![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This will probably be the last installment of my summer journal. I didn't realize I wrote so frickin' much. And most of it is boring, but here's up to the end of July anyway.
Sunday, 16 July
What a day....
I woke up at 8:30 and left Emily sleeping while I walked down to Au Bon Pain by the Yale Bookstore. I got a muffin, a bagel, some watermelon, and two coffees, and came back to the apartment. It was already hot.
After breakfast, we set out for IKEA. Three or so hours later, we tumbled out of IKEA with a bed frame, a mattress, a table, two chairs, two floor lamps, and all manner of kitchen supplies.
Then we hit up the WalMart in West Haven, where we bought a fan, more kitchen stuff, and a trashcan.
All in all it was a very productive day.
We began assembling furniture and got about halfway through the bed before we discovered we were missing pieces.
And then the fire alarm went off. We went outside and met the guy who lives in #1. He's been here for seven years and just finished a Ph.D. in Classics. I can't remember his name.
After about ten minutes, I called the housing office. They said they'd send someone over.
Twenty minutes later, a Yale University policeman rolled up on a frickin' bicycle. We gawked. Half an hour the fire alarm has been going off, and we get a bicycle cop? Holy hell.
He poked around for a few minutes. Next thing we knew, we heard sirens. A firetruck came screaming around the corner. A cop car pulled up. Another fire truck and two more cop cars arrived. Soon we had three university policemen, two Yale security guards, and two New Haven Fire Dept trucks, fully staffed with firemen, all in our street. And the fire marshall was on his way.
They pretty much simultaneously decided it was just a faulty smoke detector head and found a sinkhole in the middle of the street. We came back into the apartment. They put a traffic cone over the sinkhole, which was about as big as my open hand.
Emily and I set off for IKEA so pick up some parts for the bed we'd forgotten. We joked about how the traffic cone would be gone in less than 48 hours, either stolen or run over, but the sinkhole would be there forever. But when we got back from IKEA... the sinkhole AND all the potholes on the street had been filled in! On a Sunday!
So apparently it takes half an hour for anyone to respond to a fire alarm, but they fix sinkholes immediately. Wow. What a state. What a first day in COnnecticut.
We assembled more furniture and had dinner at Bulldog's Burritos.
All in all, it was a very productive, very exhausting day. I honestly hope that tomorrow is less productive.
Monday, 17 July
Blech. It's still hot as hell. Despite now having two fans, this apartment is death. Heat death of doom!
We found a laundromat and a grocery store today. so I feel a little bit more like I live here now. I have clean laundry and food in my fridge.
Still need a ton of stuff. Like a toilet plunger.
I'm way too exhausted for coherent writing.
Koffee Too? has really good coffee--and some of it is Fair Trade--or so I thought this morning. The Educated Burgher puts too much dressing on their salads--ask for it on the side.
I live here. ...?
Wednesday, 19 July
I took a day off writing because I was way too emotionally exhausted yesterday to deal with recording life.
I crashed Maggie.
Emily and I were going to go to Target. We got in the car and I went to pull out of my parking lot onto Dixwell Avenue... I know I looked at least twice, and I remember seeing a car in the intersection, but it must have been going a LOT faster than I anticipated, because I KNOW I was clear, and I pulled out and CRASH! It didn't help that it was sort of a blind corner; there are huge trees there, and cars parked on the side of the street, and I'm sooo not used to that. Parked cars means slow traffic in California. Everyone in Connecticut drives like a maniac. I guess now I'm better aware of that.
I took the car in today. Hopefully I'll get it back before I go to Texas (I'm spending a week with Ann at her beach house in Port Aransas, then a few days with Poopah in San Antonio).
Emily took a taxi to the bus station, and should be in Boston by now. She's flying back to California tomorrow.
I had dinner with a fellow entering grad student from California. He's also MCGD, and he's from Fresno. We went to an Indian restaurant on Howe St, and then he drove me to Target. I bought a TV, a toilet plunger, some toilet paper, a toilet bowl brush, and two small trashcans. He was a really nice guy. Tomorrow we're going to IKEA so he can look at bookshelves. I sort of need a desk, but I think I'm going to hold off on getting one. I've spent enough money this month. I've spent way more money than I have. I don't even know how much I put on my credit card. God, I hope my credit limit goes up. Otherwise I might not be able to get my car back.
