Okay, the sentiment here has been about a month in the making.
Dear Clothing Manufacturers and Fashion-Deciding People Everywhere:
Why? Why is every shirt you come up with either too short, made with a plunging neckline, or too thin to wear as a single layer? Is the economy really so bad that you have to conserve on fabric? Are you really not creative enough to combine attractiveness with a little lower of an Expected Square Inches of Visible Skin factor? I understand that the idea, in many cases, is to layer one shirt under another, but I rather resent the implication that I should have to own multiple shirts per outfit. I have already conceded so far as to purchase, over the course of the past year, three white tanktops, and sometimes I already have to layer more than one of them under the shirt I'm trying to wear, because they, too, are so thin.
Let me put it to you in more helpful terms: I am twenty-one years old, a college senior, at the disposable-income end of your hottest demographic. I have a part-time job and generous parents. I have no debt. For perhaps the first spring/summer of my life, I want to wear something nicer than t-shirts every single day. I am medium height and of medium build. The t-shirts I do have are getting so faded and worn that I have to replace most of them. Literally, the only thing standing between most of a wardrobe replacement and me is your lack of suitable garments. Take a few of the semi-fashionable things you're making now, raise the necklines at least halfway (or add buttons, so I can adjust them myself), add three to four inches to the bottoms, price them mid-range to cheaply, and you are shooting fish in a barrel. I cannot possibly be the only person who thinks this way, so whoever we are, you're losing us through your own neglect.
I'm not a big fan of megamart evilness; I've heard plenty of stories about Wal-Mart and a few about Steve & Barry's. But right now, they're the only ones attempting any sort of happy medium. Their clothing rips and overshrinks easily; I'd be happy to switch from them to you if you'd give me a reason to.
Thank you.
-Laurel
3.23.2007
3.22.2007
3.21.2007
Allegory
Cara, from IV, had a performance art piece tonight.
Since probably last semester, and certainly through this semester, she's been having people write down their emotional burdens on stationery that I believe she made herself. She collected lots of them, rolled them up, and put them in bags she made (I'm not sure what material). Each bag was maybe, oh, the size of a small toaster (I know, what a measure to use there. But it's all that springs to mind), and kind of pod-shaped. Then she sewed the bags onto a dress, also handmade...not the most comfortable-looking fabric, though it wasn't burlap or anything. Most of the bags were at the back and bottom, kind of like the train on a wedding dress. The dress was peach-colored and fairly simple, though, not white and lacy.
The performance part came, as I say, tonight, when she put the dress on and walked from Main Street (probably Hair Care, 'cause her apartment's above it) up to campus, down Academic Alley, and all the way to Hairpin Turn, where, in the field that's there at the turn, she tore the bags off her dress one by one and put them in a wooden chest.
That's a fairly straightforward summary, but I'm going to try to put down what I remember so as a) to keep it fresh in my mind, and b) to have detailed material, should I attempt to write a pantoum about it for poetry class on Tuesday:
You didn't start by looking at her face. You started by looking at the bags, especially the ones forming a train at the back. You could hear Cara coming; the bags, lacquered in some way as they appeared to be, scraped on the ground behind her. Her hands were behind her, holding up the back of her dress. She had nothing on her shoulders (bare but for the dress-straps), even though it was only about forty degrees and dropping. Her hair hung loose, about shoulder-length or close to it. She wore tan-colored hiking boots instead of dress shoes.
When I did look at her--and because we walked behind her for a lot of the piece, it took a long time to get in front of her in such a way that I could see her face--the first thing I noticed was that her expression did not change. Her lips were parted (the better, as it turned out, to breathe deeply), her face almost blank. After a while you could pick out fatigue and determination.
It took longer (longer, too, than it should have) for me to realize that she never looked at us. A crowd of people (mostly art students, plus some IV staff and students and some other friends of hers) was following behind her (sometimes slightly ahead of her, standing at a fixed point facing her: every art student with a camera was trying to take pictures)--after Academic Alley opened out into Miller/Ade and Hairpin, we were beside her, too--but she never looked at us (the temptation to do that, for me, would have been pretty much irresistible; I applaud her impressive self-restraint!).
