Remember my feelings about Comcast? Take that, triple the ire and you may begin to understand the level of emotion I feel towards Amtrak.
You remember, of course, how many financial difficulties Amtrak has had in recent years and all the discussions about the company filing bankruptcy. Clearly these scares have done little to convince them to work on their customer base – in the way of customer service.
I showed up at Union Station on Friday afternoon, shortly after work, and queued up to the Quiktrak machine to pick up my ticket. Having once made the trip from DC to Philadelphia on a regular basis, I am accustomed to the procedures (how to pick up your ticket quickly, where to go to wait for your train, sitting in your seat until the last possible moment when the Amtrak staff actually starts allowing people on the platform before cutting everyone who has been waiting in line for the past half hour). However, I quickly noticed that my train number wasn’t appearing in the departures list.
I flagged down an Amtrak employee, one of the guys wearing the blinding neon yellow crossing guard vests with the words “Amtrak staff” emblazoned across the back. The real implication of that vest is that the person wearing it should be helpful. So I told him that my train number was not appearing on the departures list and he looked at the ticket for a few moments before telling me that my ticket was for Saturday’s train to Hartford. I asked him how we could fix that and he walked me to the front of the long, long, LONG line of people waiting to talk to the Amtrak customer service staff. Then he told me I could go ask the first person in line if I could go next and he walked off.
Harrrumph.
So, with all the authority I can muster, I ask the first guy in line if I can go in front of him. I explain that I have a problem ticket and need to get on a train soon to be able to get to Connecticut any time this century. He says he has no problem with me jumping in front of him. Score!
Except that the second person in line, this nasty little blond girl (I’m getting to the reason why name-calling is totally appropriate), pipes up and expresses her opinion. She tells me that she too has a problem ticket and has already missed her train so she would not like me to jump ahead in line. I’m thinking to myself, yes, you’ve already missed your train, so now everyone else must miss their train too? You want to take your frustration out on other passengers? Way to pay it forward (insert unpleasant, unmentionable, not-so-very-nice word here).
Being the nice, not-so-inclined-to-get-the-attention-of-the-Amtrak-staff-by-causing-a-catfight kind of person that I am, I complied with the nasty little blond girl’s painfully obnoxious request and moved to the back of the line. At this point, I am really frustrated with the whole situation and the utter lack of human generosity that there is in this world. Or at least here in DC at five o’clock on a Friday.
The line moves almost as slowly as the line for my local post office (which, if I’ve never told you, is a really dull way to spend an hour of your life; even if you manage to get into line and there are only three people in front of you, you will be in line for no less than one hour – the inefficiency there is completely unfathomable). When I finally reach the front, I am greeted by one of your everyday, totally hateful Amtrak employees with attitude. I begin to explain that I have a problem ticket, but I don’t even get in my destination or request in before she interrupts, “All the trains are sold out for the day.” I try to request the time of the next earliest train out to Hartford and again I get, “All the trains are sold out for the day.” I patiently try to explain that I understand the words that are coming out of her mouth, but could she please look up the next available train time? “All the trains are sold out for the day.” Yes, lady, I GET IT. Now give me the ever-lovin’ earliest train time for tomorrow, you dumb, repetitive, ginormous pain in my tush!
Although I didn’t quite express my frustration with her in so colorful a way, she did eventually tell me that the earliest Hartford train I could get on was a 7:30AM train that left on Saturday morning and arrived mid-afternoon. I called Mel to confirm that this would be okay, and we both pretended that we weren’t totally disappointed with this arrangement. So I paid an extra $40 to switch my ticket.
Then I had an epiphany and called Estee to beg her to allow me to stay in her hot pad in NYC for the night. I checked the Quiktrak machine and found that there were at least four available trains out to New York Friday night. By available, I mean that they were still enabled on the screen and therefore could seat another passenger. So I jumped back into that mile-long line in front of the Amtrak counter.
After another eon spent in line, I end up with a very nice, amazing, super-fantastic, lovely, kind-hearted, generous, and totally my BFF-forever Amtrak employee. He must clearly see how frustrated I am by the whole Amtrak experience. Not only does he get me to New York on Friday night, he booked me on the same trains as Estee for Saturday morning and we were still able to get into Hartford by 9:30AM! And – yes, it does indeed get better! – he doesn’t charge me the fee for exchanging my ticket AND issues me a $17 voucher. In the end, I still get all of Saturday with Mel and I only paid an extra $20 for correcting my bonehead ticket.
The downside to all of this is that my train arrives in NYC at midnight. Since we all know how lovely a person Ryan becomes when she doesn’t get to sleep at her normally appointed bedtime (somewhere around the crack of sunset, according to some), there isn’t much guesswork involved in predicting Ryan’s ability to keep up with all the twenty-two year-old first year law students on Saturday.
I manage to make it to Estee’s (HUGE, GARGANTUAN, AMAZING, and HOLY COW! LOOK AT ALL THAT CLOSET SPACE!) new apartment before 1AM, where she is waiting for me with open arms and a wide smile. I cannot believe that we have not seen each other since our reunion in May of last year. But while things continue to change, some things always stay the same – we can always talk as though the time hasn’t passed us by.
