Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 00:50 - General
My advisor Robert came up with the idea to have Ik Heart Breukelen T-shirts made in the vein of the I Heart New York Shirts, since this translates in Dutch to I love Breukelen, which happens to be the town in the Netherlands after which Brooklyn is named. Since we both live in Brooklyn now, and I speak Dutch, it fit well, and so he made me one too. I was wearing this shirt today, and some Dutch girl said "I like your shirt because it's in my language" and I replied "ik spreek ook nederlands" and she was impressed.Stroke the ego.
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( 0 / 0 )Tuesday, July 22, 2008, 12:41 - General
So many little anecdotes, I just hope I can remember a decent fraction of them.Thursday I went in to the office for most of the day to actually do some schoolwork. The building process has led me to get very far behind schedule, so my long days are going to continue through the summer. If I can get half as much productive work done on school as I have with the building process though, I'll be in great shape. It's indescribable how much of a fiasco the project was in terms of being overbudget and overtime, but it's done now. Well, we have to put up trim, and maybe build lofts and a ladder for the loft over the living room, but the bedrooms are done. Painted, doors are in, really done. And it feels great. Thursday was mudding, as was Friday (which Lewis helped a little with). We also sanded on Friday, which was messy, but far less annoying than it could have been had we actually really cared about having the walls be perfectly flat. Our concerns were heavily concentrated on the structural integrity and soundproofing fronts, so aesthetics were neglected largely. The only reason we put on 2 coats of primer and 1 coat of white paint was that we thought it would help the walls not rot. Anyway...
Friday I put up another ad on Craigslist about the sublet and got deluged with responses as per usual. One guy was adamant about coming over that day so I warned him about how messy the place was (the dust gets freaking everywhere, especially when you have to sand off 1/2 inch from the door bucks due to them somehow being too narrow for the doors to fit). Turns out he's a freelance math tutor as well as a jazz drummer - seems pretty sweet. We offered him the place, and discovered in the finalization that he'd recently legally changed his name to Sal A. Mander which weirded us out at first (in a wtf kinda way) but I trust the guy's legit and not going to just walk off with all of our belongings once he has the key. Plus he's a drummer which is perfect. He moves in today.
Can, if you're reading this, you owe us like a million dollars. And you also get to do all cleaning in the flat for the entire first year.
At one point Lisa and I were speaking in Dutch while painting, and I threw in Arthur's name just to make him think we might be talking about him - not that we'd ever do such a thing. I do this too, but it seems that whenever people hear a foreign language being spoken they immediately wonder whether it's a secret slam on them when it's far more likely to be just a conversation about the weather or something. Lisa helped so much during the building. She's really one of the nicer, more caring and empathetic people I think I've ever met. Very selfless and honest and understanding. Just felt inspired to say thanks.
Priming and painting really went very fast - we finished sanding on Friday night and put up a first coat of primer in Can's room (which we used to test every new process). Then by then end of the day on Saturday we'd done 2 coats of primer and a coat of paint on every wall. The only hitch was when each of us in turn spilled a bunch of paint all over the floor one after the other in like a 10 minute period of time leaded to much Eric frustration. Sunday we cleaned a bunch and put in the doors as well as returned the drywall scaffold. We originally weren't sure we'd need it for the full first week! but ended up needing it for 4 weeks, and paid enough in rent to have bought a brand new one. Oops. This project was indeed quite the learning experience in many ways. We also were there for a while buying other random stuff like an 8-foot ladder ("for changing light bulbs" - and installing projectors!) as well as like $100 worth of lumber so that Arthur can build a loft over his door in his bedroom. I'm going to wait and see how that goes for him before I make up my mind on whether and how to do one myself.
Yesterday I spent the whole day cleaning (and holy crap was the place nasty) before having dinner with Lewis and Brandy at this place down the street which has a great backyard area, tasty paninis, and 100 types of beers all at reasonable prices. I'll be going there again. We then hung out on my rooftop for a bit before I unpacked all my stuff, built my bed, and played a little guitar at a very late hour. I'm sure my neighbors weren't happy about that, but I couldn't resist. I also got the munchies at like 1:30am, but I was easily able to rectify that by just walking 1.5 blocks to a 24-hour store. I love cities.
Ok, so I'm sizing up my room now. I need to reclaim a little floorspace for my pedalboard. My apartment is really really cool. I'm glad that I did all that work now that it's done. People should come visit.
I fly to Madison on Friday. Well, technically to Milwaukee, but Nate's picking me up.
