Seven of Books

Tuesday:
from the Nunnery
to the Famous Carroll Street Cafe *
to the airport **
to Philadelphia ***
to Boston
to a shuttle
to my father's car
to my parents' home

* I was spotted at the cafe by Cara, whom you'll remember from earlier. Coincidentally, this was her last day in Atlanta - she was moving to Boston the following morning. We exchanged numbers.

** Moments before takeoff, the gentleman in the seat next to mine wordlessly took hold of my seatbelt and ever-so-gently tightened it for me. This, it turns out, was a mistake; he thought it was his seatbelt, not mine.

*** As I was boarding, I asked the flight attendant where I could hang my suit:

Flight Attendant: You can hang it right here.
Sabitathica: Oh, thanks.
FA: Just make sure you don't forget it when you deplane.
Sabitathica: (looks at him)
FA: I know what you're going to say next: "I won't."
Sabitathica: I won't.
FA: Ha! Famous last words...

And so I would like to suggest that flight attendants (or anybody who is even remotely associated with air-travel) be banned from saying such things as "famous last words," or from using any similar phrases which effectively amount to prophesying my imminent doom.

~~~~~~~

Wednesday:
awake at 06:45
to my grandmother's wake *
to the funeral mass
to the burial
to my parents' home
to the reception
to my parents' home
to my father's car (with my wonderniece)
to Logan airport
to Philadelphia
to Atlanta **
to my car
to the Nunnery
to wine and reacclimatization with L.

* On Monday the hospice called my uncle to update him on my grandmother's condition. They (lied and) said they'd just checked on her, that she was fine - alive and well - looking good, etc. Of course, she'd passed away two days prior. Apparently they hadn't gotten the memo.

** Making four planes in under 36 hours. As of today I've been on 15 planes so far in 2008. Have I mentioned how much I dislike air travel?

Fun facts I learned from the in-flight edutainment movie-mercial:
1. Ninety percent of the country's lobsters come from New England;
2. Fenway Park opened in 1912, the same week the Titanic went down;
3. Paul Revere's house is the oldest wooden building in Boston.


The moon was out, nearly full (actually waxing slightly gibbous), and kept me company on the final leg of my travels:

~~~~~~~

Love is all you need

My mother's mother passed away on Saturday.

I'm flying to Boston today, returning tomorrow.

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This morning I dropped L off at the airport before heading to the famous Carroll Street Cafe for breakfast.

Strangely, Rashid was there - the cafe was empty except for the two of us so I sat and we talked and ate together.

Charleston: part 2

Sunday morning we breakfasted and brushed our teeth and rode around town on the complementary bikes provided by the Inn. Bike riding is so much more fun than walking...

My sweet ride:


L's ride had a comely basket between her handlebars.

Wardrobe shopping for L at Urban Outfitters where I planted myself in the changing room and offered fashion opinions before heading back to the beautiful beach at Sullivan's Island.

The beach was a total stunner in the daytime and again relatively deserted. We played in water and laid on sand.


As a mathematician I'd feel remiss if I neglected to point out that, in the grand calculus of vacations, beaches=good times. Squared, yo.

And there was a sweet lighthouse which is always good to see.


The previous night the lighthouse was like the Eye of Sauron, sinister and majestic, sweeping the land for trespassers and Shirelings. In the naked light of day it was somewhat less sinister - in fact it looked as though it might have been made of Legos. And in the hierarchy of sinisterness, Sauron trumps Legos...


Now playing, Love is a Losing Game by the tragic Amy Winehouse.

Charleston: part 1

On Friday L and I drove to Charleston, South Carolina for a fourth of July getaway. We prepared for the 5 1/2 hour car ride with some creative reading material and a bulging iPod.

Along the way we stopped for dinner at a chain restaurant and found ourselves caught up in a sad comedy of errors. Our waitress was weeded and overwhelmed (even though the restaurant wasn't particularly busy), and her manager's apology was socially awkward.

