Visiting Susan: Part 1

I’m visiting my friend Susan this week.

Susan is a friend I made on the internet. I’ll give you a moment to gasp, clutch your chest, and fan yourself.

Susan and I began conversing in the comments section of her blog four years ago. Then we connected on Twitter. Over time, I’ve developed a sense not only of Susan, but of her life, her friends, her connections with others. See, the thing about Twitter is that it isn’t a one-on-one conversation. It isn’t an instant message chat. It’s open and indiscreet. In its own way, it’s wildly revealing. I can’t explain it much more than that. If you’ve developed these types of relationships, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you’ll just have to trust me on it.

Anyhow, Susan was more than happy to welcome me into her home, and introduce me to her town.

Susan lives in Lititz.

Lititz is nestled in Lancaster County, PA (note for my fellow outsiders: I was quickly informed that it’s “LAN-cuh-ster” and not “Lan-CAH-ster.” If you want to spare yourself similar embarrassment, learn this ahead of your inevitable trip to this beautiful place). Lititz is about as adorable as you’d expect a small town in Lancaster County to be.

There are rows and rows of houses patriotically displaying American flags.

There are adorably quaint homes with accents of scalloped blue siding.

There’s a “Main Street” of independent shops, staffed with friendly people, filled with unique goods and services. And photo-grabbing, nostalgia-inducing store signs.

I can’t help but love Lititz already, and I’ve barely been here two days. But honestly, how could you not love a town with homes like this one on its street corners? It’s impossible. Over and out.

May Day in April

I went to May Day yesterday. May Day is something that I haven’t really done since I graduated from Brenau four years ago. And I wasn’t really planning on changing that—May Day has always felt like a very flawed event to me. But when I met up with Anna-E, Cheryl, and Sarah for Winter Weekend, they convinced me that we would all have a good time together.

So I headed over to Anthropologie to find a May Day dress. And let me just say as a side-note: Anthropologie is the perfect place for May Day dresses. You’re far less likely to end up in a “she’s wearing my dress!” situation with an Anthro dress than with, say, a Gap dress. And strangers come up to you and say “I love your Anthro dress,” which is actually kind of fun.

So I had my dress, I had an old pair of purple suede wedges that kind of fit the dress perfectly, I had my camera packed, and I was ready to go. The day went on about as expected—a combination of too much heat and too much wind (which is pretty standard for May Day, I’d say), mediocre food, and running commentary during the May Court presentation.

And I’d just like to say, as a side note, that I’ve always found the May Court presentation to be a ridiculously anticlimactic affair. The girls are escorted to the stage, take a seat on a theater stool, hold their calla lily awkwardly across their lap, and just try to stay focused on keeping their ankles crossed the entire time. The May Queen’s presented, Schraeder blocks everyone’s view as he crowns her, and that’s pretty much it. There isn’t even a Junior Class Skit anymore—which is all kinds of disappointing.

What I realized throughout the course of my first May Day experience as an alumna is how truly different the experience is when you’re older. When you focus most of your attention during the May Court presentation on the girls’ hemlines. When you complain about how little they actually wrapped the may pole. When you spend most of the day talking to old friends about their kids. When you need two highchairs at the post-May Day El Sombrero lunch.

How much we change in four years, man. How much we change.

In which I turned 25

Last week was my birthday week. I didn’t realize it was an entire week of celebrations until Michael pointed it out to me last night. And there’s kind of a reason for this. See, I have two birthdays.

Stay with me here. My driver’s license (and various other official documents) show my birthday as March 30th. My real birthday is March 31st. There’s a long story about why this is the case and why I’ve chosen to just embrace it rather than get it fixed. It didn’t really affect me at all until my 21st birthday, four years ago (yes folks, I am at the ripe old age of 25 now. But more on that later this week…), when my sister Yana couldn’t attend my birthday dinner on the 31st. So we went out to Twist on the 30th, and the waiter served me (alcohol, I mean…), since by all accounts I was 21 years old.

Usually I skip over the 30th, and celebrate on the 31st. But I also share a birthday week with a couple of coworkers, so this year, we ordered in lunch on Wednesday, the 30th, a special treat at my workplace, where we usually just eat lunch at our desks.

And on the 31st, I had a fantastically delicious meal at Goldfish with Michael, Yana, my previously-mentioned awesome brother-in-law Vlad, and my mom. (Sidenote: I had two Strawberry Lemonades that night, which are more awesome at Goldfish than anywhere else because they’re made with muddled strawberries and Ketel vodka. I have a new favorite alcoholic drink, folks.)

So Friday went on as normal, and I was a year (or a day, if you think of it that way…) older.

I spent Saturday morning in bed with my iPad, catching up on a couple days of General Hospital (no shame, friends, no shame), and headed on to Institut DerMed in the early afternoon to take advantage of the Groupon Yana gave me for my birthday last year. I spent an hour in oiled, lotioned, massaged bliss.

I drove back home and waited for Michael to come home from work so we could head to Yana and Vlad’s for a barbecue to welcome the spring and check out their newly-built deck. We pulled up into the driveway, which was already occupied with a few cars. I had been instructed and made especial pains to come on time, but not early. (Remember how I said before that I’m spastic about being on time and a little bit crazy?)

I didn’t even consider the fact that Vlad had already started grilling, which almost never happens when I first get to their place for family gatherings. So we walked up to the front door, and Yana greeted us like normal, and led us toward the kitchen.

