Vacation Finale

Wensdy

I went to Manhattan, after a very rocky start. I planned on leaving the house around ten, but got sidelined by my breakfast getting a sudden desire to come visit my toilet, a fun voyage that lasted a good half hour. Finally leaving at close to 10:30, I made good time to Rutgers, where I had planned to take the train the rest of the way, only to meet with tragedy: the parking deck by the New Brunswick station was full, necessitating my side jaunt over to Edison, a trip complicated by the Route 18 extension, which I hadn't realized takes you nowhere near where I had planned on going short of taking the Livingston campus exit and cutting through that way. Which, after a brief adventure getting lost, I did, only to find no parking by the Edison station either, forcing me to park in a Farmer's Market parking lot and hope that the owners would be forgiving (since my car was still there and unticketed when I returned, they were). Finally getting on the train to Manhattan at 12:30, I began the second half of my grand voyage.

Getting to Manhattan at 1:30, I quickly hoofed it thirteen blocks to the St. James theater (it is normally twelve, but I went in the wrong direction at one point) and got a ticket to the matinee of the Producers less than ten minutes before the show started. I must say that despite all the aggravation in getting there on time, it was totally worth all the screaming and frustration. Fantastic show, and the plot was just altered enough from the original film (one of the greatest comedies ever made, if any of you haven't seen it yet) to keep me uncertain of how it was going to turn out. The musical numbers were great, especially (naturally) the big, somewhat extended production of Springtime For Hitler. Delightful show all around, even if they do overcharge for a rum and coke, quite frankly. I don't care if it is Manhattan, lower your damn prices already.

After the show, I wandered around aimlessly for a bit, passing by Tim Robbins in a surprise celebrity cameo that was over before I even had the thought of being a pain in the ass and making him come with me to a Best Buy so I could make him autograph a copy of the Shawshank Redemption for me, then I went looking for a store that I could buy something from so I could then stuff my playbill and whatnot into a bag, and after a brief, unfulfilling search, I called Shana and made her look up directions on how to get myself to the nearest Barnes & Noble, whereupon I showed off how totally slick and cool I am by buying a Flash graphic novel, and then going off in search of food at the TGI Friday's in Times Square. Afterward, I searched for Broadway so I could go to Caroline's comedy club, whose website had been promising "New Talent" for the night, which I had mistakenly assumed started at 7:30. It actually turned out to be starting at 7, which made me one of those awful people who gets there at 7:05 and causes the whole show to start late because Americans are ignorant assholes. The show wound up being really good, though that may have been partially because the club had a two drink minimum, and I knocked back my two apple martinis before the second comedian had finished his routine. There were nine or ten comics in total, all people I had never heard of before except for the surprise headliner, SNL's Darryl Hammond. It was a fun night out, though, as it was apparently Gay Pride Week, more than half the comics devoted all or most of their acts to how they were gay. It's one of my pet peeves when a comic devotes most of his or her act to jokes about how he/she is gay/black/Ethiopian/self-hatingly Jewish/whatever wacky ethnic, racial, sexual, or religious subcategory s/he falls under, so it was to their credit that none of them really bothered me this night.

On the way home, I lucked out with my car still being there and unticketed or keyed or broken into or anything, then regained my unlucky factor on the drive home, as there was an accident on the turnpike, causing me to spend over an hour going from exit 9 to exit 8. For those of you who don't use the turnpike, let me make that a bit clearer for you: driving from my home, right next to Philadelphia, to Rutgers normally takes me about the same amount of time that it took me to traverse the distance from exits 9 to 8. Not so high on the fun scale, especially when I tried calling people (Meena, Tammy, and Shana, in that order) to keep me company while I sat there, and none of them would answer their phones. Indeed, Shana had even left me an IM by the time I got home berating me for being a cockblock, as apparently I had called in the middle of her goodbye makeout session with her boyfriend Matt. What a lovely end to the evening.

Thursdy

Another relaxation day, I spent the early part of the day watching E.T. before going over to Curtis's house and spending the evening bumming it with him and his girlfriend-turned-fiancee. His dog, Zeus, loves me, and tried to tackle me right when I first got in the door, but I was able to take him to school with little difficulty. We didn't really do that much, merely a few games of Halo, dinner at a new, surprisingly upscale TGI Friday's (I'm not actually a fan of the place, I don't know why I managed to frequent it twice in two days), and seeing two more movies (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) before going home to beddy bye.

Fridy

Another great event day marred by great irritation, I went to a comedy show with my favorite comedian Brian Regan, but to my dismay, I had an extra ticket to the show and yet couldn't find a single damn person to join me. I seriously went to the point of calling up people that I haven't spoken to in years looking for someone, but to no avail. Still, the show itself was great, even if the fire alarm went off twice before the show started due to some electrical malfunctioning. Still, it prompted two great jokes from Regan once he came on ("I'd just like to thank you all for coming out here tonight, then leaving, then coming back, then leaving..." The other one involved him doing the sound effect of the alarm, and as such is largely untranslatable to the printed page. I know you're all heartbroken at this news), so it all worked out well.

