Yep, parades. A slightly less-well-known fact about me is that I jump at the chance to go to parades. Despite being about as unnationalistic as they come, I love all displays of Americana--county fairs, fireworks, picnics, and parades. And I have never been to the Albany St Patricks Day Parade before, but my extended family goes every year. Despite having not one iota of Irish genetics, I am fond of St Patricks day because a lot of my favorite music is Irish/Celtic in origin and soda bread is awesome, and I knew that my relatives + beer + bagpipes = a good time for all, and I was SO right.
To back up a bit: I flew into Albany on Friday after a really great week with my sister visiting me in Indiana. I'm sure there will be further posts about that, but suffice it to say that it was super fun. We ended the week with a massive dance party with my friends, having somehow convinced the DJ at a particular bar to play us multiple Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls tracks. We flew out on two separate planes yet landed in Detroit at around the same time. I met up with my sister and her roommate there, where we went to an airport bar for the first time ever for some very overpriced martinis. Then they flew to Rochester and I flew to the ol' state capital itself. If you were curious, the gate I flew out of in Detroit was in the far end of the C wing, down some stairs, and they were re-carpeting the floor so I had to climb over some carpet rolls and dodge some caution tape. It was pretty classy! One of my cousins picked me up, we collected another cousin at the train station, and headed home.
Saturday morning began Parade Day. We all got decked out in green and headed to the city to check in on one of my cousin's and his friends, who were most definitely drunk but also their normal polite and funny selves. Then we went to another house party, where a really really good college friend of mine met us. After we left and were walking down the street, we walked past the house of a guy who went to high school with my friend, and he was standing on his porch! She knew he lived on that street, but not where, so that was pretty cool. We met his roommates, used their bathroom, chatted, grabbed lunch, and met up with more of my family, including my seven year old cousin, who was wearing a green tutu, and her fabulous mom (another of my many awesome cousins) who was wearing rainboots with chickens on them. My family's tradition is that you walk along the parade route with the parade before watching most of it from the end.
(photo courtesy of my cousin Melis! We're festive.)Admittedly, there was nothing that spectacular about the parade--some pipes, drums, marching bands, random Irish people, step-dancers, and the like. What was fun was all the various people watching and their shenanigans. The police just give up for the day and don't enforce open container laws, and it seems to work surprisingly well. I didn't see anyone who was belligerent, although I'm sure as the day went on that got a lot worse. And my relatives seem to always find random people wherever we go that they know somehow, so that's always funny. The father of one of my cousin's friends works at City Hall and let us in the basement to use the bathroom, so I can now say I've been in City Hall! In a weekend where so much of the news was about tsunamis and flooding and sadness, it was nice to stop watching the news and just to be goofy for awhile. My friend came home with us and we had really great bonding times before she had to leave for work this morning.
As for today, I spent a lot of time in my grandmother's wing of the house--she's been feeling unwell but seemed to perk up a bit today. We dropped my cousin off at the Hudson train station (a really adorable train station! It reminds me of England). I read for school (about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons), read for fun (Agatha Christie), watched the most TV I've watched in about 3 months, and wrote an abstract (due tomorrow--no sense in waiting til the last minute, say I). My aunt made a tasty salad and shrimp alfredo for dinner, I got to meet the newest member of my family, my 6 month old cousin who is the smiling-est baby boy EVER, hung out with his 6 year old sister who is hilarious, and had the goofy (as they often are) black lab lick my feet. I miss my hometown and parents and my other grandma, but I also love all these people to bits. My family, I often say, is the best.
I leave the fam tomorrow and train-it to Brooklyn tomorrow. Details to follow!
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