Well, this weekend could have gone a lot better.
Friday the weather decided that being warm and sunny and beautiful outside is just not appropriate any longer, so it snowed, the winds kicked up, and it was cold. Valery and I planned on getting some lunch together, but my boss scheduled a meeting half an hour after her train arrived. So, we tried. We talked, drank a beer, and tossed my food into a box so I could still be late into the meeting. Said meeting lasting only another ten minutes. We said we'd try it again some time, when there were no meetings and such. And less shitty weather.
Sometime during the last hours of work my head began to hurt.
After work I met up with Ember at Naked Chocolate so we could talk and let her borrow my external drive with her demo reel on it. We talked for a while and eventually went back to her apartment. I ended up staying the night and we got a train back to New Brunswick so I could get my car so we could drive to the roller derby expo in Feasterville, PA. Unfortunately, Google Maps' directions failed me for the last time. A "slight right" 0.5 miles away was actually a 90 degree turn twenty feet after the exit. That one took a long time to fix. MapQuest is uglier and has more ads, but dammit, it's almost always accurate.
Eventually we got to the expo, where there was no parking. We managed to find some parking, walked to the main building (I noticed walking caused pain and my head was still hurting), turns out they don't take credit cards, and neither of us had enough cash, so we walked back to the car, drove around trying to find something, drove back, walked across the parking lots, and finally got our tickets and finally met Lauren.
She introduced us to her fiance Jon (a derby ref) and friends Luke, and Gena, who plays on the Detroit girls' team. Then Ember and I saw our first derby match. Neither of us knew what to expect, nor knew anything about how the game played aside from tough girls beating each other up. While I was slightly disappointed because I didn't get to see any girls spit out teeth with a long trail of spit and blood, watching them bash into each other and shit was still highly entertaining. I haven't roller skated in a good decade, so seeing them be able to go around, bashing into each other, maintaining balance (or not) is quite a respectable sight.
I think these girls take more of a beating than most football players. Those guys have much larger padding and aren't on wheels (Not to mention they have half hour breaks full of commercials after every 15 second play). And not constant two minute jams one after another.
And apparently Detroit has a motto, if you're not going to be famous, be infamous. The Detroit fans we were sitting with took that to heart and booed every one. The refs, the announcers, and bad plays by the opposing team (one of the North Carolina teams). It was kind of amusing, but after seeing how many bad calls the refs made (or plays not called at all) even I was starting to get pissed, and I'm not one to give a shit about any form of sporting activity. Sadly, the Detroit girls lost by a large margin; though had the refs made proper calls/paid attention (the blonde girl ref that kinda looked like Julia Stiles made me angry, she had this habit of staring off into the distance for minutes at a time during the game), I still think the NC girls would have won because they were really good.
After that we went back to their hotel room and hung out a bit by playing Catch Phrase and watching silly videos on Luke's iPod, such as Awesometown.
Before we left, Luke gave me directions via his/Gena's GPS. It seemed simple enough. However, once on the road I immediately saw signs for I-95, and since I am very familiar with I-95 I decided to follow the signs. That was the biggest mistake in human history. There were traffic lights every 100 feet. The traffic lights took 5 minutes to cycle. That is not a hyperbole. One of the lights just stayed on red, forcing everyone to forgo the law and run the light. Eventually we stopped seeing signs for 95 and we turned around so I could use the GPS directions. And stopped at many of the lights, again. And then it was smooth sailing, except the trip ended up being nearly twice as long.
By this point I was feeling very shitty. I think I fell asleep immediately. I woke up in the morning, went to the bathroom and nearly toppled over. Walking exerted far too much energy from my feeble man body. Making it back to bed without falling over was a small miracle. Ember ended up spending a portion of the day taking care of my sick ass. She also got me some pills, some food, and other random shit that I was far too weak to get on my own. Eventually she was able to con Enid into giving her a ride to the train station. (She has this thing where she hates driving me/others to the train station even though it's really not that far from the house).
