While I was downstairs, Jessica called me, wanting to know if anything had been decided for tonight. I relayed to her Jesse's brilliant plan (Jesse was all about the brilliant plans this weekend) to have people hang at Jessica's early in the evening, and then go to msbelle's afterward to hang with Nilly post-Sabbath. I made up an approximate arrival time of seven. Planning being done, we conversed about used books and the principle of books becoming either cheaper or more expensive as they become older. Apparently there's a whole market for old FORTRAN manuals.

There was no public restroom, so I ran five blocks downtown to the Barnes and Noble. On the way, I passed the woman I'd sat next to on the train. Seriously. There she was again. It was in the same area of the city, so some of the weirdness was tempered, but this was fucking New York! That's not supposed to happen.

The Strand was so big, I had to call Kate to find her, although she wasn't answering her phone, so luckily I ran into her myself. I had spied a used record store across the street she might be interested in. She fingered a copy of The Namesake but rationalized that if she bought a book, she couldn't buy any CDs.

On the way to Secondhand Records, Trudes gave me the horrific update on the train folk. Billytea had only just arrived (over three hours late), and Kristin wasn't coming till 7:40. Bloody trains! And poor Trudes had been sitting in Penn Station for hours. She was still living in the nineties, without a cell phone. I told her the plans for the night.

Secondhand Records netted me Placebo's Without You I'm Nothing (which many had recommended over the years, and was just calling to me with its seven-dollar price tag), Drain STH's Horror Wrestling (which I didn't even know existed, for five dollars), Collective Soul's eponymous (with all the classics like "The World I Know" and "Gel," for five bucks), and Moist's Silver (for Lindsay, who loved Moist but had no CDs, free with purchase of the previous two). Kate looked but didn't get anything.

Because Tower Records was so cool, I had to let Kate see the crazy deals. The thing about Virgin and Tower is their regular prices are insane, but their deals rule. She flitted up to the world music section for a while, and I waited, not wanting to look at anything since I'd spent enough time looking last night and hadn't bought anything but the Rachael Sage. I'd already bought CDs today! I couldn't buy more. Kate didn't end up getting anything there either. I felt like taking her back to the Strand so she could buy her book, since her rationalization had been rendered null, but we were running fairly late as it was.

Let's pretend it was about this time where I discovered she was only a year or two older than I was. My mental perception of her age had been pumped up by all her talk of travels to Africa and India.

The map said to take a yellow train downtown to the ferry, so we hopped on the N. After a while, we crossed a bridge, which poked something in my head. It was only when we stopped at Fulton, a street I knew was in Brooklyn, that my FUCK! Meter went off. I ran to the map and saw that while the W goes to the ferry, the N breaks off and goes to Brooklyn. Go me! I fucking rule.

We got off at the next stop, and I checked a map. It looked like taking a 4 or 5 would take us right where we needed to be. We went upstairs and downstairs and however many other stairs it took to get to our transfer. Some of these stations are horrendous.

When we got there, I took another look at the map to make sure we were on the right side of the tracks. Returning to Kate, I found her talking to someone. His name was Sylvan. She had run into one of her classmates during her semester in Africa. Whom she hadn't seen in almost two years. All because I was a moron. This was fucking weird.

He joined us on the 5 as they caught up on the lives of their other friends. It was fun explaining to him how we knew each other. "From the Internet." And we'd only just met last night. A messageboard. About Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He clearly was not experienced in the ways of meeting people online. I'd done it numerous times, so it was nothing to me, but he was all, "Ooookay." He did note that it seemed Buffy was a very strong bond for people, stronger than most other common interests.

Let's pretend it was around here, even though it was most likely earlier and maybe later, that Kate and I talked about music. She had picked up a lot of her music from her travels (hence the predilection for world music). But she'd also had a folk phase back in the day, and she knew Rose Polenzani! Well, not knew knew, but she'd actually been to her shows. She did, however, know know the Nields, as she'd worked for them after having gone to see pretty much every show she could. I tried to trace the evolution of my music tastes, from pop to rock to folk and everything in between.

We got off at the ferry stop, but we had no idea how to get to the ferry. There had to be signs, right? It was the ferry! And, in fact, there were. Also a helpful man who pointed us in the right direction. There were gobs of people waiting to get on the ferry. It was no longer sunny; it was grey. I told Kate my brilliant plan was to see the sunset from the ferry.

Seeing New York from the ferry, I could see why Nilly loved it so. Because suddenly, you see it all. You see all the buildings and bridges, made to bend in the wind. To withstand the world, that's what it takes. And man had done this, all that steel and stone, formed into these gargantuan structures that make up a city. It's really quite wondrous if you think about it. And look! There was the Statue of Liberty! Standing in the water, standing guard over the city, the country.

I heard the T-Mobile jingle. I had messages. Kristin! I'll let Kristin herself tell the story:

hi sunil! i am finally en route to penn station after a hell of a day. trains all screwed up and cell phone broke so had to buy a new one last minute, w

hich made me miss said train. Now on different train and trying to figure out new phone. ack! I get into penn @ 740 and [trudes] is meeting me. then to jes

sicas? call if you want [number] Cant wait to meet you!

I later learned that "cell phone broke" meant her antenna just fell off. Right off. On the way to the station. Fun times for Kristin!

I wanted to take a "Kiki Takes Manhattan" picture, somehow skewing the perspective so it looked as if my teddy bear were causing mass destruction. I posed Kiki to eat the Statue of Liberty on our way back, but I don't think it'll come out, since the light was so low. But because the light was so low, the city was all lit up and pretty.

