8 hours of driving for 6 hours of pong

we've lived on third avenue for over 2 years now. our bedroom windows face the street, but our terrace faces a roof and a wall directly across from us, and some other apt buildings kitty corner. i'm not so good at shutting the shades in the morning, but the apt building diagonal from us is having some construction done and there are construction workers out there every morning. i think i need to get better at shutting the shades lest they get the wrong idea when i'm getting dressed in the morning. that being said, it's so easy to see into other people's apts that i'm sure someone's seen it already before.

had a fantastic trip up to hanover this weekend. dragged vin out of bed at 6 on sat morning, something that was pretty rough as we'd been at a bar up the street where the hook bartenders were guest bartending at dana's bar on friday night. found celeste at grand central and took the train to stamford where we picked up the car.

made good time up to hanover on a gorgeous sunny day. usually i do that drive up in the dark on a friday night post work, so it was nice to have daylight so we could see the beautiful landscape we were driving through. met up with my parents and my brother and my sister and the puppy (sasha bear!) and went to boloco for lunch, then wandered around the football stadium, gym (which i've been trying to check out for two years now. just generally too drunk), bema/robert frost/lone pine and library. i was thinking about the time boxa and i took tay tay's pink flamingo rosario to various places around campus and took pictures of him to send to taylor while she was on her off term in barcelona. (the only remaining pic is one of us at a lot, but i know we did robert frost too).

found celeste and diede at dirt cowboy, made a trip to the co-op to snag some 'merchandise' and then hung out on the green where puppies and strange performance art of a person dressed up in a clam suit abounded. this clam (if you could call it that, it mainly looked like burlap to me) was just bopping around the green, collapsing in strange places for awhile, and then getting up again. my sister told us this was the current installation at the hop, so we went over to check it out. the installation was a bunch of burlap clams inside a glass case. so odd.

back out to the green to listen to the baker bells play the alma mater at 6, and then to molly's for $2 margs and sustenance. quick stop at stinson's for beer, boones and cups, and it was back to sd for harbour with some sig eps. the basement music, as usual, was subpar, but the harbour was fantastic. the night disintegrated from there; eventually i had to step off a pong game b/c i couldn't see the cups, but it was so nice to play real pong, in a basement, with plenty of space where the ball bounced and people weren't trying to fight you for playing a game they've never seen. we all passed out in the sd tv room/library, where we glad for some sketchy sleeping bags. that's the one issue with cleaning out the library - where will sketchy alums sleep? vin was worried about getting lost on campus, but we told her that 'sigma delt was a destination you could ask for' if she needed to. fortunately that was mitigated simply by never leaving sd. problem solved.

grabbed bagel basement for bfast, dropped the extra 30s of keystone we had bought off to my sister, and headed back early on sunday. quick trip, but so worth it. just need a fix every once in awhile. vin and i hit up target and taco bell in stamford before dropping off the car. could not for the life of us find the taco bell, so vin called and asked for directions, a process that took about 15 minutes. when we finally did arrive the cashier asked if 'we were those girls who wanted directions to the taco bell' and 'we really wanted to taco bell that badly?' it was like a taco bell commercial, which got better (or worse) when we ran down the stairs at the stamford train station and got on a train that turned out to not be the 4:03 to nyc, but the 4:00 to new cannan. so we rode the train to new cannan and then back to stamford, an experience that would have been much much worse had we not had the taco bell in hand.

so happy we went, and super happy that i'll be back again in six weeks. makes leaving easier. :) other things that make the dartmouth withdrawal easier is the fact that boxa is in town this weekend! looking forward to lots of catching up with her and causing mischief.

where i'm from we pronounce that 'epic'

made it back from dc in one piece, though it was questionable at times. trip was epic, nothing less than expected.

scored tickets to the boston jimmy buffett show on june 25. that's a thursday for those of you without a calendar. we're taking the day off to tailgate and then i'll prob just hang out on the cape the rest of the week leading up to the 4th of july. summer vacation scheduled - check!

walked over to the pong tourney that the dartmouth club of dc was throwing in georgetown on saturday afternoon with caro and alice b/c lingley asked her to come pick me up and told her 'i like walking.' this is true. i do like walking. but i wouldn't introduce myself with, 'hi. i'm lyon. i like walking. and turtles.'

