How I Accidentally Became a Political Activist

Today my friends and I were supposed to go to see the ultimate chick flick movie. As it turns out, two of my friends are both politically active (go them!) and knew about a rally for Obama taking place right near the theatre we were going to be going to for the movie. I didn't want to go to Manhattan by myself, so my plan was to go to the movie theatre and buy the tickets, hang out at the rally but more probably ditch them and spend some quality time in the Barnes & Noble.

Unfortunately the movie we had wanted to see was already sold out. No big deal though, I decided I would still go to the bookstore until we were supposed to meet up with our other politically disinclined friend.

Everything was going according to plan until Brittany called to tell me that the rally had turned into a march, and they were going to be walking to Columbus Circle (?) 45 blocks away. Well, since I did not know where that was I decided I best walk with them.

The cons to marching along were the crazy loud chants that were being shouted (though I did enjoy the one that went, "Ba-rock the vote!"), the tourists taking pictures of you as you walked long, and the police men threatening to arrest the marchers (I wasn't to worried about this because I had no posters, buttons, stickers or other paraphanalia, but still...).

The pros were much more numerous: (ONE) Lots of people honked their horns in support of the marchers, which was fun to witness; (TWO) Random people joined in the march who were really funny; (THREE) Actually, everyone at the march was really nice; (FOUR) We got to meet this really nice guy who Emily knows and as it turns out, he speaks French so I got to have a conversation in French; (FIVE) He also happens to be in a band and we totally scored an invite to go see him play; (SIX) Finally, I got some really good exercise and built up a huge appetite!

Here's Brittany and Emily at the end of the march. I am actually really glad I accidentally ended up going with them - it's actually sort of fun to be involved in something that people are so passionate about.

In other news, my cold is progressing and I have now entered the "cough up a lung" stage which made having a chat with my other friend on the phone this evening very difficult!

Also, last night our neighbors had a very raucous party. I wouldn't have really minded (we're all young in this apartment building and they should be able to have some outrageous fun sometimes) if the noise had been made in their apartment, but people kept running up the stairwell shouting, throwing things and probably falling down stairs (from the sound of it). Also, some party goers kept buzzing our apartment via the intercom system, which thoroughly pissed me off.

So that was my weekend in a nutshell (well, I also cleaned the apartment, but apart from Brittany's toothbrush incident the details of that are fairly mundane). Oh, and I got invited to a no-pants party! So that should be fun. :-)