Poppin’ Straws and Takin’ Names
There's something to be said for growing up in small towns. Where else can you spend 45 minutes popping straws in a Tim Horton's/Wendy's parking lot and claim it was the most interesting thing there was to do?
I've been hanging out with Tracy (who incidentally hasn't touched her site in ages) quite a bit lately. We spend much time contemplating how little there is to do in the Finger Lakes for people who are Broke As Hell™. These are some of the few times that I regret being unemployed. The other times are when I am on my computer and want it to be faster, or when I want to buy something, or when I'm low on gas, or when I'm hungry, or in other situations where it would do well to have money. In retrospect, there are more than a few times that I regret being unemployed. I do not regret it, however, between the hours of 6 and 11 in the morning, when I am sleeping.
I digress. I came today to talk about bloodwork. If your doctor sends you in for routine bloodwork, and casually asks if you'd like to be tested for HIV, tell him no. If you have a female doctor, tell her no. The number of things that have been going through my head, the what ifs, is terrible. Even though I'm sure it will come back negative, my imagination really seems to love contemplating the possibilities. Because I needed to take my mind off it, and because I knew she'd be a helpful person to talk to about it, I called on Tracy.
We sat around on the dock for a while and dangled feet in the water and talked about school, friends, life, and everything else. Hunger set in, and on a reminiscent kick we decided to go to Luigi's, a little pizza place in Naples. There we ate chicken wing pizza and reminisced more. More so than doing it, talking about reminiscing makes one feel old. After pizza I did not feel like going home, so we got in the car and I drove in the opposite direction. That was not much more exciting than the route home, until I decided that getting lost would be a good idea. We took a side road, about a lane and a half wide, dirt, with trees on either side. There was this house that appeared to be abandoned. The windows were all boarded, with no trespassing signs, but the lawn was mowed out front. That, along with darkness and lack of flashlights kept us out. The oddest thing about the house was not its lawn, but its address. It had a five digit number! This was before we were thouroughly lost, so I do intend to explore eventually.
A few twists and turns later, we found ourselves on top of one of those big hills. If you're from the Finger Lakes you know what I'm talking about. It's one of those hills you always see in the distance but can never figure out how to get on top of. We went out and sat on top of the car for a while and popped some straws we liberated from Luigi's (remember Luigi's?). The ones from Wendy's worked better.
It was a great time of day to be way up in the air. The stars were just coming out. We sat for a while trying to discern where the sounds of traffic originated, so far out in the sticks. It turned out to be I-390. We had fun looking at the sky and contemplating the really important things in life, like what the fuck was a broadcast antenna doing on top of this hill and what did it broadcast?
On the way home we got Really Fucking Lost™. I'm trademarking a lot of things tonight. Anywho, we were down near Cohocton and Wayland, and by astral navigation and Tracy's Spidey Sense, we managed to find 21 and get our Really Fucking Lost Broke as Hell asses out of there. I should mention that Spidey Sense is probably trademarked to Marvel, or Stan Lee, or something like that. It would be pretty dickish of them to come after me for something like this though.
Back at the Casa de Tracy, we did more lakeside-sitting, though this time we kept our piggies out of it. The temperature had dropped a healthy number of degrees, and there was a stiff breeze. More stargazing was accomplished at this point. I'm losing wind here. Can you tell? Oh yeah, and before we arrived back at Tracy's, we stopped at the graveyard and did the first major stargazing and talking about stars thing.
I'm done.