Viggo Mortensen always has blondes throwing themselves at him.
And they're usually involved with horses, and he always leaves them alone in their tents. Then he goes and hangs out with the brunette chick and touches her ears. WTF??? Oh, what the hell. Get down with your bad self, Veggo.
So, where have I been for the last few weeks, you ask?
Here, there and everywhere, up, down and in between. Things have been crazy. This should come as no surprise.
I, Feather, am a Nice Person. Therefore, I have Cut This For You. Yay.
Work, and Joanie’s Defection
Work at the Bakery had just gotten stupid. You think things can’t possibly get any worse and then WHAM! They do. Between Scott being an absolutely spineless yet nice yet useless ‘manager’ and Gary on what amounts to a pathetic/eternal power trip, things were just… dumb. Really, really, frustratingly stupid. Too stupid to even save in this journal. Although writing it all down will come in handy once I write my one act play about this place. Harold and Jim got fired on the same day, which was ridiculous since they are two of the three people who actually keep the store running. Then Joanie quit- kind of- it was more like, ‘she went away on vacation and never came back.’ But before she left, she told Gary he could take a flying fuck off the wall and told Scott, “See ya, fuck head!” and walked out laughing. Gotta love Joanie.
Work, carrying on
Mom and I just worked for the next week. Since working is what you do when you’re down to two people in a bakery that takes four people to run, so the remaining two have to work at least eight hour shifts every single day, but whatever. Money is good. (Career? Hell no, paychecks!) One day I was there from 2 AM to 1 PM and let me tell you, that was a giant fucking barrel of fun.
And then on Friday, Aunt Sean came up to visit
And that was really cool because, you know, Aunt Sean is really cool. We didn’t do much on Friday, since Mom and I had to work every day that weekend, but Saturday was jam packed. Mom and I worked, and when we came home we all went out to lunch at Lock 24. Aunt Sean seemed amazed by the Seneca River- “That’s the Seneca?” “Yes.” “That?!?” “Yes!” “That is the Seneca River?!?!?” “YES!!!” She accused Mom of talking about it like it was the Mississippi and was quite disappointed. Kelsey liked the waiter and named him Figwit for his dark hair and blue eyes. I didn’t think so, but then, she’s impossible to argue with so I gave it up as a bad job. Mom decided that Aunt Sean would like to take a drive through the graveyard, so off we went.
Or tried to. The main graveyard was closed, so Mom had to drive through the Catholic graveyard. The Catholic graveyard was very… eclectic, I guess, for Catholics. Every one of their cemeteries I’ve ever been in were very strict on what you could have on your gravestone or what you could decorate your gravesite with; this one had etchings of cabins and fish and ducks and deer and people and obscure biblical scenes all over the place. There were also a large amount of gravestones for people who hadn’t died yet. Mom almost drove into a new grave looking at a gravestone with the names of the dead people’s children all over it. Very odd.
Then we trooped over the Winterguard show at the high school. It kind of sucked- CNS Dance Ensemble performed three times just to fill it up. There were only five competing guards, or something stupid like that. There were a couple of good ones and B’ville was great, as usual. La la la. Onwards.
Getting Fired! (Sunday morning, paper entry)
Of course work today is an abrupt 180 on any happy-go-lucky feelings. They’ve turned pissed-go-psycho. Or something. Little Scotty-boy left us a note on the door saying that they’d ordered a bunch of stuff from some other bakery; it was getting delivered at seven, could you just finish up the odds’n’ends and we’ll talk then. Whatever the fuck that means. Are we fired or something? WTF? Mom is pissed because she’s getting screwed for doing the right thing. We handed in our resignations, but they were for March 17th. Which is not March 7, and we need the money. Fuck fuck. Oooh, it makes me mad. You can’t refreeze any of the dough, and it was all defrosted by the time we got the note, so we had to bake it all. Fuckbrain knew that- he must have, we’ve told him a thousand times, but maybe he’s stupider than I thought. Listen, kids, don’t marry your cousins or your children will turn out like my boss. Alleged boss. He’s got all the spine of an amoeba. So here I am at work, during a lull period, just writing. Blah blah, woof woof.
