Hitting the Uptown on Thursday for the 2:50 LotR. Have bought tickets from Fandango. (Fandango!) Yes, I'm a dork. Don't give me the 'I have no time' excuses which I am sick of hearing, as blameless as you all are. :( If you can go, say you can. If you can't, say nothing.

Later

It was quite good, despite me waiting in line in the cold. I hadn't realized I'd be waiting outside in line.. bah, I'm too used to multiplexes. I had a frappacino waiting outside. But no, I did not go to the bathroom during the movie. Anyways. Ahh.. Aragorn. There was a person with a laser pointer though, so at times Theoden would suddenly be sporting a bindi. (I'm not sure how to use that word in an actual sentence, but the point is, he looked hella stupid and it was distracting). The first part of T2T was a lot less boring the second time around, and the Arwen parts no longer seemed as intrusive, and yes, the plot flowed better. I could notice more things. This was an older crowd, and more decorous (with the exception of the anonymous laser wielder) but less given to spontaneous applause.. no Legolas fangirls here to applaud for his horse-riding tricks, or his snowboarding tricks, though there were two girls wearing elf-ears. Poor Legolas. I felt like such an idiot clapping alone. Being the Uptown, it's pretty much impossible to get the whole theater clapping, like at Regal.

Oh, the Very Secret Diaries are being updated again.

GO ME!

Friday

Saw LotR, spent with Jen making comments about how many times Aragorn washes his hair and oohing at his general hotness, but also wanting to smack a certain Lisa for talking constantly during the movie (even more than I am prone to do).

Then went to get Andrew a thong at Lakeforest with Alex, Jen and Anika. Agreed on Aragorn's general hotness. More later.

Saturday

Went Mall hopping with my mom at White Flint. Happiness abounds. More later.

Sunday

Went to New York with my family for a family friend's birthday. Much more later.

Later

I love car rides. There's something about being able to see far into the distance that you don't get normally sitting still, or even with a plane, because you're so high up. Although the ground next to you flashes by there'll be a clump of trees thousands of feet in the distance that just doesn't move, as if the world were flat and turning on an axis. The sound of cars alongside you isn't one you'll find anywhere else.. not on planes or on foot, or normal driving. It's a sound of speed and thunder, (which would be a good title for a bad book). But honestly, it's a unique experience, especially if you remember that cars and highways are a very new invention given the length of human history, and very exclusive too. Because they're so common in the US people don't treat them like a novelty, but the fact that we can take something so amazing for granted makes the feat even more impressive. Also, along a highway, if you're going faster than another car and pulling past it, you can imagine that you're staying still and the other car and the rest of the world are all sliding backwards under you. It's not like planes. You can feel yourself moving, and you can see the landscape changing. And on skyways and suspension bridges where you fly over rooftops and other cars and see the whole sprawl of a city or the length of a river snaking away under you, that's more flight than watching the same motionless grid of land beside an airplane wing from a porthole for hours on end.

And of course, New York is amazing at night. I was going to Queens, but because my dad/New Yorkers are crazy drivers, we'd be shooting at 70mph through tunnels and under causeways where the speed and thunder (tm) would echo along the walls, and there would be buildings and people right above you like you were zooming through the canals of some sugar-crazy Venice at night, and you'd flash by lights, some close, some in the distance over the dark and invisible water. You can imagine that the far city is just a large plate of pinpoints of light hovering in the middle of space. And looking at the far city over the sea I was wondering what it was, until I realized from the small outline of the Empire State Building and the Chrystler Building that I was staring at the south side of Manhattan.

It no longer looks like the south side of Manhattan.

...

We went to the Terrace on the Park in Queens (which looks like a crazy giant tripod- the Terrace, not Queens), but we were delayed because my dad was afraid of driving through a 'ghetto' neighborhood at night. There was food, champaigne, dancing that looked like it belonged to an Old Folks' Cruise.... me and my parents went to a friend's house to stay the night, in suburbia which looked so much like home. I could make a left, and I'd be in Maryland again. Some people find suburban conformity to be depressing, but to me it was a comfort, though tiny, tiny things are different. When we woke up in the morning, it was snowing, and it was cold.