I admired her (HUGE, GARGANTUAN, AMAZING, and HOLY COW! LOOK AT ALL THAT CLOSET SPACE!) place and then began to torment her eleven-week old kitten, this beautiful, little, gray, short-haired tiger cat. I throw balls of paper at her and try to dig her out from under the futon. My master plan of holding and cuddling the kitty fails, but Estee tells me that Motik (I won’t even pretend that I can spell it, but whatever it is, it means “sweetie” in Hebrew) is her name and that she is at wit’s end over her. Apparently, Motik was recently diagnosed with some kind of parasite by the vet, which means that Estee is constantly giving her medication. Furthermore, Estee came home to find the cat playing with her own feces in the litter box. So Estee is all OCD about washing her hands after every attempt to touch the cat (even if there is no fur to flesh contact) and we decide that Motik needs a new name – does anyone out there know the Hebrew word for (attention: any children out there should skip to the next paragraph to avoid the terribly not-so-nice word ahead) “shit-eater?” I don’t know about you, but I am convinced there must be a certain je ne sais quoi to the word and only the New York Jews would have any idea what Estee is saying.
We don’t stay up for long so we’re in our pajamas and in bed before you can say “New York minute.” Estee doesn’t allow Motik into her bedroom at night so I listen to the little jingle-ball attached to Motik’s collar as I drift off to sleep.
A few hours later, I jolt awake. My body is telling me that it is freezing (something about sleeping a mere feet away from the a/c window unit) and I can feel little Motik gnawing at my hair. Motik’s little jingle ball jingles as she drools on my head and then she moves to lie down on my crotch. What a sweet little kitty.
I get up, turn off the a/c, and then drift back to sleep.
Only to be awoken again in what feels like a few, short minutes. My alarm had been set for 5:30AM, but Estee was already up, showered, and running around in her best traveling clothes. And I thought I was the morning person.
So we get our things together (and this includes barricading the litter box so when Motik plays with her excrement, she can’t quite fling it all the way down the hall and into the kitchen) and head out the door. Estee is not feeling the subway so we grab a cab down to Penn Station. As if it cannot already be predicted, Estee already misses Motik. By the time we’re at the train, Estee has already cycled through all the pictures she has on her cell phone of her kitty.
I’m not much of a coffee person because my body reacts strangely to it. I get the shakes, my heart rate soars, I start to sweat profusely, and when I talk, I sound like the Micro Machines man. I used to think it was the caffeine, but I can drink caffeinated tea for hours on end and still never experience the same thing. So it must be something else. I can almost imagine a setup very much like a meth lab, where those little Columbian men roast the coffee beans and add that little special something (I’m imagining crack-cocaine) for an extra kick. It totally explains the massive amounts of people who are addicted to coffee.
All this to say that I headed straight for the Dunkin Donuts and bought myself a coffee. To mitigate the effects, I had them make it half decaf and I ordered a bagel.
Once aboard the train, Estee bravely fights exhaustion and listens to me drone on endlessly about the life and times of Ryan. By the time we get to New Haven, I am convinced that the breath coming out of my mouth is the elixir of life because Estee has not yet nodded off.
We switch to the shuttle train and I finally shut up. Estee is able to sleep for the forty or so minutes it takes to reach New Haven. It was the least I could do after making her wait up for me all through Friday night to the wee hours of Saturday (although she tells me that she was able to clean the apartment and do laundry while waiting).
Mel is waiting for us inside the microscopic Hartford train station, easily spotted in her (surprise, surprise) pink sweater. She whisks us away to the nearest McDonalds, where I haven’t eaten since I was ten. Mel, of course, just ate there last night for dinner.
Estee was finally to that point in the day when she could consume food so she ordered breakfast. Remembering how amorously I longed for McDonalds’ fries when I was a child, I thought I would order them – especially now that a small fry is on their dollar menu. Did anybody else out there know that McDonalds does not serve fries in the morning? What a rip-off. Disappointed, I ate a hash brown instead.
And then we were off to Hogwarts…I mean, University of Connecticut Law School. The school is beautiful, but at the same time it reminds me of those one-room school houses that you read about in your history texts. Mel told me that even the Law School library hosts classes, but there is only one usable, but tiny, room in the building. Of course, I imagine them all sitting amongst the books, crammed in between shelves, their laptops and case books littered across the floors and on top of bookcases. Oh so very 19th century of them. I wonder if they even have blackboards…
We met what seemed to be a million, all-too-eager, and all-too-happy twenty-something first-year law students in the parking lot. I kid you not when I say that one of them – a young twenty-two year old named Jon – serenaded Mel with an operatic rendition of the Happy Birthday song as soon as we climbed out of the car. Being the truly friendly person that I am, I told him to stop or we may have to kill him.
We walked around campus and took a lot of photos. Mel looked more than adorable taking pictures with her butt sticking out to California. It’s a look that I tried to capture on film, but was never quite quick enough. You will just have to imagine how awesome it was.
So, the law students: apparently these kids are (nearly) all the students in Mel’s section. My understanding of law school is incomplete, but I absorbed something about incoming first year classes being separated into different sections and then taking all their courses together for the rest of the year. Law students don’t really meet anyone else in their class until their second year. Or something like that.
I believe there were ten of us gathered for the joy that is apple picking. (Let’s count, shall we? Mel, Estee, myself, Jon, Adam, Cara, Amy, Mike, Courtney, and Christophe. Yup, that’s ten.) Of the whole group, I was the only one that had ever been. I don’t know how this is even humanly possible. People were asking me how you pick apples and if it was okay to eat them off the tree. It was mind-blowing.
