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edenfallingDespite an unplanned detour up past Syracuse on I-81 (because of missing the exit to NY-79), Susan arrived safely at my apartment on Friday night. We got the air mattress set up, chatted for about half an hour, and then went to bed because we had a full day planned for Saturday.
We ate breakfast at the diner next to my laundromat and then set out on the Cayuga Wine Trail's annual Wine & Herb event, for which I had purchased a two-person ticket. The idea is that at each participating winery (there are sixteen members of the trail -- well, okay, technically fifteen wineries and one cidery, but let's not quibble details) you get a small potted herb, an hors d'oeuvre sized portion of a food involving that herb, a sample of a wine specifically chosen to complement that food, and then a free tasting of some of that winery's other vintages.
Of the sixteen wineries, we visited twelve. That is a lot of wine, even if you're sensible about the tastings and dump most of the samples into the dregs jar after only two sips. Of course, there IS also food to help absorb the alcohol, and we stopped for a leisurely lunch at which we drank nothing but water (several glasses each), but even so. A LOT of wine. :-)
We stopped for ice cream at the Cayuga Lake Creamery on our way home, then by mutual agreement sacked out for a brief nap before even daring to contemplate dinner. We took a walk into town to see if a bit of exercise would wake our appetites (and also so I could show Susan the initial stages of the Commons renewal project -- the pavilions are mostly dismantled and all the trees have been cut down or transplanted elsewhere) but despite the two-mile walk, we were still not hungry upon returning to my place. So we chatted a bit, which resulted in Susan prodding me into completing the next step in my college application process. Tentative yay?
On Sunday morning we ate breakfast at Waffle Frolic and then went to church -- it turned out to be Rev. Grimm's last sermon before his sabbatical -- after which we changed clothes and shoes and went hiking in Buttermilk Falls gorge. The waterfalls were displaying to best effect, since we've had rain recently enough for the creek to be full, but not so recently that it was brown and overflowing. That is always nice. We then drove into town and had lunch at Sammy's Pizzeria, after which we cleaned up and looked at cute pictures of Susan's baby nephew until the four o'clock Cayuga Chamber Orchestra Chamber Series concert at my church. This one's theme was music from Austria: Mozart's String Duo in G Major for Violin and Viola (K. 423); Fruhling's Trio in A Minor for Clarinet, Piano, and Cello (Op 40); and Schubert's Piano Quintet in A Major (D. 667 "The Trout"). The concert lasted roughly two hours and was excellent.
After the music, we went to Rogues Harbor for dinner (we both got the mushroom ravioli, which was delicious). Since it was still only 7:30pm at that point, Susan suggested we see a movie and we discovered that 42 was playing at the mall at 9:20pm. So we went to Target to kill some time, which resulted in me purchasing four new t-shirts; this was not intentional, but not a bad result since some of my older t-shirts have shrunk over the years, as clothing tends to do.
The movie itself (42, that is) was very good. It's pretty straightforward and not flashy in the slightest -- kind of oldfashioned-feeling, in a way -- but it's not a story that needed flash or dazzle, and in fact might have been harmed by attempts to be "edgy" or otherwise technically showy. There are definitely some scenes that are schmaltzy in the extreme, and also points where you can tell the music is playing on your emotions, but I was generally in sympathy with the emotions that the director and composer wanted me to feel, so that was merely something I noticed rather than something that felt annoyingly manipulative. And speaking as a white person, the film is squirmingly uncomfortable to watch in a lot of places -- the racism is presented very... hmm... matter-of-factly, which in some ways makes it even more of a slap in the face than otherwise. (Also, Chadwick Boseman is amazing and I wish him a long and fruitful career.)
On Monday, we did breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts because I got a sheet of useful coupons to the local store (very occasionally, junk mail is not actually junk, who knew?) and then Susan hit the road while I got ready for work.
And that was my weekend with Susan. :-)
She and I have technically known each other since we were very small -- we were in the same Brownie and then Girl Scout troop -- but we didn't become friends until 7th grade, at which point we were suddenly in the same school. So that makes nineteen and a half years of friendship. *blinks* Neither of us is particularly good at telephones, but we make an effort to call every couple weeks because friendships need maintenance and this one is important to both of us, even if we rarely meet in person anymore.
We ate breakfast at the diner next to my laundromat and then set out on the Cayuga Wine Trail's annual Wine & Herb event, for which I had purchased a two-person ticket. The idea is that at each participating winery (there are sixteen members of the trail -- well, okay, technically fifteen wineries and one cidery, but let's not quibble details) you get a small potted herb, an hors d'oeuvre sized portion of a food involving that herb, a sample of a wine specifically chosen to complement that food, and then a free tasting of some of that winery's other vintages.
Of the sixteen wineries, we visited twelve. That is a lot of wine, even if you're sensible about the tastings and dump most of the samples into the dregs jar after only two sips. Of course, there IS also food to help absorb the alcohol, and we stopped for a leisurely lunch at which we drank nothing but water (several glasses each), but even so. A LOT of wine. :-)
We stopped for ice cream at the Cayuga Lake Creamery on our way home, then by mutual agreement sacked out for a brief nap before even daring to contemplate dinner. We took a walk into town to see if a bit of exercise would wake our appetites (and also so I could show Susan the initial stages of the Commons renewal project -- the pavilions are mostly dismantled and all the trees have been cut down or transplanted elsewhere) but despite the two-mile walk, we were still not hungry upon returning to my place. So we chatted a bit, which resulted in Susan prodding me into completing the next step in my college application process. Tentative yay?
