I'm writing from the road, riding north and just out of NYC on my way back from my best weekend since, let's say, my trip to Norway. That wouldn't be hard, I guess, the rough times I've had lately, but this would've been a good weekend, anyway. I've been drinking steadily since Sunday, though, and that might have something to do with it.
I came down to New York for a professional conference on Saturday and met up with Kim, who I crashed with, when I got off the train in Penn Station. This is Kim from my InterSlice days, and she hasn't got a nickname - I've been trying to pin one to her for years, but nothing's really stuck. She's at NYU now and was going to the conference, too, so it worked out well.
Kim lives at the edge of Boerum Heights in Brooklyn, one of those little historic areas that's a little bit gentrified, row on row of brownstones and old oaks lining the streets. Her place is a two-story townhouse, a little smaller than mine in Syracuse but spacious for the city, with roof access and a little patio out back. NYC's too crowded for me to move back to, but if I lived there that's the sort of place I'd want to stay. Not that I could afford the $1.2 million price tag on the building. Neither can Kim, which is why she rents.
The one thing we could both afford, though, is beer, and Saturday being a friend of hers' birthday we trekked out to Madam X in SoHo to celebrate.
Sunday saw me on a morning work-trip to JFK airport, which was stupid, and on an evening romp with Dan Proctor, Boy Genius, which rocked. There have to be a million bars in the city, but Proctor somehow knows all of the best ones - the quiet little gems that serve amazing burgers and a huge selection of rare imported beers. One of these, George Keeley's, is where we ended up. They'd just run out of Leffe, a chocolate beer Aaron told me about a while back and I'd last had in its native country, Belgium, but I had some Fishhead-Something-or-Other instead, which was good enough to make up for it.
Mr. Proctor and I caught up and talked, like we always do, about women and music. Commiserations flew back and forth on the one and recommendations on the other. I've been told before that when Dan and I go off on music it's easy for us to leave everyone else behind. From the look on Dan's roommate's face the whole night, I guess that must be true. Sorry, Wes!
Monday was the big conference day, and I'm just geeky enough to have thought it was fun. I went to 4 different sessions and I'd say I learned at least something at three of them, which isn't bad. Woo, professional development! I also talked to some reps from this exhibitor called CDS International. They do study abroad programs, including work/study for mid-career development. "Oh?" says I. We talked about a 9-month program they have in Germany - language training, graduate certificate and 2 work units at different German government offices/NGOs in your field of study; travel and insurance is covered, and it's an 1800 Euro a month salary. Not bad.
I missed the deadline for this year by about two months, but the application has a year turn-around time. So I could apply September '08 to start in 2009, or September '09 to start in 2010. That'd be right around the time I'd be ready to leave Seattle for a bit, I think. Not that Germany's top on my list of places to live, but it would be cool anyway. Cooler if I could find similar programs from a similar company in, say, Holland. Or Belgium. Or New Zealand.
The post-conference cocktail hour actually ran for about 3 hours, and I got back to Kim's around 9:30pm, where I hung with her roommate, Heidi. Heidi's a once-and-future Anthropology student, so we clicked pretty well, and we mostly talked about books and papers we'd read and her research interests ("the anthropology of gay tourism"; I guess it's important to study what you're passionate about...). Kim got in an hour later, and we sat around, watching the Breakfast Club and goofing off.
Not much to say for today - I wrapped up my conference attendance this morning, said my goodbyes and caught the train out just before 2pm. Now I've got 4 hours left to Syracuse, the Hudson River wide on my left with rolling hills behind it, and a book or two waiting for me. See you all when my train comes in!