Mom says Joanie put kisses on the postcards she sent us from Colorado. Where are they, I asked. She said that putting on a postage stamp upside down means that it’s a kiss. Maybe she did but she’s got a habit of labeling things upside down, so I don’t know. I find that she wanted to give kisses to the customers doubtful. She was swearing at them most of the time.
[LJ addition: She swore up a storm at Mrs. Dayger one time. Kept calling her an old crow. Hee hee.]
New Jersey: Part one
Came down with Aunt Sean and Sandy, a friend who she had driven up with. That was… Monday, I guess (counting backwards on my fingers.) It was kind of a spur of the moment decision, but when opportunity knocks, you beat it over the head with a shovel and lock it in the basement.
Tuesday night we went to Alex’s comedy club improv show. That was a lot of fun, with tons of great food made by the kids in the cooking program. The food was great. James was in heaven. They had hot and cold antipasto, fillet mignon, the whole nine yards. And chocolate mousse cake (drool, drool) Mmmmmm good.
Alex’s improv thing was absolutely hysterical. We were cracking up the whole time. My favorite one was this thing with a dog- they had to keep changing personas, or something. At any rate, it was really funny.
New York: part one, with Original Paper Entry!
On Wednesday, we (Aunt Sean, Uncle Kevin, and I) went into Manhattan. We stayed at Grandmaman’s apartment. It was great because she was in Florida for the winter or something. That sounds horrible of me to say, but she really unnerves me. I can’t help it. So we got to stay in the loft and I actually relaxed for once.
We got in early in the afternoon and stopped at some Japanese restaurant. I got negi maki, which was great, especially since I hadn’t had it in a while. We also split a thing of sake. Also very good.
Then we just traipsed around the city for a while. We wound up visiting the Lower East Side Tenement Museum gift shop, but not the museum itself, apparently. We also went to Ferrara’s, and I got the cheese from DePaulo’s that I forgot to get last time for my dad. Uncle Kevin got ten pounds of pickles from the Pickle Guys, a hole in the wall pickle place that’s under the Rabbinical supervision of Rabbi Shmuel F-something or other, which I got a kick out of. They had pickled just about everything.
Then we took a bus back to 22nd street at around four. Back at the loft we opened up a bottle of champagne while we waited until five to go meet Neil at the Red Lion on Bleeker St. Neil, I discovered, was Uncle Kevin’s friend from work, who he hadn’t seen in a while and who we were going to be spending the evening with. Three glasses of champagne later, I find my self out the door on my way to the Red Lion. Then we each had another drink (white wine, whatever Aunt Sean was having.) The bar was nice, very cozy and dark, but the band was playing way too loud so we decided to leave. Neil and Christa (another co-worker) went someplace to get a belly button ring, and that’s the last bit I remember clearly.
Somehow we wound up at Jekyll and Hyde’s. Maybe it was down the street or something. Anyway, it’s a cool place, touristy/hokey but still fun. There’s a talking rhinoceros head above the fireplace. I know because I was watching it, or trying to, since I couldn’t quite focus my eyes. That was the three rum and cokes talking. At one point Aunt Sean and I went to the bathroom, and we had to go down this hallway to find it. The hallway looks like a library, and the bathroom is behind a ‘secret’ door, which I had the luck to fall against and into, otherwise we would never have found it. There was a map above the hand dryer of Europe, and I kept looking for Norway, since Miss Cam lives there, but my eyes couldn’t make out anything but the Atlantic Ocean and Iceland. That really pissed me off. I kept going back to look for it. I think Christa found it eventually. Aunt Sean sure didn’t, she being as drunk as me.
Meanwhile, Uncle Kevin, Christa, and Neil were drinking yards of ale, which is basically beer that comes in a yard long glass on a stand. They each had two, so they were kind of out of it. (I think?) Then we left there, and went to the Slaughtered Lamb, since it was in some movie or something, only we didn’t go in and went to this place called Boxer’s instead, where I got a really strong mudslide. I remember asking the bartender to add some more milk, and he said he wasn’t using milk, that was only for white Russians. What the hell is Parmalat? That’s what he added to my drink.
Then we went home. This drinking excursion was so momentous that I decided I need it to record it for posterity. The following entry was written at 12:35 AM, in nearly illegible handwriting.
