In review

It's been an odd couple of days.

Against my better judgment, I joined Facebook, and though it's been neat to reconnect with NYU, Grinnell, & HHS friends, I'm not altogether sure the site is healthy.

Tuesday night, Neil & I went to "Mark Twain Tonight!", which I was really looking forward to. Hal Holbrook is such a cute old man. It was a good show--folksy and amusing--and we had seats right behind a separating aisle so we could stretch our legs out.

Then about halfway through the first act, I began noticing the stench. It reminded me of unwashed human and something I couldn't put my finger on--something the really big, nasty-haired guy who used to come to the ARC smelled like. The smell would come in waves, right when the ventilation system blew over our way, every five minutes or so, so it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. Moving seats really wasn't an option, since the show was just about sold out. I asked Neil if he smelled it, and he had just started noticing it, too.

I tried breathing only through my mouth, but the nature of the show is such that you have to really think about what Holbrook is saying to get it--and when I got lost in his narrative, I'd relax and start breathing normally. Then the stench would arise again. It was awful.

At intermission, I asked Neil what he wanted to do. He reluctantly admitted he'd prefer to leave, and I was glad he did. Holbrook is 83, but maybe he has another tour left in him that we can catch.

As soon as we were outside, Neil explained what I couldn't figure out--it smelled like whoever the person was lived in a house where they let their cats run wild without doing much cleaning up. It was cat urine and poop smells that had seeped into clothes--one of the worst, subtle smells ever. And since you can't really tell that from just looking at people, we couldn't see who it was.

It was a bummer. We visited Dad after for a few minutes and took a walk around his side garden, then went to Subway to pick up dinner to watch in front of the "Idol" I recorded while we were gone. But Subway was out of bread. It would have been easy to get a healthy-ish meal there, but instead we went to Taco Bell, where they only gave me like 7 mild sauce packets.

"Idol" was Neil Diamond week, a night I figured would be awesome, but...it wasn't, really. No one stood out or blew me away, and I'm wondering what it takes to do this now. Shouldn't they be getting better? Archuleta's "Imagine" and David Cook's "Hello" seem so far in the past. I'm even losing most of my affection for David A. The judges, of course, see no wrong in him.

At least we got NKOTB tour information this week. October 4th in Chicago.
Em--are you in????? How much fun would a girly road trip be?!