Airport for Biiiiirds~ (haha you know I never post here any more unless it's for a thing.)
Ohhhh man. It's like, I want to write this, but I'm getting sick-ish and I'm still so fucking disoriented from having to return to my """real life""" after being away in what is REALLY the realest part of myself. So I know the only way I'm ever going to get through this is if I just force myself to start and like trap myself in the rolling ball of it!
SO. AIRPORT FOR BIRDS. !!!!
As some of you may have witnessed via very, very minimal livetweeting/blogging, one of my missions re: A4B was making a shitton of StarKid valentines to give out to total strangers in the line before the show. I was really dead-set on this for some reason but UNFORTCH it was incredibly time-consuming like way more than I'd anticipated?? Yikes. So I was still making valentines up until almost 11:30 the night before I had to leave, when I was going to have to get up before 6 the next morning to make it to the airport on time. COOL. I was like "if I just get done by 11, I can get everything packed and get to sleep by midnight!" But then, of course, I realized that Lucie's Swing Into Flight was both parts posted now, and I decided it would be a good idea to start reading it at like 12:30. I made some poor decisions regarding sleep pretty much all weekend. LIKE ALWAYS.
The point to this paragraph being that while I was frantically cutting-and-pasting away at my really cool valentines, around 8 or 9 I got a call from the airport that was like "Your flight has been delayed so they can meet requirements for crew resting time! However, pls come as if your flight HASN'T been delayed anyway in case we work some shit out and we can actually leave on time." WHATEVER. God knows I can never travel anywhere without it getting clusterfucked in some manner or other so I just kind of ignored it, made sure I was packed and planned to do what it told me, and to throw a hissy fit at the airport if they weren't able to get me a new connecting flight since I was going to miss my original one (which they did without me even asking - flying out of Chicago at 11:45 instead of 10, no probz). Now, of course, there was no WAY we were going to be leaving on time at 7:57 like we were supposed to, so I prepared to just hang out in the airport for two hours and read. I got a semi-shitty muffin out of the airport vending machine and, once I finished The Sands of Time (my bus!reading book from the day before) I moved on to The Fault In Our Stars, which I'd been saving since roughly Christmas specifically for reading on this trip. :D
So they finally let us through security and I'm hanging out down in Lynchburg's one, tiny concourse where they have literally four, tiny departure gates and it gets to be like...eight-fifty.... and then there's an announcement that the plane is going to require some maintenance and we're now delayed until TEN. Which like...the duration of the flight was about 1:08 or something, so if we didn't literally leave AT TEN there was a chance I would YET AGAIN miss my connecting flight??? CLUSTERFUCKS. So I'm reading my book and trying not to pay attention to the real world because I really, really want to feel the emotional impact of the book because it's a hella great and emotional book but everyone around me is getting so agitated about the continued delays that I'm having to struggle not to just osmose their agitation and then they make me BOARD A PLANE IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUSTUS WATERS'S FUNERAL..... Look everything about this whole flight out was wrong and just you wait it keeps getting wronger.
Upstairs they'd told me my carry-on would be okay as long as it squished (which it did - it was full of alligator) but I'm heading out to the plane and they stick a yellow tag on it and take it from me and make me check it. Bullshit!!!! Unimpressed. I DON'T LIKE CHECKING MY BAG. IT'S WHITE. ALSO THERE IS A BREAKABLE WOODEN ROCKETSHIP INSIDE OF THERE. but ehhh I dealt with it I guess and we flew out and bleh bleh flying I DO RLY LIKE FLYING SO SO MUCH OCEAN OF CLOUDS YAY but I'm crying about fictional kids with cancer and the woman sitting next to me is also going to Chicago and freaking about our connection because we have to get from concourse B to concourse E in like...not enough time to do that. Like we consulted the map and it was completely ridiculous. SO we touch down in Charlotte and I am freaking out because I still have to get my suitcase back from airport folks and I like...am panicking........
Look okay my flight to Chicago started boarding at 11:15 and at 11:20 I was JUST getting my hands on my bag again. Here is the airport where I was going from like E-somethingintheteens to B6. I had about 20 total minutes.
I RAN. I DID VERTICAL RUNNING. THIS WAS MORE PHYSICAL EXERTION THAN I HAVE DONE IN PROBABLY YEARS??? Which like, yes this is embarrassing I should be in better shape but I am literally wearing a mohair sweater AND a leather coat and a scarf and I am carrying my clunkiest purse and my fucking alligator (whom I'd taken out of the bag in the hopes that it would become more checkable that way in Lynchburg but nope, and whom people were JUDGING ME SO HARD FOR as I blitzed through the airport) while hauling a decent-sized rolling suitcase behind me. I JUST. WANT TO GET TO CHICAGO TO SEE MY FRIENDS. like I'm literally going to scream if I don't make it but I'm running and running and dodging around people and not...really breathing..... and I start to hyperventilate. And I don't mean like "lol omg I was totes hyperventilating" I mean I actually experienced the physical process of hyperventilation. When I realized this was happening, that my body was undergoing uncontrollable physiological panic, my emotions kind of wigged uncontrollably too, and I started also emotionally panicking, which resulted in some crying. I am sprinting through an airport in a yellow leather jacket while carrying a stuffed alligator and I am sobbing at people to please please get out of my way and just crying-crying, first out of sheer and utter distress at the idea of not making this flight after all the shit I've gone through already this morning (which let me remind you included the entirety of TFioS) and then, when I got to B6 and there were still about five people in line to board, out of sheer and utter RELIEF. I had a really hard time catching my breath - I am pretty sure I did some serious damage to my esophagus, because my throat has hurt ever since then as if I am having a respiratory bug or something, and I still wasn't breathing properly after I boarded the plane and sat down, and I kept dry-heave-coughing all the way to Chicago - but everyone was really sympathetic so it kind of made me feel better wahhh. (Except the lady who was checking my boarding pass. She was side-eyeing me really hard and was like "....Are you okay..." BITCH NO I JUST WON THE OLYMPICS)
SOOO at last I am ON THE PLANE TO CHICAGO WEEPING WITH RELIEF and the flight is nice and short and I get myself a ginger ale and try not to die and then I am in O'Hare!!! And everyone else is nearly there already too omfg asjdghlka and the first person I met up with was SERA~!!! OF COURSE! because conveniently - the only thing all day that has been convenient - the delay on my flight/arrival put our arrival times at O'Hare much closer together and made it way easier for us to meet up almost instantly. I got a caramel apple spice at the starbucks closest to her terminal and waited for her for about 20 minutes and then she was THERE!! AND I WAS RUNNING ACROSS O'HARE TO HER and lmao the floor was nice and slick and my boots had no traction so it was a good thing I was going in for a hug already bc I would've eaten it so hard on the floor. Team Yellow Coats REUNITED AT LAST!!!!
So now that I had a Sera we had to work on getting a Kelsey and a Gabi. They, too, had already met up with each other at the Megabus chunk of Union Station, so we figured we would just go to them and then the four of us would go to the hotel! Sera and I loaded up some CTA cards and scurried off in their direction but we got disoriented when we disembarked and didn't rly know which way to go to get to Union. We asked a front desk concierge at a Holiday Inn and she gave us TERRIBLE directions, so we ended up wandering in circles for a little bit before stopping at a Greyhound station where Sera was able to get enough wifi to orient us better. Then we were in Union Station but couldn't find Gabi and Kelsey, so we went across to the other side in Old Union because we had no idea what we were doing and there was a wedding party taking pictures and we were so confused, so we were headed back out to maybe cut around to the other side and then Sera was like WAIT I SEE KELSEY!! It's great because Kelsey has this like tomato-orange coat now so she's just as easy to spot as Sera and I are :3 so we bustled back across the street and had a million hugs!!!!! #BIRDSBUDDIES #PORTLANDPALS #THEERICKAHNGALES
We're all p hungry so we're like, let's go check into the hotel and then find a place to eat! But while walking to our El stop we pass a fucking POTBELLY AND I AM LIKE...MY SANDWICH SENSES ARE TINGLING....IS THAT A POTBELLY and so I made everyone come in there with me and we ate foooooood~ IT WAS SO FUNNY BECAUSE We made camp at this tall round table and we were throwing our stuff in chairs and whatnot and I guess everyone thought that like...there were way more chairs than there were...like I think we all thought we were sitting like person-chair-person-chair, but it was really like there were seven seats and it was kelsey, gabi, sera, an empty seat, me, and two more empty seats I WAS ALL ALONE AND IT WAS FUNNY OKAY. I got a big-ass chicken salad sandwich and a Nantucket Nectars lemonade and the lemonade was nice on my effed-up throat and I was just WITH MY FRIENDS!!! and it was finally making up for the shittiness that had been my morning. We sat and talked about all sorts of wonderful shit LIKE... THIS WOMAN SERA AND I SAW ON THE TRAIN... We'd been riding to Union Station from O'Hare and this elderly woman in a red coat got on the train and as soon as it started moving she straight fell, like, the way old people fall. When an old person "has a fall." She was RIGHT near us and everyone around her kind of softly "oh my god"-ed and people started moving to help her up and she was literally just like "I WOULD PREFER TO GET UP BY MYSELF DO NOT TOUCH ME." like YELLED AT US. I have never seen anyone so vehemently refuse help (I think Sera actually used the word 'vehemently' when telling Gabi and Kelsey this story). INTENSE.
