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.