So, yesterday I took the Chinatown bus down to New York (Lucky Star, because #1 they have a cool dragon logo, and #2 I have never heard of one of their buses catching on fire, unlike some other Chinatown bus companies I could mention). It was my first time on the cheap bus, and honestly I didn't find it any worse than a regular bus, though it did not compare with the Diamante Class bus I took in Mexico at Christmas time. Also not comparable to the Mexican buses: the view. I-95 in Connecticut is not one of our country's more scenic stretches of highway (while the trip from Cuernavaca to Acapulco was pretty much continuously breathtaking).

Anyhow, you would think that, as a person who is able to find her way around pretty well any neighborhood in Boston, I would find numbered streets laid out in a grid to be a Piece of Cake, but I still managed to get all turned around on my way to hook up with asvern and M. But hook up we did, and artistic photographs were looked at, and dinner was eaten, and Avenue Q was seen (and was pretty awesome; at first, I was like, "Oh, shit, what the hell did I spend my money on this for?" but by about 10 minutes in I was loving it).

Anyhow, today I got up at 6:00AM and got on the train back to Boston (the train is faster than the bus and I was supposed to be at work by 11:00AM). I bought Half-Blood Prince at the train station (continuing my run of never buying Harry Potter books from actual bookstores -- 1-3 were from a book club, 4 was from Target, 5 from WalMart, and now 6 from a train station newsstand), but I finished Laurie R. King's excellent new Mary Russell book (Locked Rooms) before I started it. Now I'm about halfway through, and it's quite good, isn't it?

I forgot to buy any snacks before I got on the train, and I am always so disappointed by Amtrak food that I just couldn't muster up the strength to walk to the snack car, in spite of having had nothing to eat since the gin and tonic after the show, so by the time I got to Boston I was FREAKING STARVING, but I was also late for work so I didn't get anything to eat until 2:00PM. Now I am enjoying a truly enormous salad, with fresh greens and herbs and feta cheese and Yasou! dressing.

Even though I just worked in an un-airconditioned museum for the last 7 hours, I think I should easily be able to finish the book before I pass out, so I am looking forward to that. Also: the baby monkey is even cuter than it was last week.

I figure I might as well not read livejournal until I've finished the book, so I can happily click away on all the spoiler cut tags.