Summary of "Val and Mark cause trouble in the NY metro area" weekend
So, Mark came down Friday night after he got out of work, and arrived in Hicksville (where I work, and where there's a much more high-quality train station than Huntington's) around 6pm. We went to my bank so I could transfer money, then onto the train into NYC. He showed me his spiffy new cell phone on the way in, and we had some fun adventures on the subway. We found where we needed to be later, then we wandered around looking for dinner. We went to some pizza place on 8th Ave., then headed back to the club. I'm not really into most synthpop, besides Freezepop, but it was still fun, and some of the other bands were good, and we got to just hang out and talk between sets. At like 12:30, Freezepop went on, and they were awesome, as usual. I definitely had a wonderful time singing and dancing around. There were two very drunken lesbians dancing in front of us and subsequently bumping into us, which was kind of funny, annoying and pathetic all at once. I got some good pics, which I'll eventually put up. Their set ended around 1:15, and it was a chilly walk back to the subway. At night, the subways don't run nearly as often, so we had to wait about 20 mins for the next subway. There were some weird metal sculptures around in the station of little... creatures? Men? I dunno, I'll have to put up the pictures at some point. And they appeared to have some very visible male appendages, so we had a good giggle over that, and snapped some pics. Some weird guy in the station saw us taking pictures, and proceeded to tell us his whole life story, which was just bizarre. We got back to Penn Station around 2, found a convenience store to grab a drink at, and went to the waiting area to sit on the floor and laugh at all the hooker girls and drunk guys coming back from clubbing. Our train out wasn't till 2:55am, so we had a good while of people-watching. Our train arrived, and we crashed in the first seats we found and napped all the way back to Hicksville. We were both dead tired, having both woken up at 7am for work the day before. When we got off the train, it was cold, like way colder than it was in NYC. I guess that was a good thing - it kept Mark awake enough to drive, and me awake enough to give directions. We got to my house at around 4:15am, and Mark set up camp on my floor, and I tried to keep the cats away from harrassing him.
We woke up around 11am on Saturday. Mark had forgotten to pack shirts, so I lent him my quadfest 11 t-shirt, and we headed out to Ikea. It was so freakin' packed, which was understandable, since it was a Saturday afternoon. I totally can't wait to have my own apartment to decorate with Ikea goodies. I found some really neat picture frames super-cheap there, but the lines were so insanely long that it wasn't worth waiting on them for a $5 purchase. I'll go back and get them one night after work... I love working down the road from Ikea. After Ikea, we got lunch at McD's, and wandered the mall. After the mall, we headed home and had a rousing battle with Amplitude, which was interesting, giving our states of tiredness from the previous day. We went to the pizzeria in the shopping center by Eckerd and ordered a REAL NY PIZZA, and stopped into Eckerd so I could introduce Mark to Kristen. We got the pizza, and watched 4 Ali G episodes. Mark grudgingly agreed that NY pizza is pretty damn good. We decided to go see Ocean's Twelve for lack of any better ideas, even though I hadn't seen Ocean's Eleven. I still greatly enjoyed Ocean's Twelve though, and I totally need to see the first one now. After the movie, we went driving around, looking for a 24-hour Stop and Shop (in the absence of Price Choppers - the nearest one being about 2 hours away). Failing that, we went to a 24-hour Pathmark, bought some Drake's cakes and Diet Pepsi, and drove around randomly for about another hour, talking. By the time we got home, it was around 1:30, and we were both pretty sleepy, so Mark crashed on the futon, and we went to sleep.
We woke up this morning around 10:30, and spent a while torturing the cats with the laser pointer. Mark has a bit of a history with driving animals nuts with laser pointers - he likes teasing Mike's sister's dog with one, and the cats provided much hilarity also. We eventually headed out for lunch at Friendly's after much indecision, where I continued my 4-day streak of getting chicken fingers. No more chicken fingers for me for the next month or so! After lunch, Mark packed up his car, and headed back up to CT, so he could pack to go back to Worcester for the first day of the new semester of grad classes.
Good times were had this weekend. The next couple of weekends also promise to be superfun - next weekend I'll be down in PA with Jeff, and the weekend after, he'll be up on LI with me, which will be super-sweet, especially since my mom's going away for at least part of, if not all of, the weekend. Life is good, and my 'nearest and dearest' rock. :)
We woke up around 11am on Saturday. Mark had forgotten to pack shirts, so I lent him my quadfest 11 t-shirt, and we headed out to Ikea. It was so freakin' packed, which was understandable, since it was a Saturday afternoon. I totally can't wait to have my own apartment to decorate with Ikea goodies. I found some really neat picture frames super-cheap there, but the lines were so insanely long that it wasn't worth waiting on them for a $5 purchase. I'll go back and get them one night after work... I love working down the road from Ikea. After Ikea, we got lunch at McD's, and wandered the mall. After the mall, we headed home and had a rousing battle with Amplitude, which was interesting, giving our states of tiredness from the previous day. We went to the pizzeria in the shopping center by Eckerd and ordered a REAL NY PIZZA, and stopped into Eckerd so I could introduce Mark to Kristen. We got the pizza, and watched 4 Ali G episodes. Mark grudgingly agreed that NY pizza is pretty damn good. We decided to go see Ocean's Twelve for lack of any better ideas, even though I hadn't seen Ocean's Eleven. I still greatly enjoyed Ocean's Twelve though, and I totally need to see the first one now. After the movie, we went driving around, looking for a 24-hour Stop and Shop (in the absence of Price Choppers - the nearest one being about 2 hours away). Failing that, we went to a 24-hour Pathmark, bought some Drake's cakes and Diet Pepsi, and drove around randomly for about another hour, talking. By the time we got home, it was around 1:30, and we were both pretty sleepy, so Mark crashed on the futon, and we went to sleep.
We woke up this morning around 10:30, and spent a while torturing the cats with the laser pointer. Mark has a bit of a history with driving animals nuts with laser pointers - he likes teasing Mike's sister's dog with one, and the cats provided much hilarity also. We eventually headed out for lunch at Friendly's after much indecision, where I continued my 4-day streak of getting chicken fingers. No more chicken fingers for me for the next month or so! After lunch, Mark packed up his car, and headed back up to CT, so he could pack to go back to Worcester for the first day of the new semester of grad classes.
Good times were had this weekend. The next couple of weekends also promise to be superfun - next weekend I'll be down in PA with Jeff, and the weekend after, he'll be up on LI with me, which will be super-sweet, especially since my mom's going away for at least part of, if not all of, the weekend. Life is good, and my 'nearest and dearest' rock. :)