more adventures in long island this weekend.

friday i hopped the q to manhattan fairly early, since gundam was getting out of work at two for staying until eight earlier in the week. it was really gorgeous out in the morning - on the cool side and windy and kind of overcast. it got warmer out later but not terribly hot.

before i picked up gundam i took the train up to herald square and then walked over to the hotel my parents are going to be staying at in october - my mom got a room so cheaply that she wanted to make sure it wasn’t a really skeezy dump or something. turns out the hotel itself is just being renovated so they’re giving everyone discounts; it was actually a really nice place. my parents are going to be in the city for another show of my dad’s sculpture, and i guess i’m actually going to be working the show with them as an exhibitor and stuff this time. so that should be fun.

i got to gundam’s office mad early, but it’s a fairly casual work environment so they don’t really mind me hanging out. i mostly draw on the whiteboards until he’s ready to leave. we got out of there around two and walked down to the post office so he could mail some stuff for torny, then walked down to st mark’s and hit a few stores. we weren’t really hungry so we didn’t bother actually going to lunch/dinner.

around four we walked back up towards union square and went to forbidden planet, where gundam was really sweet and got me some aliens graphic novels, then went to see tim burton’s planet of the apes at the theater across the street. i’ve heard a lot of bad things about it - either people think it was too much like the original or too different. personally, i really liked it. we were very much in the mood to just soak up a couple of hours of gorgeous tim burton visuals and check out helena bonham carter and tim roth as apes, so it’s not like we had these towering expectations. it’s not like i’m never going to watch the original again now, or something, but i still really enjoyed it.

after the movie we headed back to gundam’s office for a bit so he could drop off some stuff, then took the q back to my house and were lazy geeks for the rest of the night. can’t go wrong.

saturday we ended up waking up really early, and gundam went out to get us breakfast. we ate cereal in bed and watched saturday morning cartoons - digimon, spiderman, etc. yes, we’re in our twenties. shut up. we lazed around for a while - went out for cigarettes and chinese food but mostly just read and played dreamcast. eventually we showered and dressed and all that and started getting ready for batcave.

batcave was pretty cool; i hadn’t been in a couple of weeks so it was nice to see everyone again. straylight and d_mambo from #penny-arcade were there, so that was cool. without even planning it, it ended up that i was wearing my transformers autobot shirt, and gundam was wearing his decepticon shirt. so that was sort of geekishly cute, i thought. i ran into voltaire, who was appreciative of my shirt, and of course all the other usual people were there too. matty, killah, al, dino, brian, gerard, etc etc. we didn’t end up staying too late - we left around two thirty or three - but i think a good time was had by all.

we ended up taking the train back to long island with matty and killah and al instead of going back to brooklyn, what with gundam’s superior a/c and everything. i slept most of the way home but woke up in time for a flock of drunken winners to recognize gundam from years ago and sit down with us. that was, um, fun. we eventually got home around four and went to bed.

sunday i decided not to bother going back to brooklyn and just spent the day with gundam in long island. we woke up to carmine asking us did we want bagels, so we got up and had really yummy fresh bagels and oj. we weren’t quite ready to really get up yet, so we climbed back in bed and watched the fifth element until steve asked did we want to go to a barbecue at his mom’s to celebrate his twenty eighth birthday. and of course we did, because steve is rad. so we got dressed and piled into steve’s car, and headed off to his mom’s house, after a brief stop for code red slurpees at 7-11. steve’s mom turns out to be really nice in a classically mom way, and we sprawled in her nice shady back yard for most of the afternoon with assorted siblings and aunts and dogs and cats. what with the whole vegetarianism thing i wasn’t really down with the burgers and hot dogs, but i made a pasta salad sandwich and all was well. steve has this really adorable six month old niece who was completely fascinated by my bracelets - we’re convinced she’s going to grow up to be a raver. there was even a carvel ice cream cake which of course reminded me of snarf. so that was fun. we headed home around seven and watched aliens movies until we fell asleep.

monday morning we got up ass early, had leftover bagels, and headed into the city. i slept on the lirr, woke up at penn, walked to herald square, and then slept all the way home. hooray.