In late-March fashion, the ground was patchy and soggy, some places white with old-looking snow growing more slushy, some places brown and green from the melt. The sidewalk was wet in patches, too. Cara kept walking. The dress dragged through the snowmelt that had wet the sidewalk, the bags coming with it, everything growing grimy from the wet debris and tiny gravel bits that stuck.
"It's about burdens," one art-student girl said low to another, explaining the project as they walked with a third girl. "Did you put any in?" asked the second when the project had been outlined. That stopped the first girl. "No," she said, laughing uneasily and mumbling something about not having burdens. The second laughed. "You don't have any burdens?" "No regrets," said the first, laughing like she was making a joke out of it. "Way to live," said the second, a tone coming through like she was snickering at the first, not believing her.
At first, people followed behind Cara as she walked along the sidewalk, on the Powell side of Academic Alley (as opposed to the Kanakadea/Seidlin side, across the street), or walked in the road. I was with Andrea, though, and as the walk progressed, I suddenly realized that Andrea and I were the only ones still on the sidewalk with her, though we followed at a reasonable distance. One by one, everyone else had drifted into the street or to the other side.
So Andrea and I did, too, and as Cara passed by McMahon, she had the sidewalk to herself--no passersby in front of her or behind her for a good long stretch. She looked alone.
When she got to Bartlett, she starting attracting more passerby notice...but not without fail. One girl in white karate pants, probably bolting for class, came down from the Bartlett front door. She got to the sidewalk and flew right by Cara, not even looking. I watched. The girl glanced back absently, then forward again. Maybe five seconds later, she looked back again, over her shoulder, a little longer this time, but nothing in her face changed before she kept barrelling to class. Ho-hum. Another weird art thing.
By this time, many of us were slightly in front of Cara now, angle-wise. When we'd been on the sidewalk with her, it seemed important to let her lead. In the road or across the street, we could cheat forwards and watch her face. The weight was starting to tell on her now--her breathing seemed a bit more labored, her expression had hardened a bit. She kept pace.
She glanced up at Hairpin Turn--how tiring that ascent would be with a weight dragging backward, I realized--then back down at her feet. Her expression didn't change much. She kept walking. Her hair had fallen into her face, but not across her eyes; it forked along her nose, swinging in two pieces under each eyelid, forming a shape almost like goggles. She kept her hands on her dress. Eventually she leaned her head and blew softly, and the pieces were a bit more orderly.
She walked up Hairpin Turn. Her walk had begun around twilight, the sky still reasonably bright; things had darkened some and were turning blue.
When she got to the field at the turn, she suddenly turned--still not really looking at us; we parted to give her space--and walked into it, climbing over a low snowdrift speckled with debris. We stopped following.
Maybe thirty feet from where we'd stopped was a large wooden chest--"treasure chest" seems too silly a term for the piece's gravity, but that's what it looked the most like. Silence fell so heavily that we could hear her panting, thirty feet away. She paused only a moment at the chest before lifting up its lid and beginning to tear the bags off her dress.
This was no easy task; they'd been sewn to stay on during twenty minutes of being dragged, and not one had fallen off. She had no tools. Most of the bags were connected to strings--maybe fishing line, for often we could hear them squeak as she pulled them taut, and snap as they came loose. One by one, she put every bag into the chest. It took a long time, and after one particularly stubborn one, where she doubled the string back and pulled hard for second after hanging second (would she get it off? What would happen if she couldn't?), we could tell the string had cut into her hands when it snapped. She closed her hands for a second after that one, apparently in pain, before she went back to work.
It was about halfway through this process that I realized that I could hear birds--maybe baby birds--chirping loudly in the dusk. It was when there were only about two bags left that rain started to fall, slowly but coldly.
She searched her dress's folds for bags she'd missed. When she didn't find any, she paused a second, then shut the chest. She walked off towards the bridge into the woods.
When she got to the bridge, she did something that happened at no other time in the whole piece: she turned and looked at us, just for a second. Then she walked off into the woods, up the snow-covered hill, as the dusk turned to blue dark. Just as we first lost sight of her among the trees, the streetlamp closest to the turn shut itself off.
It was finished.
We stood there a moment, thinking. Then, in small groups, we all turned and headed back the way we'd come, Cara still somewhere in the woods, someone hidden there (or so we'd heard, but didn't know) to help her into warmer clothes.
