| Rare update |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|01:11 pm] |
Sitting in the office with no work - and I mean legitimately no work, not that there could be work if only I would apply myself more - so I am going to catch up this LJ with recent events. Quickly, before the headache from squinting at the screen with just one contact lens on sets in! (Will be picking up a new pair of glasses on my way home from work today. Thick black plastic-framed hipster glasses, very exciting!)
First thing is that I was out of town last weekend - Portland/Portsmouth/Boston/NYC. In Portland (the one in Maine) on Friday my mother and I did the arts district in the morning, port district in the afternoon. We had lunch at a pub where we were the only women - sort of funny, the "commercial street pub" sign outside was right next to one that said "no drinking at any time" - getting into the spirit of the place we drank beer, and my mother told me about the summer she'd worked as a waitress at a Maine resort in the seventies. (What am I going to be able to tell my hypothetical children?!)
Art district: really decent work at the Maine College of Art - acronym MECA - plastic flamingos dressed up in regional costumes. Also a nice antique fabric gallery across the street whose minder, who was about 25 and very friendly, said he'd gone to NYU and hadn't liked it because everyone was off doing their own thing, "like in high school" (which made me wonder what kind of high school he'd gone to). Port district: lots of lobster-flavored souvenirs and some old houses with plaques on 'em, including one called "Victoria House" that had Greek doric columns, Victorian woodwork around the doors and windows, Moorish geometric patterns along one roof, Chinese-style eaves along the other, and even a tower with one of those round nautical windows. All executed in brownstone. It was Special. *g*
...that paragraph could have been accomplished much more easily with pictures! Oh well.
Dinner in Portsmouth, which turns out to be a really trendy, upscale place. (Who knew?) We went to three breweries in a row that each had a 45 minute wait, then finally scored at an older, smaller one where the staff said the wait was only 15 minutes...though this turned out to also be 45 minutes. XD; Proof that you shouldn't always settle for the first decent, easy thing?
Did Boston Saturday. Met up with my cousin and her boyfriend, who have an apartment in Cambridge halfway between Harvard and MIT. Was nice to ditch the parents! We walked around Harvard Square, had lunch in a cafe where the waitress snootily informed us that they didn't serve those kinds of sodas (ie, Diet Coke - I suppose they had Italian sodas). Very good food though. Walked down to the Charles river, the weather was gorgeous, the people were wearing a variety of things - unlike New Yorkers, Bostonians don't tend to follow a style code. Boyfriend pointed out the building where he has a day job creating spreadsheets calculating the economic advantages of green technologies, on those rare days when his advisor is actually around to advise him. Discussed, with cousin, the way that office work trains you to approach every problem with "I can put that in a spreadsheet for you".
Then tea in a coffee house where my cousin had work up (she paints), then MIT where we saw the building that might collapse. A bit dizzying, actually, to behold. According to cousin's bf the more architecturally complicated, the higher the costs of repairs. And the roof leaks, also. *g* Proceeded to browse at the MIT bookstore where every book is a ground-breaking study with good cover design - just skimming the titles made me feel smarter.
Caught a train at 4:30 to NYC so I'd be back in time for Glasvegas, who were...not very good, actually. XD; Sort of boring? When your aesthetic ideal is a Phil Spectre-esque Wall of Sound, you'd better have the sound production to back it up, and they just didn't. Closed with what felt like the the entire audience singing along to this song, though, so that was a highlight. If I ever go to see this band again, I am definitely standing front and center - I'm not letting myself be taken aside after two drinks by a 40 year-old Morrissey fan who offers to buy me a third. (Seriously, what was I thinking? Though this did answer the question, who likes Glasvegas? As dude was way up on his British indie rock canon as determined by weekly British music magazines.) (Another nice thing about the show is that the audience was actually pretty mixed - old folk, young folk, black folk, white folk, Asian folk. Even some South Asian folk, who I have never before seen at an indie show.) |
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| Christmas 2007 |
[Dec. 27th, 2007|01:12 am] |
For Christmas, my parents and younger brother and I drove out to Ohio (although I didn't do any of the driving). We reached the father's father house on the 22nd and vegged, drove out to Columbus to see an aunt (father's older sister) on the 23rd, shopped last minuted with an uncle (father's younger half-brother) on Christmas Eve, and split Christmas Day between the aforementioned uncle and another uncle (father's older step-brother). By the way, this is all according to tradition.
I had a very good time and ate a ton of food, which I am now regretting. -_-; But I can't regret it too much because the food was very good. Both aunts (father's older sister and father's sister-in-law) outdo themselves every year, which in the case of father's sister-in-law opened the door to a nasty stomach virus. -_-; This is the fifth year in a row she's been sick on Christmas.
Partially because of this, we've been talking about skipping Christmas next year and doing Orthodox Christmas instead. Less fuss, better bargains, less stress for both aunts, and the entire family might show up for the same meal! Hey, a girl can dream.
