| Wednesday, October 31st, 2001
1747
Act Two, Scene One: Got to SEA-TAC early enough to check in and catch an earlier flight to Chicago. Great! I thought to myself, I have extra time to spend either a) exploring Chicago, or b) catching up on my sleep at the hotel...Get into Chicago O'hare Intl and proceed to get my rental car...slight problem: I left my drivers license in my rental car back in Seattle! = no rental car for me in Chicago. Suddenly the ten miles or so to my hotel seemed a mucher large pain in the ass than originally forecasted. The taxi there cost $30. Lets add to the dilemna now, shall we? The hotel is even further NORTH from the venue than the airport. Looking at maps it was easily 20 miles...I was *not* about to pay that taxi fare. I checked in and, with the help of the concierge/desk clerk, I planned out my public transit opportunities. The bus stop was only about a six block walk. So instead of catching a few winks it's option a) Explore Chicago...only differently than I expected. Three hours after leaving the hotel, one bus, two trains, and easily an hour and a half of walking later I get to the theatre...Turns out the train stop my hotel concierge told me to take was...oh about four or five stops North of the one I *really* wanted to take. Oh well. I got to walk downtown Chicago, see that fountain you see in the opening credits of "Married with Children" set against the lake, and Soldier Field, which besides being beautiful, and cool because of it's dedication to the armed forces, was the site of a Mamoth PJ gig in 95 :) All in all it was a lovely walk...just that I was not in the best of moods or conditions to do it in. Oh well...it was for Tori, and I just had to suck it up and drive on. At least it wasn't raining. Finally I made it to Arie Crown Theatre--it was nestled inside this
huge convention center and i wandered about lost for several minutes.
Getting in was kind of nerve wracking--they security was doing rather thorough pat downs, and I was carrying an entire extra recording rig in with me...Add to that fact that if I got caught I had nowhere to take my gear and would have to check it with security! (Nooooooo!!!!!!). Luckily enough I had brought my backpack with me from the hotel and security paid all the attention to it and never patted me (whew!). I got in line to get a shirt, but they were all $30 and I didn't really like any of them...so I bailed for the john and rigged up. Somewhere in that bathroom I dropped $140 out of my jeans pocket...with all the extra boxes and wires I must not have even noticed :( Thankfully I had so much bankrolled for my trip, and all that money had been from extra groundworks tickets already paid for...it didn't upset me as much as it really should have. Tori's Opener...Rufus Wainwright...sucked ass. His set was just so slow and relaxed and casual and boring...especially after having sat through three crappy REM sets...He bored me to tears. Add to that fact the girls behind me screaming bloody murder over his body and I was NOT happy. There I was, 2nd row from the speakers, and I was about to enjoy an evening of screaming wenches...with a touch of tori thrown in under them for color. Sigh. I turned around and asked them if they were gonna scream like that for Tori. At first, one was nice, saying that no, she was just hot for rufus...but her friend got bitchy and turned her over as well. Lovely. It amused me to no end, their lust, when rufus intimated his homosexuality during the gig... Finally Tori came on, the girls screamed almost never, and the show was just...phenominal. Tori played so many incredible songs, some real shockers, like flying dutchman, bachelotette, a burt baccarach cover(!), donut song, hey jupiter, butterfly, sister janet... Sadly I was just so dreadfully tired the full effect didn't wash over me until way later in the set. On the way back to the hotel I was just so dead to the world nothing much registered. The recording of the show is probably the best tape I have ever made of any artist. I'm glad I had the minidisc rig running as well as I have needed it to splice a section the DAT had to fade out and back in to semi correct a level discrepancy... The four hours or so that I got that night was the best (and longest uninterrupted) sleep I'd gotten since Friday night. Wednesday morning I hurled myself out of bed and into the shower, had a cab called, and got on my flight back to Seattle. Lucky me, there's a totally paranoid, retarded, and bogus anthrax scare...got to sit on the plane, at the terminal, for three friggin hours. That delay, of course, killed any plans to visit my higher headquarters at Fort Lewis. I had better things to do...so after getting back to my seattle lodgings and my car (where I *promptly* gathered my license and stuffed it back in my wallet) I set out for Gasworks Park, Jimi's Grave, and back up to Seattle to see the Aussies... And that, then, is where everything capped the trip. Charlotte was the only one at the Queen Anne Hotel when I got there--the boys had run off to do something or another and hadn't left a note for Charlotte to find when she returned from her afternoon jaunts alone. It being night by this time, and being simply famished, I grabbed charlotte and we drove about the town, finally stopping on Broadway St in the Capital Hill district, for dinner at a Sbarro's type Italian resteraunt. Broadway street has a super cool string of indie/trendy shops at