darn fool cow

boredom overwhelms me...

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 06:55:27 GMT

Merwyn and I decided to stay home tonight instead of going to the Mark like we'd originally planned. I don't mind TOO much...I'm kind of tired from having to work today... but it's hot and stuffy in this apartment, and I'm not tired enough to sleep,so right now I'm feeling very bored.

I love spending time with Merwyn, but at times like this I wish I had someone else to hang out with. There's no one else I can think of who I know wouldn't mind if I called them up and asked to do something. I don't even have most people I know's phone numbers! Oh well. Maybe I need to find something fulfilling to do with my time, some volunteer work or a hobby. Even if I didn't get to know anyone, it would at least give me something to do...

I actually have some ideas, I'm just not sure how to go about them. I wonder if there is a dance class here in Olympia or a writing group...? I would love to volunteer for something like Bread and Roses, too, but last time I inquired about that they gave me a vague, discouraging answer. Actually the same thing happened with a writing group I asked about.
(Hmmm, a sign?)

There has to be SOMEthing out there for me, though! I want to be involved in things, not hanging around the hot stuffy apartment all the time...

A little more about New York

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 02:45:14 GMT

I'm in a crabby mood right now and therefore not really in the mood to write, but I wanted to blab some more about my trip to NYC -- because someday it will be nostalgic, and because a couple of people actually asked. Plus two weeks have already passed.

Let's see, where did I leave off? Lunchtime, Wednesday, two weeks ago (our first day in the Big City). Lunch = awesome Mexican food at a cheap place in the East Village!

After lunch, Missy and I (window)shopped for a couple more hours. We came across Stuyvesant Park at one point and hung out there for awhile. It felt good. The humidity seemed REALLY bad that first day, so it was nice to take a break from walking around and just kick back and people-watch. The park was a quiet one, near a hospital. There were a lot of hospital employees there... and a lot of dogs! Mostly small ones. In fact, I kept seeing Yorkies throughout my trip, which made me miss my little Katie!

Anyway, when we were ready to get up and explore again, we enjoyed a bit more of the East Village, and then for some reason decided to eat dinner. That was sort of piggish, being that we'd just had lunch less than three hours ago, but I was craving Shepherd's pie and there just happened to be an Irish bar in the neighborhood with $10 Shepherd's pie. I think what we both REALLY wanted, though, was something to drink, thanks to all that heat! So we went in, I ordered my Shepherd's pie and Missy ordered Bangers 'n' Mash. I downed a couple diet cokes while we were waiting. The food came and it was yummy, but we were both too full to finish (then a fly landed on my Shepherd's pie, which didn't exactly make me want to finish it anyway).

Finally, after dinner, we headed back to Hotel 17 to check in. One thing about the hotel (which is guess is common for New York) is that private bathrooms... do not come with the rooms. But the shared bathroom wasn't too bad, all things considered. It was clean, and as private as a shared bathroom can be -- no bank of stalls or anything -- basically it just looked like a regular hotel bathroom, the only difference was that it wasn't just ours.

Missy claimed the bathroom closest to us first and took a shower, while I lounged around in our room and drank in the view (big buildings with fire escapes, yay!). Then I took my own much-needed shower. After we were both all clean, we decided to see what was on New York TV. There wasn't much, but she found something and not too long later we both lazily fell asleep. Except for that short time on the plane, I hadn't REALLY slept since Monday night, so I relished my afternoon nap!

We woke up around 7:30 pm, ready to "hit the town", but somehow we got distracted by that epitome-of-a-guilty-pleasure show "America's Got Talent" and decided to watch that stupid thing. Then we left and headed toward Union Square, a small yet lively park about three blocks from our hotel. We'd briefly stopped there earlier in the day. It was pleasant then, but now it was hopping! There were people just hanging out, people walking every which way, and a big crowd watching a trio of horn players. Missy and I watched them too for a few minutes, but our main reason for being at Union Square was to catch the subway, so we made our way down the dirty stairs to brave that infamous mode of transportation for the very first time.

Actually, it wasn't really my VERY first subway ride. I've been on L.A.'s subway plenty of times, and rode the BART a few years ago when I was in Berkeley. I don't remember having any major problems with those (especially not L.A.'s) but it took much longer to get onto New York's subway than we anticipated!

At first, it was because my sister was having trouble with the machines that were selling Metro cards; after several tries, the machines wouldn't accept her credit card. (I was able to buy my 7-day Metro pass right away from the customer service window, but they only accepted cash, and Missy only had her credit card plus a bit of change.) So she finally decided to use her change to buy a $2 "one way" pass (with the idea to buy her 7-day pass at a different subway stop's machine) -- only the thing that you slide your pass into to get through the gate cheated her! It did not say "go" (it said "please swipe again") yet somewhow it implied that she'd already used her one-way pass. At this point, I was already through the gate, but my sister just couldn't get through... so I went back through the exit gate and joined her. She was getting mad, and I couldn't blame her. FINALLY, though, the machine accepted her credit card and she got her pass. I went through again, but the machine kept telling my sister to swipe her pass again! So I exited again to help her... but when her thing finally said "go", and I tried to swipe MINE, it said I'd "just used" it!! Now I was QUICKLY losing MY patience (wasn't this pass supposed to be unlimited for 7 days?). But we talked to the customer service person, and learned that we had to wait 18 minutes between swiping the card. Goody.