Before we went to de-apple the trees, however, we were ready to partake of the farm’s maize maze. I am so old that I no longer bat an eyelash at an $8 entrance fee because $8, eight measly dollars?, will not even get you a standing room only ticket at a concert, it is so cheap. However, the law kids are still in that I-show-up-at-school-events-because-there’s-free-food stage of their lives so $8 is a hearty sum. Mel, Estee and I were the only ones to take the plunge.
The way the maize maze works is that you take with you a little sheet of questions and each time you reach a sign post, you read the question that coordinates with the number on the sign post and, if you answer correctly, you are given the proper direction in the maze to go. There are a number of different question sheets, each with a different theme. In light of Mel’s impending birthday, she chooses the question sheet and we end up with the “Corny” questions.
Having been through corn mazes before, I can say that this particular maize maze was pretty easy. There are not a lot of decision points and you can very quickly find that you have gone the wrong way when you make a bad decision. The maze at Davis’ Farm in Sterling, MA is built by a famous English maze-maker and I usually go there every year. It is far more challenging.
All the same, I think the maze was just long enough to make Estee and Mel thankful that they were out in wide, open, corn-free land again.
Our question sheet was 4.25”x5.5” so it fit six questions on it. When we got to sign post six, Estee and Mel danced Balki’s dance of joy. Hurrah!
Except that we weren’t finished. We quickly discovered that there were questions printed on the back of the sheet as well. Thank god for that ivy league education.
By the time we actually did finish, we had learned such wonderful tidbits as a) there are an average of two ears of corn per stalk, b) cows are only fed the field corn variety of corn, and c) the tallest corn stalk ever recorded was 20’ tall. We totally earned those “I survived the corn maze!” stickers.
We picked up the law school kids and drove to the apple trees. We picked some very tasty Macoun and McIntosh apples. I spent a whopping 67¢ on three baby Macouns (that I would end up eating on the train ride home Sunday) and ate at least two Macouns and one McIntosh out in the fields. So the farmers only made about
50¢ on the dollar off of me. But that rate is better than the one they received from the law kids. Most of them just ate apples and didn’t buy anything.
However, Jon, Mel’s adorable little law school friend who she adopted as a kid brother (of operatic Happy Birthday fame), bought a bushel of apples. I don’t know if he cooks, but I sure hope they don’t go to waste. Though he did mention something about sending some to his grandparents…
Post apple-eating goodness, we drove to the Southington Apple Harvest Festival. By the time we arrived, I was in bad need of a nap. A decades-long nap. So I bought myself another cup o’ joe, this one a pumpkin coffee. It was totally unlike the Starbucks or Caribou variety where they put enough syrup in their coffee to turn you into a walking mound of saccharine. The coffee beans were actually roasted with pumpkins so there was just a hint of pumpkin-y awesomeness. It rocked my socks off.
So the Apple Festival. It was quaint. It was parochial. There were teenage girls dressed like apples and a scarecrow contest. We had apparently just missed the bed race (where you take someone, throw them onto a bed with wheels, and run with them down the street until you and the bed pass the finish line), but we were totally in time for all the hand-sewn frilly dolls, tea cozies, bedazzled clothing, apples ensconced in ten tons of chocolate and candy, country signs, and a whole host of other crafts. The real steal of the day was the 50¢ slices of homemade apple pie. It took me back to a time I wasn’t even alive for, when we measured cost in coins instead of bills. You know, when your parents used to walk uphill – both ways – to school. It was glorious.
There was a whole host of carnival rides, but at a one-block distance, they were much too far away to visit. I saw the ferris wheel just fine from my curbside seat, as I dug into another bite of apple pie.
We must have returned back from the Festival around five or six. You would have thought that we would be full from the apples, kettle corn, apple pie, hot dogs, and other such tasty yumminess that we consumed all day, but no. Estee, Mel and I required even more sustenance. So we hit the Prospect Café for dinner.
We laughed, we cried, we ate. We even talked about how Mel and Estee are secretly the love of my life. Or something truly heartwarming like that. What can I say? We’re girls.
When we got to Mel’s cavernous apartment, Estee and I decided that it was the perfect time for cake. I need to preface this story with the explanation of the cake. I pre-ordered this cake on Monday last week. It was a fabulous chocolate raspberry buttercream confection, exquisitely designed to tickle the chocolate fancy of our dear friend Mel, who suffers from an extreme E.L. Fudge addiction. I picked the confection up on Thursday, brought it to work on Friday, traveled with it to New York on Friday night, then accompanied it to Hartford on Saturday. By the time we spotted Mel’s adorable pink sweatshirt in the Hartford train station, it was still the happy, beautiful, chocolatey cake it was meant to be.
But then: the HORROR. We never went to Mel’s apartment before the day of apples. The cake. sat. in. the. car. for. EIGHT. hours.
When I pulled the cake out of the fridge after dinner, it was this goopy, sloppy, Alice in Wonderland mess. We could just make out where the icing that used to be a delicate little rose was. All that care, all that advance planning, and now, NOW, the cake was a mess.
Mel lied beautifully as she laughed and said it was the best birthday cake ever. We put candles in it and sang, and then called Eric to have him sing us Journey (Eric, we hope your roommate really doesn’t hate you because of it). It was one of those perfect moments that happen because nothing went perfectly but you’re surrounded by truly amazing friends.