So we talked about StarKid and traveling and Chicago and plans and LIFE~ and I talked about all the presents I had for everyone and lksdgalshg yaaayyy FRIENDS and then we looked up... and it was 5:15... and the Potbelly closed at 5 on Saturdays. I was like OH SHIT WHAT because I could not BELIEVE that I was that asshole, because I hate people that do that at Chipotle so, so much and there I was doing it. So we all scrambled to clean up and get out and they were like "It's okay...you can stay...." but we were literally just going to be doing what we had been doing for the rest of the night so we were like, it is probably better to check into our hotel and do it there instead lmao.
So we hotel'd and we had to go up the elevator in shifts because the max capacity is 3 people and we also had a lot of luggage lmao ohh City Suites I love you. Our room is just like I remembered them except BACKWARD so there was that! and I was like yay! THE SWANKEST BATHROOMS AND THE FREE WIFI. We sat around and talked and blogged a lotttt (mostly talked) and I distributed my presents (I got Gabi this for her birthday as well as giving everyone their super-late Christmas collage-balloons, showing off my valentines and letting people get first dibs on them, handing out my sparkly A4B birds that I got everyone, and giving Gabi and Kelsey their dumb sparkly heart keychains that I got them at AC Moore) I HAD A LOT OF GIFTS WOW. This was so much fun, Gabi's birthday gift nearly killed her aahhh. Sera also gave each of us a blind-item My Little Pony figurine and we traded around so I ended up with Fluttershy! No Pinkies :( and Kelsey had made us each "bracelets" (mine was way too tiny and will never go around my wrist, I think I'm gonna scrapbook it) that say E K G S for Emily Kelsey Gabi Sera but it's also my initials kind of haha and then because it's my initials it is also kind of Eric Kahn Gale's initials and so Gabi was saying like, I feel like it's "Eric Kahn Gales" plural and she decided that was like oUR GROUP TAG~! like the butts or whatever we're #theerickahngales which is hard to type I am starting to realize. But yay.
So more talking forever and ever because god damnit I love my best friends!!!! And only vaaaguely making plans for the next day like I think I corresponded a tiny smidge with Allegra about when we should get to the theatre and then also ALSOOOO I WAS EMAILING BACK AND FORTH WITH MOLLY SCANLON AND WE MADE PLANS TO HANG OUT WITH HER AGAIN TOO. :D She kept saying "Don't let me interfere with your other plans" and we were like "molly we literally have no other plans." So yes!!!! BEST. But MOSTLY we did not plan anything and we just sat and talked more. It is hard to not see your best friends for six months!! We were all kind of sitting in the general sofa...area... and talking and then all of the sudden there is this banging on the wall from the room next to us. I can't tell if it's accidental banging, deliberate banging at us, or deliberate banging for some other reason, so I kind of...pause...stop talking...keep going...AND THE BANGING COMES BACK LOUDER AND MORE PISSED and this woman literally shouts "SHUT THE FUCK UP NO ONE CARES" at us. !!! Rude!! We were pretty scared omg I was like "is she drunk?" and we did not know what to do but we wanted to keep talking so we moved out of the "living" part of the suite and into the bedroom area and all piled on the bed. And AS WE WERE MOVING the woman starts banging AGAIN! And Sera shouted back at her like "WELL We are moving now so you can calm down." Yeeeeeesh.
After some more lazy talking and maybe someone took a shower(?) we finally decided it was bedtime. Sera and I unfolded the sofa-bed and we all kind of made our spots for the night but I ended up coming back into Gabi and Kelsey's bed for a little bit and falling into a cuddle pile because I missed them so much like I literally just sat down but then bent at the waist and faceplanted, and we sat so we could all sit touching each other and Gabi was petting my arm/shoulder which was nice and eventually Sera joined too but I think she is the least cuddly of us all but we peer-pressured her into it anyway heee. But a time came where Gabi was mostly-asleep and I was pretty far toward slumbertown myself so we gave up and crawled into bed for realsies and I was like "okay everyone just so you know I am definitely going to be the first one awake tomorrow and I apologize" lmao.
Because I totes was! I woke up a solid hour before anyone else even thought about getting out of bed, so I mostly hung out online trying to get final solidification on our Mollyplans and also I went downstairs to steal everyone some doughnuts for breakfast (and get myself a goddamn glass of orange juice like dang). Yaayyy I am the breakfast fairy. I ate a cherry cheese danish and it was good. Then I took a shower! And so did other people I think and meanwhile like while Sera was putting her face on I kept emailing with Molly and we finally decided we were gonna do a thing. And the thing was that I wanted to go see the Bean!! because this is my FOURTH trip to Chicago and I STILL hadn't done it and so we told Molly we were doing that and lunch and she was like well I can meet up with you guys around 2? And she literally used the phrase "for coffee, or maybe something scandalous, like mid-afternoon dessert." And we were like YES SCANDALOUS SCANLONS. So whoooo! And we finally got our shit together after debating a lot like, are we going to come back to the hotel before the show or not, should we take our shit, etc. etc. but I was like "no guys I do not want to have to haul all my valentines AND my gifts for jaime and dstrauss and nick and corey AND my fucking rocketship everywhere" so we decided Gabi and Kelsey would take the tickets and go straight there and Sera would come back with me after lunch/Bean/Mollytimes and yeah awesome. We took tourist pictures at the Marshall Field sign and then ended up at Corner Bakery for MORE SANDWICHES. This was Sandwichcon. :D I got this ballin' panini that had superyummy grilled chicken and some pesto spread and mayo and basil and spinach and cheese. (and it was meant to have tomato but I was like no.) Gabi got THE TASTIEST MAC AND CHEESE WOW omg such a nice lunch.
We're hanging out at lunch and Molly tweets me "where are you friends?" So we tell her and before we know it she is coming to Corner Bakery to see us!! We pulled her up an extra chair to the side of our booth and wowwee we just chatted with Molly freaking Scanlon for an hour or so. She is soooo perf like I don't have words for her?? We talked about grade school and work and StarKid/WWM stuff and our pets and some other fandom things and how her aunt has two goats named Pretty George and Ugly George. Also about Ali Gordon and how we'd tried to work it so Kelsey could meet her this weekend and it was my secret plan but Ali was still in NYC and wouldn't be Chicago-bound for like another two weeks and Molly was like "You're building her up to be this big thing but she really isn't that great." and we laughed a lot. And gosh she is just so pretty and SPARKLING like in the way that a person is sparkling?? Like she's smart and cute and gets pop culture references and said heinously nice things about Dylan Saunders and gosh I just don't know what to do with her and also she had a fabulous blue coat. a;lskjdghlaksjdg mollyyyyyy
We'd passed this Sugar Bliss cupcake place on our way to find food (we'd gotten turned around in the wrong direction hopping off the El, why do we ever let Gabi lead lmao) so we decided that was perfect for our scandalous mid-afternoon dessert and we walked over there for a moment~ They had full-size cupcakes, precious mini-cupcakes and even PRECIOUSER cake pops. None of the flavors of regular cupcake were rly appealing to me at that moment so I got two cookies-and-cream cake pops and alkjsdhlakjsg THIS IS WHERE IT GETS RIDIC: MOLLY PAID FOR ALL OF US. She was the first to make up her mind on what she wanted so she was first in line and she goes "And all of these are going to be together." WHAT??? We were all like *__________* MOLLY SCANLOONNNNNNN asdflaksjdghlkaj. And so we hung out at Sugar Bliss some more and instagram'd our cupcakes and whatnot and I kept shaking mine around like maracas and we talked more and talked about cupcakes and the Bean and going to see the show and stuff :3 everything was wonnnnderful. Molly finally had to leave but her train was in the same direction we were going so we walked with her for a little bit and we passed this FUNNY OLD MAN he had like a Sherlock Holmes hat, a Sherlock Holmes pipe, and a Burberry scarf ffff and we all saw him and could barely suppress our giggles long enough to get past him except KELSEY who had NO IDEA what we were laughing at and it was great and silly. Then we had to go our separate ways but we stopped a woman on the corner to get her to take a picture of all five of us and we were SO CUTE. I LOVE EVERYONE AAHHHHHHH
Then we went to the Bean! :3 We took some typical silly Bean pictures. It was very cold. I felt fine considering I was just visiting but like when I go to Chicago for realz I am going to invest in warmer pants?? Or possibly just commit to wearing more layers like tights or long underwear or something. But I could handle it for roughly 48 hours or so. All of us were very cute at the Bean. When we were done being dumb tourists I had been getting some texts from Allegra and we worked it out that she was driving into the city but she would meet us at our hotel and take the train with us to the show! That was neeeat~ so Gabi and Kelsey went ahead with our tickets to hold our place in line and Sera and I went back to the hotel to collect all my JUNK and also Allegra. She hasn't been driving for very long so she was having a bit of a tizzy re: parking BUT eventually everything was fiiiine~ :3 goodness gracious it was exciting. Like a lot of the time the four of us were so caught up in seeing each other and having happy best friend time that we were kind of forgetting WAIT...WE ARE...GOING TO SEE TEAM STARKID......