Mar 10/04
V V V drunk
22nd and 6th
Grandmama’s
Sake with lunch- bento
3 champagne w/ ferraras
1 wine- red lion
3 rum/coke Jekyll hyde
(bathroom books
Iceland-norway
Atlantic ocean)
Mudslide- boxers
2 yard beers (ales??)
Uncle Kevin made bed
13:35 am dizzy bed now
New York, day two
5:43 AM: woke up after nightmare with orcs. Aha! No hangover. Still going back to sleep though.
9:44: Still no hangover. Go me. They let me sleep it off but they could have woken me up.
Going to the Cloisters now. Supposed to be getting ready but writing instead. Should surprise Nellie! Yay, with the Oregon Trail. Looks like I survived cholera after all.
Of course, we lost all my clothes.
Am Evy- “The tools, the equipment… all my clothes…”
Hee hee, going now.
The Cloisters were a lot of fun. Of course, that’s right up my alley, all medieval art, and I highly recommend it to anyone who visits New York. I’d only been there once before, with Nana, Aunt Doris, Mom, Kelsey, Liam, and Melissa, so needless to say this time around it was much more laid-back. I took a lot of sketch notes on different motifs that I plan to use in my various LOTR costuming and embroidery projects, some of which I can’t wait to get started on. We ate lunch up there in the park house restaurant before grabbing our stuff and heading for Penn Station to come back to Jersey.
Friday Nana came over and we went to the movies. We went to see Hidalgo (again, Aunt Sean and I saw it up in Sadexcuse.) It’s a good movie but twice is enough. Nana and James really liked it, and Aunt Sean and I giggled through the whole thing (“See that man? That’s you.”) As a result we’ve been calling each other Hidalgo and Al-Hattal for the past few days.)
A random day trip to Washington, D.C.
James was supposed to go down to DC to rendezvous with his girlfriend, Virginia, for spring break, so Aunt Sean and I decided to go too, since we’d both been wanting to. Here’s a review of Washington in a Nutshell.
Washington, our nation’s capitol city, is free and open to the public. When the public has tickets. When do you get the tickets? At eight in the morning. So visiting the White House, Capitol Building, and Washington Monument was out. The city smelled horrible, there were no cabs, tour buses, or trolleys, so we had to hoof it everywhere. There was no traffic anyplace but the Mall, which was hellish. The Reflecting Pool was empty. There were only two restaurants, one of which was closed, and the other was overpriced and mediocre. The Hope Diamond had a finger print on it and was dusty; they kicked us out of the Moon room in the Air and Space Museum fifteen minutes before the museum closed. Union Station has a huge food court, but it’s full of sketchy characters and the only bathroom there is is in a sketchy basement movie theater. The Korean War Memorial is creepy at night and the city is full of one way streets so you can’t find where you parked you car, which happens to be in the only out door parking lot in the place, since every parking garage is closed.
I very thoroughly enjoyed myself.
At one point I was admiring bumper stickers in one part of the Mall and they left me there and kept walking, so I had to run to catch up, knocking people out of the way and trying desperately to keep my eye on James’s head so I could find them in the crowd. At another point Aunt Sean had all kinds of stuff in her pockets, and the security guard’s wand kept beeping so she had to keep pulling it all out. That took about fifteen minutes and I’ve got pictures of it all. Touching the moon rock was awesome. I thought the Hope Diamond would be a little bigger than it was (I admit it: I thought it would be as big as the Heart of the Ocean in Titanic) and I really wanted to see the Enola Gay, which had been moved to Virginia, but whatever. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and watching night fall over Washington was decidedly cool. And we unexpectedly got up close and personal with the Pentagon when Virginia made a wrong turn (twice.) We walked through the empty Reflecting Pool and looked up Ricky Carraba’s name on the Vietnam Wall. Aunt Sean got really upset. I guess that was the only person she knew who didn’t come back from Vietnam. She said my mother screamed herself dehydrated when she heard that he was killed. Went right into shock and all, and almost wound up in the hospital. Sometimes I wonder if he was my mom’s first love.
I got a hat that says CIA on it and wore it around cause it was cold. Pictures to come later.
At the end of the day James and Virginia left for Richmond and Aunt Sean and I headed back to Jersey. I was supposed to drive the whole way but only made it to the sign that said ’74 miles to Philadelphia’ before I had to switch with Aunt Sean. Then I fell asleep, waking up at some point to tell her “not to worry, they can never prove you wrote it” before falling asleep again.
