorite Polish place, which is also right around the corner. Here you can get dinner for two for $12. We ordered way too much, and ate the same and so out tummies were heavy with grease when we went to my place for drinks. We sat up on the roof and had some good conversations about cities and transportation (Cameron is an avid cyclist) over a bottle of burgundy. She kept exclaiming all weekend about how great NYC is.
After the wine we went down to Barcade to meet some of her friends. Games were played and beers were delicious as usual. I got to a new level on Tapper, which I didn't think existed. I felt like a little kid again, giddy with excitement. As usual, nobody cared. Brandy also came out and we all piled into a couple cabs to meet some more of her friends in the LES.
Besides a couple of places, LES is a complete piece of shit, and tonight was no exception. We went to two terrible places and I stayed out too late, drank too much.
Sat I got up too late and spent about 6 hours working on trying to finish the cycling research study for John.
That evening we went up to 117th & 8th to a little party that one of the friends was throwing for Cameron. We had a nice time hanging out with her the last night, and her friends are fairly cool despite not being the first type I would think to hang out with. I mean, shit, dude had a plasma screen TV. On the ride home we got into this huge discussion about social engineering. We determined that it is pretty much a terrible idea, both politically and the potential for abuse.
Sunday I worked ALL day. I had to spend a couple hours trying to finish up the cycling study, which is now almost done except for a couple questions. The Polish football team must have done something good because there were Poles dressed in garb and honking horns all over the neighborhood all day long. I was not so annoyed by the honking because it was celebratory vs. being impatient assholes.
After the cycling work had to go through some documents that discussed greenhouse gas emissions inventorying and allocation for regions and come up with questions and thoughts on it for today. The weather was fantastic so we decided to take our work outside. After failing to make lunch due to the beans taking way longer than expected, we ate a quick salad and headed to the park to hang out for awhile. There were some guys tossing a disc, but I was able to control myself and got some work done. Eventually some kickball guy started blasting really shitty rap music, which was the sign to move on to the coffee shop.
I have decided that I quite like El Beit. Their tables are really nice (good size and height, stable) and the chairs are pretty decent. It also seems like there is enough turnover that I can get a good spot by waiting only a short time and then zone completely out for hours.
I treated myself to a Clover coffee since I had been good about not having coffee all semester. Alas it turned out to be a little overroasted and watery, but still nice to have coffee. On one of my many piss breaks some guy was locked in the bathroom and I had to get the manager. He seemed pretty embarrassed.
I stayed up pretty late working and am now rather tired and trying to stay awake in GIS class.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Lausanne day one
I'm on the train now from Lausanne to the Geneva airport.
There seems to be a lot of sunflower grown in this part of the country. Just passed some apples too, and of course vines.
<I just realized something that has been underlying my feelings about Europe since I first came; everything seems so tame here. All has been handled and manipulated by man for centuries and it shows.>
There is also a lot of corn here, and ostensibly potatoes as I saw a McDo sign advertising 100% Suisse pommes de terres. There is a ridiculous amount of vine east of Lausanne along the hills next to the lake.
Ok, farm report over.
I'm now on the plane to Rome. I left my fucking hoodie in the terminal at the airport.
I was slightly concerned about what was going to happen when I arrived in Lausanne. I had no SIM card for my phone and I had merely told Eric to text Layi when to meet me at the station, since he would be at work when I came. When I got off the train, Eric was standing right at the door. He'd overslept and decided to skip work. This was fortuitous because right then he got a message from Layi that she was sick and just woke up. Not that it would have been terrible, but definitely rather annoying. As it was, we had a fantastic time.
We walked up the huge hill through town to his apartment. Lausanne is a really nice looking town. There is a medium sized valley which separates two parts of town, although it is filled with neighborhood and there are ways to get down. This valley affords plenty of nice views from the bridges.
<This airline is amazing. I paid 128 francs for Geneva-Rome and they had a nice little seating area at the airport with an easy chair that I totally snagged. On board we got these little fruit juices, then these amazing muffin things with fresh fruit (I scored one of the leftovers), then coffee, then hot face towels. I think the treatment has something to do with them being new though.>
There are a lot of pedestrian streets and cars are very respectful. We climbed up to his place, which is on the top floor of an "East German shoebox." There is the smallest elevator, which doesn't have any internal doors, so I was praying as we went up that nothing on my body would get caught as I was crammed between the bicycle and the moving floors outside. Eric has apparently found the exact angle to turn his handlebars so that nothing drags.
We picked up some picnic food at the nearby shop run by this friendly Sicilian guy and then went for cheaper better beer and some more grub at this huge supermarket way out of the way. We laughed about the fact that they had imported Coors Light for 4 francs per can, more expensive than the imported Miller. They also had Brooklyn Lager, which was kind of shocking.
We climbed way up into this nearby park and hung out on a bench under some trees while we wolfed down our food, us being insanely hungry by then. As we drank our beers we reflected on how nice it is in Europe not to have to worry about such nonsense of not being allowed to have a beer in the park. Turns out though that backwards Rome has passed a law prohibiting public drinking.
Later we hiked up further to this lookout tower. It is constructed with these huge timbers arranged in a spiral for stairs. This makes it so that there are two separate stairways, one on either side of the spiral. The view of the city, lake, and mountains from the top was spectacular. We also saw what must have been the largest helicopter I have ever seen. It was at this tiny airport and was really just way out of proportion.
After coming down we went to this pizzeria with a sweet outdoor space and had cappuccinos and played cards. Somehow Eric had never been even though it is right next to his place.
<We keep flying over these really cool islands off the west coast of Italy.>
After chilling at his place awhile and hitting the email, we went to this nearby bar that allows you to drink out in this public space that overlooks one of the main squares. The square is totally modern and hideous, but still a great place for beers.
<Holy shit! Now we are getting hot chocolate on this plane.>
On the way to the next place I stepped in this huge pile of fresh juicy shit, but didn't get it quite as bad as the previous shmoe who went front and center.
The next place was this nice fondue restaurant where we spent an amazing 48 francs splitting a fondue and a bottle of wine. It was worth it though as the courtyard we were in was really nice and the wine was quite good. Fondue was not my fav, but ok. There were three German girls sitting at the same table and the one who lived there started talking to us after overhearing our discussions of my planned bike trip. She was friendly and impressed by Americans who could "speak" three other languages. She tried to convince me to take my trip on Sat because it sounded really awesome to her but she had to work and her friends would have wanted nothing to do with such a venture. But alas for her I shall be gone. But Eric and her exchanged # and she will get the info.
After dinner we went to two more bars. The first brewed its own beer and Eric and I ended up trading after trying and liking the other's better. The bartender played an entire Ratatat album, which impressed Eric. Eric taught me about 4/4 beat and the difference between Fender guitars because I am pretty much completely ignorant about music.
The second bar was one that Eric thought he hated, but turned out to have really good beer, great sidewalk seating area and not be filled with schmucks. I love the Francophone obsession with outdoor seating. We ordered one too many beers, ending up fairly wasted and not feeling so fantastic in the morning.
I got over it pretty quickly though since I was meeting Layi at 11 to do some biking.
Landing!!
There seems to be a lot of sunflower grown in this part of the country. Just passed some apples too, and of course vines.
<I just realized something that has been underlying my feelings about Europe since I first came; everything seems so tame here. All has been handled and manipulated by man for centuries and it shows.>
There is also a lot of corn here, and ostensibly potatoes as I saw a McDo sign advertising 100% Suisse pommes de terres. There is a ridiculous amount of vine east of Lausanne along the hills next to the lake.
Ok, farm report over.
I'm now on the plane to Rome. I left my fucking hoodie in the terminal at the airport.
I was slightly concerned about what was going to happen when I arrived in Lausanne. I had no SIM card for my phone and I had merely told Eric to text Layi when to meet me at the station, since he would be at work when I came. When I got off the train, Eric was standing right at the door. He'd overslept and decided to skip work. This was fortuitous because right then he got a message from Layi that she was sick and just woke up. Not that it would have been terrible, but definitely rather annoying. As it was, we had a fantastic time.
We walked up the huge hill through town to his apartment. Lausanne is a really nice looking town. There is a medium sized valley which separates two parts of town, although it is filled with neighborhood and there are ways to get down. This valley affords plenty of nice views from the bridges.
<This airline is amazing. I paid 128 francs for Geneva-Rome and they had a nice little seating area at the airport with an easy chair that I totally snagged. On board we got these little fruit juices, then these amazing muffin things with fresh fruit (I scored one of the leftovers), then coffee, then hot face towels. I think the treatment has something to do with them being new though.>
There are a lot of pedestrian streets and cars are very respectful. We climbed up to his place, which is on the top floor of an "East German shoebox." There is the smallest elevator, which doesn't have any internal doors, so I was praying as we went up that nothing on my body would get caught as I was crammed between the bicycle and the moving floors outside. Eric has apparently found the exact angle to turn his handlebars so that nothing drags.
We picked up some picnic food at the nearby shop run by this friendly Sicilian guy and then went for cheaper better beer and some more grub at this huge supermarket way out of the way. We laughed about the fact that they had imported Coors Light for 4 francs per can, more expensive than the imported Miller. They also had Brooklyn Lager, which was kind of shocking.
We climbed way up into this nearby park and hung out on a bench under some trees while we wolfed down our food, us being insanely hungry by then. As we drank our beers we reflected on how nice it is in Europe not to have to worry about such nonsense of not being allowed to have a beer in the park. Turns out though that backwards Rome has passed a law prohibiting public drinking.
Later we hiked up further to this lookout tower. It is constructed with these huge timbers arranged in a spiral for stairs. This makes it so that there are two separate stairways, one on either side of the spiral. The view of the city, lake, and mountains from the top was spectacular. We also saw what must have been the largest helicopter I have ever seen. It was at this tiny airport and was really just way out of proportion.
After coming down we went to this pizzeria with a sweet outdoor space and had cappuccinos and played cards. Somehow Eric had never been even though it is right next to his place.
<We keep flying over these really cool islands off the west coast of Italy.>
After chilling at his place awhile and hitting the email, we went to this nearby bar that allows you to drink out in this public space that overlooks one of the main squares. The square is totally modern and hideous, but still a great place for beers.
<Holy shit! Now we are getting hot chocolate on this plane.>
On the way to the next place I stepped in this huge pile of fresh juicy shit, but didn't get it quite as bad as the previous shmoe who went front and center.
The next place was this nice fondue restaurant where we spent an amazing 48 francs splitting a fondue and a bottle of wine. It was worth it though as the courtyard we were in was really nice and the wine was quite good. Fondue was not my fav, but ok. There were three German girls sitting at the same table and the one who lived there started talking to us after overhearing our discussions of my planned bike trip. She was friendly and impressed by Americans who could "speak" three other languages. She tried to convince me to take my trip on Sat because it sounded really awesome to her but she had to work and her friends would have wanted nothing to do with such a venture. But alas for her I shall be gone. But Eric and her exchanged # and she will get the info.
After dinner we went to two more bars. The first brewed its own beer and Eric and I ended up trading after trying and liking the other's better. The bartender played an entire Ratatat album, which impressed Eric. Eric taught me about 4/4 beat and the difference between Fender guitars because I am pretty much completely ignorant about music.
The second bar was one that Eric thought he hated, but turned out to have really good beer, great sidewalk seating area and not be filled with schmucks. I love the Francophone obsession with outdoor seating. We ordered one too many beers, ending up fairly wasted and not feeling so fantastic in the morning.
I got over it pretty quickly though since I was meeting Layi at 11 to do some biking.
Landing!!
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
French dinner and deflating my ego
Cutting transport close, as always. I arrived at Gare Lyon at 7:49 for my 7:48 train to Lausanne. The machine wouldn't give me my ticket b/c I didn't have a Euro Mastercard (thwarted again!). Then apparently I had to go to a different ticket counter, as the guy I asked pointed me in another direction. I ran over and there were about ten ppl in line. I quickly explained my situation to the lady who stands at the entrance to the queue answering questions and she told me I needed to ask the 1st person in line. The eyes of the guy at the head of the line got really huge when I said, "j'ai un reservation pour 7:58" and he quickly waived his hand toward the next ticket agent. I've been led to believe that French ppl don't move very quickly, but the ticket agent typed my ridiculously long name with amazing efficiency and told me I better run because doors close at 7:56. I did and made it w/a couple min to spare. I was happy to note that I did most of this in French. I am now sitting on the train.
Last night I was once again punished for my arrogance about directions. This is the second time in a month. I'm either becoming old, or just more of an asshole. The problem is that yes, I'm phenomenal with directions, probably much more so than the vast majority. However, while a good part of it is my ability to visualize everything, read between the lines, see through buildings, and memorize maps, a good 30-40% is due to my thoroughness. I recheck my map constantly, even though I know, I ask questions, make certain of the route, and question assumptions. So, from memory, my hosts' address is ## Rue du Jura, Stair B, 5th fl, rt. door, code ####B. I arrive right on time. I check the address, check the names on the door, and climb 5 flights, add one if you are American. Ok, which is right? Facing the doors, or facing the building? I guess doors but check names anyway. No name on either, only the middle door. But there is mail left on the floor in front of the left door and the name is wrong, perfect. Ring bell. Nothing. Ring again... wait ten minutes. Get bored and trudge down and wait ten more. Maybe she was in the shower. Climb back up. Ring bell. Nothing. Now I'm getting annoyed. She said 6:30. It's 7:10. I walk to the main street. Maybe I'll go to a kiosk and buy a phone card. Maybe I'll see a bar and leave a note on the door for where I am. A guy who could be CS type walks past and goes in the door. I follow and look to see if he went up the stair. Nope, back outside. ... CLICK <<eyes open wide>> I didn't verify the stair!! I used intuition - clearly A is left and B is right. I check. Huge silver letters clearly show that A is on the right and B is on the left. I climb again the 5 floors and Katia opens the door for me. She told me that she'd seen me downstairs and then I came in and they waited, but I never came.
<We just went past a river and I saw a guy reeling in a fish. I love when I get to observe these moments of action in the flash of time I happen to be passing.
These canned messages on the train are terrible. They are obviously computer generated. I don't see how it could be so expensive to just have someone record them. It would probably be cheaper than the computer software plus the tech support.>
Katia is from a suburb of Buenos Aires (she hates burbs) and Clement is from Savoie (French Alps). I think though that Katia spent many years in France. They had been neighbors in the neighborhood they lived in before and had met in a local bar.
After I got there and showered, they spent a bunch of time looking online for places to go out to dinner before we ended up going to a neighborhood called Butte aux Cailles, or literally, Quail's Hill. It used to be a separate village from Paris and still has a lot of small old homes. It is now a minor bar and restaurant district with two streets that are lined with several of each. We walked around for awhile looking at all the choices before going to one place that turned out to be full. K gave her number to the maître d’ who had huge bulging eyes, a giant smile and a leaning stance. He made a joke to me about how he wasn't trying to pick up my woman, but I didn't understand a thing and just smiled. We went off then to find an apéritif.
Clemente seems to like to let her lead, but she cannot make any decisions, so we spent a bunch of time wandering around. We tried a couple of places, but they did not serve drinks unless you were having dinner, which seemed pretty ridiculous especially for the one which was pretty much empty. We ended up going into a place which seemed pretty lame since it looked like a coastie posh lounge with red lights, faux leather seat cubes and tools sipping martinis, but the tool factor was lower than initially imagined and it actually turned out to be pretty decent. The waiter was really friendly, and I imagine quite funny although I couldn't understand a thing he said. We got rosé with which my only previous experience had been from a box or 5L jug. It was quite nice, and if I could tell the future from this train, I might say that I will buy some the day after I return home and drink it before watching a movie with Sal and Brandy.