Then we napped. Or more precisely: Estee napped. With the softest blanket on earth that I am convinced is made from puppies and kittens.
Mel and I staid up, with Mel knitting (can you see it now? The most domestic Chinese-American girl ever, with knitting needles and pink yarn? It is oh-so-pinch-your-cheeks adorable). Eventually, Mel took a fifteen-minute power nap and I started to figure out how to use a flat iron on my hair. I wrestled and wrangled with the damn thing, nearly strangling Estee at one point in my efforts, and had some mildly straighter hair as a result. Then Mel breezes in, all glowing from her itty-bitty nap, and just glides her curling iron through her hair and, ta-da!, just like that, her hair is bouncing, shiny, and all sorts of va-va-voom. Her hair belongs in a shampoo commercial, I tell you.
Around 9:30PM, we arrive, all beautified, at Room 960, Hartford’s supposedly most swank lounge. According to Hartford Magazine, “What, may you ask, qualifies as a lounge? How about groovy, Miami-inspired white couches, young professionals clearly brought in from the Land of Beautiful People and a martini list a mile long? Downstairs at Room 960 is all about being hip and knowing it.” This press snippet is exactly what lead me to a) call it the “pretty people lounge,” and b) know that I would hate it. I was right about at least one of the two.
It turns out that 9:30 is far too early to show your face at such a cool establishment. When we arrived – “we” being Mel, Estee, myself, Cara and Adam – we were the only people there. There were two bartenders, two bouncers, two DJs, and us. The totally crazy thing was – and by “crazy” I mean “annoying” – that the short DJ kept turning up the dance music to obscene levels. My teeth were actually chattering. I tried very hard to maintain some semblance of conversation with the law kids, but after a short period of time, my head was pulsating in time to the music and I wanted to attack the DJ with the heel of my shoe.
Estee put it perfectly when she said the DJ thought he was Paul Oakenfold himself. He was bouncing around, dancing, and driving his fist through the air in time to the music. You could just see that he was imagining a crowd of thousands gyrating to the sounds he was coaxing out of his turntable, very much like that all too out-of-place rave scene in the Matrix Reloaded movie (the one that is intercut with that truly awful sex scene with Neo and Trinity). The DJ was living up to that Hartford Magazine comment about “being hip and knowing it.”
Eventually we were joined by three more law kids: Mona, Amy, and Danielle/Rachel (I don’t know, my mind is a blank; all I remember is that she is from Yale and she already has it out for one of the law professors – oh, and she also eats grilled cheese). Since they had to pay a cover charge (somehow we got in without paying one), we decided to stay. Anyway, there were already other non-UConn-Law-School people there. In fact, there were even guys there with eight-inch popped collars who looked very much like they may still be in high school. By the time we left, I was still looking for the “pretty people” (you know, other than we hot babes that graced the popped collar crowd with our presence).
I think Mel had a good time. About halfway through her second drink, she was already a little toasty. And she was in her element, bringing all these people together to have a good time. (She also introduced quite a racy subject by way of The Sharper Image. I won’t explain it here, but you can use your imagination.)
We left around midnight to go find a diner. Estee and I were pretty tired and all the law kids had to study the following day so we couldn’t make it a late night. Not to mention the fact that we were in Hartford. Even the swank places close by one or two in the morning.
We were standing outside the door to Room 960, deciding what to do next, when Mel decided that the whole world would come to a crashing end if she did not receive the free shot our bartender, Melanie, offered her earlier. Estee ran back into the lounge after her, and arrived just in time to see Mel down an entire glass of vodka. Needless to say, Mel was done. With a capital D.
Yet she still offered to drive. Silly girl. As the designated driver for the evening (yeah, I know, can you believe it??!), I survived on Hype, the cool kids’ version of Red Bull. So I grabbed the keys away from her and began the long, slow trek back to the car, supporting Mel’s weight on my shoulder as she proclaimed how so-very-sober she was.
When we got back to the parking garage, the entrance we had used was now closed. Cara, Adam, and Estee waited with Mel, while I circled the block alone, looking for another way into the garage. Eventually, after what felt like a mile (hey, you try walking in high heels with blisters!), I found the one open doorway. I picked up Mel’s entourage and we drove to the Goldroc, a little diner located several blocks from Mel’s house, but only half a block from the hospital’s ambulance dropoff point. How convenient.
Mona and Danielle/Rachel/whomever joined us for a late night snack. I wish I could say that I remember the conversation, but most of the night was centered on law school talk and I had faded at least three hours before.
By the time we got back to Mel’s apartment, I wanted to die. So I just curled up on my little air mattress and closed my eyes, while Mel and Estee continued to chat and get ready for bed. I vaguely remember someone saying, “Oh look, Ryan’s trying to sleep,” as if their talking or the lights being on would really affect my ability to pass the heck out at that point.
Then there was nothing.
Until the alarm. 8AM felt like hell. It seriously felt as if I had consumed a fifth of vodka. I was dehydrated, my throat hurt, my head was pounding (I blame you, Mr. DJ!), and all I wanted to do was stay dead.
But we rallied, as we always do. And Estee and I were on the 9:30AM train, dammit.
It was a whirlwind tour, but I feel so lucky to have seen Estee’s new place and new kitten, and to see Mel’s new place and new school. Mostly, it was just pleasant to visit with my girlfriends. It is always far too long since I have seen you.
