Every Day an Adventure

And didn't sing out at the top of my lungs or anything. Actually, I was kinda surprised that it was such a nondescript corner.

See, it was the day for making gratuitous Eddie From Ohio references, being the Fifth of July and all. So I spent the day wandering the city. I went by Book-Off, and got lunch at Oh!Raku sushi, formerly Genki sushi, the kaiten place which is too damn expensive. Went around Rockefeller Plaza; failed to get anything; was properly scared by the Build-a-Bear place.

So I went down to Noho/Soho and wandered there for a while. I went to the corner of Bleecker and Broadway and... er, well, I forget most of the lyrics right this second, and all I did was get an ice cream cone from the Mister Softee parked on the corner. It melted in approximately 1.57 minutes, ending in the cone exploding in my hands as I got to the bottom of it. I walked around the area for a while, though. The Scholastic Store is really cool and has all of this cool Harry Potter stuff, and they're also having a big HP party next week, of course. I got chai in a random streetcorner cafe (not a Starbucks! a place at Broadway and Spring) and sat around for a while, then walked more. I walked through NYU, but it really doesn't feel like a campus, which bugs me. Washington Sq. Park with the chess players is neat though.

Came back up here after that to pack, stopping by Times Square to pick up theater tickets. Then Nick and I headed down to see Avenue Q, stopping at a deli on the way for dinner -- and daaaamn was that a good sandwich.

Anyway, Avenue Q was fantastic. There's so much that doesn't come out just from listening to the soundtrack, but I'd feel sort of like I'm giving away spoilers if I really talked about a lot of it, so I won't (except for "Monsterssori School", hahahahaha). Suffice it to say, it was awesome, and Nick really laughed at it too, which is good. It was a lot of fun and I'm happy I got to see it.

Ack, I have to leave New York soon. That sucks.

Wheeee, Yankees game. Unfortunately I didn't have pre-knowledge of which way Yankee stadium faces and unfortunately I got us tickets in the upper deck on the third base side, which means we didn't have shade for the first three hours of the game. Three hours of sun and no sunscreen and no hat == extremely sunburnt Deanna and mildly sunburnt Nick.

It was a really long game, actually, and a huuuuuuge slugfest.

By the way, before nickjong can out me to everyone, I rooted for the Yankees today. I mean, I actually got up and shouted things like "LET'S GO YANKEES!" and clapped and stuff. See, the thing is, when you go to a game that is of two teams that you dislike, it's just a lot easier (and less risky) to root for the home team, I figured. So, I became a temporary Yankees fan. Don't tell Josh or Ficus, okay?

Don't worry, I didn't root for A-Rod.

Anyway, that said, it was a really entertaining game, much moreso than Sunday's Mets game, which was short and not very sweet. Today's was a long, drawn-out game involving a lot of scoring and a lot of pitcher switching (12 pitchers overall were used, and 21 runs overall were scored). The Yankees got off to a fast 6-0 lead, but then the Orioles chipped away at it for a few innings until it was 8-6, at which point the Yankees exploded for 7 runs in the 8th inning. It was crazy, and Jason Giambi hit two home runs, one in the first inning and one in that crazy 8th. One of his home runs was pretty funny -- he hit this huuuuuge blast into the outfield stands, but it was called foul -- so he gets back up and two pitches later blasts an even further one into the outfield stands, this time unmistakably fair.

Matsui hit a home run and they put "Gonezilla" on the scoreboard, along with the katakana for home run.

So apparently Quantrill and Stanton are gone. There's this new kid, Wayne Franklin, wearing Quantrill's old number, 48, so I was really confused when he was warming up. The very first batter this guy faced was super-star Brian Roberts. What a way to start off! He struck him out, though, which was promising, but unfortunately the next inning he got two runners on which brought it to 7-6 and thus charged him also with his very first blown save. Whee!

It's funny, but the worse the pitchers are, the more entertaining the game is, I think.