We then had a nice long dinner at the other place with good wine and eating marmots (yes there is a dish called the marmot). We talked about our countries and they actually got my humor very well. I tried some of Clement's blood sausage and verified that I still despise it. This one didn't taste so much like a scab as like chalk. A step up no doubt, but a step from runny poop to corny poop is not such a step indeed. I had a pork calf over lentils, which was decent and we got an order of these cheesy mashed potatoes that were amazing. We were sitting on the street and they had a special table for pulling the potatoes, since they were more like cheese with mashed potato and could be pulled like taffy. Of course they immediately captured my heart. By the time we got our desert we had become extremely tired. This consisted of some strong berry sorbet with this Everclear/Moonshine type liquor. Yikes. I was ok, but a bit much. I dropped 30 euros, but it was a great time.
The high Alps are looming in the background and I finish this just in time as we are arriving in Lausanne.
Last night I was once again punished for my arrogance about directions. This is the second time in a month. I'm either becoming old, or just more of an asshole. The problem is that yes, I'm phenomenal with directions, probably much more so than the vast majority. However, while a good part of it is my ability to visualize everything, read between the lines, see through buildings, and memorize maps, a good 30-40% is due to my thoroughness. I recheck my map constantly, even though I know, I ask questions, make certain of the route, and question assumptions. So, from memory, my hosts' address is ## Rue du Jura, Stair B, 5th fl, rt. door, code ####B. I arrive right on time. I check the address, check the names on the door, and climb 5 flights, add one if you are American. Ok, which is right? Facing the doors, or facing the building? I guess doors but check names anyway. No name on either, only the middle door. But there is mail left on the floor in front of the left door and the name is wrong, perfect. Ring bell. Nothing. Ring again... wait ten minutes. Get bored and trudge down and wait ten more. Maybe she was in the shower. Climb back up. Ring bell. Nothing. Now I'm getting annoyed. She said 6:30. It's 7:10. I walk to the main street. Maybe I'll go to a kiosk and buy a phone card. Maybe I'll see a bar and leave a note on the door for where I am. A guy who could be CS type walks past and goes in the door. I follow and look to see if he went up the stair. Nope, back outside. ... CLICK <<eyes open wide>> I didn't verify the stair!! I used intuition - clearly A is left and B is right. I check. Huge silver letters clearly show that A is on the right and B is on the left. I climb again the 5 floors and Katia opens the door for me. She told me that she'd seen me downstairs and then I came in and they waited, but I never came.
<We just went past a river and I saw a guy reeling in a fish. I love when I get to observe these moments of action in the flash of time I happen to be passing.
These canned messages on the train are terrible. They are obviously computer generated. I don't see how it could be so expensive to just have someone record them. It would probably be cheaper than the computer software plus the tech support.>
Katia is from a suburb of Buenos Aires (she hates burbs) and Clement is from Savoie (French Alps). I think though that Katia spent many years in France. They had been neighbors in the neighborhood they lived in before and had met in a local bar.
After I got there and showered, they spent a bunch of time looking online for places to go out to dinner before we ended up going to a neighborhood called Butte aux Cailles, or literally, Quail's Hill. It used to be a separate village from Paris and still has a lot of small old homes. It is now a minor bar and restaurant district with two streets that are lined with several of each. We walked around for awhile looking at all the choices before going to one place that turned out to be full. K gave her number to the maître d’ who had huge bulging eyes, a giant smile and a leaning stance. He made a joke to me about how he wasn't trying to pick up my woman, but I didn't understand a thing and just smiled. We went off then to find an apéritif.
Clemente seems to like to let her lead, but she cannot make any decisions, so we spent a bunch of time wandering around. We tried a couple of places, but they did not serve drinks unless you were having dinner, which seemed pretty ridiculous especially for the one which was pretty much empty. We ended up going into a place which seemed pretty lame since it looked like a coastie posh lounge with red lights, faux leather seat cubes and tools sipping martinis, but the tool factor was lower than initially imagined and it actually turned out to be pretty decent. The waiter was really friendly, and I imagine quite funny although I couldn't understand a thing he said. We got rosé with which my only previous experience had been from a box or 5L jug. It was quite nice, and if I could tell the future from this train, I might say that I will buy some the day after I return home and drink it before watching a movie with Sal and Brandy.
We then had a nice long dinner at the other place with good wine and eating marmots (yes there is a dish called the marmot). We talked about our countries and they actually got my humor very well. I tried some of Clement's blood sausage and verified that I still despise it. This one didn't taste so much like a scab as like chalk. A step up no doubt, but a step from runny poop to corny poop is not such a step indeed. I had a pork calf over lentils, which was decent and we got an order of these cheesy mashed potatoes that were amazing. We were sitting on the street and they had a special table for pulling the potatoes, since they were more like cheese with mashed potato and could be pulled like taffy. Of course they immediately captured my heart. By the time we got our desert we had become extremely tired. This consisted of some strong berry sorbet with this Everclear/Moonshine type liquor. Yikes. I was ok, but a bit much. I dropped 30 euros, but it was a great time.
The high Alps are looming in the background and I finish this just in time as we are arriving in Lausanne.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Paris first day
I am back home from my three week trip to Europe. I am going to attempt to write as much as possible about it, but we'll see since I do get bogged down with details. Since I wrote a lot of notes during the trip, I'm going to write as if I was writing it at the time/place of the note writing, although I will add to it as needed. I will also post date to correspond to when the notes were written.
I'm not sure where these first notes were taken, so...
My flight out was rather uneventful. I was annoyed as usual by the insane security measures that any four year old could defeat with five minutes of thought. Of course thinking people know that it is all show for the gullible to feel more safe, and I'm sure that some of the security does protect us, but damn is it a pain in the ass for and a boon for the bottled water industry. I am happy though that they lifted the ban on lighters.
I drank a couple little bottles of wine compliments of my friends at Air France, and watched some French movie about a teacher of troubled students that didn't seem to have a plot or an ending. It was reasonably entertaining though. I was entertained to find that my dinner was Bœuf Bolognaise, which happened to be the exact main dish I had made for my dinner party on Wed. For some reason I was kind of surprised to find that it was identical right down to the little pearl onions, although mine was of course much better. I think it is just strange that all of these random recipes that I find and make actually exist outside of paper and this might be the first time I've come across something that I've made, besides something that I sought after eating it.
I played some hangman in French and was pleased to actually do alright. I could understand a lot more of the French I heard around me - almost everyone on the flight was French - than I had expected, and I finally learned the proper pronunciation of 'ainsi' after asking the guy next to me.
Since I've arrived in Paris I've found my French to function shockingly well and have found the locals to be fairly friendly and helpful.
Right now I am sitting in a street cafe in a square at Rue Censier and Rue Mouffetard, near Ave des Gobelins. I find this name amusing and it is all over this part of the city. (I later will find out that it is named after a family of Dyers and Tapestry makers dating back to the 15th Century, who eventually became quite wealthy)
It's weird, all of this does not seem to feel all that foreign. I have been to Europe enough times, and Paris is quite typically "European" as I seem to have defined it in my head. While eating in a restaurant that could have been in New York, I even caught myself thinking, "man, there sure are a lot of French people here." My first impression of the city was that it's quite like NYC, but without all the cars and assholes. In a way this is true, but certainly not correct. For one, people are frustratingly slow for a guy who has gleefully embraced the NYC walk. And here, slow people do not get out of your way. But the pace is also part of the beauty. Nobody seems to work too hard. They take it easy. Take this cafe, they serve food, but the waitress doesn't blink an eye when I only ordered a 1.20 coffee. In fact, she smiled when she brought it, which was likely a mix between the way I ordered it because it was something I'd never had, and my hideous attempts at French.
Argh! I just saw a Velib go by. It is this amazing Paris bike share program. It is next to free, and there are stations everywhere. However, I am excluded because they are racist against my American debit card without the fancy pants microchip. The first thing I did after finding my way out of the maze of the Les Halles Metro station was to spend 10 min wrestling with the atrociously designed Velib terminal, only to find I was shit out of luck.
After this disappointment I wandered over to where I was going to meet an American CSer to buy a phone. I sat around a couple of different fountains, one of which is in front of the ridiculous Centre Pompidou, which is the Paris MoMA. It looks like a huge ship with pipes everywhere, and I regret taking a picture of the monstrosity. After waiting around and withdrawing some euros, I met up with Sarah and had lunch a good, but unremarkable organo veggie type place. It was nice though to be able to get a verre vin rouge for only 3.20 that was definitely good. We then went off to find a place to buy a Sim card, but it seems as though all of the phone places are closed until Aug 15th! (wow, this girl just sat down to a nearby table and she has the deepest back I've ever seen. It looks like she doesn't have any organs in there)
After parting with Sarah I started walking around, making my way towards where I'd meet my CS hosts later that evening. I walked past Notre Dame, which was not surprisingly crawling with tourists. This was after passing two other places that my dim memory made me think might be it, since all of these cathedrals are the same type of cool. Yes, I'm pretty ignorant about the location within cities of all of the famous landmarks. Notre Dame is above and beyond cool though. But I cannot handle being around throngs of tourists, so I screwed pretty quickly.
I then walked past the Sorbonne, which sadly did not seem to have much of a campus to walk around, and was more of just a bunch of huge buildings right up to the street. I like to visit famous universities when I travel.
Ugh, the guy at lunch gave me nine euros in fifty cent coins and now I have all this damn metal to dispose of.
After the Sorbonne, I found this nice little park in front of this big, cool building with an unidentifiable purpose. I wanted to be a hotshot and only bring my regular school backpack. You know, travel light and look all cool with how little I was taking for three weeks. Unfortunately I seem to have brought too much stuff to be able to pack in a manner that will allow comfort carriage, hence I have many stops. I kicked off my feet, lay in the grass and konked out for a bit.
This coffee has been my next stop and after I shall head over to my hosts'.
I'm not sure where these first notes were taken, so...
My flight out was rather uneventful. I was annoyed as usual by the insane security measures that any four year old could defeat with five minutes of thought. Of course thinking people know that it is all show for the gullible to feel more safe, and I'm sure that some of the security does protect us, but damn is it a pain in the ass for and a boon for the bottled water industry. I am happy though that they lifted the ban on lighters.
I drank a couple little bottles of wine compliments of my friends at Air France, and watched some French movie about a teacher of troubled students that didn't seem to have a plot or an ending. It was reasonably entertaining though. I was entertained to find that my dinner was Bœuf Bolognaise, which happened to be the exact main dish I had made for my dinner party on Wed. For some reason I was kind of surprised to find that it was identical right down to the little pearl onions, although mine was of course much better. I think it is just strange that all of these random recipes that I find and make actually exist outside of paper and this might be the first time I've come across something that I've made, besides something that I sought after eating it.
I played some hangman in French and was pleased to actually do alright. I could understand a lot more of the French I heard around me - almost everyone on the flight was French - than I had expected, and I finally learned the proper pronunciation of 'ainsi' after asking the guy next to me.
Since I've arrived in Paris I've found my French to function shockingly well and have found the locals to be fairly friendly and helpful.
Right now I am sitting in a street cafe in a square at Rue Censier and Rue Mouffetard, near Ave des Gobelins. I find this name amusing and it is all over this part of the city. (I later will find out that it is named after a family of Dyers and Tapestry makers dating back to the 15th Century, who eventually became quite wealthy)
It's weird, all of this does not seem to feel all that foreign. I have been to Europe enough times, and Paris is quite typically "European" as I seem to have defined it in my head. While eating in a restaurant that could have been in New York, I even caught myself thinking, "man, there sure are a lot of French people here." My first impression of the city was that it's quite like NYC, but without all the cars and assholes. In a way this is true, but certainly not correct. For one, people are frustratingly slow for a guy who has gleefully embraced the NYC walk. And here, slow people do not get out of your way. But the pace is also part of the beauty. Nobody seems to work too hard. They take it easy. Take this cafe, they serve food, but the waitress doesn't blink an eye when I only ordered a 1.20 coffee. In fact, she smiled when she brought it, which was likely a mix between the way I ordered it because it was something I'd never had, and my hideous attempts at French.
Argh! I just saw a Velib go by. It is this amazing Paris bike share program. It is next to free, and there are stations everywhere. However, I am excluded because they are racist against my American debit card without the fancy pants microchip. The first thing I did after finding my way out of the maze of the Les Halles Metro station was to spend 10 min wrestling with the atrociously designed Velib terminal, only to find I was shit out of luck.
After this disappointment I wandered over to where I was going to meet an American CSer to buy a phone. I sat around a couple of different fountains, one of which is in front of the ridiculous Centre Pompidou, which is the Paris MoMA. It looks like a huge ship with pipes everywhere, and I regret taking a picture of the monstrosity. After waiting around and withdrawing some euros, I met up with Sarah and had lunch a good, but unremarkable organo veggie type place. It was nice though to be able to get a verre vin rouge for only 3.20 that was definitely good. We then went off to find a place to buy a Sim card, but it seems as though all of the phone places are closed until Aug 15th! (wow, this girl just sat down to a nearby table and she has the deepest back I've ever seen. It looks like she doesn't have any organs in there)
After parting with Sarah I started walking around, making my way towards where I'd meet my CS hosts later that evening. I walked past Notre Dame, which was not surprisingly crawling with tourists. This was after passing two other places that my dim memory made me think might be it, since all of these cathedrals are the same type of cool. Yes, I'm pretty ignorant about the location within cities of all of the famous landmarks. Notre Dame is above and beyond cool though. But I cannot handle being around throngs of tourists, so I screwed pretty quickly.
I then walked past the Sorbonne, which sadly did not seem to have much of a campus to walk around, and was more of just a bunch of huge buildings right up to the street. I like to visit famous universities when I travel.
Ugh, the guy at lunch gave me nine euros in fifty cent coins and now I have all this damn metal to dispose of.
After the Sorbonne, I found this nice little park in front of this big, cool building with an unidentifiable purpose. I wanted to be a hotshot and only bring my regular school backpack. You know, travel light and look all cool with how little I was taking for three weeks. Unfortunately I seem to have brought too much stuff to be able to pack in a manner that will allow comfort carriage, hence I have many stops. I kicked off my feet, lay in the grass and konked out for a bit.
This coffee has been my next stop and after I shall head over to my hosts'.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Last weekend I went to one of best tournaments there is, Wildwood - four hundred teams playing ultimate on the beach. We alternate by playing one game, and then having one game off, where everyone runs into the sea. It was a lot of fun as always, and we camped at the same site as the last two years. We took two teams of Grey Till members. Since I did not "baggage" with any of the core members, I ended up on the new member team. This turned out to be great because the other team was taking things a little more seriously than we, and we had a winning record, unlike them.
We had a little snafu at the last minute on the way to Wildwood where my beloved van decided she did not wish to make the journey. Luckily, she made this decision while I was on the UWS picking up Sam, and some hot logistics action on the part of Brandon, Kara, and perhaps some anonymous heroes got us back on the road with only a couple hours wasted.
Of course, that still left me with a limping van with potentially very expensive repairs, 50 miles from her parking garage in New Brunswick, 10 miles from my apartment, and with me leaving town on the 3rd for three weeks.
On Monday, which was supposed to be a work day to finish up my Portland cycling project, I took the hour train ride to Sam's place with the intention of checking the differential oil as that was one of the possible problems found in my research. Alas, I had not the correct tool, which was a square. I wandered up to Harlem in search of a hardware store or auto parts store, sweating my ass off in the heat. I found nothing and became very frustrated. When I had been leaving my house that morning I spoke with an old Polish guy who has a van on my block, and he recommended a place in the neighborhood, as well as giving me an oral history of the maintenance of his van. I decided to make a go for it rather than trusting some random Harlem service station and was able to bring her home without a problem.
When I got home I went to a parts store nearby and asked for the part. The guy looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "it's square. They just use a socket wrench. You can put on the extension and it's still square." Indeed. So of course the problem was not the fluid, so I had to bite it and take her to a shop. This is something I've been avoiding since I moved here since I have a hard time trusting mechanics, and in New York, forget about it. Nobody has a car here, so I could not get any decent recommendations.
So by this time, it was too late to go to a shop and my day was shot. Wednesday it would be. I spoke with Sal, who has the same van, and he told me about another shop, recommended to him by an ex-mechanic friend who also has the same van.