So far I don't think I'm adjusting very well. I miss Santa Cruz. I miss Neal. I've been having incredible dreams about Santa Cruz. I miss Ann-life is hard without a best friend. And I was only alone for about an hour today after Emily left before I called Clark. He actually answered the phone and we talked for a while. I miss him. I miss the internet. Luckily that's getting set up Friday.
I miss Wednesday nights at the Dakota. It's 1 am here, which means it's 10pm in Santa Cruz, and Rainier and the gang are just warming up. The dancing will begin in an hour.
I guess I don't really wish I was there. I was never part of Rainier's group, I was just a passerby who looked in on their fun for a while.
Hopefully I'll find my own group out here.
Tomorrow I'll go to the library again to check my email. In the meantime, I guess I should sleep.
P.S. Yesterday evening we had an AMAZING thunder and lightning storm and today it's MUCH cooler. Yay rain!
Sunday, 23 July
Oops. Didn't mean to take such a long hiatus from writing.
Thursday Thihan and I went to IKEA and looked around. It was a 3-hour excursion, complete with meatballs.
Friday we went to what we thought was going to be a classical music performance, but it turned out to be a carilloneur performance. That's right, a bell tower. A guy played a bell tower. Thihan and I drank a bottle of wine and laughed. Afterwards, we tried to buy alcohol, but I guess you can't go to a liquor store in Connecticut after 9 pm. SO we went to an Irish pub down on Crown St or Church St or somewhere along there. We chatted with the bartender, Dean, and his significant other, Kathy, and talked for a while. Then we came home and watched Moulin Rouge while Thihan sobered up so he could drive home.
Yesterday we went to a free concert on the green. Apparently this is a big New Haven thing. Boyz II Men was playing. Thihan is pretty into them.
He met another Sri Lankan through Facebook, so she and her roommate came. They're really nice. We had fun at the concert.
Afterwards we went to Yorkside Pizza and discussed the differences between Mormons and the Amish. We laughed.
Today the four of us went hiking up East Rock, so we could see all of New Haven spread out below us. It was fun, even though I'm really not a hiking sort of person.
Tonight I watched Grey's Anatomy (cable TV is set up as of Friday, but still no internet--they're bringing me a new modem tomorrow, because apparently mine is faulty) and then talked to Ann for an hour and forty minutes.
I still miss Neal and Stephane. And I REALLY miss climbing. But slowly, slowly, my homesickness is beginning to abate. Slowly.
Wednesday, 25 July
Wednesday and drunk. Just like old times. Just like Santa Cruz and the Dakota and dancing.
Last night--well, yesterday in general was insane.
I talked to Clark on the phone for a good five hours--about nothing in particular, about my dad, about us... He might move to Boston in October. Boston is much closer to New Haven than Florida is.
And then, somehow, I spent five hours on the phone with my dad, talking about all sorts of insane things. Things you don't want to know about your parents. It was kind of weird... but it was good. We sort of bonded. It was all very strange, but I got to know him better and I told him I'm not a virgin and I think we got to know each other better.
Anyway. Today. Also very crazy.
I can't write much more tonight. I'm too drunk to think. And it's late and I only slept five hours last night because I talked to Dad until 4 am. So anyway.
Saturday, 29 July
*sigh* With all the goings-on of the last couple days, somehow I just never managed to sit down to write a journal entry.
Thihan and I went out to diner and to bar Wednesday night. I got super drunk and we danced. Thursday morning we went to IKEA again.
Later that day, Thursday, I talked to Neal on the phone for two hours. It was really good to catch up with him, and to have a real conversation. I miss him so goddamn much.
I talked to Clark again on Thursday, too. This time we spent 6 hours and 44 minutes on the phone, in one long continuous conversation.
Yesterday, Friday, I got my car back from the mechanic. Yay! I'm mobile again! I can go to IKEA without Thihan to drive me! He did drive me all the way to Fairfield to get my car, in POURING rain, so I am grateful.
Today I just sort of puttered about the apartment for a while. I went to the train station to pick up a schedule, and to WalMart to get some closet organizers and a laundry basket. And the free concert on the green this week was The Temptations, so Thihan and Sashi and Cari and I went. We went to Yorkside Pizza again afterwards.
