Part of my Vacation Home- Snow, Late Night ER Action, Miller Lite, SuperBowl

OK, Part 2 of my late January/early February journal from my vacation back home in the US.

After a monster-sized Veselka breakfast fit for a king on the lower East side, Dad and I drove home to Braintree. I thought there was a lot of snow in NYC at the time, but Braintree had NY beat hands down. Snow was everywhere and it was bountiful. We pulled up to the driveway- Mom had begged someone to plow it, so it was plowed, but only ¾ of the was up to where my car was, so the Saab was basically plowed into the driveway by 4 foot high, 6 foot wide ice bank. I wouldn’t get it out of there until over a week later. There was a thin, tiny path shoveled out from the driveway to the backdoor for a walkway. I had a lot of shoveling detail to do.


The inside of the house wasn’t in its cleanest state, but it felt good to be back. All the CDs and books I had ordered over the last 7 weeks had arrived and they were waiting for me on the dining room table.


During the week I drove out to Patty’s in Arlington and had an amazing dinner with the Kelly family- it made up for the Christmas day festivities I had to miss the previous month. And we even got to have pork! Mike made my favorite baked beans and for dessert, Patty had my other favorite staple, mud pie and chocolate sauce. Both my taste buds and my stomach were in heaven.


I love spending time out there because everyone always seems so relaxed and convivial. They all seem to know how to enjoy life better than the rest of us, so any time I can hang out with them is worthwhile as I hope their “joi de vivre” can rub a little off onto me. After dinner, Joanna had a hockey game, so we all piled into Peter’s car and drove over to the rink and watched the second half, screaming out her name, trying to cheer her on and alternately embarrass her at the same time. After the game, we went back to the homestead and we all ended up talking in the living room until 11:30 or so. It felt great to be able to be back here with my family for a while. Nights like this just weren’t possible in Izmir.


Another day I went to the South Shore Plaza to pick up a few things, and I noticed that a lot of stores were still having post-Christmas, “get it out of here” sales. Men’s Express had all of these winter items thrown in big boxes, and everything in there was $5 each. $5! Even their long cashmere scarves that originally sold for $70 were priced down to $5. Unbelievable. I made out there like a bandit.


Later, I went over to the Derby Street Shops and picked up my first ever pair of Birkenstocks (still don’t have them, though- they had to stay and get the lift put on them, so I hope I can get them shipped out here eventually) and I bought a packtowl, which is this thin towel made out of a chamois material. It’s ultra-absorbent and it takes up little to no space in your bag. It’s mainly used by backpackers and campers, but anyone who wants to travel light can use them. I first saw Jen’s when I visited her in Turin two years ago, and when I saw she still had it here in Izmir, I was set on finally getting one for myself.


I saw a few movies when I was home. I went into Harvard Sq. one day to watch a double feature of Closer and A Very Long Engagement. To my disappointment, I didn’t like either of them. With Closer, I found all the main characters so despicable that I really didn’t care what happened to any of them by the time the film came to an end. And the dialogue, it just sounded forced at times. The language sounded awkward when it was spoken aloud, and I kept thinking, people wouldn’t say something that eloquent in that stressful a situation. Adapted from a play, I had high expectations from the dialogue, but it disappointed me. As for A Very Long Engagement, I just got bored with it after a while. The movie goes on some long tangents that, in the end, have no effect on the main plot or the outcome of the story. I ALMOST fell asleep, but I think I managed to stay awake until the end. When it finished, I was glad to leave the theater, which is never a good sign. I’ve really enjoyed all of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s previous films, but this one didn’t strike any sort of chord with me this time.


After a week in Braintree with Mom and Dad, Nick came home on Thursday night. Mom, Dad, Nick and I all went out for dinner at The Fours, and of course we all ate too much. Once we got home, Mom started having some chest pains, and by the time she went to bed they still hadn’t gone away.


Late in the evening, Nick and I were watching the last few minutes of Star Wars (I had just picked up the new edition set on DVD) when Mom woke up in even more pain. Both Nick and I thought it was indigestion or acid reflux, but just to err on the side of caution we drove Mom to the South Shore Hospital Emergency Room. After Nick had trouble finding the entrance to the ER, he parked the car while I went inside with Mom to check her in. Once they brought her back into an ER room, she stayed there for the rest of the night.


