check out the ‘photographs’ section for all the photos from the trip, captions and all. in the meantime, enjoy these delicious meat pies.
the trip was awesome, but exhausting. we walked everywhere and all day for a week and a half. when we first got to amsterdam there was a mishap with some boiling+ temp water and my hand and fingers were burned. thereafter followed encounters with rude dutch workmen and a really nice dutch doctor who, after bandaging me up, basically told me that i would feel better if i went out and smoked up. at amsterdam schiphol passport control the lady asked me if i spoke dutch and if i lived in italy. i was confused until i remembered this. the hotel in amsterdam was really cool and the city is beautiful and so laid-back. we saw the van gogh museum but not the rijksmuseum due to time constraints and construction. in london we hit a museum almost every day and had some delicious food at restaurants and homemade by brook and will. i got to know the admiral and kittybuns, brook and will’s roommates and learned that home design (particularly kitchens) in london is leaps and bounds ahead of anything i’ve seen in the states. i had a full english breakfast and saw the imperial war museum. we took a day trip to greenwich, had delicous pasties at goddard’s pie house, was the national maritime museum, climbed the hill to the royal observatory and stood on the prime meridian. eric and i went to a movie at the clapham theater – layer cake, a london gangster film that was really good – lots of twists and turns. i shopped in covent garden – bought a load of stuff at muji including a nice teapot and went to the tea house for some unique herbal teas and whole leaf teas. we ate at neal’s yard salad bar and i had some incredible vegan food including a chili-sort of stuff that i would’ve sworn had meat in it. we saw the graphic design and liebskind exhibits at the barbican and an exhibit about the history of optical illusions and the moving image at the hayward. tea every day all day in london and great architecture everywhere. i would love to live in either of these cities!
japan: snack = girly shows
amsterdam: coffeeshop = weed and hash, smartshop = mushrooms and herbal ecstacy
weird.
(2pm amsterdam time)
i voted this morning at the humongoid high school down the street from my apartment. i came armed with 6 bills, past voter registration cards, my passport and my lease, just in case some pesky republican poll watcher tried to interfere. my first impression of this, the most hallowed experience of the democratic process?
anticlimactic.
the part when i first got in there and they looked up my name and signature in the big book of signatures and pulled out my form with my name on it from the big book of voters was cool. the part where i punched #4 (?) for john kerry was sort of cool. the rest of the voting where i was confronted with the names of about 500 judges that i’d never heard of in my life…that wasn’t so cool. my second impression of this, the cornerstone of democracy?
embarassing.
jeff took us all to fogo de chao today for eric’s going away party. i am…stuffed. in pain. but oh, it was glorious. so much meat, so many tomatoes. mmm. highly recommended, but only if you like meat. a lot of it. force-fed. for an hour.
this weekend was a veritable orgy of audio-visual stimulation. friday night eric and i hit city north and saw ‘ray’ – the ray charles biopic starring jamie “oscar shoo-in” foxx. the movie was incredibly good and touching and i could not believe that the actor playing ray was the same guy who played steamin’ willie beamen in ‘any given sunday’ but let’s face it, jamie foxx was pretty awesome in that movie too. everyone in that movie did a great job. afterwards we got some carry out from the pasta bowl.
saturday i got my glasses adjusted – another preparation for the trip to london and had some greek fries which are the biggest thing i miss about evanston. saturday night andrew had a party at his coachhouse. sarah dressed as a valkyrie, complete with spear and winged helmut. a bunch of us pitched in to tape coins to her to make an armored bodice. it was exactly the sort of detail-oriented (some would say ‘tedious’) task that i relish. afterwards she was thanking me for helping out and all i could think was ‘oh no no no – thank YOU. THANK YOU.’ jill and i hung in there for the long haul, but everybody else lost interest after her boobs were covered with coins and there were no more opportunities to cop a cheap collective feel. mwahahaha!
after andrew’s eric and i were to the empty bottle to see the bobby conn et al halloween cover show, the juke box of the dead. it was…(wait for it…bet you can’t guess what word i’m going to use!) awesome! first up was baby teeth, the band fronted by pearly sweets, the glass gypsies’ keyboardist. they played covers of some hard rock songs of yore in a really cool sort of ’70-ish style (i am not good at explaning genres). the second opener was the detholz, fronted by the glass gypsies’ (new) bassist jim cooper (who also played in baby teeth). the detholz put on a really good show, playing adult contemporary classics reworked into rock songs (celebration, dancing on the ceiling, like a virgin, do you believe, etc.). the arrangements were really impressive and imaginative and set the bar pretty high for me. this, combined with searing pain in my feet and shoulder and all volume turned up about twice as high than the openers, left me sort of underwhelmed by bobby conn and the glass gypsies. i’m sure i would’ve enjoyed it more if not for these extenuating circumstances and the fact that every high note was like a drill boring into my brain. bobby conn’s mike was up particularly high and pretty much made it impossible for me to not be in pain every time he sang. i DID enjoy the show a lot, it was overall really awesome. i am willing to give bobby conn another shot. just – why did it have to be THAT loud? my ears are still ringing two days later.