fortunately it was a gorgeous sunny spring-like day out, which we promptly effectively ditched by going into the bar and upstairs where the shades were lowered, the pong tables were set up and the bon jovi was rocking. it took me about two minutes to spill beer all over the floor. some things never change.

linsalata and i played together - the first two rounds were diamond instead of shrub (if you didn't go to dartmouth, read this useful wikipedia article on dartmouth pong) - smoked the first round, but the second round was killer. we set up for shrub in an effort to get the tourney back on track and were promptly repremanded by jen krimm. this was bad b/c we had gotten the game against two '97s off on a good start when i sunk two cups in a row. once we reverted to diamond it was a quick three sinks for the old alums and we were smoked. game over.

fortunately there was still an open bar, good music, sketchy alums to talk with and soldja boy dancing to do (i think this is how i railed my knee. per usual). lingley appeared and refused to let me go to virginia to play more pong with an '03 that i'd known since freshman year so we went back to liz and lopez's apt, where i promptly put myself to bed for three hours.

woke up around 10, had some salt and vinegar chips (the b-side lays version) and grabbed some road sodas and headed to a house party in an unidentified area of dc. we didn't know a soul but we totally dominated this party - 'we came, we saw, we conquered, not in that order of course' style.

by the time we got there there were no mixers, so rast chugged bombay sapphire straight in response to some snarky boys who asked if she was drinking water. no one there appreciated this but me, so we lamented the uselessness of non-dartmouth boys for a portion of time. i was drinking malibu straight through a straw - delicious candy. we all ended up in the kitchen (as tends to happen at parties) next to a wine rack of expensive wine and crown royal. shots were had, rast and i sang 'don't stop believing' acapella and to the amusement of the kitchen. this boy took my hat - my super sweet 'save water, drink corona' hat, that i acquired from an '08 at psi u at some point, it's my party hat - which i took as an invitation, but lingley chose that moment to show up, blitzed from the wine and cheese party she had been at, and do some shots of crown royal before passing out on the sidewalk.

there was lots of running in and out of the house, with and without shoes. some dancing. i went to go get some money so lingley could get a cab home and she managed to lose $40 in the space of 5 minutes. i later found one of the $20s in my pocket when i was getting ready for work this morning.

finally sent lingley off with lopez and liz - rast had gone home to her 'bf' tivo by this point, with a bottle of tanqueray and the bottle of malibu in tow. lingley, it turns out, had purloined two of the bottles of wine. this is the real world kids - you can't go all klepto like at school!

the boy and i go off to find his friends, end up at a restaurant for some beers - stamp on my cc slip says 2 am. turns out he is from manhattan and works on the hill. best part of this story is his name is merle and apparently he is engaged if facebook is to believed. but how was i supposed to know that?

collect my things in the morning and walk back (yes - i like walking) to lingley's, WITH my hat - there was no way i was leaving it - for potluck brunch. lings and i whipped up a sausage souffle, rast brought baked brie and liz brought a fruit salad which we inhaled with mimosas before some tv/napping time.

i headed back to nyc on a 3 pm bolt bus. met a very cute, smart boy on the way - sat next to me and we talked all the way home. he gave me his card and said he'd be down for drinks next week but if facebook is to be believed, he's dating someone, so, as vin said, i have to stop 'naming the puppy' but as christine said, he did make the 4 hr trip back much more enjoyable at the very least and it's always nice to talk to someone who doesn't already know my life story.

am actively peer pressuring the dc gang to come up for my bday - which i just booked at 'whiskey town' - and it sounds like some of them are in for the debauchery. like the post's title says, where i'm from we pronounce that 'epic'.

good work kids

back to the island

had a fantastic, fantastic time in washington dc this weekend visiting lingley. beautiful weather, good times, and lots of singing of our new favorite song: voglia di dance all night (seriously - we must have listened to it like 50 times. check it out.) a perfect celebration of memorial day

got in around 8:30 on friday night - after some pizza, we went out to a d party on a roof downtown. turns out said party was for one of the kids that lived below us on the second floor of richardson our soph year. soph year, boxa, taylor and i (skips lived with us winter term) lived in a two-room triple in richardson (richardson 309). the room was ridic small - boxa and my bed was bunked and taylor's was lofted - but we had really great parties where we'd cram most of the crew team in all the time. we'd stick the bar in the bathroom (half bath that also had my wardrobe. yeah) and turn on the music. one time on the way back from the liquor store, boxa dropped an entire handle of bacardi on the (stone) stairs in front of our uga. yeah. we discussed this with the boys at friday night's party - was a nice blast from the past, though they were a little weird and smoked a lot of pot. but i digress.

