Well My Kind's Your Kind, I’ll Stay The same!
Happy Birthday, gears_fc3s!
Epic weekend.
Marvel and I had decided that, since I wanted to visit my grandfather last weekend, and I had a half day for Good Friday anyway, we would celebrate White Day on Friday. White Day started off with a beautiful bouquet of white roses, daisies, carnations, and baby's breath with a pink heart balloon being delivered to my office. Thank God I work with mostly men, and there's only one woman in the office to make jealous. (She was pretty funny about it--when she used to sit up here by me, I would tell her we'd share my flowers. I still put the flowers Marvel sends to my work up on the cubicle wall so everyone can enjoy them.)
So, I got out of here around one, picked up Marvel's Easter present (more on that later) and headed to the mall to meet up with Marvel. We took the train up to 5th Avenue so we could go to Takashimaya, a Japanese department store with a tea salon in the basement. I love that place, but it closes at 5:30 so we never get to go. We had a wonderful meal, and Marvel gave me my White Day present--Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the DS! I just started the game this morning and I've only played three puzzles, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Except...for the fact that my intelligence (or lack thereof) is one of the few things I'm secretly ridiculously paranoid about (really, it would beat out my obsessing over being fat, if only fat didn't show so much more easily), so while I *am* enjoying the game, I'm not enjoying breaking out in a cold sweat over the prospect of failing a really easy puzzle and...I don't know. Having the game judge me? Knowing I'm not as smart as I want to think I am? I don't know, paranoia never seems to have a very good idea of what the feared consequences are. Much like my fear of moths.
Anyway, as we were walking back to the train station, we passed Cartier, and I joked that we should go say hi to Sissy, The Other Secretary's sister. We're actually pretty friendly--I call her "Sissy", for one thing, I talk to her nearly every day, and if The Other Secretary is busy, sometimes Sissy and I will joke around with each other while she waits for The Other Secretary to get un-busy. I had only brought it up to mention that she worked there, but Marvel said, "Sure!", so we crossed the street and went into Cartier. Let me tell you, that place is better guarded than Fort Knox. We had guys following us around (to be fair, I'm sure we didn't look like their typical clientele--I had my Spinal Tap bookbag on for Chrissakes) and talking into their wristwatch and describing us as "One white male, one white female" and all that, but eventually I told them I was looking for Sissy (and I had to think hard to remember her real name, because as I said, I always call her "Sissy") and they brought her up out of the basement. Turns out she was the only manager on duty, and totally welcomed the break from whatever she was doing with stock to give us a museum-esque type tour--I had no idea the store used to be a private residence, or that Louis Cartier invented the wristwatch. She also insisted I try something on, and slipped a very large sapphire ring with two crescent moon diamonds on either side onto my finger, and then told me it was worth $100,000. Nervewracking. We also got to poke the vintage broach Renee Zellwegger wore to the Oscars this year, and Marvel got to try on a wristwatch that was even more expensive than "my" ring had been. It was really pretty cool.
After that, we tried to go shopping in Chinatown, but we had limited success. Even Pearl Paint was kind of a washout, because while I was able to find the wooden canvas stretchers my Dad needed, their Prismacolor marker selection was REALLY poor--there's more in the small art supply store near my job than Pearl Paint had. Then, we tried to go shopping in the Chinese shops, but the wind was so bad it was tearing things out of my hand, so we decided to give up and come back sometime in the summer when the weather is nicer. So instead, we went home, ate dinner while watching Batman, dyed Easter eggs, and then Marvel took a nap while I played some more Oblivion. He woke up again close to 11, and we watched Next starring Nicholas Cage and...crap, that chick who's Whistler's daughter in Blade 3, she's really hot, but anyway, with Rifftrax, and it was a REALLY enjoyable Riff, I highly recommend it.
Saturday, we did a lot of hard manual labor, with me mainly concentrating on repainting the pipe that runs across the ceiling in the basement with a rust-corrective-and-preventative paint that works really well (and is very shiny) but reeks to high heaven--the basement still stinks. Dad started even earlier than I did, but Marvel and I helped from about 1 PM or so until we knocked off for the night around 7 or so. After dinner, I finished up another new drawing (I'm terrified of this streak ending) and watched From Dusk Til Dawn--I still hate Quentin Tarantino.
Pepper and Captain Technical came by around 9, and we made drinks, told stories, watched Master and Commander (it was really very good, and I thought of you, pirate_duck, a lot), and taught Pep to play poker. She makes the same mistakes I used to, it took me forever to learn that three of a kind beats two pair. (In my mind, 4 > 3, but I have to remind myself that apparently three of a kind is rarer, and that's what counts.) They left really late, and I only got around three hours sleep that night, but I had such a wonderful time that I felt great all the next day.
Easter Sunday, I gave Marvel his Easter present, Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii. (No, he does not want to play you yet. He hasn't played any SSB game in a while, and wants to practice a bit before challenging people online.) He played around with that, while I put on a cute little plaid dress that I got really cheap in the kid's section of Walmart--thank God for the obesity epidemic among our nation's youth. We went over to my father's family in Brooklyn, and I spent the day condemning Peeps to death by decapitation, helping with the dishes, and watching It Came From Hollywood which featured Gilda Radner, Dan Akroyd, John Candy, and Cheech and Chong (I know, some cast, right?) introducing clips from some of the most awesome horrible old movies--Ed Wood merited his own section, of course. My uncle poured Marvel wine like he was watering a thirsty plant, and I think I fell asleep for about twenty minutes while watching The Three Stooges.
On the way home, we had to help my father carry down a queen size bed, mattress, and box spring from my aunt's mother's house. While tossing the ropes over the roof of the car to secure them on, my father beaned my aunt with a metal belt buckle. Trying to get that stuff up and down stairs in a little dress and four inch heels was nothing if not interesting.
As I told ssfseiyakou, it is usually tiring to be Crissy, but it is rarely boring.