-Laurel
Since probably last semester, and certainly through this semester, she's been having people write down their emotional burdens on stationery that I believe she made herself. She collected lots of them, rolled them up, and put them in bags she made (I'm not sure what material). Each bag was maybe, oh, the size of a small toaster (I know, what a measure to use there. But it's all that springs to mind), and kind of pod-shaped. Then she sewed the bags onto a dress, also handmade...not the most comfortable-looking fabric, though it wasn't burlap or anything. Most of the bags were at the back and bottom, kind of like the train on a wedding dress. The dress was peach-colored and fairly simple, though, not white and lacy.
The performance part came, as I say, tonight, when she put the dress on and walked from Main Street (probably Hair Care, 'cause her apartment's above it) up to campus, down Academic Alley, and all the way to Hairpin Turn, where, in the field that's there at the turn, she tore the bags off her dress one by one and put them in a wooden chest.
That's a fairly straightforward summary, but I'm going to try to put down what I remember so as a) to keep it fresh in my mind, and b) to have detailed material, should I attempt to write a pantoum about it for poetry class on Tuesday:
You didn't start by looking at her face. You started by looking at the bags, especially the ones forming a train at the back. You could hear Cara coming; the bags, lacquered in some way as they appeared to be, scraped on the ground behind her. Her hands were behind her, holding up the back of her dress. She had nothing on her shoulders (bare but for the dress-straps), even though it was only about forty degrees and dropping. Her hair hung loose, about shoulder-length or close to it. She wore tan-colored hiking boots instead of dress shoes.
When I did look at her--and because we walked behind her for a lot of the piece, it took a long time to get in front of her in such a way that I could see her face--the first thing I noticed was that her expression did not change. Her lips were parted (the better, as it turned out, to breathe deeply), her face almost blank. After a while you could pick out fatigue and determination.
It took longer (longer, too, than it should have) for me to realize that she never looked at us. A crowd of people (mostly art students, plus some IV staff and students and some other friends of hers) was following behind her (sometimes slightly ahead of her, standing at a fixed point facing her: every art student with a camera was trying to take pictures)--after Academic Alley opened out into Miller/Ade and Hairpin, we were beside her, too--but she never looked at us (the temptation to do that, for me, would have been pretty much irresistible; I applaud her impressive self-restraint!).
In late-March fashion, the ground was patchy and soggy, some places white with old-looking snow growing more slushy, some places brown and green from the melt. The sidewalk was wet in patches, too. Cara kept walking. The dress dragged through the snowmelt that had wet the sidewalk, the bags coming with it, everything growing grimy from the wet debris and tiny gravel bits that stuck.
"It's about burdens," one art-student girl said low to another, explaining the project as they walked with a third girl. "Did you put any in?" asked the second when the project had been outlined. That stopped the first girl. "No," she said, laughing uneasily and mumbling something about not having burdens. The second laughed. "You don't have any burdens?" "No regrets," said the first, laughing like she was making a joke out of it. "Way to live," said the second, a tone coming through like she was snickering at the first, not believing her.
At first, people followed behind Cara as she walked along the sidewalk, on the Powell side of Academic Alley (as opposed to the Kanakadea/Seidlin side, across the street), or walked in the road. I was with Andrea, though, and as the walk progressed, I suddenly realized that Andrea and I were the only ones still on the sidewalk with her, though we followed at a reasonable distance. One by one, everyone else had drifted into the street or to the other side.
So Andrea and I did, too, and as Cara passed by McMahon, she had the sidewalk to herself--no passersby in front of her or behind her for a good long stretch. She looked alone.
When she got to Bartlett, she starting attracting more passerby notice...but not without fail. One girl in white karate pants, probably bolting for class, came down from the Bartlett front door. She got to the sidewalk and flew right by Cara, not even looking. I watched. The girl glanced back absently, then forward again. Maybe five seconds later, she looked back again, over her shoulder, a little longer this time, but nothing in her face changed before she kept barrelling to class. Ho-hum. Another weird art thing.
By this time, many of us were slightly in front of Cara now, angle-wise. When we'd been on the sidewalk with her, it seemed important to let her lead. In the road or across the street, we could cheat forwards and watch her face. The weight was starting to tell on her now--her breathing seemed a bit more labored, her expression had hardened a bit. She kept pace.