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( 0 / 0 )Tuesday, July 15, 2008, 14:15 - General
It's been a long time. I'm more busy and working more these days that I have in a long time. More of that is on my loft bedrooms than should be, but that needs to get done badly. My guitar has been sitting in storage for like 3 weeks and it's killing me.Lots of stories should have been told, but I'm afraid I won't remember them or the details well enough to do them justice. The standout of the time period before I moved was definitely my parents coming for a 4-day 5-night visit in mid-June. They'd never been to New York, so I got to play tour guide. It was really fun, and we packed in lots of stuff: top of Rockefeller, walk through Central Park, visit to the Hungarian Pastry Shop in Harlem, walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, a Polish dinner, a trip to my soon-to-be roof deck where we froze waiting for the sun to go down so that we could see the skyline at night. It was quite the adventure even just finding a cab in Greenpoint to take them back to LaGuardia. They got my bed while I slept on the couch, but once my loft is built out I'll have a real guest "room" with a futon. Thus: more people should visit me. I hear Neal is coming in August which should be fun.
So we're building bedrooms in our new apartment. The story is a common one in New York: an old factory building gets converted into apartments when the neighborhood in which it was built transforms from industrial to prime residential. The style is called a loft, and they usually come as a big empty space with a kitchen and a bathroom and the blessing to build whatever you like. We had quite the fiasco getting into our place, with the original plan being that we get the keys around June 10 or so and thus I was thinking about putting a futon there and having my parents get their own "hotel room" to speak while they were here. It turned out that the wood floors had really severe water damage in a few spots and were really warped, so the agent promised to fix them for us. This meant waiting until around June 27 before it was done, with every day or two being reassured that it was about to happen. This really sucked for many reasons, the biggest being that our old lease was up July 1 and thus we had to move our stuff to the new place then. When we finally got the key and were told it was done, Arthur met me at the Home Depot in Gowanis in southern Brooklyn - me having taken Lewis's van down the BQE during rush hour, and thus arriving nearly two hours after I'd left - to pick up the first of 3 1000-lb loads of drywall, a bunch of metal track and studs, two doors, and a bunch of tools, etc. We showed up at the apartment and found the floor not even started yet. We thus dropped off all our stuff and asked what the hell was up. Again told to wait a day, which we did, and came back to find it half done and all our stuff gone from the apartment. (And let me tell you, hauling 1000 lbs of drywall up to your apartment isn't fun. Nor is doing it three times.) Apparently they'd moved it all to the next door apartment from which the previous tenants had been evicted as the guy wanted to varnish the whole floor again. One more day and it was finally done, and so we were let into the next door apartment to pick up our materials. It was at this point that my jaw dropped to the floor - it was a music studio! Just like I dream about all the time - right in Brooklyn, 6th-floor amazing huge music studio with double-studded walls, raised carpeted floors, drum isolation booth. Really professionally done. We thus looked up the previous tenants (who'd left some music royalty checks lying around) and it turns out one of them was a drummer for Norah Jones or something. Anyway....
So we've been building three 12-foot tall, 12-foot by 6.5-foot bedrooms. It's been way more difficult than any of us thought it would be, with lots of setbacks and delays and costs, but that's really to be expected since none of us knew what we were doing at all. All I did was buy a 150 page drywall book from Amazon. Thus pretty much every day I either sleep in the loft or commute to Lisa's and back since the place is a freaking mess from all the dust and insulation and crap, then spend the whole day working on building or school. I took 10 minutes off from building to look a bit at the fireworks from the rooftop (there were like 400 people up there and a DJ) before going right back to building. Can left for North Africa and Turkey for the summer on like the 7th or something (about which I'm sure he's happy since he doesn't have to build or sleep in the mess anymore!), so we've been one man down since then though Lisa's helping quite a lot which is nice. Some things that have happened: we built the doorways 1/4-inch too small to fit the door frames so we had to buy a power sander to grind the wood down, we had to figure out some way to fit drywall onto the narrow areas in between the windows on the window frames on the far bedroom walls (and I'm quite proud of my solution), drilling into concrete ceilings and structural beams which cut across said ceilings is a royal pain in the ass, metal tracks and studs seem like they are infinitely easier to work with than wood - especially if every line in the apartment is not straight at all, I've taken an absurd number of trips to Home Depot, we've rented a drywall scaffold for so long we could have bought one for cheaper, I've learned the nuisance that is having to move one's automobile back and forth across the street every other day since I've been borrowing Lewis's van this whole time. I've been photo-documenting the whole process, and I'll post the pics sometime soon. I've learned a lot, and I'll love this apartment more than any other since I built it myself.
