(Not So) Lazy Sunday

Looking back on today, it doesn't seem like I did all that much, but my yawning is telling me otherwise.

First, I was up at 8 in the morning, listening to the rumble of thunder and searching out my window for the flash of lighting (a few day earlier I had re-arranged my room a bit; now I can look out the window and see the sky without even having to raise my head from my pillow). I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I absolutely adore thunderstorms. They are utterly magnificent.

But a key part of thunderstorms is, as everyone knows, rather heavy rain, and that made it difficult to go out and grab something to eat in the time I'd allowed myself. So, instead, I caught an extra hour of sleeping mixed lightning-watching before hauling myself out of bed. I'd signed up to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my RA this morning, and we were meeting at around 10 AM to leave, an early start for a lazy Sunday but not incredibly unreasonable. 

A large group of us (this time all girls, a steep contrast to my earlier photography museum trip) took the subway and then a bus down and across town to see the museum. At the Met was Alexander McQueen's exhibit called Savage Beauty, the only museum collection that I know of where fashion is the only art form. The dresses there were all incredible, more works of painting or sculpture than clothing someone would actually wear. The installation itself was very well done, with each room having a totally different feel from the next, although I must admit that the eerie vibes some rooms were trying to achieve were distorted by the sheer number of people in the exhibit: our group had to wait in line for more that 45 minutes to even get inside, and after we came out at the exit the line had gotten even longer. 

We all ate lunch at the museum (quite overpriced for not amazing quality; but hey, museum food, what can you expect?) and I ended up heading back early with my RA, Julia, as both of us were drooping after the sheer boredom of waiting in line followed by the intense experience of seeing Savage Beauty; I'm hoping to go back to the Met sometime in the next two weeks so I can treat it more as a museum and wander about the paintings on the upper story.

Our walk back was quite the trip. We (Julia, myself, and another RA, Adam) had decided not to to take the bus back to the subway but instead to walk there. Our original plan was to cut essentially straight through Central Park to Broadway, where we could catch the 1 train back up to Columbia. Well, we... meandered. Half an hour later we came out 2 miles uptown of the Met, at 96^th street, which is only about a mile south of Columbia. We'd walked almost all the way home! My complaining feet opted for the subway, and all three of us reached the campus intact and ready for a nap.

I puttered about during the afternoon, studying a bit, doing laundry, attempting to clean my room, until eight o'clock rolled around. At 8, I went with three of my suite-mates down to the gazebo, where we met a few more people and headed out for dinner: one of our friends, Aarev, hadn't had Indian food in almost two months and was missing home, so we decided to take him out to an Indian place recommended to us in Times Square. But fortune had other plans: a delay of more than 30 minutes on the subway platform left us with not enough time to head downtown, properly enjoy a meal, and be home in time for curfew without cutting it very finely, so we went searching a little closer to home. At West 108^th we found our dinner destination, and had one of the less expensive (20 dollars for an entree, naan, and a lassi; pretty decent for New York!) but most lively meals I've had in weeks. The entire dinner was spent laughing and talking, and I feel like we all left that restaurant much closer to each other than we had been before.

Tomorrow is our trip to Coney Island with Mrs. L, and tomorrow night I'm heading to Riverside Park with the rest of my suite to watch the fireworks; it promises to be a good Fourth of July here in New York