You remember, of course, how many financial difficulties Amtrak has had in recent years and all the discussions about the company filing bankruptcy. Clearly these scares have done little to convince them to work on their customer base – in the way of customer service.
I showed up at Union Station on Friday afternoon, shortly after work, and queued up to the Quiktrak machine to pick up my ticket. Having once made the trip from DC to Philadelphia on a regular basis, I am accustomed to the procedures (how to pick up your ticket quickly, where to go to wait for your train, sitting in your seat until the last possible moment when the Amtrak staff actually starts allowing people on the platform before cutting everyone who has been waiting in line for the past half hour). However, I quickly noticed that my train number wasn’t appearing in the departures list.
I flagged down an Amtrak employee, one of the guys wearing the blinding neon yellow crossing guard vests with the words “Amtrak staff” emblazoned across the back. The real implication of that vest is that the person wearing it should be helpful. So I told him that my train number was not appearing on the departures list and he looked at the ticket for a few moments before telling me that my ticket was for Saturday’s train to Hartford. I asked him how we could fix that and he walked me to the front of the long, long, LONG line of people waiting to talk to the Amtrak customer service staff. Then he told me I could go ask the first person in line if I could go next and he walked off.
Harrrumph.
So, with all the authority I can muster, I ask the first guy in line if I can go in front of him. I explain that I have a problem ticket and need to get on a train soon to be able to get to Connecticut any time this century. He says he has no problem with me jumping in front of him. Score!
Except that the second person in line, this nasty little blond girl (I’m getting to the reason why name-calling is totally appropriate), pipes up and expresses her opinion. She tells me that she too has a problem ticket and has already missed her train so she would not like me to jump ahead in line. I’m thinking to myself, yes, you’ve already missed your train, so now everyone else must miss their train too? You want to take your frustration out on other passengers? Way to pay it forward (insert unpleasant, unmentionable, not-so-very-nice word here).
Being the nice, not-so-inclined-to-get-the-attention-of-the-Amtrak-staff-by-causing-a-catfight kind of person that I am, I complied with the nasty little blond girl’s painfully obnoxious request and moved to the back of the line. At this point, I am really frustrated with the whole situation and the utter lack of human generosity that there is in this world. Or at least here in DC at five o’clock on a Friday.
The line moves almost as slowly as the line for my local post office (which, if I’ve never told you, is a really dull way to spend an hour of your life; even if you manage to get into line and there are only three people in front of you, you will be in line for no less than one hour – the inefficiency there is completely unfathomable). When I finally reach the front, I am greeted by one of your everyday, totally hateful Amtrak employees with attitude. I begin to explain that I have a problem ticket, but I don’t even get in my destination or request in before she interrupts, “All the trains are sold out for the day.” I try to request the time of the next earliest train out to Hartford and again I get, “All the trains are sold out for the day.” I patiently try to explain that I understand the words that are coming out of her mouth, but could she please look up the next available train time? “All the trains are sold out for the day.” Yes, lady, I GET IT. Now give me the ever-lovin’ earliest train time for tomorrow, you dumb, repetitive, ginormous pain in my tush!
Although I didn’t quite express my frustration with her in so colorful a way, she did eventually tell me that the earliest Hartford train I could get on was a 7:30AM train that left on Saturday morning and arrived mid-afternoon. I called Mel to confirm that this would be okay, and we both pretended that we weren’t totally disappointed with this arrangement. So I paid an extra $40 to switch my ticket.
Then I had an epiphany and called Estee to beg her to allow me to stay in her hot pad in NYC for the night. I checked the Quiktrak machine and found that there were at least four available trains out to New York Friday night. By available, I mean that they were still enabled on the screen and therefore could seat another passenger. So I jumped back into that mile-long line in front of the Amtrak counter.
After another eon spent in line, I end up with a very nice, amazing, super-fantastic, lovely, kind-hearted, generous, and totally my BFF-forever Amtrak employee. He must clearly see how frustrated I am by the whole Amtrak experience. Not only does he get me to New York on Friday night, he booked me on the same trains as Estee for Saturday morning and we were still able to get into Hartford by 9:30AM! And – yes, it does indeed get better! – he doesn’t charge me the fee for exchanging my ticket AND issues me a $17 voucher. In the end, I still get all of Saturday with Mel and I only paid an extra $20 for correcting my bonehead ticket.
The downside to all of this is that my train arrives in NYC at midnight. Since we all know how lovely a person Ryan becomes when she doesn’t get to sleep at her normally appointed bedtime (somewhere around the crack of sunset, according to some), there isn’t much guesswork involved in predicting Ryan’s ability to keep up with all the twenty-two year-old first year law students on Saturday.
I manage to make it to Estee’s (HUGE, GARGANTUAN, AMAZING, and HOLY COW! LOOK AT ALL THAT CLOSET SPACE!) new apartment before 1AM, where she is waiting for me with open arms and a wide smile. I cannot believe that we have not seen each other since our reunion in May of last year. But while things continue to change, some things always stay the same – we can always talk as though the time hasn’t passed us by.