On Wed I took her in, expecting the worst. One trip around the block and Junior told me that it was my universal joints and it would be $150! So the world is sunny again, at least in my head, and Gina is back on the road. I took this opportunity to finally get her inspected, and that dratted driver's side mirror is also fixed. I'm afraid though that the A/C is not, and never will be.
On Wed I could not do my Portland project either since I was having a dinner party, and for me this is an all day affair. It was a great time as Sam from my team, Lauren, Seth from CS and a Russian CSer, Luva, Brittany (a girl who lives in the neighborhood and plays disc) and her roommate, and Lilli and her boyfriend attended. Besides appetizers, I made scalloped kohlrabi, couscous salad, and a French beef dish that came out excellent. We played Werewolf and Lilli confessed! which was the second time this happened this week as Kara did the same at Wildwood. Dang Brandy used her intimate knowledge of my nuances to figure out that I was the other. After that, and a bit too much wine and sangria a la Brandy, we went on the roof to smoke cigars. All in all it was a great night, but going to work the next day was not a lot of fun.
Friday I was able to work most of the day and got a lot of my project done. That evening I went to Seth's, since Karrie, a CSer I had met long ago in Philly was in town. Our roommate Dan stopped by for a bit to get the keys since he was staying in our house that night because his sister kicked him out so she could have a slumber party (i.e. get totally wasted without your brother). The funny thing was that Dan had met Karrie a long time before that at Beauty Bar and she was the first one to tell him about CS. It was a small gathering and we hung out for quite awhile before Karrie, her German friend, and I caught a cab to the LES to meet up with Brandy.
We went to this bar called D.B.A. on 1st Ave. The moment I walked in I said, lame! There was nothing interesting about it and it was filled with tools. But then, I looked behind the bar and saw that beautiful sight, the giant chalkboard covered with tiny writing. This can only mean one thing, beeeer! The price was typical, $7, and the beer was delicious. Yet, the place was still fairly lame and we were getting tired so we headed out. We walked up to 14th St and then decided to show Beauty Bar to the German guy. They were stealing identies at the door with their fucking swipe thing, so Brandy and I opted for home while the other two entered.
Ok, it sounds conspiracy, but we are convinced that when they swipe your ID at the bar they take your info and sell it to marketers. After all, there is no need to do the swipe. Also, Dave got swiped once and shortly thereafter he was mysteriously on the Marlboro list and got inundated with offers and also started getting other ads for drinking related shit. This may be circumstantial, but there is enough evidence to have concern.
Yesterday we were a little toasted in the morning so we lounged around and then went to Eat Records with Dan for brunch. We hadn't been here before and this place is awesome. They sell mostly local organic food, so they are a bit pricey, but they also have this amazing outdoor area. It is in this little brick enclosed courtyard with lots of trees and foliage and there are three long, communal tables. There is this novelty store across the street with lots of stuff like bacon bandages and bacon scented soap. We also stopped at a yard sale where we got The Truman Show and some other movie on VHS for a buck, opting to not purchase the stone penis for $8.
After that I spent much of the day working on my Portland project and finally finished. We then took a nice walk through Williamsburg. These little exploratory walks is one of my favorite things about living here. There are so many cool places to see that we almost always discover something new. Of course, we also almost always see some new yuppie condo and this time we saw a new Subway invading Bedford Ave. We checked out this video store we just heard about that is a block from our place, Film Noir. It is this hole in the wall place with videos stacked all over the place and a pretty decent foreign selection. I can't believe we've been walking all the way to Greenpoint Ave. We were tired and excited to try out the new projector, so we rented a Korean 'horror' film called the Host, which turned out to be pretty decent.
Today I have to take Gina down to New Brunswick and we may check out Princeton, although the rain is pretty formidable.
Tomorrow I leave for Europe for three weeks. Sweet.
We had a little snafu at the last minute on the way to Wildwood where my beloved van decided she did not wish to make the journey. Luckily, she made this decision while I was on the UWS picking up Sam, and some hot logistics action on the part of Brandon, Kara, and perhaps some anonymous heroes got us back on the road with only a couple hours wasted.
Of course, that still left me with a limping van with potentially very expensive repairs, 50 miles from her parking garage in New Brunswick, 10 miles from my apartment, and with me leaving town on the 3rd for three weeks.
On Monday, which was supposed to be a work day to finish up my Portland cycling project, I took the hour train ride to Sam's place with the intention of checking the differential oil as that was one of the possible problems found in my research. Alas, I had not the correct tool, which was a square. I wandered up to Harlem in search of a hardware store or auto parts store, sweating my ass off in the heat. I found nothing and became very frustrated. When I had been leaving my house that morning I spoke with an old Polish guy who has a van on my block, and he recommended a place in the neighborhood, as well as giving me an oral history of the maintenance of his van. I decided to make a go for it rather than trusting some random Harlem service station and was able to bring her home without a problem.
When I got home I went to a parts store nearby and asked for the part. The guy looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "it's square. They just use a socket wrench. You can put on the extension and it's still square." Indeed. So of course the problem was not the fluid, so I had to bite it and take her to a shop. This is something I've been avoiding since I moved here since I have a hard time trusting mechanics, and in New York, forget about it. Nobody has a car here, so I could not get any decent recommendations.
So by this time, it was too late to go to a shop and my day was shot. Wednesday it would be. I spoke with Sal, who has the same van, and he told me about another shop, recommended to him by an ex-mechanic friend who also has the same van.
On Wed I took her in, expecting the worst. One trip around the block and Junior told me that it was my universal joints and it would be $150! So the world is sunny again, at least in my head, and Gina is back on the road. I took this opportunity to finally get her inspected, and that dratted driver's side mirror is also fixed. I'm afraid though that the A/C is not, and never will be.
On Wed I could not do my Portland project either since I was having a dinner party, and for me this is an all day affair. It was a great time as Sam from my team, Lauren, Seth from CS and a Russian CSer, Luva, Brittany (a girl who lives in the neighborhood and plays disc) and her roommate, and Lilli and her boyfriend attended. Besides appetizers, I made scalloped kohlrabi, couscous salad, and a French beef dish that came out excellent. We played Werewolf and Lilli confessed! which was the second time this happened this week as Kara did the same at Wildwood. Dang Brandy used her intimate knowledge of my nuances to figure out that I was the other. After that, and a bit too much wine and sangria a la Brandy, we went on the roof to smoke cigars. All in all it was a great night, but going to work the next day was not a lot of fun.
Friday I was able to work most of the day and got a lot of my project done. That evening I went to Seth's, since Karrie, a CSer I had met long ago in Philly was in town. Our roommate Dan stopped by for a bit to get the keys since he was staying in our house that night because his sister kicked him out so she could have a slumber party (i.e. get totally wasted without your brother). The funny thing was that Dan had met Karrie a long time before that at Beauty Bar and she was the first one to tell him about CS. It was a small gathering and we hung out for quite awhile before Karrie, her German friend, and I caught a cab to the LES to meet up with Brandy.
We went to this bar called D.B.A. on 1st Ave. The moment I walked in I said, lame! There was nothing interesting about it and it was filled with tools. But then, I looked behind the bar and saw that beautiful sight, the giant chalkboard covered with tiny writing. This can only mean one thing, beeeer! The price was typical, $7, and the beer was delicious. Yet, the place was still fairly lame and we were getting tired so we headed out. We walked up to 14th St and then decided to show Beauty Bar to the German guy. They were stealing identies at the door with their fucking swipe thing, so Brandy and I opted for home while the other two entered.
Ok, it sounds conspiracy, but we are convinced that when they swipe your ID at the bar they take your info and sell it to marketers. After all, there is no need to do the swipe. Also, Dave got swiped once and shortly thereafter he was mysteriously on the Marlboro list and got inundated with offers and also started getting other ads for drinking related shit. This may be circumstantial, but there is enough evidence to have concern.
Yesterday we were a little toasted in the morning so we lounged around and then went to Eat Records with Dan for brunch. We hadn't been here before and this place is awesome. They sell mostly local organic food, so they are a bit pricey, but they also have this amazing outdoor area. It is in this little brick enclosed courtyard with lots of trees and foliage and there are three long, communal tables. There is this novelty store across the street with lots of stuff like bacon bandages and bacon scented soap. We also stopped at a yard sale where we got The Truman Show and some other movie on VHS for a buck, opting to not purchase the stone penis for $8.
After that I spent much of the day working on my Portland project and finally finished. We then took a nice walk through Williamsburg. These little exploratory walks is one of my favorite things about living here. There are so many cool places to see that we almost always discover something new. Of course, we also almost always see some new yuppie condo and this time we saw a new Subway invading Bedford Ave. We checked out this video store we just heard about that is a block from our place, Film Noir. It is this hole in the wall place with videos stacked all over the place and a pretty decent foreign selection. I can't believe we've been walking all the way to Greenpoint Ave. We were tired and excited to try out the new projector, so we rented a Korean 'horror' film called the Host, which turned out to be pretty decent.
Today I have to take Gina down to New Brunswick and we may check out Princeton, although the rain is pretty formidable.
Tomorrow I leave for Europe for three weeks. Sweet.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Whatever, Burp Castle
I am finding myself really missing Portland right now. I am working on this project for my professor where we are comparing cycling in several cities in the US. I just finished NYC and am now working on Portland and all of the data that I am poring over is bringing back myriad memories and feelings, reminding me how perfect Portland is for me. I really am not sure exactly how I will ever get back there, but it is on my mind.
I do not remember a lot of last week because my brain is kind of useless like that sometimes. I have been thinking a lot about memory and why I am able to easily recall intricate details of some very mundane events from long ago, yet I cannot remember the very existence of recent events that are extremely important to me. A couple weeks ago Brandy busted me for completely forgetting a very special experience we shared, the PREVIOUS week. I even did not believe her at first when she told me about it. Now, this was something that I clearly should have remembered as it meant a lot to me, but yet it was gone. Yet, when I took that memory test at NYU, I was told that I had amazing memory. Even when I try to remember things, they are often obliterated. Now, this may have something to do with some years of heavy drinking, but I had this problem before college and it seems to be an ingrained trait. Ugh.
So last week I probably did some cool stuff, but can't really remember. I know I didn't get enough work done. Ah yes, I knew something went down on Wed, and a review of my emails confirmed it. The L Magazine is showing free movies at McCarran Park for several Wednesdays over the summer and they were showing Evil Dead II, which I had yet to see. I've seen the third, which is the classic, Army of Darkness with Bruce Campbell. The second one is where he goes to this old cabin with his girl and she, and his hand, are taken by the evil. We set up a CS meeting and had a picnic in the park with delicious food and a few people, including Sal, J, Nelson, our CSer, Matthieu (a French guy who's been hitchhiking and urban camping all over the world and has some great stories from Mongolia), and a few other CSers. After some wine and food, we gathered some more guests and went to the ballfields to watch the show. The show was hilarious, of course, and watching a movie like that is always fun with 200 people in a ballfield. There is this scene at the end after he gets sent back in time where a huge flying gargoyle thing comes swooping down and he shoots it out of the sky to become a hero. Right at that moment this huge hawk or seagull or something came flying out of the trees about 20 feet above our heads. He made a circle around and passed over again before flying into the distance. It was so perfect and everyone was cheering and laughing, besides those on the other side who were probably wondering what they missed.
After the show I, and a few beers, came up with the idea to bring everyone back to the apartment and watch Army of Darkness. Several agreed and I ran off ahead to make it to the video store before any of the hipsters at the show got the same idea. I speed walked all the way past Greenpoint Ave to find a handwritten note explaining that the store would be closed until Friday! A came back with my head hung low, but we all hung out and had a great time anyway, despite the dopey CSer who was there who had "tried" heroin seven times and wouldn't stop letting the echoes in her empty head come out the mouth. We smoked a hookah and chattered late into the night, or so it seemed. When I went to bed I was amazed to see it was only 2.
Thu I just worked and then drove back so that I would have my van for the tournament. I left work early so that I could go to practice, but then found that my van battery was dead in the garage. After some douchebag in a Jaguar refused to jump me, some grizzled woman in her 50s with a cig and an old minivan stopped. She clearly would have rather gone home, but she was a sport and stayed much longer than should have been necessary because my van just wasn't starting. This was a real drag because I had recently replaced the battery and I really needed it to run for the weekend. I finally gave up and wandered around trying to figure out what to do. I looked in one more time and realized that the interior lights were on. After extinguishing them, I went outside to find someone else and found this German PhD student who had TAed my Stats class, Stefan. He had never jumped before, so I got to be an instructor to the instructor. In a moment Gina roared to life and I was off. Traffic was a miracle and I was only a few mins late to practice.
Over the weekend my team went to Ow My Knee, a tournament in Albany. Brandy stayed behind to have a girl's slumber party/pole dancing class, which is reported to have been a resounding success. As we drove up Fri night, it began to rain. My shitty wipers and the heavy traffic meant quite a harrowing drive, but we made it in one piece around 10:30. We got to our campsite to find that it was more of a quagmire of mud and standing water. We elected to grab a better one, and then have a beer before attempting the set up. We kept debating going to a hotel, but we are stubborn. We finally made our dash and began setting up when suddenly one of the poles on Brandy's tent snapped. This also snapped the last of our willpower and we drove off to the Belvidere Inn. It was a pretty nice place though, and Matteo, Kally, Cid and I sat in their little covered veranda drinking some beers and interacting with some members of a wedding party who were doing the same. This was, of course, after 28 year old Kally was regretfully rejected from buying because his license is expired. Man, US drinking laws can just blow me.
On Sat we played much worse than we should have since we seemed to have gotten into our heads. Nevertheless, we won our first three games and lost the last, which got us the four seed in the next day's bracket. At the end of the third game I jumped for a disc with lots of heat on me, and as I went up I knew there was a problem. My calf cramped up worse than any cramp I've ever had. I held the disc anyway and when I came down I was readying myself to first let it off because we were in a zone D and I had just popped the cup and needed to send it to break, but after a second I realized that, nope, not gonna happen, and I crumpled to the ground. I'm told it was rather humorous. This cramp was insane. My calf muscle was literally concave. I was out for the day, but was happy to be able to play on Sun. That night we went back to the campsite and had delicious grillin' a la Kara and drank more beers.
On Sunday we played three games. We won our first one and lost the last two, giving us 6th or 7th place in the tournament.
On Monday I tried to work but just did a lot of little shit that needed to get done. At about 5 I went into the City to meet up with Brandy to watch a movie between her work and pole class. We watched Up and Away or something like that. It was a chick flick, but I actually liked it quite a bit, especially because the guy reminded me of myself, except for when he's being a total toolbox. Afterwards I went on a fruitless shoe shopping mission at DSW. I've been passively looking for shoes for the last few months and I'm getting really damn sick of it. I finally today bought some online. Afterwards I went home and played ultimate at McCarran. I was too late and everyone was kind of tired and playing really shitty, poaching all over and hucking bullshit constantly, and fucking crossfield hammers every time. I have to get there earlier to play real ultimate.
Last night Brandy and I had a date. After work I met her near NYU and we went to this opening called Trashion, which was supposed to be all about waste and reusing "garbage" into art. It was pretty much the lamest lame that was ever lame. Most of the "trash" was obviously not rescued from the garbage, and what had been was pretty much total crap. They all had these really absurd little paragraphs from the artist where he had clearly gotten out his dictionary so he could sound totally profound. Man, I can only handle so much artist crap in my life and now I'll be good for a few months.
We then went wandering and found ourselves at this Spanish place on Houston that Brandy had wanted to go to for a long time. It is a nice little tapas place with live music. We got wine and some anchovies and ate the delicious bread, gratis. I had the seat facing outside. As I watched so many different and interesting people passing in buses and on the sidewalk I was thinking about how I will miss the incredible diversity of this city whenever I choose to leave.