Yesterday we didn’t do much. Just cooked with Uncle Kevin, but that involved a trip to the Asian supermarket, homemade teriyaki sause, miso soup, and daikon salad. Now I know how miso soup is made. It’s an interesting process with seaweed, benito flakes, miso, tofu, and more seaweed. I’m not insanely fond of it but now I know how to make it. Yay!
Today Aunt Sean and I went and saw Secret Window. That movie was insanely predictable and yet somehow enjoyable (probably because of Johnny Depp.) Then we snuck in to watch a few minutes of LOTR (Legolas taking down the elephant!) before coming home again. Then Alex came home, and she, I, and her friend Kelly all went to the mall to see the prom dresses they’re getting tomorrow. Alex looks like a princess, but this isn’t unusual since the girl is drop dead gorgeous. We got our pictures taken at one of those picture things (real informative, I know. The booths in the mall that take you picture with a video camera and make it into a t-shirt.) The guy is going to use one of them for display. Wow! Infamy in a New Jersey Mall. I got two buttons- one of me and Alex, and the other of the three of us.
Then we came home and ate dinner (steak Haddad- or, as Aunt Sean tells me, “STEAK AL-HATTAL!!!!!” Told her it was a piece of Hidalgo, from when he fell into the stake pit, and she it me on the head with a fork. Hee hee.)
So here I am, at the end of a horrendous journal entry. I’ve got a long trip ahead of me tomorrow, which I’m kicking myself for, since Uncle Kevin said that if I could stay an extra day he’d go and see ROTK with me tomorrow. This is something of a personal triumph since he usually never goes to movies. Dammit, dammit. What to do.
Two things that don’t seem to belong anywhere: I have a new [girly] purse. It’s red. Kate picked it out, since I’m useless at that kind of stuff. So, yay. I also have girly shoes. Black high-heeled things, that aren’t high heels per say. It’s wonderful, going by plate glass windows and realizing how good my shoes look with my jeans. As long as I don’t go past my knees, lol.
I’m sick of typing now, so I’m out.
Nellie and Sara, thank you so much for the cards! *blows kisses*
Lise, hang in there, babe.
Love you all. Leave comments and show the love.
So, where have I been for the last few weeks, you ask?
Here, there and everywhere, up, down and in between. Things have been crazy. This should come as no surprise.
I, Feather, am a Nice Person. Therefore, I have Cut This For You. Yay.
Work, and Joanie’s Defection
Work at the Bakery had just gotten stupid. You think things can’t possibly get any worse and then WHAM! They do. Between Scott being an absolutely spineless yet nice yet useless ‘manager’ and Gary on what amounts to a pathetic/eternal power trip, things were just… dumb. Really, really, frustratingly stupid. Too stupid to even save in this journal. Although writing it all down will come in handy once I write my one act play about this place. Harold and Jim got fired on the same day, which was ridiculous since they are two of the three people who actually keep the store running. Then Joanie quit- kind of- it was more like, ‘she went away on vacation and never came back.’ But before she left, she told Gary he could take a flying fuck off the wall and told Scott, “See ya, fuck head!” and walked out laughing. Gotta love Joanie.
Work, carrying on
Mom and I just worked for the next week. Since working is what you do when you’re down to two people in a bakery that takes four people to run, so the remaining two have to work at least eight hour shifts every single day, but whatever. Money is good. (Career? Hell no, paychecks!) One day I was there from 2 AM to 1 PM and let me tell you, that was a giant fucking barrel of fun.
And then on Friday, Aunt Sean came up to visit
And that was really cool because, you know, Aunt Sean is really cool. We didn’t do much on Friday, since Mom and I had to work every day that weekend, but Saturday was jam packed. Mom and I worked, and when we came home we all went out to lunch at Lock 24. Aunt Sean seemed amazed by the Seneca River- “That’s the Seneca?” “Yes.” “That?!?” “Yes!” “That is the Seneca River?!?!?” “YES!!!” She accused Mom of talking about it like it was the Mississippi and was quite disappointed. Kelsey liked the waiter and named him Figwit for his dark hair and blue eyes. I didn’t think so, but then, she’s impossible to argue with so I gave it up as a bad job. Mom decided that Aunt Sean would like to take a drive through the graveyard, so off we went.
