Ooch, jeez. Sorry for the delay. There's quite a bit to cover.

So, Boston. Yes. On Mother's Day, Hannah and I went into Boston, went to the Garment District, and then drove around for an hour or so looking for a parking spot. We failed and ended up cruising until hunger got the best of us and we headed back to the 'burbs for lunch. We made dinner together (which was a bit of a disaster).

In the morning, Hannah drove me to the train station and I got on the 9:00 train to South Station. My bus was schedule to leave ten minutes after I arrived at the station, so I rushed to the bus terminal and just made it in lucky-time to board the Lucky Star to New York City.

I arrived in Chinatown in the late afternoon and went uptown to check into my hostel on 95th and Broadway. The lobby was overflowing with people; apparently the computer systems had been updated and all internet reservations were lost. I was checked in to room 502, which the computer said had an unoccupied bed but the unmade beds with other people's things on them seemed to indicate otherwise. I went down to ask whether I was right in assuming that there wasn't a bed for me and took another trip up the stairs with one of the clueless receptionists. She confirmed my assumption and took me back down to the desk to get another room. Room 402 (a 6-person room) was much more what I had expected: one bed was occupied and the rest were neatly made. I threw my stuff into a locker, left the building, and started my walk downtown.

Teshika was staying with Kaorina at the latter's family's apartment; I met the former in the fancy lobby and we walked and talked around Central Park before returning to the apartment, appreciating the spectacular view (which included Central Park from north to south end), and watching Being John Malkovich. Karoina came back eventually, responding to the pleas of Teshika and my empty stomachs. We wandered around the Upper West, looking for a reasonably priced restaurant. Eventually, we found a hole-in-the-wall falafel place where we enjoyed some hummus, tabouli, and fried chickpeas and gossiped about college folks and talked about the coming summer. After returning to the apartment for a little, I went back to my room at the hostel, which I shared with a few Australians, and slept soundly.

In the morning, I started my gung-ho, New York adventure. After walking east into Central Park and being unpleasantly surprised by the Jackie O. Reservoir, I got to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was AMAZING and EXPANSIVE; the Superheroes and Jeff Koons exhibits were a lot of fun and the permanent exhibits were awe inspiring. Also exhausting and easy to get lost in.

Since I had skipped breakfast, my 'tomach was a-rumblin' by 1:00. I left the Met (reluctantly, since I felt like I had only seen a fraction of what was on display), called Patricia, and started the hike to Columbia University. Since I had packed as lightly and compactly as possible, the only sneakers I had were my All-Stars, which, with the morning's activity, had started to piss off my feet. By the time I got to the north end of Central Park, I was desperately hungry and tired; drinking an abandoned, unopened can of Diet Coke lying in the middle of a Harlem sidewalk seemed like a good idea. I made it to Columbia, well caffeinated and ready for food. In Patricia's dorm room, I met her roommate and a few of her friends. She took me to a nearby store to get some pizza and we hung out for the rest of the afternoon. We went to dinner at Columbia Cottage with a group of Patty's friends where I ate some delicious Chinese mango chicken.

We hung out until it got late and I decided to head back to my hostel. When I got back to my room, the door seemed to be locked from the inside, so I went to the lobby to ask the hiccuping, obviously intoxicated desk attendant to let me in. He opened the door for me and I walked in to find every bed occupied by a Chinese traveler. They were as shocked as I was by the unfortunate state of affairs. I went back to the desk, explained my situation, and the attendant took me to a 12-person room. I slept in my grungy clothes, pissed off and tired.

In the morning, I got up absurdly early, explained to another attendant that I was dissatisfied with the hostel's organization, and that I wanted to check out. He let me into my first room, where the Chinese family was even more confused when I opened a locker and pulled all of my belongings out. I apologized frantically, went back to the front desk, and received an unapologetic refund. Pissed off, I called Patty, told her what had happened, and made the poor decision to walk uptown to Columbia with my huge duffel bag. It was still pretty early, so I dropped my stuff off, took a shower, and left the sleeping roommates for another adventure of sorts. My morning destination was the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. It was pretty neat, but the rest of the museum wasn't all that impressive. (I suppose I spoiled it by going to the Met first...) I wanted to see a little more of Brooklyn while I was in the borough, but was discouraged when an old homeless man obscenely catcalled me. Instead of wandering around on my own, I ate lunch at Subway and headed back to Manhattan.

When I was at the Met the day before, I had tried to take a picture and realized that my camera was completely broken. From Brooklyn, I headed to B&H, "the professional's source," to see what they had in the way of used SLR cameras. After consulting my dad and one of B&H's employees, I ended up buying a refurbished Canon Rebel XT. With my acquisition in hand, I went back to Columbia.

