Goodnight Hayley

I'm tempted to say that grad school applications are too freaking difficult to fill out. But if I actually said that, I think it would automatically disqualify me from any grad school anywhere, including Uncle Jeff's School of Public Policy and AirBrush Nail Design.

Interestingly, the application for the school in London is the least complicated (man I loved that Indigo Girls song). IF I'm accepted there, the visa and financial aid information will more than make up for the lack of application paper work.

And here it is, folks, Hayley's most boring blog post yet. She's talking about filling out forms. And the only thing more boring than filling out forms is talking about filling them out. I've reached a new low, friends.

So, on to something more interesting. Post-T-Day bachelorette/bachelor parties. On Friday night, I went to Ms Erica Rhoten's apartment for low-key pre-marital partying. Poor Erica was getting over being sick, so we stayed in, ate food (thanks to Anne Marie Harvey for being the only worth-while friend Erica has), and talked. The plan was to watch girlie movies, but things got carried away when we started talking about feminism and then racism. Those were my contributions.

On Saturday I headed to Joe Mize's cabin (Joe being the soon-to-be-wedded bachelor in this mix) for fun and booze. The all-male debauchery had occurred the night before, and this was to be a night of fun for both parties. However, I was the only member of the bachelorette party in attendance. Erica was too sick and the other (two) girls had to go home. So there I was in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of drunk guys who like to hunt. They had venison on the grill and booze-a-plenty. It was a swell time. Best of all, Erica felt better later in the evening and showed up after all. Just as great was Dave Brumbaugh's attendance. He came up from Texas for this event.

Maybe the best news of all - I can drink wine again. And lots of it!

Joe and Erica's wedding isn't until December 17, so you'll have to wait a while for a recap of that party. Until then, snack on this.

I've never had tofurkey

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Mine was low key but very cozy. I brought wine and I did a damn fine job of picking it out, too. Of course, it's nice that the people at the store put little descriptors beneath their wines.

IN OTHER NEWS:

On November 11, Veterans / Armistice Day, I posted on this website that I had finally found employment. I would like to make a retraction: I am not, in fact, employed at all. By anyone. Or anything.

Finally, the ugliest dog in the world died this week. There's a little less ugly in the world, though maybe we're all colder for it.

We learned a lot that day and had fun too

Television shows always manage to work in a very special lesson for all the holiday episodes, as if meaning was just waiting around until late November to pop up. The messages are especially contrived because they are not usually heeded year-round. Yesterday, however, I experienced a very special Thanksgiving miracle. Dad (post-surgery) and I were walking at Fenner Arboretum, when we saw two deer off the trail. This being an arboretum (a small one, at that) in the middle of the city, these deer were not very freaked out and continued foraging, while we stopped to stare. Somewhere behind us, though, was a constant rustling that could not have been attributed to squirrels or wind. We turned and looked and saw several wild eastern turkeys. For ten or fifteen minutes, we just stared - first at the deer, then at the turkeys. I had never seen a wild turkey before, and this, just days before T-day, had to have meant something. Unlike television, though, the meaning was not made clear by a narrator, or symbolism, or Bob Saget. But STILL....

Otherwise, I spent all last week in Lansing, helping out with Dad and taking care of the cat while Mom was out of town. It was a very relaxing week. I watched a lot of movies. I saw a few friends, but mostly I stayed in with the parents and just relaxed. We had our first snow fall on the day Dad had his knee surgery, so we made a fire in the fire place and everything was very warm and cozy.

He was gentle, a vegetarian even

I found this bad boy on the beach in Miami. As you can see, only half was sticking out of the sand, and Christ only knows if the other half was underneath or not. Either way, I almost sat on him. He wasn't a very big shark, but he was a shark nonetheless, and for that we owe him a great deal of respect. I'd encourage a moment of silence in his memory.

Finally!

Gaines got a job!

This weekend, my cousin became a Man in grand Miami Beach style

I suppose it's nigh time I included a post about my weekend in Miami Beach for the bar mitzvah of one Daniel Gaines. The weekend featured great food, great family, great fun, and even great rabbis. Which reminds me of a joke: what made Hitler's dog foam at the mouth? Rabbis.

We (Dad and I) got into Miami a little after three p.m. on Friday, met Brother at the airport, and took a cab to the Eden Roc, the home of bar mitzvah debauchery. The cab driver told us that he was still without power from hurrican Wilma. Nuts. There were signs of destruction all around, mostly in the form of palm trees with no fronds. We arrived at the hotel, checked in, and spent a little time luxuriating in our surroundings. Later on, dinner at a Chinese place with all the family. Then Friday night services, with two great rabbis and the best oneg shabbat ever. Then, back to the hotel for drinks in the lobby. I eventually wandered onto the beach, enjoying the balmy sea-breeze, when what should I happen across but a shark. No lie. Albeit, a small and rather dead shark, but a shark nonetheless. We took pictures which I will eventually have sent to me and will post just to prove my point.