Restaurant Manager: How's everything tonight?
Sabitathica and L: (lying) Fine thanks.
RM: Good, good... (he grows quiet)
Sabitathica & L: (waiting)
RM: So, are you, um...
Sabitathica & L: (waiting)
RM: (falls silent and stares distantly into the space between Sabitathica & L)
Sabitathica & L: (look at each other)
RM: Is your... um.
Sabitathica & L: (look back at RM)
RM: Are you the people who haven't received their appetizer yet?
Sabitathica: Yes.
RM: Because I didn't know if it was maybe that other table.
Sabitathica: No, it's us.
RM: Oh, okay, because I wasn't sure.
Sabitathica & L: (look at each other again)
RM: Heh, well, what happened was, um, apparently the kitchen dropped it on the floor...
Sabitathica: Oh.
RM: And, heh, yeah, well we didn't think you'd want to eat it after that...
Sabitathica: (looks at RM)
RM: Heh... so, yeah...

In the alternate ending to this dialog, this is the moment when I stood up and half-nelsoned the manager into promising to attend a customer relations training seminar.

We changed hotel rooms three (3) times on Friday night before we finally settled on one. Does this make us high-maintenance? Aaron, the desk clerk, assured us it did not. But then, his nametag boldly claimed he was the Kwisatz Haderach, so I'm not sure how much weigh to give to his opinion.

We took photographs and drank EVIL wine. A very fun night.

~~~~~~~

Next morning we left the hotel and moved to the Cannonboro Inn, a carefully furnished bed and breakfast L found for us on Ashley Ave.

~~~~~~~

Having settled in, we explored Charleston:

~~~~~~~

Episode 12b: How to recognize different trees from quite a long way away. Number 1, the Larch...

It began to rain, so we lounged in the b & b until the weather passed, then headed to E. Bay Street and walked the pier:

Dinner at Social, which has a good wine selection (I had the 2005 Domaine Montpertuis Cuvée Counoise from southern France) and a tasty crème brûlée.

After dinner we drove to the beach on Sullivan's Island. It was late - approaching midnight - and the shore was deserted except for a group of girls hunting for hermit crabs.

Metaltainment

Daniel Johnston was excellent. He played the most convincing version of I Saw Her Standing There I've ever heard (or, more convincing than I've heard from any band which doesn't already happen to be the Beatles. The Beatles were fucking amazing.). And he encored with True Love Will Find You In the End, which was beautiful. I love that song. It channels his innocence and frames his naiveté.

He was more competent than I expected, and funny, too. He told the audience about a dream he'd had where he was arrested for attempting to commit suicide, a crime for which he was sentenced to death.

With archetypal depth and irony, he didn't want to meet death against his will and he mimicked his dream-self for us, crying out "no! nooooo!"

~~~~~~~

Rashid texted me over the weekend that I had to see Wall-E so after LBC Monday I went to the theater with him and J.

Wall-E is a ton of fun and, believe it or not, 2001-esque. Kubrick references were made throughout, some of them explicit, some more subtle. Very fun. I never met a Pixar film I didn't like.

Sabitathica's official assestimate: A film you can feel good about feeling good about.

In front of Wall-E was my new least-favorite trailer - for a movie called Beverly Hills Chihuahua. You can watch it here if you're so inclined. Which you shouldn't be. I'm not kidding. You've been warned...

You: But, Sabitathica. It doesn't have to be of high quality: it's for kids. It's not for adults.
Sabitathica: Shut up.

~~~~~~~

Wednesday night was Iron Man with Jennifer, where Robert Downey Jr. flexed his hella-charisma. And as usual, there was post-film debriefing time next door at the Righteous Room with several Highland Gaelic Ales.

Strangely, I have endured no small amount of grief concerning Wall-E and Iron Man. I've talked with several people who would have me believe that seeing these films is proof that I have terrible taste and fail at life.

It's true that most comic-book movies are insulting and sloppily made (cf, the ridiculous X-Men and the retarded and disastrous Spiderman), but they're not all going to be that way. Patterns evolve, and the good times, hopefully, aren't genre-specific.

Opeth are playing a song about that very thing right now.

~~~~~~~

Margaritas last night with Cassandra, who looked at me like I was retarded and sloppily-made when I mentioned I'd seen Wall-E and Iron Man.

La Fonda is good.