all days are a mix of good and bad [weekend update]
Cleaning my glasses Friday morning, I found that one of the lenses had a crack in it. I don’t know how it happened, which is bizarre, and I think it’s gotten bigger over the weekend, so that moves it up on my (ever-growing) To Do/Buy priority list.
I decided that although the Dean’s e-mail said to dress “casual,” they really meant “business casual,” and lo I was correct. I did wear my denim jacket as my jacket, though. Eric asked what the N on the back was for and I said it was the first initial of the town I grew up in, that it was “a varsity letter for drama.”
“Oh, okay; I knew it couldn’t have been for sports,” he said.
“Hey now. You don’t know that.”
“I know.”
“You so don’t.”
And so we argued like 12-year-olds as we walked down the hall to pick up Mary Alice. [“If it had been for chess, I totally could have seen that,” he said.]
To prove his point -- or whatever -- he asked Mary Alice, if she were told that I’d gotten a varsity letter in high school, what would she guess it was for? She guessed “Academics?” I pointed out that this was a fair guess and very different from “I know you couldn’t have won a varsity letter in sports.”
Also amusing was Eric asking about the jacket itself and having that same "Oh okay, that makes sense then" to the information that it was my uncle's jacket, saying I don't seem the type to wear baggy clothes -- which is funny because I totally used to be, though given how I dress now (esp. at work -- which is obviously the only place he sees me) of course his impression makes sense.
At the lunch, one of the servers was pudgy, had medium length hair in a ponytail, shirt collared so you couldn’t see an Adam’s Apple or no, and a nametag saying “Pat.” I definitely often try to discern, so maybe I was just reacting because I’m contrary, but I was all, “Dude, 4 years at Smith, who cares?” After all, you hardly use pronouns in talking directly to someone, and when you do (usually when you’re the server) it’s no sweat to just leave off the gendered reference (sir/ma’am - this also solves the ma’am/miss problem, though I don’t think women usually get annoyed by being referred to one or the other of those). Eric claimed that you interact with people differently based on what you perceive their gender to be. “In professional interactions?” I queried. I don’t think that when interacting in a professional context with people I know that I act any differently based on it being a man or a woman, so I challenged him to give me specific examples (because hey, I could be wrong) and of course he couldn’t think of any. I know I’m awful at coming up with stuff on the spot myself, so this doesn’t necessarily mean specific examples don’t exist, but since he couldn’t come up with any I turn to the flist for discussion.
Eric and I were ready to leave fairly quickly, but the event was scheduled for 11:30-1:30 and was held in the gym so Mary Alice couldn’t work out afterward as she’d planned until it was actually officially over, so we stayed until ~1 ‘cause we felt bad abandoning her.
Eric is in love with the honeydew slush at Boston Tea Company, so after we left we went there. I’m not a hug fan of honeydew melon (this is gonna sound crazy ‘cause it’s me, but… it’s too tasteless for me) so I planned to just have a sip of his and order something else myself. I didn’t wanna order something I could get anywhere, though, like strawberry. What I really wanted was cantaloupe, but that wasn’t an option. One was “taro,” a word I didn’t recognize, so I asked him and he said he thought it was a kind of potato. So, thinking of Cat, of course I ordered that. The honeydew was actually rather good, but while I had expected to not like the taro at all, it was so good (and Eric even agreed that it tasted good). Also, purple.
We hung out by the T, drinking our snows [snow=creamy slush] and chatting. He’d seen the gay cover of the most recent stuff@night, so of course he asked me if I’d seen it. I had in fact picked up on my way to work earlier that week, so I lamented to him that it was so gay male centric. We’d both read the day’s Metro, so he got to point out that there was a Dyke something as part of Pride -- Dyke March, I said. He said that large groups of masculine women [as in, the ones who could be taken for men and could beat you up] scare him. [Oh my poor sheltered boy.] This of course made me wanna go to get a demographic spread -- and of course I told him that. Unfortunately, I was going out of town that night, but I told him I would drag him there next year.
Originally I had hoped to make the 2:45, but that definitely didn’t happen (I made the 4:30 instead, which was fine.) but that was totally okay because walking up Holland St. who did I see? She nearly tackled me with her hug, twirled me around. Mmm, I have been touch-deprived. [Eric is touchphobic. What is up with that? My universe is askew.] It was her last day of school, so she invited me to go out with them that night. Sadly, I couldn’t. But there will be housewarming parties in our future.
Singspiration was okay. I just really wasn’t into the music, in part because I’m in one of my detached-from-faith mood. And JeffC continues to annoy me, and that night I was noticing that we seemed to always skip the verse of a hymn I thought the most meaningful. (I did really like the musicality of the Filipino Vocal Ensmebl from Tremont Temple doing “Immortal, Invisible,” though.) The people are still good, though, so I’ll probably be back next year provided there aren’t things I’d rather be doing those nights. I hadn’t intended to stay so long after, but yeah, good people, yay talking.