I ended up sleeping a large portion of the day yesterday and still managed to sleep for eight hours at night. At nine this morning I called out sick, made a little breakfast, popped some more Tylenol, chugged apple juice (each serving contains 120% vitamin C) and laid back in bed.
I've done nothing productive today. I'm still not sure if I'm going into work tomorrow or not. Today wasn't as bad as yesterday, but I've gone through many, many, many tissues, and my throat is in constant agony from coughing so much. My head is less painful. I haven't moved around much, so I'm not sure what my energy is like. Commuting will take a lot of energy, energy I'm not willing to spare if I can't get all the way to work through the day and back.
And Mark recently told me some bad news. I'm going to have to move out soon. Soon as in like this weekend. The studio called and their landlord is jacking up their rent, and Mark isn't willing to pay that much for the office space he doesn't really need. So he'll have to move everything back downstairs where I sleep, and he typically works nights until 2 am, when I need to be sleeping. It looks like I might have to move back in with my aunt and uncle. The only positive thing from the move will be free dinner every night. Everything else will suck, including: living with my "parents" again, not making any semi-loud noises after 8:30/9, and the drive to the train station is 2-3x longer (their house is closer to Princeton Jct. station, but that lot is packed by 6 am, which is when I typically wake up). I'm not sure how bad traffic will be driving from their house all the way to New Brunswick station in the mornings. It can only be worse since my drive right now is short and easy, aside from dodging pedestrians who almost seem to want to get hit by me and other motorists.
So that sucks, in addition to the sickness, and having to call out of work which means less money. Fucking balls, I say.
Oh, on a slightly unrelated note: If I wasn't partially single, roller derbies are full of hot chicks. So, if you're a single dude and are into punk rock/metal chicks, this is the place to be. Fuck bars. Check out derbies.
Friday the weather decided that being warm and sunny and beautiful outside is just not appropriate any longer, so it snowed, the winds kicked up, and it was cold. Valery and I planned on getting some lunch together, but my boss scheduled a meeting half an hour after her train arrived. So, we tried. We talked, drank a beer, and tossed my food into a box so I could still be late into the meeting. Said meeting lasting only another ten minutes. We said we'd try it again some time, when there were no meetings and such. And less shitty weather.
Sometime during the last hours of work my head began to hurt.
After work I met up with Ember at Naked Chocolate so we could talk and let her borrow my external drive with her demo reel on it. We talked for a while and eventually went back to her apartment. I ended up staying the night and we got a train back to New Brunswick so I could get my car so we could drive to the roller derby expo in Feasterville, PA. Unfortunately, Google Maps' directions failed me for the last time. A "slight right" 0.5 miles away was actually a 90 degree turn twenty feet after the exit. That one took a long time to fix. MapQuest is uglier and has more ads, but dammit, it's almost always accurate.
Eventually we got to the expo, where there was no parking. We managed to find some parking, walked to the main building (I noticed walking caused pain and my head was still hurting), turns out they don't take credit cards, and neither of us had enough cash, so we walked back to the car, drove around trying to find something, drove back, walked across the parking lots, and finally got our tickets and finally met Lauren.
She introduced us to her fiance Jon (a derby ref) and friends Luke, and Gena, who plays on the Detroit girls' team. Then Ember and I saw our first derby match. Neither of us knew what to expect, nor knew anything about how the game played aside from tough girls beating each other up. While I was slightly disappointed because I didn't get to see any girls spit out teeth with a long trail of spit and blood, watching them bash into each other and shit was still highly entertaining. I haven't roller skated in a good decade, so seeing them be able to go around, bashing into each other, maintaining balance (or not) is quite a respectable sight.
I think these girls take more of a beating than most football players. Those guys have much larger padding and aren't on wheels (Not to mention they have half hour breaks full of commercials after every 15 second play). And not constant two minute jams one after another.
