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the_dala at 11:42pm on 08/02/2004
the_dala at 11:42pm on 08/02/2004Okay, I'm somewhat recovered from the nonstop craziness, so I'll take a stab at transcribing it.
Friday, driving home -- normally one of my favorite activities in all the world, but Friday's drive pretty much sucked. It rained all day long and it was disgustingly gray from here to G-burg. Even the river was ugly, because it reflected the devoid-of-all-blueness of the sky. I was not sad to leave this sorry, dripping campus behind. BUT.
If I were a cop, I would spend every single rainy day trawling for people without their headlights on and slapping them with the most exhorbitant fines I could get away with.
Honestly. Citizens of the state of Maryland: having your lights on while it is raining is the law. Not only is it the law, it is the most basic common sense you could imagine. Hello asshole, if you don't have your lights on and it is dusky and and drizzly and gray outside (even if it is 2:00 in the afternoon), you are invisible in my rearview mirror. You do not want to be invisible WHILE DOING 80 TO PASS SOMEBODY ON THE RIGHT ON THE CAPITAL FUCKING BELTWAY.
495 has enough problems on a good day, they don't need to be compounded by the sheer stupidity of inconsiderate drivers in the middle of a rainstorm.
Rants aside, Friday night: the minute I got home, Dad dragged me off to the used bookstore to hunt for discounted Hornblowers. I pointed him towards the fiction section and disappeared, because I have my routine, after all: children's lit, sci-fi, new arrivals, music and film, hardcover fiction, rare/antiquarian, paperback fiction. It sends me flitting back and forth from different corners of the store, but it makes sense in my head. I found a nice copy of Peter Pan and Janet Evanovich's Hard Eight right away. My constant search for Neil Gaiman yielded no results, but I did finally remember Christopher Moore's name and snatched up the one copy of Lamb. I've been looking for it for months, and either I forget the damn author's name or it's not there. Last find was the copy of The Princess Bride I vowed to find or die trying: the one with "What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince in the world, and he turns out to be a son of a bitch?" on the back cover. Finally. It only took me three years of searching.
Anyway, Dad found a couple of Foresters, but he also found about a dozen books from...this other series, by...this other guy. I don't know. I think they're naval stories because he mentions them in context with Horatio Hornblower, but I hadn't heard of the guy. Now, Daddy has gushed endlessly about Horatio, but he went and found all these other books (which I assume are out of print) and had an honest-to-goodness freakout. It was funny as hell. I just nodded and said, "This place is like Disneyland, isn't it?" Which got me a "hell yes, when can we go again?" My pa: why I love reading, exhibit A.
Then there was dinner with both the parents at Bugaboo Steakhouse, where I was dumb enough to eat cheesy spinach dip, bread, and salad before my giant chicken/ribs combo arrived. Then my mother spent ten minutes talking me into taking it home (because NO ONE is going to eat it, not me, not her, and not Dad, so why the hell should I doggy-bag it?), only to have all three of us forget the box when we left. Oh, but Bugaboo's bananas foster was delicious, even if I didn't really have any room to spare when we ordered it. Watched "Freaky Friday" -- very cute; if I have to pick a teen star I'd go for Lindsay Lohan over Hilary Duff any day of the week -- and called it a night.
Saturday began with a trip to the bank to deposit checks ...
...pause to assist in Vanessa's mission to rescue her box of Kotex from the very back corner of the overhead storage; is successful once we break out the masking tape...
...from winter vacation and withdraw some much-needed cash. I wandered over to Borders on the off chance that they might have the "Ultraviolet" DVDs. I really wasn't expecting them to, but lo, after ten minutes of browsing I check it out on the computer, and it says they have it. I contain my squealing long enough to trip down the stairs and storm the British TV section. I really did squeal. Just a quiet, Mini-me-ish "Eeee."
You'd think that would be enough, but NO. They're having a special where all the $11.99 CDs are marked down to $8.99. I flipped through the racks and found the Indigo Girls' Rites of Passage. Then I debated between Piano Man, Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin, and Cheap Trick: Greatest Hits, finally going with Cheap Trick. I waffled about Gene Weingarten's new book, but I'm so spoiled by used books now that it was only a flirtation.
