kjpepper | City girl returns...

Wow, it's been... a day.

Strode quickly through a barely awakening Northampton and made my bus with ten minutes to spare. Halfway to Springfield I discovered that though I had the foresight to pack extra batteries for my Nomad, I had quite conveniently left my headphones on the kitchen table. Smaaaaaaaaaaart. (bought new ones upon arriving in NY). Lucky for me I was able to conk out for the entire trip down to NY and even managed to sleep through all but the end of the PPB presentation of The Core. Wow. All I caught was the last twenty minutes of the movie and holy crap, it was baaaaaaaaaaaad. And I thought it looked cheezy from the trailers. Mike, Crow and Servo, where are you when we need you?

New York. Though it may not be home anymore, I forget how the city still makes my blood sing, still inflames, amuses, and inspires me. I suppose it's a bit like sleeping with an old lover: Eventually you remember the bad times and the reasons why you parted ways in the first place, for for a few magic moments it's like coming home, wonderfully familiar.

It's always a bit of a shock coming back and realizing just how predominantly pale New England is. Here a riot of color and culture everywhere. Or maybe just a riot of people everywhere. I swear, there were more people packed into Port Authority while I was having lunch today than are in town during the Taste of Northampton, and that's a pretty hefty crowd. So yeah, whenever I come back I always feel a bit nostalgic. With good reason I guess - once upon a time I truly thought I would go to college, come back and spend the rest of my days here. C'est drôle, la vie... n'est ce pas?

I killed some time in the satellite Transit Museum at Grand Central, then watched the holiday laser show on the ceiling of the main concourse, which was wicked cute. Especially the end. See here's an idea with great potential but of course doesn't seem to work out in practice - the end of the show was an outline of a mistletoe sprig with the word Mistletoe above it in case anyone missed it, and it was just floating around the ceiling for about two minutes... and absolutely no one on the floor was going for it. Then again by that point, no one was looking up either. At that point I spotted

harinezumi by the info clock and tried to bounce across the floor in time to catch him as it passed over, but by the time I got across the floor the floating laser mistletoe had disappeared. I kissed his cheek anyway. Jeez. Wake up, New York! ;)

Had fun pounding pavement with the Russian all day. Moseyed through Chinatown, getting pretty lost at one point and working up an appetite for the massive amount of dessert we wanted to consume later. After doing that we subwayed it uptown where we found a two and a half hour wait at Serendipity 3's (not really surprising, considering Bloomingdales' is across the street. Went to Dylan's Candy Bar and wandered down 57th Street, where we found the OSCORP building from Spiderman (not really, but it's a really cool office building with a pretty cool Stonehenge remisicent type structure out front) and Hammacher Schlemmer (bastion of expensive high tech vibrating toys) and having a supergeeky moment where were both plugged into my nomad bopping to Happy Hardcore's "Ultimate Sex Track." We did finally get into Serendipity's and get dessert, and I got the dubious privilege of watching him put away another of their enormous drug store sundaes. I don't know where the hell he puts them.

We wandered back to GCT, where we reprised the musical geek moment, except this time I was listening to angsty Russian rock on

harinezumi's iPod while he was listening to goth and Coldplay on my Nomad until it was time for him to catch his train. And then I went home.

New York wouldn't be New York without the obligatory Weird Shit. There was the guy in the red T-shirt doing interpretive ballet through the crowd around the info clock in Grand Central that had both

harinezumi and I thinking "...". There was also the Japanese guy in the Canal Street station when I switched trains to Brooklyn that was cheerfully playing christmas carols on a koto. I don't think that was quite what Irving Berlin had in mind, but go him. And one of my favorite things in the subway besides the big music toy in the N/R 34th Street station - there's a short angsty poem inscribed on white subway tile like plaques along the ceiling of this passageway at 42nd street between the IND (blue lines) and the BMT (yellow) lines that goes like this:

woke up late
so tired;
if late
get fired.
why bother?
why the pain?
just go home,
do it again.

Nope, no bitterness there. I've always liked that poem.

Now I'm quietly hanging out in my Mom's room, doing my usual thing where I completely monopolize her internet connection. And damn, if my legs aren't sore. :)

Tomorrow morning, I go have breakfast and stomp around Central Park with

jaicat and her boy. Yay.