Transatlantic visitation
Mar. 28th, 2006 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicSo ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
catilinarian came Thursday for a long-overdue visit and a much-needed escape from the mundane. She brought gifties—Montezuma's chocolate samplers and a killer penguin t-shirt—and in return got free laundry services, tea, a theatre ticket and a happy chauffeur.
Highlights of the weekend included a trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, full of bones and children, the former very cool and the latter thankfully confined to a side room; a culinary tour of Cuisines Catherine Doesn't Get Enough Of In England; gratuitous book purchases; a serendipitous run-in with P. at the organic supermarket (I hadn't seen him in four years, and wouldn't have seen him on Friday either except he recognized me from the back and called my name); a visit to the supermarket for Cat's and her/our expatriate friends' cravings as well as weekly shopping; viewing of Joyeux Noel, "Black Books," Dylan Moran standup, "House" and "Lestat"; my dance competition (to my surprised delight, I earned two golds, a silver and a bronze); and more destruct-o work on the bathroom while Cat and Margaret IMed, this time including cement board- and shower door-lugging and midnight tile demolition.
That's the edited version. The unabridged one is over 2,500 words. Consider yourselves spared.
"Lestat" gets a separate post. The brief review is that it did far more than expected without achieving much of objective quality; the Chronicles and slash fans among us were delighted, the Elton John fan won over, and the disinterested boyfriend at least satisfied.synn and Cat kindly let me yammer on for an hour on the train ride home about the books and what worked in the musical and what didn't. No one outside the fan boards seems to have reviewed the New York production yet—we saw the opening performance—so there's still hope that I'll be able to get this review written and out to you before it's contaminated by other opinions.
Sorry, this was meant to be a jovial post but I've just been yelled at by a client I'd never spoken to before for something I had nothing to do with, and Teflon Manager wouldn't take the call. *steams* "House" and "Boston Legal" will compensate later.
ETA: Oh, what the hell. The long version:
Thursday I stayed at work a few hours late, discovering the wonders of a dark and quiet office and some uninterrupted time in which to organize my tasks. Then I picked Catherine up at JFK without trouble and in record time. Once home, she presented a cache of Montezuma's chocolates and an adorable killer-penguin t-shirt; we had some cheese and watched the most recent episode of "House" on tape followed by "The Daily Show" (Endangered Species Jerky—"Mm, panda!"). Then bed, because, jet lag.
Friday Cat got the tour of the town. We started at a tiny garage sale where she managed to snag a nifty Chinese dragon pin for $1, except she only had British pounds and I only had 90 cents and some twenties, and then when I offered the lady the coins she said we could just take the pin in exchange for telling someone about the garage sale. Cat then did the I Just Got A Dragon Pin For Free Dance in the passenger seat while we debated who would be the most ridiculous person to tell about the sale. Then we went to the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, a little place I've somehow managed never to visit despite having lived 15 minutes away from it for my entire childhood (but then my sister has never been to the Walt Whitman birthplace, a staple "attraction" of our town). It was full of bones and children, the former very cool and the latter thankfully confined to a side room where they watched a video and sang in admittedly adorable high tremulous voices. I think our favorites of the items on display were the half-dozen carved whalebone pie crust sealers. Also enjoyable were the impossibly large bones and the exhibit cards with delightful whale-related words like "flensing" and "ambergris."
It being lunchtime by then, we commenced our weekend-long culinary tour of Cuisines Cat Doesn't Get Enough Of In England with a trip to a Mexican place in town next to my favorite bookstore, which Cat requested we visit. Of course the parking lot was less conveniently located and the weather gods must have been feeling spiteful because it rained on us as we dashed over and then it cleared up by the time we were done eating. Naturally. But the food was divine and plentiful, including a strangely neat nacho appetizer in which the chips were individually laid out in a ring on the plate each with a piece of melted cheese, slice of jalapeno and refried beans, with lettuce, tomato and sour cream relegated to the middle. We were moderately successful at the used book sale, which was nice because the last time I dropped in on it at the beginning of the month I didn't find anything. This time I raided the Fiction shelves and ended up with Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg, Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe, The Anne Rice Reader edited by Rice-worshipper Katherine Ramsland (has some essays I used for my thesis), Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain (one's from Satan) and Children of the Wind by Kate Wilhelm (five sci fi novellas); Cat got an excellent-looking one about rhetoric in popular culture and another I won't mention because I think it's a gift.