Sunday, 30 July
and
Monday, 31 July
So it's about 5 am on Monday.
Sunday first.
I was on the phone with Clark until the wee hours of the morning. We talked about cookies and he demanded that I send him some oatmeal raisin cookies. I refused.
But when I woke up, I went to the grocery store and bought ingredients to bake oatmeal raisin cookies. And I spent 45 minutes on the phone with my dad while he looked up a recipe for me online. And I baked oatmeal raisin cookies for Clark.
Then I packed. I packed the cookies, too. I'll mail them from Texas.
Thihan and Sashi took me to the train station around 10:30 pm. I caught the 11:18 train from New Haven to Grand Central Station. It was cool--I love trains. They're so much more fun than buses.
I chatted with Clark a bit while I was on the train, but I lost reception a little before Stamford. SO I looked out the window for the rest of the ride and saw New York City for the first time. And damn is it big. Really fucking big. It rises out of the darkness in silent monstrosities, shadowy and huge and foreboding. I loved it immediately.
Grand Central Station is always fucking big. It's gorgeous. I loved it immediately too. I think I might have to have a love affair with New York City and Grand Central Station. I love San Francisco, but I think I might have to be disloyal. We'll see.
I took the subway from Grand Central to 82nd street and Jackson Heights. Which is right in the middle of Queens. And I got there at 1:30 in the morning.
I called Clark so he could look up the bus schedule for me. He worried about me (I guess not without reason) for standing, well-dressed, alone, female, and young, in the middle of Queens at 2 am. I finally ended up asking a cop about the bus, and was advised to take a cab instead. Clark breathed a sigh of relief as I caught a taxi and got off the street.
I got here, to LaGuardia airport, at about 2:30 am.
Boarding now--more later.
Okay, boarded.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Sitting in the LaGuardia food court in terminal B, playing Set and talking to Clark until 4 am.
Security opened at 4:30, so I bought coffee and a bagel and went through the motions of checking in and going through security. And now here we are.
It's nearly 6 am and I haven't slept at all. I'm on the plane and I get to spend a week on the beach.
Sunday, 16 July
What a day....
I woke up at 8:30 and left Emily sleeping while I walked down to Au Bon Pain by the Yale Bookstore. I got a muffin, a bagel, some watermelon, and two coffees, and came back to the apartment. It was already hot.
After breakfast, we set out for IKEA. Three or so hours later, we tumbled out of IKEA with a bed frame, a mattress, a table, two chairs, two floor lamps, and all manner of kitchen supplies.
Then we hit up the WalMart in West Haven, where we bought a fan, more kitchen stuff, and a trashcan.
All in all it was a very productive day.
We began assembling furniture and got about halfway through the bed before we discovered we were missing pieces.
And then the fire alarm went off. We went outside and met the guy who lives in #1. He's been here for seven years and just finished a Ph.D. in Classics. I can't remember his name.
After about ten minutes, I called the housing office. They said they'd send someone over.
Twenty minutes later, a Yale University policeman rolled up on a frickin' bicycle. We gawked. Half an hour the fire alarm has been going off, and we get a bicycle cop? Holy hell.
He poked around for a few minutes. Next thing we knew, we heard sirens. A firetruck came screaming around the corner. A cop car pulled up. Another fire truck and two more cop cars arrived. Soon we had three university policemen, two Yale security guards, and two New Haven Fire Dept trucks, fully staffed with firemen, all in our street. And the fire marshall was on his way.
They pretty much simultaneously decided it was just a faulty smoke detector head and found a sinkhole in the middle of the street. We came back into the apartment. They put a traffic cone over the sinkhole, which was about as big as my open hand.
Emily and I set off for IKEA so pick up some parts for the bed we'd forgotten. We joked about how the traffic cone would be gone in less than 48 hours, either stolen or run over, but the sinkhole would be there forever. But when we got back from IKEA... the sinkhole AND all the potholes on the street had been filled in! On a Sunday!
So apparently it takes half an hour for anyone to respond to a fire alarm, but they fix sinkholes immediately. Wow. What a state. What a first day in COnnecticut.