I can't wait to be done with this as my place is really going to be amazing when it's finished. I'm planning on getting a projector and mounting it above the loft/guest room so we can treat it like a movie theater, and we'll but a couple couches, a stereo, and my server up there. I'd also like to build a loft in my bedroom to reclaim some of my 12 feet of vertical space but I'm quite sick of building at this point so it'll have to wait. I interviewed some people for subletting Can's room and hopefully we'll get someone in there this weekend - there was a cool older guy who does NGO stuff all over the world who came by yesterday.
I look at interior walls in a whole new light now.
Obama has alienated me back to full-fledged jadedness.
I did take a couple hours off to go to a party at Lewis's, at which I spoke Dutch with 2 Dutchies and German for quite a while with a cool German girl.
Lisa bought a car, a brand new Hyundai Accent, and it's fun to drive and while I feel bad about it, makes the commute take less than half the time from hers to mine.
I've started exploring my neighborhood a little bit and I love it. I can't wait to have the time to enjoy it.
So much work to do.
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( 0 / 0 )Wednesday, June 4, 2008, 16:19 - General
Friday night I went up to Lisa's so that we could get up early on Saturday to start attacking the move. I did borrow her bike to go over to the 7-Eleven and pick up a six pack and we watched a couple episodes of TPB prior to retiring to slumber on her futon for the final time (about which my back is not unhappy). I got up around 9 but this was definitely not enough sleep for me and I was really tired. We went over to Enterprise to try to pick up a van but somehow "by 9:30" actually meant "by 12" and thus the van wasn't back yet. In addition, we'd had some trouble getting me set up as a secondary driver due to my lack of a real credit card (I've never had one in fact, though maybe I should try to find a no annual fee one to build more credit history). We were told via phone by one person that my lack of a real credit card meant I couldn't drive the van (which Lisa really wanted me to do since we were going into Manhattan), but then a return call gave us hope by telling us that as long as I brought a debit card, a utility bill, and proof of income I could be added as a driver. Why does everything have to be more difficult in New York? I mean, I've rented from Enterprise at least three times before. Anyway, when we got there we were told that not only was the van not ready, but no, those documents really weren't going to replace a credit card after all. After this we decided to leave for a while, she going off home to take care of something and me heading over to the cafe at the entrance to Rockefeller State Park for a much-needed coffee. The view from the outdoor seating was gorgeous. She came back and we headed back to Enterprise, and somehow worked it out such that I was the primary driver so that was cool and the van was back so we were off.I drove down the FDR and stopped at 36th and 3rd in the pouring rain so that we could run up and grab a couch that Lisa's friend Calvin was giving away. He has a quite nice apartment for Manhattan (including the ultrasmall kitchen), and while the stairway was narrow and had many angles, I've definitely carried couches up and down worse. It was really poring when we got it outside and into the van, but somehow it being very warm made that feel nice instead of painful. If it weren't for the fact that my shoes would have gotten soaked I would have liked to just stand in the pouring rain for a while. With that we were off to 57th Street to Lisa's office so that she could run up and get two loads of stuff since her office is moving to 42nd Street next week. This took forever since some streets were blocked off and thus the traffic was insane - I think it took longer for me to go from 36th to 57th than it did for me to get from Westchester to 36th. I just waited in the van feeling very tired and famished, people watching and feeling the van shake whenever a car went over the metal plate on which my rear tire was resting. The rain came and went, and unfortunately for Lisa was at its zenith while she was carrying her first load to the van but had completely stopped by the time we were out of there, replete with two sandwiches and teas from some deli. From here we took the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey to head toward Ikea, but we first stopped at Sleepy's since I suggested getting a real bed for a tiny bit more money than the crappy 1-inch foam mattress beds you can get at Ikea cost (not that I'm bitter about my current bed or anything...). She got the guy to give her a double bed with box spring for $450 tax included which I thought was a great deal. We were told it was the last one and we had to go pick it up at a warehouse 10 mins away, and when we got there we found we had around 12 choices of top-layer color... whatever, it was still a great deal, and it's not like the phony urgency had any bearing in our decision. Lisa seemed rather annoyed when the guy who helped us put the mattress and box spring in the van commented that she "has some muscles".