We were planning to see Joyeux Noel at our wonderful indie theatre but spent a little too much time at the bookstore (no, never! and no regrets!) so instead we wandered around town some more to kill a couple of hours before the next showing. We dropped by the candy shop, dripping with multicolored pastel Easter decorations, but they didn't have chocolate bars and I was in a chocolatey kind of mood, so Cat got some juicy gummy bears and we kept walking to the organic supermarket at the top of the hill, dropping by the HSBC along the way so Cat could get her American money (too late for you, hoodwinked dragon pin lady!).
These details have a point, and the point is this: if all the timings of all the day's events hadn't been precisely what they were, then we wouldn't have ended up at the supermaket when we did, crossing paths with P. by the entrance/exit.
Let me explain something.synn and I, and to a lesser extent my sister and I, have this thing where any time we go into town we wonder if we'll run into P., who lives nearby. We've giddily hoped for years that it might happen. It never has. Well, never had.
I stood there grinning like an idiot and said "I'm just going to stand here grinning like an idiot." There's one improvement over high school—the confidence to admit something like that, and cheerfully. It balances the fact that he said he'd recognized me from the back by my hair—how nice to think that after nine years I'm still wearing it the same way. So we stood there grinning and trying to figure out where to start—"I know," he said, "there's so much to talk about"—there was a flurry of an introduction to Cat, he chatted with her about London for a bit while I (hopefully surreptitiously) stared at him, and then I completely ignored her in the throes of rapture. He's grayer than a few years ago and has more facial hair, but is still as sinfully handsome as ever. And I had this pile of books under my arm, which, just like high school all over again, I felt vaguely self-conscious about when he asked to see them, and I wished I'd picked up something more impressive. He seemed happy enough with the rest of them, and didn't make a remark about the Anne Rice book, counter to expectation and despite the defense I had semi-prepared while still in the bookstore ("It's academic essays!") because I am a dork. Cary Tennis' voice in my head again, telling me that this selection of books and my sensitivity to P.'s reaction is not in fact a symbol of how my life has changed and yet remained precisely the same since 12th grade. Then we parted ways, and I floated through the produce section while Cat patiently waited for the high to fade.
After all that, we still didn't find any really good movie snacks.
A final stop at the music/movie store before we journeyed on over to the theatre for Joyeux Noel. It was all right. I'd have chosen Sophie Scholl over this for Best Foreign Film.
Saturday we trolled over to the supermarket to do some shopping, both for our house and for Cat's (and her/our expatriate friends') cravings. Very exciting. We watched some "Black Books" to kill time before heading into the city with everyone for "Lestat." There was some minor scheduling chaos that resulted in Cat,synn and me picking up Alex and missing the train we wanted by about 30 seconds, so that we stood on the bridge over the tracks at the station as it pulled away. The conductor, seeing us standing there sort of grinning in defeat, waved as he passed underneath.
We caught the next one a half hour later and got in to Manhattan at an odd time, had a late lunch, circled around in search of Lush, then wandered down Broadway in Soho, wheresynn led us to a huge Chinese imports store called Pearl River something-or-other that was a great place to spend an hour. We then commenced more scheduling confusion in meeting Alex's boyfriend Mike, whom we expected to be grumpy after having apparently waited for her call for half an hour at Penn Station. But he was all right and we had a very good Italian dinner, made even better of course by the company—not to mention a bottle of excellent Chardonnay (Alex proposed alcohol as entertainment insurance) and the fact that Mike very generously picked up the tab—followed by a stop at a bakery 'round the corner for theatre snacks.