Well, we hung out in the subway station for the remaining 15 minutes or so, and then at long last we were both able to swipe our passes with no trouble and make it through the gate, onto a (hot) platform. A subway came right away; we figured out it was headed uptown, and climbed on (and after all the trouble getting to the platform, the ride itself turned out to be quick, air-conditioned, and really not so bad).

We got out at Times Square. And I'll write more about that later. Ha ha, I'm still on my first day, but I've been in the Evergreen computer lab for hours and need to go home. More coming!

I'm a pervert

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 01:53:35 GMT

That's what a random old fellow told me last week, as I browsed an East Village record store. I was wearing one of those touristy tank tops that says 'I (heart) NY' and flipping through the used CD bin, when out of the blue he said to me "If you love New York, you're a pervert." So I smiled and told him that I guess I must be one. I really did love that city... even more than I thought I would!

Here's a little about what my sister and I did on our trip -- so I can look back on some day when I'm feeling particularly stuck here in Oly, and feel inspired to plan another trip.

Well, we flew out last Tuesday night. I hadn't flown since 2004 and was a little worried about making it to SeaTac on time, since I had Radio8Ball that night (which doesn't end 'til 8 pm) and our flight left at 11:15, and United's website said 'be there at least an hour and a half prior', blah blah. But the check-in process turned out to be ridiculously easy. Merwyn pulled into SeaTac at 9:15-ish...Missy and I went inside, she put her credit card into this machine, our info came up, our boarding passes were presented, and then we even breezed through security... we were at the departure gate by 9:30! We hung out for awhile, and snapped a picture or two just for the hell of it. By 10:45 we were in the walkway to the plane. The flight itself left on time, and by 11:30 I was flying through the air in a cramped seat listening to XM Satellite Radio in the sky.

The flight was problem-free; actually, I liked it! I enjoy flying and this ride was no different. Other than listening to XM and chattering with my sister, I slept some and ignored the stupid Matthew McConaughey movie they were showing.

About four hours later we landed in Chicago. I'd heard that airport was all busy and bustling, but it wasn't too bad at 5 in the morning. We got breakfast at McDonald's (because it was the only food place where a mere breakfast sandwich didn't cost $8 or $9) and I ordered a breakfast burrito and a hashbrown, but they gypped me on the hashbrown. When I sat down and opened my bag, it only had a breakfast burrito in it. Oh, well. After about an hour in Chicago, we boarded the next plane to Newark. I slept almost that entire flight.

My sister and I didn't plan as much as we should have prior to leaving for our trip, and I honestly had NO real idea how we would get from Newark to NYC, but fortunately that final leg of the traveling process turned out to go as smoothly as the rest had gone. We managed to stumble across this machine selling tickets on an AirTrain for $14, and bought a couple of those. We did have to ride that AirTrain thing a bit longer than necessary, because we missed the stop where it connected to an actual Amtrak train...but eventually we found our way onto that train, cruising through the Lincoln tunnel, and then in the middle of Penn Station in NYC! Woohoo!

By then, it was almost lunchtime in New York and the city was bustling. My first glimpse of the city looked pretty much as I thought it would -- skyscrapers, murals, street vendors, people going this way and that. It was awesome. Right away, somebody thrust a card at us with a granola bar attached and said, "Would you like a free granola bar!" Missy and I stood around enjoying the atmosphere for a moment; then we tried to figure out exactly where we were, and decided to try to walk to our hotel. We quickly changed our minds and flagged down a taxi. Our cab driver didn't seem too crazy; he was just a cab driver, but for some reason his taxi was VERY hot. It felt like 150 degrees inside there. I guess that was when I first noticed the New York humidity. We didn't have to roast in there too long, though, as what would have been a long walk (especially with luggage) was only a 5-minute ride away (through Chelsea and into the Gramercy Park/Flatiron area).

Our hotel was called the Hotel 17. It's a "European style" hotel, with narrow hallways and spooky cool-looking rooms. Apparently David Bowie, Madonna, and lots of other people have been photographed there, and Woody Allen shot a movie called "Manhattan Murder Mystery" there in the 80s. Some people on hotels.com and such said that the rooms were "the size of a walk-in closet" but when we eventually checked in, Missy and I had a double room and it was no smaller than your average hotel room. We had a TV, two beds, a decent view, etc. I liked the room. We couldn't check into it right away, though, it wasn't 3:30 yet, but at least they let us drop off our luggage. Then we went "out on the town."

We walked a few blocks away to the East Village and wandered into a kitschy-looking store called (I believe) 'Love Saves the Day'. Madonna bought a pair of boots or something there in "Desperately Seeking Susan" (what was with the constant Madonna references? Those weren't the only times her name came up). Anyway, secondhand stores are my favorite kind of store to browse, and this one had a nice mix of old clothes and old toys and I think there was vintage porn there, and all kinds of fun things! I could have stayed there the whole afternoon. There were some things I wanted to buy, but we left after half an hour or so thinking "we'll be back." (Of course, we never made it back.)

We then perused some CD shops, and I picked up some cheap CDs by They Might Be Giants, the Kinks, and Persephone's Bees, plus this Troma film with Campbell Scott in it (just cuz I'd never seen or even heard of it before, and I love Campbell). Or maybe we ate lunch first. I don't remember. Anyway at some point we had lunch at an awesome Mexican restaurant. They had the best chili taco plus a steak fajita for under $5!

I'm going to continue this later, because in my usual style it's already really long and I have to go to Target and make dinner and such.