woooo! gays!
Hi, internet. I'm tired and shaking a little because there was a Bug Incident not long ago. I think things will be better in a couple minutes, but I am distracting myself by writing about how awesome Sunday was! Well, actually, my entire weekend, starting with Friday.
***
Friday involved Blog Like It Isn't You Day (and I actually have one more blog entry for that which I am going to backdate. I'll link to it when I do, but I'm too lazy to go get my flashdrive right now), picnic, and Happiness!
So, despite going to bed earlyish on Thursday, I still overslept a little on Friday. By the time I got up, I cobbled together a blog entry for Keerthi and forced myself to take a shower.
Apparently "forcing myself to take a shower" really translates to "watching NCIS," because that's what I really did until far too late. I was planning on taking the 3:50 bus into the city, but by the time I finally showered, went to the grocery store, made lunch, packed it away, and made a couple more entries for Keerthi, it was past 3:50. I got on the 4:30 bus instead and foolishly thought I would beat the traffic. HA!
I actually think I probably would have managed to avoid most of it if it wasn't for the RANDOM CONSTRUCTION AT RUSH HOUR WHAT EVEN?! They had the highway down to one lane! At rush hour! Into Manhattan! WHY WAS THIS A GOOD IDEA?
Anyway, I ended up way late, but so did Caitlin! So really, it all worked out. We got to "the place" (aka the area of Port Authority where we always meet, sometimes inadvertently) at around the same time and took the subway to Columbus Circle! We found a nice spot in the park and had the most amazing picnic lunch where we mostly ate brie and talked about stuff. I don't remember what, except that it was great, because we are pretty cool!
We eventually headed over to Lincoln Center and found our seats for Happiness. It was cute! Seb was excellent, obvs, and we got to see Joanna Gleason! She was also excellent! The cast was very talented all around, and I actually cried at one point (the second "moment" song about the guy going to the baseball game with his dad).
After the show, Caitlin and I discovered that we are friends because we have the same opinions on pens. They are complicated to explain, but basically it means that we are more neurotic cooler than you.
But then Seb showed up and we talked to him for a little while and here is the important part of the conversation that will go outside the cut because I cannot frigging comprehend it still.
I said to Seb, "So, guess what I'm going to see next weekend? Guess!" (because I am five.)
And he said, "9 to 5."
And I said, "Yes! And, allow me to be a fangirl for a moment, but you need to understand--Allison Janney has been THE PERFECT WOMAN for nearly ten years now. Is she as amazing in real life as I want to believe?"
And he said (and this is the crazy part), "Oh, yeah, she's awesome. I've been to her house!"
Um.
He may have gone on after that for a little bit, but I'm not sure because I was too busy clutching his arm and going, "OH MY GOD YOU'VE BEEN TO ALLISON JANNEY'S HOUSE?!" I think I said it about eight times. And barely restrained myself from texting him on my way home to repeat it again.
Anyway, other than that we had a nice chat. The thing about Seb, his whole family really, is that he's sometimes like a really sincere high school guidance counselor. He's always telling me to keep writing and follow my dreams and all this shit and he 100% A++ totally believes every bit of it. And why shouldn't he? He did just that and now he's starring in frigging Broadway shows. But he's always just... radiating this goodness and encouragement that, frankly, would be a little creepy coming from anyone else. Somehow, he can pull it off.
I may have promised him a manuscript at some point in the future. I DON'T KNOW, GUYS. He has this... I don't know, genuineness (which is apparently a word, unlike "genuinity") that catches me off guard, so I just... I don't know. AGREE TO THIS SHIT. I don't know.
Anyway. After talking to Seb for a little bit, we wandered over to the Apple Store to see if Steven was working. He wasn't. After that, we headed to 75th Street. This is where the night went a bit downhill. Caitlin and I had a great walk up to 75th, where I was going to meet my parents who had been at a John Prine concert. However, by the time we got there and then walked to where my parents' car was, it would have been faster for me to take the bus. We didn't get home until well after 1am and I had shit to do on Saturday, so I was a little cranky. But the rest of the day was excellent!
***
Saturday! On Saturday, I had the first meeting of my summer critique group!