We didn’t know what was happening or how long she’d be there, so Nick and I waited in the waiting room. By now it was 2am and both of us were exhausted, especially Nick, who had just driven 4 hours home from NY. After a while we decided to try and get some sleep ourselves, so we tried our best to lie out on some waiting room loveseats and chairs. In the waiting room though, they had a big screen plasma television hanging from once corner of the room, and even though it was the middle of the night, the volume on the TV was ridiculously loud. At 3am, Oceans’s 11 came on. Now, I love that movie, but the last thing I want to hear when I’m desperately trying to get some sleep is George Clooney’s and Brad Pitt’s witty banter blaring in my ear.


I woke up around 7AM or so, and Nick and I, both recovering from one of the worst nights of sleep in recent memory, went back to see Mom. She was hooked up to all these machines, acting like she was half-dead. The pain in her chest still hadn’t gone away, but tests showed that she didn’t have a heart attack, thank god.


The hospital still wasn’t ready to release her, but I had to be at The Office of Career Services in Harvard Sq. at 9AM to help Ralph, the Isikkent headmaster, interview college seniors for my teaching position next year in Izmir (my attendance wasn’t mandatory by any means, but I had told him that since I’d be home at that time that I’d come, give him some company, and help him out). Nick drove me home, where I hastily changed into some decent clothes, and then back out we went to the T station, where I hopped on an inbound train.


Now, I remembered the inbound red line trains being slow before I left, but the ride into Harvard I had this day was unbearably, excruciatingly slow. From Braintree to JFK, the train never got up to full speed, averaging about 15mph, and it was constantly stopping in the middle of nowhere without a station in sight. What should have been at most a 45-minute trip slowly, and I stress “slowly”, turned into a 75-minute ride into Harvard Sq. What is wrong, MBTA? Please, your red line trains have been going at a snail-like pace since September!


Needless to say, I missed the first interview entirely, but I was able to be there for the rest of them. For lunch, I ordered a Papa Johns pizza (yay!) and walked over to William James to have lunch with Kevin, who was in the middle of advisor hours on the 2nd floor. By the end of the day, on the little, poor sleep I had gotten, my batteries were drained, so I left with one more candidate to go, but Ralph really appreciated me coming in and being there given my Mom’s circumstances.


I got back home at 6, and by that time Mom was discharged from the hospital. In fact, she had even gone grocery shopping earlier in the afternoon! We decided to stay in for the evening and Nick cooked us dinner, which he always enjoys doing immensely. Unfortunately, Mom had another attack of pain in her chest, and this time she said it was even worse than the night before. Knowing that it wasn’t a heart attack or anything a hospital could fix at the moment, we decided not to go back to the ER. I don’t think any of could have handled another night’s sleep there anyway.


On Saturday morning, Nick and I were going to drive back to NY together, but Mom was still in awful pain, and I couldn’t leave her alone in such agony. So Nick left because he had work to do and a Shark Show to perform that night, and I stayed back with Mom, with plans to take a bus to NY Sunday morning so I could watch the Superbowl with him at a big party in Brooklyn before my plane to Turkey left from JFK Airport on Monday afternoon.


Well, Sunday morning rolls around and Mom’s still in dreadful pain. So much pain that she doesn’t think she can muster the strength and concentration to drive me to the bus terminal. I tried calling Dad to see if he could drive me, but I couldn’t get a hold of him. I was going to take an 8am bus, but that soon got pushed back to an 11am bus. After a few hours, Mom thought she was well enough to be able to drive.


It’s always sad to leave your family, but even worse when your Mom is quivering from pain and constant discomfort. I stayed with her as long as I could and then I boarded the 11am Chinatown bus to NY.


To get my mind off my Mom and to get my mind focused on the Patriots-Eagles Superbowl I’d be watching that night, I fired up my laptop in the bus and threw in the DVD from the Pats’ last championship season. It chronicled every regular-season game and followed them all the way to their Superbowl victory against the Panthers. By the end, the movie had stirred up all those good memories from last year, and I was primed up and ready for another win.