She glanced up at Hairpin Turn--how tiring that ascent would be with a weight dragging backward, I realized--then back down at her feet. Her expression didn't change much. She kept walking. Her hair had fallen into her face, but not across her eyes; it forked along her nose, swinging in two pieces under each eyelid, forming a shape almost like goggles. She kept her hands on her dress. Eventually she leaned her head and blew softly, and the pieces were a bit more orderly.
She walked up Hairpin Turn. Her walk had begun around twilight, the sky still reasonably bright; things had darkened some and were turning blue.
When she got to the field at the turn, she suddenly turned--still not really looking at us; we parted to give her space--and walked into it, climbing over a low snowdrift speckled with debris. We stopped following.
Maybe thirty feet from where we'd stopped was a large wooden chest--"treasure chest" seems too silly a term for the piece's gravity, but that's what it looked the most like. Silence fell so heavily that we could hear her panting, thirty feet away. She paused only a moment at the chest before lifting up its lid and beginning to tear the bags off her dress.
This was no easy task; they'd been sewn to stay on during twenty minutes of being dragged, and not one had fallen off. She had no tools. Most of the bags were connected to strings--maybe fishing line, for often we could hear them squeak as she pulled them taut, and snap as they came loose. One by one, she put every bag into the chest. It took a long time, and after one particularly stubborn one, where she doubled the string back and pulled hard for second after hanging second (would she get it off? What would happen if she couldn't?), we could tell the string had cut into her hands when it snapped. She closed her hands for a second after that one, apparently in pain, before she went back to work.
It was about halfway through this process that I realized that I could hear birds--maybe baby birds--chirping loudly in the dusk. It was when there were only about two bags left that rain started to fall, slowly but coldly.
She searched her dress's folds for bags she'd missed. When she didn't find any, she paused a second, then shut the chest. She walked off towards the bridge into the woods.
When she got to the bridge, she did something that happened at no other time in the whole piece: she turned and looked at us, just for a second. Then she walked off into the woods, up the snow-covered hill, as the dusk turned to blue dark. Just as we first lost sight of her among the trees, the streetlamp closest to the turn shut itself off.
It was finished.
We stood there a moment, thinking. Then, in small groups, we all turned and headed back the way we'd come, Cara still somewhere in the woods, someone hidden there (or so we'd heard, but didn't know) to help her into warmer clothes.
-Laurel
3.09.2007
::startled shriek::
The first Newbery ever? Has 601 pages.
I skimmed it, since it was nonfiction anyway and therefore didn't have a (literary) plot.
Seven more to go.
Morehouse is going to kill me when we meet, oh dang.
-Laurel
I skimmed it, since it was nonfiction anyway and therefore didn't have a (literary) plot.
Seven more to go.
Morehouse is going to kill me when we meet, oh dang.
-Laurel
3.07.2007
Reporting Live from Syracuse
Am home for break.
Went to Long Island/NYC this weekend and saw Kristin on her birthday: we'd been talking for a while about my doing it at some point, this weekend seemed good on both sides, and JetBlue was cooperating nicely price-wise. So I went.
I always think, while I'm doing something, that I'll remember it well enough to blog about it in ways more interesting than straight journalism. But, unfortunately, often as not, I don't. So this's what I have for the trip:
Friday: Went from Alfred to home. I was somewhat later than I said I'd be, but I did come bearing a Tinkertown Hardware apple-peach pie, decorated with little apple-shaped cutouts in the crust, so my dad and brother forgave me rather quickly (Mom was at work anyway; Dad had just come home). Hung out at home doing stuff like talking to my family, then got a last few things together and set off for Hancock Airport, with Dad driving my car so he could take it back home after I'd gone. (Verdict: Hancock is a little bigger than Greater Rochester International, but not as nice, especially in terms of parking. You will get no free first-thirty-minutes-of-parking in Syracuse, and the parking area's not as simple to navigate, either.)
My plane, Dad and I found out, was running on about an hourlong delay. So we went to the airport's Sbarro and grabbed some pizza for dinner. Then we said goodbye and I went through check-in (the inspection guy, annoyed at the flawed liquids-regulations compliance of the girl in front of me, actually gave me an "Excellent!" when I held up the one-quart, clear, ZipLoc-style baggie that held my shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, and contact solution, all in bottles of three fluid ounces or less...this was, as you may imagine, to the letter of JetBlue liquid law right now).