Our dumb brown line train took forever getting there?? sigh but we made it just in time to have some silly line-waiting shenanigans with folks like Arianna and Liz so yay~ and I distributed my valentines and all was well! Some people were hesitant about them but by the time the line had started moving, I think people were catching on, so it was literally like I was running along to keep up with my group in the line movement and like people moving the other way on the other side of the line loop were just reaching in and snatching valentines at random. I hope everyone is ultimately satisfied with the ones they got!! By the time we made it into the theatre I had like 9 left. Out of 95. Success \o/
So we were less than impressed with the setup for the theatre tbh. Our seats were crammed in rly rly close together and for me and Sera, this meant sitting on edge seats up against strangers and getting way too up close & personal and idk it was odd. We didn't have a bad view of the stage tho and we were RIGHT next to a camera that was filming so we got some Liam chats in before the show even started and that was qualityyyyy~ oh Liam. Around this point was when Gabi started openly feeling Not Good and we made sure she sat on the end so she could get to the bathroom if she needed to? Wahhh poor Gabz :( And then the show started!!!!! IT WAS REALLY FUNNY. I feel like I missed a good chunk of the opening number - like, not a LARGE chunk, but enough that I feel like I missed something, which was dumb - because our waitress was annoyingly fluttering around like gosh just get me a lemonade and then leave. But there was some funny shit with Chris Allen and Nick's music is soooo goooooooood and I loved the choreography and I was just like BRACING MYSELF FOR FUNNIES. And it was so funny. Denise is perf and DStrauss is perf and idk what to even say about Joe Walker and Chris Allen. ugh ugh. CUT ME DOWN. BURN MEEEE.
Intermission! Gabi spent most of it in the restroom poor thing wahh :( but Sera, Allegra and I kind of hovered over to merch? I got a button and a playbill and that was cool~ and I chatted with Lisa Chau who is just...motherfucking adorable. And then I spotted MARK SWIDERSKI!! lurking around and I had seen him before the show so I knew he was there but I was like...must...get...rocket signed..... so I semi-pounced him and I was like hi I love you I am so glad you are here I feel like every time we have been near each other you are the person I have missed! will you please sign this!! and so he did and I was like SUCCESSSSSSsss. He's legit someone I've wanted for So Long on that thing and I missed him at Slamaganza AND at SPACE tour so fuck yeah~~ He is so skinny now! It makes him look like a little puppydog like something about his skinny face and his facial hair put together idk. I love you marrrkkk.
ACT TWO WAS. BETTER THAN ACT ONE. Act two was actually perfect like they opened on this PERFECT SKETCH LITERALLY RIGHT AFTER INTERMISSION AND I CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT BUT WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW IS THIS: Someone in the sketch is not speaking in a regular human being voice at all and Sera leans over to me and goes "Man I hope they put subtitles on this that would be So Funny" and I was like YEAH U RITE and so we were talking to said not-speaking-regular-human-language actor after the show was over and we mentioned the subtitles like, if there is to be youtube or a DVD and at first said actor was like of like "ehhh" and not feeling it but then suddenly it dawned and this person's face changed and was like "Oh. Yeah. I'll talk to Meredith since she's the one that wrote the sketch and maybe" so basically IF THIS HAPPENS FOR REAL YOU HAVE ME AND SERA TO THANK FOR IT :D
We were kind of lurking/all over the place after the show wrapped up? Mostly because A. had been like "Nick Gage will be over there when the show ends" and Nick was the person I was most anxious to see just because I fucking ADORE him and because like, we have communicated a strangely high amount over the internet so I wanted to be like "HEY I AM CHIPOTLE GIRL." Which I'm pretty sure is exactly how I introduced myself to him lmao. HE SAID REALLY NICE THINGS ABOUT ME??? LIKE WOW I WAS TRIPPIN like he complimented my lyric-writing skills and I was like are...you joking...nick gage said I was good at a thing asgdhaksjdg I was just kind of overwhelmed. And he signed my rocket and his signature is FLAWLESS. I can't wait until I am living in Chicago and I can get around to doing a thing with him. I want to do a thing with him so so so so so bad.
But like basically what happened was everyone was out in the lobby already except...for...us?? like we were still in the theatre space and the cool thing was, that's how the actors were coming out, so we literally got first grabz at just about everyone. I snagged Sarah Petty (and apologized for shouting at her earlier like I had literally been like SARAH!! because I wanted to talk to her/meet her a lot!!) and got her to sign my rocket too~ right next to corey~! and then Daniel Strauss was there and I was messin with him and I gave him his bird and he totally knows who I am like, that is the trippiest thing about DStrauss, is he has all these twitter interactions with people and actually remembers them. He recognized me from the Tropicana thing which was like a good six months ago. I can't?? And we saw Walker and Denise and Brian and Lauren and Jaime I think, and then we were like "we should probably not stay in here forever we don't want to get in trouble lmao" so we wedged our way out into the lobby area also.
Basically I talked to everyone I wanted to talk to and got pictures with a lot of them and it was great! Except for...Corey....... This is the first time Corey and I have been in the same place that I have not gotten a pic with him and I'm just so like, disappointed in that. Because tbh I'm disappointed in the way our relationship has gone. We used to have this fun like, fangirl/object-of-fangirling banter thing going on, but I think he's been exposed to enough of my creepiness at this point that he full-on identifies me as a creep, and every interaction we've had since then (the second half of Leaky, all ConQuest-related shit, and now A4B) has been tense and weird and eye-contact-avoidy and I don't know, I just want to undo all the horrible shit I did? I want to undo asking him to the Leaky ball and undo making sexually charged Tumblr posts about him and just undo it all because I'm actually not that ~totally in love~ with him any more I just love him like I love all of my Most Favorite Of All starkids. but I can't get back to that now. and it's hard on me. :( wahh there I said it.
