2004-07-27 - 9:54 p.m.

just an incoherent recap

Bleah.

I had a cool weekend.

Yes, those two go together.

This has been an extremely busy week. Weekend before this last one, I was out of town, visiting MDT and family and going to a show. That was a lot of fun. The time always goes by too fast.

Got back on Wednesday and decided at the last minute to go to NYC this weekend to see my Thinks-He's-Not-A-Rock-Star guy, who was playing a club. I wasn't going to go, because that the show was Sunday night, and I really had to work Monday morning, and NYC to my house is about a 5 hour distance. My boss was going to be out Monday, and while it wouldn't have been a big tragedy for me to take the morning off, it would have freaked out HER boss, who's kind of in charge of me while she's gone. I tried and tried to think of an excuse in advance why I'd be late so it would be expected, but I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't get me THE LOOK. The "Betty's not going to be here; what if there's an emergency; there should be nothing happening in your life that you won't cancel in order to have your butt in your chair first thing Monday morning just in case we need you" look.

So I wasn't planning on going, but seeing as how I missed a couple of shows this past month by this guy, and there are a couple next month I just can't make, I really really wanted to see this one. But the train takes time - the earliest one out is 6am, which would put me into work no earlier than 11:30 if the traffic is on my side. And driving into NYC is just too stressful to do more than once every lifetime or so - and I've done it three times already. So I'm pushing it there. Then I found a 3:30am train that cost $39 (the 6am is $13) and with luck, that would put me in right on time. I felt a lot better that if I were late, at least I'd be able to call and say "I'll be there in a half hour or so" rather than "hi, be in at lunch time!" So - I'm there.

Tried to time getting to the train station so that I'd be there on the half hour. A train leaves every hour on the hour (well actually on the :59), and I wanted to make it so that I wasn't running like mad to catch one, or missing it by just a few minutes and having an hour wait in the station. Of course that didn't work. I pulled into a parking space at 11:50, bought my ticket at 11:56, and walked onto the train at 11:58.

I thought the weather in NYC was muggy and nasty - however, one of my friends and Mr. Not-A-Rock-Star both commented on how nice it was out - so maybe I just shouldn't have been wearing my sweater that loves me. I always forget that it is kind of heavy.

The show was great - got to see some friends, and some other people I know. Tried not to be too much of a bitch but I just wasn't in the mood to pretend to like people who annoy me.

Mr. NARS is such a sweetheart - there were about 150 people at the show, and he came out between the opening act and his own set to say hi to the folks he knew, and thank us for coming. This is a guy who a year ago was playing 10,000 seat venues and who wasn't allowed to go out to the bus after the show without at least one security or crew staffer with him. Now he's in a smaller spotlight and thinks nothing of letting fans walk him to his car. And happy as a clam at high tide.

The show was great. He has a new CD out, which you can't buy in the US but which probably half the audience owned anyway, as an import. The new stuff rocks and I like the old stuff too. He played a couple hits, and played Starship's "We Built This City" in celebration of it being at the top of Blender magazine's list of the worst songs ever written. He said he was just relieved nothing he wrote was on there.

He chats with the audience a bit during the shows. He mentioned how far some people had come (one friend of mine flew in from California) and asked if we were nuts, but also said he considers himself quite a lucky bastard that people bother to come see him from anywhere at all. Saw some guys in the audience from an up-and-coming band who have covered one of his songs on their own new CD, and called them up on stage to sing it with him. They were thrilled. He threatened since it was a small audience to call us all up on stage one by one, to sing whichever song of his we knew. He didn't do it, but with him you never know. Just a really great guy. He was talking to a bunch of us after and wanted to know how and when everyone was getting home. I told him I was taking the train in a few hours because I had to work in the morning - and he knows how much distance that meant I had to cover. He just shook his head.

Meanwhile, I had been talking to a couple of friends at the show who actually live in NYC, and when I told them about choosing the 3:30 train over the 6am, I also happened to mention that there was also a 1:30am that I could probably make, but I was afraid to be in Grand Central Station at 1:30. They laughed and laughed big - and said, so 3:30 at Penn Station is better? Somehow in my mind it was... Grand Central Station equals classic NYC commuter center equals really big and scary. Penn Station is probably the same, just doesn't loom as large in my mind. No one ever looks around and says, "Good grief, there's so much going on around here, it's like Penn Station" - now do they?

But the fact that they laughed SO hard (in a nice way) at little suburban bourgeois me was actually helpful. The woman of the couple told me she'd taken that exact same train before and it was fine and would be safe. I really liked the idea of being able to drive between 3:30 and 6:30 rather than between 5:00 and 8:00 - I'd be able to change into my work clothes at home instead of at a rest stop on the Mass Pike. And maybe be able to actually catch an hour or so of sleep before work - bonus.

So I caught the 1:30am train, which as an additional bonus was also at the $13 price. And it was fine. Just a bunch of tired people like me who really would rather have been home asleep already. In fact, for about half the ride, there were six uniformed policemen in the car I was in. I don't think they worked there or were there for security - being all bunched up like that wouldn't have been the most effective arrangement. Cops gotta get home too, I guess. They were perfectly welcome to stand around next to me. I still didn't like being in Grand Central at 1:30 though (place was deserted, believe it or not) and I still took a cab to get there, instead of walking the five and a half blocks from my hotel. Forty-second street was NOT deserted and that didn't make me feel any safer. I wonder how my NYC friends would have reacted to that - if they would have said a cab was smart, or laughed and said, so, alone in a cab with a lunatic who doesn't speak English is safer? Oh well. Baby steps.

Got home fine, scared my husband to death walking in the door because he didn't hear me drive up and I'd told him I wouldn't see him until after work. Got to work on time, no one ever realizing I was gone anywhere - which is how I like it.

As for the "bleah" at the top of the page - boy was I not feeling well. If it had just been the lack of sleep headache, I would have dealt with it. But I had so much wrong with me - stomach things, head things, fever things, ankle things - just not a good day. So having come in and dealt with the Monday morning possible crisis timespan, I left at lunch.

Funny how if the only thing wrong with me had been something that was, in my opinion, caused by my own behavior, I'd have toughed it out. But with so much other stuff wrong that was "not my fault," I was like, okay, I'm outta here!

And it was fine with Betty's boss since I'd covered the potential stressfest of Monday morning. Funny. Had I called in sick that morning, it would have been "you'd better be dead" but at lunch it was all "you do look very flushed, yes, go home." And it was actually a good thing I was in, just for political reasons - I got one phone call that was over a very tiny issue that the help desk could have easily resolved, but had I not been there to take care of it myself, there would have been a lot of "dropping the ball" and "letting the team down" kind of comments made. So, go me.

I went to bed when I got home, and most of the stuff wrong with me is better today. No idea what I did to the ankle. It's been bothering me a little for the past six weeks or so, but this past week it's been really sore in the morning. By the time I got off the train at 3:30 Monday morning, it was really hurting, and when I got home from work yesterday I finally noticed that it was pretty swollen. So I put some ice on it and put it up, and then put a compression bandage on it. I should have had it elevated at work today, but that was SO uncomfortable. I don't know what made me think I'd enjoy trading less discomfort while sitting for more actual pain every time I stand.

And that's it. Sorry for the lack of off-ramp.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -