one nutty weekend
Already : Hatachi Archives
one nutty weekend Wednesday September 8
listening to: gil scott-heron - the revolution will not be televised
on friday night, i made curry for the first time since being back. not only that, but it was also the first meal i've cooked in my new kitchen. i finished clearing out the dining room, and the table has placemats on it. yes, you could say it's finally becoming my home.
i only had two takers for free curry, cara and my roommate billie. billie left, and in a discussion that was more like babble than anything, i told cara that i feel that she's had a positive influence on me. if left to my own devices, sometimes i can get all worked up and just need to chill out. like otto in a frenzy. cara's chill, and thus as a result of knowing her, i've absorbed a certain amount of that, well, for lack of a better term, chill-ness. i was babbling that night, but that is true. sometimes i need to chill.
i would say "this led to a discussion", but it was really just me talking and cara listening. this is precisely what i've been trying not to do recently, but there are certain people that i am close enough to that i can do it when i need to. i was in a room all day by myself working on the new wpgu website prior to making dinner, and thus i really, really just wanted to chatter on for a bit and then leave the house.
so i went on about a quality that i have that is difficult to nail down as positive or negative, it just is: i find it relatively easy to mold myself to whatever person or people i am around. certainly, i have strong opinions, but there are times where the situation doesn't call for me to say anything. or, i recognize that it's just easier to not express myself. it would not be worth the trouble.
sometimes this very positive: i can meet new people relatively easily, and i have a vast array of experiences that enable me to talk about most subjects that are of interest to the person i am speaking with. people feel comfortable when they can talk about things they know, and thus i can make new faces feel comfortable aroud me.
there is one flipside point: as soon as i have created a conversational mark, i have stowed away who i really am to make the social situation simpler, and as a result, those relationships can only run so deep before they simply run aground. that is, naturally, unless the person ends up having a very compatible personality. the effect of all of this is that i am said to be someone that it is easy to get to know, but difficult to get close to. it takes me a while to warm up and really let you in.
unless i'm in one of those weird meet-the-total-stranger moods, which overtakes people like naomi and i every now and then. these occurances should be noted as exceptions. it is difficult to lay down "how it is" in life, because "it" always has plenty of facets and angles and perspectives and people involved. thus, we'll just say that the general case is what i've discussed formerly and that this case is a noted exception.
as an aside, there are a lot of "it"s in that last paragraph; it is interesting to note that the "it" at the beginning of this clause has no meaning: it is simply there serving as a grammatical crutch of the english language. however, the "it" i just used after the colon does have an antecedant. do you know what it is?
enough linguistics. back to business. we're talking about my facade construction and its negative facets.
before i begin this story, though, i should say that, of course, i always try to have a good head on my shoulders, and i rarely find myself swayed to act in a negative manner merely to get on well with someone else. however, i do have some vices that are not healthy, and thus these people are not necessarily "peer pressuring" me as much as they are enablers. college is full of enablers, because it's full of people who want to reciprocally be enabled. okay, the parental disclaimer issued, let's go.
yesterday was the first home football game of the season. which means one thing: planetgate (now: pgu pregame). planetgate has peppered my fall saturdays for four years now, filling my late mornings and early afternoons with large helpings of brats, chips, this awesome potato salad, and either beer or clear soda, depending on my mood. yesterday started out as a clear soda day, but quickly became a beer day. which is fine, because i usually run myself on a pretty tight schedule -- even if i'm going to enjoy a beer, i can't indulge too much because i'll slack in some other department.
now herein lies the problem with planetgate: the tailgate ended at 5:00p.m. i was tired from the heat and a bit tipsy, so i could have easily taken a nap. but taking that kind of nap is bad news, because you'll wake up at 10:00p.m. utterly disoriented. the only thing left to do after that kind of nap is to go out again. i don't quite understand why. i'm someone who's had many a late afternoon nap. of course, those naps were not usually due to beer: eating too much dorm food was a sure-fire way to induce a so-called "food coma". regardless of the impetus, though, the result is the same. you wake up with a feeling like you need to do something to not be an indolent sloth, and thus you get up, take a shower, and try to find something to do with friends. but usually you've slept too late to make plans with people, and you end up alone, bored, and annoyed that you "missed" the night.