BUT I got pictures with Nick Gage, Liam (+Sera), DStrauss (+Sera, Gabi and Kelsey), Nick Strauss (+Sera), Jeff Blim (+Sera, Gabi, Kelsey and Allegra), and also a pic with Arianna and I just had a great time talking to StarKids and being pals. And I got Pat Rourke and DStrauss to sign my rocket also~! And some scrapbook-sigs from a bunch of other people (Nick Strauss wrote "Nick Strauss Loves You?" WITH A QUESTION MARK and we couldn't stop saying it omg "loves you????" the best). I gave Denise and Lauren a couple of my spare valentines since they were like...of them (a Bug+February one and a Boy Toy one) and that was so cool because Denise was SO excited about them like alsjdghlakjsdg like she was like "I am taking a picture of this and texting it to Joey RIGHT NOW!" and literally did that in front of me, she was so into it, and Lauren was like "I love the quote you used for this haha that is great" (it was 'time with you I always enjoy') and wow that was cool like this is the first time I think I have outright made/given a thing to starkids that wasn't baked goods snacks so that was cool!!!! And I gave DStrauss a Robin one - it was so funny, he kept mis-identifying people he was like "is this dylan??" when it was brosenthal and idk he got something else wrong too but then he was like "is this lauren" and that was right and then he saw the Robin one and goes "IS THIS NICK??" and I was like YES GOOD and so he took that one and I was like "Oh good now you match Arianna" and he was like DID SHE GET THE SAME ONE and he was excited and it was so dumb and I love him? I love him. And Richard Campbell was there to see the show and he took my last Gilderoy Lockhart one and then I offered one to Nick Strauss and was like "No one took any of the Miss Cooter ones! You can have a Miss Cooter" and he was like "well of course not because Devin sucks!" and we were laugh and Kelsey was like "I've heard from good authority that Ali Gordon isn't that great either" and Nick was like "No. Actually no, I fucking love Ali Gordon, she's the greatest" and Richard was like "oh I love Ali!" and we were laugh some more and Nick was like "Who told you she sucks?" and we giggled and were like "Molly Scanlon" and his LITERAL FIRST REACTION WAS LIKE "OH DID THEY BREAK UP OR SOMETHING" AND WE WERE DYING we were like "No, no, Molly was just joking" and he was like "oh okay. They are dating, right" and we were like YES AS FAR AS WE KNOW. GUYS I THINK NICK STRAUSS SHIPS IT. here for this. and then our entire picture-taking experience with jeff blim was just indescribably hilarious. LET'S JUST DO US. IT'S JUST US. :D
Gabi had been feeling soooo poopy like the entire time we were doing these things though and it had remissed a little and she'd come back to party with us but she finally just quit and we were like, we can't just leave gabi aw gabi awww. So we were like...are we still going to IHOP for food...?? But we were too dead so we all stopped at a mcdonald's that was close to the theatre for late-night munchies and then hit the hotel. Allegra came with! And she stayed and talked until like 11:15 or so (I think this included me attempting to teach everyone to say Dangan Ronpa (unless that was another conversation - someone said they just said it "Dang Man Ron Paul" and I was like OKAY YES and died idk) and also discovering that allegra does NOT like lemony snicket which was so weird and incongruous to me for some reason) and then she had to go and then we all just stayed up and talked except gabi kind of died and slept. I was doing that dumb thing that I do where my body is like "gooo tooo sleeeeeep" but I'm like NO I NEED TO MAXIMIZE FRIEND TIME so yeah I just stayed up way too late and lost my ability to actually pay attention to what Sera was saying and I was like "I think it is sleep time now" and then we all died at last hurrah. I ruined my sleeping this weekend it was awful BUT WORTH IT.
Gabi had to get up tooooo early the next day to catch her bus and Kelsey went with so we all got up so we could touch each other's faces again one last time before departing. THESE THINGS ARE SO STUPID. I WAS NOT EQUIPPED TO HANDLE LEAVING THE CITY I HATE EVERYTHING NO NO NO NO NO. And Sera and I were having a hard time getting up and getting ready, we were just laying around and listening to AVPSY songs and not packing, so we tried to motivate ourselves with like SHIT MAN LET'S GO TO IHOP but we got lost going to ihop and fucked it up and didn't want to be late to the airport so we just made ourselves get turned around and get on the train to o'hare. It was REALLY obvious that we didn't want to leave because we were even like, subconsciously fucking up and losing our way and not going to the train stop. yucky :(
we had to split up to get through security because sera is so gosh darn canadian but we were like SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE WE'LL EAT FOOD TOGETHER!! except...WE TOTALLY LOST EACH OTHER!! And like every time I was trying to text her she apparently couldn't receive it AND couldn't manage to send any of her own so I was freaking out worried about what was going on and I was waiting for her at the place where we'd met up on Saturday but I finally just hiked my ass all the way to her departing gate and found her which was wonderful. She'd gotten a pre-packaged sandwich from the nearby Starbucks so I got one too (and it was funny because we ended up getting the same one SO MANY SANDWICHES THIS WEEKEND) and I just sat there with her for like the half-hour she still had before boarding and we talked about life and about how bad we want to move to chicago and about how much it sucks that it's going to be so much longer until we are able to, basically we hate the world. Then she had a REALLY hard time peeling herself away from me to board her plane and I was just touching her face and hugging her and in general Being Really Upset but finally she literally had to get in line to board and I sadsadsadly left her there to go back to Ontario and made my way back to my own departing gate on the other side of O'Hare with pretty much perfect timing to board my own dumb plane back to shithole Virginia.
They ran out of overhead compartment room by the time they got to boarding zone 5 (my zone natch we are peasants) so I had to check my bag AGAIN but it was actually kind of nice this time around because I felt so unencumbered like I was a cool jetsetter who didn't even need to have bags with her or anything~ and then I had a long, boring, wifi-less layover in Charlotte and then we came back to Lynchburg on the Tiniest Plane Ever. I became kind of chums with this guy from just outside of Chicago who was coming to Lynchburg on an assignment with his job (he's apparently a mechanical dude of some sort and he's here to install a giant machine that I have never heard of for a company I have also never heard of lmao). We hung out at the gate together and then boarded and on the plane I saw a woman who comes into Chipotle all the time and she recognized me and we laughed because lol small world and by world I mean LYNCHBURG it is so tiny here and awful. she totes gets a chicken bowl. (she actually came in to work yesterday and we were like HA HA HI.) Before the Charlotte > Lynchburg plane took off I texted my mom like "hey are y'all available to pick me up from the airport around 7:30" and she was all "please find a ride!" HONESTLY WHEN IT'S MONDAY NIGHT AND YOU ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING ELSE I don't ask for much ugh I was so annoyed. I called a bunch of other folks like Peyton and Lizzie and Allena and none of them could get me either so I basically resigned myself to another $25 taxi but when I got to the airport...I couldn't get any cash because the ATM was out of service!! Wow neat!! So I was like begging with Peyton but her dad was being a dick so I'm just sitting in the airport like uuggghhhhh and mechanical guy goes "...Can I offer you a ride someplace?" and I was like OMG ARE YOU SERIOUS??? WOW COOL. So I got a ride home from Matt From Aurora Who's Not A Serial Killer (I Asked). He was kind of not the most interesting dude and the ride was pretty awkward because I think both of us kept trying to be "funny" to ease the tension but I didn't actually find him all that funny, but it could have been a lot worse and he seemed like an okay guy. I had him drop me off at the top of Duval and I didn't tell my mom I'd gotten a ride from a total stranger, as tempting as it was to be like SEE WHAT I HAVE TO DO WHEN YOU DON'T HELP ME OUT WITH SHIT? I COULD'VE GOTTEN MUGGED. but I'm a nice guy like that so I didn't.
Then I was back in Lynchburg and everything was terrible. I just lay on the sofa for a little bit having an existential crisis about how I'm stuck here and Chicago is not real life for me and that's so hard. then I took a shower because I had a doctor's appointment and then work in the morning, and that was actually kind of nice because Mom drove me to the doctor's and we went by Montana Plains first and I got the most delicious fucking chocolate cream cheese brioche in the world. Then I had to walk from the doctor to the plaza to catch my bus and I texted Gabi some holmestresser A+++ BUT BUUUTTT I didn't manage to make it there in time to catch the 9:15 bus so I literally had to wait until the 10:15 bus and I was bothered by random creeperstrangers and I almost froze to death.
Why am I telling this part of the story? Because what happened next was I'm sitting in Chipotle eating my quesadilla for early-lunch, and I'm looking around at the room, and all of the sudden I have this intense disassociative experience where the world around me ceases to be the real world. I don't know if I can entirely classify it as out-of-body because it was more like me and my body were just out-of-world. I could not process at ALL the fact that I was sitting in a Chipotle in Lynchburg, Virginia, and that I worked at this Chipotle, and that all the people around me were really there and really part of a life I lived, and that I was not in fact in Chicago running around with my best friends and the actors who've helped me meet them. I was so disoriented and still so cold that I was downright shaking, and it's one of the scariest, trippiest feelings I've had in a long time. I think it was a real awakening moment for me, to be honest, because since then, since that flicker of fucked-up non-reality, I have been so Chicagoan single-minded that I'm actually amazed with myself.
I need five thousand dollars and my driver's license, and then I am fucking out of here and I am never on my life going to come back.
WHATEVER WHATEVER UGH WHAT IS REAL LIFE Anyway, here are some great pictures of my friends and their faces!!! Also I took a video for my chum Claire and that can be watched here. If you have any questions about the show or if I gave you a valentine and you want to say HEY just let me know on Tumblr or something!! LOVE YOU GUYS MWAH
Best friends at Corner Bakery! THE ACTUAL CUTEST PICTURE OF THEM.
Owl sweaters!!!
Sera's incredible-looking red velvet cupcake.
Gabi Vanna Whites her chocolate and chocolate-peanut butter.
WE'RE ALL ADORABLE
bean
ALL THE FRIENDS IN EVERY COMBINATION
TEAM YELLOW COATS
I LOVE HIS MOUSTAAACCCHHHE omg marry me pls
cannot
CANNOT
someone shop sera's eyes open
(there's no saving this one)
meredith i
Nick called this the Seatbelt of Love
Who's That Girl!?
