Queen Mary II, Day 4
Today I woke up late, we all did. And by late I mean 10 something. We missed out on the, in my opinion, far superior Britannia breakfast as well as, I don't know, but we must have missed out on something even if all it was ended up being hours of nothingness.
Yesterday I finished my bad book, the title of which I will now reveal:
The Fabulous Traveling Funeral Of Annie Freeman or (I can't quite recall) Annie Freeman's Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish. I may have cried but that does not, in my estimation, make it a good book. Okay, I did cry. I cried when she wrote about mothers dying or friends dying young. I had a burst of death, back in my sixteenth/seventeenth year, of so many different varieties of death (old age, suicide, completely unexpected meningitis) that I can't help but feel a bit for any character that has had a similar experience of a 'boom, boom, boom' series of loss
Anyways it was early in my afternoon that I saw famous guy whose name ends in Black but doesn't start with Jack. After that I finished my latest book, The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg (pretty good) and was in need of stopping by the cabin to pick up a new book. I chose to take stairway C ( I think it was C though it could have been D) which would mean a short walk outside and then through the pavilion bar/pool. I walked through that area and found it to be not ridiculously crowded and so my plan was to pick up my new book and then go back there to read and write a bit. Well, JK, you'll be disappointed in me because I did not, by any means, kiss Uma Thurman. Nor did I approach her. But she was there. Within minutes of my buying myself a Stella Artois and setting myself up facing the pool I was approached by Uma. She wanted a cigarette, I had one, she asked if she could borrow one, I saw this as my opportunity to take a photograph without losing my common decency. And so we traded, photograph for camel light. There was an exchange of a few words and then she assumed, I guess this is what most people want, that I wanted a photograph with her. At this point, I'm ashamed to admit, my hands were shaking a bit (it was like when I saw Tom Hanks for forty five seconds at the boyfriend's graduation) and so we put our heads together and we took, for me, the worst photograph ever. I look terrible! She, of course, looks beautiful and gracious. And of couse I will post it on this blog because, well, how could I not. So I would just like to make it clear that yes, she is as beautiful as she is in the movies only moreso because it's completely natural and all that. But, for my sake, I do not (or at least I don't think I do) look quite as greasy, cross eyed, double chinned and generally sucky as I do next to her. I won't lie. It was pretty neat, especially since I accomplished a photograph without actually coming up to her and asking. See, there are benefits to smoking.
I really wish I didn't look like such a tool in the photograph but what can you do...I saw her today and I almost aske for a re-do, but once again common decency got the best of me. I swear my face doesn't look that bleck. Or maybe it does and so what I should really say is that I swear I don't think of my face as looking like that. Blah.This is what I wrote within minutes of my interaction with the famous woman….I'm sharing this with you but I'm not sharing the three or four pages of dialogue I managed to write for my Reality Story novel…though I did come up with a great analogy for Stephanie (for the one or two of you from class who know what I'm talking about) and that was that Stephanie felt like the bird in the alligator's mouth, cleaning the teeth thus getting food but really the less powerful in the supposedly 'altruistic' arrangement….oh yeah I was going to copy my hand written notes:
"Very much similar to my forty second proximity to Tom Hanks, I began to shake a little when, just moments ago, Uma Thurman asked me for a cigarette….It was embarrassing—this shaking—because it was a clear indicator that I didn't consider her just somebody. But then I didn't gush either, so I guess it could have been worse."
Well, actually, that quote is a repeat of what I've already said. Oh well.
But the dialogue I wrote was a conversation between Stephanie and her father and step-mother when she first tells them she's going to be on the show. It seems that Stephanie looks very much like her mother, just a bit overweight (who knew? I certainly didn't until I wrote it) and her father is awfully upset about the whole thing not enough to change her mind but enough for her to think hard about the phone conversation just days before she is going to go under the knife..
Before all this Uma shizz, I went to the Planetarium and saw the "Stars of The Atlantic" show. My favorite part was when they digitally/planetarily re-created the slow building of the International Space Station. The planetarium was much larger than I thought it would be though not as large as Chicago's planetarium.
Right now I'm sharing a table with my dinner table mates but am not participating in their conversation.
I watched the Italy/Ghana game this evening, before dinner, with a Scotsman, an Englishman and their wives. It was a far more interesting game than the last match I watched. This trip may make me care about football. Though I thought, for a while, that I cared about baseball after the whole White Sox world series thing…basically I'm a sports climber, I watch when it's socially interesting but maybe not always. What?
I'm ashamed that the majority of what I can say about today (tomorrow by the time I post this) is Uma related but what can you do. I liked the books I read. I'm now reading The Art of Being a Wallflower which is the third out of the four books I brought for this trip…damn, I read fast.
Lunch was a small turkey sandwich and cookies...I think that was yesterday. I have photos of the breakfast too but...blah.Dinner was: Thai Fish Cakes, Smoked Chicken Salad and Fettucini with a cheese plate for after dinner.
After my day of work I returned home for a breather. Seriously, I know that there are plenty of people in the world who work harder than me, but this unrelenting work does make my brain, once not concentrating on the task at hand, go a little funny. That being said, when two shiny, tinted, hybrid Explorers pulled up on my block, I knew somebody important was inside. So, when I saw a guy who looked a lot like the Mayor of Philadelphia (Nutter) and his wife and daughter get out of said car I assumed I was just imagining things for only a second before running inside and googling his name. I found photographs of his family and confirmed the truth of my eyes. Then I came back out and took a photograph of the car, blurrily, as proof. Our upstairs neighbor confirmed that it was, in fact, Nutter. I consider this a celebrity sighting.
Once I regrouped, I headed out to the Kite and Key for drinks with S. and her bf, Ak and A2 were there as well, and another of S.'s friends. I had a Dogfish Punkin Head. More people came, we chatted. S. will be living in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, for real. And her walls may or may not be beige. More people came, two of S.'s friends (whose names I sadly do not remember, though their occupations I do--a filmmaker/editor, a third grade teacher and a law student) and L. joined the group. I was totally zonked, but the beer rallied my sprits so when L. asked about the possibility of having a shot before heading off, I thought that was a good idea. This story does not end in disaster.
Shots in hand, baseball on tv.
In the end we returned to the deck, which, let's face it, is where I'd like to spend all of my time, so that was great. I took a few photographs of L. pursuing Zul, but this is what it looked like when she got him. It's not really summer, so many needed layers, L. I gave this sweater (which I have owned since I was 13, I don't ever want to part with it).
To A2 I gave a vest that was given to me by my aunt.
I thought this was hilarious, so I lunged and pointed.
Hats and scarves also came out. J. and J. came later and I gave them scarves and dip. And Zul. got picked up again.
I really have a lot of scarves and hats and sweatshirts (Ak borrowed a sweatshirt that I got when visiting L.'s Brooklyn apartment during a blizzard six or so years ago) and whatnot. The night wrapped up with some backwards beer tossing, to different levels of success. It was a nice change of pace from the majority of my days and nights, even if it meant I stayed up too late.
