Rochester Trip Part One

Just got back from most of a week spent in Rochester with Mary Beth's parents. We left on Saturday. Taxi came and picked us up in the mid-morning, or at least not the super-early morning. The flight up went pretty smoothly. I feel like the planes just keep getting smaller and smaller. On the first leg, Mary Beth and I were crammed in the last row and it weirdly didn't even have a window (though the same last row on the other side did). As we started to land in La Guardia and were going over Manhattan, I did catch some fleeting glances of the city through the window in front of me (crazy to behold as always!). I did finish reading The Complete Short Prose 1929-1989 by Samuel Beckett on this first leg. Another plus is that we did share that flight with a cat in a carry-on (the next flight we shared with a cello that got its own seat right in front of us). At the airport, Mary Beth ate something from a ramen place that looked a lot better than the burger I had next door (though the place's sign said "Sexburger" (it's actually something called "Essex Burger" but it was written in frosted glass globes and the second E was turned around...I'm easily amused!). We got a rental car this time. New cars are weird 'cuz there's no key and you just unlock with the fob and press a button to start/stop. It's weird. And all the fancy computer crap that I didn't use. I did enjoy my freshly loaded mp3 player though! We drove out to the airbnb house we were staying at. It was pretty fine. It did have the loudest staircase in the history of human civilization. I'm missing the order! On the way there, we stopped at Herrema's (a local grocery store that's nearby) and loaded up on some drinks for our stay. Then we ordered some pizza to pick up from Pontillo's (we got extra so we were eating all this pizza on our off-hours throughout the trip). After we picked it up we went over to Charlotte where there's a popular beach area. It was dark by then but some people were still around and we got to see the lake in the approaching darkness. I think we got to see the last dregs of a sunset (still super-beautiful). And there was this woman in a white dress being photographed (professionally, lit up by some fancy light or something) and, while I was taking a picture of the lighthouse, I noticed the weird ghostly effect of this person that just happened to be at the bottom of my photo. At first I didn't know why she was coming out so weirdly (they were a good bit away in the distance so I couldn't make out any detail), but then I realized what was going on and I took some weird, floating, ghost-like pictures of her in the scene. Back at the house, we checked out the tv situation and pulled up Hulu. Realized we could watch at least the first two episodes of the new season of Futurama. I liked it a lot. I read some lukewarm reviews (especially in regards to the meta stuff in the first episode, like "good they got that out of their system right away") but I'm enjoying what I've seen so far. I think it's a good deal better than the last run of seasons (and no, not better than the original run, but still high up there). What else? Probably sleep. The bed was weird. It was slightly tilted, either the bed or the floor was tilted (probably the latter but same effect). So my sinuses are kinda sensitive to clogging depending on my position when I sleep, so with the bed tilted where my head was at the ever-so-tiny-slightly-lower decline, my sinuses clogged up straight away no matter what position I was in. So I ended up sleeping the other way on the bed (hanging out with Mary Beth's feet) and with my head up on the ever-so-tiny incline, my sinuses cleared right away. So I slept the rest of the trip backwards or upside-down or however you wanna call it. It was fine. It didn't help that the bed wasn't very comfortable, I mean, there's worse, but there's better.

Sunday we started off by going over to Mary Beth's parents' house for lunch and hanging out. We hung out there for a good while. It had been a while so it was good to see them. After a little bit we went over to the nearby beach and Mary Beth got to swim and hang out in the lake (that's Lake Ontario). It was pretty crowded too, Mary Beth says she's not used to that beach being crowded (it's the one she prefers 'cuz the water is colder and it's more ocean-like). After we hung out there for a while (and rinsing off, etc) we went back to Mary Beth's parents' for dinner and to see her Uncle Denny who was there as well. We hadn't seen him since we lost Aunt Laurie and we were happy to see him again. After he left, Mary Beth's parents must have been very excited by the visit and wanted to stay up quite late talking and hanging out (like, several hours past their usual bedtime, that went back down pretty quickly subsequent nights though).

Next it was Monday! We started off on a quest for some white hots ("hots" are what Rochester calls their hotdogs and there are red and white, so white hots are kind of like a frank-like pork sausage and you can really only get them in Rochester so they're a favorite to get). We thought we could get them from Bill Gray's but they only seemed to have red hots. Then we said fuck it and it was a change of plans and we tried to go down to Nick Tahou and get a good ol' fashioned garbage plate (with white hots, of course) but then found out they're closed on Mondays! So, we thought we could get them from the source at Zweigle's, but oops, they're just a retail manufacturer and it was the plant and not a dining establishment and we're driving in circles around the block trying to figure out where the hell to park until we figure it out! Then some more research and Mary Beth picks Mark's Texas Hots (neither of us have been there before, but she knew about it). It's a divey little diner (kinda like Nick Tahou) and the "Texas" part seems to me to be a big misnomer but their menu is vast. We got their version of the garbage plate called "sloppy plate" and I thought they were my second favorite garbage plate version (behind Nick Tahou's) but Mary Beth wasn't into it as much. After that we went around the neighborhood and stopped at this little gift shop kinda place called Archimage and I got some goofy souvenirs for some people. Then there was this art gallery (mostly an artists' workshop but with a small gallery too) that had an exhibit on cat ceramics that was on her list anyway. It's The Flower City Arts Center. So we looked at some mugs and jars and statues of goofy cats. Then it was Record Archive for cd shopping! It's a big kinda warehouse place and I picked up some (a whole bunch of) new and (mostly) used cds: Oxbow: Love's Holiday, Tangerine Dream: Tangram, Uzeda: Out of Colours, Prolapse: Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes, Sonny Simmons: Solo Out into the Andromeda, Shellac: The End of Radio, Liars: Wixiw, Arnold Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht • Variationen für Orchester, Greg Ginn: Let It Burn (because I Don't Live There Anymore), Greg Ginn: Dick, Stevie Wonder: Fulfillingness' First Finale, The Black Heart Procession + Solbakken: In the Fishtank, Colleen: The Tunnel and the Clearing, Colleen: The Golden Morning Breaks, Thelonious Monk: Brilliant Corners, The Flying Luttenbachers, Gods of Chaos, and Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus (also, I did attempt to pick up Ice Cube: AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted but later I found that the disc was missing!...also, this is the second time I've gotten that Stevie Wonder album...I wasn't into it before, but I do like the single...and I've come around more on a lot of his other ballady stuff so maybe I'll like it more with a second chance?). Later it was back to Mary Beth's parents' for more dinner and hanging out. I think at night we went back to Charlotte and got some frozen custard at Abbott's. Mine was blueberry and it was very very tasty. Some more walking around Charlotte beach area.