You'd think THAT would be enough, but again, NO! Turns out that my beloved Borders was also having a 20% student discount this weekend, and I just so happened to have my ID with me. So I made out with two albums and a two-disc DVD set, for only forty bucks. My crazy euphoria lasted for a couple of hours wherein I made soup and bounced around the living room to Cheap Trick. I had to close the blinds, it was embarrassing -- but exactly the sort of thing I don't get the chance for at school, so doubly satisfying. I watched a bit of the first ep of "Ultraviolet," which I really enjoyed once I got over the knee-jerk reaction of having Jack Davenport linger on my TV screen. I never watched much "X-Files," but that's what I'd compare it to.
Eventually my mother staggered home (fully an hour later than expected) and we squabbled a bit before heading out the door, laden with baby shower gifts. The next forty-five minutes were very difficult to live through. My mom, you see, is not the best driver in any situation. She's timid and she never plans ahead. I know I've only been driving for a fraction of the amount of time she has (and believe me, I get this fact pounded into my head every time I dare to criticize), but there's no getting around it: she is a bad driver. And driving into D.C.? It's difficult. It's not something I like to do, and it's certainly not something I like to do when I'm in the passenger seat of my mother driving the Jeep. I cringed, I winced, I gripped the side of the door until my knuckles turned white. I failed to keep my mouth shut, because dammit, you cannot pull into the middle-left lane on 270 and slow down to 60, and you can't turn your signal on and wait for somebody to let you in, and you can't pay attention to the weird-ass street progression across Mass. Avenue if you're busy freaking out about bridges (of which there are NONE in the route from our house to Georgetown). Nevertheless, we're both still alive.
The shower was held, against the wishes of the family because it is way harder to get into D.C. than it is to get out of it, at my counsin Beth's friend's house in Georgetown. I'm going to break out the stereotypes on both sides, just to get across the mood of this gathering: my family is white trash, and Beth's friends are yuppies (they are now, anyway; they used to be cool bohemian artist-types). The family there -- that is, me, Mom, Grandma, my aunts Carolyn and Mary Ann, cousins Larissa and Nancy, and a mother/daughter duo who were explained as somehow being related to Uncle John -- was pretty uncomfortable. I got in some rare Grandma-time and sat around looking stiff, before Lauren (Larissa's oldest girl, who's nine) and her friend Paige rescued me and invited me up to the playroom. God. I would so rather hang out with the kids than the adults, pretty much in any situation but especially in this one. Nancy was up there with her two babies, Nicholas and Jacob (hereafter referred to as Whitey because he's got the palest complexion and the whitest-blond hair you've ever seen, and because it's such a damned cute nickname), and Larissa's youngest Allison. My two girls, Lauren and Allie. Anyway, Nancy's even more anti-social than I am, so we commiserated for a little while before there was a call for cake and present-opening. I snuggled Whitey while Beth was opening her mountains of gifts. I love all my little cousins (except Jack when he's indulging the Mr. Hyde half of his personality), but Whitey's the one who makes my insides go all achey because I just want to take him home and keep him forever. He's the sweetest-natured kid this family's ever seen, that's for sure. I also talked to a friend of Beth's who went to my school, which was neat.
After the festivities were ended, the fam crossed the street to Beth and D.J.'s house to make further plans. I got to play with the hamster and feel Baby Bump poking around. I'm kind of worried about Beth. She's tiny to begin with, and the baby is definitely tiny as well. I mean, she's eight months pregnant and you couldn't even tell if you saw her from behind. Kind of like fake TV pregnant-bellies, but smaller. Her doctor told her no more exercise or yoga for the rest of the pregnancy, because she's gained so little weight.
Not going to focus on badness, though. We're all pretty sure the baby is a girl. Larissa says Beth knows and won't tell anyone. It's going to be Sky if it is indeed a girl, and David James, after D.J., if it's a boy. There was talk of nicknaming Boy-Baby Bump 'Jamie,' and I squeed a little inside.