sat lings made me run six miles on the mall with her. 1. i don't run that much very often anymore, 2. it was really hot and sunny and 3. had had no food. despite these challenges, i was glad she made me do it, as we saw all the memorials and buildings and things. it was memorial day weekend and there were tons of biker vets in for the occasion. looking at the vietnam memorial surrounded by veterans was an emotional added element. i've been reading a lot about world war 2 lately and was really able to comprehend the meaning of the inscription on the memorial: 'here we mark the price of freedom.' intense stuff. lingley showed me her offices - was very patriotic and moving. dc is so cool!

played pong in lingley's backyard on sat afternoon - diana and the boy came over to play me and linsalata in tree before dashing off to family affairs. great to see her however briefly and get in some afternoon pong. lingley and i also attempted to make the sherbert punch that was so delicious (and deadly!) senior spring - but we must have forgotten an ingredient because the stuff turned out to be this ugly green color that no self-respecting mother would serve at a child's birthday party. we dubbed it 'the hatorade' or else some sort of slythern type concoction - green and evil. this and more tree contributed to lingley being unable to talk later on, and then passing out sitting straight up at evan's friends apt after flinging the drumsticks for rock band because she couldn't figure out how to play. as one of the wknds motto's went: 'classy. low classy.'

sun we went to see the washington nationals play the milwalkee brewers. was a gorgeous day for a baseball game and the new park is beautiful. for most of us, the game was about eating delicious ball park food like hot dogs and dipping dots, but it was a nice bonus that they won.

more pong when we returned (am loving this 'play lots of pong all the time' mentality) and after 2.5 games of tree we were all wasted, which contributed to lingley's friend passing out sitting straight up after chinese food. she even slept through an impromptu dance party to lingley's new favorite songs, which, not at all coincidentally, are my current favorite songs (see above). lots of jumping ensued.

mon morning we hit up the national zoo before i headed back to nyc. our animal count was about 5 for 15 - it was remarkably hard to find the animals - but it was nicely landscaped, and we did see the panda, elephants and lots of small mammals. there were children everywhere and we were very snarky, but it was fun. lingley gave me her ipod to reprogram with my music. i do pride myself on my dj skills but this was a first. am looking into doing an podcast that you guys can download ala the 'doodad and mullet radio show'. will let you know.

really good times all around - so great to hang out. dc is gorgeous - ravines and grass and leaves and sun. am covered in freckles. or i will be when the sunburn fades. perfect way to celebrate memorial day. =)

blackout '08

aka - green key '08. blackout is a good title, however, b/c it refers to the amount of beer consumed, the fact that there was a lot of britney spears (and subsequent remixes and mashups) and the power went out for a portion of time on sat night leaving us in the basement playing social by the light of the emergency lights and then after those went out, outside by the headlights of cars in the backyard of sd.

cut out early on fri to drive up with cody, and christine. was torrentially downpouring in nyc as i walked up to grand central (soaking rain) which was really sparkling so to speak. made good time driving up despite what cody thought was snow, ('is that snow flying at the windshield?' 'no - it's 60 degrees out). we also learned that northwest now flies non-stop from hartford to memphis, though why someone would want to go there (hi crew team), non-stop or otherwise, is anybody's guess. cody had this annoying gps system in the car that kept wanting us to a) take 95, and b) warning us that htown was 'not on the map and we should proceed with caution.' we knew htown was rural, but sheesh!

got up to school and went to play pong with my bro at xh where we successfully ran table on games of tree for several in a row before jas was booted off. had worn heels all day at the office, so when i leaned in to hit the ball my calves kept cramping up. that is one problem i never had as an undergrad. in keeping with the eclectic music of xh, was introduced to the 'holly dolly' song (which i am now addicted to) and sang to 'mrs. robinson' and 'heart of gold'

went and found kevin at 8 school for some 'since you been gone', before wheeling the storage room key out of the undergrads to get beer so we could play pong with ceppos and the boy. what followed was a game of incoherentness that we lost badly, and will be run back in nyc this summer, before we headed to sae for a mini-d reunion in the back room. i also accidentally drunk-dialed my new boss, as i thought i was calling ceppos and it turns out i had just redialed my last missed call. oops!