Tuesday we sent off out into the country to take a tour of this Alapaca farm called Lazy Acre. It was pretty neat. A nice hilly farm area and they've got a bunch of alpacas. Our tour group was just us and a women with her two little girls. The farm also had two goats that we were told were there for "comic relief." We got to feed the alpacas these grass pellets and they just liked 'em up off the hand. They apparently only have bottom teeth so they can't bite. We could pet 'em a little bit but they only really tolerate their necks being touched, not the head at all. They're apparently kinda like cats in that they're curious but standoffish. Only a few came up to eat (though the goats were over-eager volunteers, but they can bite so we were told not to feed them!, they were in a separate pen too). We went in the pen with the pregnant women and babies and moms. The men alpacas are kept separate and we didn't go to them. We went to another pen with the non-pregnant women though we didn't go inside. They were much more eager to approach. Got some more fancy souvenirs in this gift shop. On the way back into the city, I stopped back by Record Archive to see if I could switch out that Ice Cube cd but they didn't have another one so I just replaced it real quick with The Clash: Combat Rock (finally actually bothering to get this after so many decades!, decided that the goodness of "Straight to Hell" probably outweighs the less-than-good-ness of the two big singles). After that we went to the George Eastman Museum. We couldn't figure out the parking lot and ended up parking on the street behind it. Oops. But it was fine. We just walked slightly longer. Okay. I'm going to break this up into another post now!

Rochester Trip Part Two

Let's see if I can wrap this up here! So I left us on Tuesday at the George Eastman Museum. It was pretty cool. It's broken up into a few parts with more of a museum with galleries and then the old mansion that's more of the history museum. We first went to the galleries and there were some awesome exhibits (photographs, as George Eastman is the Kodak dude...history lesson!) and a lot of them were focused on the theme of the South. The biggest one was from Gillian Laub when she went and documented the segregated proms in George back in 2008 (I remember when that made it into the news the next year and you know, of course being "what the fuck!?" but yeah, kinda crazy that the big article on it that came off the photo series put on the public pressure that finally got them desegregated in 2010). It was all really good and there was a whole lot of information about everything including lots of talks with the people on both sides (and how depressing the justifications of "it's just the way it's always been" and "it's not based on racism, they go to the same school together" are). We also continued to see more Tommy Kha. And there's one room with an exhibit of cameras and they had the camera from the lunar orbiter that mapped the moon landing site and it looked pretty cool, just like something that was in space in the 60s should look. So after that it was back to Mary Beth's parents'. Then at night we got the privilege of one more episode of Futurama being available. Their Hulu subscription is not ad-free so, though we'd tried a little to watch some more shows, this is about the breaking point where we couldn't take the fucking ads anymore and gave up on it except to watch that one new Futurama episode.

Then on Wednesday we went back up to Charlotte and had a nice daytime walk around the park. We even rode the oldschool carousel! We sat on cats that went up-and-down and had carved fish in their mouths. Then we walked out to the end of the jetty (I think this is where I got a little bit of sunburn but I don't think it's too bad...yet, knock on something). Then we went to the Memorial Art Gallery, the big art museum. There was a lot of really awesome stuff. One room of video exhibits had "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" playing. Lots of good modern art, an old organ (like, early Renaissance, or something like that?...and even got to see someone playing it), a trio of Monets, lots of good stuff. Then we tried to go to this other smaller gallery but found it's closed while preparing some installation. There was a used bookstore almost next door and we just hopped in there instead. I picked up a couple (being conscientious of physical size and being able to take them back on the plane!): Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett, Pigeon Post by Dumitru Tsepeneag, The First Lulu by Frank Wedekind, and History. A Mess. by Sigrún Pálsdóttir. Then when we met Mary Beth's parents we went over to this bar right on the water (river side, but right across from the jetty on the other side, also pretty much down the street from where we were staying) called Silk O'Loughlin's. Some friends of Mary Beth's parents met us there. We sat outside by the water and it was nice, at first it was sunny but it got less so, though there were two guys playing guitar and it was kinda loud but I had my earplugs nearby. Their version of the garbage plate is called "trash plate" and Mary Beth and I ate that.

Okay, now we're up to today. That was the trip back. Drove to the airport and dropped the rental off. While waiting for our first flight I finished reading Night by Elie Wiesel (good, but you know what it's about!). Then all the next run of flights went smooth. We stopped at the Reagan airport in DC (or should I just call it "Washington National?"). Then back home to Memphis! Kinda funny is the same taxi driver that drove us to the airport on Saturday happened to be the guy who drove us home today. So then...well, yeah. You're caught up, I guess. I probably forgot a bunch of shit or got some details wrong. I can always awkwardly correct it later!