On Sunday morning we ate breakfast at Waffle Frolic and then went to church -- it turned out to be Rev. Grimm's last sermon before his sabbatical -- after which we changed clothes and shoes and went hiking in Buttermilk Falls gorge. The waterfalls were displaying to best effect, since we've had rain recently enough for the creek to be full, but not so recently that it was brown and overflowing. That is always nice. We then drove into town and had lunch at Sammy's Pizzeria, after which we cleaned up and looked at cute pictures of Susan's baby nephew until the four o'clock Cayuga Chamber Orchestra Chamber Series concert at my church. This one's theme was music from Austria: Mozart's String Duo in G Major for Violin and Viola (K. 423); Fruhling's Trio in A Minor for Clarinet, Piano, and Cello (Op 40); and Schubert's Piano Quintet in A Major (D. 667 "The Trout"). The concert lasted roughly two hours and was excellent.
After the music, we went to Rogues Harbor for dinner (we both got the mushroom ravioli, which was delicious). Since it was still only 7:30pm at that point, Susan suggested we see a movie and we discovered that 42 was playing at the mall at 9:20pm. So we went to Target to kill some time, which resulted in me purchasing four new t-shirts; this was not intentional, but not a bad result since some of my older t-shirts have shrunk over the years, as clothing tends to do.
The movie itself (42, that is) was very good. It's pretty straightforward and not flashy in the slightest -- kind of oldfashioned-feeling, in a way -- but it's not a story that needed flash or dazzle, and in fact might have been harmed by attempts to be "edgy" or otherwise technically showy. There are definitely some scenes that are schmaltzy in the extreme, and also points where you can tell the music is playing on your emotions, but I was generally in sympathy with the emotions that the director and composer wanted me to feel, so that was merely something I noticed rather than something that felt annoyingly manipulative. And speaking as a white person, the film is squirmingly uncomfortable to watch in a lot of places -- the racism is presented very... hmm... matter-of-factly, which in some ways makes it even more of a slap in the face than otherwise. (Also, Chadwick Boseman is amazing and I wish him a long and fruitful career.)
On Monday, we did breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts because I got a sheet of useful coupons to the local store (very occasionally, junk mail is not actually junk, who knew?) and then Susan hit the road while I got ready for work.
And that was my weekend with Susan. :-)
She and I have technically known each other since we were very small -- we were in the same Brownie and then Girl Scout troop -- but we didn't become friends until 7th grade, at which point we were suddenly in the same school. So that makes nineteen and a half years of friendship. *blinks* Neither of us is particularly good at telephones, but we make an effort to call every couple weeks because friendships need maintenance and this one is important to both of us, even if we rarely meet in person anymore.
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(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-10 06:43 am (UTC)I guess I'm asking because for me, fandom / real life are two things that Do Not Mix. For pretty much my whole life, I never spoke about fandom or squeed about characters/ships/whatever in real life. But since 50 Shades of Grey came out, everyone knows what it is, and suddenly I'm encouraging friends to read fanfic for stories they're into, or discovering that another friend has secretly been into slash rpf for the last year or something, and it just comes up in real life casual conversation a lot more??
So I was wondering about how you, real life people you know, and fandom mix together in your life.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-10 07:07 am (UTC)I have never made fandom and fanfiction a big secret. I don't usually go around advertising it, but I told my sister, my parents, and Cat & Susan that I'd started writing fic within a year of when I fell into fandom. I think I told Cat soonest, since we were already in the habit of editing each other's original fiction and I wanted her to beta-read my fic. Vicky (my sister) has also beta-read for me a few times and is still my editor of last resort, because even if she knows nothing about any particular fandom, she knows me and where I habitually cut corners. I have mentioned in passing to some of my other relatives and also to some of my coworkers that I write fanfic, though I haven't handed out my pseudonym. And my former coworker MS and I used to talk fandom since she wrote some deliberately terrible Trigun crack!fic back in high school.
I've lost touch with Cat, alas, but I sometimes tell my family and Susan about fandoms I'm into or stories I'm writing, because fandom is a significant part of my life. They all think fanfic is a slightly peculiar hobby, but no weirder than a lot of things other people are really into. Vicky probably understands it best, since she and I kind of did fandom together as kids before we had internet access. We would spend ages talking and theorizing about books we'd read -- doing meta, I guess you could say. (We were much more into world-building than relationships and had no real concept of shipping as such, though obviously we did talk about favorite characters and favorite interactions. *wry*) Susan is also fannish in that sense -- she would probably enjoy reading meta essays about books and tv shows she likes -- but she's not really into fanfiction. She's always been more interested in my original work than my fandom work, but she is a freelance artist (among many other things), so she understand the need to create things, whatever form it happens to take.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-01 12:22 am (UTC)It is so cool that you have a friendship that old and established.
You sound as though you had a really good time.
C
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-01 02:26 am (UTC)