After some sleep, and getting some serial numbers, and a day or two to chill out and get over this a bit, I’m feeling a bit better. I still don’t expect to ever see the laptop or camera again, and I’m still fucking pissed and sad about all the pictures that were on the laptop and nowhere else, but like Greg has been telling me repeatedly: shit happens. I’m still mad at myself for not locking that damn door the moment I noticed it was unlocked before we left, but whatever. Shit happens. Or, in this case, shit *has* happened, and there’s not much to do about it now. I will say that the Ram Shop at UNC is awesome (for still having a record of the laptop’s serial number years after Greg purchased it), and Pentax is awesome (for including a serial number card with the camera’s manual and shit, so now we know the camera’s serial number, too), and the Durham police have got their customer service down pat. They seem pretty organized, too – apparently there’s one detective who deals with all the pawn shops, and so he’s on it, and if they show up in a pawn shop he’ll get them back to us. I still don’t expect to see either of them again (do thieves really go to pawn shops these days? especially when the cops seem to be onto that?), but it helps. It doesn’t help my anxiety (which is going to be insane in terms of needing to double- and triple-check that we locked all the doors, and probably pestering Greg alot about whether he locked doors or the car or whatever), and it’s not going to help my tendency to want to stay home instead of going anywhere. Which is ridiculous, since the thief didn’t break in, just walked in, but whatever. Greg’s going back up to New York in July for another show, and I wasn’t planning on going to the show, but I was planning on going back up to New York with him. Now I don’t know. We’ll see. Anyway.
So, New York. Sorry this is without pictures, y’all.
Sunday, we got up, I ran by Harris Teeter for mustard for Lance and Angelique, and then we took Dara and Tiffianna to Jade Palace for lunch. It was delicious. Came home, finished packing real quick, and left for Binghamton. It was about a ten-hour drive, and we took turns, with me handling the last leg (thank you, five hour energy drink), and we pulled in around one in the morning. Unloaded at Lance and Angelique’s (in Vestal, actually, but close to Binghamton), and went to sleep.
Monday, we slept in. If I recall correctly, Angelique made french toast that morning (it was either Monday or Tuesday, I think Monday), and it was fucking delicious. We went to the Binghamton Zoo, which was pretty cool. I think the tamarins were my favorite. Drake mentioned that he didn’t get to see the penguins the last time he was there – I think they couldn’t find them or something. Anyway, I made the mistake of promising him we’d find the penguins this time – and of course, while we did find where the penguins normally are, the penguins weren’t there, since it was too cold for them to be outside. (Seriously? Penguins? But Lance says they were African Penguins, so maybe it was too cold for them. All I know is, at our zoo, the penguins stay in this indoor habitat and it is always fucking freezing, way colder than Binghamton was, although it was on the chilly side while we were there.) We went to a Mexican restaurant for lunch, and it was delicious. When we got back, we played some games, and then I was tired so I took a nap, while everyone else played some more games. We got Chinese for dinner, and it was yummy! Then we hung out, and then it was bedtime!
Tuesday, we slept in again. Breakfast was bagels, and then we went into Binghamton. We toured the Phelps Mansion, which was pretty neat, but no pictures allowed, so I don’t have much to show you. The third floor is also just a facade – they took it down during World War II (if I remember correctly) because it needed repairs but they couldn’t get building materials to repair it with, so they just took it completely off. Later, the Monday Afternoon Club restored the house, but couldn’t afford to rebuild the third floor, so they just put the facade up. Boo. I bet that third floor was cool as hell. After the Phelps Mansion, we ran by Lance’s work so he could get a file or something, and we got to hang out there for a while. It was neat. Downtown Binghamton is very pretty. We went to Whole in the Wall for lunch, and it was alright, but I wouldn’t go back. The food was okay, not stellar, and I thought it was a smidge overpriced for “okay but not stellar,” and the service was pretty abysmal. It’s a place I’d go once to say I’d been, and now I’ve been. (Lance and Angelique hadn’t been before either, but had asked a vegetarian for recommendations on where to take us, and Whole in the Wall was highly recommended. I feel kind of bad about it, since they probably wouldn’t have gone there on their own. But whatever. We were all slightly disgruntled, but we were all slightly disgruntled *together*, and that’s what counts. Plus we got to eat, so that was good, too. It’s good not to be ravenous.) Tuesday evening, we did something we used to do regularly when Lance and Angelique lived down here, but haven’t done in a while: ate french fries and watched UFC (specifically, the Ultimate Fighter). It was awesome, and I totally pigged out on the french fries.
Wednesday morning…I think we actually set an alarm, but we didn’t have to leave until about 2:00pm, so we still got to sleep in a bit. Lance made pancakes, and we watched a little more Ultimate Fighter, then packed up and got ready to drive into the city. Drake didn’t want us to leave, because he wanted to keep playing with us (I think probably Greg more so than me, since I don’t really roughhouse), and said he was coming with us – that was pretty cute. But we promised to come visit again, and told him they’d have to come visit *us* some time, and that seemed to cheer him up. (The last time we saw them in NC, Drake was about one, and the cats were absolutely terrified of him. I should add that Drake was extremely well-behaved and calm around the cats, especially considering he was one, and they just freaked out. I think it was his size, but I’m not sure why. Apparently this is not uncommon, for cats to be terrified of small children, and even of the small children that aren’t running shrieking after the cats to pull their tails. Drake falls into that last group, of course.)