We then went to Burp Castle, which seems to be taking a nose dive. First of all, there is the outdoor area. For some reason they got rid of the tables, ostensibly to hold more people, but they replaced them with the same amount of seating, in the form of these hideous chrome bar stools, and they screwed on this bright, shitty chrome bar around the outside that looks totally tacky. You can probably fit two more people out there, max. Then, it was filled with a bunch of total knuckleheads, although I'm hoping that this was some special group that was having a meeting there. Yikes, it was pretty terrible. I did get the chance to see this flyer about some bikes + good beer event where there seems to be a bike tour of beer bars in Williamsburg, EV & LES. This got me excited because it looks like there are several in Wbg that I do not yet know.
Today, I failing at getting work done, but I really really need to get my shit together because I leave for Europe in less than three weeks and I haven't done a damn thing on my independent study and still have quite a bit of work to do on the cycling project. Agh.
I do not remember a lot of last week because my brain is kind of useless like that sometimes. I have been thinking a lot about memory and why I am able to easily recall intricate details of some very mundane events from long ago, yet I cannot remember the very existence of recent events that are extremely important to me. A couple weeks ago Brandy busted me for completely forgetting a very special experience we shared, the PREVIOUS week. I even did not believe her at first when she told me about it. Now, this was something that I clearly should have remembered as it meant a lot to me, but yet it was gone. Yet, when I took that memory test at NYU, I was told that I had amazing memory. Even when I try to remember things, they are often obliterated. Now, this may have something to do with some years of heavy drinking, but I had this problem before college and it seems to be an ingrained trait. Ugh.
So last week I probably did some cool stuff, but can't really remember. I know I didn't get enough work done. Ah yes, I knew something went down on Wed, and a review of my emails confirmed it. The L Magazine is showing free movies at McCarran Park for several Wednesdays over the summer and they were showing Evil Dead II, which I had yet to see. I've seen the third, which is the classic, Army of Darkness with Bruce Campbell. The second one is where he goes to this old cabin with his girl and she, and his hand, are taken by the evil. We set up a CS meeting and had a picnic in the park with delicious food and a few people, including Sal, J, Nelson, our CSer, Matthieu (a French guy who's been hitchhiking and urban camping all over the world and has some great stories from Mongolia), and a few other CSers. After some wine and food, we gathered some more guests and went to the ballfields to watch the show. The show was hilarious, of course, and watching a movie like that is always fun with 200 people in a ballfield. There is this scene at the end after he gets sent back in time where a huge flying gargoyle thing comes swooping down and he shoots it out of the sky to become a hero. Right at that moment this huge hawk or seagull or something came flying out of the trees about 20 feet above our heads. He made a circle around and passed over again before flying into the distance. It was so perfect and everyone was cheering and laughing, besides those on the other side who were probably wondering what they missed.
After the show I, and a few beers, came up with the idea to bring everyone back to the apartment and watch Army of Darkness. Several agreed and I ran off ahead to make it to the video store before any of the hipsters at the show got the same idea. I speed walked all the way past Greenpoint Ave to find a handwritten note explaining that the store would be closed until Friday! A came back with my head hung low, but we all hung out and had a great time anyway, despite the dopey CSer who was there who had "tried" heroin seven times and wouldn't stop letting the echoes in her empty head come out the mouth. We smoked a hookah and chattered late into the night, or so it seemed. When I went to bed I was amazed to see it was only 2.
Thu I just worked and then drove back so that I would have my van for the tournament. I left work early so that I could go to practice, but then found that my van battery was dead in the garage. After some douchebag in a Jaguar refused to jump me, some grizzled woman in her 50s with a cig and an old minivan stopped. She clearly would have rather gone home, but she was a sport and stayed much longer than should have been necessary because my van just wasn't starting. This was a real drag because I had recently replaced the battery and I really needed it to run for the weekend. I finally gave up and wandered around trying to figure out what to do. I looked in one more time and realized that the interior lights were on. After extinguishing them, I went outside to find someone else and found this German PhD student who had TAed my Stats class, Stefan. He had never jumped before, so I got to be an instructor to the instructor. In a moment Gina roared to life and I was off. Traffic was a miracle and I was only a few mins late to practice.
Over the weekend my team went to Ow My Knee, a tournament in Albany. Brandy stayed behind to have a girl's slumber party/pole dancing class, which is reported to have been a resounding success. As we drove up Fri night, it began to rain. My shitty wipers and the heavy traffic meant quite a harrowing drive, but we made it in one piece around 10:30. We got to our campsite to find that it was more of a quagmire of mud and standing water. We elected to grab a better one, and then have a beer before attempting the set up. We kept debating going to a hotel, but we are stubborn. We finally made our dash and began setting up when suddenly one of the poles on Brandy's tent snapped. This also snapped the last of our willpower and we drove off to the Belvidere Inn. It was a pretty nice place though, and Matteo, Kally, Cid and I sat in their little covered veranda drinking some beers and interacting with some members of a wedding party who were doing the same. This was, of course, after 28 year old Kally was regretfully rejected from buying because his license is expired. Man, US drinking laws can just blow me.
On Sat we played much worse than we should have since we seemed to have gotten into our heads. Nevertheless, we won our first three games and lost the last, which got us the four seed in the next day's bracket. At the end of the third game I jumped for a disc with lots of heat on me, and as I went up I knew there was a problem. My calf cramped up worse than any cramp I've ever had. I held the disc anyway and when I came down I was readying myself to first let it off because we were in a zone D and I had just popped the cup and needed to send it to break, but after a second I realized that, nope, not gonna happen, and I crumpled to the ground. I'm told it was rather humorous. This cramp was insane. My calf muscle was literally concave. I was out for the day, but was happy to be able to play on Sun. That night we went back to the campsite and had delicious grillin' a la Kara and drank more beers.
On Sunday we played three games. We won our first one and lost the last two, giving us 6th or 7th place in the tournament.
On Monday I tried to work but just did a lot of little shit that needed to get done. At about 5 I went into the City to meet up with Brandy to watch a movie between her work and pole class. We watched Up and Away or something like that. It was a chick flick, but I actually liked it quite a bit, especially because the guy reminded me of myself, except for when he's being a total toolbox. Afterwards I went on a fruitless shoe shopping mission at DSW. I've been passively looking for shoes for the last few months and I'm getting really damn sick of it. I finally today bought some online. Afterwards I went home and played ultimate at McCarran. I was too late and everyone was kind of tired and playing really shitty, poaching all over and hucking bullshit constantly, and fucking crossfield hammers every time. I have to get there earlier to play real ultimate.
Last night Brandy and I had a date. After work I met her near NYU and we went to this opening called Trashion, which was supposed to be all about waste and reusing "garbage" into art. It was pretty much the lamest lame that was ever lame. Most of the "trash" was obviously not rescued from the garbage, and what had been was pretty much total crap. They all had these really absurd little paragraphs from the artist where he had clearly gotten out his dictionary so he could sound totally profound. Man, I can only handle so much artist crap in my life and now I'll be good for a few months.
We then went wandering and found ourselves at this Spanish place on Houston that Brandy had wanted to go to for a long time. It is a nice little tapas place with live music. We got wine and some anchovies and ate the delicious bread, gratis. I had the seat facing outside. As I watched so many different and interesting people passing in buses and on the sidewalk I was thinking about how I will miss the incredible diversity of this city whenever I choose to leave.
We then went to Burp Castle, which seems to be taking a nose dive. First of all, there is the outdoor area. For some reason they got rid of the tables, ostensibly to hold more people, but they replaced them with the same amount of seating, in the form of these hideous chrome bar stools, and they screwed on this bright, shitty chrome bar around the outside that looks totally tacky. You can probably fit two more people out there, max. Then, it was filled with a bunch of total knuckleheads, although I'm hoping that this was some special group that was having a meeting there. Yikes, it was pretty terrible. I did get the chance to see this flyer about some bikes + good beer event where there seems to be a bike tour of beer bars in Williamsburg, EV & LES. This got me excited because it looks like there are several in Wbg that I do not yet know.
Today, I failing at getting work done, but I really really need to get my shit together because I leave for Europe in less than three weeks and I haven't done a damn thing on my independent study and still have quite a bit of work to do on the cycling project. Agh.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Drain monster
There is a drain monster in our kitchen that rears its head at least once most days. I am sitting here at the table minding my own business, pretending to work, when from the depths of the sink comes an ominous, GLUG-KER-BLUG-UGG-G-BLUGG-GLUG-GLUG. It often gets loud enough to be heard in the next room and can last for several minutes. I am not sure what is happening in there, but I have the suspicion that it has something to do with the disappearance of my roommate.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Weekend
After a lot of stress about our itinerary and some discussion, Brandy and I have decided to skip Denmark and go straight from Berlin to Paris. This means that we will go to zero of the cities I had wanted to go to and one that Brandy had wanted. Of course, we will be going to some other cool places, so whatever.
Wed was my birthday, but I didn't really feel like getting friends together to do the b-day hooplah. Conveniently Lauren was having a BBQ the same day so Brandy and I went there, and were met by the Italians. It was a lot of fun and I got pretty tipsy by the time we left to go to karaoke. The first place we went to was scanning IDs and I was too drunk to remember that those scanners are for the purpose of selling your personal info and I let them scan mine. Brandy refused, but nobody else would leave, so it was the two of us for a bit. We ended up at some bar that was kind of lame except for the fact that it was filled with really hot girls. It was the type of place that I would have loved about three years ago, but now it was eh.
After a drink there we went to the next karaoke place to meet the others, grabbing three Frenchies on the way who were milling around the front of the place trying to figure out where to go. I tried to speak with them in broken French quite a bit and was probably pretty ridiculous. The next place was fun but I honestly only remember bits of it, which precipitated my not getting out of bed until 6 PM the next day. Man, my body just cannot handle this crap any more.
Thu we didn't do too much besides get some Thai food take out and hang around talking about getting a movie, but never following through.
Fri we also intended to stay at home since I had to get up pretty early for practice, which had been moved to 9 because of some scheduling conflicts and shitty weekend subway service. However, Seth happened to have a BBQ on his roof which was a ton of fun. I showed up with a pretty amazing looking strawberry shortcake that turned out to be marginal at best. I saw some people that I hadn't seen in quite awhile and met a bunch of cool CSers from all over, and got to speak broken French and German, getting the typical BS compliments on my accent. Come on folks, I know better. I wish I could remember better the people I spoke with, but sometimes my mind just doesn't work that way, even if I really am interested in them and am not really drunk. I guess part of it is that I was being really social that night and talked to many folks.
We ended up getting home pretty late and I only got five hours of sleep. This somehow did not kill me and I had a lot of energy at practice. I decided to take my bike this time so that I could ride back part of the way. But once I got going I couldn't stop and ended up riding all the way from Inwood, which is at the very northern tip of Manhattan and is about 13 miles. Crossing Wards Island via the Triboro Bridge is actually pretty creepy. You have to go down underneath and you are in this weird purgatory of no borough, with a maze of empty roads under the bridges and signs pointing to all of the boroughs. Then you get back up and you are so secluded on this ramp a million miles above the ground and there are people hanging out and drinking right on the path. The ride was nice, but I was carrying this really shitty back pack and my shoulders and neck are really sore now.
Later on we went to Kara's, a teammate of mine, who was throwing a goodbye party for herself as she is moving out of Brooklyn and up to Inwood, thus placing me further into the minority of living location. We had a lot of fun eating and meeting some cool people and got home rather late. We also met a nice girl who has just moved into Greenpoint.
Today I spent most of the day trying to figure out my trip stuff while Brandy was cleaning. God, I don't think I actually did shit today. What a waste. But I do have a more definitely plan now.
Finally I had to get the hell out of the house and we went for a nice walk throughout Williamsburg. Seeing all the people and great restaurants and shops made us wonder why we spend so much time trying to travel when we have all this around. We were searching for desert, but then we found this Italian festival going on around Havermeyer and Roebling and 9th. We got an Italian sausage and went on some spinny ride before heading home, stopping to watch a soccer game in the park on the way.
Wed was my birthday, but I didn't really feel like getting friends together to do the b-day hooplah. Conveniently Lauren was having a BBQ the same day so Brandy and I went there, and were met by the Italians. It was a lot of fun and I got pretty tipsy by the time we left to go to karaoke. The first place we went to was scanning IDs and I was too drunk to remember that those scanners are for the purpose of selling your personal info and I let them scan mine. Brandy refused, but nobody else would leave, so it was the two of us for a bit. We ended up at some bar that was kind of lame except for the fact that it was filled with really hot girls. It was the type of place that I would have loved about three years ago, but now it was eh.
After a drink there we went to the next karaoke place to meet the others, grabbing three Frenchies on the way who were milling around the front of the place trying to figure out where to go. I tried to speak with them in broken French quite a bit and was probably pretty ridiculous. The next place was fun but I honestly only remember bits of it, which precipitated my not getting out of bed until 6 PM the next day. Man, my body just cannot handle this crap any more.
Thu we didn't do too much besides get some Thai food take out and hang around talking about getting a movie, but never following through.
Fri we also intended to stay at home since I had to get up pretty early for practice, which had been moved to 9 because of some scheduling conflicts and shitty weekend subway service. However, Seth happened to have a BBQ on his roof which was a ton of fun. I showed up with a pretty amazing looking strawberry shortcake that turned out to be marginal at best. I saw some people that I hadn't seen in quite awhile and met a bunch of cool CSers from all over, and got to speak broken French and German, getting the typical BS compliments on my accent. Come on folks, I know better. I wish I could remember better the people I spoke with, but sometimes my mind just doesn't work that way, even if I really am interested in them and am not really drunk. I guess part of it is that I was being really social that night and talked to many folks.
We ended up getting home pretty late and I only got five hours of sleep. This somehow did not kill me and I had a lot of energy at practice. I decided to take my bike this time so that I could ride back part of the way. But once I got going I couldn't stop and ended up riding all the way from Inwood, which is at the very northern tip of Manhattan and is about 13 miles. Crossing Wards Island via the Triboro Bridge is actually pretty creepy. You have to go down underneath and you are in this weird purgatory of no borough, with a maze of empty roads under the bridges and signs pointing to all of the boroughs. Then you get back up and you are so secluded on this ramp a million miles above the ground and there are people hanging out and drinking right on the path. The ride was nice, but I was carrying this really shitty back pack and my shoulders and neck are really sore now.
Later on we went to Kara's, a teammate of mine, who was throwing a goodbye party for herself as she is moving out of Brooklyn and up to Inwood, thus placing me further into the minority of living location. We had a lot of fun eating and meeting some cool people and got home rather late. We also met a nice girl who has just moved into Greenpoint.
Today I spent most of the day trying to figure out my trip stuff while Brandy was cleaning. God, I don't think I actually did shit today. What a waste. But I do have a more definitely plan now.
Finally I had to get the hell out of the house and we went for a nice walk throughout Williamsburg. Seeing all the people and great restaurants and shops made us wonder why we spend so much time trying to travel when we have all this around. We were searching for desert, but then we found this Italian festival going on around Havermeyer and Roebling and 9th. We got an Italian sausage and went on some spinny ride before heading home, stopping to watch a soccer game in the park on the way.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Lancaster weekend, Italians, stuff
This weekend we went to Lancaster since it was a long weekend.
On Fri morning we got going a little later than we should have to catch the 10 AM bus to Philly. We arrived at the New Century Travel office at 10:01 and there was this huge crowd of about 60 people standing around a bus. We gave up on the 10 and went in and bought tickets. Luckily the Chinatown buses leave every half hour. A little inquiry outside informed us that the huge crowd was waiting for DC, suckers. Suddenly a guy at the door shouted Phiradelphia! and we ran onboard, leaving a minute later.
I called Christina to see if she and Curt were there to meet us and she told me that they had been about ready to get going when there was a shooting on her block, so they were still at home waiting for the police to disperse. We went off to find the great coffee and chocolate shop where we had met Christina last time in town. After completing a few circles we found it, only to be saddened by the fact that it had closed, so we waited for them on a planter.