Or tried to. The main graveyard was closed, so Mom had to drive through the Catholic graveyard. The Catholic graveyard was very… eclectic, I guess, for Catholics. Every one of their cemeteries I’ve ever been in were very strict on what you could have on your gravestone or what you could decorate your gravesite with; this one had etchings of cabins and fish and ducks and deer and people and obscure biblical scenes all over the place. There were also a large amount of gravestones for people who hadn’t died yet. Mom almost drove into a new grave looking at a gravestone with the names of the dead people’s children all over it. Very odd.
Then we trooped over the Winterguard show at the high school. It kind of sucked- CNS Dance Ensemble performed three times just to fill it up. There were only five competing guards, or something stupid like that. There were a couple of good ones and B’ville was great, as usual. La la la. Onwards.
Getting Fired! (Sunday morning, paper entry)
Of course work today is an abrupt 180 on any happy-go-lucky feelings. They’ve turned pissed-go-psycho. Or something. Little Scotty-boy left us a note on the door saying that they’d ordered a bunch of stuff from some other bakery; it was getting delivered at seven, could you just finish up the odds’n’ends and we’ll talk then. Whatever the fuck that means. Are we fired or something? WTF? Mom is pissed because she’s getting screwed for doing the right thing. We handed in our resignations, but they were for March 17th. Which is not March 7, and we need the money. Fuck fuck. Oooh, it makes me mad. You can’t refreeze any of the dough, and it was all defrosted by the time we got the note, so we had to bake it all. Fuckbrain knew that- he must have, we’ve told him a thousand times, but maybe he’s stupider than I thought. Listen, kids, don’t marry your cousins or your children will turn out like my boss. Alleged boss. He’s got all the spine of an amoeba. So here I am at work, during a lull period, just writing. Blah blah, woof woof.
Mom says Joanie put kisses on the postcards she sent us from Colorado. Where are they, I asked. She said that putting on a postage stamp upside down means that it’s a kiss. Maybe she did but she’s got a habit of labeling things upside down, so I don’t know. I find that she wanted to give kisses to the customers doubtful. She was swearing at them most of the time.
[LJ addition: She swore up a storm at Mrs. Dayger one time. Kept calling her an old crow. Hee hee.]
New Jersey: Part one
Came down with Aunt Sean and Sandy, a friend who she had driven up with. That was… Monday, I guess (counting backwards on my fingers.) It was kind of a spur of the moment decision, but when opportunity knocks, you beat it over the head with a shovel and lock it in the basement.
Tuesday night we went to Alex’s comedy club improv show. That was a lot of fun, with tons of great food made by the kids in the cooking program. The food was great. James was in heaven. They had hot and cold antipasto, fillet mignon, the whole nine yards. And chocolate mousse cake (drool, drool) Mmmmmm good.
Alex’s improv thing was absolutely hysterical. We were cracking up the whole time. My favorite one was this thing with a dog- they had to keep changing personas, or something. At any rate, it was really funny.
New York: part one, with Original Paper Entry!
On Wednesday, we (Aunt Sean, Uncle Kevin, and I) went into Manhattan. We stayed at Grandmaman’s apartment. It was great because she was in Florida for the winter or something. That sounds horrible of me to say, but she really unnerves me. I can’t help it. So we got to stay in the loft and I actually relaxed for once.
We got in early in the afternoon and stopped at some Japanese restaurant. I got negi maki, which was great, especially since I hadn’t had it in a while. We also split a thing of sake. Also very good.
Then we just traipsed around the city for a while. We wound up visiting the Lower East Side Tenement Museum gift shop, but not the museum itself, apparently. We also went to Ferrara’s, and I got the cheese from DePaulo’s that I forgot to get last time for my dad. Uncle Kevin got ten pounds of pickles from the Pickle Guys, a hole in the wall pickle place that’s under the Rabbinical supervision of Rabbi Shmuel F-something or other, which I got a kick out of. They had pickled just about everything.