A VERY SATISFYING ADVENTURE.
SO. AIRPORT FOR BIRDS. !!!!
As some of you may have witnessed via very, very minimal livetweeting/blogging, one of my missions re: A4B was making a shitton of StarKid valentines to give out to total strangers in the line before the show. I was really dead-set on this for some reason but UNFORTCH it was incredibly time-consuming like way more than I'd anticipated?? Yikes. So I was still making valentines up until almost 11:30 the night before I had to leave, when I was going to have to get up before 6 the next morning to make it to the airport on time. COOL. I was like "if I just get done by 11, I can get everything packed and get to sleep by midnight!" But then, of course, I realized that Lucie's Swing Into Flight was both parts posted now, and I decided it would be a good idea to start reading it at like 12:30. I made some poor decisions regarding sleep pretty much all weekend. LIKE ALWAYS.
The point to this paragraph being that while I was frantically cutting-and-pasting away at my really cool valentines, around 8 or 9 I got a call from the airport that was like "Your flight has been delayed so they can meet requirements for crew resting time! However, pls come as if your flight HASN'T been delayed anyway in case we work some shit out and we can actually leave on time." WHATEVER. God knows I can never travel anywhere without it getting clusterfucked in some manner or other so I just kind of ignored it, made sure I was packed and planned to do what it told me, and to throw a hissy fit at the airport if they weren't able to get me a new connecting flight since I was going to miss my original one (which they did without me even asking - flying out of Chicago at 11:45 instead of 10, no probz). Now, of course, there was no WAY we were going to be leaving on time at 7:57 like we were supposed to, so I prepared to just hang out in the airport for two hours and read. I got a semi-shitty muffin out of the airport vending machine and, once I finished The Sands of Time (my bus!reading book from the day before) I moved on to The Fault In Our Stars, which I'd been saving since roughly Christmas specifically for reading on this trip. :D
So they finally let us through security and I'm hanging out down in Lynchburg's one, tiny concourse where they have literally four, tiny departure gates and it gets to be like...eight-fifty.... and then there's an announcement that the plane is going to require some maintenance and we're now delayed until TEN. Which like...the duration of the flight was about 1:08 or something, so if we didn't literally leave AT TEN there was a chance I would YET AGAIN miss my connecting flight??? CLUSTERFUCKS. So I'm reading my book and trying not to pay attention to the real world because I really, really want to feel the emotional impact of the book because it's a hella great and emotional book but everyone around me is getting so agitated about the continued delays that I'm having to struggle not to just osmose their agitation and then they make me BOARD A PLANE IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUSTUS WATERS'S FUNERAL..... Look everything about this whole flight out was wrong and just you wait it keeps getting wronger.
Upstairs they'd told me my carry-on would be okay as long as it squished (which it did - it was full of alligator) but I'm heading out to the plane and they stick a yellow tag on it and take it from me and make me check it. Bullshit!!!! Unimpressed. I DON'T LIKE CHECKING MY BAG. IT'S WHITE. ALSO THERE IS A BREAKABLE WOODEN ROCKETSHIP INSIDE OF THERE. but ehhh I dealt with it I guess and we flew out and bleh bleh flying I DO RLY LIKE FLYING SO SO MUCH OCEAN OF CLOUDS YAY but I'm crying about fictional kids with cancer and the woman sitting next to me is also going to Chicago and freaking about our connection because we have to get from concourse B to concourse E in like...not enough time to do that. Like we consulted the map and it was completely ridiculous. SO we touch down in Charlotte and I am freaking out because I still have to get my suitcase back from airport folks and I like...am panicking........
Look okay my flight to Chicago started boarding at 11:15 and at 11:20 I was JUST getting my hands on my bag again. Here is the airport where I was going from like E-somethingintheteens to B6. I had about 20 total minutes.
I RAN. I DID VERTICAL RUNNING. THIS WAS MORE PHYSICAL EXERTION THAN I HAVE DONE IN PROBABLY YEARS??? Which like, yes this is embarrassing I should be in better shape but I am literally wearing a mohair sweater AND a leather coat and a scarf and I am carrying my clunkiest purse and my fucking alligator (whom I'd taken out of the bag in the hopes that it would become more checkable that way in Lynchburg but nope, and whom people were JUDGING ME SO HARD FOR as I blitzed through the airport) while hauling a decent-sized rolling suitcase behind me. I JUST. WANT TO GET TO CHICAGO TO SEE MY FRIENDS. like I'm literally going to scream if I don't make it but I'm running and running and dodging around people and not...really breathing..... and I start to hyperventilate. And I don't mean like "lol omg I was totes hyperventilating" I mean I actually experienced the physical process of hyperventilation. When I realized this was happening, that my body was undergoing uncontrollable physiological panic, my emotions kind of wigged uncontrollably too, and I started also emotionally panicking, which resulted in some crying. I am sprinting through an airport in a yellow leather jacket while carrying a stuffed alligator and I am sobbing at people to please please get out of my way and just crying-crying, first out of sheer and utter distress at the idea of not making this flight after all the shit I've gone through already this morning (which let me remind you included the entirety of TFioS) and then, when I got to B6 and there were still about five people in line to board, out of sheer and utter RELIEF. I had a really hard time catching my breath - I am pretty sure I did some serious damage to my esophagus, because my throat has hurt ever since then as if I am having a respiratory bug or something, and I still wasn't breathing properly after I boarded the plane and sat down, and I kept dry-heave-coughing all the way to Chicago - but everyone was really sympathetic so it kind of made me feel better wahhh. (Except the lady who was checking my boarding pass. She was side-eyeing me really hard and was like "....Are you okay..." BITCH NO I JUST WON THE OLYMPICS)
SOOO at last I am ON THE PLANE TO CHICAGO WEEPING WITH RELIEF and the flight is nice and short and I get myself a ginger ale and try not to die and then I am in O'Hare!!! And everyone else is nearly there already too omfg asjdghlka and the first person I met up with was SERA~!!! OF COURSE! because conveniently - the only thing all day that has been convenient - the delay on my flight/arrival put our arrival times at O'Hare much closer together and made it way easier for us to meet up almost instantly. I got a caramel apple spice at the starbucks closest to her terminal and waited for her for about 20 minutes and then she was THERE!! AND I WAS RUNNING ACROSS O'HARE TO HER and lmao the floor was nice and slick and my boots had no traction so it was a good thing I was going in for a hug already bc I would've eaten it so hard on the floor. Team Yellow Coats REUNITED AT LAST!!!!
So now that I had a Sera we had to work on getting a Kelsey and a Gabi. They, too, had already met up with each other at the Megabus chunk of Union Station, so we figured we would just go to them and then the four of us would go to the hotel! Sera and I loaded up some CTA cards and scurried off in their direction but we got disoriented when we disembarked and didn't rly know which way to go to get to Union. We asked a front desk concierge at a Holiday Inn and she gave us TERRIBLE directions, so we ended up wandering in circles for a little bit before stopping at a Greyhound station where Sera was able to get enough wifi to orient us better. Then we were in Union Station but couldn't find Gabi and Kelsey, so we went across to the other side in Old Union because we had no idea what we were doing and there was a wedding party taking pictures and we were so confused, so we were headed back out to maybe cut around to the other side and then Sera was like WAIT I SEE KELSEY!! It's great because Kelsey has this like tomato-orange coat now so she's just as easy to spot as Sera and I are :3 so we bustled back across the street and had a million hugs!!!!! #BIRDSBUDDIES #PORTLANDPALS #THEERICKAHNGALES
We're all p hungry so we're like, let's go check into the hotel and then find a place to eat! But while walking to our El stop we pass a fucking POTBELLY AND I AM LIKE...MY SANDWICH SENSES ARE TINGLING....IS THAT A POTBELLY and so I made everyone come in there with me and we ate foooooood~ IT WAS SO FUNNY BECAUSE We made camp at this tall round table and we were throwing our stuff in chairs and whatnot and I guess everyone thought that like...there were way more chairs than there were...like I think we all thought we were sitting like person-chair-person-chair, but it was really like there were seven seats and it was kelsey, gabi, sera, an empty seat, me, and two more empty seats I WAS ALL ALONE AND IT WAS FUNNY OKAY. I got a big-ass chicken salad sandwich and a Nantucket Nectars lemonade and the lemonade was nice on my effed-up throat and I was just WITH MY FRIENDS!!! and it was finally making up for the shittiness that had been my morning. We sat and talked about all sorts of wonderful shit LIKE... THIS WOMAN SERA AND I SAW ON THE TRAIN... We'd been riding to Union Station from O'Hare and this elderly woman in a red coat got on the train and as soon as it started moving she straight fell, like, the way old people fall. When an old person "has a fall." She was RIGHT near us and everyone around her kind of softly "oh my god"-ed and people started moving to help her up and she was literally just like "I WOULD PREFER TO GET UP BY MYSELF DO NOT TOUCH ME." like YELLED AT US. I have never seen anyone so vehemently refuse help (I think Sera actually used the word 'vehemently' when telling Gabi and Kelsey this story). INTENSE.
