Dorms, Boggarts, and Not Enough Sleep

So I finally moved Mikey into his dorm at NYU. He, his mom (my stepmother...let's call her "StepMom"), and his cousin ("RY") arrived on Saturday morning at the butt-crack of dawn (they had taken a redeye from CA). I offered them to take them back to my house so they could nap for a little bit, but they were all gung-ho about doing some dorm shopping, so we did. I had printed out a list of things he would need, and over the summer I had been surreptitiously acquiring various items for him, from a fridge to file folders, so at least we didn't wander around too aimlessly.

We managed to get all our shopping done by 2 PM (well, everything that would fit in my little Saturn, that is). When we finally got home, that's when everyone crashed...everyone except Mikey, that is. He was still wide awake, and he and I decided to watch the highly appropriate movie, The Freshman. Of course, even I fell asleep in the middle of it, but he stayed alert and engaged throughout the whole movie. Pretty good for someone who was going on three hours of sleep on a plane. Sure enough, though, after dinner, we watched another movie on TV, and he was out like a light before any of the rest of us.

What I enjoyed most about having houseguests was that I was able to cook for them. First of all, Mikey's a vegetarian too (okay, so I'm a pesco-vegetarian...or, as some people like to call it, a pesky vegetarian, so Mikey's more strict with his diet than I am), and second of all, StepMom and RY are from the Phillipines, so they're more amenable to the idea of having the curry I made for dinner. I couldn't imagine anyone who actually lives in my house (besides me, of course) even touching the stuff. I mean, it's not meat and potatoes: scandalous! Granted, there were potatoes in the curry, but you know what I mean.

On Sunday, I packed everyone and everything in the car and drove up to New York. It didn't take very long to unload, but there were long lines for check-in and, more importantly, for the elevator (Mikey's on the 16th floor). Luckily I didn't have to wait in line very much since I had to dash to Queens and get another carload of stuff (fridge, microwave, etc.) I had dropped off at a friend's house earlier. And on Monday, I ended up going to NY again to bring him the stuff that didn't fit in my car on Sunday.

StepMom and RY ended left on Sunday afternoon, since they both had to be back at work in CA on Monday morning, so I drove them to the airport. I came back to NYU to do some extra shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond with Mikey...they were open until midnight for a move-in day extravaganza, and NYU IDs got you a 10% discount. Discount good. Sale good. Dorm stuff expensive.

Besides a very bizarre lunch with StepMom's future brother-in-law (I'm really not clear on the details, but I guess her sister has been dating this guy online for a while and he plans on bringing her into the country and marrying her), who brought his mom along for the lunch, everything else ran very smoothly and according to plan. I think Mikey is now well-ensconced in his dorm with a view, and I can get back to my normal, everyday craziness.

Ice Cream

I'm not much of an ice cream afficionado. To be perfectly honest, it's not ever something I crave or go out of my way to get. But yesterday, after wandering around Philadelphia in 90-degree weather with two daughters of visiting friends of mine, ice cream seemed just the thing.

We went to Philadelphia's Please Touch Museum, which was a great success with them both. Although I have to say, we were lucky they didn't have any school groups there, because it was hard for me to keep track of them both just with the 40 or so kids that were running around. We ate pizza at a local pizza joint, where Amelia (the blonde in the picture) insisted that she would only eat cheese pizza, and then when she got the pizza proceeded to scrape the cheese off and eat only the crust and sauce. After lunch, we spent a little time in the playground outside the museum, but it got way too hot to really play for any extended period of time.

We then decided to get a little history and took a tour of the Betsy Ross House. They weren't as much interested in the history of the place (everything behind glass windows, nothing you can actually touch) as the were in the living history characters wandering around. Ah, it took me back to my Beechwood days. We watched a sword-fighting demonstration and a rifle-shooting demonstration. Chloe (the brunette) got a crush on one of the colonials and had to have her picture taken with him. And Amelia was fascinated by a knot-making demonstration by a sailor.

We got our ice cream at the Franklin Fountain, a 1900's style soda fountain that had really good ice cream. As I said, I'm no afficionado, but to this novice tongue, the ice cream went down smooth and sweet. The girls, of course, were in heaven, and Chloe got most of her ice cream on her face rather than in her mouth, but that's what napkins are for, right?

Sleepy

Besides staying up late for these union negotiation meetings, I've been running around like mad trying to clean the house. Only the house just doesn't get clean because there's always something else more important that I have to do. Argh!