Then we took a bus back to 22nd street at around four. Back at the loft we opened up a bottle of champagne while we waited until five to go meet Neil at the Red Lion on Bleeker St. Neil, I discovered, was Uncle Kevin’s friend from work, who he hadn’t seen in a while and who we were going to be spending the evening with. Three glasses of champagne later, I find my self out the door on my way to the Red Lion. Then we each had another drink (white wine, whatever Aunt Sean was having.) The bar was nice, very cozy and dark, but the band was playing way too loud so we decided to leave. Neil and Christa (another co-worker) went someplace to get a belly button ring, and that’s the last bit I remember clearly.
Somehow we wound up at Jekyll and Hyde’s. Maybe it was down the street or something. Anyway, it’s a cool place, touristy/hokey but still fun. There’s a talking rhinoceros head above the fireplace. I know because I was watching it, or trying to, since I couldn’t quite focus my eyes. That was the three rum and cokes talking. At one point Aunt Sean and I went to the bathroom, and we had to go down this hallway to find it. The hallway looks like a library, and the bathroom is behind a ‘secret’ door, which I had the luck to fall against and into, otherwise we would never have found it. There was a map above the hand dryer of Europe, and I kept looking for Norway, since Miss Cam lives there, but my eyes couldn’t make out anything but the Atlantic Ocean and Iceland. That really pissed me off. I kept going back to look for it. I think Christa found it eventually. Aunt Sean sure didn’t, she being as drunk as me.
Meanwhile, Uncle Kevin, Christa, and Neil were drinking yards of ale, which is basically beer that comes in a yard long glass on a stand. They each had two, so they were kind of out of it. (I think?) Then we left there, and went to the Slaughtered Lamb, since it was in some movie or something, only we didn’t go in and went to this place called Boxer’s instead, where I got a really strong mudslide. I remember asking the bartender to add some more milk, and he said he wasn’t using milk, that was only for white Russians. What the hell is Parmalat? That’s what he added to my drink.
Then we went home. This drinking excursion was so momentous that I decided I need it to record it for posterity. The following entry was written at 12:35 AM, in nearly illegible handwriting.
Mar 10/04
V V V drunk
22nd and 6th
Grandmama’s
Sake with lunch- bento
3 champagne w/ ferraras
1 wine- red lion
3 rum/coke Jekyll hyde
(bathroom books
Iceland-norway
Atlantic ocean)
Mudslide- boxers
2 yard beers (ales??)
Uncle Kevin made bed
13:35 am dizzy bed now
New York, day two
5:43 AM: woke up after nightmare with orcs. Aha! No hangover. Still going back to sleep though.
9:44: Still no hangover. Go me. They let me sleep it off but they could have woken me up.
Going to the Cloisters now. Supposed to be getting ready but writing instead. Should surprise Nellie! Yay, with the Oregon Trail. Looks like I survived cholera after all.
Of course, we lost all my clothes.
Am Evy- “The tools, the equipment… all my clothes…”
Hee hee, going now.
The Cloisters were a lot of fun. Of course, that’s right up my alley, all medieval art, and I highly recommend it to anyone who visits New York. I’d only been there once before, with Nana, Aunt Doris, Mom, Kelsey, Liam, and Melissa, so needless to say this time around it was much more laid-back. I took a lot of sketch notes on different motifs that I plan to use in my various LOTR costuming and embroidery projects, some of which I can’t wait to get started on. We ate lunch up there in the park house restaurant before grabbing our stuff and heading for Penn Station to come back to Jersey.
Friday Nana came over and we went to the movies. We went to see Hidalgo (again, Aunt Sean and I saw it up in Sadexcuse.) It’s a good movie but twice is enough. Nana and James really liked it, and Aunt Sean and I giggled through the whole thing (“See that man? That’s you.”) As a result we’ve been calling each other Hidalgo and Al-Hattal for the past few days.)
A random day trip to Washington, D.C.
James was supposed to go down to DC to rendezvous with his girlfriend, Virginia, for spring break, so Aunt Sean and I decided to go too, since we’d both been wanting to. Here’s a review of Washington in a Nutshell.