"Lestat" gets a separate post. The brief review is that it did far more than expected still without achieving good quality, but it was enough to please everyone andsynn and Cat kindly let me yammer on for an hour on the train ride home about the Chronicles and what worked in the musical and what didn't.
Sunday everyone got dragged to the high school for our dance competition (feis, pronounced "fesh"), and first of all let's have three cheers for my parents, sister, Cat and even my mom's boyfriend for (a) showing up and (b) waiting around in the noisy, stuffy gym for over two hours while we waited to compete and then for another 30 or 45 minutes in the hallway while we waited for the scores to be posted and to get the judge's comments and our prizes. There were enough competitors this year that we weren't all guaranteed to place. To my surprise and delight, not only did I place (which was all I'd been hoping for, and idly at that), I placed in all four of the dances on our level, I won two of them (slip jig and hornpipe, funnily enough the two I was least comfortable with), and three times out of four I placed higher than my friend, who beat me in everything last year and who I think has awesome form and energy. [/bragging]
It was after 4:00 when we finally got out of there—we'd arrived at noon at my teacher's instructions—came home, had a little snack, Cat and I regaled my sister with some tales of "Lestat," Cat IMed with Margaret while I helped my dad carry sheets of cement board into the garage, and then she and I dined at a nearby Japanese restaurant that does sushi and some irresistably huge dinners. More "Black Books," a snippet of Dylan Moran's standup routine, a shorter snippet of "Immortal" (the patience of a thousand saints, has Catherine), and then I begged off to bed because, horror of horrors, work.
Monday we said our goodbyes at 7:45 a.m., I hunkered down for the morning commute, and if all went as planned,synn came over and took Catherine to the train an hour later.
The end!
catilinarian came Thursday for a long-overdue visit and a much-needed escape from the mundane. She brought gifties—Montezuma's chocolate samplers and a killer penguin t-shirt—and in return got free laundry services, tea, a theatre ticket and a happy chauffeur. Highlights of the weekend included a trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, full of bones and children, the former very cool and the latter thankfully confined to a side room; a culinary tour of Cuisines Catherine Doesn't Get Enough Of In England; gratuitous book purchases; a serendipitous run-in with P. at the organic supermarket (I hadn't seen him in four years, and wouldn't have seen him on Friday either except he recognized me from the back and called my name); a visit to the supermarket for Cat's and her/our expatriate friends' cravings as well as weekly shopping; viewing of Joyeux Noel, "Black Books," Dylan Moran standup, "House" and "Lestat"; my dance competition (to my surprised delight, I earned two golds, a silver and a bronze); and more destruct-o work on the bathroom while Cat and Margaret IMed, this time including cement board- and shower door-lugging and midnight tile demolition.
That's the edited version. The unabridged one is over 2,500 words. Consider yourselves spared.
"Lestat" gets a separate post. The brief review is that it did far more than expected without achieving much of objective quality; the Chronicles and slash fans among us were delighted, the Elton John fan won over, and the disinterested boyfriend at least satisfied.
synn and Cat kindly let me yammer on for an hour on the train ride home about the books and what worked in the musical and what didn't. No one outside the fan boards seems to have reviewed the New York production yet—we saw the opening performance—so there's still hope that I'll be able to get this review written and out to you before it's contaminated by other opinions.Sorry, this was meant to be a jovial post but I've just been yelled at by a client I'd never spoken to before for something I had nothing to do with, and Teflon Manager wouldn't take the call. *steams* "House" and "Boston Legal" will compensate later.
