Yesterday, I was too harsh on the trip thus far, and I intend to correct that this morning.
First of all, I was in New York. New York is one of my favorite places in the country, and although I get jaded because it's also the place I visit most often, it's only fair to note that I *always* like visiting New York. It's a slice of home for me, and I love being there.
Second, while in NYC, I got to see three of my favorite people - Mike, Russ and Megan. Megs was the big surprise because she lives in DC, but since she had to be in town for a work thing, they sent her up a night early and she rallied and came out late-night style to hang out with me. Awesome. Michael trekked all the way back into the city for a quick dinner, and Russ came across town to have drinks - everyone went out of their way to come hang out with me and that's an honor. And besides old friends, I also got to see Lindsay, who took me to a hilarious late-night "happy hour" Broadway event where Stanley Tucci ended up pouring me a Chopin on the rocks. She also suggested and then met me for pizza when I was craving New York's finest. Good stuff.
For the first time in years, I didn't have to stay in a Hotel, either. I stayed in a friend's studio apartment, which was also pretty cool. While it wasn't free, it was cheaper than a hotel and pretty much exactly the same thing - a studio (except this had a kitchen that I didn't have time to use) apartment in New York. In fact, it was bigger than most of the hotel rooms I rent. It's in a great neighborhood on the upper west side, just a quick train ride to work - a fact that makes it more convenient in some ways than even my favorite place in Times Square (that's now $400/night to which I'll never return) That was pretty cool.
After NY, I took a bus to Hershey. I hear that I could have taken a train, which also would have been cool (and a little faster), but I didn't think to check on that, so a bus it was. No trouble, and I got to read my Kindle more. I've been reading the shit out of things on my Kindle - it's almost time to start looking through the Project Gutenberg library and such for more fodder. I still haven't bought anything from the Kindle store because fuck DRM and because I have enough to read already. Eventually, when I have no other choice I certainly will buy something, but I'm in no hurry to load my Kindle up with hundreds of dollars worth of bits and bytes that I don't even get to own. But having and using the Kindle is a definite plus for me while I'm on the road.
Hershey has been relaxing. I've been catching up on my sleep (I think I got nine consecutive hours two nights in a row now!) and generally keeping out of harm's way. Set up at the venue went way more smoothly than I thought it would, and I could be ready to prompt in under an hour (and that includes having pulled the monitors off the stage to keep rain off them). It's looking more and more like I might have to head back to the east coast for the Meadowlands shows, but we'll see - it's all still totally up in the air right now. It's not like I'd be buying a ticket for Monday night or anything, right?
Okay, this update is way too long. Tonight I fly home and meet Drew for the start of his Bachelor party weekend. I hope he doesn't have any clue as to our activities (any more clues than I've already given him, that is), but you never know. He's smart, and I'm loose-lipped - a deadly combination for secrets. We'll see soon enough, right?
Happy Wednesday.
Just performed an applications reset on my Pre because there was some weird issue where there was a blank application that was keeping my phone from updating some of the programs that needed upgrading. Doing a reset where I deleted and re-installed the applications on the Pre (and restarted twice) seemed to solve the problem, at least for the time being. I've read that the problem came back for some poor schmuck, but at the moment, it seems solved on my part.
I picked my first orange! It was great! I drank it as juice, the out-of-focus picture of which is right here. That's all for now - two more oranges to pick, but they're surprisingly not too rind-y and light and sweet in the juice. Excellent!