Friday, January 10, 2014

The day I met Rachel "When-A-Lion-sleeps" and did some other things


A little while ago, just before the new year, I moved. I've moved a lot in my life, but it's very rare that I move next to my best friend of 7 years, Rachel.  After getting settled in I was finally able to go over to her house, which is seriously almost walking distance if I wasn't lazy and out of shape. Despite talking about it for, well, years, we still didn't really have a plan of what we'd do when we met.

Another thing I forgot about, stairs. It wasn't a big deal for me, but in the back of my mind I thought "wow if I lived here these stairs would really make daily life annoying" and Rachel confirmed that. Thankfully nobody exploded or anything when I stepped through the door, but Wolfy did say "You look different from your Facebook profile picture," and he'd also be right because I have had a lot of weird hair transformations since I put that thing up.

At first, mostly out of a lack of things to do, I didn't stay at the apartment very long. Wolfy just kind of played a video game and Rachel guided me to the nearby mall. I think this next sentence sums up the experience as a whole: literally within the first five minutes of walking to the mall Rachel was like "I have never seen this path before." (There was this shaded dirt path that went around a building and I guess was just there to connect sidewalks.) We waltzed through it and looked down and there was this massive field with giant cement circles randomly placed all over it. We figured it was some kind of park, but there was no indication of that and there were no benches or tables. Then we thought it might be one of those places that are totally illegal to walk on because it messes up the grass or something, but there was no sign indicating otherwise. So we kept walking.

At the mall we shouldered past every stranger we came across in search of the food court and once we found it we spent another ten or fifteen minutes deciding what to eat. We probably would've gotten pizza from the Italian place if Rachel hadn't already had pizza many times before that week, so we picked something at random. I think it was called Osaka something. Whatever, it was Asian food. We both ordered something different, and we both got the same thing. Here's a picture if you don't believe me.


Originally I took this picture to text to Grace, who you may know as Sissi, just to taunt her. But now I get to show you the food too!

Rachel thought it was horrible, but I didn't really notice until I was 3/4 of the way through the meal because I hadn't eaten all day and I rarely stop eating something just because it was subpar. Also, I ordered a Nestea Raspberry drink thing which isn't carbonated, so I didn't know the soda was flat either.

Full of (hopefully) food we stumbled into this small arcade-y place even further into the food court, or just at the very end of the mall. All I had to turn into change was a $5, so I got this huge pocketful of quarters and only used a couple on this light gun game that confused us both. It didn't even have air hockey! What a rip off. I ended up having to walk around with quarters in my hoodie pocket all day.


Before venturing further into the abyss, Rachel pointed out this big 'ol calender kiosk in the middle of the, uh, mall corridor. I don't know what else to call it. It had a lot of really strange calenders, anything from kittens to playboy to trains. As she browsed them seriously, I browsed less seriously as I didn't personally need a calender. In no apparent order, the calenders on the rack suddenly became those of several softcore porn varieties. It was weird. Directly next to each other was this Maxim pinup model one and this "Hot firefighting men" female friendly/gay (I guess?) one. To call attention to it, I tried to make a joke which ultimately backfired due to my lack of pointing skills. It went something like this.

Me: Hey Rachel!
Rachel: *looks over*
Me: A calender for you,
*POINTS TO THE MAXIM ONE*
Me: And one for me...!
*POINTS TO THE HOT FIREFIGHTER ONE*
Me: ....


We both laughed our asses off, which wasn't helped at all by her quiet comment "It's okay if you're into that" so it's certain I'll never live that one down.

Instead of heading straight to our next destinations, we went people watching for a short while. Apparently this mall is a nest for goths because there were TONS of them. Even a goth mom, pregnant with a goth child and I think a goth husband/boyfriend to a lesser extent. We started a tally but lost count.

Just before leaving we looked around inside this pet store, which was a little depressing to be honest, but it was full of adorable puppies. There was this small boxed in area with two tiny puppies of varieties I have never seen before, so I don't know what they are. The slightly younger one licked my knuckle, it was great. It had an older sibling though that bit Rachel. That seems to be a common thing for her. Here's some pictures from that place.
A Shiba Inu sleeping


This is a lab pup but you can't see the head very well, it's hidden in the shredded paper.
On the way back we picked up some In 'n' Out milkshakes because we can't get enough food and got pissed off at one of those sign spinning people who stand at the corner because their sign kept obstructing the pedestrian walk sign.


Back at the apartment, Rachel and I watched Whose line is it Anyway clips for like an hour and a half like social people do. Wolfy pretty much continued to play games, and Jared was sleeping so we had to stay quiet. Then we skyped with Grace for a really long time but had to type because of the aforementioned Jared.

Most of that was basically Rachel and I talking to Grace by handing the laptop to each other, where I would say something wacky and quickly hand it back and watch Grace laugh. However, Grace's niece wanted to play with her, so we ended up skyping with her too. If you want to see how well that went, Rachel wrote about it here. I don't know if she really knows who I am, but she did say "Hi Tony and Rachel" so that was cool.

Just about twenty minutes before I had to leave, Jared woke up at like 9 PM. He bummed around in the kitchen and his room, each time not noticing me once. It actually took Rachel once or twice to even get him to notice I was sitting a couple feet away from him by telling him "My brother is here!" and he was just like "Oh" then left. It was kinda funny.

Except there was a final problem. He left his light on, which would stay like that all day and affect the electricity bill and NO ONE wants to go in his room because it is fabled to hold many horrible and unhygienic things. I just shrugged that off, told myself I am a man who likes maxim calenders and hesitantly swung open the door. (I'd like to note that at this point Grace suggested I venture inside, but I'm pretty sure she was joking.) As soon as I did that, an empty Corona bottle rolled to the left wall in such a cinematic way that I could only imagine Jared left that for me. The entire room was many shades of brown and tan and his brown (I'm not sure they were originally this color) bedsheets were twisted into a log diagonally across the mattress. I don't remember if the floor was carpet or if it was basically one layer of clothes. I had to pull my T-shirt collar over my nose to protect from the musky smell, glance nervously around the room that looked like the air was partially darker with dirt than the rest of the apartment and flick the switch off. I grabbed the knob and pulled it closed, sitting back down. I uttered one word. "Nasty."

That was about it. I suppose I'll write more the next time I hang out with Rachel.

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