The devil is in the details

World traveller

It was quite the weekend. I started off with some travel trouble-I was stuck in Dulles for about 3 hours longer than I was supposed to be there, since my flight was delayed. It was okay except for the whole no wireless access in Dulles thing, and the fact that I had to spend the time in Terminal G. At Dulles, G apparently stands for ghetto...it is sort of like a converted shack with shitty heat. I made it to the hotel though, so it was all good. I was a little freaked out, because I had planned on doing a little shopping in Durham before everyone else got there, but I was stuck in Dulles instead. Shock of all shocks, I managed to find most of what I needed in the Durham Kroger, so it worked out. Other thing that I learned during this part of the trip: there is a lot more to Durham than I thought. Whole sections that I was unaware of. This means that a: I was very clueless about my environment as an undergrad or b:A whole other section of the city appeared overnight. I prefer option b, so that is what I'll believe.

Had a GREAT time Friday night watching Duke beat UVa at Satty's while eating lots of yummy pizza and drinking yummy beer. Then we played PhotoHunt, where we reset the top scores and generally got to feeling like it was old times. The only problem on Friday (and it was actually a problem that happened THREE separate times that day) was that we had to wait for unending amounts of times for cabs. I learned that perhaps I will have to live in a large city for the rest of my life solely because I'm not patient enough to wait very long for cabs. How do cab companies survive when they take half an hour to show up after you call? Unbelieveable.

Saturday was super fun too. We had a good time at the bridal shower pretending to be grownups. Duke won again and I got to walk around a cool mall. All in all, the best part of the whole experience was that I got to see old friends who I hadn't seen in a while. I miss them (you guys) and I wish that I could see you all more often (well, except for the whole mocking me at Satty's thing....) Sometimes I think that maybe I should have stayed in the south (and not only when I miss my friends. Also when it snows here, which is about every 5 minutes.)

Yesterday was kind of crazy-I tried to standby onto earlier flights and ended up hanging out in Dulles (again) most of the day. At least I didn't have to hang out in Terminal Ghetto. While bouncing around Dulles trying to get to Boston, I hung out with this guy who is sort of my polar opposite, but we were being kind of flirty, mostly because we had lots of time to kill. It was kind of funny--he was Mr. Earthy Crunchy, while I am, ummmmmm, not. The part that was really interesting was that he seemed really curious, intelligent, well-read, etc., but he was really ignorant about HIV/AIDS, and he spent a good two hours asking me questions about what HIV/AIDS and vaccines were. It was good for him to find stuff out (it took a while, but I also finally explained to him that he sounded silly when he talked about doing certain things for enzyme health, when enzymes are actually inside of cells. Then we talked about what he could do for cell health) and it was good for me to realize that I can't always assume that people understand what I think ought to be common knowledge. Great line from Mr. Crunchy Granola "You know, before I talked to you, I thoght that condoms rock, because they let people enjoy sex for sex and not worry so much. Now, I think that condoms rock even more, and I am going to start telling all of my friends how important they are." (Look at me, changing the world little by little.) I had another semi-enlightening conversation with the cab driver that drove me from my hotel room in Durham to the airport. I don't know what got into me, but I thought strangers were really interesting yesterday.

Today was a relatively busy day getting little crappy administrative details done. Tomorrow I have the experiment day from hell, so don't expect anything. Oh, today I also set up lots and lots of NCAA tournament pools, but I haven't made any picks yet. I really can't get behind Duke as a number 1 seed--we just aren't worthy of it. Oh well. I won't be surprised when Kentucky beats us.

All in all, it's been an interesting few days. Lots of alcohol, lots of fun, and lots of chatting with old friends and meeting new people (who are generally somehow related to old friends.) All of the old friend/new people-ness resulted in my being asked about what I want to do in the future a whole bunch, and the conversations led me to talk about a couple of issues that nag at me but that I never talk about. The whole thing has put me into a bit of a pensive mood (it is readily apparent that all of the things that I really want in life are incompatible), so you may be getting some more deep stuff soon.

posted by Immunegirl @ 10:04 PM