Went to my gate. The previous flight to JFK--not mine, that is, but the one before it, scheduled for 90 minutes earlier--was still waiting there, so there were lots of people around. I sat against the wall and read. Got hungry. Bought some M&Ms. Came back and ate some of those and read some more.
The announcement came that my plane was switching gates, but it would still be a little while before boarding. Walked to the new gate. Sat down against a pillar and mostly people-watched. Ended up boarding the plane eventually, probably a little over an hour after scheduled.
Next to me was this friendly guy whose name I never caught (just as well, since he didn't ask mine, either), middle-aged, who kept talking to me and asking little questions. That happened periodically throughout the flight. Nice enough guy, though I'm not good at small-talky stuff with perfect strangers. Anyway, he told me to just take his window seat instead of his having to get by me (I was in the middle) to it (since he was kind of a big guy), for which I ended up grateful, 'cause of the view.
It was a cloudless night (the plane delays were caused by high winds at JFK, not precipitation...though by the time we flew, we didn't run into any turbulence at all), and the plane flew low enough that, throughout the whole flight, I could see city lights. I could tell, haha, when we were flying over the Southern Tier, 'cause there'd be hardly any lights at all for long distances, just little orangey Christmas-light glowings in small clumps, and the occasional low-flying plane's lights. As we got closer to New York, on the horizon I saw a warm but faint orange glow that eventually transformed into lots of lights, most of the ground lit up in (as you'd perhaps expect) city-block patterns. But we weren't clear to land just yet, and in circling the airport, we left the Manhattan area and went out over the water, with no land in nearby sight. This, too, was gorgeous, for it was a full moon, and it lit up the water, showing dark wrinkles for the waves, like it was a big piece of midnight-blue velvet or something.
We eventually landed, and after still more of a wait (it was 9:00 by this time...the original time projected for touchdown, before the delay, had been 7:50), I got off the plane. After a bit of calling Kristin and figuring out where she was (JFK, unlike Hancock, has about seven JetBlue gates, and they all let out into the same room, which kinda threw me off), I took the escalator down to the baggage claim and met her. Not that I needed to claim any luggage, for all I'd taken was my bookbag (cram-jammed, but effective and time-saving), but that was where the public was.
Said our hellos, then took off at a brisk pace for the AirTram (or whatever it's called) to the subway and the Long Island Railroad (hereinafter the LIRR, or ell-eye-double-arr...not the leer, as I'd expected to say it), which brought us back to Huntington, where Kristin's car was parked. She drove us to her house, which is very pretty, inside and out. (Houses without an upstairs always surprise me, since I've lived in one or another of them all my life, but that's not important to the description.) I met her mother, and the three of us talked for a bit, then got ready for bed: we were all zonked, and Kristin and I would have to get up fairly early so's to get into NYC at a good time the next morning. Nestling under lots of cozy blankets, I fell asleep.
Saturday: I really am not a person to do a lot of this, but I slept through Kristin's alarm, which was right near my head. The thing is, so did everyone else. It must have gone off, I'm serious, for about fifteen minutes (I was so tired that it incorporated itself into my dreams) before my brain managed to wrap itself around what was going on. Whereupon we actually got up; it was probably, what, 6:30? We wanted to leave the house by seven-something, was the thing, so that we could get into NYC by nine, so's to be in the cheap-Broadway-tickets line by 10:00.
So, having grabbed a quick Dunkin Donuts breakfast (bagel and chai, on my end), we took the train into NYC (arriving a little late, around 9:13, but whatever) and walked uptown a ways to the TKTS line. It was, well, pretty long. So we hung out in line, talking via cell phone to Gabe, and ended up with two tickets to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, of which I'd seen a scrap about two years ago (the only time I've ever watched the Tony Awards). Both of us wanted to see it, so that seemed like the best idea.
From there, since the show wasn't for another several hours, we did a little of this and a little of that. FAO Schwartz (why not?). The all-glass-exterior Apple store (by Kristin's special request, haha). Rockefeller Center for a bit. St. Patrick's cathedral (whoaaaa). Lunch. The Hershey's store (just for the chocolate scent and the discovery that this year is the Hershey Kiss's centennial). A lot of just walking around and enjoying the lovely day (must've been close to fifty degrees, really).