Saturdy

Another sadly uneventful day, this one made worse by a recent development. My mother was unable to join me at the comedy show the night before, because she had to go to the airport to pick up my dad, as he had a doctor's appointment in the morning to get a bit of skin cancer removed, so he's now staying with us until Wednesday when he flies back out to California and hopefully out of our damn lives already. I called up Shana and Tammy, hoping that either of them would be free to do something so that I could escape from the house for my final day of freedom, but it was sadly not to be. Instead, I watched a couple more movies (no pattern at all in my life, nope -- by the way, they were Brian Regan: I Walked On the Moon, Grizzly, and the Weather Man, for those keeping score) before my dad took me and my sister out to dinner at the Italian Affair right before a slight torrent of rain began and forced us to go home in a bit of a flood, and then taking us to Barnes & Noble, where I did a little bit of reading about the RISING ISLAMIC THREAT~! before we went home again. I now get to stay up all night so that I can get back on my normal sleep schedule for work tomorrow night. What fun.

Vacation Part Deux

Sundae

I figured I'd just bum around the house and relax this day, so I spent most of it just plowing through most of the rest of the Honeymooners box set I got, plus Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, because I am all about intellectual wonders like Russ Meyer films.

Monday

I went to Six Flags with my sister, and as a result my neck is now somewhat sunburned and I tragically still do not have a tan. We first went on Superman, which featured its own Dj for the line, and I have to say, she was more into her job than just about anyone I've ever seen before. Nothing but happiness and dancing and sayings like "Every minute you frown is sixty seconds of smile you missed" until we had gotten to the ride proper. The rides were fun, particularly Nitro and Kingda Ka and the swirling tea cups that I managed to spin so fast that my sister and I could barely walk afterward, though there was some serious trouble waiting in line for Kingda Ka. The line was ridiculously long, taking us about two and a half hours to get to the ride, then, when we were two sets of runs away from getting on, the ride broke down and we had to wait another half hour before it was fixed and we could go on it. Fun as hell, though, as you go from 0 to (no shit) 120 in 3 seconds, and are blasted straight up in the sky. So not worth that long-ass line, though.

Toesday

Another bumming it day, as I just sat around and watched movies all day. I managed to catch The War of the Roses, Niagara, and How to Steal a Million (OMG Emmy Audrey so cute!), though I was slowed in my viewing by my mother's unwieldy presence, as her summer vacation starts now so she kept hogging the living room (damn teachers).

Everything I touch dies

For the past month or two, my car has decided that it wants to make that obnoxious chime that I left my lights on whenever my driver door is open, regardless of whether the lights are on or not. Friday night, while I slept, my cell phone decided that it wanted to stop working, so I had to spend an hour and a half upon waking fiddling with it to get it to start working again. Yesterday my satellite radio broke because my sister leaned on it too hard in the car and snapped off a bit of the cable that connected it to the cigarette lighter in my car. It is not a good time for me with technology, and I am rather irritated by it all.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

So yah, I'm on my lovely first week ever of paid vacation, and I've been rather enjoying it so far. Here's my early day 3 update:

Friday

As often happens when I decide to adjust my schedule to that of a normal person's for a weekend, I don't really remember too much of what I did this day. I talked to Stay-C on the phone for a while, and I think most of the rest of my day was comprised of playing with the dog and watching a marathon run of the Honeymooners because, as Shana has informed me, I am a 90 year old man. Also, in true Zach Savage fashion, that night I called Shana at 9, leaving a message telling her to call me back, then fell asleep ten miutes later so I couldn't hear her return my call an hour later, then woke up at 2 am and couldn't fall back asleep. Go me!

Satyrday

I started off the day by fixing my phone which had decided it wanted to break entirely while I slept, then I watched a couple more episodes of the Honeymooners before driving up to Yonkers to visit Shanni. She made me bring the first season of 24 with me so that I could get her as addicted to it as I got her with Lost before we went to see the Break-Up with her friend Jaiby, and then Shana's mother made us pasta for dinner.

Also, her dog Malous absolutely hates me. She was out back when I first arrived, so she didn't know I was here until about a half hour after she had come back inside and I went to the kitchen to get a drink, at which time she went completely ape shit on me. She ran downstairs barking to alert Shana's dad that I was intruding in the house, then ran to the top of the steps leading back to the living room barking like crazy at me, then after a few minutes took a step closer, barked another five minutes, then took another step, barked another few minutes, took another step, etc., until she was almost within arm's reach of me, then ran back downstairs again. Later, I tried to give her a treat, and she ran into her cage in Shana's parents room to hide from me. I tried to feed her her treat through the cage, then dropped it in there accidentally, and she wouldn't even eat it then. She sniffed it, apparently decided too much of my stink was on it, then moved her paw farther away from her treat so that she wouldn't even have to touch it. She did eventually eat it after it lied there for a good five minutes or so, and even let me pet her a little through the cage before curling up in a ball on the opposite side of the cage from where I was sitting, because I evidently am a horrible, horrible person to her. She at least stopped barking at me after all that, but two of the times I went to pet her later in the day she tried to bite me. I have such a good way with animals.