They took us to this delicious Ethiopian restaurant in University City, and we got to meet their new baby Elizia. What is now a recurring theme with visiting them, the food took ridiculously long and we had to shovel it down and race out of there to try to catch our 3:00 train. We arrived at 2:58 to find that the train was not posted on the board. The information guy told us that they were on a weekend schedule (even though the website had said otherwise) and that the next train was at 3:45, thank god, because we would have never had time to get tickets. The people who sold me coffee at the station were strangely friendly. You know, like they really really meant it.
We arrived uneventfully at Lancaster and Melissa picked us up. We relaxed a bit and went out to First Friday – Lancaster art galleries are open late the first fri of the month and there is music and other stuff – which was ridiculously crowded. We also checked out the new convention center which is actually kind of cool, despite being a huge waste of money in my opinion.
After that we went out to a couple bars and hung out and had some food and beers. I was shocked and overjoyed to be charged $11.25 for a beer and two mixed drinks. Living in NYC will have me loving everywhere else price-wise. I ended up calling Andrew, an old buddy whom I hadn’t seen in quite awhile and he came out. Turns out he’s married now and he is thinking about getting into travel nursing.
On Saturday we went to Market, of course, and I got Lebanon Bologna and Wendy Jo’s cookies, of course. We then walked to Binn’s Park where we were entertained by this dog attacking the water sprays in this artistic ground level fountain where the water constantly changes.
After that we packed up a bag and went to Central Park for a picnic. It was awesome and I really need to do more picnics.
One of the reasons I came was so that we could go mulberry picking and do jam, but Melissa had checked out the situation and apparently most of the berries had been knocked down by rain. We almost didn’t go, but decided to at the last minute. We were really glad we did because, although we didn’t get a lot of mulberries, we found the motherlode of raspberries and wineberries, which I hadn’t eaten before. We spent over two hours picking them from around this crappy apartment complex where people are apparently too stupid to realize they have an insane berry land right outside their home.
Sunday morning we checked out this new coffee shop, Chestnut Hill, which Julie and I had waited and waited for to open, but it hadn’t until we were long gone. It is really nice with a great outdoor area and good coffee. After that, Melissa gave me her keys and went to
church while I met up with Angela, a professor at a local uni. I had met her in a county planning class and then presented at one of her classes. We had breakfast at Wish You Were Here, a fav place for breakfast in town. It was really nice seeing her again and chatting about Lancaster, university classes and the way things are done at unis.
I then tried unsuccessfully to get more work done before meeting Bill for lunch and meeting yet another first baby.
After lunch we went to Chestnut Hill again since they were having a one-year anniversary including live music and a half-priced drink which included two shots of espresso and a couple scoops of ice cream. Holy shit was it good, although the same cannot be said about the band. We then went to Buchanan Park where there was supposed to be pick up and I was hoping to get a couple points in before taking off. Unfortunately people were lame and traveling or whatever and there were not enough of us to get a game and all we did was toss.
All in all I had a really nice time and it was good to realize that I had made some pretty good friends while in Lancaster, despite the lack of people my age there at the time.
We got more travel luck throughout the rest of our journey home, timing wise, not stupid diseased ho-bag sitting behind wise. We got to the Lancaster station within five min of the train, then at Philly we got into what seemed like an insane line, but were lucky to only have to wait 15 min through one bus. The enormous woman in front of us claimed to have waited three buses. In Manhattan we were lucky to be dropped off at the 1 train instead of under the Manhattan Bridge where the buses end. This way we could take that to the L instead of dealing with the J and bus. Also, the L pulled up right as we came down the stairs, which is remarkable because it was late on Sun night.
There was this completely horrible fat Hispanic (and for those sensitive types, no this isn't a bad thing, just a descriptor) woman sitting in front of Brandy on the Philly-NYC bus. I don't get to honestly call someone completely useless, but she was worse than useless. She had these 6" nails, which to me says, "I don't have to work because I'm a lazy fat piece of shit and my man is a fucking tool." She almost took Brandy's eyes out with those talons when she reached behind her head to stretch and Brandy was leaning forward. Then she spent most of the time talking on the phone about useless shit, which wouldn't have been terrible because her volume actually was reasonable, but this meant she was ignoring her travel partner the whole time which is just plain rude, and the worst was that she was leaning all the way forward into the corner of the seat in front of her and window, which put her about two inches from the ear of the poor enormous lady from the line, who had heretofore been sleeping. When she wasn't chatting, she was stretching her fat ass by grabbing the seat in front of her and pulling herself up with much force, shaking the seat. To top it all off, she kept hacking these death rattles of disease without doing much to cover her mouth. I was happy to be behind her though, rather than in front.
We are trying to get replace Dan and we met two girls we liked last week. We deliberated through the weekend and finally just went with the first one we met. She came over on Mon and brought the check and hung out for a bit. I was starting to get some second thoughts because she was exhibiting some maybe crazy behavior, and then the next day she sends a message to Brandy about how she is too much of a neat nick and we probably won't make a good fit and how she felt rushed and jumped into it, for chissake. I mean, great I'm glad she is honest and we don't have to deal with her, but damn get your life together and figure your shit out so you don't waste other people's time. Of course the other girl was no longer available and now we are getting all sorts of response from the last minute suckers. Ugh.
Last night we met Stefano, one of the Italians who came with me on the move out here, and his girlfriend Elena for dinner at Moto. It was excellent and pricey as always. After that I showed them Barcade, which they loved and then we came back to our roof for some beer and relaxation. There was a cool storm blowing through and we got to watch lightning and cool clouds in the distance without getting wet.
Turns out tonight is my birthday and we will be going to Lauren's since she is having a BBQ, and then we will probably go out after that. I feel kind of lame b/c I haven't invited anyone out, but meh. Birthday, whatever.
I just found out that one of the Italians from study abroad is getting married while I am in Europe, so I will probably have to make a detour to go down for that, which means no Freiburg, but it will be great to see a lot of other people again.
On Fri morning we got going a little later than we should have to catch the 10 AM bus to Philly. We arrived at the New Century Travel office at 10:01 and there was this huge crowd of about 60 people standing around a bus. We gave up on the 10 and went in and bought tickets. Luckily the Chinatown buses leave every half hour. A little inquiry outside informed us that the huge crowd was waiting for DC, suckers. Suddenly a guy at the door shouted Phiradelphia! and we ran onboard, leaving a minute later.
I called Christina to see if she and Curt were there to meet us and she told me that they had been about ready to get going when there was a shooting on her block, so they were still at home waiting for the police to disperse. We went off to find the great coffee and chocolate shop where we had met Christina last time in town. After completing a few circles we found it, only to be saddened by the fact that it had closed, so we waited for them on a planter.
They took us to this delicious Ethiopian restaurant in University City, and we got to meet their new baby Elizia. What is now a recurring theme with visiting them, the food took ridiculously long and we had to shovel it down and race out of there to try to catch our 3:00 train. We arrived at 2:58 to find that the train was not posted on the board. The information guy told us that they were on a weekend schedule (even though the website had said otherwise) and that the next train was at 3:45, thank god, because we would have never had time to get tickets. The people who sold me coffee at the station were strangely friendly. You know, like they really really meant it.
We arrived uneventfully at Lancaster and Melissa picked us up. We relaxed a bit and went out to First Friday – Lancaster art galleries are open late the first fri of the month and there is music and other stuff – which was ridiculously crowded. We also checked out the new convention center which is actually kind of cool, despite being a huge waste of money in my opinion.
After that we went out to a couple bars and hung out and had some food and beers. I was shocked and overjoyed to be charged $11.25 for a beer and two mixed drinks. Living in NYC will have me loving everywhere else price-wise. I ended up calling Andrew, an old buddy whom I hadn’t seen in quite awhile and he came out. Turns out he’s married now and he is thinking about getting into travel nursing.
On Saturday we went to Market, of course, and I got Lebanon Bologna and Wendy Jo’s cookies, of course. We then walked to Binn’s Park where we were entertained by this dog attacking the water sprays in this artistic ground level fountain where the water constantly changes.
After that we packed up a bag and went to Central Park for a picnic. It was awesome and I really need to do more picnics.
One of the reasons I came was so that we could go mulberry picking and do jam, but Melissa had checked out the situation and apparently most of the berries had been knocked down by rain. We almost didn’t go, but decided to at the last minute. We were really glad we did because, although we didn’t get a lot of mulberries, we found the motherlode of raspberries and wineberries, which I hadn’t eaten before. We spent over two hours picking them from around this crappy apartment complex where people are apparently too stupid to realize they have an insane berry land right outside their home.
Sunday morning we checked out this new coffee shop, Chestnut Hill, which Julie and I had waited and waited for to open, but it hadn’t until we were long gone. It is really nice with a great outdoor area and good coffee. After that, Melissa gave me her keys and went to
church while I met up with Angela, a professor at a local uni. I had met her in a county planning class and then presented at one of her classes. We had breakfast at Wish You Were Here, a fav place for breakfast in town. It was really nice seeing her again and chatting about Lancaster, university classes and the way things are done at unis.
I then tried unsuccessfully to get more work done before meeting Bill for lunch and meeting yet another first baby.
After lunch we went to Chestnut Hill again since they were having a one-year anniversary including live music and a half-priced drink which included two shots of espresso and a couple scoops of ice cream. Holy shit was it good, although the same cannot be said about the band. We then went to Buchanan Park where there was supposed to be pick up and I was hoping to get a couple points in before taking off. Unfortunately people were lame and traveling or whatever and there were not enough of us to get a game and all we did was toss.
All in all I had a really nice time and it was good to realize that I had made some pretty good friends while in Lancaster, despite the lack of people my age there at the time.
We got more travel luck throughout the rest of our journey home, timing wise, not stupid diseased ho-bag sitting behind wise. We got to the Lancaster station within five min of the train, then at Philly we got into what seemed like an insane line, but were lucky to only have to wait 15 min through one bus. The enormous woman in front of us claimed to have waited three buses. In Manhattan we were lucky to be dropped off at the 1 train instead of under the Manhattan Bridge where the buses end. This way we could take that to the L instead of dealing with the J and bus. Also, the L pulled up right as we came down the stairs, which is remarkable because it was late on Sun night.
There was this completely horrible fat Hispanic (and for those sensitive types, no this isn't a bad thing, just a descriptor) woman sitting in front of Brandy on the Philly-NYC bus. I don't get to honestly call someone completely useless, but she was worse than useless. She had these 6" nails, which to me says, "I don't have to work because I'm a lazy fat piece of shit and my man is a fucking tool." She almost took Brandy's eyes out with those talons when she reached behind her head to stretch and Brandy was leaning forward. Then she spent most of the time talking on the phone about useless shit, which wouldn't have been terrible because her volume actually was reasonable, but this meant she was ignoring her travel partner the whole time which is just plain rude, and the worst was that she was leaning all the way forward into the corner of the seat in front of her and window, which put her about two inches from the ear of the poor enormous lady from the line, who had heretofore been sleeping. When she wasn't chatting, she was stretching her fat ass by grabbing the seat in front of her and pulling herself up with much force, shaking the seat. To top it all off, she kept hacking these death rattles of disease without doing much to cover her mouth. I was happy to be behind her though, rather than in front.
We are trying to get replace Dan and we met two girls we liked last week. We deliberated through the weekend and finally just went with the first one we met. She came over on Mon and brought the check and hung out for a bit. I was starting to get some second thoughts because she was exhibiting some maybe crazy behavior, and then the next day she sends a message to Brandy about how she is too much of a neat nick and we probably won't make a good fit and how she felt rushed and jumped into it, for chissake. I mean, great I'm glad she is honest and we don't have to deal with her, but damn get your life together and figure your shit out so you don't waste other people's time. Of course the other girl was no longer available and now we are getting all sorts of response from the last minute suckers. Ugh.
Last night we met Stefano, one of the Italians who came with me on the move out here, and his girlfriend Elena for dinner at Moto. It was excellent and pricey as always. After that I showed them Barcade, which they loved and then we came back to our roof for some beer and relaxation. There was a cool storm blowing through and we got to watch lightning and cool clouds in the distance without getting wet.
Turns out tonight is my birthday and we will be going to Lauren's since she is having a BBQ, and then we will probably go out after that. I feel kind of lame b/c I haven't invited anyone out, but meh. Birthday, whatever.
I just found out that one of the Italians from study abroad is getting married while I am in Europe, so I will probably have to make a detour to go down for that, which means no Freiburg, but it will be great to see a lot of other people again.
Exercise
Ok, the one or two people who read this can ignore posts titled exercise since I will be posting the shit I do so that I can realize how lame and undedicated to the sport of Ultimate that I truly am.
Track workout.
10 min - jog
12 min - sprint 1/2 rest
14 min - sprint 1/2 rest
18 min - sprint 1 rest
20 min - sprint 1/2 rest
22 min - sprint 1/2 rest
26 min - sprint 1 rest almost die
cool off + stretch
Track workout.
10 min - jog
12 min - sprint 1/2 rest
14 min - sprint 1/2 rest
18 min - sprint 1 rest
20 min - sprint 1/2 rest
22 min - sprint 1/2 rest
26 min - sprint 1 rest almost die
cool off + stretch
Friday, July 3, 2009
So, to the actual writing...
We have been paid off by waiting and not jumping on the first person who was interested in Dan's room, who was kind of lame. We now have two interested girls who we liked a lot, which is a curse in itself. So we decided to go with the first one who saw it and she will be letting us know on Monday. Looking for roommates is not nearly as bad as looking for apartments, but still quite annoying.
On Monday I spent most of the day working from home. Sitting in my sunny kitchen and listening to all of the birds chirping and the breeze in the trees always makes me feel good, even when not being very productive.
Around three, an acquaintance of mine from Lancaster came by for a visit. Erin had begun a free market in Lancaster and I had interviewed her about it once right before I moved away, since I have this latent interest in free markets. We reconnected since I am still on her free market email list and she was in town looking at apartments for a future move. In our communications we kind of acted like we were old friends who were reconnecting after years, but the reality is that we hadn't ever really hung out and didn't know each other too well. We sat in the kitchen awkwardly for a bit chatting and then I took her for a little tour of the neighborhood, of course showing her the most important Greenpoint landmark, the Rite Aid that used to be a theater, and a roller rink and thus still has the balcony, oval shape, and huge disco ball. I also shower her the old Faber Castell pencil factory with huge pencils in the architecture. The awkwardness did not last and we ended the day having tea on the sidewalk at this very cool cafe on Franklin.
I spent the week alternately working in New Brunswick and at home. At work I have been stuck calling transit agencies for interviews about using ITS. Calling people is not really my cup of tea, but it is good practice to get over my irrational somewhat fear of calling people professionally. Especially good to have the practice with friendly Midwesterners who love to talk. I spent a lot more time on this project than I should have and my boss made some comments about it.
Yesterday I started to go to lunch at 11:30, but then remembered that my current favorite prof was having a goodbye lunch since he is going on to Berkeley, so I went back to the office and sat around for 15 min and left again. The lunch went until 1:30, so I ended up spending two hours in the lunch process and thus didn't get my full 15 hours this week. Meh.
Today we will be leaving for Lancaster for the weekend. We are going to meet up with old friends of mine. Tonight we will go to First Friday. On the 1st Fri of every month all of the many studios in Lancaster stay open until nine often give out food and wine and tons of people fill the streets. It is more of a social event than anything, but very fun. Tomorrow we will spend the day picking Mulberries and making jam.
Anyway, gots to go if I'm to eat breakfast before I go.
We have been paid off by waiting and not jumping on the first person who was interested in Dan's room, who was kind of lame. We now have two interested girls who we liked a lot, which is a curse in itself. So we decided to go with the first one who saw it and she will be letting us know on Monday. Looking for roommates is not nearly as bad as looking for apartments, but still quite annoying.
On Monday I spent most of the day working from home. Sitting in my sunny kitchen and listening to all of the birds chirping and the breeze in the trees always makes me feel good, even when not being very productive.
