Vivian, Shopping, and Snow!

Yesterday was a very long day.

went to work for most of the day. it was recognition day, so i got there a bit earlier than my normal time. i made 72 placemats for the cooking class i'll be leading monday. only a few days left at work :(

then i left to meet VIVIAN. she will be playing louisa von trapp. she and i have been corresponding on theater forums since about 2001 or so. but despite both living in NY, we never actually met, and eventually the forum we met on closed, and i didn't follow to the next one. so we lost touch for a few years...until she began announcing she was cast, and then i announced i was, and the rest is history!

it's funny, most of the years we "knew" each other, i hadn't seen pictures of her, so i didn't know what she looked like or anything. i remembered all about her opera happenings, but since i hadn't been in touch for several years, i didn't really know what to expect. but she showed up at my door looking just like her pictures on her new blog indicated. she was surprised to see how short i am :)

we requested to be roommates, but as many aspects of the tour are still up in the air, we;re not sure if that's going to happen.

so we met at my apartment. terry is out of town, so we took his car and drove to walmart. ok, so i won't get into the politics of walmart, but it's cheap, and we were buying a lot, both with very small bank accounts, so... off we went!

after hanging out with v all day, i can tell she's going to be a very bad influence on me, but we were like personality twins separated at birth, my doppleganger! but i'm sure it'll be great fun, if yesterday proved anything.

so we set off. the plan was to go to walmart for an hour or so, then head to one of the many malls up there, get some food, and head back.

we ended up at walmart for 3 hours! i forgot to make my list, so i just followed her list, and filled in some gaps. we did a lot of analyzing, trying to guess how often we'll get sick, how much shampoo we'd need, whether or not floss could be found in china, as well as more important things- where were the sour patch kids?

we bought so much stuff. it was a ton of little things. and those little things really add up. we played the guess how much money worth of product is in the cart. we were both way off our guesses. but we came within only a few dollars of each other, close to $200! i guess that isn't bad, considering we were buying for 8 months.

but then you wonder what you will really need. should i be bringing two sets of shampoo/conditioner? is one face soap enough? how much make-up is necessary? no one has contacted us about hair and make-up. should i bring more socks? oy... made shopping interesting. at the end, i ended up putting about $30-50 worth of stuff back on a pretty shelf somewhere. but how can you guess what you'll need? what you'll be able to find there, or not find? makes me realize i need to pay better attention to my usage habits here at home.

by the time we finally left walmart, it was a bit after 8pm. and it was SNOWING! we drove just down the street to find dinner. we passed Outback, so we stopped there, but the wait was forever, and we were both narly hungry. so i suggested we check out cheesecake factory, and if worse came to worse, we could go to whole foods. so we treked down the block in the snow to cheesecake. both restaurants had over 30 minute waits, so we did go into whole foods, and i bought some tea, some lunch (which i just ate, yummy), and some chocolate and fruit trail mix.

we went back to cheesecake factory, grabbed some menus, then sat down on the floor for lack of anywhere else to sit. i think we were both debating eating the menus. but those are gross. so we waited. we drooled over the menu, but sat in silence as our tummys began to eat themselves. after an eternity, our shaker thingy shook, and we jumped up to get our table. we were given a nice big booth and some yummy bread.

but then food came. and we ate glorious food! for a bit. by then, it was like, 10pm, and the wave of exhaustion and extreme hunger took over the actual hunger, and we couldn't eat very much in the end, though vivian did do a good job on her fries. and i passed up dessert. what is wrong with me? i've been doing that a lot, recently. could i be maturing into adulthood? nah.

by now, simply sayin that it was snowing was an understatement. it was snowing so hard you could barely see 5 feet in front of you. but we were in white plains. we had to get home. so we drove at 10 miles an hour, in the dark, after 11pm. oy...

as we were driving back to my place, i realized this would have been a perfect opportunity to bring my video camera. this was a day for documenting!

i was originally planning to drive vivian all the way to her apartment, so i felt extremely bad when i realized there was no way i would be able to find our way to her apartment in manhattan then back up to mine in the bronx in the snow. so i showed her how to get to the D train, grabbed my heavy bags, and began to make my way to my apartment. of course, i got all the way inside, took off my wet jacket, shoes, socks, and was begining to take off my wet jeans when i realized i had left the car door unlocked. so i had to put everything back on- cold and wet- to go back out in the snow to grab my leftovers from cheesecake factory and my buys from whole foods and then lock the door. AND i actually remembered to put my food in the fridge so i can eat them another day.

now i have bags of stuff all over the apartment. i was supposed to be cleaning today. instead, i'm on my third movie. i'm enjoying my day off. finally!!!

must get off my lazy tush and do some cleaning. i hate how the apartment looks right now. it's such a mess, and thats my fault. my music books are everywhere, stuff i'm bringin on the tour is everywhere... it's just a mess. off to clean!