high point of the night – the guy dressed as BEAKER from the muppet show! beaker is my favorite! all you could see were the guys eyes through beaker’s mouth-slit. i couldn’t take my eyes off of him. luckly he moved to the bar area before the bands started playing so i wasn’t distracted by the ingenuity of his costume during the whole show. also distracting – the see through white costumes the glass gypsies wore…i didn’t see much underwear going on and that…disturbed me, the guy dressed in a pink body suit (head included) with a sparkly tail who was brought on stage and also obviously wasn’t wearing underwear, water balloons throw up at the ceiling that burst and showered everyone with ceiling run-off.
yesterday i spent the whole day doing laundry and cross stitching. today i completely forgot that we’re going to fogo de chao for lunch, or i would’ve worn something less ass. oh well. i have bigger things on my mind, like how to pack for a place that rains all the time and what to bring on the plane to stave off boredom. i doubt the plane will be as nice as the jal flight we took to japan.
oh thank you airbag. thank you thank you thank you!
‘reservoir dogs.’ last week during lunch we watched it. hopefully soon we can cross some more off the list. i cringe whenever i look at that.
update: we watched ‘crimson tide’ the other night, so now eric will understand what i mean if i ever exclaim ‘recommend alert 1! recommend ALERT 1!!’ i don’t know why i would ever say that, but it’s out there.
friday was eric’s birthday party – there was much bowling and merrymaking. the birthday boy passed out early but i think everyone had a good time that night (at eric’s anyway). saturday eric and i saw ‘the grudge’ which wasn’t as scary as ‘the ring’ but still totally creeped me out. the result? it took me twice as long to get ready this morning (and i skipped stuff) because i was terrified of the shower and of mirrors. and my own hair. that is the worst thing about all of these japanese horror remakes. they turn my own hair into a symbol of psychological terror the way the hockey mask is now a symbol of goofy terror.
the rest of saturday was spent in sort of a depressed stupor as i was feeling too blah to do much of anything else. eric decided he didn’t feel up to going to see the brian jonestown massacre either so we sort of sat around like globs of goo until going to sleep at like 10pm. sunday eric drove me to union station so i could catch the metra to aurora. i met my parents there and we ate and shopped a little at the ‘chicago premium outlets’ outlet mall. afterwards they drove me back to my apartment and set up my new bed frame. it has a middle support so my mattress doesn’t cave in at the middle. it is wonderful. after all of that excitement we went to noon o kebab for dinner with eric who had spent the day with his dad. for dessert i had what appeared to be a corrugated mini-loaf of fried dough that had been soaking in butter and honey for at least a week. it was delicious but afterwards i felt like i had been sucking on a honeycomb for hours. i will stick to baklava from now on.
after dinner my parents loaded up the old bedframe and my air conditioner into the car. my dad went to pick up my air conditioner but it slipped and he cut his thumb on the fins and dripped blood in a nice trail all the way to my front door. this comes on the heels of my mom telling me at lunch that my uncle cut part of his finger off in a bandsaw accident, jon slicing part of his thumb off with an exacto and eric stabbing his finger awhile back while separating frozen meat patties. all of this digital mutilation must’ve been preying on my subconscious mind because while i was cross stitching a few hours alter i stabbed my thumb pretty good with the needle. i managed not to bleed on my cross stitching. crisis averted!
now i’m sitting here operating on far too little sleep. i yawn about every 30 seconds. i feel sort of achy all over and i feel like i can’t walk right – it seems like i’m sort of flopping my legs around and somehow they manage to move me through space. maybe i’m getting the flu? i don’t know. a week and 2 days until eric and i leave for europe. a week and 1 day till eric’s last day of work and my first time voting. i didn’t vote 4 years ago because i was still registered at home and i didn’t quite understand that whole absentee thing. luckily illinois was already commited to the blue (the electoral college makes no sense). i feel like i’m starting to really ramble so i’ll stop while i’m ahead.
i don’t know if i’ve ever read something that better describes how i’ve felt for the last year. the entry starts with ‘most of my life…’