2:05 p.m. - 2004-05-04
all over the place
Flying first class is a wonderful, wonderful thing. In a rather serendipitous way, I had the pleasure of my flight out to Ohio being upgraded to the good seats. As many of you have probably experienced, if not in actuality, at least through the proximity of walking by or sitting in the first row BEHIND first class, they get bigger seats, more leg room, a delicious meal, bottomless beverages, little table cloths for your tray, reclining seats. Though most of your seat mates are probably republican, they might be sort of interesting (mine happened to be Newt Gengrich's 40ish, rocket scientist nephew.) We ate sausage and quiche and pineapple. He drank Heineken and I had a delightful chardonay. We argued about the current administration. He called me young and naive. I called him a selfish bastard. We laughed, we elbowed each other, we recommended restaurants in cities we've both been. We were called by name when the flight attendants freshened our beverages and pretty much it felt like I was in a really nice restaurant in a lazy boy chair.
My flight back was, needless to say cramped, foodless, nearly beverageless and not equipped with correctly functioning headphones. In order to watch "Along Came Polly" with sound, I had to hold the wire to my headset up in the air. I was wishing my electrical engineer boyfriend was sitting next to me. Or someone besides the useless Johnny Depp look-alike with the Depp-esque bored and Euro-wanna be demeanor. One look at his Dolce and Gabbana spectacles and I knew he wasn't going to be any help. Anyway, both flights on the way back were delayed, there were crying babies and one bathroom was out of order. Poor Ben Cape had to circle the Sea-Tac passenger pick up loop about a million times because I was an hour late and my luggage was about the third to last to pop out. Ugh.
Then I had to be up at 6:30 this mornign to go to a volunteer expo fair for old people where (THANK GOD) Holly also happened to be, for her volunteer program. We got to watch these seriously old white ladies do low impact arobics. Then a bunch of really really old Philippino ladies did this traditional drama/dance where two of them were basically fighting over this pink fluffy scarf in slow motion while the other dramatically reacted to whatever was happening in slow motion. Then a bunch of older black ladies danced to a re-mixed version of the electric slide. IS ANYONE EVER GOING TO MAKE UP ANOTHER DANCE TO ANOTHER SONG SO WE CAN GET RID OF THE ELECTRIC SLIDE ONCE AND FOR ALL AND MOVE ON WITH OUR LIVES?!?!?!?!?!
Did I mention I had the greatest weekend ever? My party was so, so, so fun. I especially liked Kelly and April's original songs, Aaron's song about Libby and his sampler of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", Patrick's performance of Sea of Galilee, which I'm pretty sure he wrote, which he knows I love so much it makes me cry, especially this line "You've been a long time gone" which is the first line of the song. Matt and Bev's cover of Rosie's "Wedding Day" was simply divine. I am pretty sure that song was written about me. I mean, I know I hadn't actually met Rosie yet when she wrote that, and I know we aren't exactly even at the acquaintance level yet....but surely someone must have told her about me....Anyway, I wish I could have thought of a good song for Bob to play. I never know what to request when people ask for requests. It's too wide open...you want to be original but not overly obscure. I mean, I seriously want to injure people at concerts who shout out stairway and freebird...I mean WHY...there should be a surgical procedure where they put a filter in those people's brains that stop them from making the horrible, awful, obvious "joke." That is seriously a good idea...a filter. Ok, I'm being sickly controlling.
I hate leaving Athens. I love it so so so much. Some of the best people in the world live there. And some of the coolest gatherings you can imagine happen there. I spent a fair amount of time at Casa ingesting the world's best Tofu which always makes me really happy. There is beautiful music and dependable people and shared ideas and shared resources and little surprises around every corner that can make your day. It's good to be back in the coolest, hippest city in the world....but there is a nostalgic feeling about my heart today. Ben Cape should get some credit for inspiring me toward this thought: The feeling I have toward Seattle is LUST. The feeling I have toward Athens is LOVE....the kind of love that is both a FEELING that makes you kind of crazy and distracted and giddy and comfortable and familiar as well as a CHOICE that involves committment and sacrifice.
This entry is long and overly multi-topical.
