Great thoughts of Fleeting substance

A summary of neat things that have happened over the past few weeks:

I’M DONE WITH MY MASTERS DEGREE! I took the last final a week ago, went pretty well, and while it’ll be a while before I’m, perhaps ‘officially’ done with school, the part where I have to do work is over. So that’s pretty much the best news I’ve had all year. I had what many would consider to be a ‘very festive beverage’ when I left that last final too, and so I hung around school for a while to eat dinner while my ‘festive beverage’ ran its coarse. Then I went home.

No, technically I didn’t drink for a week, as I threatened to do before, upon completing my final. In fact, there really wasn’t that much alcohol at all. The day after my final I went to a work-friends wedding. A lovely ceremony, a delicious reception, and then dancing and festivities. All without alcohol! Cool! Here’s my wedding story:

So I’m on the dance floor, and they’re playing some funky-cool music, and I’m quite digging it. I start working in some of my techno-dance moves, cause I can, and cause that’s really the only kind of dancing I’m any good at. Yes, I look like lemur on muscle relaxants, but I do it with authority, confidence, and I like it, so it’s good dancing. Well at this party was another guy, someone I’d never met before, who was really good at dancing. He was in the wedding party, looking quite dapper, and busting out moves on the floor that demonstrated either a lot of time on a dance floor, or perhaps a degree in dance. Either way, he’s pretty good. So after a while, he comes over, and we start working off each other. He’ll do something, and I’ll try to mimic it, or the other way around. It was a lot of fun. Well after a while, I decide to rest and grab a tasty beverage, so I shake the guys hand and thank him for the good time. That’s when I hear applause. As it turns out, we two were the only two people on the dance floor, and pretty much everyone had been watching us tear it up for quite a while. I don’t think I’ve ever had my dancing applauded before. It was a pretty great-fun time. So just remember that next time, kids. You can get away with anything—ANYTHING—on a dance floor, as long as you do it with confidence.

So stayed at the dry wedding till it was over, had great time with everyone, came home, went to sleep.

The next day is the big party. It’s a ‘housewarming’/’graduation’/’early Christmas’ party. Three in one! It was a housewarming party for The Chef, who had just bought herself a condo. It’s a pretty nice place, with a big ol’ kitchen, so it’s just right for her. There were graduation festivities too, for both myself and Bon Bon, who both graduated this semester. And there was a gift exchange, too. I got a duffel bag, which will make a great upgrade to my current Tae Kwon Do carrying bag, which is currently held together by duct tape. It had some bleach spilled on it several months ago, and I didn’t know, at the time, that bleach in it’s undiluted form will EAT RIGHT THROUGH YOUR CLOTHES. Luckily, it only got the bag, but let that be a warning to you. Bleach is tough stuff.

So the plan was to go drinking. I was supposed to get really hammered, celebrate my graduation, and then sleep it off on Sunday. But remember, this was a celebration for the Chef, too, which means she was cooking. And the Chef is an AWESOME COOK! So the first thing I did when I got there was eat a bunch of her food, because it was totally and completely delicious. But then I was too full to drink. And then every time I would digest some space back into my stomach, I’d walk back into the kitchen and this would happen: over here would be Alcohol, which isn’t that tasty even in it’s best moments, and over here would be delicious Chef food. And so I’d go for the Chef food. So I didn’t get a lot of alcohol, but I did get a lot of candy and chicken and fondue, so It was hardly a loss.

Then Sunday J(5) and I went out to get some post-party breakfast at a café down the street from her house, and as we get there, we see people setting up for something. Well as we get closer, J(5) recalls that there’s a Holiday parade on this very day along main street and so we grab ourselves some breakfast, sit down with our tasty beverages on the side of the street, and catch a totally unplanned showing of holiday floats. I got to see various El Segundo council people, some cheerleading and drill teaming, and even a live band on a trailer. They were quite good.

Then there was a work week, work stuff happened, not nearly as interesting as the weekend.

So now we’re caught up to this weekend, which I just returned to from a nice little vacation out to New Mexico. One of my pairs of friends (married) who we will call ‘Kits’ and ‘Kilts’, have found themselves transplanted to New Mexico, which, as my research has shown, is a pretty neat little place to live.

So! In order to better explore all the experiences this world has to offer, I, with J(5) by my side, decide to take the train to New Mexico. This turns the whole weekend into a sort of double-vacation, alternately either checking out ‘being on a train’ or actively goofing off in New Mexico, Albuquerque, to be exact.

Here’s my review of trains. Coach class gives you a first-class-on-a-plane sized seat for a dangerously small price, but the trip takes a LOT longer. I wouldn’t recommend coach for any trips over a day in length, because sleeping in those chairs, with everyone else around, isn’t really the most restful of experiences. For somewhat shorter trips that you just don’t feel like driving, though, trains are awesome on coach. Scenery is great. Good stuff.

On the way up, though, I got us a two-person sleeper car. My recommendation: take sleeper cars for any trips over 1 day in length. Having a private room and the twin-sized sprawl-space makes the entire trip much more bearable. We had a great time just poking around at things, having our free meals (sleeper cars come with all food included!) and all of this for a price right around what a plane ticket might have cost.

Think of it this way: plane vs. train on sleeper car. Essentially you’re trading speed for leisure. If you’ve got the time to get there, and the season doesn’t make the sleeper cars too expensive, I heartily recommend them. Makes your vacation start as soon as you start traveling. Good stuff.

And ABQ itself was a fantastic place. We took a tram up top of a nearby mountain to see the whole city sprawled out in all of its glory, we went to a Christmas light show at the botanical gardens, went to the atomic museum, read some comic books and watched some movies, and did more eating of food than any human being has ever done before. Concerned parents will be quite happy to know that J(5) and us usually had to debate which one of us would pay for dinner for our hosts on pretty much every meal. Kit got us once, but only once. We didn’t let many slink by our ‘kindly guest’ force-field. It was a great time.

So now I’m back, having dovetailed my first experience traveling by train with my first experience traveling by metro rail through LA. It’s a pretty civil way to travel, as long as you accept the fact that a certain percent of people in LA are crazy, and a certain percent of those crazy people ride metro, and so you may have to listen to some of the most ridiculous posturing and angry yelling you have ever heard.

Quotes!

“Why you put your elbow in my face? Why you put your elbow in my face. You don’t just put your elbow in someone’s face. That’s being rude to women. Don’t put your elbow in my face. You put it in my face.”

“I’m not gonna fight you, you got your man and baby with you! You meet me here next week!”

And several other jewels unfit for civilized ears or keyboards. This all came from an argument between a somewhat crazy lady and another angry lady, neither of which had the good sense to just calm down and try not to make themselves look like absolute idiots in front of everyone else on the train. It makes for a good story, at least, and I was ready to leap between J(5) and danger should the argument have come to blows (It didn’t), despite being unable to move, pretty much, because of my bit-o-luggage for the trip. I think everyone’s first experience with metro has to involve a crazy person, though, perhaps even by public statute.

Voof! Finally, an update. So give that a good read, discuss amongst yourselves. I’ll be seeing several of you coming up very soon now. So good Christmas-stuff to all of you. Ta!

-N