Mom decided to go out with Larissa and Nicole (Paige's mother, who used to live next door to Larissa and is by utter coincidence a cousin of our cousin Jimmy. See what happens when NOBODY in your family ever moves away?) and I took charge of the three girls. I made it back to G-burg in one piece, taking 355 the whole way and staying remarkably calm in the face of the traffic. We ordered pizza and had a girls' night out -- I said it should be girls' night in, but Lauren claimed that since they didn't live there and I didn't really, either, it counted as a night out. As always happens when one of Larissa's kids comes over, there was a screening of "Return to Oz." I don't know if it's a kid thing or a genetic thing, but every one of those children loves that movie. Paige gave Dad the wonderful new nickname "Candy" because she misheard Lauren saying "Ken." I've been calling him Candy for the past day and a half, and it hasn't gotten old yet. Larissa eventually arrived to take the girls off my hands before I was coaxed into a sixth game of Herd Your Horses. I could play that with Jessie for hours on end when we were ten, but you know? It's actually kind of boring. Allie pouted and wanted to stay, so she slept over. I tucked into my sleeping bag in my room and waited till she'd fallen asleep before sneaking downstairs to watch OUaTiM. Dad kept saying "This movie is weird," but I think he liked it. He did admit that he's become a Johnny Depp fan since PotC. Score.
On Sunday, I had had just about enough of Allie by the time Larissa came to pick her up. I watched up through the third episode of "Ultraviolet" while I finished up my laundry. Vanessa asked me if there was any eyebrow action, but I must say, I've been too fixated on Jack Davenport's Worried Eyes and his completely heartbreaking Tiny Sweet Self-Deprecating Half-Smile to notice. I think I like the third ep best so far. I also read some more of Lamb, which is completely deserving of all the recommendations. It's sharp and hysterical and I have a feeling that it's going to touch me deeply before it's done. Eventually I dragged my ass up, packed, and drove back to school. Still can't get the stupid Discman/tape deck adapter working. The radio was good to me tonight, though, so it didn't matter much.
And now here I am again, three weeks' worth of clean clothes to unpack and a lot of Polysci reading to do. Also fic to catch up on, and a J/N hurt/comfort bunny to contemplate. Different from "Nail" in that it would be Norrington doing the hurting and Jack doing the comforting, in a literal sense, since I would certainly say that happens in a non-literal sense in "Nail"....Gah! No! No writing tonight, I'm too tired to make any sense. The bunny will still have its teeth latched onto me in the morning.
Friday, driving home -- normally one of my favorite activities in all the world, but Friday's drive pretty much sucked. It rained all day long and it was disgustingly gray from here to G-burg. Even the river was ugly, because it reflected the devoid-of-all-blueness of the sky. I was not sad to leave this sorry, dripping campus behind. BUT.
If I were a cop, I would spend every single rainy day trawling for people without their headlights on and slapping them with the most exhorbitant fines I could get away with.
Honestly. Citizens of the state of Maryland: having your lights on while it is raining is the law. Not only is it the law, it is the most basic common sense you could imagine. Hello asshole, if you don't have your lights on and it is dusky and and drizzly and gray outside (even if it is 2:00 in the afternoon), you are invisible in my rearview mirror. You do not want to be invisible WHILE DOING 80 TO PASS SOMEBODY ON THE RIGHT ON THE CAPITAL FUCKING BELTWAY.
495 has enough problems on a good day, they don't need to be compounded by the sheer stupidity of inconsiderate drivers in the middle of a rainstorm.
Rants aside, Friday night: the minute I got home, Dad dragged me off to the used bookstore to hunt for discounted Hornblowers. I pointed him towards the fiction section and disappeared, because I have my routine, after all: children's lit, sci-fi, new arrivals, music and film, hardcover fiction, rare/antiquarian, paperback fiction. It sends me flitting back and forth from different corners of the store, but it makes sense in my head. I found a nice copy of Peter Pan and Janet Evanovich's Hard Eight right away. My constant search for Neil Gaiman yielded no results, but I did finally remember Christopher Moore's name and snatched up the one copy of Lamb. I've been looking for it for months, and either I forget the damn author's name or it's not there. Last find was the copy of The Princess Bride I vowed to find or die trying: the one with "What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince in the world, and he turns out to be a son of a bitch?" on the back cover. Finally. It only took me three years of searching.