We assembled more furniture and had dinner at Bulldog's Burritos.
All in all, it was a very productive, very exhausting day. I honestly hope that tomorrow is less productive.
Monday, 17 July
Blech. It's still hot as hell. Despite now having two fans, this apartment is death. Heat death of doom!
We found a laundromat and a grocery store today. so I feel a little bit more like I live here now. I have clean laundry and food in my fridge.
Still need a ton of stuff. Like a toilet plunger.
I'm way too exhausted for coherent writing.
Koffee Too? has really good coffee--and some of it is Fair Trade--or so I thought this morning. The Educated Burgher puts too much dressing on their salads--ask for it on the side.
I live here. ...?
Wednesday, 19 July
I took a day off writing because I was way too emotionally exhausted yesterday to deal with recording life.
I crashed Maggie.
Emily and I were going to go to Target. We got in the car and I went to pull out of my parking lot onto Dixwell Avenue... I know I looked at least twice, and I remember seeing a car in the intersection, but it must have been going a LOT faster than I anticipated, because I KNOW I was clear, and I pulled out and CRASH! It didn't help that it was sort of a blind corner; there are huge trees there, and cars parked on the side of the street, and I'm sooo not used to that. Parked cars means slow traffic in California. Everyone in Connecticut drives like a maniac. I guess now I'm better aware of that.
I took the car in today. Hopefully I'll get it back before I go to Texas (I'm spending a week with Ann at her beach house in Port Aransas, then a few days with Poopah in San Antonio).
Emily took a taxi to the bus station, and should be in Boston by now. She's flying back to California tomorrow.
I had dinner with a fellow entering grad student from California. He's also MCGD, and he's from Fresno. We went to an Indian restaurant on Howe St, and then he drove me to Target. I bought a TV, a toilet plunger, some toilet paper, a toilet bowl brush, and two small trashcans. He was a really nice guy. Tomorrow we're going to IKEA so he can look at bookshelves. I sort of need a desk, but I think I'm going to hold off on getting one. I've spent enough money this month. I've spent way more money than I have. I don't even know how much I put on my credit card. God, I hope my credit limit goes up. Otherwise I might not be able to get my car back.
So far I don't think I'm adjusting very well. I miss Santa Cruz. I miss Neal. I've been having incredible dreams about Santa Cruz. I miss Ann-life is hard without a best friend. And I was only alone for about an hour today after Emily left before I called Clark. He actually answered the phone and we talked for a while. I miss him. I miss the internet. Luckily that's getting set up Friday.
I miss Wednesday nights at the Dakota. It's 1 am here, which means it's 10pm in Santa Cruz, and Rainier and the gang are just warming up. The dancing will begin in an hour.
I guess I don't really wish I was there. I was never part of Rainier's group, I was just a passerby who looked in on their fun for a while.
Hopefully I'll find my own group out here.
Tomorrow I'll go to the library again to check my email. In the meantime, I guess I should sleep.
P.S. Yesterday evening we had an AMAZING thunder and lightning storm and today it's MUCH cooler. Yay rain!
Sunday, 23 July
Oops. Didn't mean to take such a long hiatus from writing.
Thursday Thihan and I went to IKEA and looked around. It was a 3-hour excursion, complete with meatballs.
Friday we went to what we thought was going to be a classical music performance, but it turned out to be a carilloneur performance. That's right, a bell tower. A guy played a bell tower. Thihan and I drank a bottle of wine and laughed. Afterwards, we tried to buy alcohol, but I guess you can't go to a liquor store in Connecticut after 9 pm. SO we went to an Irish pub down on Crown St or Church St or somewhere along there. We chatted with the bartender, Dean, and his significant other, Kathy, and talked for a while. Then we came home and watched Moulin Rouge while Thihan sobered up so he could drive home.
Yesterday we went to a free concert on the green. Apparently this is a big New Haven thing. Boyz II Men was playing. Thihan is pretty into them.
He met another Sri Lankan through Facebook, so she and her roommate came. They're really nice. We had fun at the concert.
Afterwards we went to Yorkside Pizza and discussed the differences between Mormons and the Amish. We laughed.
Today the four of us went hiking up East Rock, so we could see all of New Haven spread out below us. It was fun, even though I'm really not a hiking sort of person.