Around three, an acquaintance of mine from Lancaster came by for a visit. Erin had begun a free market in Lancaster and I had interviewed her about it once right before I moved away, since I have this latent interest in free markets. We reconnected since I am still on her free market email list and she was in town looking at apartments for a future move. In our communications we kind of acted like we were old friends who were reconnecting after years, but the reality is that we hadn't ever really hung out and didn't know each other too well. We sat in the kitchen awkwardly for a bit chatting and then I took her for a little tour of the neighborhood, of course showing her the most important Greenpoint landmark, the Rite Aid that used to be a theater, and a roller rink and thus still has the balcony, oval shape, and huge disco ball. I also shower her the old Faber Castell pencil factory with huge pencils in the architecture. The awkwardness did not last and we ended the day having tea on the sidewalk at this very cool cafe on Franklin.
I spent the week alternately working in New Brunswick and at home. At work I have been stuck calling transit agencies for interviews about using ITS. Calling people is not really my cup of tea, but it is good practice to get over my irrational somewhat fear of calling people professionally. Especially good to have the practice with friendly Midwesterners who love to talk. I spent a lot more time on this project than I should have and my boss made some comments about it.
Yesterday I started to go to lunch at 11:30, but then remembered that my current favorite prof was having a goodbye lunch since he is going on to Berkeley, so I went back to the office and sat around for 15 min and left again. The lunch went until 1:30, so I ended up spending two hours in the lunch process and thus didn't get my full 15 hours this week. Meh.
Today we will be leaving for Lancaster for the weekend. We are going to meet up with old friends of mine. Tonight we will go to First Friday. On the 1st Fri of every month all of the many studios in Lancaster stay open until nine often give out food and wine and tons of people fill the streets. It is more of a social event than anything, but very fun. Tomorrow we will spend the day picking Mulberries and making jam.
Anyway, gots to go if I'm to eat breakfast before I go.
Don't talk to the police... and now I will write
First off, this video must be watched by any American:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
This is important advice about our 5th Amendment rights and why you should never talk to the police. I think this is especially important for teenagers and college students to watch since they are more easily intimidated, and automatically considered criminals by the police. Remember that the format is of professor to law students. There are also some good comments here that talk to the grey area in this, although most of them are typical internet fools. Ok, if you get busted red handed smoking pot, maybe it's time to be a little honest. At that point he can choose to search you anyway and you've already 'said' to the police that you were smoking pot.
The phrase, 'there are so many stupid people on the internet' is kind of funny because, no, they are actually all around you everyday, they just haven't opened their mouths to tell you how stupid they are. But they vote, and they get jobs that give them the power to affect your life. Yikes.
I came to the conclusion yesterday that I need to write more, particularly about my observations, and especially when traveling. I am reading this excellent book called, The Discovery of France. The author, Graham Robb spent several years cycling around France and another few years researching and tells a very good story of what was going on around France, outside of the typical Paris, politico life. At least he does what he can with the data he has. I won't get into it, but I was thinking about how little had been written down and kept - things that would have seemed rather mundane at the time, but would be of great interest now. That lead me to the idea that I must write as much as possible, for who knows the value of it in the future. I mean, we are all just dead meat waiting to die and probably won't make that big of an impression on the world, but written word has a much greater chance to last much longer and tell much more than most physical achievements we might make. Not that I will abandon my trade and all the things I tell myself are making the world a better place, but I will also try to put as much word to, at the least, silicon and perhaps it will surface someday and some professor will happily be able to say, wow, "there is evidence that the such and such existed in Ohio as early as 2009." I also understand that writing is available to so many more people than ever before, which makes the importance of my pieces that much less valuable, but not entirely useless, so I continue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
This is important advice about our 5th Amendment rights and why you should never talk to the police. I think this is especially important for teenagers and college students to watch since they are more easily intimidated, and automatically considered criminals by the police. Remember that the format is of professor to law students. There are also some good comments here that talk to the grey area in this, although most of them are typical internet fools. Ok, if you get busted red handed smoking pot, maybe it's time to be a little honest. At that point he can choose to search you anyway and you've already 'said' to the police that you were smoking pot.
The phrase, 'there are so many stupid people on the internet' is kind of funny because, no, they are actually all around you everyday, they just haven't opened their mouths to tell you how stupid they are. But they vote, and they get jobs that give them the power to affect your life. Yikes.
I came to the conclusion yesterday that I need to write more, particularly about my observations, and especially when traveling. I am reading this excellent book called, The Discovery of France. The author, Graham Robb spent several years cycling around France and another few years researching and tells a very good story of what was going on around France, outside of the typical Paris, politico life. At least he does what he can with the data he has. I won't get into it, but I was thinking about how little had been written down and kept - things that would have seemed rather mundane at the time, but would be of great interest now. That lead me to the idea that I must write as much as possible, for who knows the value of it in the future. I mean, we are all just dead meat waiting to die and probably won't make that big of an impression on the world, but written word has a much greater chance to last much longer and tell much more than most physical achievements we might make. Not that I will abandon my trade and all the things I tell myself are making the world a better place, but I will also try to put as much word to, at the least, silicon and perhaps it will surface someday and some professor will happily be able to say, wow, "there is evidence that the such and such existed in Ohio as early as 2009." I also understand that writing is available to so many more people than ever before, which makes the importance of my pieces that much less valuable, but not entirely useless, so I continue.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Tarrytown weekend
This weekend Brandy and I went up to Tarrytown to see Keller Williams, a one-man band that Brandy used to follow pretty religiously. On Friday night we had a girl come to see the apartment. She was a Long Islander who is planning on finally getting the hell off the North Shore. She was really only beginning her search, so we don't see much chance that we would be living with us, but she did score some good points when she mentioned one of her pet peeves as not recycling and we got into this huge conversation about recycling and composting. Since we had to get up early the next morning, Brandy and I decided to stay in and drink one of the last bottles of wine we got from the wine club membership my dad and stepmom had given us for Xmas. It had a shockingly strong flavor but was pretty good nonetheless and we had no problem polishing it off.
I had to get up at 7:30 so that I could have breakfast before the two hour trek to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx where I have practice. It is pretty ridiculous that it takes me longer to get to practice, which is in the same city, than it does for me to get to school in another state 45 miles away.
After practice I had lunch with my team at a diner before attempting to meet Brandy on the Metro North train at Marble Hill. We had planned to meet right after practice and have lunch in Tarrytown, but Brandy had to return to the apartment four times for forgotten items. I had a turkey burger and suffered from diner's envy as everyone else's food looked much better than mine. The wasabi mashed potatoes were pretty damn good though.
After lunch I tried to make it to the train station to meet Brandy's train, but it turned out to be a little further than I expected and my knee was bothering enough to discourage running. I was about half a block away when all of the arriving passengers came pouring out and one informed me that, "shit dude, you just missed both." So I ended up waiting 20 min for the next one.
In Tarrytown we stayed with a CSer from Marseilles, Antonin, whose brother was also visiting. He turned out to be very cool and we had a lot of excellent conversations about France, America, Champaign and wine. They also told me that the were impressed with my French from only one year of study, but that French people are worthless at learning languages anyway.
The show was at the Tarrytown Music Hall, which is the oldest music hall in Westchester County and is absolutely gorgeous. It is red brick with all these little eaves and windows. It is relatively small and intimate on the inside with awesome wall art. We checked out the balcony for awhile and it is almost better than sitting down below, although everyone was standing below. The place is also a non-profit and is run by a bunch of old and relaxed volunteers. Actually, it seems like this is representative of much of the workforce in this town. The show itself was pretty cool too. Keller does a pretty fun show and I got quite into it. There were these two drunk girls, Brandy suggests Jersey girls, jumping around in the front row and by far the most into the show, until they disappeared for a little bit and came back completely fucked up. They went to the front again for a bit and just looked really disoriented and then one of them rushed back to her seat with an abominable look on her face and sank into her chair. The other one was not far behind and was not spotted for the remainder of the night. Nothing like getting too fucked up to enjoy your favorite band.
Today we started the day with a long conversation about France and USA again and then had overpriced breakfast at a diner before coming home.
I am reading this book called The Discovery of France, A Historical Geography by Graham Robb, a historian of France who spent a lot of time cycling around the country. He makes the conjecture that the fact that France exists as a unified country is pretty shocking given the history and the differences of the people and past, and even present, local languages. It is very interesting and highly recommended.
I had to get up at 7:30 so that I could have breakfast before the two hour trek to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx where I have practice. It is pretty ridiculous that it takes me longer to get to practice, which is in the same city, than it does for me to get to school in another state 45 miles away.
After practice I had lunch with my team at a diner before attempting to meet Brandy on the Metro North train at Marble Hill. We had planned to meet right after practice and have lunch in Tarrytown, but Brandy had to return to the apartment four times for forgotten items. I had a turkey burger and suffered from diner's envy as everyone else's food looked much better than mine. The wasabi mashed potatoes were pretty damn good though.
After lunch I tried to make it to the train station to meet Brandy's train, but it turned out to be a little further than I expected and my knee was bothering enough to discourage running. I was about half a block away when all of the arriving passengers came pouring out and one informed me that, "shit dude, you just missed both." So I ended up waiting 20 min for the next one.
In Tarrytown we stayed with a CSer from Marseilles, Antonin, whose brother was also visiting. He turned out to be very cool and we had a lot of excellent conversations about France, America, Champaign and wine. They also told me that the were impressed with my French from only one year of study, but that French people are worthless at learning languages anyway.
The show was at the Tarrytown Music Hall, which is the oldest music hall in Westchester County and is absolutely gorgeous. It is red brick with all these little eaves and windows. It is relatively small and intimate on the inside with awesome wall art. We checked out the balcony for awhile and it is almost better than sitting down below, although everyone was standing below. The place is also a non-profit and is run by a bunch of old and relaxed volunteers. Actually, it seems like this is representative of much of the workforce in this town. The show itself was pretty cool too. Keller does a pretty fun show and I got quite into it. There were these two drunk girls, Brandy suggests Jersey girls, jumping around in the front row and by far the most into the show, until they disappeared for a little bit and came back completely fucked up. They went to the front again for a bit and just looked really disoriented and then one of them rushed back to her seat with an abominable look on her face and sank into her chair. The other one was not far behind and was not spotted for the remainder of the night. Nothing like getting too fucked up to enjoy your favorite band.
Today we started the day with a long conversation about France and USA again and then had overpriced breakfast at a diner before coming home.
I am reading this book called The Discovery of France, A Historical Geography by Graham Robb, a historian of France who spent a lot of time cycling around the country. He makes the conjecture that the fact that France exists as a unified country is pretty shocking given the history and the differences of the people and past, and even present, local languages. It is very interesting and highly recommended.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Madison and home
On Thu I woke up too early, but since I was already awake we decided to hit up the basement taxidermy exhibit, which was yet again no disappointment.
That evening we went to my favorite place, the Union to meet up with Michelle's CS host, who was strangely there with her boyfriend watching her ex play a show. It was especially strange the fact that she could not be seen by her ex because she had been banned from watching his shows. We spent the entire night there drinking beers with some CSers who came out and Jennifer, Jennifer's new man, Hanna, Terra, Jeff, and for a pleasant surprise, Jen's mom and stepdad, Craig. Craig and I shared a moment when I was shocked to hear him going on about nutrition and how horrible and unsustainable our industrial food system was, and then I told him my feelings on unions. Hands were shaken and mutual shock was expressed.
I got way too little sleep and had to get up very early for my presentation. I had only practiced twice and was fairly nervous. It actually went pretty well and I think that the people were good to me due to my obvious newbieism. It felt good to be presenting and be the expert in front of all these people.
We drove around the Dells a bit and hiked out to this nice secluded spot to look at the nice nature that does indeed exist there. We got back in time to meet my mother, have dinner at the Essen Haus and head back to the union to watch this bluegrass band. Their songs were all the same. Brandy made the comment that songwriting must be the easiest part of the guy's job. But they had a great stage presence and were fun to watch.
Fri I finally got the sleep I needed.
In the morning we went to the farmer's market and then up to the top of the capital from which there is a great view of the city. I met my mother's cousin, who is a geology professor UW, for the first time and we had lunch together. He is a talker and get right into it about why he thinks global warming is overrated and is a dangerous thing for environmentalists to get too excited about. He gave some compelling evidence about the self-selection of climate scientists and the fact that your career is basically over if you do not totally accept warming, and some other facts about the reliability and variability of data, meaning that it is still very uncertain. The danger in everyone embracing it, even for the good intention of reducing pollution is that if it proves to be false, then those who have attached to their goals the importance of fighting global warming will find that they suddenly not taken seriously. Anyway, interesting discussion.
On Sunday I was dismayed to find that my favorite restaurant in Madison, Clevelands, had been renovated to be a nicer Greek place. Fuck that shit. I hope they go bankrupt, greedy fools.
We ended up taking way too many stops and back roads and didn't get to our camping spot on Lake Erie until two. My one experience with Ohio state parks leaves a negative taste in my mouth. First of all, they are insanely expensive, $21 for a tent spot, which was no more than a paved parking space with a few square feet of grass and a picnic table. Then, at seven in the morning there were these fools with a power blower right outside making ridiculous amounts of noise so that I could no longer sleep. Seems someone had decided to waste a bunch of stimulus money on some make-work which included having several people doing the job of one to repave a perfectly fine camping road. I mean come on, it's a camping road so even if it wasn't already completely smooth, who cares? I don't mind that someone decided to create jobs for people, but they could have at least been doing something useful like removing invasive species or bringing back swamps. I'd rather they were on welfare than doing useless work.
Despite the early start we again made so many stops that we didn't get home until after two. On the bright side, I got to get some pictures of the Healthline bus rapid transit in Cleveland.
That evening we went to my favorite place, the Union to meet up with Michelle's CS host, who was strangely there with her boyfriend watching her ex play a show. It was especially strange the fact that she could not be seen by her ex because she had been banned from watching his shows. We spent the entire night there drinking beers with some CSers who came out and Jennifer, Jennifer's new man, Hanna, Terra, Jeff, and for a pleasant surprise, Jen's mom and stepdad, Craig. Craig and I shared a moment when I was shocked to hear him going on about nutrition and how horrible and unsustainable our industrial food system was, and then I told him my feelings on unions. Hands were shaken and mutual shock was expressed.
I got way too little sleep and had to get up very early for my presentation. I had only practiced twice and was fairly nervous. It actually went pretty well and I think that the people were good to me due to my obvious newbieism. It felt good to be presenting and be the expert in front of all these people.
We drove around the Dells a bit and hiked out to this nice secluded spot to look at the nice nature that does indeed exist there. We got back in time to meet my mother, have dinner at the Essen Haus and head back to the union to watch this bluegrass band. Their songs were all the same. Brandy made the comment that songwriting must be the easiest part of the guy's job. But they had a great stage presence and were fun to watch.
Fri I finally got the sleep I needed.
In the morning we went to the farmer's market and then up to the top of the capital from which there is a great view of the city. I met my mother's cousin, who is a geology professor UW, for the first time and we had lunch together. He is a talker and get right into it about why he thinks global warming is overrated and is a dangerous thing for environmentalists to get too excited about. He gave some compelling evidence about the self-selection of climate scientists and the fact that your career is basically over if you do not totally accept warming, and some other facts about the reliability and variability of data, meaning that it is still very uncertain. The danger in everyone embracing it, even for the good intention of reducing pollution is that if it proves to be false, then those who have attached to their goals the importance of fighting global warming will find that they suddenly not taken seriously. Anyway, interesting discussion.
On Sunday I was dismayed to find that my favorite restaurant in Madison, Clevelands, had been renovated to be a nicer Greek place. Fuck that shit. I hope they go bankrupt, greedy fools.
We ended up taking way too many stops and back roads and didn't get to our camping spot on Lake Erie until two. My one experience with Ohio state parks leaves a negative taste in my mouth. First of all, they are insanely expensive, $21 for a tent spot, which was no more than a paved parking space with a few square feet of grass and a picnic table. Then, at seven in the morning there were these fools with a power blower right outside making ridiculous amounts of noise so that I could no longer sleep. Seems someone had decided to waste a bunch of stimulus money on some make-work which included having several people doing the job of one to repave a perfectly fine camping road. I mean come on, it's a camping road so even if it wasn't already completely smooth, who cares? I don't mind that someone decided to create jobs for people, but they could have at least been doing something useful like removing invasive species or bringing back swamps. I'd rather they were on welfare than doing useless work.
