Friday, February 24, 2006
To Boston And Back

Since I've dragged my arse and overpacked bag back home, I've managed to find the time to tweeze my eyebrows, shower and slather baby oil all over me because the winds in Boston were so bitterly cold that they managed to dry out my skin through my layers of jeans, knee socks, tank tops, sweaters and even permeate the cheap (but beautiful-from-far-away) peacoat from Old Navy. Oh, and I massaged whatever life is left back into my feet because our plan to budget well and WALK ALL OVER THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS left the soles of my feet seven layers of skin lighter, swollen to a half shoe size bigger and my ankles achey and sore like I was retaining my own weight in water.

So I'm back and in full out whiny mode as you can tell, but despite all the complaints, I sure do miss The Trip and am going through some serious Annia*-Withdrawal. 137 straight hours with her is apparently not enough. We're actually in for at least another 48 hours because she's coming back to the Loo with me on Sunday aft to spend not one, but TWO nights at my place. (We're going to see Metric! w00t!)

I can't even find a map big enough to show you everything that we managed to see, do and eat in the five or so days that we were there, but lemme tell you this: If you spend five days and four nights in a city and only take the subway twice a day (to and from 'home') and WALK EVERYWHERE else, you WILL see EVERYTHING. Annia and I aren't the travel-so-we-can-party-and-drink types. We're not (at least, she isn't - I did have a beer at the original Cheers bar(!!) because I was cranky from all the walking and it was damn good enough to put the mojo back into my feet and make me all better again). We're the let's-get-brouchures and plan-our-days and go-on-tours-of-campuses-museums-and-galleries and schedule-as-many-things-as-possible for us to see and do types. We are (I spent hours online the night before we left looking up places and things to see/do/eat and ended up with a four page list, AND we sat down in Quincy Market on our first night for a full hour at a table covered in papers, maps, lists and brochures that a local couple giggled at us and added even more things to our lists - thanks!). It was a full five days of good ol' fashioned, wholesome fun. Laced with some lesbianism.

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So I'm just going to put this out there: I hate Facebook. Well, I guess I don't really have all that much against it, other than the fact that I despise MSN Spaces and MySpace because I'm a Blog Snob and I liken Facebook to things like that. Basically, I think it's dumb and it's another time waster to add to the list of things that waste our time and it's another excuse for people to post pretty pictures of themselves and all these friends/people in drunken stupors at parties to prove how cool and sociable they are so that everyone else can look and coo over them and leave messages on their Walls, of all things. < / b i t c h > Yes, I can totally see how it's like a blog, but I told ya, I'm a snob. Besides, the very name of the thing implies that the face is important as opposed to a name or other textual contact information (ie: Facebook vs. Address Book), and I choose blogs based on the writing content, not on the physical attractiveness of the blogger behind it all. It's superficial. I don't like things that are superficial. Boy, I bet I'll get some heat from fellow-student-Facebook-users about the snottiness of all that, but hey, I stick by my pre-judgmental bitchiness. Maybe one day I'll crack and create an account, but it'll probably be a social experiment where I'll mock the whole concept of it all by posting photos with my face blue-dotted out - take THAT - but I really don't even see that happening. You wanna get in touch with me? How's about you email me or -GASP- pick up the damn phone and -GASP- call me.
< / b i t c h i e r >

Anyhoo.

So Annia is on Facebook (but I still like her). And so is her elementary school friend Jen. Who happens to go to Harvard. (Now, HARVARD is a huge deal to Canadian gals like me, but I'm not going to go, Wow, I totally know someone who knows someone who goes to HARVARD! because we all went to the same high school for two years before Jen went to the States so whee, I knew her too!) So Annia gets in touch with Jen via Facebook and Jen, being the wonderful gal she is, offers us a place to stay while we're in town in her dorm at Harvard (FREE! HARVARD!) and of course, we accept. Sweet deal. Facebook now has one redeeming quality: It gives regular schmoes like me and Annia access to one of the most prestigious schools IN THE WORLD. You all now have my permission to create accounts and enjoy it.

So we get there and Jen's super and her roomies are super. At first. Then we kind of realize that while we're all nice and civil to each other, they (the roomies) don't particularly...like...us. Which is fine. I mean, it's no big deal that we're sitting right there watching the Olympics because yeah sure, you can play Beer Pong loudly beside us and turn on the music to drown out the commentary and stand right in front of the screen, because you know, we don't need to watch that. That's cool, we cool. But then we kind of realize that maybe...they think that we're...a...couple. You know, a couple of LOVERS. Which in itself is fine too because there's nothing wrong with me and her being lovahs, which WE'RE NOT, until it opened up a whole Can of Awwwkwaaard which turned into five days and four nights of Awwwkwaaard.

Okay, okay, so I may have had my head resting in her lap while watching figure skating, and so we may have shared one futon and one blanket and one pillow, and we may have shared the bathroom in the morning to pee and get ready and okay, so they may have heard me call her Dear. But what they didn't see was the romantic stroll along a lit-up-tree-lined walkway, all the making out and getting nekkid underneath that one fleecey blanket, so really, how could they have known?

So yeah, it's really just a case of We Thought That THEY THOUGHT That We're Gay, so we could have been totally off our rockers, but hey, it led to a whole bunch of laughs on the subway on Sunday morning and five days worth of They're going to stone us! And then burn us at the stake! jokes. (This is not meant to be offensive in any way! We were just being our regular dumb selves.)

So:
Facebook getting us to Harvard: +1
...which led people to think that we're gay: -1
...which led to people staring when we're laughing like drunken lunatics: -1
...but we're having a helluva time anyway: +1
Facebook still = 0
Ha!

And um, that's how I managed to tie in lesbianism to the rest of this already way too long post.

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More funny-type stories and accompanying photos to come once I'm back with my beloved computer and camera cables (yeah, I'm totally in the market for a laptop soon). Mind you, the stories are probably only funny to us because they're all You Totally Had To Be There Moments - that, and we're just stupidly crazy and laugh at anything when we're together. It's what girlfriends are for, no? In between the guffaws on the streets of Boston, we managed to squeeze in talk about old high school friends, the current state of relationships, the ridiculousness of Facebook, plans for the future, the psychology behind blogging, tea, politics, history, fashion, charitable acts and landscape architecture. Yeah, that's right, we're cool. She's my best bud and I'm her premium homeslice and we wouldn't have it any other way. To my darling Annia, congrats and thanks for putting up with and surviving a couple nights of my crankiness (easily fixable with chocolate) and my whining when my feet hurt due to my stupid decision to bring just one pair of heels (feed me beer in this case). There's no other person girl that I'd rather have considered my boyfriend.

En route to home...
This is so sad. It's past midnight and we're sitting in a deserted bus station in Albany, huddled over a half-empty box of post-Valentine's Day discount chocolates.

Yeah. Please don't tell people how we live.


*You may remember Annia from other entries way back during the summer of 2003 or you can just visit this one for links to all of them. She's also the patootie that Alex and I made this monstrosity of a gingerbread house with. There's a ton of fun and awesome things that we've done since we decided it would be neat if we were friends again, but I've been bad at documenting them here. She's got tons of funny entries and photos over at her blog, but I'm not allowed to link to it. Xanga. Freshmesh. GO! Oh, and if you see any photos of me and a cute Asian chick with glasses, that's her.