I was having the weirdest dreams this morning. One dream entailed taking the blue line to OHare when I realized that I had forgotten my plane ticket and passport. There wasn't going to be time for me to go back and get them, but Rob was meeting me there, so I tried to call him to tell him to bring them. But try as I could, I couldn't dial my cell phone correctly. I would almost have our number dialed when I would screw up some digit and have to start over.
The other dream, I was at school which was also work. I had been scribbling in my diary while bored. The teacher came and took the piece of paper off of everyone's desk. Apparently, there had been an assignment and I hadn't heard about it. He took my diary entry and graded it. (Poorly, I might add.) We split up into pairs to work on it. We were working on it for awhile. She had a brown purse, I had this ugly green one. Our stuff got all mixed up, and we went to the bus to head home. I asked her if she had my purse. She didn't. It had all my valuables in it..my wallet, my phone, my diary. So I told the bus driver I had to go back for it. He was very nice about it. She came back with me to help. We looked around for a long time, and I finally found the ugly green bag, with all of my stuff in it. I apologized for taking up so much of her time. She didn't answer and walked away. I went out to the bus, but it had left and it was snowing so hard I could barely see. I was going to call a cab, but I decided to call Rob, and actually was able to dial the number correctly after a few attempts, but he was busy running for president and couldn't get away. So I proceeded to call a cab.
weird.
So we went to the anime con this weekend. It wasn't quite what I expected. I was thinking it would be bigger, but really it was only three vendors and a few rooms showing movies. Christopher and Joy were very busy, so Rob and I decided to go into Grand Rapids to grab lunch and do some shopping.
We are at a really tasty breakfast place in easttown, with awesome coffee. For some reason, tasty breakfast places aren't open past three pm in Michigan. (In Chicago, a place like that would have more than likely been open 24 hours, or at least open through the dinner hour.) So we were some of the last customers of the day in there. Afterwards, we went to an amazing used bookstore that I could have got lost in for hours. I got sucked into their art section, along with their film section and their cartooning section, having to pick and choose my books wisely. As we left, I mourned not being able to go to Kendall. I was so impressed with the school and the town seemed a step above Kalamazoo. Rob said we could visit a few more times and at least consider it.
We went next to the record store, which is very cool. I found another sunny day real estate cd (Briggs turned us on to them) which made me happy. Then we went to the anime store, and looked around for a bit. I found a Ryoko keychain. We then headed back to the con. On the way back, I noticed a lot of Grand Rapids, after you leave downtown, pretty much looks exactly the same as Kalamazoo. Some parts are even scarier on the yokelmeter than Kalamazoo is. We got back to the con and watched the original first episode of Robotech, then hung out with Joy and Christopher and helped them pack up a bit. Then, we all went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant in east town. The food was great, the service terrible. The high point of it all was when I asked for milk, which was one of four beverages listed on the menu, and I was told they didn't serve milk. I was told to go to the beverage refrigerator and pick a juice or soft drink. Well, in the fridge I saw to gallons of milk and asked her about that. She said that was her personal supply for the store and I couldn't have any. ???. Um, okay. So I just grabbed a lemonade. Well, at least the food was good. Afterwards, we went back to Christopher and Joy's hotel and talked for a bit, then got on the road.
After spending more time in Grand Rapids, I still liked it better than Kalamazoo, but I could see where it could get old fast. It had a few cool areas but once you left those, it had the same drab, generic west michigan feel to them. And after awhile, you get sick of the same three cafes, the same three bars, the same three restaurants. So I'm not so sure about the whole Grand Rapids thing.
Too bad we didn't get to do this thorough an investigation of Kalamazoo, but then maybe living in Kalamazoo has shown us more of what to look for. Maybe if we hadn't had such a good tourist guide, too, we would have seen the town for what it was rather than getting such an idyllic impression of it.
Oh well. It's not the worst place on earth, and it's only temporary. We're only going to be here for a year, and I've certainly got enough to keep me busy between now and then.
Like Italy. We leave for Italy in three days. I am both excited and nervous. I got a book on speaking Italian for tourists, although it was written in 1957 so I'll be speaking in fifties vernacular which should be pretty funny. I can't wait.