From there it was off to Ikea, which Lisa somehow seemed to hate even more than I do which was absurd. She veered directly for the as-is section and picked up a kitchen table, four chairs, and a dresser for like 40% off. We wheeled these over to the van and then I rode the cart, which is big and flat and low unlike a regular shopping cart, like a skateboard back to the entrance, jumped off quick whenever it veered out of control toward a car. I commented that now that I'm an adult and my mom can't yell at me not to do such things I have to take advantage, and she said I should tell kids who were looking on jealous-like that they just have to wait until they're older and they can do cool stuff like that too. They just need not to forget about it when the time comes. Anyway, we walked a bit around the showroom until she realized that the showroom was just big furniture (as it always is) and since she'd already gotten that stuff we went downstairs. I picked up a couple things including the exact same trash can and desk lamp I had in Amsterdam for probably 60% the price I paid for them in Amsterdam (yay exchange rates...) and two power strips for $6.
We burned out of there back to Sleepy Hollow and spent like 9 hours packing up her apartment and moving the stuff to the new place. She had way more shit than I thought she would, including around 3 times as many books as I do (jealous) and since we didn't have any small boxes that meant my back was less than happy at the end of the day. We didn't really eat dinner, just snacks and strawberries, and didn't finish moving everything until around 12:30 or so and thus I was quite exhausted at the end. She has this huge Ikea bookshelf that just wouldn't fit through the doorway of the van so I concocted this brilliant scheme whereby I laid down four book boxes in four corners of a square on the floor of the van and filled in the space between them with duffel bags to prevent the wheel wells and gas tank from causing the shelf to be off balance when we got it in. We then took off the top so it just squeezed through and were about to lay it down on the bed I'd made for it when it exploded apart into like 10 pieces - apparently the top was integral to its structural integrity. This took a moment for me to get over, but it was fine. I somehow stayed up another two hours drinking beer topless on her couch and deliriously reading Wikipedia about naval warfare tactics and strategy before taking a shower and passing out. The next day I was exhausted so I didn't get onto the train back into the city until 4:30 with a triple Americano to help me out.
Go Obama. Somehow he inspires me a little. Go figure.
Monday I spent all day looking at apartment advertisements, setting up appointments, and going to appointments. I came into Manhattan and back since I had to meet Robert at 12, then go back for apartment showings at 2 and 3:30, then come back to pick up proof of income documents before the showings at 8 and 8:30. The apartment search was already beginning to wear on me and I'd only spent like 20 hours on it. The first flat I saw was in a huge condo building that couldn't be sold off due to a tanking real estate market and thus was being hurriedly converted to rental units. The flat was nice, right off the Lorimer L stop, and had laundry in-unit and a balcony as well as a huge roof deck with a panoramic view of the city, but it was also very yuppie (I imagine I'd have hated most of my neighbors), we'd have had to build our own walls, one bedroom would be sans windows, etc. It was ok but not great. I then had a little time to kill so I walked over to the Bedford Ave stop and got a coffee, sitting on a bench outside next to this girl. After a bit her friend came over and started talking to her in Dutch - cool. I turned to the girl once the friend went inside and said jullie zijn nederlands? to which she replied o, wat toevallig hoor (what a coincidence). We chatted for a few minutes, I told her I was doing my PhD, she asked me whether I would go back home to the Netherlands afterward (ha! stroke the ego...) and that was that. The next flat I saw was very nice and right by the Williamsburg bridge but was also a bit on the pricey side ($2850/mo plus $4000 signing fee) so I shortlisted it with reservation.
From here I went back into the city, and after a while Arthur and I walked over to Guitar Man, a tiny shop in the LES that specializes in high end guitars, to kill some time. On the way I saw the two Dutch girls on a bench! I said to them nog een keer ontmoeten?, they replied o, toevallig and I said ongelofelijk hoor and we kept walking. The owner of Guitar Man was quite cool and had me play on two Tom Andersons (they were out of John Suhrs) and some other guitar I'd never heard of. I'm just starting my guitar hunt and I don't really know what I'm looking for yet, but there are many more guitar shops to try out in the city. We had dinner at a cool vegetarian place and I got a half liter German beer which I put in a paper bag on our way out and drank while we walked over the bridge to the next viewing. We picked up Can at 4th Street and we all went over to the big converted factory building to see a loft (big empty room in which tenants build their own space). The guy showing it to us was dressed in full Hasidic wear and he was very nice and everyone in the building said hello to him as we walked around. He showed us three apartments, none of which was the actual one but all of which were finished versions of it, so that we could get a feel for what it might look like done. We were thinking it could work and the building was really cool and full of energy and youth which I really liked. Then he took us to the roof deck. Holy crap. It could easily fit 300 people, is above the 7th floor, and has 360 degree panoramic views of the entire city including an amazing view of the bridge and Manhattan. I was sold instantly. It took a little bit to convince Can that building the walls would be ok, but we decided to take it after missing the open house at 8:30 for a flat which I'd seen the previous week (and the landlord of which was nuts). Thus we're going to get to learn how to do drywalling. I'm really pumped. Lewis and I are going to bring a grill up to the roof tomorrow since he has nowhere to put it and we'll take some good shots from up there and I'll post them here.
