Passion

The catbeast and I are largely moved. She gave me SEVERAL scares during the actual "moval of the catness" phase. She escaped from the car when I went back to get her litter (damn my stupidity and my lack of a cat carrier and my laziness in putting her harness on her...), and after about five minutes of me standing next to the open car not having ANY idea which direction she'd gone, I saw a flash of orange and chased her through the neighbor's yard and snatched her up neatly when she tried to double back. Mwa ha ha. I'm learning her little escape tricks. ...slowly, apparently.

We managed to make the two-block drive without incident. Weeeee!

Then I got her into the new apartment and occupied myself pouring new litter into her pan (for, like, eighteen seconds!)... and then realized the bathroom window to the roof was open, and I couldn't find her ANYWHERE. Turns out she was in the stairwell hiding, but it took a good ten minutes of me hanging my head out onto the roof clicking for her before she finally trotted up behind me. AUGH. WHY DO I HAVE TO LOVE HER SO MUCH SHE IS INSANE THIS IS WHY I'M NEVER HAVING KIDS.

Anyway. New apartment rocks utterly. New roommates rock utterly. They have awesome taste in music. Only problem so far is that it's on the third floor and third floor apartments are very very hot in the summer.
It'll be so nice in the winter though!

I'm home.

The trip was great.

We did go through the Wind Cave in South Dakota, and then over to Mt. Rushmore, and then through the Badlands. We made it to the edge of South Dakota and camped there for the night, then drove through Minnesota and up to St. Paul the next morning. That afternoon we wandered around the Mall of America (civilization! at its... worst...), and saw Knocked Up in the mall theatre. Not as funny as I thought it was going to be... Actually, I think the movie sort of traumatized me. I was in a weird mood for several days afterward.

After Minnesota, we drove through Wisconsin and up through the little arm bit of Michigan and across the Mackinac Bridge into the top of the mitten part of Michigan. We hung out in Mackinaw City for two days, did a bit of shopping, and spent an entire afternoon laying in the grass in a park next to Lake Huron, reading in the sun. THAT was vacation. That was nice.

After Mackinaw City, we drove down through Michigan a bit and then over into Ontario. We didn't have too much trouble crossing the border, despite not having passports or birth certificates. They grilled us on how we knew each other and what we wanted into Canada for, then stamped our piece of paper and sent us on our way. We camped outside of Toronto that night, then got up the next morning and drove to Niagara Falls. We agreed that the Canadian side of Niagara is much, much better than the American side. Then we drove back into the States (more grilling), and thus ended our brief Canadian venture. Except for all the signs being in kilometers, it was pretty much exactly like the United States. (The last time I was in Canada was when I was 8, and I didn't remember much except the Edmonton Mall and the Peace Gardens.)

In Niagara, we realized we were only 8 or 9 hours from New Haven, so we went ahead and came all the way back. We got in Friday night instead of today. We had dinner with two of my friends, so Ann got to meet them, and then yesterday we had dinner with two more, and this morning we had brunch with another. Hopefully now she'll finally know who I'm talking about all the time...
We also wandered around downtown New Haven a bit yesterday, and we're pretty sure we saw two of Harrison Ford's stunt doubles. They're filming the fourth Indiana movie on the Yale Campus, so there are film crews and road blocks EVERYWHERE, but we walked down to the Green and watched them shoot a bit of a scene early yesterday afternoon. There were people dressed up in 1950s college-type clothes lounging on the Green or walking around. They were the background. The actual scene had someone driving a motorcycle by with Harrison Ford's stunt double on the back. They drove just a little past the Green and then through Phelps Gate into Old Campus, where we couldn't see them anymore. It was kinda cool, there were 50s cars EVERYWHERE in New Haven, and Chapel St had actually been completely transformed for about a block--all the storefronts had been made up to look like 1950s shops. The local Starbucks was posing as a bar, and had a Guinness poster in the window. It was pretty cool.

Anyway, it's good to be home. Hopefully more updates will come.

Oh yeah, and I also got my final secret pal package waaaaay back in Reno, and I need to post pictures of that... (Thank you Emily!! I'd read both books within a week of picking up the package, and I love them!) Official update to come.

Things are going amazingly well. I'm starting to adjust to New Haven. I guess I don't have too much to report, except that I felt the desire to write. I've been doing a ton of writing in my paper journal lately, in an attempt to beat the habit back into myself. I'm sure that in twenty years I'll want my first year of graduate school--and my first impressions, and fears--recorded somewhere, so I'm doing my best to write down every thought and feeling I have. Which is, of course, completely impossible, and in twenty years I'll look at my journal and be completely dissatisfied with the amount of detail I've recorded.

I got sorta homesick for Santa Cruz last night, and I needed long-sleeve shirts for the impending cold that Connecticut promises, so I looked up the nearest American Apparel store and drove an hour to get there. I tried on about twenty different things, and miraculously ended up spending exactly the amount of money I'd allotted myself. $75 on the nose. I also spent about twenty minutes chatting with the guy behind the counter, who was flamingly gay and terribly sweet. We discussed the west coast and homesickness and how New Haven is "the city" to people who live in rural Connecticut.

Tonight Shannon (my new bff, I suppose, or at least my new partner in crime) and I are going to a show at the Yale Cabaret. They have a new show every week, and they're all student run and directed and acted and that sort of thing. I might get a ten-ticket pass and go as a regular thing. But I might have to wait until I get paid again to do that. The stipend is generous, and they send us a check every two weeks, and I just got my first one last week... but somehow I'm broke again already. I guess having a car really IS way more expensive than I anticipated. Y'all were right, those who told me so.

And in other news, several people have been complaining that we don't talk much anymore. In the spirit of this, and because I feel like there are a lot of people I don't talk to much anymore, I called a ton of you in the last couple weeks and left messages. And not a single one of you called me back.
If you feel like we don't talk and I didn't call you, it's because I got disheartened. You should call me.

Thanks to the dual miracles of Livejournal communities and Google Earth, I found a Trader Joe's in Connecticut, and it's only a 12-minute drive from my apartment.

Thank God. There will be goat cheese and organic fruit in Connecticut.

(Something will be familiar.)