So we talked about StarKid and traveling and Chicago and plans and LIFE~ and I talked about all the presents I had for everyone and lksdgalshg yaaayyy FRIENDS and then we looked up... and it was 5:15... and the Potbelly closed at 5 on Saturdays. I was like OH SHIT WHAT because I could not BELIEVE that I was that asshole, because I hate people that do that at Chipotle so, so much and there I was doing it. So we all scrambled to clean up and get out and they were like "It's okay...you can stay...." but we were literally just going to be doing what we had been doing for the rest of the night so we were like, it is probably better to check into our hotel and do it there instead lmao.
So we hotel'd and we had to go up the elevator in shifts because the max capacity is 3 people and we also had a lot of luggage lmao ohh City Suites I love you. Our room is just like I remembered them except BACKWARD so there was that! and I was like yay! THE SWANKEST BATHROOMS AND THE FREE WIFI. We sat around and talked and blogged a lotttt (mostly talked) and I distributed my presents (I got Gabi this for her birthday as well as giving everyone their super-late Christmas collage-balloons, showing off my valentines and letting people get first dibs on them, handing out my sparkly A4B birds that I got everyone, and giving Gabi and Kelsey their dumb sparkly heart keychains that I got them at AC Moore) I HAD A LOT OF GIFTS WOW. This was so much fun, Gabi's birthday gift nearly killed her aahhh. Sera also gave each of us a blind-item My Little Pony figurine and we traded around so I ended up with Fluttershy! No Pinkies :( and Kelsey had made us each "bracelets" (mine was way too tiny and will never go around my wrist, I think I'm gonna scrapbook it) that say E K G S for Emily Kelsey Gabi Sera but it's also my initials kind of haha and then because it's my initials it is also kind of Eric Kahn Gale's initials and so Gabi was saying like, I feel like it's "Eric Kahn Gales" plural and she decided that was like oUR GROUP TAG~! like the butts or whatever we're #theerickahngales which is hard to type I am starting to realize. But yay.
So more talking forever and ever because god damnit I love my best friends!!!! And only vaaaguely making plans for the next day like I think I corresponded a tiny smidge with Allegra about when we should get to the theatre and then also ALSOOOO I WAS EMAILING BACK AND FORTH WITH MOLLY SCANLON AND WE MADE PLANS TO HANG OUT WITH HER AGAIN TOO. :D She kept saying "Don't let me interfere with your other plans" and we were like "molly we literally have no other plans." So yes!!!! BEST. But MOSTLY we did not plan anything and we just sat and talked more. It is hard to not see your best friends for six months!! We were all kind of sitting in the general sofa...area... and talking and then all of the sudden there is this banging on the wall from the room next to us. I can't tell if it's accidental banging, deliberate banging at us, or deliberate banging for some other reason, so I kind of...pause...stop talking...keep going...AND THE BANGING COMES BACK LOUDER AND MORE PISSED and this woman literally shouts "SHUT THE FUCK UP NO ONE CARES" at us. !!! Rude!! We were pretty scared omg I was like "is she drunk?" and we did not know what to do but we wanted to keep talking so we moved out of the "living" part of the suite and into the bedroom area and all piled on the bed. And AS WE WERE MOVING the woman starts banging AGAIN! And Sera shouted back at her like "WELL We are moving now so you can calm down." Yeeeeeesh.
After some more lazy talking and maybe someone took a shower(?) we finally decided it was bedtime. Sera and I unfolded the sofa-bed and we all kind of made our spots for the night but I ended up coming back into Gabi and Kelsey's bed for a little bit and falling into a cuddle pile because I missed them so much like I literally just sat down but then bent at the waist and faceplanted, and we sat so we could all sit touching each other and Gabi was petting my arm/shoulder which was nice and eventually Sera joined too but I think she is the least cuddly of us all but we peer-pressured her into it anyway heee. But a time came where Gabi was mostly-asleep and I was pretty far toward slumbertown myself so we gave up and crawled into bed for realsies and I was like "okay everyone just so you know I am definitely going to be the first one awake tomorrow and I apologize" lmao.
Because I totes was! I woke up a solid hour before anyone else even thought about getting out of bed, so I mostly hung out online trying to get final solidification on our Mollyplans and also I went downstairs to steal everyone some doughnuts for breakfast (and get myself a goddamn glass of orange juice like dang). Yaayyy I am the breakfast fairy. I ate a cherry cheese danish and it was good. Then I took a shower! And so did other people I think and meanwhile like while Sera was putting her face on I kept emailing with Molly and we finally decided we were gonna do a thing. And the thing was that I wanted to go see the Bean!! because this is my FOURTH trip to Chicago and I STILL hadn't done it and so we told Molly we were doing that and lunch and she was like well I can meet up with you guys around 2? And she literally used the phrase "for coffee, or maybe something scandalous, like mid-afternoon dessert." And we were like YES SCANDALOUS SCANLONS. So whoooo! And we finally got our shit together after debating a lot like, are we going to come back to the hotel before the show or not, should we take our shit, etc. etc. but I was like "no guys I do not want to have to haul all my valentines AND my gifts for jaime and dstrauss and nick and corey AND my fucking rocketship everywhere" so we decided Gabi and Kelsey would take the tickets and go straight there and Sera would come back with me after lunch/Bean/Mollytimes and yeah awesome. We took tourist pictures at the Marshall Field sign and then ended up at Corner Bakery for MORE SANDWICHES. This was Sandwichcon. :D I got this ballin' panini that had superyummy grilled chicken and some pesto spread and mayo and basil and spinach and cheese. (and it was meant to have tomato but I was like no.) Gabi got THE TASTIEST MAC AND CHEESE WOW omg such a nice lunch.
We're hanging out at lunch and Molly tweets me "where are you friends?" So we tell her and before we know it she is coming to Corner Bakery to see us!! We pulled her up an extra chair to the side of our booth and wowwee we just chatted with Molly freaking Scanlon for an hour or so. She is soooo perf like I don't have words for her?? We talked about grade school and work and StarKid/WWM stuff and our pets and some other fandom things and how her aunt has two goats named Pretty George and Ugly George. Also about Ali Gordon and how we'd tried to work it so Kelsey could meet her this weekend and it was my secret plan but Ali was still in NYC and wouldn't be Chicago-bound for like another two weeks and Molly was like "You're building her up to be this big thing but she really isn't that great." and we laughed a lot. And gosh she is just so pretty and SPARKLING like in the way that a person is sparkling?? Like she's smart and cute and gets pop culture references and said heinously nice things about Dylan Saunders and gosh I just don't know what to do with her and also she had a fabulous blue coat. a;lskjdghlaksjdg mollyyyyyy
We'd passed this Sugar Bliss cupcake place on our way to find food (we'd gotten turned around in the wrong direction hopping off the El, why do we ever let Gabi lead lmao) so we decided that was perfect for our scandalous mid-afternoon dessert and we walked over there for a moment~ They had full-size cupcakes, precious mini-cupcakes and even PRECIOUSER cake pops. None of the flavors of regular cupcake were rly appealing to me at that moment so I got two cookies-and-cream cake pops and alkjsdhlakjsg THIS IS WHERE IT GETS RIDIC: MOLLY PAID FOR ALL OF US. She was the first to make up her mind on what she wanted so she was first in line and she goes "And all of these are going to be together." WHAT??? We were all like *__________* MOLLY SCANLOONNNNNNN asdflaksjdghlkaj. And so we hung out at Sugar Bliss some more and instagram'd our cupcakes and whatnot and I kept shaking mine around like maracas and we talked more and talked about cupcakes and the Bean and going to see the show and stuff :3 everything was wonnnnderful. Molly finally had to leave but her train was in the same direction we were going so we walked with her for a little bit and we passed this FUNNY OLD MAN he had like a Sherlock Holmes hat, a Sherlock Holmes pipe, and a Burberry scarf ffff and we all saw him and could barely suppress our giggles long enough to get past him except KELSEY who had NO IDEA what we were laughing at and it was great and silly. Then we had to go our separate ways but we stopped a woman on the corner to get her to take a picture of all five of us and we were SO CUTE. I LOVE EVERYONE AAHHHHHHH
Then we went to the Bean! :3 We took some typical silly Bean pictures. It was very cold. I felt fine considering I was just visiting but like when I go to Chicago for realz I am going to invest in warmer pants?? Or possibly just commit to wearing more layers like tights or long underwear or something. But I could handle it for roughly 48 hours or so. All of us were very cute at the Bean. When we were done being dumb tourists I had been getting some texts from Allegra and we worked it out that she was driving into the city but she would meet us at our hotel and take the train with us to the show! That was neeeat~ so Gabi and Kelsey went ahead with our tickets to hold our place in line and Sera and I went back to the hotel to collect all my JUNK and also Allegra. She hasn't been driving for very long so she was having a bit of a tizzy re: parking BUT eventually everything was fiiiine~ :3 goodness gracious it was exciting. Like a lot of the time the four of us were so caught up in seeing each other and having happy best friend time that we were kind of forgetting WAIT...WE ARE...GOING TO SEE TEAM STARKID......
