immersed in amherst
Well, I guess we've been in MA for a whole day, time to write an entry or something. Although ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eub already wrote an entry, I will write my version of it too.
10 hours in the car. Burger King in Middletown, NY had LOTR stuff, but I asked the guy if I could get a Legolas figurine ("...the elven dude shooting an arrow...") and he said they just had some monsters and some chick on a horse, so I ended up not getting anything LOTR and feeling a little silly. But, fast food is fast food, so it's not like it would have been so different to eat at Wendy's. I spent about 2/5 of the trip asleep in one form or another, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. I spent about 1/5 singing along to random tapes in the car, and I spent about 1/4 reading Fellowship of the Ring, sometimes by light, sometimes by flashlight (For the record, the flashlight I bought on my NY trip does get about 3 hours of good light before you need to change the battery). I got up to the council of Elrond just as we pulled into Amherst Woods, so I gave up then.
Eli's family were very happy to see us. Eli's dog Liza was very happy to see us.
Today I got up and read some more and called Verizon. See, my phone said "Roaming" from a little while after we got out of Pittsburgh until now (and it still does). The Verizon lady said that it should be ok and I shouldn't be charged extra for any calls here, but who knows. Anyway. We ate chicken soup and did crosswords and then went shopping!
Whee! Shopping was fun and culminated in going to the Hampshire mall, where I played some DDR 3rd Mix. The machine was fux0red in that the left side kept bumping up and down as I jumped on it. I did one set of normal songs (sigh you can't do SSR on it by default I always forget silly pre-4th machines, but I do admit it was fun to impress the 10-year-olds who had been playing on the machine when I nearly fullcomboed Butterfly Upswing and did tons of spins and crap) and then did a roulette nonstop. First song that comes up is Paranoia Rebirth. (gasp) According to Eli, there were a decent number of people watching me do it. The second song was So Many Men, which is slow and dull so I put spins into it (it astounded me to turn around and see people watching), and then the next one was um... The Race trick, which was ok. Dead End trick came up as my last song though and I was sort of out of it because I'd overdone myself out on The Race. So I gave up and the crowd dispersed. It was still pretty cool I guess. I'd go back to the machine since it's so close, although I'd like to check out the other 3rd mix up in Holyoke that a guy online told me is in much better shape.
We came home and had dinner and showed Eli's parents and brother the pictures we'd gotten developed which were of our apartment. They were well-received, and a bit later we had dinner. I think we were supposed to watch movies after that, but Ollie decided he didn't feel like it and Eli and his dad sat there and did crosswords for a while, while I played Tony Hawk 2 (Ollie, Eli's youngest brother, is a skateboarding fiend, and is also a film-making sort of person - last night we watched an hour-long film he and a friend put together of skateboarding footage - it was pretty good, it really looked a lot like one of those montages you see on MTV or something where you have the skateboarders doing tricks and music playing in the background. Anyway Ollie has like one game he plays on the PSX, and it's Tony Hawk 2, which is a skateboarding game). TH2 is sort of like SSX but very different - the controls are weird and there are no flips, the tricks are mostly spinning and kickhooking or whatever. So my SSX skillz did not translate, but I caught on eventually and had fun, and stopped faceplanting every time I jumped and all.
Then I came up here and read some more; I'm up to page 397 of my edition of FOTR, or um, they have gotten to the ancient elven forest after getting out of Moria. I also did some prep for one Christmas present, but.. whee.
Oh yeah. Happy Birthday, Lori. Sorry we couldn't be in the state to celebrate with you.
Also, poor Eli. His dad was asking him what to get me for Christmas apparently and Eli said he had no idea and I was just really surprised that he hadn't caught on to my hundreds of thousands of hints, including the blatant wish lists in my LJ, etc. I guess I buy so much gratuitous stuff that it's hard for him to tell when I'm being serious about wanting something unless I buy it. Blah.