Saturday, had a nice breakfast with Brother, then changed into the old bathing suit and spent a few hours poolside, reading, warming, drinking pina coladas. Then upstairs to change for Bar Mitzvah festivities. At the actual Bar Mitzvah Service Danny did wonderfully. He read from the Torah like a true man. And he looked great in his silk Armani suit. After services, I was in charge of making sure that all of Danny's friends made it onto one of the limos that were waiting to take them to the party at the Eden Roc. When we finally all got there, we were treated to cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. Danny's pug, Roxy, made an appearance in a sequined ball-gown - utterly cruel, though she was pretty damn cute.

We were finally ushered in for dinner in the grand ballroom, half of which had been sectioned off and turned into Central Park (the theme was New York). Music, a Liza Minelli impersonator (still not certain if that was a man or a woman), the Rockettes, dancing, great food, more drinks, a cake shaped like Tiffany's boxes, a chocolate fountain... it goes on and on. After the party, Danny had the Elizabeth Taylor pent house suite, where we hung out for a little before I absolutely had to go to sleep.

The next day, Sunday, we had brunch out near the Eden Roc pool, then we all grabbed our luggage and moved into two poolside cabanas for the rest of the day. Eventually we all had to leave, so we got dressed and headed to my aunt and uncle's house. We had dinner at the cafe at Books and Books, walked around Lincoln Road, and eventually went home.

Monday was my last day in Miami. Despite Jon and Karen begging me to stay longer, I had to leave that night as I had a job interview the next day. I got my hair cut at a place called Snip and all thanks to Lee for making me look fabulous. Dad and Brother and I had lunch on Lincoln Road, walked around, looked in some stores (Brother got a sweet new pair of Reeboks) and eventually headed home, where the rest of my day was spent just relaxing and hanging out with the family before they took me to the airport.

Thanks to the Miami Gaineses for a phenomenal weekend (though no one was surprised). And to all those who haven't yet been to Miami, maybe it's time you went.

H does a bit of reflecterating

Tuesday morning, Drew and I awoke early to head into Detroit that we might wait in line to see Rosa Parks lying in repose at the Charles H Wright Museum of African American History. After having read articles about people waiting in line for seven hours in DC (to see the first woman to lie in repose in the Capital's rotunda - boo ya!) we were expecting a similar wait. I had a back-pack with water, a cheese sandwich and apples, GRE study tools, a book, my mp3 player, my swiss army knife, a flare gun, a small tent, enough quinine to anti-malarial-ize 2/3 of sub-Saharan Africa, a small gas cooking range, and a spare tire. We were only in line for about an hour. And Starbucks was there with free coffee for all. Don't give me that shit about the company being evil. Your argument sucks.

For being what it was (waiting in a line to see a dead civil rights leader) it was fun. There was the usual comradery one finds in large, sympathetic groups (it was sort of cold, it was early, we were fearful of rain, we all felt indebted to the woman), and one woman even cut us in line which only elicited a large laugh from me and the woman in line behind us. There isn't much to say about actually seeing Mrs. Parks, other than that she looked like a dead person. I did mist up a bit as I stopped at her casket, though. Back outside, there was the actual bus on which she sat, roped off. A contingent of Windsor police-men stood vigil and visitors and news people stood about. One man asked Drew if he was English. He responded that no, he was not from England. The man said, "Oh, I was just wondering because you look like one of those English Beatles." Later on, walking down Cass, a panhandler exclaimed that Drew looked just like the reincarnation of John F Kennedy. At no point did anyone liken me to Jackie K. or Marylin, or even Yoko (understandably).

Wednesday, I awoke early - yet again - to head back into Detroit to take the GRE. It didn't suck nearly as much as I thought it would, though my math score, as predicted, was pretty low. the test works in such a way that if you answer a question correctly, the next question will be more difficult. Conversely, if you answer a question incorrectly, the next question will be easier. It's trying to find your skill level and meet your needs (smart fucking test). I knew I wasn't doing too well on the math section when the question that came up asked me to determine whether column a was greater than column b or if they were equal and column a was 2+2, column b was 4 and I took three minutes to determine that the question could not be answered due to a lack of information. It's alright, though. I more or less killed the verbal section.

Meanwhile, as I took the GRE, Mrs. Parks' funeral got under way and proceeded for over five hours, the audience being addressed by more or less every single person ever. Jennifer Granholm, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, John Conyers, Jesse Jackson, Reverend T.D. Jakes, Al Sharpton, Reverend Bernice King, Minister Farakhan, John Kerry, Kwame Kilpatrick, and approximately 83 other people. At one point I went to my room to take a nap for a few hours, and when I emerged the funeral was still going strong. I believe at one point, news cameras caught Cornell West leaving. At least it looked like West. Most of the US Senate was there. And apparently Japan sent two planes full of roses, which is better than two planes full of a lot of other things (A-bombs, for instance).

Taking into consideration the light that was shed on racial stratification as a result of Hurricane Katrina's fall-out, and the general state of the world (earthquakes, hurricanes, riots in Paris) it seems now is a great time to seriously address issues of racial injustice in the US. I don't have much hope that anything more will be seriously resolved, but the mood is right. I don't know nothing about birthing no babies, I'm just saying.