Friday, Travel Day.
I like to spice things up so I did a half drive, half train situation. I stopped for a Happy Meal along the way. This was a terrible idea for my stomach, but I can't remember the last time I had one, and I really enjoyed the pint sized box it came in. Anyhoo, off topic, shocker. So, I'm waiting for the train in New Haven, rockin' my penguin hat, and trying not to stare at no one in particular. I board the train and right away this dude asks if he can sit with me. He immediately proceeds to take out his phone and call five million people. When the conductor comes to take our fare, the dude proceeds to whip out a huge wad of cash. He then focuses his attention on me, asking if I'll be his bodyguard. "You want me to be your bodyguard?" I ask. "Well, I mean, I do lift weights. Sure, why not." He then tells me he is a fighter, hence the cash. "A fighter? Like you bet on fights or you are doing the fighting?" Turns out, he does the fighting. He lowers his sunglasses revealing a nasty black eye. His name is Ramon and he has beef with me from the train platform earlier. "I saw you give me this look." "I gave you a look??" "Yeah, like you was scared or something. You don't remember that?" He asks me. "No, I was just staring off but I'm sorry if I pulled a face. I do tend to roll my eyes a lot and not even realize I'm doing it." After Ramon and I squash our beef, he then proceeds to talk to me for two hours. Ramon is 42 and from Puerto Rico. He has lived in the Bronx, Wisconsin, and currently in Connecticut. He loves fighting more than anything. He knows how to respect the ladies because he has like six sisters. Ramon has a slew of kids himsef, the eldest being a twenty-seven year-old daughter. He switches Sim cards on his phone (because he has two and not everyone can know where he is) and logs onto Facebook to show me pics of all of his kids. Ramon tells me a story about a 21 year-old girl who lives three doors down from his ex and how he tries to help her but doesn't want her to get the wrong idea, because he respects and understands ladies after all. Ramon tries to teach me Spanish, tells me why he decided against enlisting in the army, and then informs me that God put us together. "Not like in that way, but like as a friend way. Like, I saw you and felt a click. That's God!" Ramon got off one stop before me and continued to wave from me on the platform as the train took off. Good times.
My mission when I get off the train is to find Cassie's (Bird, Cash $) work and hang out around there until she gets off at 6. Well, I got there around 5:23, so I spent a good amount of time sketchily loitering outside her building, sitting in a park, and then walking around the block. During this time, I received my test results for the Foundations of Reading MTEL (teacher test, blah!), and thankfully, I passed. That test was no walk in the park. For the first forty minutes I was trying to block the chick next to me out who was talking to herself about law stuff. Anyhoo, since I had time to kill and I passed the test, I figured it'd be fitting to treat myself to a happy hour drink. I'm a pretty straightforward drinker. I don't like to mess around too much, usually sticking to an occasional glass of Cab, perhaps a Heineken, or at times, a Tom Collins. Yet, somehow I'm pointing to a drink entitled "Heaven on Earth" on the menu and saying that I'll have that. WORST IDEA EVER. For one, I haphazardly neglected to check the price. "That'll be eighteen dollars please." Eighteen dollars! For a drink that has beets in it and burns my throat going down! I'm an idiot. "Heaven on Earth" looked like it belonged on a Christmas tree. I was sort of embarrassed to be drinking it. A guy approaches me. "Is this the drink menu? I'm Josh by the way." So smooth, Josh, getting your name in there. Josh and I and some other lady next to us begin talking for a good fifteen minutes or so. Evidently, everyone at the bar is to celebrate Kinky Boots the musical. "The producer's right there. Nice guy. So, you're here for the party too?" "No, I'm here to crash the party," I tell them. Josh is nice enough, and the lady (Maureen? Mel? Lucy?) opened up to me (after he went to mingle more) that she has been single for the past two years and has tried Match.com and everything but is very frustrated. Do I think she should just have a casual hookup? I like how I'm giving this middle aged woman advice after twelve minutes of meeting her.
Cassie finally gets off work and after I encourage Maureen (?) to do her thang, Bird and I are off to BK to meet up with our college friend Cruz. Cruz hangs out with us like once a year, usually meeting us at B.B. King's for a cover band of some sort, most likely involving the Rat Pack. So, we head to this German Beer Garden where I proceed to eat and drink things that will completely mess with my stomach. IBS what what!! Post stomach messin', we head to the Zombie Hut because we are quite interested in seeing what this entails. Well, somehow it is less Zombie (minus a delicious frozen orange thing named "frozen zombie. Well, it's actually terrible initially, but gets better), and more tiki-like. I like tiki-like though. And the jams are pumpin'! I'm talking R. Kelly and Beyonce! So good. Cruz, Cash and I start playing Apples to Apples and this group of friends asks to join us. Being the accommodating ladies that we are, we said but of course. In order for the group, Dexter, Nathan, Takia, and I didn't catch his name but also nice dude, to join us, they had to ask other people to move. Thankfully, everyone was quite obliging at the Zombie Hut. So, a rowdy game started. I don't think the newbies really liked our way of playing. We went for the less obvious choices, well, they were obvious to us. For instance, playing "lobster" for "inspirational". Makes total sense. Anyhoo, they were good people despite this. Dexter had a crush on Cruz but she informed him that after a scout, there was no talent in the bar. He was crushed. He tried to talk to me for a minute, and that didn't work out either, so we wrapped up the game and headed for some s'mores. Cassie had been wanting to go to Camp since moving to BK and I had always wanted to go but regrettedly hadn't when I lived there. So, up the street we went, to a place where you can order a s'more plate fully equipped with a mini-fire. Genius. Except, really?...no concern over drunk people playing with fire?! Anyhoo, the s'mores were simply divine. We were all in the can't-stop-dancing phase of our night, so we got low. A guy came over and asked us if we were "coked out Girl Scouts". Cruz took this as a compliment since "aren't people that do coke skinny?", but I informed him that we don't do coke, and we never did Girl Scouts. His name is Tom. His friend's name is Jerry. So, Tom and Jerry start talking to us. Meanwhile, Dexter and his friends have filed into the bar, looking for Cruz to ask for her number. She turns him down again, poor lad, and focuses on Tom and Jerry. As this is all happening, I'm at the DJ booth requesting Taylor Dayne, Three Dog Night, Weezer, and ABC's "Poison Arrow". The DJ's boyfriend is horrified by my song choices. The DJ ends up playing "Tell It To My Heart" but gives me a DJ etiquette lesson aka don't over-request. I feel bad. "Aaah! I know this! I know! I just really got excited!" He tells me it's okay and he hopes my "Gemini guilt" won't get the better of me, referring to a talk we had previously had involving astrology.
Well, after the s'mores were eaten and it was obvious the rest of my requests weren't getting played, Cash and I decided to call it a night. Cruz, meanwhile, stayed behind to chat up Tom and Jerry some more.