Because I couldn't get up and moving on Friday, I had some things I had to attend to before I could go to the group. I picked up notebooks and pens for everyone and then rushed to the bus. I juuuust made the 11:50 bus, which should have been fine--theoretically, that would have gotten me in around 12:30/12:45, leaving me time to make some more purchases and get a snack and get to Prospect Park before our meeting time--1:30pm.
Of COURSE life doesn't work that way. It was a little drizzly and the traffic was OUT OF CONTROL. I mean, it was frigging Saturday afternoon! I didn't get into the city until after 1pm and by the time I met up with harmonyangel we were already late. We stopped at Crumbs, where I got a twelve-pack of mini cupcakes for snacks (I REALLY wanted to get some from sugar, Sweet, sunshine, but clearly didn't have time to go all the way downtown.) and then got on the train to Brooklyn.
I apologized about ninety nine times when we finally got off the train. Chris and Mark were already waiting for us, but they were agreeable enough about our lateness. We wandered into the park and found a nice spot to put down our blanket and start our meeting.
And here is where I make a confession--I had incredibly awful cramps for the first hour or so of the meeting, if not longer. Thus, I do not remember much of what happened at first. Eventually I felt better and we started talking about stuff. Writing, what we wanted to get out of the group, projects we were working on, our lives in general. We went through prompt books and picked things for future meetings and then did a quick writing exercise. (My contribution is here.)
Afterwards, Jen went off to meet some other friends and Chris, Mark, and I got dinner. We ended up wandering around Brooklyn, which was wonderful. We ended up at this little park between the bridges and had a lot of lovely conversation and companionship. My cramps started acting up again and I took my leave after that, but I went home feeling a lot happier than I had in a long time. Later, though, than I had anticipated. I did not have time to make a cake, so that was put off until Sunday.
***
Sunday: I baked a cake for Lauren! I decorated it! I brought it to her! I went to the Marriage Equality Rally! I met shaeberry FINALLY!
Okay, so, the exhaustion was starting to creep up on me on Sunday. I got up later than I intended and immediately starting making the cake I had promised to make for my friend Lauren's graduation from college. It was a yellow cake with white chocolate buttercream filling and chocolate buttercream outside. All homemade, of course, because I'm crazy. I got the cake done and then my dad helped me drive it over to the Bookstore. I put it on a platter that didn't fit into any of my cake carriers, so I needed someone to carry it.
I gave Lauren her cake and she was totally surprised! We had a nice talk and ate some cake and then I went home and quickly cleaned up the cake making crap so I could make the 3:30 bus. I just made it. If the bus hadn't been three minutes late, I wouldn't have made it. Yikes. But I did! The ride was smooth and traffic-less, of course. Once I got off the bus, I went over to buy tickets to 9 to 5, but forgot my discount print-out at home. I went on an epic quest to find somewhere to print the flyer and got a text from shaeberry along the way! I skipped returning to the box office to wait for her at the edge of the rally, by a bunch of advance men who were making jokes about being advance men. It was odd.
Anyway, THEN SHAE SHOWED UP. It was great, guys, as we had never met IRL before. We made our way back to the rally and chatted and Cynthia Nixon walked right by us! With her girlfriend and children! Her daughter was totally bedecked in pride regalia, it was totally cute! Anyway, we freaked a little. Well, I freaked a little, Shae freaked a lot and grabbed my hand and ran up the other side of the barrier to faux-stalk her.
We nestled into a position about a dozen spots from the front of the second barrier. We couldn't see or hear anything, so we just cheered when other people cheered and chanted along with the chants. It was pretty great, though! Bloomberg spoke and Paterson and some other politicians. The cast of Hair performed a couple of songs and maybe did some other stuff. We didn't get to hear anything for maybe the first twenty minutes because the speakers weren't on right. Cynthia Nixon gave a really great speech and announced her engagement! When she spoke, Shae attempted to get on my shoulders to see her. I think it worked! David Hyde Pierce was incredibly funny. But, oddly enough, the two speeches that I remembered the most were from not-famous people.
This lesbian couple--and I never heard their names--who own a restaurant, talked about what marriage meant to them and why they were fighting for it. They told a great anecdote about how they were asked to do a series of ads for a soup that showed their family cooking in their restaurant. After the first one ran, the AFA started sending angry letters to the soup company, so they decided to crop the family out of the second ad and just show the woman making soup. And she replied, "But nobody wants to see a gnarly old lesbian making soup! The family is what makes the ad interesting!" (There was another cute part where their son brought it into school for show and tell. "This is my family. And this is a box of soup.")
