I Go, I hCome Back Again

Tired. Sore. Loopy. God knows, probably malnourished too.

I had a lovely weekend.

New York is, somehow, less intimidating in person. There's an awful lot of it, though. It's not the kind of place I now could have a go at alone. Considering the labyrinthine routes one takes just getting into the damn subway station, I can see myself quickly giving in to a gibbering disorientation very quickly. But anyway.

Busses are a really fine way of getting places if you're not wealthy or in a terrible hurry; they're about as comfortable as anything can be that has lots of people packed into a small space moving very fast. However, and this is critical: PEE BEFOREHAND. Do not be reassured that the Greyhound has a little bathroom in the back. If you're anything like me, trying to relax the requisite muscles while simultaneously hanging on for dear life as the vehicle pitches like a ship in a gale is well-nigh impossible. Yeah, I know you can just sit down, but at that point the loss to your dignity is just as bad as the motion problem, or has the same effect at any rate, at least if you're as neurotic as I am about such indelicacies. So it goes.

Anyway.

Spyder is about as cool as a person should be allowed to be, which isn't exactly surprising, but is very nice nonetheless. I wound up having one of those days where you walk around having to remind yourself that you actually haven't known who you're hanging out with for years and years. Easily already one of my favorite people, and fun in that easy way that I value highly in a friend; we spent all day doing ... not much of anything except going to cafes and comic book stores and walking the streets of the city, and I had such an amazingly good time that the day just flew. All of which more or less goes to show that my theory that smart, talented tough-chick artists are not a thing my life can have too much of has not been disproven.

(And while I'm on a roll counting my blessings, a side note is due my lovely wife, not just for being a smart cool tough chick herself, but also for being the kind of person who doesn't blink at the thought of me gallivanting around a city many miles away with another one. And for being the sort of spouse who, when I come home and she asks me, "Is she cute?" I get to say "Yes," and there are no Consequences. I mention this mostly because the memory is still all too vivid, despite the intervening years, of previous circumstances with an ex who shall be protected by anonymity, wherein there would have been a number of Consequences, one of which probably would have been my never ever going to New York alone in the first place. And that would've been the reasonable part. Ah, something too much of this. In any case, thank you, sweetheart. Being trusted is a beautiful and loving thing, and don't think I value it lightly.)

I got back on the bus at Port Authority last night at 11, realizing that about twenty-four hours had gone by bookended by bus stations and that I'd been awake for most of them. I listened to the last handful of tracks on Disc Alpha of All Dolled Up Like Christ and promptly fell asleep (and let me tell you, "Lucifer Over London" is damned surreal as lullabies go, and not for the faint of heart), waking up just in time to arrive at Union Station a handful of hours later. I came home at almost exactly four, to the reassuring sight of Matt's enormous shoes under the coffee table - Stacy's always happier to not have to sleep in the apartment alone - and my body, which I had pummeled into submission all day by making it walk more than it had in a very, very long time, scored a final and decisive victory. I slept long and well.

And I later saw the other side of 41K on the novel. Making it a kind of banner couple of days all around.

Three-day week up ahead, which always makes Sundays feel less depressing somehow. On the other hand, it's nearly Thanksgiving already, and that just feels wrong. Somewhere in there, I had a November. I'm going to have to request some written reports of it afterwards, just to find out what the hell happened.