My World Keeps Shrinking

About 2 weeks ago, I was living by myself in a studio apartment with too much stuff. In some small way, my stuff is hard to part from because my stuff is my part of the world that I'm familiar with. Two weeks ago, my world was my room and it was quite cluttered and a bit annoying. Then I cleaned it up, so I could share my "world" with someone else for a summer (my sub-letter). Then I took off on the road trip and my world shifted from being my apartment to my car - a slightly smaller space, but I had what I needed... and then some actually. I drove all up and down the east coast with a big bag a laundry and a smelly soccer bag. Yesterday, my "world" shrunk once again to what you see in the picture - my little blue bag, which fits inside my big red bag, my security belt, and my travel book (which I highly recommend for any single female traveller!). AND I still think I'm carrying too much. I leave for Europe at 8:30AM tomorrow, and I'll try to consolidate one more time.

I spent the past couple of days in northern Virgina, where I grew up. I have to include the word "northern" because northern Virginians often don't want to be associated with their southern neighbors. It's a really different culture up north. While I was there, I visited with 3 different friends I've known since elementary school. They're all in very different parts of their lives. My friend Vered is married and has a 2 year old son, Joseph Ari or Joe Safari, or just Ari. He just discovered the word "no" and that's all he says. I stopped by right around nap time and Vered (mommy) was excited to see me, but Joseph just kept saying "No! Go Away!" He finally decided it was ok for me to stay after he saw my fake dragon tatoo.

Next, I saw my lawyer friend Dori and her husband Dave. Dori and Dave are excellent cooks and they made me this wonderful crispy tofu and homemade egg drop soup. Their collaboration was amazingly well orchestrated, and it was fun to watch them cook so harmoniously together. Dori and Dave met in law school at William and Mary. They both work for the federal government instead of a law firm and quite prefer that life style because they actually get to HAVE a life as government employes.
Next, I saw Stephanie, a single (very available, very nice, very pretty, very successful, very smart) dentist (yes, Stephanie, I'm trying to help you out here!) Stephanie is an unusual person because she always wanted to be a dentist (well, an orthodontis, but that morphed in general dentist, which isn't too different), AND she did it. She brought me some old high school prom pictures, which she just dug up a couple of weeks ago. Check it out:

My parents currently live in the part of northern VA next to my favorite football team's training camp. They shop at the self proclaimed official grocery store of the Washington Redskins.

After my time in VA, it was time to head up to NY for 2 reasons. (1) It's Nicky's birthday! Happy birthday Nicky (July 10), and (2) I have to catch a plane to London. I ditched a lot of my "world" or stuff with my parents in VA, and then came up here with my backpack.

We're really celebrating Nicky's birthday tonight because it's Friday night, but his birthday was really yesterday. Nicky and I had a quiet celebration. I was able to flirt with a couple of bar tenders and get us a free taramisu martini. Nicky thought that the bar tender that looked like Orlando Blume was flirting with me and tried to get me to leave my email address on the bill. Even though it was Nick's birthday I didn't humor him that much. Orlando's pick-up line was "I'm not using this as a pick up line, but I've always love Massachusetts because of the descriptions from my favorite poet, Robert Frost." This gave me some evidence that Orlando wasn't trying to pick me up. Nicky and I ended up sharing 3 stiff drinks and some chicken wings.

We also spent time enjoying the blue-ness of the sky and waterfront near Nicky's new apartment in Long Island City (one of the few places down town with really nice fresh air).