The other one I remembered is David Eggers and Eric Sciotto. They were up there with their little baby son (I found a picture! I was bummed that day because I love babies but couldn't see the stage.) and they were hysterical. I was too far away to tell if they were reading prepared remarks or what, but they were back and forth and joking and, oh man. I can't even remember half of it. They kept repeating my favorite line from A Charlie Brown Christmas, "All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share." Also, there was this thing about Martha Stewart cookbooks and living in New Jersey and, man, the whole thing was great.
But Audra McDonald sang and Douglas Carter Beane made a joke about Grease 2 ("Gay marriage is to straight people what Grease 2 is to gay people.") and there was more attempted chanting and cheering.
(Okay, I just realized that everything I wrote up there is incredibly out of chronological order. Whoops!)
Eventually, the whole thing broke up and we headed back down to 9 to 5, but the box office was closed. Bummer, but not night-ruining! We took the F downtown with the intention of going to sugar Sweet sunshine, but they were tragically closed! We ended up at sugar where we spent a loooong time talking.
Guys, Shae is a) twenty times cooler than me and b) eerily similar in some regards. We both dated girls who broke up with us by breaking off all contact! I seriously thought I was the only one that happened to! Also, we have similar opinions on fandom, et cetera. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. I really, truly enjoyed spending time with her and I can't believe we haven't done it before now. We will in the future, believe me.
I walked her to a party afterwards and then took a long walk up town and got on the bus. That was a bit of a clusterfuck, but only because there is a sign on my forehead inviting everyone to ask me obscure questions about the bus line, even if I have my headphones in and am using the phone. No one knew where the hell they were going and only half the people spoke English and everyone expected me to have the answers. Ugh.
But eventually I got home, later than I intended, and got to bed.
***
Today I had to work. I left early because my crippling cramps returned and they basically forced me to go home. I napped and then attempted to tackle my to-do list. Once i post this entry, I will have done everything on it! Of course, I still have a million things to do before inocciduous gets here, but it's a start!
Now it is after 11 and I started this post like, three hours ago, so it's time to go to bed. I had a near-perfect weekend, guys, and I hope yours was the same. Have a good night :)
***
Friday involved Blog Like It Isn't You Day (and I actually have one more blog entry for that which I am going to backdate. I'll link to it when I do, but I'm too lazy to go get my flashdrive right now), picnic, and Happiness!
So, despite going to bed earlyish on Thursday, I still overslept a little on Friday. By the time I got up, I cobbled together a blog entry for Keerthi and forced myself to take a shower.
Apparently "forcing myself to take a shower" really translates to "watching NCIS," because that's what I really did until far too late. I was planning on taking the 3:50 bus into the city, but by the time I finally showered, went to the grocery store, made lunch, packed it away, and made a couple more entries for Keerthi, it was past 3:50. I got on the 4:30 bus instead and foolishly thought I would beat the traffic. HA!
I actually think I probably would have managed to avoid most of it if it wasn't for the RANDOM CONSTRUCTION AT RUSH HOUR WHAT EVEN?! They had the highway down to one lane! At rush hour! Into Manhattan! WHY WAS THIS A GOOD IDEA?
Anyway, I ended up way late, but so did Caitlin! So really, it all worked out. We got to "the place" (aka the area of Port Authority where we always meet, sometimes inadvertently) at around the same time and took the subway to Columbus Circle! We found a nice spot in the park and had the most amazing picnic lunch where we mostly ate brie and talked about stuff. I don't remember what, except that it was great, because we are pretty cool!
We eventually headed over to Lincoln Center and found our seats for Happiness. It was cute! Seb was excellent, obvs, and we got to see Joanna Gleason! She was also excellent! The cast was very talented all around, and I actually cried at one point (the second "moment" song about the guy going to the baseball game with his dad).
After the show, Caitlin and I discovered that we are friends because we have the same opinions on pens. They are complicated to explain, but basically it means that we are more neurotic cooler than you.
But then Seb showed up and we talked to him for a little while and here is the important part of the conversation that will go outside the cut because I cannot frigging comprehend it still.
I said to Seb, "So, guess what I'm going to see next weekend? Guess!" (because I am five.)