Despite the early start we again made so many stops that we didn't get home until after two. On the bright side, I got to get some pictures of the Healthline bus rapid transit in Cleveland.
To Madison
The following day we shockingly got going right on schedule. That didn't stop me from having the longest day ever, but I'll talk about that later. We had a nice drive through back roads for the first couple of hours. Everyone slept for most of the time, which I simply do not understand. I absolutely cannot sleep on a road trip, even in boring country, for fear of missing something. Eventually we got on US 30 and began powering our way across the plains, before I diverted once again to some lovely back roads. It's really amazing how pleasant boring flat plains become just be getting off the godforsaken freeway. I have come to the conclusion that I absolutely despise driving on freeways and especially turnpikes where you are stuck with worthless oases. Ugh, if you call that traveling, you probably call puking enlightenment. I do not hate freeways, in fact I quite like them. They are fantastic feats of human creation and are incredible for getting you to point B in minimal time. I just cannot stand traveling that way if it is not necessary. I quite like it when I have the occasion to write three two letter words in a row. OOh, time out for amazing sunset on the roof, post thunderstorm. The sun is just coming out under the cloud deck, over Midtown.
The green of the vegetation and the black of the soil of northern Indiana is just spectacular.
I dropped Jordan off at his parents' place on the South Side and was plugging quarters into the meter in front of Mike's place in Lincoln Park at 8:05 - quite impressive when I predicted an 8:00 arrival that morning. Liz was there already and they both had a laugh at my handlebar moustache, which I sported for the trip after shaving off the rest of my 6 month beard. I wished to relax a bit, but I was in logistics mode as Mike's (rideshare Mike) father had gotten misinformation from Mike's girlfriend about arrival time and had already arrived in Madison at noon. This was to be the first time they ever met, so quite an event. I had told his father earlier that I expected to be in town by about 2, but now Brandy's flight had been delayed two hours and I had to pick her up before leaving Chicago. The catch was the neither Mike nor his father had a cell phone. His father is a trucker and was just sitting in his car waiting for him at a truck stop. For an added kicker, Brandy had left her cell at home so I could not communicate with her either. I came to the quick conclusion that I could put Mike on the 10:15 bus to Madison and get someone to pick him up and take him to the truck stop at 1:30. Jennifer was at a show and in no condition to drive anywhere, so I reluctantly called Mel and she agreed. We rushed downtown to put him on the bus, giving him money for the ticket since he was out of cash. We were there with less than ten minutes to spare and all cheered. As soon as I got back to Chicago Mike's place, other Mike called and told me he missed the bus because he had been an idiot and gone to the bathroom in the station. I directed him to the bus to where we were, expecting him to become totally lost. Luckily he made his way back and after a brief nap we headed out to get Brandy and get moving. Eventually Mike's dad called and we told him the scoop, which he was not excited to hear.
We got in close to four and I died for a few hours.
The green of the vegetation and the black of the soil of northern Indiana is just spectacular.
I dropped Jordan off at his parents' place on the South Side and was plugging quarters into the meter in front of Mike's place in Lincoln Park at 8:05 - quite impressive when I predicted an 8:00 arrival that morning. Liz was there already and they both had a laugh at my handlebar moustache, which I sported for the trip after shaving off the rest of my 6 month beard. I wished to relax a bit, but I was in logistics mode as Mike's (rideshare Mike) father had gotten misinformation from Mike's girlfriend about arrival time and had already arrived in Madison at noon. This was to be the first time they ever met, so quite an event. I had told his father earlier that I expected to be in town by about 2, but now Brandy's flight had been delayed two hours and I had to pick her up before leaving Chicago. The catch was the neither Mike nor his father had a cell phone. His father is a trucker and was just sitting in his car waiting for him at a truck stop. For an added kicker, Brandy had left her cell at home so I could not communicate with her either. I came to the quick conclusion that I could put Mike on the 10:15 bus to Madison and get someone to pick him up and take him to the truck stop at 1:30. Jennifer was at a show and in no condition to drive anywhere, so I reluctantly called Mel and she agreed. We rushed downtown to put him on the bus, giving him money for the ticket since he was out of cash. We were there with less than ten minutes to spare and all cheered. As soon as I got back to Chicago Mike's place, other Mike called and told me he missed the bus because he had been an idiot and gone to the bathroom in the station. I directed him to the bus to where we were, expecting him to become totally lost. Luckily he made his way back and after a brief nap we headed out to get Brandy and get moving. Eventually Mike's dad called and we told him the scoop, which he was not excited to hear.
We got in close to four and I died for a few hours.
A Pittsburgh
I am back in town now after about a week traveling to Wisconsin, again. Several months ago I submitted an abstract to a Midwestern ITE Regional conference because it was in the Dells, and I figured, what the heck, if I get in I can do some visits at the same time. I decided to drive out there since I had the time, I’m getting quite sick of flying, and with even a half full van, the environmental impacts are probably less than the flight.
I first offered the trip up on CS, and then later on Craigslist. I love logistics and planning these things, but it was still a trying experience with all the last-minute cancelations, and other nonsense. We had a couple cancel because dude’s sister decided to get married, another girl who was bringing a friend canceled because she got free tickets to Bonnaroo, another canceled the day before b/c despite the fact that we had met and discussed this, she somehow did not realize that we were taking two days. then on the day of the trip, one girl calls me to tell me that she only has half of the money, but had the rest at her apartment in Chicago. I asked her what she was going to do about food for two days and she said she had three dollars in change and could live off of crackers because she was “used to being broke.” To me this means, I’m good at stealing and getting suckers to buy me shit. This was sounding really sketchy, I was in a hurry to get out, and I didn’t really want to be the guy who brought some spanger trash into our host’s house, especially since I had just met that guy too. I told her to she would need to find another ride, despite her whining and assertions to her non-sketchiness. I loaded up the other dudes, at least one of whom I might add looked a bit more sketchy and broke than she was, with his torn up jeans, but everyone else had the dough, so we were off. I had to remind myself the kind of shitty shit I wore when I was in college, and everyone turned out to be really cool anyway.
We got to Pittsburgh in very reasonable time, and after some nice stretches of rural roads. Pittsburgh itself is a very cool looking city in my opinion. It is a large Rustbelt city built over numerous hills and in the valleys of two converging rivers. There are steep streets and bridges everywhere. I love seeing stately hills that are part of the city visible all around. Little clusters of homes and building fill up every conceivable niche in the hills. I saw two four story apartment houses next to each other that were bounded by the freeway on one side and a rock wall on the other three sides that appeared to have been cut out for the sake of these buildings and could almost be reached from the upper windows. It is very typical PA city housing which means lots of brick row houses and very tight streets. I think from an aesthetic and location viewpoint I could definitely live in Pitt.
When we got there, we all relaxed around the Pittsburgh ride share's house for awhile before walking the dog and going in search of food. On this little food search I found that I was among kindred spirits as Jordan exclaimed with pleasure that there was a Royal Crown Cola vending machine, and Mike was as impressed and pleased as both of us. I'm simply not used to meeting people who even know what RC is, much less share the love I do. The machine however did not reciprocate our love and chose not to vend a damn thing and I never actually did get a taste of the best soda of low enough quality to be served in a can. I have certainly become a soda snob, which I can add on to my beer, food, chocolate and coffee snobbery. I really believe that life is too short to settle for crap, especially when it comes to edibles.
Now I have seen cool dogs, but this little bitch is amazing. She is a border collie with unbelievable energy and affinity for catching shit in the air. So ok, she can catch a tennis ball with unbelievable accuracy at about 5 feet, yay. But the amazing thing about this dog is that she can climb trees. And I do mean climb trees. All Sam had to do to get her excited was to yell, "Millie, there's a squirrel, there's a squirrel!" and point up in the tree. She would bolt to the tree and shoot up to the branches, which were about at the height where I could reach with my hands, and then back flip off and land on her feet, albeit rather ungracefully with a face plant. She did this repeatedly, and supposedly she can actually get into the branches when there is a squirrel up there. After grabbing some Thai food to go, we headed over to meet our host for the night, Amanda have a beer and eat our food. Speaking of beer, don't mind if I do.
Amanda and her friend, who is a personal chef for some rich people, were friendly and immediately very talkative. The first thing I saw when I went in was several bikes and bike parts everywhere, making me an instant fan. Most of the bike stuff belongs to her roommate who was unfortunately not present, but she uses her bicycle for work every day, so she gets the seal of approval. The beer was good, the Thai was marginal, and then we were off to the karaoke bar where we were to meet up with Sam again and several local CSers. A complication arose at the door when one of my riders, Jordan, became exasperated when he realized that you had to be 21 to enter. Apparently in Rhode Island where he schools you only have to be 18 to enter, 21 to drink. He assured us that he would be fine in the van since he had plenty of homework to do. The other non-local Craigslist rider also decided to hang in the van since he didn't want to spend any money. I didn't want to leave them sitting on their asses in the van, but we were meeting CSers, so the remainder entered. Sam was there, and soon several more CSers showed up and we had a group. I was quite impressed with the CS Pitt response I got since it was so last minute. Everyone was pretty cool, but for some reason we kind of all just hung around and the conversation was a bit forced. I think it had something to do with the physical configuration of the group, but I wasn't too happy about it. One of the CSers informed us that there was a bar across the street that didn't card, so after a few songs were sung and beers drunk, I got everyone going with the hope that the change of venue would improve the dynamic, and we headed to the other place with the van folks amongst us. Sure enough, it did and conversation began to flow more freely, despite the presence of some shyness in the group. However, by that time everyone was a bit tired. I think the van guys would have been happy not going out and just did because we went through the effort of moving. In the end though they got the benefit of conversing with some white haired vet with typical shorts, long white socks and unbent armed forces baseball cap. I did not get to enjoy his company, but he was vehement about his Irish heritage and his status as a Vietnam vet. Since sleepiness was setting in and an early morning was imminent, we departed rather quickly. I drove Sam and those who would sleep at his place up the hill to his house because it was pouring and then crashed like a baby on the blow up mattress in Mr. Handiman Bike Dude's room.
I first offered the trip up on CS, and then later on Craigslist. I love logistics and planning these things, but it was still a trying experience with all the last-minute cancelations, and other nonsense. We had a couple cancel because dude’s sister decided to get married, another girl who was bringing a friend canceled because she got free tickets to Bonnaroo, another canceled the day before b/c despite the fact that we had met and discussed this, she somehow did not realize that we were taking two days. then on the day of the trip, one girl calls me to tell me that she only has half of the money, but had the rest at her apartment in Chicago. I asked her what she was going to do about food for two days and she said she had three dollars in change and could live off of crackers because she was “used to being broke.” To me this means, I’m good at stealing and getting suckers to buy me shit. This was sounding really sketchy, I was in a hurry to get out, and I didn’t really want to be the guy who brought some spanger trash into our host’s house, especially since I had just met that guy too. I told her to she would need to find another ride, despite her whining and assertions to her non-sketchiness. I loaded up the other dudes, at least one of whom I might add looked a bit more sketchy and broke than she was, with his torn up jeans, but everyone else had the dough, so we were off. I had to remind myself the kind of shitty shit I wore when I was in college, and everyone turned out to be really cool anyway.
We got to Pittsburgh in very reasonable time, and after some nice stretches of rural roads. Pittsburgh itself is a very cool looking city in my opinion. It is a large Rustbelt city built over numerous hills and in the valleys of two converging rivers. There are steep streets and bridges everywhere. I love seeing stately hills that are part of the city visible all around. Little clusters of homes and building fill up every conceivable niche in the hills. I saw two four story apartment houses next to each other that were bounded by the freeway on one side and a rock wall on the other three sides that appeared to have been cut out for the sake of these buildings and could almost be reached from the upper windows. It is very typical PA city housing which means lots of brick row houses and very tight streets. I think from an aesthetic and location viewpoint I could definitely live in Pitt.
When we got there, we all relaxed around the Pittsburgh ride share's house for awhile before walking the dog and going in search of food. On this little food search I found that I was among kindred spirits as Jordan exclaimed with pleasure that there was a Royal Crown Cola vending machine, and Mike was as impressed and pleased as both of us. I'm simply not used to meeting people who even know what RC is, much less share the love I do. The machine however did not reciprocate our love and chose not to vend a damn thing and I never actually did get a taste of the best soda of low enough quality to be served in a can. I have certainly become a soda snob, which I can add on to my beer, food, chocolate and coffee snobbery. I really believe that life is too short to settle for crap, especially when it comes to edibles.
Now I have seen cool dogs, but this little bitch is amazing. She is a border collie with unbelievable energy and affinity for catching shit in the air. So ok, she can catch a tennis ball with unbelievable accuracy at about 5 feet, yay. But the amazing thing about this dog is that she can climb trees. And I do mean climb trees. All Sam had to do to get her excited was to yell, "Millie, there's a squirrel, there's a squirrel!" and point up in the tree. She would bolt to the tree and shoot up to the branches, which were about at the height where I could reach with my hands, and then back flip off and land on her feet, albeit rather ungracefully with a face plant. She did this repeatedly, and supposedly she can actually get into the branches when there is a squirrel up there. After grabbing some Thai food to go, we headed over to meet our host for the night, Amanda have a beer and eat our food. Speaking of beer, don't mind if I do.
Amanda and her friend, who is a personal chef for some rich people, were friendly and immediately very talkative. The first thing I saw when I went in was several bikes and bike parts everywhere, making me an instant fan. Most of the bike stuff belongs to her roommate who was unfortunately not present, but she uses her bicycle for work every day, so she gets the seal of approval. The beer was good, the Thai was marginal, and then we were off to the karaoke bar where we were to meet up with Sam again and several local CSers. A complication arose at the door when one of my riders, Jordan, became exasperated when he realized that you had to be 21 to enter. Apparently in Rhode Island where he schools you only have to be 18 to enter, 21 to drink. He assured us that he would be fine in the van since he had plenty of homework to do. The other non-local Craigslist rider also decided to hang in the van since he didn't want to spend any money. I didn't want to leave them sitting on their asses in the van, but we were meeting CSers, so the remainder entered. Sam was there, and soon several more CSers showed up and we had a group. I was quite impressed with the CS Pitt response I got since it was so last minute. Everyone was pretty cool, but for some reason we kind of all just hung around and the conversation was a bit forced. I think it had something to do with the physical configuration of the group, but I wasn't too happy about it. One of the CSers informed us that there was a bar across the street that didn't card, so after a few songs were sung and beers drunk, I got everyone going with the hope that the change of venue would improve the dynamic, and we headed to the other place with the van folks amongst us. Sure enough, it did and conversation began to flow more freely, despite the presence of some shyness in the group. However, by that time everyone was a bit tired. I think the van guys would have been happy not going out and just did because we went through the effort of moving. In the end though they got the benefit of conversing with some white haired vet with typical shorts, long white socks and unbent armed forces baseball cap. I did not get to enjoy his company, but he was vehement about his Irish heritage and his status as a Vietnam vet. Since sleepiness was setting in and an early morning was imminent, we departed rather quickly. I drove Sam and those who would sleep at his place up the hill to his house because it was pouring and then crashed like a baby on the blow up mattress in Mr. Handiman Bike Dude's room.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
I am really enjoying life today. I think it helps that I have been rather productive so far, but it is also the fact that the weather is absolutely perfect and I'm working from my house. Granted, I don't get to be outside in it, but all of my windows are open, the breeze is floating through laden with the sound of chirping birds and scents of plant and sea, and all of our houseplants are soaking up the midday sun.