Our dumb brown line train took forever getting there?? sigh but we made it just in time to have some silly line-waiting shenanigans with folks like Arianna and Liz so yay~ and I distributed my valentines and all was well! Some people were hesitant about them but by the time the line had started moving, I think people were catching on, so it was literally like I was running along to keep up with my group in the line movement and like people moving the other way on the other side of the line loop were just reaching in and snatching valentines at random. I hope everyone is ultimately satisfied with the ones they got!! By the time we made it into the theatre I had like 9 left. Out of 95. Success \o/
So we were less than impressed with the setup for the theatre tbh. Our seats were crammed in rly rly close together and for me and Sera, this meant sitting on edge seats up against strangers and getting way too up close & personal and idk it was odd. We didn't have a bad view of the stage tho and we were RIGHT next to a camera that was filming so we got some Liam chats in before the show even started and that was qualityyyyy~ oh Liam. Around this point was when Gabi started openly feeling Not Good and we made sure she sat on the end so she could get to the bathroom if she needed to? Wahhh poor Gabz :( And then the show started!!!!! IT WAS REALLY FUNNY. I feel like I missed a good chunk of the opening number - like, not a LARGE chunk, but enough that I feel like I missed something, which was dumb - because our waitress was annoyingly fluttering around like gosh just get me a lemonade and then leave. But there was some funny shit with Chris Allen and Nick's music is soooo goooooooood and I loved the choreography and I was just like BRACING MYSELF FOR FUNNIES. And it was so funny. Denise is perf and DStrauss is perf and idk what to even say about Joe Walker and Chris Allen. ugh ugh. CUT ME DOWN. BURN MEEEE.
Intermission! Gabi spent most of it in the restroom poor thing wahh :( but Sera, Allegra and I kind of hovered over to merch? I got a button and a playbill and that was cool~ and I chatted with Lisa Chau who is just...motherfucking adorable. And then I spotted MARK SWIDERSKI!! lurking around and I had seen him before the show so I knew he was there but I was like...must...get...rocket signed..... so I semi-pounced him and I was like hi I love you I am so glad you are here I feel like every time we have been near each other you are the person I have missed! will you please sign this!! and so he did and I was like SUCCESSSSSSsss. He's legit someone I've wanted for So Long on that thing and I missed him at Slamaganza AND at SPACE tour so fuck yeah~~ He is so skinny now! It makes him look like a little puppydog like something about his skinny face and his facial hair put together idk. I love you marrrkkk.
ACT TWO WAS. BETTER THAN ACT ONE. Act two was actually perfect like they opened on this PERFECT SKETCH LITERALLY RIGHT AFTER INTERMISSION AND I CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT BUT WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW IS THIS: Someone in the sketch is not speaking in a regular human being voice at all and Sera leans over to me and goes "Man I hope they put subtitles on this that would be So Funny" and I was like YEAH U RITE and so we were talking to said not-speaking-regular-human-language actor after the show was over and we mentioned the subtitles like, if there is to be youtube or a DVD and at first said actor was like of like "ehhh" and not feeling it but then suddenly it dawned and this person's face changed and was like "Oh. Yeah. I'll talk to Meredith since she's the one that wrote the sketch and maybe" so basically IF THIS HAPPENS FOR REAL YOU HAVE ME AND SERA TO THANK FOR IT :D
We were kind of lurking/all over the place after the show wrapped up? Mostly because A. had been like "Nick Gage will be over there when the show ends" and Nick was the person I was most anxious to see just because I fucking ADORE him and because like, we have communicated a strangely high amount over the internet so I wanted to be like "HEY I AM CHIPOTLE GIRL." Which I'm pretty sure is exactly how I introduced myself to him lmao. HE SAID REALLY NICE THINGS ABOUT ME??? LIKE WOW I WAS TRIPPIN like he complimented my lyric-writing skills and I was like are...you joking...nick gage said I was good at a thing asgdhaksjdg I was just kind of overwhelmed. And he signed my rocket and his signature is FLAWLESS. I can't wait until I am living in Chicago and I can get around to doing a thing with him. I want to do a thing with him so so so so so bad.
But like basically what happened was everyone was out in the lobby already except...for...us?? like we were still in the theatre space and the cool thing was, that's how the actors were coming out, so we literally got first grabz at just about everyone. I snagged Sarah Petty (and apologized for shouting at her earlier like I had literally been like SARAH!! because I wanted to talk to her/meet her a lot!!) and got her to sign my rocket too~ right next to corey~! and then Daniel Strauss was there and I was messin with him and I gave him his bird and he totally knows who I am like, that is the trippiest thing about DStrauss, is he has all these twitter interactions with people and actually remembers them. He recognized me from the Tropicana thing which was like a good six months ago. I can't?? And we saw Walker and Denise and Brian and Lauren and Jaime I think, and then we were like "we should probably not stay in here forever we don't want to get in trouble lmao" so we wedged our way out into the lobby area also.
Basically I talked to everyone I wanted to talk to and got pictures with a lot of them and it was great! Except for...Corey....... This is the first time Corey and I have been in the same place that I have not gotten a pic with him and I'm just so like, disappointed in that. Because tbh I'm disappointed in the way our relationship has gone. We used to have this fun like, fangirl/object-of-fangirling banter thing going on, but I think he's been exposed to enough of my creepiness at this point that he full-on identifies me as a creep, and every interaction we've had since then (the second half of Leaky, all ConQuest-related shit, and now A4B) has been tense and weird and eye-contact-avoidy and I don't know, I just want to undo all the horrible shit I did? I want to undo asking him to the Leaky ball and undo making sexually charged Tumblr posts about him and just undo it all because I'm actually not that ~totally in love~ with him any more I just love him like I love all of my Most Favorite Of All starkids. but I can't get back to that now. and it's hard on me. :( wahh there I said it.