And he said, "9 to 5."
And I said, "Yes! And, allow me to be a fangirl for a moment, but you need to understand--Allison Janney has been THE PERFECT WOMAN for nearly ten years now. Is she as amazing in real life as I want to believe?"
And he said (and this is the crazy part), "Oh, yeah, she's awesome. I've been to her house!"
Um.
He may have gone on after that for a little bit, but I'm not sure because I was too busy clutching his arm and going, "OH MY GOD YOU'VE BEEN TO ALLISON JANNEY'S HOUSE?!" I think I said it about eight times. And barely restrained myself from texting him on my way home to repeat it again.
Anyway, other than that we had a nice chat. The thing about Seb, his whole family really, is that he's sometimes like a really sincere high school guidance counselor. He's always telling me to keep writing and follow my dreams and all this shit and he 100% A++ totally believes every bit of it. And why shouldn't he? He did just that and now he's starring in frigging Broadway shows. But he's always just... radiating this goodness and encouragement that, frankly, would be a little creepy coming from anyone else. Somehow, he can pull it off.
I may have promised him a manuscript at some point in the future. I DON'T KNOW, GUYS. He has this... I don't know, genuineness (which is apparently a word, unlike "genuinity") that catches me off guard, so I just... I don't know. AGREE TO THIS SHIT. I don't know.
Anyway. After talking to Seb for a little bit, we wandered over to the Apple Store to see if Steven was working. He wasn't. After that, we headed to 75th Street. This is where the night went a bit downhill. Caitlin and I had a great walk up to 75th, where I was going to meet my parents who had been at a John Prine concert. However, by the time we got there and then walked to where my parents' car was, it would have been faster for me to take the bus. We didn't get home until well after 1am and I had shit to do on Saturday, so I was a little cranky. But the rest of the day was excellent!
***
Saturday! On Saturday, I had the first meeting of my summer critique group!
Because I couldn't get up and moving on Friday, I had some things I had to attend to before I could go to the group. I picked up notebooks and pens for everyone and then rushed to the bus. I juuuust made the 11:50 bus, which should have been fine--theoretically, that would have gotten me in around 12:30/12:45, leaving me time to make some more purchases and get a snack and get to Prospect Park before our meeting time--1:30pm.
Of COURSE life doesn't work that way. It was a little drizzly and the traffic was OUT OF CONTROL. I mean, it was frigging Saturday afternoon! I didn't get into the city until after 1pm and by the time I met up with harmonyangel we were already late. We stopped at Crumbs, where I got a twelve-pack of mini cupcakes for snacks (I REALLY wanted to get some from sugar, Sweet, sunshine, but clearly didn't have time to go all the way downtown.) and then got on the train to Brooklyn.
I apologized about ninety nine times when we finally got off the train. Chris and Mark were already waiting for us, but they were agreeable enough about our lateness. We wandered into the park and found a nice spot to put down our blanket and start our meeting.
And here is where I make a confession--I had incredibly awful cramps for the first hour or so of the meeting, if not longer. Thus, I do not remember much of what happened at first. Eventually I felt better and we started talking about stuff. Writing, what we wanted to get out of the group, projects we were working on, our lives in general. We went through prompt books and picked things for future meetings and then did a quick writing exercise. (My contribution is here.)
Afterwards, Jen went off to meet some other friends and Chris, Mark, and I got dinner. We ended up wandering around Brooklyn, which was wonderful. We ended up at this little park between the bridges and had a lot of lovely conversation and companionship. My cramps started acting up again and I took my leave after that, but I went home feeling a lot happier than I had in a long time. Later, though, than I had anticipated. I did not have time to make a cake, so that was put off until Sunday.
***
Sunday: I baked a cake for Lauren! I decorated it! I brought it to her! I went to the Marriage Equality Rally! I met shaeberry FINALLY!
Okay, so, the exhaustion was starting to creep up on me on Sunday. I got up later than I intended and immediately starting making the cake I had promised to make for my friend Lauren's graduation from college. It was a yellow cake with white chocolate buttercream filling and chocolate buttercream outside. All homemade, of course, because I'm crazy. I got the cake done and then my dad helped me drive it over to the Bookstore. I put it on a platter that didn't fit into any of my cake carriers, so I needed someone to carry it.
