what a weekend

This weekend was insane.

Let's just go through this step by step.

FRIDAY

1:00 - Get out of class.

1:15 - Catch a cab to the airport.

1:40 - Go through security. Get searched, because I'm going to DC and not checking any luggage, which is suspicious. Find it weird, anyway, that they had to pat me down, seeing as the clothing I tend to wear is pretty tight. Where would I be hiding anything?

2:15 - Hang out at the airport bookstore. Move Glenn Beck's books to the children's section. Feel clever, although I certainly hope no children really pick that book up. Yikes.

2:50 - Flight takes off.

4:15 - Land at National. See house. Get unduly excited at the thought of being back in my hometown.

One thing I've noticed about the life itinerant is that perhaps, rather than being more or less homeless, everywhere I go is home. This weekend I went home, and then I went back home, and I'm going home again over thanksgiving, going home, going home over winter break, going home at the end of january, and then going home again sometime in March or April to see my baby niece (!!!!)

4:17 - Get on the Metro. I love not checking baggage. SO worth the awkward pat-down.

5:30 - Meet Vivian in Rockville. Go back to her house. Eat Brazilian food.

6:3o--1:00 - Do weird things. Vivian and I read through our entire Wall-to-Wall looking for quotes without context. I catch Vivian up on the past season and a half of Gossip Girl. Daphna calls. I try to learn how to play the ukelele.

Me: So Serena is like "ohhhh I don't know what to dooo everybody just likes me!" and Juliette is like "*obvious scheming*" and Nate is like "You like me? OK! You're teaching dentistry to midgets? OK!"

1:15 - Go to bed.

SATURDAY

8:30 - Wake up.

9:30 - Go to Vivian's friend's house for breakfast. It turns out, Vivian's friend's dad is a columnist that I used to read all the time (back when I got the Washington Post). Get excited.

10:20 - Get to the Silver Spring Metro stop. Get seats, because it's early and Silver Spring is near the end of the line.

10:25 - Realize that the crowd on this Metro is only a taste of what is certainly to come. Feel like a sardine.

11:30 - Arrive in Metro Center. Try to meet Sam at Caribou Coffee but he is not there. Get caught up in the general enthusiasm of the day, and probably rant about the impossibility of meeting people anywhere else, because there are literally hundreds of thousands of people here.

12:15 - Get to a crowd of people dense enough that it must be considered the Rally.

12:23 - See some cool signs.

12:48 - Get stepped on.

12:57 - Try to hear something. Realize that this is futile.

(lather, rinse, repeat)

Angry Guy: PUT DOWN YOUR SIGN! WE CAN'T SEE! PUT DOWN YOUR SIGN PLEASE!

Me: Yeah, and if everyone could shrink by about a foot, that would be great too!

People around me: *giggles*

1:30 - Reason that while we've had the Rally experience, the rational thing to do would be to locate a TV in a warm food-serving environment from which we could watch the end of the Rally.

1:50 - Get out of the densest part of the crowd. Use our awesome DC-native knowledge to navigate to Union Station.

2:00 - Go to UNO's. Have some deep dish pizza. Have a sassy waiter named Tommy. Tommy inexplicably hates us, because we ordered an appetizer or something.

2:50 - Catch the metro to the airport.

4:15 - Buy a Washington DC shot glass. Buying an Alexandria one is on my to-do list.

4:35 - Get on the bus from the terminal to the actual airplane. Strike up conversation with a family from Indiana who was at the Rally as well. Engage in intelligent political discourse with various bus passengers. Make a friend.

4:59 - Take off for Philadelphia.

5:45 - The kid from the bus runs after me to exchange facebook-friendship. I may have been short with him. I was in a hurry. Regardless, we are now facebook friends.

5:55 - Board flight for Providence.

7:30 - Land.

7:40 - Catch a cab back to campus. I had a very nice cab driver. He was probably around my age, going to college during the day and driving taxis at night. He was from Syria, and wanted to go to med school. I told him to rock on.

8:00 - Get back to school. Change into my Halloween costume. Spend a good amount of time trying to make myself look like Marie Antoinette.

9:45 - Go with Hannah to Jameson. Chill there for a bit. Realize that most people are dressed with a Harry Potter theme. Audrey drew a sick Dark Mark on Scott's arm.

10:20 - The hallway party is dissolving. Jump on the bandwagon going to the Harry Potter party. Decide that for the purposes of this party, I'm a veela. Realize too late that John and Alex are still in the back, taking pictures of themselves and uploading them to facebook.

10:30 - Get to the Harry Potter party. Drink Butterbeer which involves cream soda and is actually delicious. Meet a "Hipster Harry Potter". Meet a girl with whom I'm friends on facebook.

later - Decide to leave. Get my tiara tangled in the fake spiderwebs on the stairs.

Me: Oh my god! I'm a spider web!

Guy: You're a spider web? That's not very sexy.

Me: I know! It's a problem!

later - Go into a chinese restaurant to use the bathroom. Commit some crimes.

later - Hit up the frat scene. Make some friends. Lose Hannah. Find Hannah. Go outdoors.

later - Meet some guys who were either seriously from Yale, or dressed up as guys from Yale. They said their costume was "Ivy League Douches". Yale kids seem cool enough to make fun of themselves that way, but they might have been serious.

later - Meet someone dressed up as "Security" who is trying to mess with people, telling us not to stand in certain places and whatnot. I tell him that I'm Princess Peach and that he does not want to fuck with royalty.

later - I seem to recall talking to someone about the fact that I'm a shiksa? i.e. a non-jewish girl? I'm not sure how anyone got onto this topic.

later - I want food. Hannah and I go to the new cone place. The new cone place serves pizza and other food items in a cone. I get eggplant parmesan ... in a cone. We meet Jackie and her friend, who are dressed as sexy founding fathers.

Jacqueline: we the white male landowners, in order to serve our corporate interests, do delcare:
1. all founding fathers look the same.
2. if it's not slutty, it's not halloween

2:00ish? - Go home. Fall asleep.

SUNDAY

10:30 - Decide that church bells are a tool of the devil, ironically.

11:00 - Actually get out of bed.

1:00 - Go to the library. Actually get shit done for the first time this weekend.

2:30 - Walk to the other side of campus to try to arrange Hakuna Matata.

3:00 - Try to teach said arrangement to other people. Feel ineffective.

4:15 - Go to the Brown Bookstore. Chill there for a while.

5:00 - Post- meeting.

6:30 - Get dinner. Feel like soup. Feel a head-cold coming on.

8:00 - Try to do linguistics. Feel the desire to hit my head against the wall. Repeatedly.

9:00--12:00 - Watch three hours of Law and Order.

12:30 - Go to bed.

And now it's Monday and I have class and almost definitely a sinus infection. But it's so cold! Shouldn't the cold have frozen all of the allergens? Does that even make sense?

I don't know. My ears hurt. And my head feels strange.

Well, if this weakened-immune-system was brought on by anything this weekend... it was worth it.

Love always,

Clara