the like best birthday ever

so you thought it was over and the countdown was reset to 364 days, but not so much... last night was the good chats and dinner night... tonight was the crazy night...

first though, i had to give a talk to the rutgers REU kids... eric had called late last night and we talked til nearly 3am my time... and then i crashed... i kept dreaming that i overslept and missed giving the talk or that i screwed it up somehow or another, but i did wake up on time, get some breakfast, and practice my talk before heading to campus to give it... and here's proof that eric's just that great... we were talking at 3am my time/midnight his... he generally stays up til 2 or 3am, and then sleeps til noon... he set his alarm for 9am his time/noon mine and was like "ok, so you're freaking out about the talk, i don't have a planned peptalk, but like i can totally field all your usual ridiculous questions... so have at it"... yeah, eric's great :-)

long story short (or at least this part of it), i gave the talk, the audience cheered and approved, asked good questions, and even the one professor who sat in came up afterwards and complimented me heartily.

thus ends the being responsible part of the day.

although there was dinner last night, the thing i really really wanted to do for my birthday was see a broadway show, so sarah, scott, ben, and me had tickets for "movin' out" tonight...

sarah had to work til late, so scott, ben, and i caught the 3:30 train to penn station, then beelined for the world's largest toys r us (in times square) -- it was great, because although i've been there many times, it's a completely different dynamic for everything when you put ben and scott together... scott oohed and aahed at the huge moving dinosaur and ben played with action figures... we all danced the hokey pokey and the chicken dance with the dancing elmos, and scott freaked out over a kids book and had to read it to us (called my mamma is a llama or something like that)... it was just plain hilarious -- it's fun to hang out with people who can be completely ridiculous like that!

after dinner at sbarro and a run through the hershey store just to get high on chocolate smells without actually buying anything, we headed to the broadway/43rd street starbucks where we were meeting up with sarah... we met up with her, and meandered to another starbucks and then to wait for doors to open for the play.

so, "movin' out" -- fantastic! it's a broadway musical centered totally around the music of billy joel... i think you have to have a real appreciation for billy joel music to get the most out of it... there was a plot, but no dialogue -- just a band (handpicked by billy joel) that was on a platform that moved on the stage or up in the air depending on the scene and lots of ballet people (handpicked by twila tharp) going along with the music -- impressively there were a handful of songs neither scott nor i knew, but the choreography was amazing!... each scene was just a single billy joel song, or a couple glued together, kinda like rock concert meets ballet... scott and i (and occasionally ben) sang at the top of our lungs along with the songs we knew (and it was so loud you couldn't really hear us anyhow so we weren't being distracting, just laughing our heads off and having a blast!)... they did a really weird arrangement of "we didn't start the fire" though that we didn't recognize until the words started and "pressure" was done in like double time with the cheesy synthesizer line replaced by something else... sarah commented though, that even being less familiar with the songs, the choreography, especially in act 2, was completely amazing... so yeah, we all had a blast... and scott and me sang ourselves nearly hoarse =P

when the play got out (10ish) no one wanted to go home yet, so we all wandered towards penn station, didn't see anywhere to stop, so we headed east a bit and ended up at some random pub for 2.5 hours... sarah, scott, and ben split 2 pitchers of beer, i had 3 margaritas, and we all split miscellanous fun food... the thing is alcohol makes me quieter and tireder... coffee's what makes me do crazy stuff, so it was tasty, but i was the quietest in the bunch, still it was a hilarious conversation and we had fun... we left mostly because there were 2 trains left going back to jersey before sunrise, and we figured if we at least tried to make the earlier of the 2 (the 12:42am train) we'd for sure make it home... we ran into the station and onto the train as they were calling "all aboard" and ready to head out...

scott, ben, and me laughed most of the way home, and then riding in my car back to campus, we sang along with toy story and lion king songs on the CD i had in my radio -- me, ben, and scott trying to sing along with the high parts of hakuna matata at 2am... yeah... it was durn entertaining :-)

now, i'll get photos tomorrow and scan them for your laughter enjoyment, and scott owes me a dramatic reading of "go dog go" (kids book) tomorrow afternoon -- i'm excited =P

time to get un-manhattan-ified (i.e. i always feel gross and sticky after getting back from the city), and get some sleep... yeah, it's been a durn good day :-)

night y'all!