Spelling Bee, when we got in, had the cutest decorations. The theater, called Circle in the Square, is pretty small, thrust stage; it'd been set up rather like a school auditorium. We weren't allowed in at first, so in the lobby area outside were all these school-style posters and projects: fliers of kids running for student council, children's drawings of piranhas (after the Putnam Piranhas, the school sports team), those professionally-published school posters with mottoes on them about respect, that sort of thing.
I interviewed, in fact, to be in the spelling bee. As it turns out, there're four audience participants per show, distributed across age levels, spelling skill and a bunch of other things taken into account. I wasn't chosen, for which I was ultimately grateful. More on that in a bit.
Inside the auditorium, too, were sports banners proclaiming the Piranhas' victories in obscure varsity sports (caber toss, synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, etc.). On the stage was a section or two of risers and a microphone, as well as a spelling bee banner. It was all very cute.
The show itself was very clever. I disagree with the part on the sign outside that called it "family fun," since I would not take anyone younger than sixteen to the thing, but it was certainly witty, and in parts very sweet. And Olive, William, and Leaf (three of the six child characters) were very cute; the other three weren't bad, either, but they were written to be more harsh, so they were harder to like (well, Logainne wasn't really worthy of dislike, but she seemed to learn the least of them all, and to be stuck in the hardest situation). I was glad, ultimately, to have seen it. John and Glenn should see it; they'd be intensely amused.
(And I loved the part at the end, though I really don't know why it caught my fancy the way it did, when William pulled off his glasses and mentioned growing up to be "incredibly handsome.")
Oh, about the audience participants: the thing was designed such that they'd all eventually be spelled down. I would have dropped like a rock, probably on the first word I got, 'cause some of them were Says You!-worthy in their obscurity. They gave easy words, mostly, to the little girl who was up there (she was probably, oh, seven or eight)...but then, when they tried to clobber her with some little-known nautical term, she actually spelled it right! You could tell she wasn't supposed to, 'cause the guy giving the words couldn't help laughing, and then as soon as she'd gotten back to the riser, they called her back up (which doesn't happen; you get one, it goes through the whole cycle before it comes back to you) and managed to get her the next time.
After the show, we took the train back to Long Island and got dinner with her family, then hung out a bit, had birthday cake (cannoli cake, oh man!), and just talked for a long time, us and her mom. A little more hanging-out-ness, and then it was time for more sleep.
Sunday: Ah, sleeping in! Well, it was only eight-something when we got up, but last week was midterms, so seven-and-something hours of sleep felt lovely. After a delicious and hearty breakfast, we went to church, where I went up into the choir loft and sang with Kristin and the rest of the soprano section (though I sight-read the alto line for a song or two...I'm still trying to decide how much of that was just for fun, and how much I was showing off, since I knew no one but Kristin could hear me anyway. One should not do that in church, but never mind for the moment). After that, we went back to Kristin's house and watched Food Network (laugh if you want, but it was fun), had some very tasty sandwiches, and pretty soon were off to JFK (via car this time, Kristin's dad driving) 'cause of my plane home.
The returning flight left on schedule, and I ended up at the same gate in Syracuse at which I'd taken off (making me think there really is only one JetBlue gate in the whole airport...I guess Rochester must've had multiples, or else it just wasn't such a small gate, but hey, doesn't matter anyhow). My parents met me outside, and the escapade was over.
And so is this blog post. More another time...and edits another time, too, I imagine. So any mistakes you see should be fixed, oh, tomorrow. Cheerio.
-Laurel
P.S.: Down with the new Blogger rule where you have to pass a word-verification test before they'll let you post. What is this, the Livejournal comments page? :-p
Went to Long Island/NYC this weekend and saw Kristin on her birthday: we'd been talking for a while about my doing it at some point, this weekend seemed good on both sides, and JetBlue was cooperating nicely price-wise. So I went.
I always think, while I'm doing something, that I'll remember it well enough to blog about it in ways more interesting than straight journalism. But, unfortunately, often as not, I don't. So this's what I have for the trip:
Friday: Went from Alfred to home. I was somewhat later than I said I'd be, but I did come bearing a Tinkertown Hardware apple-peach pie, decorated with little apple-shaped cutouts in the crust, so my dad and brother forgave me rather quickly (Mom was at work anyway; Dad had just come home). Hung out at home doing stuff like talking to my family, then got a last few things together and set off for Hancock Airport, with Dad driving my car so he could take it back home after I'd gone. (Verdict: Hancock is a little bigger than Greater Rochester International, but not as nice, especially in terms of parking. You will get no free first-thirty-minutes-of-parking in Syracuse, and the parking area's not as simple to navigate, either.)