slept on the first floor of sd and woke up early for harbour, which of course took forever to round up. ceppos and i played diamond after buying beer at stinson's (learned we can call up stinson's and have them send us cups. clutch) until huyett appeared and lingley, who was in fine form on friday night, showed up. after peer pressuring huyett into playing (she 'doesn't like specialty pong' she claims) and attempting to keep lings from booting by filling half our cups with boones, we started the game. lings was in poor shape, and deide stepped in an an apparent rescue effort, but we were sunk by a lucky shot and out first.

deide and i ran it back with ceppos and the boy but lost again (second game that will be run back this summer) to our dismay, and headed to the pig roast and lawn party for a break and some sun, as it was the nicest green key possibly in my seven years of green keys, but def since our junior year. i had discovered a silver star headband which became my flair of choice, and we realized we all should have taken showers when diede's pics got put up on fb. but our feet were dirty, we were drunk and showering wasn't really an option.

sat night found deide and i ponging in the basement with a kid i randomly met in line for the grill at food court. this phi delt is apparently working at gs after graduation, and seemed to be having some serious remorse issues. we encouraged him to take a break and think about what he had done with us at sd and after getting beat twice by deide and my bro, he disappeared. a few pong games later the lights went out, prompting many 'how many d students does it take to change a lightbulb? none: htown doesn't have electricity' jokes. so we moved the tables next to each other and sang the basement songs ourselves. turns out, we know a little of a lot of basement songs. eventually those lights went out, so we joined forces with the kids playing pong outside for some social bra pong in the dark.

headed back early on sun am and got back to the city in time to crash at 5 pm and sleep straight through til 7 the next morning. gk '08 over. but just like the stars in my headband, green key is really more of a mentality than anything else. perpetual green key if you will.

great to chill with everyone - on the way up it was like we were going to this big party where lots of people we liked were going to be. i have this feeling fairly often as we have lots of parties with people i like, but it was nice to have them all in one place. def good times. made me very happy i had gone up. we missed you if you weren't there, and i have decided to make more permanent versions of the team tequila shirts. it was awfully hard to bequest them, though i'm glad we did and the lineage has continued. 'if only everything were has reliable as team tequila'. =)

oral fixation

there's a pretty hilarious blog out there called 'how not to get laid' - it chronicles stories of exactly that - things that people do that don't seal the deal.

in lyon land (hint: you're in it right now) that includes one major thing (drum roll please):

SMOKING

ugh ugh hate it hate it hate it. god -forget laid - that's how to not get to make out with me, etc. etc.

there were two big issues with the kid i hooked up with last night:

1. he was 20. if you can't take me out to a bar it's not gonna work.
2. he smoked.

MAJOR turn-off.

we did hook up in the photo booth though. tee hee hee. ;-P

huyett was down, but only saw her for point five seconds, as she was apt hunting and headed back to boston early on. yesterday we spent doing activities that start with 'p' - painting and planting. vin and i planted all the seeds we ordered in the window boxes around the terrace (vin: flowers WANT to grow in response to my concerns that there's a good chance none of them will come up), and then vin, cody and i painted the pong table. we went for a 'coca-cola' motif - so if you come over, mention that it looks like that - and painted 'beer goes well with more beer' (one of my favorite sayings, courtesy of the 'new dictionary of exeter language) on it in script and block font. we are VERY pleased with ourselves.

vin and i had the inaugural rally, and then slaine and i played one on one until cody returned and aida showed up to be taught how to play. we think she liked it but it's hard to tell. we all trooped down to the lower east side to some aussie bar where we met some aussie pro squash player. informal poll: what's the additional hotness factor added by an accent? in this case - it was pretty high - but we were pretty wasted, and headed back home the ues.

in usual suspect news: chatted with laurak a bit on gtalk this week. she's taking a trip to costa rica to see her sis and won't be able to make it to green key. she said she'd talked to allette - who was off on a multi-day camping trip, but would be discussing her future with her superiors when she returned. caught boxa on fb chat - she's just back from her post-med school boards trip to cabo in mexico, and starting orientation for year three of med school tomorrow. no rest for the weary eh? diana's bday is on tuesday - she can't do green key because her brother is graduating this weekend. boo on people who don't plan things around d's big wknd party schedule . . . =)