ETA: Oh, what the hell. The long version:
Thursday I stayed at work a few hours late, discovering the wonders of a dark and quiet office and some uninterrupted time in which to organize my tasks. Then I picked Catherine up at JFK without trouble and in record time. Once home, she presented a cache of Montezuma's chocolates and an adorable killer-penguin t-shirt; we had some cheese and watched the most recent episode of "House" on tape followed by "The Daily Show" (Endangered Species Jerky—"Mm, panda!"). Then bed, because, jet lag.
Friday Cat got the tour of the town. We started at a tiny garage sale where she managed to snag a nifty Chinese dragon pin for $1, except she only had British pounds and I only had 90 cents and some twenties, and then when I offered the lady the coins she said we could just take the pin in exchange for telling someone about the garage sale. Cat then did the I Just Got A Dragon Pin For Free Dance in the passenger seat while we debated who would be the most ridiculous person to tell about the sale. Then we went to the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, a little place I've somehow managed never to visit despite having lived 15 minutes away from it for my entire childhood (but then my sister has never been to the Walt Whitman birthplace, a staple "attraction" of our town). It was full of bones and children, the former very cool and the latter thankfully confined to a side room where they watched a video and sang in admittedly adorable high tremulous voices. I think our favorites of the items on display were the half-dozen carved whalebone pie crust sealers. Also enjoyable were the impossibly large bones and the exhibit cards with delightful whale-related words like "flensing" and "ambergris."
It being lunchtime by then, we commenced our weekend-long culinary tour of Cuisines Cat Doesn't Get Enough Of In England with a trip to a Mexican place in town next to my favorite bookstore, which Cat requested we visit. Of course the parking lot was less conveniently located and the weather gods must have been feeling spiteful because it rained on us as we dashed over and then it cleared up by the time we were done eating. Naturally. But the food was divine and plentiful, including a strangely neat nacho appetizer in which the chips were individually laid out in a ring on the plate each with a piece of melted cheese, slice of jalapeno and refried beans, with lettuce, tomato and sour cream relegated to the middle. We were moderately successful at the used book sale, which was nice because the last time I dropped in on it at the beginning of the month I didn't find anything. This time I raided the Fiction shelves and ended up with Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg, Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe, The Anne Rice Reader edited by Rice-worshipper Katherine Ramsland (has some essays I used for my thesis), Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain (one's from Satan) and Children of the Wind by Kate Wilhelm (five sci fi novellas); Cat got an excellent-looking one about rhetoric in popular culture and another I won't mention because I think it's a gift.
We were planning to see Joyeux Noel at our wonderful indie theatre but spent a little too much time at the bookstore (no, never! and no regrets!) so instead we wandered around town some more to kill a couple of hours before the next showing. We dropped by the candy shop, dripping with multicolored pastel Easter decorations, but they didn't have chocolate bars and I was in a chocolatey kind of mood, so Cat got some juicy gummy bears and we kept walking to the organic supermarket at the top of the hill, dropping by the HSBC along the way so Cat could get her American money (too late for you, hoodwinked dragon pin lady!).
These details have a point, and the point is this: if all the timings of all the day's events hadn't been precisely what they were, then we wouldn't have ended up at the supermaket when we did, crossing paths with P. by the entrance/exit.
Let me explain something.
synn and I, and to a lesser extent my sister and I, have this thing where any time we go into town we wonder if we'll run into P., who lives nearby. We've giddily hoped for years that it might happen. It never has. Well, never had.I stood there grinning like an idiot and said "I'm just going to stand here grinning like an idiot." There's one improvement over high school—the confidence to admit something like that, and cheerfully. It balances the fact that he said he'd recognized me from the back by my hair—how nice to think that after nine years I'm still wearing it the same way. So we stood there grinning and trying to figure out where to start—"I know," he said, "there's so much to talk about"—there was a flurry of an introduction to Cat, he chatted with her about London for a bit while I (hopefully surreptitiously) stared at him, and then I completely ignored her in the throes of rapture. He's grayer than a few years ago and has more facial hair, but is still as sinfully handsome as ever. And I had this pile of books under my arm, which, just like high school all over again, I felt vaguely self-conscious about when he asked to see them, and I wished I'd picked up something more impressive. He seemed happy enough with the rest of them, and didn't make a remark about the Anne Rice book, counter to expectation and despite the defense I had semi-prepared while still in the bookstore ("It's academic essays!") because I am a dork. Cary Tennis' voice in my head again, telling me that this selection of books and my sensitivity to P.'s reaction is not in fact a symbol of how my life has changed and yet remained precisely the same since 12th grade. Then we parted ways, and I floated through the produce section while Cat patiently waited for the high to fade.