I admired her (HUGE, GARGANTUAN, AMAZING, and HOLY COW! LOOK AT ALL THAT CLOSET SPACE!) place and then began to torment her eleven-week old kitten, this beautiful, little, gray, short-haired tiger cat. I throw balls of paper at her and try to dig her out from under the futon. My master plan of holding and cuddling the kitty fails, but Estee tells me that Motik (I won’t even pretend that I can spell it, but whatever it is, it means “sweetie” in Hebrew) is her name and that she is at wit’s end over her. Apparently, Motik was recently diagnosed with some kind of parasite by the vet, which means that Estee is constantly giving her medication. Furthermore, Estee came home to find the cat playing with her own feces in the litter box. So Estee is all OCD about washing her hands after every attempt to touch the cat (even if there is no fur to flesh contact) and we decide that Motik needs a new name – does anyone out there know the Hebrew word for (attention: any children out there should skip to the next paragraph to avoid the terribly not-so-nice word ahead) “shit-eater?” I don’t know about you, but I am convinced there must be a certain je ne sais quoi to the word and only the New York Jews would have any idea what Estee is saying.
We don’t stay up for long so we’re in our pajamas and in bed before you can say “New York minute.” Estee doesn’t allow Motik into her bedroom at night so I listen to the little jingle-ball attached to Motik’s collar as I drift off to sleep.
A few hours later, I jolt awake. My body is telling me that it is freezing (something about sleeping a mere feet away from the a/c window unit) and I can feel little Motik gnawing at my hair. Motik’s little jingle ball jingles as she drools on my head and then she moves to lie down on my crotch. What a sweet little kitty.
I get up, turn off the a/c, and then drift back to sleep.
Only to be awoken again in what feels like a few, short minutes. My alarm had been set for 5:30AM, but Estee was already up, showered, and running around in her best traveling clothes. And I thought I was the morning person.
So we get our things together (and this includes barricading the litter box so when Motik plays with her excrement, she can’t quite fling it all the way down the hall and into the kitchen) and head out the door. Estee is not feeling the subway so we grab a cab down to Penn Station. As if it cannot already be predicted, Estee already misses Motik. By the time we’re at the train, Estee has already cycled through all the pictures she has on her cell phone of her kitty.
I’m not much of a coffee person because my body reacts strangely to it. I get the shakes, my heart rate soars, I start to sweat profusely, and when I talk, I sound like the Micro Machines man. I used to think it was the caffeine, but I can drink caffeinated tea for hours on end and still never experience the same thing. So it must be something else. I can almost imagine a setup very much like a meth lab, where those little Columbian men roast the coffee beans and add that little special something (I’m imagining crack-cocaine) for an extra kick. It totally explains the massive amounts of people who are addicted to coffee.
All this to say that I headed straight for the Dunkin Donuts and bought myself a coffee. To mitigate the effects, I had them make it half decaf and I ordered a bagel.
Once aboard the train, Estee bravely fights exhaustion and listens to me drone on endlessly about the life and times of Ryan. By the time we get to New Haven, I am convinced that the breath coming out of my mouth is the elixir of life because Estee has not yet nodded off.
We switch to the shuttle train and I finally shut up. Estee is able to sleep for the forty or so minutes it takes to reach New Haven. It was the least I could do after making her wait up for me all through Friday night to the wee hours of Saturday (although she tells me that she was able to clean the apartment and do laundry while waiting).
Mel is waiting for us inside the microscopic Hartford train station, easily spotted in her (surprise, surprise) pink sweater. She whisks us away to the nearest McDonalds, where I haven’t eaten since I was ten. Mel, of course, just ate there last night for dinner.
Estee was finally to that point in the day when she could consume food so she ordered breakfast. Remembering how amorously I longed for McDonalds’ fries when I was a child, I thought I would order them – especially now that a small fry is on their dollar menu. Did anybody else out there know that McDonalds does not serve fries in the morning? What a rip-off. Disappointed, I ate a hash brown instead.
And then we were off to Hogwarts…I mean, University of Connecticut Law School. The school is beautiful, but at the same time it reminds me of those one-room school houses that you read about in your history texts. Mel told me that even the Law School library hosts classes, but there is only one usable, but tiny, room in the building. Of course, I imagine them all sitting amongst the books, crammed in between shelves, their laptops and case books littered across the floors and on top of bookcases. Oh so very 19th century of them. I wonder if they even have blackboards…
We met what seemed to be a million, all-too-eager, and all-too-happy twenty-something first-year law students in the parking lot. I kid you not when I say that one of them – a young twenty-two year old named Jon – serenaded Mel with an operatic rendition of the Happy Birthday song as soon as we climbed out of the car. Being the truly friendly person that I am, I told him to stop or we may have to kill him.
We walked around campus and took a lot of photos. Mel looked more than adorable taking pictures with her butt sticking out to California. It’s a look that I tried to capture on film, but was never quite quick enough. You will just have to imagine how awesome it was.So, the law students: apparently these kids are (nearly) all the students in Mel’s section. My understanding of law school is incomplete, but I absorbed something about incoming first year classes being separated into different sections and then taking all their courses together for the rest of the year. Law students don’t really meet anyone else in their class until their second year. Or something like that.