I made Ray a peasant shirt for the Ren Faire yesterday (he tore one of his last weekend, so I thought I'd be nice and make him a new one. I doubled one of my measurements by mistake and I made it WAY too big. I don't think math and I get along very well. Maybe I should make an effort to be nicer to it, and it will help me get jobs done.

More CA Remembrances

As I sift through all the pictures (and video) I took while I was out there, I thought this one would be the best to show on this site. Because we just couldn't wait until the wedding and BBQ to hang out with each other, some of the Lizard People went to Japantown for some noodles and bad service. After dinner, we wandered around and had oodles of fun in the Japanese photo booths trying to figure out how to work the machine by deciphering the pictographs. We all agreed that for $5, the entertainment value was really great.

Airline Stories

So the trip to California was so much more than I had hoped it would be. Not only did Shirley get married without a hitch, but I managed to squeeze time to visit my brother as well as seeing the old high school crew (a.k.a. The Lizard People).

The flight out to CA was fairly uneventful. There was a 20-minute stopover in Las Vegas, where those of us who were continuing on to Oakland were allowed to get off the plane, stretch our legs, etc., before it took off again. I took advantage of the opportunity to use a real bathroom and ambled around the terminal a bit. Of course, in Las Vegas, they have slot machines in the airport; why would they not? I briefly thought about trying one out, but then had visions of feverishly feeding quarters into the machine as my plane took off, leaving me stranded, so I just got back on the plane. Two minutes later, a gentleman in my same situation also returned to the plane, crowing about how he just won $200 at the slot machines. Figures.

Even though I was in California specifically for the wedding, I was able to spend a couple days with Mikey, which is, as always, such a pleasure. It's pretty neat how I've gone from seeing him once every two or three years to once every two or three months. Again, let me tell the world how glad I am that he's going to NYU, and that I'll see him even more often!

I also was very lucky to be able to see the Bride and Groom a lot more than most of my friends, since I got to sing in the wedding. The three of us had dinner the night after I arrived, and then I saw them every day after that: at the rehearsal, at the wedding, and at the post-wedding BBQ the next day.

I stayed at the house of my best friend from middle school (yes, I keep in touch with many people from my past...I think I may be a rarity that way) who got married several years ago and who now has a two-year-old daughter. I was so busy running around meeting my brother, the Lizard People, and dealing with wedding stuff that it was a good thing I stayed with her...otherwise I wouldn't have had any time to spend with her, and that would have been a shame.

The trip back to Philadelphia proved itself to be more eventful than the trip there, and not in a good way. It started with a security line at Oakland airport that seemed worse than a line for a ride at Disneyland: the line kept moving, but it went around the baggage area, folded in on itself, went outside and back inside, and the TSA woman at the end of the line announced that it would be a 35-minute wait as I entered the queue. Good thing I got there early. I managed to make it on the plane without much hassle, and I sat on an aisle seat next to a nice woman and her son. Both her son and I were reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so she struck up a small conversation with me. Unfortunately about ten minutes into the flight, her teenage daughter, who had been sitting across the aisle from us, started getting sick and wanted to sit next to her mom. I'm a nice person...many would say TOO nice...so I traded seats with her.

Too late, I realized why this girl was getting sick. She and her brother had been sitting across the aisle, she in the middle and he at the window, and her brother was the fartiest little ten-year-old boy I think I've ever met. Besides the fact that I traded an aisle seat for a middle seat, I also seemed to have inherited the spot next to a kid with more gas than Saudi Arabia. It smelled like a combination of rotting eggs, day-old milk, with a slight hint of diarrhea for a good five and a half hours. Believe me, I was counting the minutes until our plane was scheduled to land...only it didn't land on schedule.

Yes, due to thunderstorms in the Philly area, the Philadelphia airport CLOSED while my plane was in the air. We circled around for a while until we got low on fuel, so we had to land in Pittsburgh to refuel and wait for a go from the tower in Philly. I was not amused. Not only had I been squashed next to Smelly the Fart Monster, but Southwest doesn't serve meals like normal airlines; they just serve snacks, so my diet for that day had consisted of a bagel I had eaten before getting on the plane, two Oreos, a bag of peanuts, a breakfast bar, and two Graham crackers. And it was dinner time by now. They did let us get off the plane in Pittsburgh to get something to eat while they refueled, but we ended up waiting around for about an hour and a half before the tower let us get back in the air. 12 hours after I left my friend's house in San Francisco, I finally made it back home. It's been quite a day, and with that, I think it's time for bed.