Tonight I watched Grey's Anatomy (cable TV is set up as of Friday, but still no internet--they're bringing me a new modem tomorrow, because apparently mine is faulty) and then talked to Ann for an hour and forty minutes.
I still miss Neal and Stephane. And I REALLY miss climbing. But slowly, slowly, my homesickness is beginning to abate. Slowly.
Wednesday, 25 July
Wednesday and drunk. Just like old times. Just like Santa Cruz and the Dakota and dancing.
Last night--well, yesterday in general was insane.
I talked to Clark on the phone for a good five hours--about nothing in particular, about my dad, about us... He might move to Boston in October. Boston is much closer to New Haven than Florida is.
And then, somehow, I spent five hours on the phone with my dad, talking about all sorts of insane things. Things you don't want to know about your parents. It was kind of weird... but it was good. We sort of bonded. It was all very strange, but I got to know him better and I told him I'm not a virgin and I think we got to know each other better.
Anyway. Today. Also very crazy.
I can't write much more tonight. I'm too drunk to think. And it's late and I only slept five hours last night because I talked to Dad until 4 am. So anyway.
Saturday, 29 July
*sigh* With all the goings-on of the last couple days, somehow I just never managed to sit down to write a journal entry.
Thihan and I went out to diner and to bar Wednesday night. I got super drunk and we danced. Thursday morning we went to IKEA again.
Later that day, Thursday, I talked to Neal on the phone for two hours. It was really good to catch up with him, and to have a real conversation. I miss him so goddamn much.
I talked to Clark again on Thursday, too. This time we spent 6 hours and 44 minutes on the phone, in one long continuous conversation.
Yesterday, Friday, I got my car back from the mechanic. Yay! I'm mobile again! I can go to IKEA without Thihan to drive me! He did drive me all the way to Fairfield to get my car, in POURING rain, so I am grateful.
Today I just sort of puttered about the apartment for a while. I went to the train station to pick up a schedule, and to WalMart to get some closet organizers and a laundry basket. And the free concert on the green this week was The Temptations, so Thihan and Sashi and Cari and I went. We went to Yorkside Pizza again afterwards.
Sunday, 30 July
and
Monday, 31 July
So it's about 5 am on Monday.
Sunday first.
I was on the phone with Clark until the wee hours of the morning. We talked about cookies and he demanded that I send him some oatmeal raisin cookies. I refused.
But when I woke up, I went to the grocery store and bought ingredients to bake oatmeal raisin cookies. And I spent 45 minutes on the phone with my dad while he looked up a recipe for me online. And I baked oatmeal raisin cookies for Clark.
Then I packed. I packed the cookies, too. I'll mail them from Texas.
Thihan and Sashi took me to the train station around 10:30 pm. I caught the 11:18 train from New Haven to Grand Central Station. It was cool--I love trains. They're so much more fun than buses.
I chatted with Clark a bit while I was on the train, but I lost reception a little before Stamford. SO I looked out the window for the rest of the ride and saw New York City for the first time. And damn is it big. Really fucking big. It rises out of the darkness in silent monstrosities, shadowy and huge and foreboding. I loved it immediately.
Grand Central Station is always fucking big. It's gorgeous. I loved it immediately too. I think I might have to have a love affair with New York City and Grand Central Station. I love San Francisco, but I think I might have to be disloyal. We'll see.
I took the subway from Grand Central to 82nd street and Jackson Heights. Which is right in the middle of Queens. And I got there at 1:30 in the morning.
I called Clark so he could look up the bus schedule for me. He worried about me (I guess not without reason) for standing, well-dressed, alone, female, and young, in the middle of Queens at 2 am. I finally ended up asking a cop about the bus, and was advised to take a cab instead. Clark breathed a sigh of relief as I caught a taxi and got off the street.
I got here, to LaGuardia airport, at about 2:30 am.
Boarding now--more later.
Okay, boarded.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Sitting in the LaGuardia food court in terminal B, playing Set and talking to Clark until 4 am.
Security opened at 4:30, so I bought coffee and a bagel and went through the motions of checking in and going through security. And now here we are.
It's nearly 6 am and I haven't slept at all. I'm on the plane and I get to spend a week on the beach.