I believe there were ten of us gathered for the joy that is apple picking. (Let’s count, shall we? Mel, Estee, myself, Jon, Adam, Cara, Amy, Mike, Courtney, and Christophe. Yup, that’s ten.) Of the whole group, I was the only one that had ever been. I don’t know how this is even humanly possible. People were asking me how you pick apples and if it was okay to eat them off the tree. It was mind-blowing.Before we went to de-apple the trees, however, we were ready to partake of the farm’s maize maze. I am so old that I no longer bat an eyelash at an $8 entrance fee because $8, eight measly dollars?, will not even get you a standing room only ticket at a concert, it is so cheap. However, the law kids are still in that I-show-up-at-school-events-because-there’s-free-food stage of their lives so $8 is a hearty sum. Mel, Estee and I were the only ones to take the plunge.
The way the maize maze works is that you take with you a little sheet of questions and each time you reach a sign post, you read the question that coordinates with the number on the sign post and, if you answer correctly, you are given the proper direction in the maze to go. There are a number of different question sheets, each with a different theme. In light of Mel’s impending birthday, she chooses the question sheet and we end up with the “Corny” questions.
Having been through corn mazes before, I can say that this particular maize maze was pretty easy. There are not a lot of decision points and you can very quickly find that you have gone the wrong way when you make a bad decision. The maze at Davis’ Farm in Sterling, MA is built by a famous English maze-maker and I usually go there every year. It is far more challenging.
All the same, I think the maze was just long enough to make Estee and Mel thankful that they were out in wide, open, corn-free land again.
Our question sheet was 4.25”x5.5” so it fit six questions on it. When we got to sign post six, Estee and Mel danced Balki’s dance of joy. Hurrah!Except that we weren’t finished. We quickly discovered that there were questions printed on the back of the sheet as well. Thank god for that ivy league education.
By the time we actually did finish, we had learned such wonderful tidbits as a) there are an average of two ears of corn per stalk, b) cows are only fed the field corn variety of corn, and c) the tallest corn stalk ever recorded was 20’ tall. We totally earned those “I survived the corn maze!” stickers.
We picked up the law school kids and drove to the apple trees. We picked some very tasty Macoun and McIntosh apples. I spent a whopping 67¢ on three baby Macouns (that I would end up eating on the train ride home Sunday) and ate at least two Macouns and one McIntosh out in the fields. So the farmers only made about
50¢ on the dollar off of me. But that rate is better than the one they received from the law kids. Most of them just ate apples and didn’t buy anything.However, Jon, Mel’s adorable little law school friend who she adopted as a kid brother (of operatic Happy Birthday fame), bought a bushel of apples. I don’t know if he cooks, but I sure hope they don’t go to waste. Though he did mention something about sending some to his grandparents…
Post apple-eating goodness, we drove to the Southington Apple Harvest Festival. By the time we arrived, I was in bad need of a nap. A decades-long nap. So I bought myself another cup o’ joe, this one a pumpkin coffee. It was totally unlike the Starbucks or Caribou variety where they put enough syrup in their coffee to turn you into a walking mound of saccharine. The coffee beans were actually roasted with pumpkins so there was just a hint of pumpkin-y awesomeness. It rocked my socks off.
So the Apple Festival. It was quaint. It was parochial. There were teenage girls dressed like apples and a scarecrow contest. We had apparently just missed the bed race (where you take someone, throw them onto a bed with wheels, and run with them down the street until you and the bed pass the finish line), but we were totally in time for all the hand-sewn frilly dolls, tea cozies, bedazzled clothing, apples ensconced in ten tons of chocolate and candy, country signs, and a whole host of other crafts. The real steal of the day was the 50¢ slices of homemade apple pie. It took me back to a time I wasn’t even alive for, when we measured cost in coins instead of bills. You know, when your parents used to walk uphill – both ways – to school. It was glorious.There was a whole host of carnival rides, but at a one-block distance, they were much too far away to visit. I saw the ferris wheel just fine from my curbside seat, as I dug into another bite of apple pie.
We must have returned back from the Festival around five or six. You would have thought that we would be full from the apples, kettle corn, apple pie, hot dogs, and other such tasty yumminess that we consumed all day, but no. Estee, Mel and I required even more sustenance. So we hit the Prospect Café for dinner.
We laughed, we cried, we ate. We even talked about how Mel and Estee are secretly the love of my life. Or something truly heartwarming like that. What can I say? We’re girls.
When we got to Mel’s cavernous apartment, Estee and I decided that it was the perfect time for cake. I need to preface this story with the explanation of the cake. I pre-ordered this cake on Monday last week. It was a fabulous chocolate raspberry buttercream confection, exquisitely designed to tickle the chocolate fancy of our dear friend Mel, who suffers from an extreme E.L. Fudge addiction. I picked the confection up on Thursday, brought it to work on Friday, traveled with it to New York on Friday night, then accompanied it to Hartford on Saturday. By the time we spotted Mel’s adorable pink sweatshirt in the Hartford train station, it was still the happy, beautiful, chocolatey cake it was meant to be.
But then: the HORROR. We never went to Mel’s apartment before the day of apples. The cake. sat. in. the. car. for. EIGHT. hours.
When I pulled the cake out of the fridge after dinner, it was this goopy, sloppy, Alice in Wonderland mess. We could just make out where the icing that used to be a delicate little rose was. All that care, all that advance planning, and now, NOW, the cake was a mess.
Mel lied beautifully as she laughed and said it was the best birthday cake ever. We put candles in it and sang, and then called Eric to have him sing us Journey (Eric, we hope your roommate really doesn’t hate you because of it). It was one of those perfect moments that happen because nothing went perfectly but you’re surrounded by truly amazing friends.