Jessica had given us crazy new directions on how to get to her place from the ferry, and I didn't fully understand them since the reception wasn't great out on the water, but it all made sense eventually. As we waited for the F, I called the apartment, and Ethan ordered the pizzas.

The F finally came, and we made it to Jessica's, where a fun time was to be had by all.

So DCistas, it took me until today to find the address for the DCistas yahoogroup and mail it to Beej so she could email it and see if she could get herself on it. Though I set it up, I handed off ownership to Lyra Jane and meara. Clearly, from the posts in the past few day, she wanted to help with organizing and get to meet Nilly; the first a generous thing to offer and the second completely understandable! Now I see that she has absented herself. I am hoping that someone from DC got in touch with her and/or added her to the list and that she is there dining with you tonight.

Wanna know a nifty spousal relations thing I learned after last Monday's event, Matt?

Sure!

I read it as, "well, she was kind weirded out by most of the crowd, but Matt, she liked you."

Oh, no no. I meant the plural "you". She's even lurked here once or twice since I've met her but, as I said in the FAQ, she wants this to be my "private" place.

Well darn. There goes my sense of superiority and unrivalled coolness!

As to how people relate to Buffistas en masse ... at the DC F2F we had people poking their heads in and asking wistfully if they could join. We were having fun ... the church groups? NSM.

If he'd asked, I'd have been happy to escort in the hot Ron Livingston-looking church group guy that I scoped out in the Union Station bookstore before seeing him with his wife and toddler at the hotel.

I have met Nilly!

We had dinner Tuesday night - spent close to two hours laughing, talking, taking many many pictures. And it wasn't until after that I realized the perfect Nillytude of the evening - there were SEVENTEEN of us at the table!

How eager were people to meet Nilly last night?

The reservations were for 7:30. Hubs and I got there about 7:35. And we were just about the last to show up.

Hubs says the pictures turned out well, and he'll get them up tonight or tomorrow night.

Well darn. There goes my sense of superiority and unrivalled coolness!

Come on Matt, everyone agrees that you have the best voice!

Returning to Kate, I found her talking to someone. His name was Sylvan. She had run into one of her classmates during her semester in Africa. Whom she hadn't seen in almost two years. All because I was a moron. This was fucking weird.

Yeah, that was awesome! When I told the story at brunch the next day, I mentioned that I'd said to him, "The last time I saw you was in Zambia!", at which billytea commented that anyone you say that to should, by all rights, be a long-lost love interest with smoldering eyes or an arch-nemesis (with or without smoldering eyes, I suppose).

It does sound like a line out of Alias. Hey, since they may be out of bad girls on that show, they should cast Kate! Oh, she could be the buddy, I suppose, but bad girls are more fun.

Well, after much discussion about where we would go for dinner, I finally made an executive decision and deemed our dinner location to be Royal Dragon, a kosher chinese restaurant (at some point yesterday, NoiseDesign and I had a discussion about why there are so many kosher chinese restaurants, and I opined that it was because there is little to no dairy in chinese cooking, so it's "easy" to be kosher and not alter the menu too much. Clean your kitchen the kosher way, get kosher meats, eliminate pork and shellfish from the menu, voila!) Hil later confirmed this and said that the first two kosher restaurants are always pizza and chinese food.

I picked up Nilly and Hil at the Whole Foods, where Nilly was buying Kosher, Vegan, Cruelty Free Chocolate for her sister. She had asked Hil about it, and Hil said "well, if it's anywhere in the city, it's at Whole Foods". I was a bit confused as to how chocolate could be "cruelty free" (as I think of it as relating to the treatment of the yummy animals we eat), but apparently, they mean not being cruel to their farmers. Fair trade and such (as I discovered later). So, we trolled merrily through the city to the Beltway, passing Howard University, and I played tour guide and explained the history of Howard. In doing so, I mentioned segregation, and Nilly looked at me and said "why?". I paused, no one had ever said that to me before. People just sort of accepted it as a part of history, and I had never had to articulate why segregation happened. It was a bit of a mindfuck for a second. I thought about it, managed to mumble something about slavery and the perception of inferiority, but I've sort of been ruminating on that. But, that's another post.

So, we get to Royal Dragon, in a shopping center. We passed it once, had to loop around the block and come back. There's also a large kosher grocery store. Hil was impressed, it is apparently much larger than the one in Silver Spring. We arrived, and they had set up our table for 15, so we sat down, Nilly and Hil went to the restroom. Everyone who came in looked right past me and said "Where's Nilly?" I chose not to take it personally.

So, Nilly came out of the restroom, and we all sat down. We had to ask them to add another table (SOMEone didn't RSVP. :) You know who you are. I don't, I tossed the piece of paper where I was keeping track last night) It was a lovely evening. Food was good, Nilly got lots of fun presents, such as a lovely tocque from Anne W. (which included many pictures of Nilly in said hat. And Fredpete's Hubs in the hat and my sunglasses, and me and Hubs in the hats) and a coloring book, and MFNLaw had the brilliant idea to buy Nilly a photo album for her trip photos. She also included a hebrew/english dictionary (fun moment, Nilly was excited about the dictionary because she wanted to look up "cilantro" because she said that people were so passionate about it, she wanted to know what it was. It wasn't in there. boo!, but yay cilantro)

We finally left at around 9, I think they were closing, and stood next to the table for a while. Then we moved outside and stood on the sidewalk for a while, and finally left. meara was coming in from North Carolina, and her plane was late, so she missed dinner. She met up with us at Hil's apartment, and we all hung out for a while just talking. Nilly had saved her last picture for meara and she let me be in it :)

A wonderful evening. Nilly is lovely, a delight. I know that everyone said it already, but it was nice to see for myself.