armed with all of that knowledge, i was determined not to sleep yesterday after eating dinner. but when you're already feeling drunk at seven in the evening, there's really not much hope for doing anything other than, well, drinking more. that is, outside of sleeping.
and i knew that i had absolutely nothing to do that night.
lawton from wpgu was having a party, so planet paul and i hung out all night. he's a guy i could see myself being friends with. he's really nice, a real good guy, and i don't have that many male friends. i'm not saying i'm explicitly recruiting male friends, but i don't have nate nor todd around, now do i?
while i don't care to go into detail of what happened as the night went on, i can offer a couple visuals: (1) me riding my bicycle from primetime pizza home with my cell phone in one hand talking to marian (via laurel), and a pizza box in the other hand, and no hand on the handlebars. i've ridden without hands many times, but usually my hands are available if necessary. realizing the inherent danger, i put the phone away. tell you man, cell phones, they'll kill you. (2) paul going to the bathroom at lawton's apartment, only to come back to find out that everyone, literally, everyone except for 5 people, left while he was peeing. including all of the attractive females. his face was priceless.
i came home at the reasonable hour of 3a.m., and i promptly set both my cell phone alarm and my desktop alarm for 7:30a.m.
who. was. i. kidding.
i had consumed a couple of glasses of water before going to bed, but the longevity of the day had exacted quite a dehydration on my body. not just alcohol, but exercise (the bike) and heat. i should have had far more water before i went to bed. i woke up feeling, well, as well all know how it goes, hungover.
and there was no way i was climbing in the car to drive 3 hours to saint louis. a long, hot shower, a 30-minute nap, and a lot of liquid later, i climbed on my bike once again and set out for the radio station, where the car was parked. all along the way i knew that the delay was going to throw off my attempts to make that train at 2:10p.m. for bloomington. i left at about 9:35a.m., so add three and you get arrival in stl at 12:35p.m. sufficient, right? not quite.
first, i had to stop at my friend sarah's new house, because i needed to use the internet to look up the train schedule (i wasn't sure if it was 2:00 or 2:10, and in this case, it did end up making all of the difference). she's living with her fiance; they both did research at duke this summer. man, i want to find someone who's as interested in academics as i am. sarah's so happy, and i'm so happy for her. you can see it on her face. i think she lost weight, too, but that would make sense. not onlny was it summer, but she was in north carolina.
then i had to go to schnuck's to buy flowers. yes, i had to buy flowers. one of the most annoying things to me, and i hate myself sometimes because i've certainly done it, is the i-said-i-was-going-to- do-something-for-you- but-never-really-had-the- inclination-to-actually-do-it disease. i was on the phone with sarah (not saint louis sarah, bloomington sarah) thursday night. on my desk sat two things, flowers and a bowl of noodles. jokingly, i told her i would give her something for driving me from bloomington to champaign; i asked her which she would prefer: ramen or flowers.
should i be surprised that she didn't say ramen? personally, i don't think it gets any better than when someone hands me a preprocessed brick of starch with a msg-caked powder packet. thus, i had to buy flowers. because i said i would. and after boarding the train, there would be no opporunity until after sarah had picked me up. taaa-cky. luckily for me, schnuck's are all laid out the same, so i quickly snagged the best lilies i could find for a fiver and ran out to park michael's car where it belonged.
my next destination was the metrolink station at the loop to pick up a lightrail train to the amtrak station. it's like the boston t, except that it's newer. the t, however, does go to more places around boston than the saint louis metrolink. pardon the digression, i'm infatuated with mass transit systems, particularly those that incorporate rails. my first dream job at age 4 was to be a train engineer. ask my mom, it's no joke. when i was 3 i got a train set for christmas, but while it was still wrapped up michael told me that they had gotten me a huge container of socks and underwear. i cried until i opened it. michael has always been good at fooling people with gifts -- let us not forget the year he hollowed out a baking soda box, filled it with snickers, perfectly refilled it, and wrapped it. nate never opened it because he thought that it was baking soda; michael had to tell him the gig. back to the saint louis story.
