In Graves We Trust

No rain on the way to the conference today, which was a pleasant change.  The Rails presentations that I had been so excited about were ultra lame, but there were a few other presentations that I didn’t expect much out of that were actually pretty awesome.

I didn’t leave the conference until about 730p or so today, which is about an hour and a half later than yesterday.  Braving the bus system again, I journeyed off to the Hyde Park area to find a vegetarian Asian restaurant called Veggie Heaven.  The restaurant met me with a dead open sign and all of its chairs flipped upside down on the tables.  Drat, they close somewhat early, and it was actually much later than I had expected it to be.

Oh well, not the end of the world.  Considering my options, I decided to try The Parlor again—hopefully their infamous vegan pepperoni this time—and called to order a large pizza, of which I was going to take back to Nick’s because I figured that he probably hadn’t eaten as he’d been tattooing all day.  As I’m getting my palette all siked about delicious vegan pizza, Parlor dude on the phone tells me that they are still out of Pepperoni.  Damn, foiled again.  Whatever, so I just ordered the mock chicken instead.  Half an hour wait?  No problem—it will take the bus that long to get there anyway.

The bus finally comes, drops me off a block or so from The Parlor, and our pizza is ready and waiting when I arrive.  Awesome, now for the return directions.  I punched the proper start and end points into Google Maps, and realize that there is nothing even remotely resembling a direct return bus route to Nick’s house.  The only viable option was to take some bus in the opposite direction from Nick’s in like twenty minutes, then walk a few blocks, then wait for another ten minutes or so for another bus that is going to make me walk so more.  Eff this, I’ll just walk back to Nick’s house.  Mind you, this is about a 3.5 mile walk—I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.

So I walked.  And then I walked some more.  Thirty minutes later, I was still walking—carrying our pizza and my big heavy messenger bag, and sans my jacket and sweatshirt.  I finally got to the main street that Nick’s neighborhood meets up with, and rechecked the Google Map options because my legs, shoulders and back were starting to express their annoyance with this decision.  Again with the whole waiting for half an hour for the bus thing—whatever, I’ve come this far, I may as well see it through.

Twenty minutes later, I’m finally back at Nick’s—legs burning, feet pretty surly, and shoulders protesting.  But damn was that pizza good after we reheated it in the oven!  I was going to hit the couch shortly after dinner, and went in to say goodnight to Nick, but we ended up geeking out about music until about 230a, which ended with both of us introducing each other to a bunch of new exciting stuff.

Come to find out, Nick had been asking me if I was awake the night before because he and his newish lady friend were going to watch the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s book Choke. Bummer that I was so ridiculously tired and narcoleptic, because I would have really enjoyed seeing what they did to that masterpiece.