BUT I got pictures with Nick Gage, Liam (+Sera), DStrauss (+Sera, Gabi and Kelsey), Nick Strauss (+Sera), Jeff Blim (+Sera, Gabi, Kelsey and Allegra), and also a pic with Arianna and I just had a great time talking to StarKids and being pals. And I got Pat Rourke and DStrauss to sign my rocket also~! And some scrapbook-sigs from a bunch of other people (Nick Strauss wrote "Nick Strauss Loves You?" WITH A QUESTION MARK and we couldn't stop saying it omg "loves you????" the best). I gave Denise and Lauren a couple of my spare valentines since they were like...of them (a Bug+February one and a Boy Toy one) and that was so cool because Denise was SO excited about them like alsjdghlakjsdg like she was like "I am taking a picture of this and texting it to Joey RIGHT NOW!" and literally did that in front of me, she was so into it, and Lauren was like "I love the quote you used for this haha that is great" (it was 'time with you I always enjoy') and wow that was cool like this is the first time I think I have outright made/given a thing to starkids that wasn't baked goods snacks so that was cool!!!! And I gave DStrauss a Robin one - it was so funny, he kept mis-identifying people he was like "is this dylan??" when it was brosenthal and idk he got something else wrong too but then he was like "is this lauren" and that was right and then he saw the Robin one and goes "IS THIS NICK??" and I was like YES GOOD and so he took that one and I was like "Oh good now you match Arianna" and he was like DID SHE GET THE SAME ONE and he was excited and it was so dumb and I love him? I love him. And Richard Campbell was there to see the show and he took my last Gilderoy Lockhart one and then I offered one to Nick Strauss and was like "No one took any of the Miss Cooter ones! You can have a Miss Cooter" and he was like "well of course not because Devin sucks!" and we were laugh and Kelsey was like "I've heard from good authority that Ali Gordon isn't that great either" and Nick was like "No. Actually no, I fucking love Ali Gordon, she's the greatest" and Richard was like "oh I love Ali!" and we were laugh some more and Nick was like "Who told you she sucks?" and we giggled and were like "Molly Scanlon" and his LITERAL FIRST REACTION WAS LIKE "OH DID THEY BREAK UP OR SOMETHING" AND WE WERE DYING we were like "No, no, Molly was just joking" and he was like "oh okay. They are dating, right" and we were like YES AS FAR AS WE KNOW. GUYS I THINK NICK STRAUSS SHIPS IT. here for this. and then our entire picture-taking experience with jeff blim was just indescribably hilarious. LET'S JUST DO US. IT'S JUST US. :D
Gabi had been feeling soooo poopy like the entire time we were doing these things though and it had remissed a little and she'd come back to party with us but she finally just quit and we were like, we can't just leave gabi aw gabi awww. So we were like...are we still going to IHOP for food...?? But we were too dead so we all stopped at a mcdonald's that was close to the theatre for late-night munchies and then hit the hotel. Allegra came with! And she stayed and talked until like 11:15 or so (I think this included me attempting to teach everyone to say Dangan Ronpa (unless that was another conversation - someone said they just said it "Dang Man Ron Paul" and I was like OKAY YES and died idk) and also discovering that allegra does NOT like lemony snicket which was so weird and incongruous to me for some reason) and then she had to go and then we all just stayed up and talked except gabi kind of died and slept. I was doing that dumb thing that I do where my body is like "gooo tooo sleeeeeep" but I'm like NO I NEED TO MAXIMIZE FRIEND TIME so yeah I just stayed up way too late and lost my ability to actually pay attention to what Sera was saying and I was like "I think it is sleep time now" and then we all died at last hurrah. I ruined my sleeping this weekend it was awful BUT WORTH IT.
Gabi had to get up tooooo early the next day to catch her bus and Kelsey went with so we all got up so we could touch each other's faces again one last time before departing. THESE THINGS ARE SO STUPID. I WAS NOT EQUIPPED TO HANDLE LEAVING THE CITY I HATE EVERYTHING NO NO NO NO NO. And Sera and I were having a hard time getting up and getting ready, we were just laying around and listening to AVPSY songs and not packing, so we tried to motivate ourselves with like SHIT MAN LET'S GO TO IHOP but we got lost going to ihop and fucked it up and didn't want to be late to the airport so we just made ourselves get turned around and get on the train to o'hare. It was REALLY obvious that we didn't want to leave because we were even like, subconsciously fucking up and losing our way and not going to the train stop. yucky :(
we had to split up to get through security because sera is so gosh darn canadian but we were like SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE WE'LL EAT FOOD TOGETHER!! except...WE TOTALLY LOST EACH OTHER!! And like every time I was trying to text her she apparently couldn't receive it AND couldn't manage to send any of her own so I was freaking out worried about what was going on and I was waiting for her at the place where we'd met up on Saturday but I finally just hiked my ass all the way to her departing gate and found her which was wonderful. She'd gotten a pre-packaged sandwich from the nearby Starbucks so I got one too (and it was funny because we ended up getting the same one SO MANY SANDWICHES THIS WEEKEND) and I just sat there with her for like the half-hour she still had before boarding and we talked about life and about how bad we want to move to chicago and about how much it sucks that it's going to be so much longer until we are able to, basically we hate the world. Then she had a REALLY hard time peeling herself away from me to board her plane and I was just touching her face and hugging her and in general Being Really Upset but finally she literally had to get in line to board and I sadsadsadly left her there to go back to Ontario and made my way back to my own departing gate on the other side of O'Hare with pretty much perfect timing to board my own dumb plane back to shithole Virginia.
They ran out of overhead compartment room by the time they got to boarding zone 5 (my zone natch we are peasants) so I had to check my bag AGAIN but it was actually kind of nice this time around because I felt so unencumbered like I was a cool jetsetter who didn't even need to have bags with her or anything~ and then I had a long, boring, wifi-less layover in Charlotte and then we came back to Lynchburg on the Tiniest Plane Ever. I became kind of chums with this guy from just outside of Chicago who was coming to Lynchburg on an assignment with his job (he's apparently a mechanical dude of some sort and he's here to install a giant machine that I have never heard of for a company I have also never heard of lmao). We hung out at the gate together and then boarded and on the plane I saw a woman who comes into Chipotle all the time and she recognized me and we laughed because lol small world and by world I mean LYNCHBURG it is so tiny here and awful. she totes gets a chicken bowl. (she actually came in to work yesterday and we were like HA HA HI.) Before the Charlotte > Lynchburg plane took off I texted my mom like "hey are y'all available to pick me up from the airport around 7:30" and she was all "please find a ride!" HONESTLY WHEN IT'S MONDAY NIGHT AND YOU ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING ELSE I don't ask for much ugh I was so annoyed. I called a bunch of other folks like Peyton and Lizzie and Allena and none of them could get me either so I basically resigned myself to another $25 taxi but when I got to the airport...I couldn't get any cash because the ATM was out of service!! Wow neat!! So I was like begging with Peyton but her dad was being a dick so I'm just sitting in the airport like uuggghhhhh and mechanical guy goes "...Can I offer you a ride someplace?" and I was like OMG ARE YOU SERIOUS??? WOW COOL. So I got a ride home from Matt From Aurora Who's Not A Serial Killer (I Asked). He was kind of not the most interesting dude and the ride was pretty awkward because I think both of us kept trying to be "funny" to ease the tension but I didn't actually find him all that funny, but it could have been a lot worse and he seemed like an okay guy. I had him drop me off at the top of Duval and I didn't tell my mom I'd gotten a ride from a total stranger, as tempting as it was to be like SEE WHAT I HAVE TO DO WHEN YOU DON'T HELP ME OUT WITH SHIT? I COULD'VE GOTTEN MUGGED. but I'm a nice guy like that so I didn't.
Then I was back in Lynchburg and everything was terrible. I just lay on the sofa for a little bit having an existential crisis about how I'm stuck here and Chicago is not real life for me and that's so hard. then I took a shower because I had a doctor's appointment and then work in the morning, and that was actually kind of nice because Mom drove me to the doctor's and we went by Montana Plains first and I got the most delicious fucking chocolate cream cheese brioche in the world. Then I had to walk from the doctor to the plaza to catch my bus and I texted Gabi some holmestresser A+++ BUT BUUUTTT I didn't manage to make it there in time to catch the 9:15 bus so I literally had to wait until the 10:15 bus and I was bothered by random creeperstrangers and I almost froze to death.
Why am I telling this part of the story? Because what happened next was I'm sitting in Chipotle eating my quesadilla for early-lunch, and I'm looking around at the room, and all of the sudden I have this intense disassociative experience where the world around me ceases to be the real world. I don't know if I can entirely classify it as out-of-body because it was more like me and my body were just out-of-world. I could not process at ALL the fact that I was sitting in a Chipotle in Lynchburg, Virginia, and that I worked at this Chipotle, and that all the people around me were really there and really part of a life I lived, and that I was not in fact in Chicago running around with my best friends and the actors who've helped me meet them. I was so disoriented and still so cold that I was downright shaking, and it's one of the scariest, trippiest feelings I've had in a long time. I think it was a real awakening moment for me, to be honest, because since then, since that flicker of fucked-up non-reality, I have been so Chicagoan single-minded that I'm actually amazed with myself.
I need five thousand dollars and my driver's license, and then I am fucking out of here and I am never on my life going to come back.
WHATEVER WHATEVER UGH WHAT IS REAL LIFE Anyway, here are some great pictures of my friends and their faces!!! Also I took a video for my chum Claire and that can be watched here. If you have any questions about the show or if I gave you a valentine and you want to say HEY just let me know on Tumblr or something!! LOVE YOU GUYS MWAH
Best friends at Corner Bakery! THE ACTUAL CUTEST PICTURE OF THEM.
Owl sweaters!!!
Sera's incredible-looking red velvet cupcake.
Gabi Vanna Whites her chocolate and chocolate-peanut butter.
WE'RE ALL ADORABLE
bean
ALL THE FRIENDS IN EVERY COMBINATION
TEAM YELLOW COATS
I LOVE HIS MOUSTAAACCCHHHE omg marry me pls
cannot
CANNOT
someone shop sera's eyes open
(there's no saving this one)
meredith i
Nick called this the Seatbelt of Love
Who's That Girl!?
A VERY SATISFYING ADVENTURE.