I gave Lauren her cake and she was totally surprised! We had a nice talk and ate some cake and then I went home and quickly cleaned up the cake making crap so I could make the 3:30 bus. I just made it. If the bus hadn't been three minutes late, I wouldn't have made it. Yikes. But I did! The ride was smooth and traffic-less, of course. Once I got off the bus, I went over to buy tickets to 9 to 5, but forgot my discount print-out at home. I went on an epic quest to find somewhere to print the flyer and got a text from shaeberry along the way! I skipped returning to the box office to wait for her at the edge of the rally, by a bunch of advance men who were making jokes about being advance men. It was odd.
Anyway, THEN SHAE SHOWED UP. It was great, guys, as we had never met IRL before. We made our way back to the rally and chatted and Cynthia Nixon walked right by us! With her girlfriend and children! Her daughter was totally bedecked in pride regalia, it was totally cute! Anyway, we freaked a little. Well, I freaked a little, Shae freaked a lot and grabbed my hand and ran up the other side of the barrier to faux-stalk her.
We nestled into a position about a dozen spots from the front of the second barrier. We couldn't see or hear anything, so we just cheered when other people cheered and chanted along with the chants. It was pretty great, though! Bloomberg spoke and Paterson and some other politicians. The cast of Hair performed a couple of songs and maybe did some other stuff. We didn't get to hear anything for maybe the first twenty minutes because the speakers weren't on right. Cynthia Nixon gave a really great speech and announced her engagement! When she spoke, Shae attempted to get on my shoulders to see her. I think it worked! David Hyde Pierce was incredibly funny. But, oddly enough, the two speeches that I remembered the most were from not-famous people.
This lesbian couple--and I never heard their names--who own a restaurant, talked about what marriage meant to them and why they were fighting for it. They told a great anecdote about how they were asked to do a series of ads for a soup that showed their family cooking in their restaurant. After the first one ran, the AFA started sending angry letters to the soup company, so they decided to crop the family out of the second ad and just show the woman making soup. And she replied, "But nobody wants to see a gnarly old lesbian making soup! The family is what makes the ad interesting!" (There was another cute part where their son brought it into school for show and tell. "This is my family. And this is a box of soup.")
The other one I remembered is David Eggers and Eric Sciotto. They were up there with their little baby son (I found a picture! I was bummed that day because I love babies but couldn't see the stage.) and they were hysterical. I was too far away to tell if they were reading prepared remarks or what, but they were back and forth and joking and, oh man. I can't even remember half of it. They kept repeating my favorite line from A Charlie Brown Christmas, "All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share." Also, there was this thing about Martha Stewart cookbooks and living in New Jersey and, man, the whole thing was great.
But Audra McDonald sang and Douglas Carter Beane made a joke about Grease 2 ("Gay marriage is to straight people what Grease 2 is to gay people.") and there was more attempted chanting and cheering.
(Okay, I just realized that everything I wrote up there is incredibly out of chronological order. Whoops!)
Eventually, the whole thing broke up and we headed back down to 9 to 5, but the box office was closed. Bummer, but not night-ruining! We took the F downtown with the intention of going to sugar Sweet sunshine, but they were tragically closed! We ended up at sugar where we spent a loooong time talking.
Guys, Shae is a) twenty times cooler than me and b) eerily similar in some regards. We both dated girls who broke up with us by breaking off all contact! I seriously thought I was the only one that happened to! Also, we have similar opinions on fandom, et cetera. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. I really, truly enjoyed spending time with her and I can't believe we haven't done it before now. We will in the future, believe me.
I walked her to a party afterwards and then took a long walk up town and got on the bus. That was a bit of a clusterfuck, but only because there is a sign on my forehead inviting everyone to ask me obscure questions about the bus line, even if I have my headphones in and am using the phone. No one knew where the hell they were going and only half the people spoke English and everyone expected me to have the answers. Ugh.
But eventually I got home, later than I intended, and got to bed.
***
Today I had to work. I left early because my crippling cramps returned and they basically forced me to go home. I napped and then attempted to tackle my to-do list. Once i post this entry, I will have done everything on it! Of course, I still have a million things to do before inocciduous gets here, but it's a start!
Now it is after 11 and I started this post like, three hours ago, so it's time to go to bed. I had a near-perfect weekend, guys, and I hope yours was the same. Have a good night :)