My plane, Dad and I found out, was running on about an hourlong delay. So we went to the airport's Sbarro and grabbed some pizza for dinner. Then we said goodbye and I went through check-in (the inspection guy, annoyed at the flawed liquids-regulations compliance of the girl in front of me, actually gave me an "Excellent!" when I held up the one-quart, clear, ZipLoc-style baggie that held my shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, and contact solution, all in bottles of three fluid ounces or less...this was, as you may imagine, to the letter of JetBlue liquid law right now).
Went to my gate. The previous flight to JFK--not mine, that is, but the one before it, scheduled for 90 minutes earlier--was still waiting there, so there were lots of people around. I sat against the wall and read. Got hungry. Bought some M&Ms. Came back and ate some of those and read some more.
The announcement came that my plane was switching gates, but it would still be a little while before boarding. Walked to the new gate. Sat down against a pillar and mostly people-watched. Ended up boarding the plane eventually, probably a little over an hour after scheduled.
Next to me was this friendly guy whose name I never caught (just as well, since he didn't ask mine, either), middle-aged, who kept talking to me and asking little questions. That happened periodically throughout the flight. Nice enough guy, though I'm not good at small-talky stuff with perfect strangers. Anyway, he told me to just take his window seat instead of his having to get by me (I was in the middle) to it (since he was kind of a big guy), for which I ended up grateful, 'cause of the view.
It was a cloudless night (the plane delays were caused by high winds at JFK, not precipitation...though by the time we flew, we didn't run into any turbulence at all), and the plane flew low enough that, throughout the whole flight, I could see city lights. I could tell, haha, when we were flying over the Southern Tier, 'cause there'd be hardly any lights at all for long distances, just little orangey Christmas-light glowings in small clumps, and the occasional low-flying plane's lights. As we got closer to New York, on the horizon I saw a warm but faint orange glow that eventually transformed into lots of lights, most of the ground lit up in (as you'd perhaps expect) city-block patterns. But we weren't clear to land just yet, and in circling the airport, we left the Manhattan area and went out over the water, with no land in nearby sight. This, too, was gorgeous, for it was a full moon, and it lit up the water, showing dark wrinkles for the waves, like it was a big piece of midnight-blue velvet or something.
We eventually landed, and after still more of a wait (it was 9:00 by this time...the original time projected for touchdown, before the delay, had been 7:50), I got off the plane. After a bit of calling Kristin and figuring out where she was (JFK, unlike Hancock, has about seven JetBlue gates, and they all let out into the same room, which kinda threw me off), I took the escalator down to the baggage claim and met her. Not that I needed to claim any luggage, for all I'd taken was my bookbag (cram-jammed, but effective and time-saving), but that was where the public was.
Said our hellos, then took off at a brisk pace for the AirTram (or whatever it's called) to the subway and the Long Island Railroad (hereinafter the LIRR, or ell-eye-double-arr...not the leer, as I'd expected to say it), which brought us back to Huntington, where Kristin's car was parked. She drove us to her house, which is very pretty, inside and out. (Houses without an upstairs always surprise me, since I've lived in one or another of them all my life, but that's not important to the description.) I met her mother, and the three of us talked for a bit, then got ready for bed: we were all zonked, and Kristin and I would have to get up fairly early so's to get into NYC at a good time the next morning. Nestling under lots of cozy blankets, I fell asleep.
Saturday: I really am not a person to do a lot of this, but I slept through Kristin's alarm, which was right near my head. The thing is, so did everyone else. It must have gone off, I'm serious, for about fifteen minutes (I was so tired that it incorporated itself into my dreams) before my brain managed to wrap itself around what was going on. Whereupon we actually got up; it was probably, what, 6:30? We wanted to leave the house by seven-something, was the thing, so that we could get into NYC by nine, so's to be in the cheap-Broadway-tickets line by 10:00.
So, having grabbed a quick Dunkin Donuts breakfast (bagel and chai, on my end), we took the train into NYC (arriving a little late, around 9:13, but whatever) and walked uptown a ways to the TKTS line. It was, well, pretty long. So we hung out in line, talking via cell phone to Gabe, and ended up with two tickets to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, of which I'd seen a scrap about two years ago (the only time I've ever watched the Tony Awards). Both of us wanted to see it, so that seemed like the best idea.