michael's parking spot is approximately 5 blocks from the metrolink, and i had never been there before. thus, i was a little confused, and right as i figured it out, the train departed the station before i could run to the platform. they were running every 15 minutes. this was at 1:34p.m. my train to bloomington was at 2:10p.m. but i had flowers in hand, and i wasn't giving up. i caught the 1:49 and sat down to call amtrak to inquire about whether or not the train was on time. knowing amtrak, maybe it wouldn't have been a big deal?
but no, she assured me, the train was acceptably on-time. and they were planning an on-time departure. i deluded myself temporarily by believing that that is what the national representative would say, and that she was just telling me that because she didn't have real information. the station phone number just kept ringing when i tried it.
so i stood up and stood near the doors. people who are rushing to be on time for something are funny: they do the littlest things to make the entire process go "faster". and everything that is slow frustrates them. most people hate this. i actually kind of like it. in fact, that feeling has been the inspiration for this post so far. if i had taken the extra five minutes so i could have gotten the earlier train to the amtrak station (mind you, i am still used to new york city where mass transit runs on the schedule of "it comes often") and relieved the whole stress right there.
but stress can be fun, because it becomes like a game for me. how close can i cut it and still make it? i do this with airplanes too. hence why i've missed three in the past year. but two were because of a woman, so i don't think that counts. women always make you late. er, you make yourself late because of them. another aside. i'm making an effort to stop calling girls girls. most of the women i know now are just that. certainly, "guy" and "girl" are acceptable, comfortable terms for the two sexes when referring to one another, but "girl" definitely has more of a younger air than "guy" does. a 30-year-old guy is just that, hey, a guy; a 30-year-old girl is a person who never really earned the title of "woman". the other reason i make this distinction is such that when i meet a girl, and not a woman, i can make that distinction clear simply by my word choice.
this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, just a general trend. so if i use "girl" next week, it doesn't particularly mean that she's immature. but now you can watch out for it, at least.
i really enjoy the positive stress of trying to "get there" in time. not so much "get it done" in time; i've never liked that stress. "get there" requires creativity: unique routes through city streets if driving, knowledge of where shortcuts can be made, where they cannot, and of course, the biggest one: knowing just how long you can wait before actually leaving and still make it.
i started talking to the conductor on the metrolink to pass the time. i was trying to extract information on how long the stations took from her, i felt that if i could just get her stamp of approval, then i'd be fine. if she believed i was going to make it, i was going to make it. at 1:56p.m. i was still two stops away, so she and i were covering all of the steps necessary for me to take after i exited the metrolink platform. turn left, run, be careful down the hill, and there you are. she was really cool, and we talked about how she wanted to move to san francisco. i'm admittedly in love with most anyone i've met from saint louis. they are, without a doubt, some of the coolest people. ever. you didn't hear me say this, but, uh, i think saint louis is cooler than chicago in a lot of ways. except that they don't have the cubs. if the cubs were in the loo, i'd just up and move there right now.
i told her san diego is nice, and that she should avoid l.a. at all costs, and that miloney found a real cheap place on the other side of the bay in san fran. apparently it's cheaper over there. these are the little tidbits of information i hear and regurgitate to make social situations go easier. maybe that's good, though, because i could tell she liked talking to me, and thus i got her stamp of approval. she thought i was going to make it.
at 2:00p.m. the train arrived at the civic station, which is two blocks from the amtrak station. i sprinted the best that i was able with my flowers in my left hand and my man-purse over my shoulder, the majority of its weight being supported by my right hand. i'm glad that leslie informed me that the amtrak station is "in the ghetto", because, otherwise, i would have questioned what i was running toward. and there wasn't anyone around to laugh at how ridiculous i must have looked.
i saw a train and a large group of passengers with luggage. waiting. sweet. i ran inside, bought a ticket, and when i came out, they were boarding passengers. i checked the time when i sat down: 2:10p.m. the train rolled out at 2:15p.m. plenty of time. i guess i had a couple of minutes to shop for some fresh produce at schnuck's. mmm, fruit would have been good. ah, next time.
isn't it beautiful though? now i'm in a great mood because i made my train. imagine if i had given myself ample time: it'd be a day in the life. anything can be fun, you just have to make it that way. i'd like to believe i'm an enabler. a fun-enabler. we should make that a new word. funabler.
funabler (fun'eigh·blur) (n.) - (1) one who enables others to have fun with the mundane events that make up daily life.
