Month: December 2010

Tuesday? But it feels like Friday!

I’m not entirely sure why, given that I’ve now been off from work for about eleven days, but I haven’t been able to shake the feeling all evening that today is, in fact, Friday.

So I’m going to go with that, and ride out this long wave of Fridays until the end of the year. Seems like a plan.

Meanwhile, I didn’t do a whole lot more exciting today than help my father set up the new high-def television my sister, my mother, and I bought him for Christmas. More than that, I helped him move the old, faltering TV, which is about twenty times heavier than the new larger one. (At this rate, in ten years, they’ll have a TV the size of a wall that you can easily carry with one hand.)

That reminds me of a funny story I found myself re-telling just this weekend, about the time at Penn State when the university police pulled me over because I was carrying a large TV/VCR across campus. The TV really wasn’t meant to be carried, despite a kind of handle on the back, but I had rented it for the evening in my capacity as Monty Python Society president. I’d done this on several occasions, actually. Sometimes, if we were meeting in the same building as the AV department, I might rent one on a rolling cart, which was easier in some ways, since I could just push it onto the building’s elevator. But it also meant that I had to trust that the unit wouldn’t be stolen or moved overnight, and that I could get into the room where I’d left it before whatever morning class had started so I could return it and not be penalized with a late fee. The more portable unit could sit in my dorm room overnight, although I did always have to carry it from the AV department to my dorm room — something like a half-hour walk — then back to the club meeting, back to my dorm room, and the next morning finally back to the AV department. And don’t think I don’t look back on that now, with my herniated disc and everything, and want to yell at my idiot self, because I do. At the very least, I probably should have tried taking the bus.

But anyway, I was carrying the unit back to my dorm room after this one Society meeting — did I mention my dorm was about twenty minutes away, and uphill? — when the police pulled me over. They were very understanding, I must say, when I told them my story, especially since it turned out that I didn’t have my ID card, much less any proof that I was telling the truth. “If I was going to steal a TV off campus,” I almost wanted to say, “do you really think I would still this heavy piece of crap?” They sent me on my way, maybe with a warning, maybe with a chuckle, and I headed over to the student union — thankfully right across the street — to search for my ID card. Because I’d had it on me earlier, when I’d been making some photocopies in the union building, and because I wouldn’t be able to get back into my dorm room without it.*

So I should thank those officers for pulling me over and filling me momentarily with panic, because I was able to recover my ID card, which until then I hadn’t known was missing. I could have trekked all the way back to my dorm, TV in hand, only to discover then, already late at night, that I was locked out. And then this story of my ridiculousness wouldn’t involve the cops, and would seem significantly more boring because of it.

Nothing even half as exciting happened today. We set up the TV with a minimum of headache, despite some not very clear instructions and a few parts that seemed to have been included just for the heck of it. And earlier in the day, I mailed out some copies of my “Best of 2010” mix, about which I’ll have more to say later. (The mix, not the mailing.)

Looking forward to tomorrow’s Friday.

* Then again, that reminds me of another Monty Python Society story, when I went to the Homecoming Parade dressed as a lumberjack and had no trouble getting back into the dorms, even with my roommate’s axe in hand. (My roommate, it should be said, was a camper, not an axe murderer. I’m fairly sure.)

Snow dazed

So, as you might have heard, it snowed a lot here overnight.

We had a total of maybe two feet here, coupled with heavy winds, and we wound up largely snowed in because of it. None of the trains or buses were running, and my office was officially closed. If I hadn’t already been off from work today, I would have been off from work today.

From the New York Times:

For much of Monday, New York’s Penn Station was filled with bedraggled passengers, some of whom slept overnight in the waiting room and even on a couple of trains. Two L.I.R.R. trains on tracks 18 and 19 turned into a makeshift hotel (minus the pillows), passengers said, as officials kept the trains open all night with lights and heat.

Can I pick the days not to go into work or what?

Luckily I still don’t have to go into work until next Monday, by which point I’m sure the Long Island Railroad will have found something else to disrupt normal service.

I spent most of the morning shoveling snow, and I’m pretty much exhausted because of it.

Home, after the holidays

Is it really Sunday already? Is my vacation really already half over? That sound you no doubt hear is my mind mid-boggle.

So I hope you had as lovely a Christmas and/or weekend as me. I spent the holiday at my sister’s house in Maryland, where she and her husband had decided to host this year’s celebrations. This seemed only fitting, since he’s originally from Maryland, with nearly all of his family still living there, and they both came here to New York for Thanksgiving.

So here in New York, we exchanged most of our gifts on Thursday night, Christmas Eve Eve, if you will, partly because my parents’ definition of “not too many presents” is maybe different than some people’s, and we weren’t going to have room for everything in the car. I’m not complaining; my parents are more than generous, and they gave me some lovely gifts, including some DVDs, a very nice sweater, and a new jacket. (I also got a swanky new iPad case from Heather — who, it should also be mentioned, renewed my subscription to One Story for me.) But there was no way we were going to fit all of those wrapped presents in the trunk of the car.

We also had to bring our quite large dog with us, his pen and food, gifts for everyone else (including my sister, her husband, and their dog), some food for the party — where there was much too much food, as it turns out — and two days’ worth of clothes. We decided taking two cars wasn’t the best option, despite the extra space it would have given us, since our dog Tucker isn’t exactly calm, and we thought it was better to have three people with him, to keep him from jumping back and forth on the five-hour drive.

So I sat in the back with him, and my knee became his frequent head rest.

The trip went by fine, though, with almost no traffic along the way. That Friday night the seven of us — me, my parents, my sister and her husband, and an aunt and uncle they’d also invited — had dinner out in Bethesda, and then we returned home or to the hotel. Tucker was staying with my sister for the two nights, which I think he found a thoroughly disorienting experience, not least of all because this may be the first time he’d ever actually seen a cat. I’m still not sure if he knew what to make of Sebastian, my sister’s cat; though obviously fascinated by it, it’s quite possible he thought it was just a very large squirrel, or a very interactive toy. (Sebastian, meanwhile, eyed Tucker with complete disdain.)

On Saturday, we hung around the hotel until the early afternoon, when we drove over to my sister’s house for a ham dinner. Many of my brother-in-law Brian’s relatives joined us, including his sister, her husband, and their dog. Tucker was equally fascinated by Layla, and continued throughout the evening to get near her, but she wanted nothing to do with it, and mostly cowered in the corner of the room. (And with three dogs and thirteen people running around, it’s little wonder that Sebastian didn’t put in an appearance all day.)

Then it was just a question of way too much food, good conversation, more presents, and finally heading back to the hotel. I capped the evening off by watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I’ve sort of been re-watching lately, on my iPad. (The image quality, it must be said, wasn’t always great, but it seemed a whole lot better than the alternative — All About Steve on HBO, or trying to sleep through that movie, while my mother watched from the next bed.)

We left early this morning, picking Tucker up from my sister’s and hitting the road before 8 o’clock, in an effort to beat the snow that was being predicted. And you know, we almost did. We got home before the real worst of it, if nothing else; right now, it’s still pretty awful out, whiteout blizzard conditions all around, and I’m not even sure it’s worth shoveling until it levels off. It’s altogether likely I won’t be the only one around here with tomorrow off from work. Not exactly a white Christmas, but definitely a white day-after-Christmas.