I went to bed a little after midnight -- first time I went to bed significantly after 11ish since before I’d moved into my new apartment (though it would become a theme for the weekend).
I actually saw Harriet at Fellowship after Singspiration, which was so random. I swung by the library on Saturday, though I’ll definitely have to e-mail some people since obviously most people aren’t there on Saturdays. Terry noticed I’d gotten my hair cut, which pleased me. I often feel weird visiting MML ‘cause I don’t work there anymore, but I feel even more separated now that I don’t even live in the same town.
I took the 1:05 back into the city, though I ended up deciding to just go to the last two sessions at Mass Art that night (8:15pm-10:30pm and the 10:45pm-11:55pm [yay for that 12:55 being a typo]).
8:45 they let us in to the “8:15.” Le sigh.
Session 13 (Saturday, 8:15pm-10:30pm @ Mass Art)
Not My Religion - the blurb overstates it
Eleven: Eleven - this is an interesting film, but the blurb seems to me to overstate a bit and even mislead
Façade á Façade - shrug
Midnight - reminded me of Lost in Translation (which is by no means an unqualified compliment)
Apparently there was a party for Midnight afterward. (The fact that attendees would be largely people who were family/friends of people involved in the making of the films was new to me.) They had a Q&A for the people who did the short films, though - which almost no one stayed for; and people also had difficulty with the concept (explicitly stated) of “If you’re going to leave, please leave quickly.” They started letting people in for the next session while the Q&A was still going on, though, so hello me not paying for my second session of viewing.
Session 14 (Saturday, 10:45pm-11:55pm @ Mass Art)
The Party - not as good as I’d expected from the blurb
Life in Transition
Club Midnight - … interesting
Telemarketing Orphan
Available Men - I hate mistaken identity plotlines (even Shakespeare can rarely pull it off - making it ironic that Twelfth Night is my favorite Shakespeare play) but I actually liked this a lot.
Succubus - the “blurb” tells the whole story, so I’m glad I’d forgotten it by the time I saw the short. It was an intriguing concept, but I wasn't impressed by the execution.
Transaction
Those strikeouts are films they didn’t show even though they were listed on the online program. I was too tired to complain (it was ~12:20, and I was feeling a little like I was drunk ‘cause I was tired). I walked to the T with a couple women and one of them was pissed -- they had shown up specifically for that second session, so they paid $10/each for ~45 minutes of film (only 2 of the 4 did she even like) that started late. She also commented -- and I agreed -- that the films really didn’t seem to be international at all.
I used my leftover ticket the following morning.
Session 15 (Sunday, 10am-12:30pm @ Mass Art)
Enfants Terribles - much better than I was expecting given the blurb
The One About the Nun and the Priest - very good
I think everyone in attendance, other than me, was friends/family of the people who did that second film, so the Q&A consisted of a lot of praising, but I was okay with that.
Mysteries of the Apocalypse - feature film following the Q&A and I don’t think anyone stayed for it; I didn’t have much interest in it, so I exited as well. Which meant I was free an hour and a half sooner than I expected. My MFA film wasn’t until 2 (it was then 11am) so I went to Downtown Crossing to do some shopping. Turns out most everything doesn’t open until noon on Sundays. So I went to Harvard Square, got a router at Staples and some stuff at CVS, then came back to Downtown Crossing and got a couple pairs of black sandals then got to the MFA with 5 minutes to spare, even with checking my bags.
The MFA film was Princess Marie [IMDb] and was quite long (~3hrs plus a 10minute intermission) but it was engaging throughout and I approve of that use of my time/money.
On the Green Line coming back the final time, sitting near me was a small young man reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower who gave up his seat for an old woman (“I’m just glad chivalry isn’t dead,” her companion said to her afterward.)
I did laundry here for the first time Sunday night. I got so spoiled at Smith. Coin-op wash is $1.75 (vs. Smith’s $1.25 with OneCard/$1.50 with coins) and the dryers are these “Speed Queens” [or something like that] that are 6min/25cents, which is of course so unhelpful.
I keep thinking about the housewarming party I want to have (current guess: mid-July, a joint birthday&apartment-warming party) and it makes me sad that there’s probably no way everyone I want to come will be able to what with people going away on vacation and all. People coming in from not-Boston is also going to be interesting as there is almost no parking. There needs to be car-pooling if many people from Norwood come. Sigh. Currently there is a whole host of other stuff that more pressingly needs my attention, but people keep asking “When are you going to have your housewarming party?” plus of course that was one of the things I was most excited for about getting an apartment.
Cat, I told my mom about your postcard (she was asking if my one-drink-remaining vodka needed to be sent over to my apartment) and I said that the way you write it’s not easy to read the words at-a-glance. “So she could write porn on a postcard and no one would notice?” my mom said. We love my parents.
Edit: Checking UnitHead's calendar, at noon today there's "USA Czech." Ah, World Cup.