From there, since the show wasn't for another several hours, we did a little of this and a little of that. FAO Schwartz (why not?). The all-glass-exterior Apple store (by Kristin's special request, haha). Rockefeller Center for a bit. St. Patrick's cathedral (whoaaaa). Lunch. The Hershey's store (just for the chocolate scent and the discovery that this year is the Hershey Kiss's centennial). A lot of just walking around and enjoying the lovely day (must've been close to fifty degrees, really).
Spelling Bee, when we got in, had the cutest decorations. The theater, called Circle in the Square, is pretty small, thrust stage; it'd been set up rather like a school auditorium. We weren't allowed in at first, so in the lobby area outside were all these school-style posters and projects: fliers of kids running for student council, children's drawings of piranhas (after the Putnam Piranhas, the school sports team), those professionally-published school posters with mottoes on them about respect, that sort of thing.
I interviewed, in fact, to be in the spelling bee. As it turns out, there're four audience participants per show, distributed across age levels, spelling skill and a bunch of other things taken into account. I wasn't chosen, for which I was ultimately grateful. More on that in a bit.
Inside the auditorium, too, were sports banners proclaiming the Piranhas' victories in obscure varsity sports (caber toss, synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, etc.). On the stage was a section or two of risers and a microphone, as well as a spelling bee banner. It was all very cute.
The show itself was very clever. I disagree with the part on the sign outside that called it "family fun," since I would not take anyone younger than sixteen to the thing, but it was certainly witty, and in parts very sweet. And Olive, William, and Leaf (three of the six child characters) were very cute; the other three weren't bad, either, but they were written to be more harsh, so they were harder to like (well, Logainne wasn't really worthy of dislike, but she seemed to learn the least of them all, and to be stuck in the hardest situation). I was glad, ultimately, to have seen it. John and Glenn should see it; they'd be intensely amused.
(And I loved the part at the end, though I really don't know why it caught my fancy the way it did, when William pulled off his glasses and mentioned growing up to be "incredibly handsome.")
Oh, about the audience participants: the thing was designed such that they'd all eventually be spelled down. I would have dropped like a rock, probably on the first word I got, 'cause some of them were Says You!-worthy in their obscurity. They gave easy words, mostly, to the little girl who was up there (she was probably, oh, seven or eight)...but then, when they tried to clobber her with some little-known nautical term, she actually spelled it right! You could tell she wasn't supposed to, 'cause the guy giving the words couldn't help laughing, and then as soon as she'd gotten back to the riser, they called her back up (which doesn't happen; you get one, it goes through the whole cycle before it comes back to you) and managed to get her the next time.
After the show, we took the train back to Long Island and got dinner with her family, then hung out a bit, had birthday cake (cannoli cake, oh man!), and just talked for a long time, us and her mom. A little more hanging-out-ness, and then it was time for more sleep.
Sunday: Ah, sleeping in! Well, it was only eight-something when we got up, but last week was midterms, so seven-and-something hours of sleep felt lovely. After a delicious and hearty breakfast, we went to church, where I went up into the choir loft and sang with Kristin and the rest of the soprano section (though I sight-read the alto line for a song or two...I'm still trying to decide how much of that was just for fun, and how much I was showing off, since I knew no one but Kristin could hear me anyway. One should not do that in church, but never mind for the moment). After that, we went back to Kristin's house and watched Food Network (laugh if you want, but it was fun), had some very tasty sandwiches, and pretty soon were off to JFK (via car this time, Kristin's dad driving) 'cause of my plane home.
The returning flight left on schedule, and I ended up at the same gate in Syracuse at which I'd taken off (making me think there really is only one JetBlue gate in the whole airport...I guess Rochester must've had multiples, or else it just wasn't such a small gate, but hey, doesn't matter anyhow). My parents met me outside, and the escapade was over.
And so is this blog post. More another time...and edits another time, too, I imagine. So any mistakes you see should be fixed, oh, tomorrow. Cheerio.
-Laurel
P.S.: Down with the new Blogger rule where you have to pass a word-verification test before they'll let you post. What is this, the Livejournal comments page? :-p