I received gifts. XD Clothes, books, and cash: very practical. The clothes were a red scarf with white snowflakes on the ends, a pair of "fur"-lined boots that almost fit but didn't quite (I'm going to exchange them tomorrow), and earrings. I also got Pokemon Diamond for the DS from Alex and have actually (horror, horror) been playing it. Almost nonstop. For the last few days. (Well, I ask you, what else was I supposed to do during all those lonnnnng car rides? Reading would have caused motion sickness, the van's CD player is busted, and my parents (all of us, really) aren't very talkative. I offered to sing Christmas carols the whole way, but for some reason, I was turned down.) |
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| Holidayblogging |
[Dec. 28th, 2006|05:28 pm] |
Verrrrraahhhh where are youuuuuu. *gnaws limbs* <-- classic V-type maneuver, heh. This is a shot in the dark but considering you haven't been answering calls or comments, if you (V) see this entry and want to get together tomorrow (Friday), I'm free. Otherwise I'm off to Upstate New York (perjury) and I'll see you later, possibly not until after graduation (in April).
Or maybe I can visit over spring break (early March)? I was just home for the holidays when my father told me, and this is nearly a direct quote, that as we have an aunt who is in Amsterdam through the end of February, he thought my brother and I could go to Europe over break, and stay with her. I thought this was the best news I'd heard all year but he went on to say that since my brother's break and mine are a week apart, it was impossible. I wanted to tell him -- and I did! -- that if it wasn't going to happen, he shouldn't have mentioned it.
(Amsterdam! Okay, I'm done.)
( Read more... ) |
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| Thanksgiving 06 |
[Nov. 27th, 2006|06:54 am] |
Flew home Wednesday night. Thanksgiving dinner was with my parents and mother's brother and his wife, and their hyperactive eight-year old and Greek-Australian friends from the neighborhood. The friends were really cool. ( I learned )
On Friday I read for class, on Saturday I read for class and played Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and saw Casino Royale. On Sunday I read for class and flew back to Ann Arbor and didn't write any of the essays I'd planned to finish over break (ahhhhhhh!). |
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| This update is for Marcie the Cincy-ophile |
[Feb. 26th, 2006|10:18 pm] |
( Cincinnati <-- note correct spelling )
Completely inadequate description, I know. We were only there for one weekend! And the only person who knew where to go was Dad, and his knowledge was 30 years out of date. Cincinnati did seem like a pretty cool place to live -- just not, you know, like your typical tourist destination. |
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| Christmas! |
[Dec. 30th, 2004|01:03 am] |
In Ohio there was an an icestorm and the trees were all made of crystal. They sparkled in the sunlight and chimed when I shook the branches. There was snow on the ground as well, about a foot before it was compacted and frosted with ground ice crytals like glitter. I spend every Christmas in Ohio because my father's side of the family, the Christian side, is there; it's usually a white Christmas but not usually as beautiful as it was this year.
My uncle's house has a wonderful library, a perfect little dark paneled room with great big comfortable chairs, a fireplace, medieval staturary, and a heavy iron Tiffany reading lamp. There's an entire wall of glass-fronted bookcases. A shame neither my uncle nor my aunt nor her brother nor any of their four little girls read - the only books on the shelves are self-help or The Bible and the rest is backissues of car magazines or videotape recordings of old basketball games.
My uncle might get a vasectomy. Four girls in five years is a little much, but my uncle and aunt are born-again Christians and don't believe in birth control. The youngest, Anastacia, is named after me, or rather we're both named after the same grandmother who died at nineteen, struck by lightning on her front porch while my grandfather was away fighting Communists in the Greek Civil War.
( Materialism )
So far my break has consisted of: family, three different hams, being cold, reading, wanting to write, realizing the "a" key on my laptop is nearly broken nd tht I use "a" quite a lot, calestenics, avoiding phone calls, and video games. Tommorow I go to spend gift certificates on books, and Friday who knows? |
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| John's weekend makes mine look positively unproductive |
[Nov. 28th, 2004|07:45 pm] |
I saw an article you'd really like in Time, Marie. About how being religious is determined by chemicals in the brain.
( Turkey Bake, Stomach Ache, Thanksgiving Break )
V, you're wrong- little boys are a million times more evil than little girls. When's the last time a little girl wouldn't stop hitting you? A note to the in-laws: stop finding stuff like this adorable, I assure you it is not.
A few things about home I'd forgotten:
-We don't turn the heat on ever. We just add layers.
- My old room is now my younger brother's video-game room. I think I was asked if this was ok, but it didn't really register until I saw the way the DDR pads take up most of the floor.
- Christmas catalogs. Knee-high. My mother doesn't like Christmas shopping so she buys everything out of catalogs. Which is all well and good, but these catalogs sell each other lists of their customers and she gets like 100 every year now.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! |
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