Anyway, this game lasted until like 5:30pm, which was ridiculously long (it started at 1). After it, Nick and I went to his sister and brother-in-law's house in New Jersey for a 4th of July BBQ with a whole bunch of his family. They had a lot of food and I probably hugely dishonored them by only eating a couple of things and then refusing everything else. Oops. We hung out for a while talking, and everyone was pretty cool, and then we went to see some fireworks. Then we braved the traffic and came back to the city.

Well, I started off the day by having a semi-embarrassing run-in with another person who's staying at the apartment for the weekend (he apparently arrived while I was taking a shower, so I was walking back to the living room to get clothes and I notice there's a guy in Nalini's room. Hilarity ensues. Actually, it wasn't really that bad, I just went back to the living room, got clothes, got dressed, and went and chatted about machine learning and stuff for a bit).

But then I went to the Strand bookstore, which was pretty cool, stopping at H&H bagels on the way to grab lunch. I rooted around in the bookstore basement for an hour or two looking at their baseball books, and I found a couple really good ones I'd never heard of before (a Goose Gossage autobiography, an Orel Hershiser autobiography, a book called "Tales from a Yankees Batboy"), and then I found the Warren Cromartie book about his time playing in Japan! So that was pretty cool.

Nick called me after that, so I headed back here (taking the 1 train this time, har har) and we headed out to give our regards to Broadway. We went by the Gershwin Theater to try to do the "lottery" for Wicked tickets, but there were a ton of people there, so we didn't get lucky. Instead, we headed over to a theater around the corner and got tickets to Chicago instead, since Nick gets an IBM discount. Then we grabbed dinner at the Roxy Delicatessen, which was expensive, but dude, I haven't had a real corned beef sandwich at a real deli in a bazillion years.

Chicago the musical was really very good. Their set was kinda wacky -- they had the band set up like a nightclub jazz band on stage, and everyone acted out scenes around it. But, the singing and dancing was great, the musical itself was very entertaining -- the only thing I thought was odd is that I felt like you don't really get a feel for Velma's character in the musical, not the same way you do in the movie. (I'd never seen the stage version before.)

I think that was actually the first broadway musical I'd ever actually seen ON BROADWAY, though I've seen ninety billion musicals in my lifetime. So, cool. We might try to go do the Wicked lottery again one of these days, or try to catch The Producers, or something. I may have to just come back to NYC in several months to see musicals, maybe.

We walked around Times Square for a while after that. The Toys 'r' Us there is awesomely frightening. Nick bought a painting from a street artist. We tried to find a place to have cheesecake for dessert but mostly failed. Then we came home (again taking the correct train).

Monday actually not much to say. Work, then errands and laundry and packing.

Tuesday, work and then gym with Megan. My arms still hurt from volleyball on Sunday. Then lastminute packing and then going to the airport, where I ran into thatmathchick and her guy since they were also heading to JFK on the same flight as me. I hadn't seen Deb in forever so it was good to catch up, though the sad part is that part of her trip here is going to David Rochberg's wedding, which I was unaware of, which makes me sad since I used to be such close friends with Dave back in the day, and now here I am not even knowing he's getting married. It made me all sad, like when you get this feeling in the pit of your stomach when you worry you've lost something important like your keys or phone or something.

The flight was fairly uneventful and I finished the Sadaharu Oh autobiography I was reading, and damn if that isn't one of the best books I've ever read. It's so bizarre to hear him talk about baseball and yet be talking about aikido and zen and swordplay and everything interspersed with it, and really entertaining. I slept off and on for the rest of the flight.

It got to JFK late, but Nick came and picked me up anyway. Yay, it's good to see Nick again, even if he sucks for not coming to Seattle. He drove me back here and I met his roomate and stuff, but then they went off to work, so now I am sitting here in his living room updating LJ and stuff and debating what to do during the day. We're gonna try to go to the Mets-Phillies game tonight, and I am psyyyyyyched.

I might just take a nap, or I might wander around here a bit. We're apparently like a block from Columbia, which is pretty cool. I'm in New York so I really ought to get bagels or pizza or something, I think.