Washington, our nation’s capitol city, is free and open to the public. When the public has tickets. When do you get the tickets? At eight in the morning. So visiting the White House, Capitol Building, and Washington Monument was out. The city smelled horrible, there were no cabs, tour buses, or trolleys, so we had to hoof it everywhere. There was no traffic anyplace but the Mall, which was hellish. The Reflecting Pool was empty. There were only two restaurants, one of which was closed, and the other was overpriced and mediocre. The Hope Diamond had a finger print on it and was dusty; they kicked us out of the Moon room in the Air and Space Museum fifteen minutes before the museum closed. Union Station has a huge food court, but it’s full of sketchy characters and the only bathroom there is is in a sketchy basement movie theater. The Korean War Memorial is creepy at night and the city is full of one way streets so you can’t find where you parked you car, which happens to be in the only out door parking lot in the place, since every parking garage is closed.
I very thoroughly enjoyed myself.
At one point I was admiring bumper stickers in one part of the Mall and they left me there and kept walking, so I had to run to catch up, knocking people out of the way and trying desperately to keep my eye on James’s head so I could find them in the crowd. At another point Aunt Sean had all kinds of stuff in her pockets, and the security guard’s wand kept beeping so she had to keep pulling it all out. That took about fifteen minutes and I’ve got pictures of it all. Touching the moon rock was awesome. I thought the Hope Diamond would be a little bigger than it was (I admit it: I thought it would be as big as the Heart of the Ocean in Titanic) and I really wanted to see the Enola Gay, which had been moved to Virginia, but whatever. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and watching night fall over Washington was decidedly cool. And we unexpectedly got up close and personal with the Pentagon when Virginia made a wrong turn (twice.) We walked through the empty Reflecting Pool and looked up Ricky Carraba’s name on the Vietnam Wall. Aunt Sean got really upset. I guess that was the only person she knew who didn’t come back from Vietnam. She said my mother screamed herself dehydrated when she heard that he was killed. Went right into shock and all, and almost wound up in the hospital. Sometimes I wonder if he was my mom’s first love.
I got a hat that says CIA on it and wore it around cause it was cold. Pictures to come later.
At the end of the day James and Virginia left for Richmond and Aunt Sean and I headed back to Jersey. I was supposed to drive the whole way but only made it to the sign that said ’74 miles to Philadelphia’ before I had to switch with Aunt Sean. Then I fell asleep, waking up at some point to tell her “not to worry, they can never prove you wrote it” before falling asleep again.
Yesterday we didn’t do much. Just cooked with Uncle Kevin, but that involved a trip to the Asian supermarket, homemade teriyaki sause, miso soup, and daikon salad. Now I know how miso soup is made. It’s an interesting process with seaweed, benito flakes, miso, tofu, and more seaweed. I’m not insanely fond of it but now I know how to make it. Yay!
Today Aunt Sean and I went and saw Secret Window. That movie was insanely predictable and yet somehow enjoyable (probably because of Johnny Depp.) Then we snuck in to watch a few minutes of LOTR (Legolas taking down the elephant!) before coming home again. Then Alex came home, and she, I, and her friend Kelly all went to the mall to see the prom dresses they’re getting tomorrow. Alex looks like a princess, but this isn’t unusual since the girl is drop dead gorgeous. We got our pictures taken at one of those picture things (real informative, I know. The booths in the mall that take you picture with a video camera and make it into a t-shirt.) The guy is going to use one of them for display. Wow! Infamy in a New Jersey Mall. I got two buttons- one of me and Alex, and the other of the three of us.
Then we came home and ate dinner (steak Haddad- or, as Aunt Sean tells me, “STEAK AL-HATTAL!!!!!” Told her it was a piece of Hidalgo, from when he fell into the stake pit, and she it me on the head with a fork. Hee hee.)
So here I am, at the end of a horrendous journal entry. I’ve got a long trip ahead of me tomorrow, which I’m kicking myself for, since Uncle Kevin said that if I could stay an extra day he’d go and see ROTK with me tomorrow. This is something of a personal triumph since he usually never goes to movies. Dammit, dammit. What to do.
Two things that don’t seem to belong anywhere: I have a new [girly] purse. It’s red. Kate picked it out, since I’m useless at that kind of stuff. So, yay. I also have girly shoes. Black high-heeled things, that aren’t high heels per say. It’s wonderful, going by plate glass windows and realizing how good my shoes look with my jeans. As long as I don’t go past my knees, lol.
I’m sick of typing now, so I’m out.
Nellie and Sara, thank you so much for the cards! *blows kisses*
Lise, hang in there, babe.
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