The next day, I set out to see the Cai Guo-Qiang exhibit at the Guggenheim. After getting off the crosstown bus, I realized that it was Thursday and that the Goog is closed on Thursdays. Disgruntled, I looked at my map book and decided to try the MoMA. Once I got there, I decided that I wasn't in the mood for a museum, wandered around Midtown for a little, napped briefly in Central Park, and then headed downtown to SoHo for some shopping. Since Patty was planning on going to a concert in the evening and I couldn't get into her building without being signed in, I headed back to Columbia. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, she had left and the friend who's number she gave me was downtown. I decided to get some dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant by myself. I had a mango chicken dish of a different ethnic origin. Since my options were limited to loitering or going somewhere with all of my stuff, I hung around in book stores, sat around on campus, made a phone call or two, and waited. Eventually, Patty called, apologized, and told me that she had found someone else to sign me in to her building. I hung around in her room for the rest of the evening.

The next day was cold and rainy. I went downtown to buy a camera case and quickly returned to Columbia. Patricia was packing and getting her belongings ready for storage. She had to wait in the rain for the movers. After complaining about the weather for a while, we got burgers at the nearby asian grocer for a late lunch. In the evening, a couple of Patty's friends wanted to go to see Ironman. Despite the fact that I'd seen it a week before, I decided that I'd rather go again than sit around in an empty dorm room. It was sillier than the second time I'd seen it; the cheesy scenes stood out like a fake tan in January and the soundtrack seemed hokeyer than ever. I suppose seeing any movie thrice in quick succession will ruin it at least temporarily.

The next day was both Patty and my last in the city. We finished packing her belongings, checked out of the building in the late morning, and sat around on the campus lawn with brave squirrels until she had to leave for the airport. We said our goodbyes and I headed down- and crosstown to meet Aliza. We walked west across Central Park to see Thumbelina, the world's smallest horse, at the AMNH. The horse was certainly the smallest horse I'd ever seen. It was also the ugliest.

A street market of overpriced crafts was underway. We wandered through it, headed back to the east side, where I had some delicious shrimp curry at Hale & Hearty, checked where my PA-bound bus was departing from, said goodbye to Aliza, and boarded a train to Grand St. It was quite a walk to the bus stop. When I got there, I saw the Lucky Star Boston-NYC bus. "Huh," I thought to myself, "what a coincidence that my bus to State College leaves from the same location that my bus from Boston arrived." WRONG. I quickly fell into a panic, rechecked the bus stop addresses I had written down and realized that Chinatown and half of Little Italy were between me and where I wanted to be. I ran as much as my feet and duffel bag allowed and made it to the bus, miraculously, in a sweaty, out-of-breath mess. It was a six hour bus ride; I didn't get to State College until one in the morning. Julia's parents picked me up in their pajamas and fed me before we all went to sleep.

The next morning, Julia got back from her prom night. I joined her and her beau for breakfast at the Waffle Shop and we spent a lazy Sunday together. On Monday, I hung out with Will for a while. On Tuesday, I went over to Tessa's. We watched Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, which I enjoyed thoroughly. On Wednesday, I woke up late, helped Leah wash windows, played some solitaire, and then went to the Natatorium with Julia and Stefan, which was a lot of fun. The week was mostly uneventful but very relaxing.

On Saturday morning, we drove to Oberlin for commencement weekend. Mia was busy working and packing, so I spent a lot of time with Julia's family. Julia, her cousin, and I went bowling. There were a lot of concerts and events: O Circus, illumination, steel drum band, senior recitals, etc. On Monday, we went to commencement, where I was very impressed with the achievements of Oberlin alumni and enjoyed the president and Fareem Zakaria's addresses. Mia and Aaron showed up for the reading of names and then informed me that we had to leave very soon. I said goodbye and thanks to Julia's family, gathered my stuff, and piled into the over-packed van. We had lunch at the Mandarin and then started our eastward adventure.

The drive was uneventful but fun. When we arrived at our destination, we picked up my belongings and stored Mia's at Julia's, and, while giving an impromptu tour of Main St., stopped by the house of our old neighbors, where we ended up eating a delicious, homemade dinner. Aaron drove us to the airport where we got a rental car, said goodbye, and started our night-time drive to Philadelphia. Although we got a little lost on the way, we made it to Will's, where we socialized and then slept. Briefly. We woke up at six in the morning, giving ourselves way too much time to get to the airport and return the rental car.

Two flights and many hours of waiting later, we arrived at Salt Lake City airport where our parents waited with open arms. We had dinner at one of Logan's few good restaurants before heading home for MOVING MADNESS. I won't bore you with details, but home improvements, yard sale preparation, and packing have kept us busy since arriving almost two weeks ago. We are still in the midst of Project Mole; Dad has recruited Mia and I to help him finish digging out the crawl space. But we finally put out a big FOR SALE sign with information sheets and have received a few calls, one of which resulted in a showing. Hopefully our house will sell astonishingly fast so we can have our yard sale and GTFO!

We've been watching Eddie Izzard stand-up as a family. The Venture Bros. Season 3 has started. Things are going well in my narrowly defined world of entertainment.