That’s when I was greeted by Vlad with his Canon T1i (taking video, I learned later), and a huge group of people in the family room to my left, who all yelled “Surprise!” in unison.

Believe it or not, this eruption did not clue me in to the fact that the gathering was a surprise party for me. See, I had already gone through telling several people, when explaining my weekend plans, that despite the fact that the barbecue was just a couple days after my birthday, that it had nothing to do with my birthday at all. And when I looked over the group of people in the room in front of me, I saw everyone who normally comes for these events—my mom, her husband Tony, Yana’s various sisters and brothers-in-law, and her parents-in-law.

It took Yana pointing the outliers—my friends Melanie and Sarah, and my father-in-law Cliff, for me to realize that this wasn’t a regular family barbecue.

Many laughs were had at my expense. Happy times ensued, and good food was devoured. And I’m sure the video footage is hilarious.

The Book-Lover’s Dilemma

I want to talk about ebooks. I want to talk about ebooks because my iPad 2 came in the mail (is it still called “mail” if the FedEx guy brings it? Or is there another word for that?) yesterday, and one of the reasons I gave Michael for wanting to get the iPad was to read books. I remembered the time about three weeks ago when I had left my copy of Wuthering Heights somewhere on Friday, and wouldn’t be able to get it back until Monday. And that weekend, I wished I had some type of e-reader so I could download the conveniently free Project Gutenberg copy and keep reading over the weekend. Alas, I waited until Monday.

So that weekend, I would have loved ebooks. And in theory, in sheer practicality, I think I kind of like ebooks. But I also hate them. I hate that ebooks cost just as much as printed books (usually). I hate that book prices apparently don’t scale according to manufacturing cost, which let’s admit, is very little when it comes to an ebook. Sure, I’m happy to pay the writer’s royalties, and pad a bit of profit to the publisher. But when I can get an actual physical copy of a book for as much as it would cost to have the ebook, let’s just say I feel ripped off.

But despite the outrageous cost of ebooks, customers must still be buying them, or otherwise the price would drop, yeah? So there are people out there buying ebooks instead of hard copies, which hurts the bookstores, both large and small. And despite the fact that I don’t spend as much time in bookstores as I used to (once you’ve worked in one it feels like coming back to work even when it isn’t your store), I still love the bookstore experience—the ability to browse at one’s leisure, flip casually through the pages of any number of books, pick a random passage on a random page to test the author’s voice for compatibility with my sensibilities.

I love the smell of books, new and used. I love the satisfaction that comes with turning pages, with feeling the weight of the writer’s words in my hands, with getting the sense of how far along I am, and how much more I’ve left to go. I love reading a used book, either borrowed or bought, and following the story of another reader’s marginalia. I love marginalia.

And despite the fact that e-readers all tout having electronic substitutes for these things, it just isn’t the same. And I’m not ready for printed books to be a thing of the past, to be antiques.

So I’ll give my iPad a try as an alternative reading platform, but I’m not going to give up on my home library, or my favorite used bookstore. In a few years, I may not even have a choice between the two. And that breaks my bibliophile heart.

Meeting with Mefites

Usually I’m a hermit. I stay indoors. I spend most of my nights and weekends holed up in my “home office” with Michael. Which means that I’m either writing or browsing the interwebs, and he’s playing World of Warcraft. If I do leave the house for something other than errands, it’s to do something with my sister and my awesome brother-in-law. Or to see various other family members.

And I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve stepped into a bar.

So Michael was admittedly confused the other day, when I suddenly told him that I was going to go out on Saturday.

“Where are you going?,” he asked. He’s never really opposed to me going out by myself, since he’s even more of a hermit than I am, and he trusts me. As long as he doesn’t have to come along, it doesn’t bother him. But in this case, my answers came off a little bit cagey.

“Oh, to this thing…,” I replied. I wasn’t trying to come off as vague, but there’s a stigma to meeting internet strangers, even in 2011. Which is what I was going to do.

See, for the past year or so, I’ve been part of a rather tight-knit online community called Metafilter. The community has an “IRL” section where members can organize local folks to meet up and get to know each other beyond usernames and text. This was the first time since I had become a member that someone had proposed and organized a meetup in Atlanta, and despite the fact that it was going to be in Decatur, Georgia, a good 45 minute to hour drive from my house, I had resolved to go.

Michael was leery at first, but after a bit of teasing on his part and explanation on my part, he gave in, gave his blessing, and I was on my way.

So yeah, I don’t go to bars much. I donned my Metafilter t-shirt, walked into Twain’s Billiards & Tap (awesome name for a bar, no?), and looked around the room awkwardly for a few minutes. Not only was I in foreign territory—bar, Decatur, social function, but I didn’t even know where to find the group I was meeting. So I walked up to the bar, ordered a Cranberry Vodka to go ahead and get my introversion under control, and did what any other internet-person does when meeting other internet-people—I pulled out my iPhone, and commented on the organization post that I was at the bar and to find me whenever they got there. (Did I mention that I had showed up a good fifteen minutes early, because I’m manic about being on time and a little bit crazy?)

Within five minutes, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and a friendly face gesturing to join everyone on the patio. Which was beautiful, by the way. It had been a gorgeous, unseasonably warm Saturday, and it was just about turning into a breezy yet balmy night.

I spent the next couple hours talking to interesting people, smiling, and laughing. We bonded over our shared love of the website, our shared appreciation of certain current internet memes, and our common general geekery. I left for home smiling, excited to have made new friends.

Excited to have stepped out of my comfort zone.

And looking forward to my next adventure.