Tuesday involved getting up painfully early after not having been able to sleep, getting a $3000 cashier's check, and applying for the lease (in New York you have to have credit checks run and show proof of income and give up your first three children in order to get an apartment). I was very tired but came into the city after that to fix my bike (it wouldn't shift anymore) and the guys at the bike store were very impressed and excited about the bike which made me feel cool. I then rode back home and took a nap before playing on my new Rat2 distortion pedal and Boss compressor (very useful for sustain and finger tapping). All in all a very good two days.
Today I rode my bike to the office and then immediately lifted weights for the first time in months. A good workout. Once I move the ride to school will take 15 minutes. Nice.
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( 3 / 10 )Thursday, May 29, 2008, 13:54 - General
Well, after much deliberation I decided that giving out well over $1000 to go to the conference just was too much. I actually told the grant committee this and they talked it over, but weren't able to come up with any more funding for me so I decided not to go.David and Giulia arrived on Tuesday evening, having tricked me by heading straight for my place while I was in my office in Manhattan expecting to pick them up at the bus station. Can let them in so I discovered them on my couch as opposed to waiting outside. I then took them to the Alligator Lounge to eat some pizzas and then to Barcade for some good beer before we called it an early evening since they had to hit the conference the next day. We hung out in the evenings for the next few days before going out on Friday as it was their only real free evening. We met up outside my office and headed over to Think where I discovered that the "beer from heaven" I'd had there not too long ago was actually made in Quebec which clearly made David rather happy. We each had one of these before stopping by The Strand and then meeting Lisa and three Dutch friends of hers at Gobo for dinner. Then the 7 of us walked over to Burp Castle where first Lisa left, then the Dutchies, and finally the rest of us at maybe 12:30 or so I think. David and I had had ample alcohol by this point, and we got into a loud argument about whether someone has the right to criticize the way things work in a foreign country. I said yes, he said no, and while we were yelling rather loudly on the subway (which I found quite amusing, though Giulia and the rest of the passengers seemed not to) we were both smiling as well. The discussion ended with him saying "you're too optimistic" and I retorted "without optimism I think I would just have to die." Good times.
The nest day was very slow. The three of us got bagels for brunch from the Bagel Smith on Bedford and ate them on a stoop while people watching. We then went to a record store and a bookstore where I showed David Found Magazine which he rather enjoyed. From here we took a walk over to Main Drag Music, where I tried out a Rat distortion pedal. The guy there was very nice as always, going out of his way to set me up in the guitar tech room by wheeling a Fender Twin in there. I definitely recommend that store. From here we took the long way home down Wythe/Kent, where I found that there's a motorcycle dealer which struck my fancy since for some reason the warm weather is making me pine hard for a bike. I'll likely wait until next summer to buy one though. We then wandered home and eventually went over to Nina's for a pizza before they left to catch their bus.
Lewis came back into town on Monday, so we had lunch on Tuesday, met up at Gizzi's and Think yesterday, and he came over this morning so I could try and fix his wireless card driver issues (he's still using Linux like a trooper). To anyone who's buying a laptop on which they'll run Linux - I do not suggest getting an Atheros card, though hopefully the new ath5k driver will make things better.
This weekend I'm helping Lisa move down the road from a tiny studio to a spacious one-bedroom. This means I get to drive a van in the city which should be rather fun.
