Happy Halloween!

What a day & it's only 9am!

I leave the apartment, walk the 100 feet to the end of the block and turn the corner. As I approach the next street, a school bus turns off of it and two girls scream out of a back window "Happy Halloween!" Without a thought, I waved and screamed it back. I wasn't really expecting myself to respond, so I was a little taken aback when I heard the words & the cheeriness come out of my mouth.

I get to my car and head towards the GCP. After sitting at the light on Jewel at the GCP for what feels like minutes (it's a pretty quick light generally), I realize the light just isn't changing. So, for the first time ever, I honk with an effective purpose, and people moved. I made my right turn and grabbed up my cell phone. I dialed "311" and reported the light. Again, something I really wasn't expecting me to do, but before I could realize what I was doing, the words, "Hi, I'd just like to report a malfunctioning traffic light," were coming out of my mouth. Of course I had to be transferred to another department to tell the same story all over again, but ultimately, the report was made. Hooray good deed! (Kind of, at least.)

Immediately after hanging up the phone, I notice one of those traffic-alert signs that then read, "Delays Ahead Exit 23 to 24." No big deal, I thought. Just one exit. That's never too bad. However, we basically stopped near exit 24, and I noted how odd that was. So I began paying attention, and the next clue I noticed was there were no cars on the westbound side of the highway, leading me to conclude that they had actually closed the highway.

As it turns out, they did. Exit 24 westbound on the Grand Central Parkway this morning was closed. The accident? A car, a truck and a police car. It was an absolutely horrible thing to have happpened, but the coolest thing to witness. I tried to get a picture, which I will attempt to upload this weekend. Of course, I hope everyone was okay. But what an interesting morning!

Here's to having a good night following a good day -- because my theory on not being able to have both has needed to be disproven. So there.

Good things.

1. I got an A on a test I took on Monday in my class on Germany. I got a B on my last test, and this one counts for more. See, when life isn't so horrible, my grades don't completely suck.

2. Barack Obama made me cry tonight. I know this doesn't come across as a good thing, but with six days left 'till the election, and a ton of things to do for school, I will make an effort to get that man the vote. I believe him. I don't usually believe politicians, but I sincerely believe this man is fighting for something we do, in fact, need. Something to bring this country back on its feet and stop it from heading somewhere noone has seen since the 1930's. I know the odds for him suck despite the polls. I know I've never voted, and therefore have never had the right to complain. But this time is different. This time it doesn't just feel like fancy rhetoric. I believe in Barack Obama. Anyone, everyone, please vote for this man on Tuesday.

3. The Phillies just won the world series! This shouldn't technically make me happy, as I'm a Yankees fan, but I have a few friends from Philly and I know how excited they are (shout outs to 'Stine, Case, Josh & B!). I am incredilbly happy for the team and for their fans.

A side story: I was studying for my history test tomorrow and watching the game with little cartoon dudes on mlb.com. It was the top of the 9th, 2 out, runner on 2nd and 2 strikes to the pinch hitter the Rays put in. Tim turns to me at that moment and says, "did your internet just cut out?" WHAT?! It did. I didn't actually get to see the final pitch, even if it was in cartoon form, because our router chose that moment to crash. It came back up just in time to see the "Phillies Win!" captions. I laughed for minutes.

4. Chris is helping me make my costume tomorrow. We're going to go to Michael's and get some stuff to make me a wand and a crown. The fact that he offered to do this for me makes me feel loved. Not that I question if I am. Just that it's nice to feel.

5. Halloween is Friday! Sure, I don't have any candy, but maybe I'll grab a bag or two tomorrow--just in case. Maybe kids in Queens don't trick-or-treat, but I'd rather have extra to eat in the apartment than not have some for the kiddies if they do swing by. But then I get to dress up and go out, with Chris, and potentially sing me some karaoke.

6. I bought Chris a present. It takes place next Friday. I'm afraid that's all I can divulge at this time. More later.

7. Joana asked me if I wanted to go see the Radio City Spectacular Holiday Show next month. I've never been, and for 40 bucks, I'm soooooo there.

So now I've spent most of my night watching Barack, the Phillies and writing this. I'm going to go devote an hour or so to studying for tomorrow's exam, then try to get a decent night's sleep.

It's nice to have good things to say. I like the way this feels.

Happy Labour Day! (...)

...if you live in New Zealand, that is. Humorously, the calendar also calls today a "Bank Holiday (IRL)." I imagine Ireland is having a bank holiday (or maybe not; I've never paid attention to "IRL" on a calendar before and thus am not sure what it means exactly), but all I can think of is that it's a bank holiday "in real life." I need to get out more.

Oooh, perfect segue!

