Trip

Just got back from our trip up to Rochester for Michelle and Liviu's post-wedding family celebration thingie (I think and hope I'm spelling his name correctly!). Anyway, we left on Friday. Flew up and all that usual stuff. It was fine. I was kinda tired so I didn't get much reading done on the flights up. I started to try on the second leg, but the lady next to me was watching a movie and her headphones were really loud and I could just hear everything and it was distracting. One marginally amusing thing is this one guy in front of me whose screen I could see was watching this tv docuseries about gut bacteria and health and stuff with information about it all and then also recipes of stuff like kombucha and kimchi. Anyway, this guy is frequently pausing the shows to take pictures of the screen on his phone (mostly things like recipes, makes sense, sure) but also taking notes on his phone of facts and things. I dunno, kinda amusing and endearing in a weird way. Anyway, we get in to Rochester at night but not super late. We go to get our rental car and the guy is all like, we only have electric cars right now so I can give you that or you should be able to talk to my manager in about ten minutes or so. We're like, no we don't want an electric so we don't mind waiting (nothing against electric cars, but just didn't want to have to deal with charging one when we don't know anything at all about that or dealing with any unknowns unexpectedly while we're traveling). Anyway, he gives us some keys soon after that and I thought, well that didn't take long for some reason. But then we get to the car and it's an electric even though we specifically said no. So we go back in and they're just like, well that's all we have. We asked about getting a refund 'cuz we could get a car from another place and he was like (when we were finally able to talk to him, the guy we first dealt with because he was on the phone kinda ignoring us), I can only give a prorated refund because technically I already rented the car to you. (Holy shit, dude! You gave us a car we explicitly said we didn't want and we hadn't even left yet.) At this point it was going to be more trouble than worth so we just went with it. Whatever. It was mostly fine until we were leaving, but I'll get into that later. We went up to Bill Gray's for some garbage plates and those were delicious. Then to the grocery store to pick up a few things. The place we rented was very nice. It was right on the lake. So there's this historical neighborhood that used to be this tent city at the turn of the last century for summer "homes". The tents were all in shotgun house formation. So this place was built up around one of those tents (apparently the canvas is still inside the walls). So it's this little shotgun house. Small for a house but large for a hotel "room". It was nice and the view was incredible. The lake was just right there down the little cliff. Only snafu was that the toothpaste had been forgotten in the packing and had to go run back to the store in the morning to get more.

Okay, it's Saturday and we make it over to Mary Beth's parents' for the first time. We hang out a little while. Not too much going on. Michelle and Liviu arrive in the late afternoon or evening. So we got to meet Liviu and he was really nice. They actually got married earlier in the year but finally got around to the celebration with family. They both work at the National Holocaust Museum in DC and that's how they met and everything. He's Romanian. The way he talks eerily reminds me of a former coworker Andrei who is Ukrainian. More than the accent which is a little similar, just their vocal mannerisms are very similar, which surprises me a little (I know the countries border each other, but I think romance vs slavic languages, but I guess there's still influence, anyway, this is just random crap that wouldn't mean anything to anyone but me!). He seems really nice and it was good to meet him. Mary Beth's parents made some dinner and we all ate it and stuff.

Then Sunday it was the day of the big party. We started by going to Railway Station Diner for breakfast. We got these breakfast garbage plates (corned beef hash and mine had hash browns...same principle but more breakfasty foods thrown together). That got me as full as hell. I was so full that even throughout the lovely catered party, I was unable to eat a single bite! Mary Beth and I picked up her parents' neighbor Ellie from across the street. She has cancer and needs some help, though she's really awesome and a lot of fun to talk to. I talked to her for a good bit during the party. That was the best part. Then later I took her back over and she showed me around her house, which is a nice midcentury home that she's kept up very well (and she's clearly very proud of the upkeep, which is cool). There were a bunch of relatives and friends at the party. Everyone talked about how good the catered food was. Finally a while after everyone left my stomach made just enough room to taste a little bit. The pre-made sliders were supposed to be the best, but they were long gone by the time I attacked the leftovers. What I did eat was good though.

Then Monday we hit another diner: Highland Park Diner. They apparently specialize in eggs benedict and have a garbage plate variation with eggs benedict on it! So we had that (three friggin' garbage plates this trip...it ruled though!). Then back to the room with a little time to kill before meeting back up at her parents' again. I had a little time to run over to House of Guitar and look around the cds. As usual, it's such a mess. Just boxes and boxes stacked on top of the stock so it's hard to see everything. You know they have awesome stuff hidden away that's just impossible to find (because I've stumbled across some here and there). And I didn't have a whole lot of time this time so I just had a casual glance. I did find a couple things to pick up: Polysics: Polysics or Die!!!! Vista and John Coltrane: The Olatunji Concert: the Last Live Recording. Okay, then over to the house. We hung out with them a little while as well as with Michelle and Liviu. We had a little dinner but Mary Beth and I had plans to go to Eastman Theatre to see the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra put on a free concert. It was really good. It started with Louise Farrenc's Overture No. 1 in E Minor which was really good. Wasn't familiar with her at all. Then Missy Mazzoli's "Dark with Excessive Bright" which was also really good. This is a contemporary piece. And while it's not full-on avantgarde new music, it does utilize techniques and aspects from that sort of music (making scraping and clunking sounds with the bows and stuff). They ended with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1. Really good performance and programming. Yes, they're students but students at a prestigious music school so very good performers. I notice at least a few of them perform with a whole lot more energy than you see in the more professional symphony (a few violinists were really going for it). There was a little bit of bumping or scraping the instruments in between or starting pieces, but not a problem at all. Anyway, it was really good and like a unique experience.

Okay, then we came back today. The flights were pretty uneventful. I was more rested and got at least a little bit of reading done. The taxi driver we got from the airport was the same one who, I think it was last trip, drove us both to and from the airport and he remembered us and everything which is funny. Okay, we're home. Not too much else to say. There's probably stuff I forgot, whatever.