Twins

Friday night was supposed to be a grand soiree of unimaginable proportions - music and drinks at the National Design Museum right up the street from me. The weather has been nasty this summer, very hot and humid. However, we have had some great weather as well - but not on Friday. Instead, the weather forecast told us that our outdoor event was going to be blasted with rain, thunder, and lightning. As cool of an effect as that would be, I didn't exactly have that in mind when I planned the event. So, after loitering down to the museum and taking out our umbrellas to protect us from the elements, we decided to postpone at the last minute and wait for a more pleasant Friady. Which was actually okay, because there was only going to be like three people there anyway :-\ . So much for a grand soiree of unimaginable proportions! We'll get there eventually, though.

So instead of that event, a few of us decided to go get some sushi at one of my favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants in my neck of the woods - Poke. There's enough space for about 15 people and it is a BYOB job, so Paul and Cathy got to free up some space in the refrigerator by sacrificing their Sapporos to the sushi gods. For that, we were grateful! After eating our little hearts out, everyone was going their seperate ways, so I headed downtown to meet up with Sean and his friend Arianna. I met them down at Local, which was a standard mid-town bar full of standard mid-town folks celebrating TGIF. It was an okay scene, but nothing too special. Standard would be a good word for it. Afterwards, Sean and Arianna got some dinner at a diner called Madison while my stomach gladly digusted the rolls I'd devoured earlier. Arianna took off to go back to Jersey in her sweet Jetta GLI (6-speed!) and Sean and I cabbed it home for an early night back home - or so we thought....

Back in our neck of the woods, we decided to have one more cocktail at a place across the street called Uptown, which is one of two places on the Upper Easy Side that is sort of trying to do the downtown scene. It's really not too bad of a place, kind of loungey and dark and lots of red colors. While Sean went to use the facilities I kinda wandered around to see who was there and I got into a conversation with a British girl. Then her friend came back from the bathroom and I found out that they were twins - even though I couldn't tell. I insisted that they weren't twins cuz their hair was too different and stuff and they were very appreciative. I guess everyone had been coming up and asking them if they were twins (and blaming them for us being in Iraq, Tony Blair, bla bla bla, etc.). They were stoked that I didn't think they were twins. In any case, Sean came back and we all got into some nice discussions - me talking about how I hate Manchester United soccer (they were from Cheshire, which is a Manchester suburb) and Sean taking the sister outside to smoke a few dozen cigarettes together. I found out that the girl I was talking to is, naturally, getting married - on WEDNESDAY! Typical luck for me! She kept apologizing for the fact that I got stuck talking to her rather than to her sister, but it was all good. Her fiancee was out at his bachelor party that night so they were at Uptown drinking a few cosmos and chilling out. The sister (Christine) had been in town for a few days from England, while Michelle lived a few blocks away with her fiancee. They were very friendly lassies and we all got along well but Christine had had a few too many cosmos by that point and, against our better judgement, we picked up their tab (ouch! A few cosmos? Try a few more!) and sent them on their way home.

Half of Saturday was spent recovering from our late night on Friday, but around 1:00 Sean and I went to get some greasy food for breakfast and reflect on stories from the night before. Afterwards, we wandered a few miles down Third Avenue so that Sean could pick up his metrosexual supplies at Aveda. It was a wonderful day outside (of course, a day after my soiree was planned for) and the temperature was perfect.

Saturday night I went to the New York Liberty basketball game at Madison Square Gardens with Paul, D, and D's mom. D's got season tickets right next to the players and had hooked Paul and I up with some free tickets and managed to get seats right next to them thanks to some strategic seat-hijacking. Smoothe one, and thanks for the tix D! Being that the New York Liberty is a WNBA team, the players were all females who could kick my butt any day. And one of them, from Belgium apparently, was basically my twin. Same face shape and profile, blonde hair, tall(er than me), it was pretty funny. And strangely awkward!

Sunday was a domesticated day for me, doing loads and loads of laundry, grocery shopping.....and watching football (NOT American football). Arsenal was playing Chelsea in the Community Shield game that marks the start of the English Premiership so of course I had that DVR'd so that I could watch it later in the afternoon. And, thanks to a combination of factors, I got hooked back into some geeky stuff and spent a significant amount of time administrating a few FreeBSD servers back in California for some friends of mine. If you think Windows is a lot of work, I have a new OS to introduce you to ;o) . I also fell in love with some music that I have, though I didn't realize it until Sunday. Those of you who have access to my music would do well to download my Stan Getz collection. It's all Brazilian/Samba jazz music and it is unreal! Check it.

J. Riley, 17 days before liftoff to Eastern Europe!