Anyway, so we drove into the city (or should I say, “The City”), which was a three-hour trip that entailed leaving New York, driving through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and then re-entering New York. Awesome. It was a nice drive, for the most part, and it rained several times, but not too torrentially, so I was happy. I was not so happy when we got to the Holland Tunnel – it went from six lanes to two in a matter of a couple feet, and this NYC bus on our right just pushed on over even though there was no room, and we came REALLY close to getting hit by that bus. I mean, it would have been a slow collision, but still, I’m not trying to have to stop right in front of the goddamn Holland Tunnel and try to get the bus driver to stop so we can work out insurance and shit. I also understand that apparently this is how drivers normally behave up there, but just because it’s the norm doesn’t mean I have to like it. Of course Greg was driving at this point. Of course. And he was fine with it, which is why he was driving and I was not, because he is a more aggressive driver than I am, and can handle tons of other drivers driving like dicks all around him. (I mean, there were some reasonable drivers, but of course the ones that stick out in my mind were the dicks. Like that bus driver. Greg was all, “She has a sideview mirror, she knows we’re here.” And I was all, “Um, yes, she is LOOKING RIGHT AT US SITTING HERE WITH NOWHERE TO GO while she prepares to ram into us. Gently ram into us, but ram into us nonetheless.” I was not becalmed by her having sideview mirrors.)
Also, did you know it’s against the law to change lanes in the Holland Tunnel? It is. It says so on huge unmissable signs leading up to the entrance, at the entrance, in the tunnel – and it’s even printed on the fucking lanes themselves. Did that stop plenty of cars with New York and New Jersey plates from changing lanes several times in the Tunnel? Of course not. There was some indignant yelling on my part. I wasn’t scared, but honestly, I get that you’re tired of waiting in the non-moving lane and you want to change to the slightly-less-non-moving lane. But the reason the lanes are backed up? Is because douchebags like you are cutting in and out of lanes up ahead. Stay in your fucking lane, and we’ll all be able to go faster. Christ.
When we got out of the Tunnel, we couldn’t turn down a road on our directions because cops had blocked it off, for no reason we could discern other than maybe they felt like it? I don’t know. I could see down it a ways, and I didn’t see a wreck, or an ambulance, or even other cops, or anything. Just empty street. Whatevs. We drove around for a while, maybe fifteen minutes, and finally figured out an alternate route. Oh – because also? It’s illegal to talk on your cellphone in the car in New York (or so we’ve been led to believe, and we don’t know if it’s only the driver or the passenger, too, but we weren’t taking chances since the cops were right there), so we couldn’t just call up a bitch and say “Shit, Beach is blocked off, how the fuck do we get to Canal.” I think those were the street names, but if they weren’t, you still know what I mean.
Anyway, we rolled up to Brian and Carol’s apartment in Fort Greene, because Danny and Michel (who we originally planned to stay with) were both at work and wouldn’t be back before the show, and we didn’t really want to leave our shit in the car. So Brian and Carol graciously let us crash at their place, and we unpacked, and then Brian led us to the Progressive Nation show at Terminal 5. It was fucking awesome. We missed Between the Buried and Me, which Brian had hoped to catch, but they went on earlier then we expected. (We also missed 3, but none of us were really interested in seeing them, and they were opening, so it was pretty sure we’d miss them.) We saw Opeth, and they were awesome, and we saw Dream Theater, and they were even more awesome. And instead of a drum solo, Mike Portnoy had this huge setup that could seat two drummers, so all the drummers from the other bands came out and drummed with him, and at the end they were all up there, drumming and shit. I also had two margaritas, and they were the best margaritas I’ve ever had. Also, on the way home, I’m pretty sure we passed Lauren Utter from America’s Next Top Model (the most recent season, 10) in the subway. (It was mildly interesting. Greg didn’t care, of course, or know who she was, but he did ask why I didn’t say anything, and the answer is, I didn’t really care enough to, either, but happened to know who it was we had just passed, thanks to fourfour recaps, and I wasn’t all starstruck. If we’d passed Jorge Garcia, then I would have totally nerded out and gone up to him to tell him how much I love Hurley. Speaking of which, our friend Kenny and his lovely girlfriend Haley stayed with us the Thursday before we left on vacation – and Kenny told us about how he was in Hawaii not too long ago, and was in line at a convenience store behind “a big Samoan” and the clerks were geeking out, and the “big Samoan” was really nice, but Kenny didn’t know who he was, but felt like it had to be someone famous? It was Jorge Garcia. And there was another Lost-sighting in New York, but not by me.)
Well, that’s the first half of the trip. More later.
