Weekend-o-rama
Sep. 20th, 2004 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindeThe Levitt-Campbells (some of our Moonbase campmates) were coming through NYC on their around-the-world odyssey, so Matthew and Kathryn and Cheryl and I (and I dragged ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sweh along) met them for dinner at Victor's Cafe 52, a Cuban restaurant which is apparently of some note. It's across the street from the Roseland, which was having some Miller-sponsored event celebrating 50 Years Of Rock'n'Roll or the like; this would have been inconsequential except that there were a bunch of cops, barriers, and protesters. The patrons of Victor's bar area were all sort of curious as to WTF, since little could be made out of the protesters' disorganized shouting--first they were yelling "Elvis was black!" and then "Elvis was a thief!"--but eventually the substance of their complaint was discovered to be that Miller's beer can series honoring 50 years blah blah did not include any black musicians. How that related to the earlier shouts, I'm not real clear on.
More importantly, I decided during the evening that any cuisine that primarily involves MEAT, garlic, lime, and black beans is a cuisine for me. The place is not cheap but the food was excellent. Also, mojitos of DOOM. All in all, a most enjoyable time. The warm fuzzy feelings lasted until we got to 14th St. only to find that the downtown PATH wasn't stopping there. (And I fell down the stairs, landing in a way that,sweh told me later, had me flashing the entire subway platform.) Since I had timed things with my usual efficiency, that meant that by the time we caught an uptown to 33rd, waited for a downtown, and took it to Hoboken, we would miss our train. In the event, we took it uptown, sprinted over to Penn, and transferred in Secaucus to our train; this worked, but left me hot, sweaty, tired, cranky, rained-on, and with feet like bloody stumps. All my transit woes seem to happen when I'm wearing unsuitable shoes.
The NYC container truck from Burning Man with our stuff on it was due to unload at 10am in the ass-end of Brooklyn, so got up at early o'clock to head out there. Fine, except for the remnants of Hurricane Ivan sweeping through the area...Rt. 17 was partially flooded at several points, leading to some interesting driving experiences. Eventually we (forsweh volunteered to come with, like the darling pet he is) made it at about 10:30. I was clearly spoiled with my last container-truck experience, 2 years ago, when we got there fifteen minutes late and the thing was half-unloaded. This time, a handful of people were standing around aimlessly. And, naturally, my stuff was at the very front of the truck. Sigh. The unloading began, at the cost of a nasty finger injury to sweh (no good deed goes unpunished?) and both of us coated in playa dust, and we finally got my stuff off noon-ish. (Without getting rained on, at least.) We drove home & unloaded; I fed him and then went a little monomaniacal, cleaning, laundering, and making pot pie when I should have been packing to turn around and go straight down to the shore. Eventually that happened too, and I got moving again c. 2:30, driving to Long Beach Island in varying degrees of rain that ran the gamut from "light sprinkle" to "I can't see a damn thing".
Arrived c. 4:30 for an evening of much wine-drinking, paella-eating, and sitting around the fire, all of which were quite enjoyable. It wasn't the weekend I was originally expecting, as Beth had thought she'd cleared occupancy for inviting all of her friends but family comms got crossed so her brother, sister-in-law, a couple of their friends, and the children attendant on said unions were present; but it was a good time anyways. Beth and I got a lot of quality time, and I got to see a post-hurricane ocean at midnight, which was exceedingly nifty.
After more beach time Sunday morning, Beth and I went 'round the quaint little shops of Long Beach Island. It's an interesting mix of worthwhile artistic items, useful if over-priced summery clothes, and utter crap. Less enjoyable was, just as I was about to leave, discovering that I was missing $40 which must've fallen out of my pocket the day before sometime--and, I might add, discovering this as I was wishing to use some of it to chip in for the weekend's food. All die; O! the embarrassment. The attendant ruffling of my feathers was not soothed by fairly terrible Parkway traffic on the way home. Eventually I stopped off to hang out with8782, whereupon we broke in his Video Entertainment System[tm] and had a spirited discussion on the origin of the term bukakke. Then home again, where my pooky had brought me a steak and a bunch of It's Happy Bunny[tm] signs to put up on my desk, because he loooooves me.