Anyway, Dad found a couple of Foresters, but he also found about a dozen books from...this other series, by...this other guy. I don't know. I think they're naval stories because he mentions them in context with Horatio Hornblower, but I hadn't heard of the guy. Now, Daddy has gushed endlessly about Horatio, but he went and found all these other books (which I assume are out of print) and had an honest-to-goodness freakout. It was funny as hell. I just nodded and said, "This place is like Disneyland, isn't it?" Which got me a "hell yes, when can we go again?" My pa: why I love reading, exhibit A.
Then there was dinner with both the parents at Bugaboo Steakhouse, where I was dumb enough to eat cheesy spinach dip, bread, and salad before my giant chicken/ribs combo arrived. Then my mother spent ten minutes talking me into taking it home (because NO ONE is going to eat it, not me, not her, and not Dad, so why the hell should I doggy-bag it?), only to have all three of us forget the box when we left. Oh, but Bugaboo's bananas foster was delicious, even if I didn't really have any room to spare when we ordered it. Watched "Freaky Friday" -- very cute; if I have to pick a teen star I'd go for Lindsay Lohan over Hilary Duff any day of the week -- and called it a night.
Saturday began with a trip to the bank to deposit checks ...
...pause to assist in Vanessa's mission to rescue her box of Kotex from the very back corner of the overhead storage; is successful once we break out the masking tape...
...from winter vacation and withdraw some much-needed cash. I wandered over to Borders on the off chance that they might have the "Ultraviolet" DVDs. I really wasn't expecting them to, but lo, after ten minutes of browsing I check it out on the computer, and it says they have it. I contain my squealing long enough to trip down the stairs and storm the British TV section. I really did squeal. Just a quiet, Mini-me-ish "Eeee."
You'd think that would be enough, but NO. They're having a special where all the $11.99 CDs are marked down to $8.99. I flipped through the racks and found the Indigo Girls' Rites of Passage. Then I debated between Piano Man, Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin, and Cheap Trick: Greatest Hits, finally going with Cheap Trick. I waffled about Gene Weingarten's new book, but I'm so spoiled by used books now that it was only a flirtation.
You'd think THAT would be enough, but again, NO! Turns out that my beloved Borders was also having a 20% student discount this weekend, and I just so happened to have my ID with me. So I made out with two albums and a two-disc DVD set, for only forty bucks. My crazy euphoria lasted for a couple of hours wherein I made soup and bounced around the living room to Cheap Trick. I had to close the blinds, it was embarrassing -- but exactly the sort of thing I don't get the chance for at school, so doubly satisfying. I watched a bit of the first ep of "Ultraviolet," which I really enjoyed once I got over the knee-jerk reaction of having Jack Davenport linger on my TV screen. I never watched much "X-Files," but that's what I'd compare it to.
Eventually my mother staggered home (fully an hour later than expected) and we squabbled a bit before heading out the door, laden with baby shower gifts. The next forty-five minutes were very difficult to live through. My mom, you see, is not the best driver in any situation. She's timid and she never plans ahead. I know I've only been driving for a fraction of the amount of time she has (and believe me, I get this fact pounded into my head every time I dare to criticize), but there's no getting around it: she is a bad driver. And driving into D.C.? It's difficult. It's not something I like to do, and it's certainly not something I like to do when I'm in the passenger seat of my mother driving the Jeep. I cringed, I winced, I gripped the side of the door until my knuckles turned white. I failed to keep my mouth shut, because dammit, you cannot pull into the middle-left lane on 270 and slow down to 60, and you can't turn your signal on and wait for somebody to let you in, and you can't pay attention to the weird-ass street progression across Mass. Avenue if you're busy freaking out about bridges (of which there are NONE in the route from our house to Georgetown). Nevertheless, we're both still alive.
The shower was held, against the wishes of the family because it is way harder to get into D.C. than it is to get out of it, at my counsin Beth's friend's house in Georgetown. I'm going to break out the stereotypes on both sides, just to get across the mood of this gathering: my family is white trash, and Beth's friends are yuppies (they are now, anyway; they used to be cool bohemian artist-types). The family there -- that is, me, Mom, Grandma, my aunts Carolyn and Mary Ann, cousins Larissa and Nancy, and a mother/daughter duo who were explained as somehow being related to Uncle John -- was pretty uncomfortable. I got in some rare Grandma-time and sat around looking stiff, before Lauren (Larissa's oldest girl, who's nine) and her friend Paige rescued me and invited me up to the playroom. God. I would so rather hang out with the kids than the adults, pretty much in any situation but especially in this one. Nancy was up there with her two babies, Nicholas and Jacob (hereafter referred to as Whitey because he's got the palest complexion and the whitest-blond hair you've ever seen, and because it's such a damned cute nickname), and Larissa's youngest Allison. My two girls, Lauren and Allie. Anyway, Nancy's even more anti-social than I am, so we commiserated for a little while before there was a call for cake and present-opening. I snuggled Whitey while Beth was opening her mountains of gifts. I love all my little cousins (except Jack when he's indulging the Mr. Hyde half of his personality), but Whitey's the one who makes my insides go all achey because I just want to take him home and keep him forever. He's the sweetest-natured kid this family's ever seen, that's for sure. I also talked to a friend of Beth's who went to my school, which was neat.
After the festivities were ended, the fam crossed the street to Beth and D.J.'s house to make further plans. I got to play with the hamster and feel Baby Bump poking around. I'm kind of worried about Beth. She's tiny to begin with, and the baby is definitely tiny as well. I mean, she's eight months pregnant and you couldn't even tell if you saw her from behind. Kind of like fake TV pregnant-bellies, but smaller. Her doctor told her no more exercise or yoga for the rest of the pregnancy, because she's gained so little weight.
Not going to focus on badness, though. We're all pretty sure the baby is a girl. Larissa says Beth knows and won't tell anyone. It's going to be Sky if it is indeed a girl, and David James, after D.J., if it's a boy. There was talk of nicknaming Boy-Baby Bump 'Jamie,' and I squeed a little inside.
Mom decided to go out with Larissa and Nicole (Paige's mother, who used to live next door to Larissa and is by utter coincidence a cousin of our cousin Jimmy. See what happens when NOBODY in your family ever moves away?) and I took charge of the three girls. I made it back to G-burg in one piece, taking 355 the whole way and staying remarkably calm in the face of the traffic. We ordered pizza and had a girls' night out -- I said it should be girls' night in, but Lauren claimed that since they didn't live there and I didn't really, either, it counted as a night out. As always happens when one of Larissa's kids comes over, there was a screening of "Return to Oz." I don't know if it's a kid thing or a genetic thing, but every one of those children loves that movie. Paige gave Dad the wonderful new nickname "Candy" because she misheard Lauren saying "Ken." I've been calling him Candy for the past day and a half, and it hasn't gotten old yet. Larissa eventually arrived to take the girls off my hands before I was coaxed into a sixth game of Herd Your Horses. I could play that with Jessie for hours on end when we were ten, but you know? It's actually kind of boring. Allie pouted and wanted to stay, so she slept over. I tucked into my sleeping bag in my room and waited till she'd fallen asleep before sneaking downstairs to watch OUaTiM. Dad kept saying "This movie is weird," but I think he liked it. He did admit that he's become a Johnny Depp fan since PotC. Score.
On Sunday, I had had just about enough of Allie by the time Larissa came to pick her up. I watched up through the third episode of "Ultraviolet" while I finished up my laundry. Vanessa asked me if there was any eyebrow action, but I must say, I've been too fixated on Jack Davenport's Worried Eyes and his completely heartbreaking Tiny Sweet Self-Deprecating Half-Smile to notice. I think I like the third ep best so far. I also read some more of Lamb, which is completely deserving of all the recommendations. It's sharp and hysterical and I have a feeling that it's going to touch me deeply before it's done. Eventually I dragged my ass up, packed, and drove back to school. Still can't get the stupid Discman/tape deck adapter working. The radio was good to me tonight, though, so it didn't matter much.
And now here I am again, three weeks' worth of clean clothes to unpack and a lot of Polysci reading to do. Also fic to catch up on, and a J/N hurt/comfort bunny to contemplate. Different from "Nail" in that it would be Norrington doing the hurting and Jack doing the comforting, in a literal sense, since I would certainly say that happens in a non-literal sense in "Nail"....Gah! No! No writing tonight, I'm too tired to make any sense. The bunny will still have its teeth latched onto me in the morning.
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