2001-12-03
Harry Potter, Saturday blahs, New Years plans, posted at 7:41 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com It's Monday. Oh, boy.The weekend was pretty uneventful. On Friday night, Jason, Mike, and I went to the movies (after dinner at Pizza Hut, where our service was really bad, and where I stole a shaker full of hot peppers from the table, and where I decided that the next time I order pizza, I'm going to try it without cheese). We hadn't planned on it, but we saw Harry Potter. Everything else was either uninteresting to us, or sold out, or not playing at a convenient time. There have been a host of movies I'd been wanting to see in the last month or so (From Hell, Mulholland Drive, Joyride, that Robert Redford/Tony Soprano movie whose name escapes me right now), but all were apparently in that limbo between the new feature run theater and the cheap theater. Thus, the only new movie I really wanted to see other than Harry was Spy Game, which was sold out. So we saw Harry Potter, in a clever deal with Jason in which I paid for half of his ticket price (he had to see it twice in the span of four days or so, so I offered to split the cost of the ticket with him).
The movie was okay. Nothing more, nothing less. It was better than expected since Chris Columbus directed it, but not nearly as charming as the book was. The sets were great, the acting and casting were perfect (I loved Maggie Smith and Robbie Coltrane), and it staid remarkably close to the plot of the novel. And therin laid its detriment - there was nothing exciting about the movie, and very little magic. I think Speilburg or Tim Burton could have done something pretty marvelous with the material, but what we had instead was merely okay - fine entertainment (if a bit too long), but nothing special. I think all the reviews who have said the direction was workman-like and uninspired were correct. Perhaps that was the contraints that Columbus had to work with. I dunno. Again, I thought the movie was okay.
I have no idea how Jason agreed to sit through it a second time, though - especially in less than a week. I was definitely fidgeting after hour two. I feel like I should have paid for his whole ticket.
***
Saturday was a pretty "chill" day, as my old friend Stine would say. I discovered this wonderful grocery store called Trader Joe's in Towson. Never before have I had so much fun grocery shopping - the place was full of specialty foods, health foods, and foods I have never seen before. I filled up my cart with things like soy pretzels (fat free, but 6.5 grams of protein per serving), flax cereal, roasted corn kernels, chai nog, and soy milk. It wasn't a vegetarian grocery store, just a healthy one with cool foods. I'm going to be doing nearly all of my shopping there from now on - I spent $90, and only went in "needing a few things." I didn't feel swindled, though; the prices were extremely good.
***
Saturday night, Jason and I sat around, for another round of feeling sorry for ourselves and thinking about the days when we used to have friends. I began to wonder what the move to Baltimore would have been like without him. I probably would be getting myself out there a bit more, and forcing myself to make friends because there was no alternative. As it is, it's easy to say to myself, "Oh, I can stay in on Saturday night; after all, Jason will be there." I guess I'm just not used to not living in the dorms yet, where I had tons of friends and it was fairly easy to make more. Living on a brick-house block of families, it's just not that easy to meet other singles.
Jason and I planned on getting drunk and playing pingpong, but it just didn't seem very interesting. So we didn't. We both placed free personal ads in the City Paper, and watched Saturday Night Live, and played an endless string of pingpong games (sober), and that was all. Crummy night, but I did remind myself that this was our first night in on a weekend in quite some time. In fact, I think it was our first night in since that famed Bridget Jones Diary debacle.
***
I have spoken earlier about that fact that Jason and I had made a middle-schoolish bet that we would go on a date by the end of the year, or face revealing our true feelings to our secret crushes. On Tuesday, my side of the pact will be fulfilled. I'm not sure if it's a real date or not, but I am going out, alone, with a single woman. Her name is Sally. I worked with her mom in Michigan. She asked me to go to this lecture with her - something about astronomy, I think. The meeting may be business-related, as we're working together on a project between the high school and the museum she works at - I'm not really sure - but she's picking me up and we're going on Tuesday night. If nothing else, she seems nice, so maybe I'll get a friend out of it. Jason, of course, is freaking out, because I don't think he ever expected me to be the one to go on the first date. The fact that the date seems very casual doesn't matter - Jason's rules were that we just had to go out alone with a woman who we did not know before moving here. The fact that I met mine through a connection with work last year may make things a bit unfair, but that's okay - if he had to tell his "secret crush" about his feelings, I wouldn't know for better or worse, since I don't know her and probably never will. For all I know, he's making her up. In my case, he knows my secret crush pretty well.
There's got to be a better word than "secret crush," isn't there? I just can't think of one. I totally feel like I'm in middle school.
***
I haven't shaved in about eight days. At first, it was because I couldn't find my razor after the Thanksgiving holiday. Then, it was because I was in a glasses-wearing mood and liked the scruffy/glasses look (sort of my "intellectual" look, or my "hippy college professor with tenure who is mad at the administration for its conservatism and isn't going to take it anymore" look). Now, it's because I want to see what I'll look like with a partial beard. I've never liked how men look with beards before. I say only 5% of men who wear beards look better with them than they do without. And I don't necessarily think I look that good with the scruff I've got now. But I figure I've got to try it out sometime in my life, and now that I'm young and foolish, it might be a good time. Besides, I could never really grow one before now. I think it's kind of cool, and the trend for first year male teachers seems to be to grow beards. So I'll keep it a few more days. Jason tells me he thinks I'm one of those 5%. We'll see.
***
Yesterday, I found out that Gale is not coming down for New Year's because of work and lack of money, but that Andy and Jenni are. Doesn't seem like a fair trade. (Don't tell anyone I said that.) Since Kelly reads this, I might as well say that I wanted to get a hold of her this weekend, but that for some reason I always lose her and Paul's phone number, so I didn't. Now, it sounds like one group of friends won't come down until the 30th, so Kelly, Paul, and Nate will hopefully still come down on the 27th, 28th or so, so I have a few days with them before the rest of them come down. We have been looking at New Year's options, and this one in Washington DC seems the coolest option so far: "The D.C. Society of Young Professionals' New Year's Eve Gala features five different party areas with American themes: a New York dance club, New Orleans Mardi Gras, gambling in Las Vegas, salsa in Miami and karaoke, caricatures and more in Los Angeles. Food stations, prepared by the Four Seasons' chefs, will feature carved meat, Mediterranean stations and hors d'oeuvres. Dress is black-tie optional. Tickets are $129." The price is a bit steep, but really isn't that bad considering there's an open bar and a meal involved. A couple of years ago, we spent $45 or so at Rum Runners in Lansing, and that didn't include an open bar. It was a great time. We're still looking, though.