And apparently Detroit has a motto, if you're not going to be famous, be infamous. The Detroit fans we were sitting with took that to heart and booed every one. The refs, the announcers, and bad plays by the opposing team (one of the North Carolina teams). It was kind of amusing, but after seeing how many bad calls the refs made (or plays not called at all) even I was starting to get pissed, and I'm not one to give a shit about any form of sporting activity. Sadly, the Detroit girls lost by a large margin; though had the refs made proper calls/paid attention (the blonde girl ref that kinda looked like Julia Stiles made me angry, she had this habit of staring off into the distance for minutes at a time during the game), I still think the NC girls would have won because they were really good.
After that we went back to their hotel room and hung out a bit by playing Catch Phrase and watching silly videos on Luke's iPod, such as Awesometown.
Before we left, Luke gave me directions via his/Gena's GPS. It seemed simple enough. However, once on the road I immediately saw signs for I-95, and since I am very familiar with I-95 I decided to follow the signs. That was the biggest mistake in human history. There were traffic lights every 100 feet. The traffic lights took 5 minutes to cycle. That is not a hyperbole. One of the lights just stayed on red, forcing everyone to forgo the law and run the light. Eventually we stopped seeing signs for 95 and we turned around so I could use the GPS directions. And stopped at many of the lights, again. And then it was smooth sailing, except the trip ended up being nearly twice as long.
By this point I was feeling very shitty. I think I fell asleep immediately. I woke up in the morning, went to the bathroom and nearly toppled over. Walking exerted far too much energy from my feeble man body. Making it back to bed without falling over was a small miracle. Ember ended up spending a portion of the day taking care of my sick ass. She also got me some pills, some food, and other random shit that I was far too weak to get on my own. Eventually she was able to con Enid into giving her a ride to the train station. (She has this thing where she hates driving me/others to the train station even though it's really not that far from the house).
I ended up sleeping a large portion of the day yesterday and still managed to sleep for eight hours at night. At nine this morning I called out sick, made a little breakfast, popped some more Tylenol, chugged apple juice (each serving contains 120% vitamin C) and laid back in bed.
I've done nothing productive today. I'm still not sure if I'm going into work tomorrow or not. Today wasn't as bad as yesterday, but I've gone through many, many, many tissues, and my throat is in constant agony from coughing so much. My head is less painful. I haven't moved around much, so I'm not sure what my energy is like. Commuting will take a lot of energy, energy I'm not willing to spare if I can't get all the way to work through the day and back.
And Mark recently told me some bad news. I'm going to have to move out soon. Soon as in like this weekend. The studio called and their landlord is jacking up their rent, and Mark isn't willing to pay that much for the office space he doesn't really need. So he'll have to move everything back downstairs where I sleep, and he typically works nights until 2 am, when I need to be sleeping. It looks like I might have to move back in with my aunt and uncle. The only positive thing from the move will be free dinner every night. Everything else will suck, including: living with my "parents" again, not making any semi-loud noises after 8:30/9, and the drive to the train station is 2-3x longer (their house is closer to Princeton Jct. station, but that lot is packed by 6 am, which is when I typically wake up). I'm not sure how bad traffic will be driving from their house all the way to New Brunswick station in the mornings. It can only be worse since my drive right now is short and easy, aside from dodging pedestrians who almost seem to want to get hit by me and other motorists.
So that sucks, in addition to the sickness, and having to call out of work which means less money. Fucking balls, I say.
Oh, on a slightly unrelated note: If I wasn't partially single, roller derbies are full of hot chicks. So, if you're a single dude and are into punk rock/metal chicks, this is the place to be. Fuck bars. Check out derbies.
ember:
Yeah, there were some hot chicks, but there were some pretty beat chicks, too...ones that shouldn't have been walking around in underwear shorts and tights. Although there was this one girl with a purple mohawk that I thought was cute. (OMG she had a mohawk and I didn't immediately hate it....PWN3D!)