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( 2.8 / 9 )Thursday, May 22, 2008, 14:37 - General
Well, I ended up getting an email last night that offered me around 1/3 funding to go to ISCA in Beijing. Thus it's kind of a dilemma - that's still a lot of money to spend to go there, but it's also a free cool conference at which I might be able to network with architecture people, and it's subsidized travel to China with a planned trip to the Great Wall among other things. I'm thus torn and wondering what I should do.[ add comment ] | permalink |
( 3 / 5 )Tuesday, May 20, 2008, 18:32 - General
Friday evening I met up with Lisa at Port Authority to catch the Greyhound up to Providence. The place is utter chaos, with no signs or helpful information of any kind to direct you anywhere, and there is no cell reception either. I arrived half an hour early, and after waiting 10 minutes for Lisa to respond to my SMS inquiring as to her whereabouts I went and looked at a chart of bus departures. It was static info and didn't include the Providence line, but I noticed that all of the Greyhound buses left from gates in the range that was downstairs, and I noted that the Boston one - the one most likely to be the Providence one as well - left from 83, so I went downstairs. After wandering a bit more I found Lisa at gate 81 and we commenced our hour and a half wait in line before the bus finally arrived and we got on. There was traffic as well, so our scheduled arrival was pushed from something like 10 to more like something past 12. Lisa's dad had some hotel points that he used to put us up in a 21st floor hotel room in the downtown area just a couple blocks from the station, and the hotel was more on the swank side than I'm used to, but then I'm not very used to hotels. Lisa was rather turned off by it all - she hates hotels - but I was very much enjoying it as a silly break from my standard Brooklyn routine.Saturday we woke up something like 10 or so, and met up with Lisa's parents in the lobby to be picked up by their friend Cheryl for breakfast/lunch at this vegetarian place. It was decent and chatting was pleasant and the weather was fantastic (well for me anyway - Lisa is weird and prefers 50 degrees and raining to the gorgeous 75 and sunny that we had). The five of us took a walk around College Hill I believe and went past a closed-off Brown which had undergrads partying in a swanky looking courtyard area. The impression which I got of the city was that there were areas that were trying to brand themselves as hip such as College Hill but really were more like what you'd expect the Wal-Mart brand shrink-wrapped version of such a neighborhood to be like, and then there were areas that basically just looked like a big Wal-Mart that people happen to live in such as downtown. I didn't see anything I really liked at all about the city while I was there in fact, but it didn't cut too terribly into my enjoyment for the weekend. You don't like everywhere you go, and I tend not to like most places in the U.S., and it further serves to remind me just how cool Brooklyn is.
Anyway, after wandering around back to the hotel we made dinner plans and then Lisa and I wandered over to a coffeeshop that she'd looked up where the barista apparently really knew her coffee. We had a cup outside, with she studying and me reading some Proust and just watching the locals before walking over to the Italian restaurant where it would be just us two and her parents dining. I got the gnocchis which were delicious and we talked about all sorts of random stuff. Then we walked over to another cafe that Lisa wanted to try for coffees to go which we drank in a main square on a bench while I discussed my distaste for the demographic to which Apple caters itself. We then walked back to the hotel and split up, where Lisa and I checked out the hotel bar before popping on Brazil on my laptop and going to bed on the awesomely huge bed.
We got up even later the next morning in order to pack up and head out to brunch. This time it was the four of us plus Cheryl, her husband Mike, and their son Matt. The non-omelet options were rather limited so Lisa and I both got the French Toast which was fine. I talked a bit about music with Matt who apparently has been in a few bands as a bassist and he recommended some odd-time stuff for me as he's into jazz. He also speaks some German, but we didn't have much of a conversation. After brunch Lisa, Matt, and I split off from the rest to head to another cafe where "the coffee wasn't as bad as it smelled" according to Lisa. She studied some more for her CFA Level 2 exam, while Matt and I and two friends of his that happened to show up talked about music and other things such as computers. I thought the girl who was there was pretty cool, and she even liked my Russian Circles T-shirt. We then met back up with everyone, were taken on a roundabout trip to the bus station, and said goodbye before we had to buy more bus tickets due to my having left the return ones on the previous bus. The ride took over 5 hours due to traffic and I passed the time by eating Pringles and drinking Gatorade and listening to weird metal where a guy growls and grunts randomly over seemingly random music. I then got screwed by the L train yet again due to it being worked on so it took over an hour to get home.
Today David and Giulia are coming to New York for a 5 day visit so that David can go to the Kripke Center opening conference. They'll be staying with me so I cleaned up the place and got some sheets for the couch.
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( 3 / 5 )Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 18:06 - Blurbs
I'm sitting in my room at my desk with the window open, and these kids who're around 10 years old just came up to me and said "hi" through the window. Then one of them said "he plays really good guitar." That kid is now cool. :)[ add comment ] | permalink |
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