I had a really nice day today mostly because I got to spend it with D. I told him that he has to come visit my blog. I know most guys aren’t into nail polish or reading about nail polish, but he should do it because he’s my friend, right?! We haven’t been hanging out too much lately since he got his new job so it was nice to just veg together and catch up. D. and I go wayyyyyyy back to August 1997; that was our first day of college and we met in French class. How fitting! We ended up being super close especially after we were both studying in France for a year at the same time. To this day, I still tell him that he just copied me. Eventually we ended up working together at Air France which allowed us to go gallivanting around the world for a few years. Over sushi, I asked him what he thought was our craziest travel adventure and he mentioned two:
1) Running to catch a train in Milan. We ran as fast as we could, threw our bags onto the train and did a flying leap onto a moving train. I don’t know how we did it, but we did. I also got my wallet stolen on that trip because D. walked off and left me alone in the compartment while I slept. Ok, it wasn’t really his fault, but I like to bust his balls about it.
2) The time I had tickets to go to Amsterdam and we were going to go for 3 days until we arrived at the airport and we were told the flight was cancelled because the aircraft had been hit by lightning. That should have been our clue to go home and just relax before having to go back to work. So what did we do instead? We took the red-eye to New York without hotel reservations or any idea about what we were going to do. We ended up in some kind of drug house hotel with Russian immigrants and then I walked into a homicide scene on the street. Yeah…I think I will talk about this one.
At our company Christmas party, I had won a pair of tickets on KLM so we made plans to take a long weekend and crash at a friend’s place in Amsterdam. I was super excited about this trip until we got to the KLM counter and we were told that the flight had been cancelled due to the incoming aircraft being struck by lightning. Completely disappointed, we headed over to our counter to see if we could re-issue our tickets for a different destination. Because we were airline employees, we could buy super cheap stand-by tickets for any airline we had an agreement with. So we decided to buy some tickets on the next Delta flight to NYC. The next available flight was unfortunately the red eye. I won’t talk of that flight because it was miserable. We got to NYC around 5 am and we had to now figure out where we were going to stay. To say that we had a limited budget is an understantement. We had planned to crash with a friend so we hadn’t truly thought about the cost of lodging…oh silly, Californians who know nothing about New York. The only thing that was in our budget was on the corner of Crack Whore and Pimp Alley. Oh well. We weren’t going to be in the hotel much, right? Well, we ended up in some shit hole with exposed pipes and bunk bends. Nice. It was so gross that I was afraid to take my shoes off at all. We did make a point of staying out all day and visiting EVERYTHING. Unfortunately, it was December and it was freezing. I soon started to complain about the cold and drove D. up the wall. It’s a gift I have. D. is actually one of the most patient people I have ever met in my life, but I somehow manage to exasperate him. That night we decided to catch a movie late at night so by the time we got out, it was way past midnight and we had to get back to our hotel. We decided to take the subway and we got a little lost….great. I got irritated with D. and I started walking ahead annoyed that we couldn’t find our street. Well, we finally got on the right street and then I raced ahead because I was tired and irritable. I started to hear screaming and running but I wasn’t really in the mood. All of a sudden, a bunch of police cars converged on the corner and I saw someone lying on the floor face down. Did I just walk into a murder scene? I was so shocked that I just kept on walking…right past the body and into a liquor store. I don’t know what I was thinking but I yelled at some man to let me through to buy a Coke. D. was behind me, probably in utter shock, and we finally got to our hotel and passed out. We spent a total of 3 days in NYC with plenty of other silly things happening, but these were the main highlights. How do you like NYC?
Today we ended up watching a French movie called Intouchables. It was amazing, and I highly recommend it if it’s playing anywhere near you.
Afterwards, we went to my favorite sushi place and really pigged out. No, you don’t understand. WE ATE LIKE PIGS. Don’t believe me? Here we go…
This is my favorite: octopus. I only have a couple of pieces because it tastes so much better if you’re left wanting more!
Yes, two people ate all of this. We have a term for this: sushicoma.
I wrote this because it was a really nice day and also to just share some of the weird things that we both got to experience when we were still carefree and in our early 20’s. I spent a year in my early 20’s completely incapacitated by depression and I hoped that I would never have to go through that again. I never sought any kind of help for my issues and they kept resurfacing every few years until I completely broke down last year. We should never be ashamed to ask for help so don’t piss away a whole decade of your life before you get the courage to get help whether it’s therapy, medication or both. Today was definitely a good day. It’s a real gift to have a friend with whom you can still act like a kid regardless of how old you are.
I hope you read this, D. You promised, you freak!
