last night i went to danny’s with cecile and a bunch of her friends, some of which were at the late-night harry potter showing way back when. we had some beers and shots (french martinis?) then devin picked us all up and we went to another girl’s apartment and hung out awhile (with a small side-trip to the 24-hour mcdonald’s drive-thru at western and milwaukee). it was a great night until the part where it took me almost 2 hours to get home because of how rarely the buses run at 2:30am.
today i struggled and managed to get up at a decent time. matt picked me up and we went to the morton arboretum in lisle. it was soooo cool. i liked it a lot more than the botanic garden. mostly because there was a lot more solitude. the botanic garden is 385 acres and the tree zoo, as matt called it, is 1700 acres. we saw one part of the path/road that looked like something out of a fairy tale (or as matt said, lord of the rings) – tall trees to the sides like a long tunnel.
after the arboretum we found an empty corporate parking lot and matt gave me my first lesson on driving stick in his passat. it was…ok. could’ve been better, could’ve been worse i guess. 🙂 i got some smooth starts in there but also some stalling and some leaving of rubber on the pavement. it wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as i thought it would be though. tomorrow my mom is going to give me my second lesson in our truck, so hopefully i’ll be able to show some improvement.
after driving we went to fry’s electronics, the biggest electronics store i’ve ever seen (and true to nerd stereotype, the more knowledgeable the subject, the crappier the website). i could practically hear the angels singing as i walked through the doors. it was awesome until we were walking through the computer parts area – where you can buy special heat sinks and video cards and water-cooling systems, etc etc. i was oogling the cooling fans and custom cases when i realized that something was horribly wrong. wrong with the air. in the space of 2 aisles the b.o. factor had skyrocketed. wtf? it was a disappointing reinforcement of a nerd stereotype.
matt bought some random things including a car charger for his new treo (!!!) and i bought probably the most insulting thing i could get at fry’s, which was a cassette deck adapter. woo! antiquated technology, meet ipod. ipod, meet the only reliable way to listen to you in a car that doesn’t have an aux in.
tomorrow morning my parents are picking me up for a few days at home. cook-out on monday, unlimited piano access, kitty and fireworks – woo!