2001-10-29
Slightly boring weekend, posted at 7:22 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com It was a slow weekend.After Friday night's jaunt to the movies with Bart and Lashonia, I ran some errands on Saturday - grocery shopping, getting some home-improvement type of things at Sears, and then heading over to Ikea. I spent about a half hour at Ikea and filled up my cart with stuff. But they kept being out of things that I really wanted to buy (a TV stand for $24.95, a shelf for the kitchen), and I got frustrated and left my nearly full cart in the store and just left. I decided that I didn't need the stuff I was buying, and since they were out of everything that I really needed, I didn't want to reward the store for stocking itself poorly. So I left Ikea without spending anything. I was proud of myself.
We ended up doing nothing that Saturday night. Jason and I had talked about going out to a bar together - we want to scope out bars to take Erin and Gale to, and wanted to check out Bohager's, which features a $15 cover and an open bar - but neither of us ended up in the mood to go out without other people again. We ended up buying some booze (which you can't buy at grocery stores here... you have to go to a real liquor store) and playing drinking games to pingpong. It was the first time I had drank since that night out in Fell's Point about three weeks ago, and I didn't get drunk this time. Only had a few drinks. We took shots every time we lost a pingpong game, and since I'm a better player than Jason, he ended up drinking a lot more than I did. My record over the last three days is something like 25-4. I've taken to playing with my left hand on occasion, just to make it interesting. Ha. He'd love the fact that I'm spreading this fact around the Internet. We did have fun, but sitting around the house drinking is getting a bit old. Plus I was really tired by the time we got the alcohol - about 10:30. The World Series game wasn't that good, since it was a 9-1 route, and Saturday Night Live was a rerun. All in all, not a very exciting evening.Jason, in his drunken state, decided to try to get me to make a pact with him that we'd each go on a date by the time Erin and Gale arrive. I told him that that was unreasonable - that we don't even have any friends yet, and I'm supposed to go on a date with someone in two weeks' time, especially with me camping in the Appalachian Mountains for five of those days? We agreed to make it by the New Year's. I still hope he forgets about it, though. If we lose, our punishment is to reveal our feelings to our secret crushes.
God. It's like we're in middle school.
Jason did make some good points. He says that we both came to this new area for a change, for a different lifestyle. ("To find the new Mark, as you say," he said.) And that hasn't happened. The problem is, he says, that we haven't gotten out of our comfort zones yet. We've got to do that. (I argue that while this is true, just getting out of Michigan was a pretty big leap out of my comfort zone.) He says I'm looking for a serious relationship - that I'm looking to be dating, and not to just go on a date. All true, I suppose. But I still feel like we've got to start at step 1 - making actual friends. We still don't have any. You should hear the plots we concoct to try to get friends. I called this guy Neil up from school on Saturday night to ask him, "Hey, my roommate and I are looking for a good place to watch the (World Series) game tonight, and were sick of the usual Fell's Point places (as if we've gone to them enough to be sick of them), and were wondering if you had any suggestions in your neck of the woods in Charles Village." I called him in the hopes that not only would he offer a suggestion, but that he would want to come along, or invite us along with whatever plans he had.
But he wasn't home. I left a message that he didn't get until Sunday morning.
Our other plot is to find this guy who lives down the street. His name is Jamie. He's an actor and is 23. His family owns this cool little place that sells snow cones and plants and has been there for a hundred years - sort of greenhouse/ice cream stand. Jason and I had a slight addiction to snow cones for a while, and ended up going there every other day or so when it was still warm out. You could get a great big, old-fashioned snow cone for $1. It was great. Jamie was a real friendly guy, making it a point to learn our names and giving us an extra squirt of flavor in our snow cones. We know that he lives right down the street, although we aren't sure which house, and has a roommate and a girlfriend.
But with the end of summer, the ice cream stand portion of the store is closed down, and only the greenhouse is open. And we don't have a natural excuse to go down there any more. Jason has been talking about going down there and pretending to want to buy a plant, just to see if he's there.
It's so funny. It's like we're trying to meet women. But it's also sort of sad.
After spending Saturday night in, we spent most of Sunday inside as well. When Mike came home from a weekend in Philadelphia at around 8pm, the chainlock on the door was still on. Jason and I spent most of the afternoon watching E! "True Hollywood Stories." Both of us are now certified experts on anything you would ever want to know about Tonya Harding (I feel sorry for her), Heidi Fleiss, Anna Nicole Smith, and Robert Downey Jr. We then watched the Ally McBeal premiere special on the same channel, and it somehow got me excited for the premiere tonight even though I haven't watched the show in two years (about the time it seemed to be recycling plots and ideas). Then, the LA Law True Hollywood Story premiered, and it was addicting. I loved that show. I was so into it that I didn't change the channel over to my beloved Alias at 9pm - I stuck with E!. So I didn't get my weekly dose of Jennifer Garner. Oh well.
Rose on The Golden Girls used to call L.A. Law "la law." Ha.
I also fit in a nice 2-mile run in the cold November air last night. There's something wrong with my right foot. I've suffered minor twists of that ankle twice in the last three weeks or so, but it's the top of the foot that hurts now. The injury was my excuse to be lazy on Saturday night on not take a run, but I wasn't going to let it lay me up last night. During the E! "L.A. Law" special, I lifted weights and did ab workouts. It felt good, which is nice because I got dissed for the third time in a row this morning (Wednesday, Friday, and now Monday). J came in today and still saw me dressed in my workout clothes (I come to school in them) and told me that Rodney, the third guy we work out with, is sick. Nice of them to let me know. Of course, my passive agressive response was, "Oh, no big deal, it just let me get extra stuff done all those mornings!".
I'm really looking forward to Gale and Erin's visit on Nov. 16. I spoke with Gale last night, and she disapproved of my placing a personal ad, thinking it would attract only "maladjusted psycho freaks." Gale is so amusing. She then related the story of her friend who met a woman on-line - and this woman told the guy that she had gotten pregnant and needed an abortion and got him to pay for it. Three times. And she was never pregnant. Nice story. I tried calling Erin, but her phone was busy. Tiffany called this weekend, and that was nice - I miss her. She says that she and n-media-res, who I haven't met yet but feel like I know from his diary, er, I mean journal, are going to come visit sometime soon. They say they're either coming the first weekend in December or for the New Year's Party - which so far is going to be attended by Gale, Erin, Nate, Kelly, Paul, and Apryl. It's going to be a good time. I've got to figure out what we're doing.
While I'm still looking forward to camping, I'm a little disappointed what I'll be missing around here. Jason is going to take care of Holden, but I'm not too crazy about leaving him for five days. It's the U-of-M/MSU game, and I was planning on seeing it with the DC Alumni Chapter with Apryl, Jessica, and Mike. Not going to happen anymore. Also, I'll miss the Emmy Awards for the first time since before Picket Fences was on. Plus, I don't have any camping stuff here - no sleeping bag even. It looks like I'll have to take a trip to Wal-Mart sometime before we leave, and I'm not too excited about spending money right now.
But it's still going to be fun.