A Couple of Squares

Last night my flight was delayed significantly because first the flight crew was late getting in from their previous flight, and then the plane was missing a medical kit so that had to be replaced.  So I got in really late, and then sat on the couch vegging and watching TV.  At 3:00 AM the Disney Channel movie "Brink!" came on.  This was bad, since I wanted to go to bed and "Brink!" is my absolute favorite Disney Channel/TV movie of all time.  I watched the beginning of it, but decided to go to bed since I needed rest and TiVO'd the movie for future viewing.

This morning I got to sleep in a bit, which was AMAZING, then I went to Union Square to meet up with Nicole and Matthew, who were having lunch with Matthew's friend Peter, an NYU student.  I also went to return a book to Barnes & Noble (the extra cash was a big relief for my fraught nerves).  So, Matthew, Nicole, and Peter come into the Barnes & Noble after a quite extensive waiting period, and it turns out that Matthew's church friend Peter is this guy who came on the Harvard-Westlake Edinburgh trip in 2005 (he went to New Roads, but the wife of the program head, Mr. Schrode, was a teacher of his).

We hung out in the book signing/readings area of the B&N because there were a whole bunch of chairs there which was nice, especially since it was raining out.  Then Matthew and Nicole headed back to Princeton, Peter headed back to NYU, and I headed back to my apartment.

I hung out in my apartment for a bit, watched about half of "Brink!," then my friend Jayson called.  He was touring the NBC studios with a group from his school, UPenn, and is staying in my apartment tonight.  He called to let me know he was done with his tour, but it was much earlier than I'd expected him to call.  I headed out and walked to Bloomingdales to return a bra (mostly for the money but also because I'd come to the conclusion that it was unnecessary and I didn't need it for anything specific at the moment since I don't wear a lot of strapless dresses), then tried to take the N or R to Times Square to meet Jayson at Rockefeller Center.  However, the N and R are all weird for a week or so, and I ended up taking the 4 to Grand Central and then the S to Times Square.

I walked to Rock Center, met up with Jayson, and we walked around Times Square for a bit.  We tried to get in for dinner at Bubba Gump, but the line was 45 min. and nowhere else was much better, so we went to the Marriott Marquis hotel and hung out in their lounge thing (and had to buy two VERY expensive glasses of coke to do that!) for a while.  Then we rode the awesome glass elevator up and down (one of my favorite Times Square activities, as sad as that sounds, although Jayson conceded that it was pretty fun -- "like a ride").

We went back to Bubba Gump and the wait was still 40 minutes long, so as a joke (which we'd been talking about in the lounge thing) I go "does it help if my dad helped found the restaurant?"  This is actually true, while my dad was working at Paramount he helped found the Bubba Gump restaurant chain and then acted as chairman.  You can read about it on his wikipedia page HERE.  Apparently, it did help, since they let us go right up.  I'm still laughing about it a little.

Then we wandered around Times Square a little, exploring the Toys R Us, the M&Ms store, and the Hershey's store.  Once again, I got hit on by some guy passing stuff out in Times Square.  This time, he asked "are you two together?" to which we replied "no!!!," then he offered me his arm and said "you can go with me then."  I said, "Sorry, I have a boyfriend," but he then asked what I was doing hanging out with Jayson.  We both virtually simultaneously responded "brother!"  Then we came back to the apartment and now we're watching a rerun of Saturday Night Live hosted by James Franco (whom Jayson did not know of until tonight).

(Another note, Jayson got sucked into a debate on Prop 8 by someone at Penn who is offended by the idea of gay unions being called "marriage."  He tried to persuade Jayson to how offensive this is by appealing to his Judaism (since clearly only Christians have marriages), and asking him how it would feel if gay marriages were called "bar mitzvahs."  The ridiculousness of this argument is not even worth discussing, but I find it hilarious so I felt like sharing.)