Then we napped. Or more precisely: Estee napped. With the softest blanket on earth that I am convinced is made from puppies and kittens.
Mel and I staid up, with Mel knitting (can you see it now? The most domestic Chinese-American girl ever, with knitting needles and pink yarn? It is oh-so-pinch-your-cheeks adorable). Eventually, Mel took a fifteen-minute power nap and I started to figure out how to use a flat iron on my hair. I wrestled and wrangled with the damn thing, nearly strangling Estee at one point in my efforts, and had some mildly straighter hair as a result. Then Mel breezes in, all glowing from her itty-bitty nap, and just glides her curling iron through her hair and, ta-da!, just like that, her hair is bouncing, shiny, and all sorts of va-va-voom. Her hair belongs in a shampoo commercial, I tell you.
Around 9:30PM, we arrive, all beautified, at Room 960, Hartford’s supposedly most swank lounge. According to Hartford Magazine, “What, may you ask, qualifies as a lounge? How about groovy, Miami-inspired white couches, young professionals clearly brought in from the Land of Beautiful People and a martini list a mile long? Downstairs at Room 960 is all about being hip and knowing it.” This press snippet is exactly what lead me to a) call it the “pretty people lounge,” and b) know that I would hate it. I was right about at least one of the two.
It turns out that 9:30 is far too early to show your face at such a cool establishment. When we arrived – “we” being Mel, Estee, myself, Cara and Adam – we were the only people there. There were two bartenders, two bouncers, two DJs, and us. The totally crazy thing was – and by “crazy” I mean “annoying” – that the short DJ kept turning up the dance music to obscene levels. My teeth were actually chattering. I tried very hard to maintain some semblance of conversation with the law kids, but after a short period of time, my head was pulsating in time to the music and I wanted to attack the DJ with the heel of my shoe.
Estee put it perfectly when she said the DJ thought he was Paul Oakenfold himself. He was bouncing around, dancing, and driving his fist through the air in time to the music. You could just see that he was imagining a crowd of thousands gyrating to the sounds he was coaxing out of his turntable, very much like that all too out-of-place rave scene in the Matrix Reloaded movie (the one that is intercut with that truly awful sex scene with Neo and Trinity). The DJ was living up to that Hartford Magazine comment about “being hip and knowing it.”
Eventually we were joined by three more law kids: Mona, Amy, and Danielle/Rachel (I don’t know, my mind is a blank; all I remember is that she is from Yale and she already has it out for one of the law professors – oh, and she also eats grilled cheese). Since they had to pay a cover charge (somehow we got in without paying one), we decided to stay. Anyway, there were already other non-UConn-Law-School people there. In fact, there were even guys there with eight-inch popped collars who looked very much like they may still be in high school. By the time we left, I was still looking for the “pretty people” (you know, other than we hot babes that graced the popped collar crowd with our presence).
I think Mel had a good time. About halfway through her second drink, she was already a little toasty. And she was in her element, bringing all these people together to have a good time. (She also introduced quite a racy subject by way of The Sharper Image. I won’t explain it here, but you can use your imagination.)
We left around midnight to go find a diner. Estee and I were pretty tired and all the law kids had to study the following day so we couldn’t make it a late night. Not to mention the fact that we were in Hartford. Even the swank places close by one or two in the morning.
We were standing outside the door to Room 960, deciding what to do next, when Mel decided that the whole world would come to a crashing end if she did not receive the free shot our bartender, Melanie, offered her earlier. Estee ran back into the lounge after her, and arrived just in time to see Mel down an entire glass of vodka. Needless to say, Mel was done. With a capital D.
Yet she still offered to drive. Silly girl. As the designated driver for the evening (yeah, I know, can you believe it??!), I survived on Hype, the cool kids’ version of Red Bull. So I grabbed the keys away from her and began the long, slow trek back to the car, supporting Mel’s weight on my shoulder as she proclaimed how so-very-sober she was.
When we got back to the parking garage, the entrance we had used was now closed. Cara, Adam, and Estee waited with Mel, while I circled the block alone, looking for another way into the garage. Eventually, after what felt like a mile (hey, you try walking in high heels with blisters!), I found the one open doorway. I picked up Mel’s entourage and we drove to the Goldroc, a little diner located several blocks from Mel’s house, but only half a block from the hospital’s ambulance dropoff point. How convenient.
Mona and Danielle/Rachel/whomever joined us for a late night snack. I wish I could say that I remember the conversation, but most of the night was centered on law school talk and I had faded at least three hours before.
By the time we got back to Mel’s apartment, I wanted to die. So I just curled up on my little air mattress and closed my eyes, while Mel and Estee continued to chat and get ready for bed. I vaguely remember someone saying, “Oh look, Ryan’s trying to sleep,” as if their talking or the lights being on would really affect my ability to pass the heck out at that point.
Then there was nothing.
Until the alarm. 8AM felt like hell. It seriously felt as if I had consumed a fifth of vodka. I was dehydrated, my throat hurt, my head was pounding (I blame you, Mr. DJ!), and all I wanted to do was stay dead.But we rallied, as we always do. And Estee and I were on the 9:30AM train, dammit.
It was a whirlwind tour, but I feel so lucky to have seen Estee’s new place and new kitten, and to see Mel’s new place and new school. Mostly, it was just pleasant to visit with my girlfriends. It is always far too long since I have seen you.