one end, books, cds, clothes, resteraunts, etc. I ended up buying some cds, a beautiful 8'11" picture of Tori...and some American Spirits (yum!). After I left my parents I commenced the standard "I'm traveling and will now smoke" routine. I'd completely forgotten to look for these wonderful smokes until I spotted them by chance at this great little foreign newspapers and magazines galor shop char and I stopped in. When we got back to the hotel I found myself so twitter-pated it was unreal. This Australian gal named Katie was there with the other aussies plus a few more new faces. She was about as beautiful to me as any woman I'd ever seen...and her socks. I remember her socks so perfectly--they were these awesome rainbow striped things with toes made out like a glove..each toe a different color. Gawd she had the most incredible smile and her thick australian accent just got my blood boiling. She talked an *awful* lot that night while watching TV (well, during commercials...she had such a smile and fixed fascination over the nighttime soaps it was so sweetly disarming) and that accent...gawdz. Sometime around midnight I took Katie and her netherlands friend Lynn back to their hostel, returned to my hotel room in SeaTac and I figured I'd never see her again--wrote this highly coherent pining over her paper entry in my traveling journal (my first entry of the trip actually) considering how drunk I made myself on george dickell and coca cola...ahhh george. I picked up three bottles during my trip and opening one in San Jose to drink and to share...I finished what was left Wednesday night at my hotel...SO now I have two bottles of this liquor to last me a year and a half. You simply can't GET it over here in Okinawa, end of story. Shipping liquor here is illegal as well. Anyway I assumed I'd never see Katie again...which wasn't going to be so hard to take since I never really did get to interact much with her anyway... The next day...my last in Seattle, I woke around ten...after the MOST awesome, rewarding, awaited, and deserved eight hours of sleep or so. Showered, checked out, and went to meet the australians at the Queen Anne. After a bit of putzing around the Seattle Center, ran into Katie and Lynn at the Queen Anne again...we all made plans to meet for dinner. Char, Joe, Cam, and myself busied ourselves with the Singles Flat, Discovery park (hungerstrike video), and the soundgarden--the latter being a bit of a dissapointment actually, it being no more than some astronomy observation thing or something, with a locked fence, and not even any wind to make it chime... We ran late over our meeting time because of the soundgarden too...luckily enough we ran into Katie and Lynn just as they were fed up with waiting for us at the Queen Anne. I immediately apologized for our lateness--it was all my fault, I insisted we go see the Soundgarden instead of showing up at the hotel in time...(which I have a feeling won me some points somehow) All of us sans Cam went to eat dinner at the Crocodiel Cafe (the "Croc"), and then out to Broadway again (with a stop at the singles flat since Lynn and Katie hadn't seen it yet). Again, I spent more money on CDs and books this time as well. Had such insane amounts of fun it almost felt illegal. Katie was much more subdued and I actually caught a few smiles/glances my way (i think?). Even knowing I would not see her again for sure after just a mere matter of a few more hours did not stop me from feeling...warm. I think the fact that I alone had a rental car and ferried them all about won me large points with the entire crowd..despite being plagued with just the WORST navigation skills for my entire trip. My last week in the states I never shaved...not until after I returned my rental car and headed into the airport to hopefully catch a free flight home (I made the manifest...easily). Well...actually I had to pay a head tax of about $41 roundtrip. I suppose it's hard to beat that kind of deal ;) So yeah, so I never shaved (meaning I was super scraggly) and opted
to forgo the gelled hair route and wore a hat from sunday on...SO yeah...I
presented a *real* inticing picture I'm sure! Heh I got a large kick out
of being so dressed down at the Tori show. If only people there that probably
looked at me and looked away knew what I'd gone through to be in that building
with them that night...(at least I was showered).
My flight home had a stop in Anchorage, Alaska (!) and while we were in the terminal, there was a bomb threat in the control tower. So yeah, lovely, had another delay. Least this one was only about an hour or so. Sucked however, that the resteraunt was closed while we were there--the food on the plane, of course sucked. The scare was bogus of course, and here I sit now, in my room. Returned to work monday and found most of the loose ends I left behind were wrapped up by the other unit's legal office (much goodness there!)...but I have still found myself with plenty of things to do. And that is it. What a friggin trip. I am stunned to think it's over...now it's back to the normal routine I suppose. I was able to go diving on Sunday--my first time out with the new regulator rig I just bought...due to my annual clothing allowance and my $300 tax refund check that I just got(!) I plan on buying the rest of my scuba gear--there's a sale at the dive shop in a couple weeks. :) current mood: nostalgic
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