On Saturday night we went to Brandy's friend Lauren's birthday party. We were quite annoyed that Lauren was two hours late to her own party due to working late out at JFK, but we sat out in the garden in front of her building drinking with the other refugees, and when she arrived, the party was a great time. After that we went to our friend Joe's moving out party as he has gotten a new place that he intends to make into a speakeasy. That party was winding down and we eventually made it to our house to smoke a hookah on the roof with Lauren and their older ex-Hells Angel, Batman. We watched one of the most beautiful sunrises I've seen yet while drinking a bottle of wine that really did not need to be opened. Brandy woke up with a killer headache and by the time she got better, my pain had just begun. I spent the day on the couch in a fetal position. My body simply cannot handle drinking like it used to. After I righted myself, I discovered that my backpack was missing. After several frantic phone calls, Joe informed me that he had seen a black backpack on the stairs in his building, but had since returned his keys and could not get me in. It was midnight and thus too late to go back ringing doorbells so I had to frown and get up early with a note to post. Somehow, the doorman was there early and he let me in to find my bag miraculously still sitting on the stairs. This was a huge relief since that bag had a bunch of random things in it that would have been a huge hassle to replace, not the least of which was my thumb drive.
Yesterday I just worked and met with my summer directed study advisors and partner. We will be doing some sort of research with car sharing and spent a couple hours hashing out potential directions we can go with it. It seems like it should be an interesting project and I'm looking forward to getting started on it. Right now I am frantically trying to get my research done for this presentation I'm supposed to make at a conference in 2.5 weeks. I have less than a week to submit my slideshow and I have done little to nothing. I'm starting to fear that this will be a horrible presentation and I can only hope the my 8 AM presentation time will keep anyone who knows anything away. Actually, I'm more hoping that I can use my charisma to not look like a total fuck since this is a paper in progress, and actually get some interesting feedback.
I fly out to WI for my sister's graduation on Thu, and I'll have to work while I'm there, which is a total drag. I have to find a way to keep my plate clear enough so that I actually have time to relax and do me things, and me and Brandy things because I can see it being very easy to completely erode your personal life in favor of the profession when the profession is very interesting to you. I want to be a professor, and be good at it, but I don't want to be the guy who ends up divorced because I lost sight of the more important things in life.
On Saturday night we went to Brandy's friend Lauren's birthday party. We were quite annoyed that Lauren was two hours late to her own party due to working late out at JFK, but we sat out in the garden in front of her building drinking with the other refugees, and when she arrived, the party was a great time. After that we went to our friend Joe's moving out party as he has gotten a new place that he intends to make into a speakeasy. That party was winding down and we eventually made it to our house to smoke a hookah on the roof with Lauren and their older ex-Hells Angel, Batman. We watched one of the most beautiful sunrises I've seen yet while drinking a bottle of wine that really did not need to be opened. Brandy woke up with a killer headache and by the time she got better, my pain had just begun. I spent the day on the couch in a fetal position. My body simply cannot handle drinking like it used to. After I righted myself, I discovered that my backpack was missing. After several frantic phone calls, Joe informed me that he had seen a black backpack on the stairs in his building, but had since returned his keys and could not get me in. It was midnight and thus too late to go back ringing doorbells so I had to frown and get up early with a note to post. Somehow, the doorman was there early and he let me in to find my bag miraculously still sitting on the stairs. This was a huge relief since that bag had a bunch of random things in it that would have been a huge hassle to replace, not the least of which was my thumb drive.
Yesterday I just worked and met with my summer directed study advisors and partner. We will be doing some sort of research with car sharing and spent a couple hours hashing out potential directions we can go with it. It seems like it should be an interesting project and I'm looking forward to getting started on it. Right now I am frantically trying to get my research done for this presentation I'm supposed to make at a conference in 2.5 weeks. I have less than a week to submit my slideshow and I have done little to nothing. I'm starting to fear that this will be a horrible presentation and I can only hope the my 8 AM presentation time will keep anyone who knows anything away. Actually, I'm more hoping that I can use my charisma to not look like a total fuck since this is a paper in progress, and actually get some interesting feedback.
I fly out to WI for my sister's graduation on Thu, and I'll have to work while I'm there, which is a total drag. I have to find a way to keep my plate clear enough so that I actually have time to relax and do me things, and me and Brandy things because I can see it being very easy to completely erode your personal life in favor of the profession when the profession is very interesting to you. I want to be a professor, and be good at it, but I don't want to be the guy who ends up divorced because I lost sight of the more important things in life.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Yesterday I took the day off from doing anything and walked around the city with Tamas. We made quite a day of it despite the fact that we didn't get out of the house until at least 11. We started our voyage in the West Village, then hopped the train to Chinatown where he got ripped off by a shopkeeper who sold him a bag and then gave him the smaller one wrapped up. We then walked down to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked over. I have been on the Manhattan Bridge, but never the Brooklyn. I did like it despite the fact that it was completely crowded with tourists. It was kind of humorous to watch exasperated cyclists dealing with peds encroaching on their lane. Clearly a lane of car traffic should be removed in each direction for the sake of bikes so that peds and bikes can be separated here. We then hung out in the park in DUMBO and then checked out Brooklyn Heights before heading home. BH, which is the original suburb in the US, is actually a very nice neighborhood since it was built for rich people who walked everywhere. There is a nice commercial street with very little traffic and lots of nice restaurants with outdoor seating.
When we got home, I was looking forward to relaxing a bit before Brandy got home, but this was not to be. Nick called and convinced us to go to some show at BB King's up at godforsaken Times Square. It was $18 and then the fucks had a ticketmaster AT THE DOOR for the sole purpose of screwing you out of another $2. The band Nick wanted to see was some marginal Reggae band that opened for some really shitty band that did Reggae covers of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Radiohead. We ended up getting the hell out of there, feeling the hole in our pockets. We then strolled through Times Square since Tamas had not seen it at night, and he was very hilarious joking about how amazing and spectacular it was. Turns out Times Square is much more tolerable when you aren't actually trying to get somewhere.
We then went to McSorley's for a few cheap ass beers and then headed over to the Bulgarian Disco. The Disco was completely dead so we wandered around for awhile, had a beer at Max Fish, which was filled with hipsters, including many cute women. We then rounded out the evening at this "speakeasy." You have to go through this little tunnel and alley to get to it, and then they serve your drinks in coffee and tea cups. There is also this little back room for VIPs and private parties that is behind a revolving bookshelf. There are a lot of nice couches and the beer is pretty good. Tamas was very excited that they had Radeberger, which comes from his hometown.
I just made some chocolate chip cookies that are not as good as I'd like, but I cannot stop eating them.
So boring post, but my mind is not here so...
When we got home, I was looking forward to relaxing a bit before Brandy got home, but this was not to be. Nick called and convinced us to go to some show at BB King's up at godforsaken Times Square. It was $18 and then the fucks had a ticketmaster AT THE DOOR for the sole purpose of screwing you out of another $2. The band Nick wanted to see was some marginal Reggae band that opened for some really shitty band that did Reggae covers of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Radiohead. We ended up getting the hell out of there, feeling the hole in our pockets. We then strolled through Times Square since Tamas had not seen it at night, and he was very hilarious joking about how amazing and spectacular it was. Turns out Times Square is much more tolerable when you aren't actually trying to get somewhere.
We then went to McSorley's for a few cheap ass beers and then headed over to the Bulgarian Disco. The Disco was completely dead so we wandered around for awhile, had a beer at Max Fish, which was filled with hipsters, including many cute women. We then rounded out the evening at this "speakeasy." You have to go through this little tunnel and alley to get to it, and then they serve your drinks in coffee and tea cups. There is also this little back room for VIPs and private parties that is behind a revolving bookshelf. There are a lot of nice couches and the beer is pretty good. Tamas was very excited that they had Radeberger, which comes from his hometown.
I just made some chocolate chip cookies that are not as good as I'd like, but I cannot stop eating them.
So boring post, but my mind is not here so...
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Ridiculous Rutgers
Just an example of how absurd my university is:
Hourly employees need to turn in time sheets by noon on Thu, after having them signed by a supervisor. The pay period ends on Friday, so that means that if you might work on Thu or Fri, you have to guess how many hours you will work and report them before you actually work them, or else they will withhold your paycheck two weeks. If there is a holiday involved, you have to turn them in by Wednesday.
Hourly employees need to turn in time sheets by noon on Thu, after having them signed by a supervisor. The pay period ends on Friday, so that means that if you might work on Thu or Fri, you have to guess how many hours you will work and report them before you actually work them, or else they will withhold your paycheck two weeks. If there is a holiday involved, you have to turn them in by Wednesday.
Crossing the Mason-Dixon
I am finally free of the semester and have been enjoying not going to New Jersey every day.
This past weekend Brandy and I went down to VA to visit her family. It was a shame that it was this weekend since Eric left for the summer before we got back, and he had his going away party as well, but it was the only weekend we could really take the trip, and Eric and I had gotten some time to hang before we left.
The trip was very nice and relaxing. It was great to get out of the city and enjoy the quiet and fresh air on the farm, and while the farm is in danger of being eaten by disgusting suburbs, their road has thusfar remained relatively unscathed, so it is still very quiet. I am also starting to feel a lot more comfortable around her parents. I must admit that it is a bit intimidating to be a liberal, non-religious, academic type meeting the girlfriend's Southern Baptist farmer parents. It is surprising though to realize that liberals (at least this liberal) and farmers have a lot more in common than I used to think. It is so important to spend time around people who you would never imagine spending time with as it really helps to show how much more complicated people and politics and beliefs are in this world than what the propagandists of our two beloved parties would like you to believe. I have been getting much more interested in farming and food systems lately because I feel like it is so very important, but is not a very sexy topic for academics and politics and intellectuals, so it is left to the corporations. It seems like this is slowly changing with the organic and buy local movements though. I entertain romantic notions of being a farmer one day, but I really doubt that I would make a very good one since I am so lazy. I guess not so much laziness, but the fact that I couldn't commit myself to being tied to the farm indefinitely. You just do not have the freedom to spend a month away, or even a week, although I imagine that depends on the type of farming. I do like the idea though of working outdoors and being a steward of the land and feeding the people. Nothing like throwing away almost a decade of schooling. Jesus god, I've been in college for something like 8 of the past 10 years. If I do a PhD, add a few more to that.
Brandy turned 30 last Thu, and she has been jokingly lamenting the fact that she is now getting "you know your old when..." cards. Had a trapper keeper, know that Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael are not just artists... That's us folks.
I wanted to throw a surprise party for her, but I knew I would just flub it since the semester was ending at the same time, so we just went out on Wed night. She was worried about not having friends any more because not a lot of people responded to us going out, but in the end a lot of her favorite people showed up and the night was a resounding success. She almost didn't call one of her friends because she had been flaky lately and they just hadn't hung out in awhile, but then she randomly read her horiscope and and it told her to call someone she hadn't spoken with for awhile, and that tonight would work out, although not in the way that was expected. So she called Lauren, and she had just randomly read her horiscope, which told her something about wishing an old friend happy birthday or something, so Lauren came out.
I had my last exam that night, so I didn't get back to the City until 11, when I met them at some stupid bar that some Couchsurfer who had taken over Brandy's birthday post by posting numerous times about this bar and getting CS discounts, etc. The bar sucked and the discounts did not exist, so we went to our favorite hookah lounge, followed by a karaoke bar. At karaoke there was this weird guy who looked like he was from some 80s hair band. He was alone and would sit staring at the screen transfixed and would randomly yell out yeeeaaahhh. We invited Lauren, who is also from Lynchburg to come with us and she accepted. She has a friend who she met on Birthright who lives in DC, so we ended up staying with him and not having to make the 8 hour drive in one shot.
Down in VA we didn't do a whole lot except hang around the farm and visit Brandy's grandma who is in the hospital after falling down some stairs. We did acquire a ridiculous amount of plants for the house.
We got back on Monday night, and then yesterday a German/Hungarian guy I know from Budapest came for the week. After he arrived we went to the sushi bar around the corner where they have free sake, and then afterwards we grabbed some beers and chilled out at the house with the roommates.
Today he went on his own, and I am supposedly working. I have basically just been out enjoying the warm weather while buying hardware and produce and being very happy to be a student. I also had a phone meeting with John, for whom I'm working on the cycling in NYC paper, so I haven't been completely unproductive.
Tonight we will probably go to Brooklyn Brewery. As much as I hate to give a German that mediocre beer, it is only $1 for Bike Month, and I will make it up to him by going to Barcade after.
This past weekend Brandy and I went down to VA to visit her family. It was a shame that it was this weekend since Eric left for the summer before we got back, and he had his going away party as well, but it was the only weekend we could really take the trip, and Eric and I had gotten some time to hang before we left.
The trip was very nice and relaxing. It was great to get out of the city and enjoy the quiet and fresh air on the farm, and while the farm is in danger of being eaten by disgusting suburbs, their road has thusfar remained relatively unscathed, so it is still very quiet. I am also starting to feel a lot more comfortable around her parents. I must admit that it is a bit intimidating to be a liberal, non-religious, academic type meeting the girlfriend's Southern Baptist farmer parents. It is surprising though to realize that liberals (at least this liberal) and farmers have a lot more in common than I used to think. It is so important to spend time around people who you would never imagine spending time with as it really helps to show how much more complicated people and politics and beliefs are in this world than what the propagandists of our two beloved parties would like you to believe. I have been getting much more interested in farming and food systems lately because I feel like it is so very important, but is not a very sexy topic for academics and politics and intellectuals, so it is left to the corporations. It seems like this is slowly changing with the organic and buy local movements though. I entertain romantic notions of being a farmer one day, but I really doubt that I would make a very good one since I am so lazy. I guess not so much laziness, but the fact that I couldn't commit myself to being tied to the farm indefinitely. You just do not have the freedom to spend a month away, or even a week, although I imagine that depends on the type of farming. I do like the idea though of working outdoors and being a steward of the land and feeding the people. Nothing like throwing away almost a decade of schooling. Jesus god, I've been in college for something like 8 of the past 10 years. If I do a PhD, add a few more to that.
Brandy turned 30 last Thu, and she has been jokingly lamenting the fact that she is now getting "you know your old when..." cards. Had a trapper keeper, know that Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael are not just artists... That's us folks.
I wanted to throw a surprise party for her, but I knew I would just flub it since the semester was ending at the same time, so we just went out on Wed night. She was worried about not having friends any more because not a lot of people responded to us going out, but in the end a lot of her favorite people showed up and the night was a resounding success. She almost didn't call one of her friends because she had been flaky lately and they just hadn't hung out in awhile, but then she randomly read her horiscope and and it told her to call someone she hadn't spoken with for awhile, and that tonight would work out, although not in the way that was expected. So she called Lauren, and she had just randomly read her horiscope, which told her something about wishing an old friend happy birthday or something, so Lauren came out.
I had my last exam that night, so I didn't get back to the City until 11, when I met them at some stupid bar that some Couchsurfer who had taken over Brandy's birthday post by posting numerous times about this bar and getting CS discounts, etc. The bar sucked and the discounts did not exist, so we went to our favorite hookah lounge, followed by a karaoke bar. At karaoke there was this weird guy who looked like he was from some 80s hair band. He was alone and would sit staring at the screen transfixed and would randomly yell out yeeeaaahhh. We invited Lauren, who is also from Lynchburg to come with us and she accepted. She has a friend who she met on Birthright who lives in DC, so we ended up staying with him and not having to make the 8 hour drive in one shot.
Down in VA we didn't do a whole lot except hang around the farm and visit Brandy's grandma who is in the hospital after falling down some stairs. We did acquire a ridiculous amount of plants for the house.
We got back on Monday night, and then yesterday a German/Hungarian guy I know from Budapest came for the week. After he arrived we went to the sushi bar around the corner where they have free sake, and then afterwards we grabbed some beers and chilled out at the house with the roommates.
Today he went on his own, and I am supposedly working. I have basically just been out enjoying the warm weather while buying hardware and produce and being very happy to be a student. I also had a phone meeting with John, for whom I'm working on the cycling in NYC paper, so I haven't been completely unproductive.
Tonight we will probably go to Brooklyn Brewery. As much as I hate to give a German that mediocre beer, it is only $1 for Bike Month, and I will make it up to him by going to Barcade after.
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