It's taken me two hours to write this goddam entry. I love it when our dialups stop working.
sweh along) met them for dinner at Victor's Cafe 52, a Cuban restaurant which is apparently of some note. It's across the street from the Roseland, which was having some Miller-sponsored event celebrating 50 Years Of Rock'n'Roll or the like; this would have been inconsequential except that there were a bunch of cops, barriers, and protesters. The patrons of Victor's bar area were all sort of curious as to WTF, since little could be made out of the protesters' disorganized shouting--first they were yelling "Elvis was black!" and then "Elvis was a thief!"--but eventually the substance of their complaint was discovered to be that Miller's beer can series honoring 50 years blah blah did not include any black musicians. How that related to the earlier shouts, I'm not real clear on.More importantly, I decided during the evening that any cuisine that primarily involves MEAT, garlic, lime, and black beans is a cuisine for me. The place is not cheap but the food was excellent. Also, mojitos of DOOM. All in all, a most enjoyable time. The warm fuzzy feelings lasted until we got to 14th St. only to find that the downtown PATH wasn't stopping there. (And I fell down the stairs, landing in a way that,
sweh told me later, had me flashing the entire subway platform.) Since I had timed things with my usual efficiency, that meant that by the time we caught an uptown to 33rd, waited for a downtown, and took it to Hoboken, we would miss our train. In the event, we took it uptown, sprinted over to Penn, and transferred in Secaucus to our train; this worked, but left me hot, sweaty, tired, cranky, rained-on, and with feet like bloody stumps. All my transit woes seem to happen when I'm wearing unsuitable shoes.The NYC container truck from Burning Man with our stuff on it was due to unload at 10am in the ass-end of Brooklyn, so got up at early o'clock to head out there. Fine, except for the remnants of Hurricane Ivan sweeping through the area...Rt. 17 was partially flooded at several points, leading to some interesting driving experiences. Eventually we (for
sweh volunteered to come with, like the darling pet he is) made it at about 10:30. I was clearly spoiled with my last container-truck experience, 2 years ago, when we got there fifteen minutes late and the thing was half-unloaded. This time, a handful of people were standing around aimlessly. And, naturally, my stuff was at the very front of the truck. Sigh. The unloading began, at the cost of a nasty finger injury to sweh (no good deed goes unpunished?) and both of us coated in playa dust, and we finally got my stuff off noon-ish. (Without getting rained on, at least.) We drove home & unloaded; I fed him and then went a little monomaniacal, cleaning, laundering, and making pot pie when I should have been packing to turn around and go straight down to the shore. Eventually that happened too, and I got moving again c. 2:30, driving to Long Beach Island in varying degrees of rain that ran the gamut from "light sprinkle" to "I can't see a damn thing". Arrived c. 4:30 for an evening of much wine-drinking, paella-eating, and sitting around the fire, all of which were quite enjoyable. It wasn't the weekend I was originally expecting, as Beth had thought she'd cleared occupancy for inviting all of her friends but family comms got crossed so her brother, sister-in-law, a couple of their friends, and the children attendant on said unions were present; but it was a good time anyways. Beth and I got a lot of quality time, and I got to see a post-hurricane ocean at midnight, which was exceedingly nifty.
After more beach time Sunday morning, Beth and I went 'round the quaint little shops of Long Beach Island. It's an interesting mix of worthwhile artistic items, useful if over-priced summery clothes, and utter crap. Less enjoyable was, just as I was about to leave, discovering that I was missing $40 which must've fallen out of my pocket the day before sometime--and, I might add, discovering this as I was wishing to use some of it to chip in for the weekend's food. All die; O! the embarrassment. The attendant ruffling of my feathers was not soothed by fairly terrible Parkway traffic on the way home. Eventually I stopped off to hang out with
8782, whereupon we broke in his Video Entertainment System[tm] and had a spirited discussion on the origin of the term bukakke. Then home again, where my pooky had brought me a steak and a bunch of It's Happy Bunny[tm] signs to put up on my desk, because he loooooves me.It's taken me two hours to write this goddam entry. I love it when our dialups stop working.