So that is just what I've been doing--or, at least, have begun to do. I think I realize now that my doing-of-things used to fuel my blog. It made me have something to say; it made me feel somewhat interesting, like there was something in my life worth writing down & remembering. It's been so stagnant lately because, well, my life has been as well. Here's the basics (pre-excitement):

- I live in Forest Hills, with Chris, since the end of August. This has not been an easy transition. I have not given up hope yet though, either. There's got to be some making-it-work time, or we didn't really try, right? I predict, and truly believe, we are now on a clear path to perfection (or as close as we can come to it).

- I drive to Stony Brook every day, for school and work. This largely fuels my desire not to want to do things other then getthehellhome at the end of the day, but that has made me quite lazy, and not a little cranky and needy. Time for a change!

- When I'm not driving or in school or work, I'm home, either doing homework, playing WoW (which is nowhere near as often as one might think -- I do a lot of homework), cleaning something in the apartment, or tapping my foot waiting for Chris to want to do something together. Bad Linda. (The foot-tapping and its effect on Chris also fuels my desire to go out & play.)

- Sometimes, on weekends, you can find me in Astoria, playing with my friends over there. But I'm too "early" for many of those excursions. They like to go out around 10/11-ish. I like to leave for the night somewhere near 12/1-ish. I used to be a 4am-er, but I was never a 10am-er. No way, no how.

And that brings us to now. Of course I've not had much to say -- I haven't done anything! But things are changing. I now have something to talk about...

Last Thursday I went to dinner with an old friend, Brian. We went to a cute little Italian place that his family frequents. Thursdays are apparently "wine night" there, so we split a bottle of pinot noir for half its cost. The food was yummy; I left my leftovers at his apartment, but mostly because I didn't pay much for it. We also watched Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, or whatever that horrible movie is titled. It was definitely an eyeroll-worthy flick. But I hadn't seen it, and it was in the collection I was able to choose from, so I picked it. It kept the mood light & silly anyway, despite the fact that it appeared to frustrate Brian some. I got home at a fairly decent hour of 11-11:30pm.

Friday Joana & I went to see Bess Rogers (a friend of mine from high school) perform at Canal Room in NYC. She was awesome, as usual, though "usual" for me has only been two shows now. ;) But I like going to see her; her songs are pretty amazing and she has real charisma on stage. We keep telling each other we'll "get together for a drink..." but it's now become a staple of our seeing each other at her shows. We laugh, say, "no really," and someone else comes over to discuss something she said/did on stage. I tend to slip past, and leave the establishment.

We also had some pretty good Mexican food at Lupe's after we left Canal Room. Maybe it was the Jack & Coke, the Captain & Coke, and the pineapple mojito, but I definitely deem the food tasty. I was highly impressed by their chicken in the tostada salad, which was like a flat taco, but delicious nonetheless.

I was going to join Jo in a dancing excursion the same evening, but I wanted to try to get to pumpkin picking semi-early Saturday morning, so we opted just to eat and part ways.

Saturday morning = fail. I woke up at 9:30, which was great, but after not sleeping very well, I fell immediately back to sleep, for a final wake time of 11:30 am. Chris deemed this a little too late (what with the rain clouds ominously floating overhead) to drive out to Long Island in seach of pumpkins, so I opted to go without him. But first we had breakfast at the diner, and what I thought was a pretty good talk, chock full o' things we needed to discuss. IMO, it went well. I left him at home shortly therafter and borrowed his car to make the trip out to Long Island.

Along the way I sought out some company in the pumpkin-hunt, and was met with a positive response from my friend Rob, though he was unavailable until after 3:30. So I did some Costco shopping (75$ in regular household stuff like TP & paper towels & sponges--OMG!) and hung out at my mom's house for a while. He finally came by around 4:30 and no sooner were we in the car and headed towards any farm we could find, when a dull mist began to fall from the sky.

Determined to outlast the rain, I found one place that was closing at 5:00. We showed up? 5:05. I thought maybe Schmitt Farms would still be open past 5 on a Sunday, and they were only a few minutes away, but alas--they were not. So we did the only thing we could think of to get pumpkins...we went to the supermarket.

King Kullen was down to about 8 pumpkins, all of which sucked, so in the essence of pumpkin "picking" we hit up another supermarket. Waldbaums came through.

It was still fairly early, and I was under pumpkin budget, so I bought Rob & me some Taco Bell and we parted ways after going back to my mother's to pick up his truck. The day, on the whole, was fun.

That evening, after making it home in the monsoon of October 2008 and managing to unload the car, I put lots of things away and then prepared Chris & my pumpkins for carving. We searched for faces to carve, decided what we were going to do, made marker-rough-drafts and got to work. The results: (picture to follow). We also picked out the pumpkin seeds and toasted them in the oven for wonderful deliciousness. I enjoyed every second of our carving-time together, and even if he couldn't be there to run around Long Island in search of last-minute pumpkins, I had an excellent time with Chris just making fun faces out of pumpkins and spending creative time together.

Sunday was full of work, so I won't bother getting into any real detail on that one.

But all-in-all, an excellent weekend.