Summer break: After review to Ahwatukee

Hmm what have I been up to in my lazy start to summer?

Last tuesday: final review, then out to $1 burgers and drinks at Bar Louis with the rest of the studio. (of course, after you add blue cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, sauces, etc it's more like an $6 burger, but the idea is the thing). Just one drink since I'm so stoned on sleep, so I catch a ride back home with some other people. Severe sleep deprivation is like an alcohol multiplier. I crash on the couch with a beer and watch part of Brazil before calling it a night and getting some much deserved sleep.

Wednesday: spent most of the day clearing out studio, finishing other school projects, burning discs of work for school records. Drinks and a casual pot luck at our instructor's house near Soulard. Really pretty part of town. Really gentrified. All old brick buildings south of downtown St.Louis. Lots of trees, narrow streets, and bars. House was predictably nice modern. Eames and Corbu chairs. $2000 rare architect's monographs. Nice kitchen. I brought beans I'd made in the crock pot with some smoked ham hocks. People really liked it. Not quite as good as Jonathan's (Sam's boyfriend) jambalaya, which was terrific, even though it had mushrooms in it. I ate a ton. We were all thrown out around 11. Kind of bittersweet as I would not see many of them for the better part of a year as they will go abroad.

Thursday: finalized burning discs and cleaning out my desk, which involved lots of sorting, throwing things away, and hauling stuff to my car. I hope I got everything. Aired up Saori's tires and drove around her car for awhile since I'd be gone for awhile. Against my better judgement, I went to a rave-themed party at a friends house, knowing full well I had a 7am cab to the airport the following morning and still had not packed for Phoenix, and potentially, Scandinavia. Oh well. The party was fun. Lots of poppy trance music, black lights, masks. I got blisters on both my feet from dancing on the wooden floors. Around midnight, the party was broken up by police who told us they'd received noise complaints from neighbors. That's the second time in a month I've been to a broken up party. We cheerfully filed out and while most people moved on to another house to party, I went home. After all, I have to be responsible and there was that flight tomorrow, er, in a few hours.

Friday: got up at 6 and quickly packed. Slipped my passport into my jeans so I wouldn't forget it. Packed quickly, going down the list of essentials I'd written the day before. You really only need two things to travel: money and a passport. Everything else is replaceable. Threw together a haphazard set of clothes: hot clothes for Phoenix, long sleeves and a wool cardigan for the UK and Helsinki, a few dress shirts and pants in case I found a job, sandals, slip on sneakers, and workplace slip-ons. And suki. Oh yes, did I mention I was bringing my cat?

Cab was early, which turned out to be a good thing.
I stuffed Suki in the airline approved pet carrier, grabbed my backpack and my suitcase, and hopped in the taxi. We were halfway to the airport when the part of my brain that knew I had my passport in my jeans finally met with the part of my brain that knew I'd changed my jeans before leaving. Even without tickets booked for international travel, I needed to have that option open so I had us turn around and I made a mad dash back into my apartment. Luckily I'm one of those people who just budgets in extra time for stuff like this, so we were totally fine for time.

I really hate air travel, and Suki dislikes it much more than I. Getting her through security was interesting. I have to take her out of the carrier and carry her through the metal detector. While I waited for her carrier to get through the xray scanner, I set her down in the gray tray and people just stared at us. She still had her lion cut which made the whole thing more strange. She didn't really fuss at all until the plane pulled back from the gate. She didn't like the noise, she didn't like the motion, and when the plane roared and accelerated into a take-off, she completely became unglued. Howling and screaming like a baby, turning around and around in her carrier. My seat companion laughed and clucked at the poor creature, and the woman in the seat in front of me rang for the air steward.

We were asked to move to a seat in the back due to the woman's allergy to cats. Although two random strangers told me that if Suki hadn't started meowing, she probably would never have noticed. I didn't care. I went from a middle seat to a middle seat, and the two guys I sat between didn't complain. Suki quieted down after awhile though it could have been from shock. She was unhappy at landing too but it wasn't as bad as takeoff.

We actually had a stop in Denver but we were staying on the same plane. It's actually a great deal- when you stay on the same plane, at least on Southwest, you have first pick of any seat. Any seat. So me and my cat moved right up the first or second row and the window. Suki's take off from Denver was actually a lot more mild than from St.Louis, I was surprised. Suki was pretty quiet the entire time. Maybe she remembered that she didn't die the first time.

Got into Phoenix around noon and both my grandmothers picked me up. I'm lucky to have such great women in my family. Drove to mom's house and Suki extracted herself from the carrier to find her unwelcome cousin, Zara. Zara's relationship to Suki is a lot like Nermal's relationship with Garfield.