More family people will get here tomorrow. I will try not to get nervous about it all. The family is cool and all but it doesn't stop me from worrying about whether I am being obnoxious here.
eub already wrote an entry, I will write my version of it too.10 hours in the car. Burger King in Middletown, NY had LOTR stuff, but I asked the guy if I could get a Legolas figurine ("...the elven dude shooting an arrow...") and he said they just had some monsters and some chick on a horse, so I ended up not getting anything LOTR and feeling a little silly. But, fast food is fast food, so it's not like it would have been so different to eat at Wendy's. I spent about 2/5 of the trip asleep in one form or another, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. I spent about 1/5 singing along to random tapes in the car, and I spent about 1/4 reading Fellowship of the Ring, sometimes by light, sometimes by flashlight (For the record, the flashlight I bought on my NY trip does get about 3 hours of good light before you need to change the battery). I got up to the council of Elrond just as we pulled into Amherst Woods, so I gave up then.
Eli's family were very happy to see us. Eli's dog Liza was very happy to see us.
Today I got up and read some more and called Verizon. See, my phone said "Roaming" from a little while after we got out of Pittsburgh until now (and it still does). The Verizon lady said that it should be ok and I shouldn't be charged extra for any calls here, but who knows. Anyway. We ate chicken soup and did crosswords and then went shopping!
Whee! Shopping was fun and culminated in going to the Hampshire mall, where I played some DDR 3rd Mix. The machine was fux0red in that the left side kept bumping up and down as I jumped on it. I did one set of normal songs (sigh you can't do SSR on it by default I always forget silly pre-4th machines, but I do admit it was fun to impress the 10-year-olds who had been playing on the machine when I nearly fullcomboed Butterfly Upswing and did tons of spins and crap) and then did a roulette nonstop. First song that comes up is Paranoia Rebirth. (gasp) According to Eli, there were a decent number of people watching me do it. The second song was So Many Men, which is slow and dull so I put spins into it (it astounded me to turn around and see people watching), and then the next one was um... The Race trick, which was ok. Dead End trick came up as my last song though and I was sort of out of it because I'd overdone myself out on The Race. So I gave up and the crowd dispersed. It was still pretty cool I guess. I'd go back to the machine since it's so close, although I'd like to check out the other 3rd mix up in Holyoke that a guy online told me is in much better shape.
We came home and had dinner and showed Eli's parents and brother the pictures we'd gotten developed which were of our apartment. They were well-received, and a bit later we had dinner. I think we were supposed to watch movies after that, but Ollie decided he didn't feel like it and Eli and his dad sat there and did crosswords for a while, while I played Tony Hawk 2 (Ollie, Eli's youngest brother, is a skateboarding fiend, and is also a film-making sort of person - last night we watched an hour-long film he and a friend put together of skateboarding footage - it was pretty good, it really looked a lot like one of those montages you see on MTV or something where you have the skateboarders doing tricks and music playing in the background. Anyway Ollie has like one game he plays on the PSX, and it's Tony Hawk 2, which is a skateboarding game). TH2 is sort of like SSX but very different - the controls are weird and there are no flips, the tricks are mostly spinning and kickhooking or whatever. So my SSX skillz did not translate, but I caught on eventually and had fun, and stopped faceplanting every time I jumped and all.
Then I came up here and read some more; I'm up to page 397 of my edition of FOTR, or um, they have gotten to the ancient elven forest after getting out of Moria. I also did some prep for one Christmas present, but.. whee.
Oh yeah. Happy Birthday, Lori. Sorry we couldn't be in the state to celebrate with you.
Also, poor Eli. His dad was asking him what to get me for Christmas apparently and Eli said he had no idea and I was just really surprised that he hadn't caught on to my hundreds of thousands of hints, including the blatant wish lists in my LJ, etc. I guess I buy so much gratuitous stuff that it's hard for him to tell when I'm being serious about wanting something unless I buy it. Blah.
More family people will get here tomorrow. I will try not to get nervous about it all. The family is cool and all but it doesn't stop me from worrying about whether I am being obnoxious here.