By the time I got to Nick and Emily’s apartment near Union Sq., Nick was already at the party. I found Emily at a nearby nail salon where she was getting a pedicure. She gave me her keys and I let myself into the apartment. Once Emily got back, she took a while getting ready, but we eventually hopped on the subway towards Brooklyn. The party was in this really industrial Brooklyn neighborhood, but it was right on the bank of the East River, giving us a picture-perfect view of Manhattan as we walked to the party.


We arrived and the party was in full-swing. A lot of people had been there for the better part of the day playing poker. After exchanging email and phone calls for nearly two years, I finally got to meet Nick’s friend, Dan Fierman, who writes for EW, in the flesh. I was like, “Oh my god! It’s you! You actually exist!” Better yet, he told me that EW might be starting up a new monthly movie magazine this fall called “Look”, and if the magazine got the green light, they’d be looking for lots of help. Dan thought he might have a much better chance at helping me get a job there than at EW, where, even with his help, I didn’t make it past the first round. So that was great, encouraging news. I was worried about what I’d do with myself once my teaching job ended, so it was reassuring to know that I had one possible, albeit a bit farfetched, option.


There was a great group of people there to watch the game at Joe Van Ek’s house. Pretty much everyone you’d want to watch the game with was there.


Not only did the Patriots win in exciting fashion, but Nick’s Miller Lite commercial aired! Nick had just met with a new agency, one that’s fairly high up there for commercial and voice over talent. On one of the first auditions they sent him out for, Miller Lite, he actually got it! Last week he recorded 4 or 5 spots, each of them criticizing Miller Lite’s competition, Bud Light, for coming out with a new low-carb beer. Apparently Miller Lite is just going to stick with Miller Lite. Once Nick recorded them, they told him there was a chance one of them would air during the Superbowl. None of us could believe it. Sure enough, sometime during the 3rd quarter, the ad came on. After it ended, everyone cheered and clapped, and Nick started jumping up and down, yelling, “Money!!!” Then, one ad later, another one of his Miller Lite ads came on. After it ended, Nick started jumping up and down again as everyone cheered. It was a really exciting moment, and I was so happy for Nick. For voice-over and commercial talent, I guess you get paid a set amount for working on the ad, but then you get residual money each time it airs. So the more popular and effective an ad becomes, the more money the people who worked on it make.


After the game, all of us extremely happy and proud, we took a service car back to Emily’s place (now officially Nick and Emily’s place) and went to sleep. Emily has this unbelievably comfortable couch, which I was to sleep on. I had slept a night on it a year ago back during the Lobster Farm shoot, and I overslept that morning by a mere 5 hours.


The next day, Monday, Nick had four auditions (a week or two ago he had seven in a day!). We met up in the early afternoon in between casting calls. I made sure I had everything packed up and then we bought the Forum movie on DVD and the complete musical score up in Times Sq. before walking back down to Penn Station, where I was to board the LIRR, which would eventually lead me to the Airtrain heading towards JFK Airport. Before I got on the train, we stopped and had lunch at this tasty, old-school diner opposite Penn Station. I never would have even noticed it, but Nick had been there before and he thought it would be a good place for a quick burger together before I go. And he was right. The burger and fries were on the money. Then, unfortunately, it was time for me to leave. We said our goodbyes and I took the descending escalator to the Long Island rail Road while Nick hopped on the subway.


Fortunately, on my way back to Turkey, I had no problems or delays. Everything left on time, and there were no hassles of any kind. I had school early next morning and I knew I needed to sleep, but from JFK to Amsterdam I flew on this new plane with a brand-new individual entertainment center. I had seen some where you get to choose 1 of 4 movies to watch, but on this one, they had an entire library of movies, over 200 at least, and you could start, stop, and pause them whenever you wanted. If I wanted, I could have pulled out a PS2-like controller from y arm rest and played video games the entire way to Amsterdam. I was so enthralled with this thing, I didn’t sleep a wink on the flight. I watched Big Fish (more like “big disappointment and boring let-down”), followed by Casablanca. I only got into the first 10 minutes of Dumbo (yes, Dumbo) before we had to land.


When I landed in Izmir, the big white Havas bus was waiting to drive people from the airport to the city. I’m so lucky, because when I was leaving Izmir it picked me up right by my apartment and then going back home it dropped me off within 100 yards of my building. I may not always love my apartment’s location, but I sure loved it that night.