After all that, we still didn't find any really good movie snacks.
A final stop at the music/movie store before we journeyed on over to the theatre for Joyeux Noel. It was all right. I'd have chosen Sophie Scholl over this for Best Foreign Film.
Saturday we trolled over to the supermarket to do some shopping, both for our house and for Cat's (and her/our expatriate friends') cravings. Very exciting. We watched some "Black Books" to kill time before heading into the city with everyone for "Lestat." There was some minor scheduling chaos that resulted in Cat,
synn and me picking up Alex and missing the train we wanted by about 30 seconds, so that we stood on the bridge over the tracks at the station as it pulled away. The conductor, seeing us standing there sort of grinning in defeat, waved as he passed underneath. We caught the next one a half hour later and got in to Manhattan at an odd time, had a late lunch, circled around in search of Lush, then wandered down Broadway in Soho, where
synn led us to a huge Chinese imports store called Pearl River something-or-other that was a great place to spend an hour. We then commenced more scheduling confusion in meeting Alex's boyfriend Mike, whom we expected to be grumpy after having apparently waited for her call for half an hour at Penn Station. But he was all right and we had a very good Italian dinner, made even better of course by the company—not to mention a bottle of excellent Chardonnay (Alex proposed alcohol as entertainment insurance) and the fact that Mike very generously picked up the tab—followed by a stop at a bakery 'round the corner for theatre snacks. "Lestat" gets a separate post. The brief review is that it did far more than expected still without achieving good quality, but it was enough to please everyone and
synn and Cat kindly let me yammer on for an hour on the train ride home about the Chronicles and what worked in the musical and what didn't.Sunday everyone got dragged to the high school for our dance competition (feis, pronounced "fesh"), and first of all let's have three cheers for my parents, sister, Cat and even my mom's boyfriend for (a) showing up and (b) waiting around in the noisy, stuffy gym for over two hours while we waited to compete and then for another 30 or 45 minutes in the hallway while we waited for the scores to be posted and to get the judge's comments and our prizes. There were enough competitors this year that we weren't all guaranteed to place. To my surprise and delight, not only did I place (which was all I'd been hoping for, and idly at that), I placed in all four of the dances on our level, I won two of them (slip jig and hornpipe, funnily enough the two I was least comfortable with), and three times out of four I placed higher than my friend, who beat me in everything last year and who I think has awesome form and energy. [/bragging]
It was after 4:00 when we finally got out of there—we'd arrived at noon at my teacher's instructions—came home, had a little snack, Cat and I regaled my sister with some tales of "Lestat," Cat IMed with Margaret while I helped my dad carry sheets of cement board into the garage, and then she and I dined at a nearby Japanese restaurant that does sushi and some irresistably huge dinners. More "Black Books," a snippet of Dylan Moran's standup routine, a shorter snippet of "Immortal" (the patience of a thousand saints, has Catherine), and then I begged off to bed because, horror of horrors, work.
Monday we said our goodbyes at 7:45 a.m., I hunkered down for the morning commute, and if all went as planned,
synn came over and took Catherine to the train an hour later.The end!
no subject
Date: Mar. 29th, 2006 07:39 pm (UTC)Do you know if Pearl River is a Chinese thing or has to do with the town upstate?
no subject
Date: Mar. 30th, 2006 01:08 am (UTC)