I Am At Peace, and I'm Not Sure Why

Thus begins my evening.

I'm gonna meet Erica and ex-asshole Steve for dinner at Grand Central Station at 7. Around maybe 6:55, Erica gives me a call and says there's some sort of emergency at work and she' s stuck in a meeting; she'll be done in maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Now, it's not like Erica is a firefighter or anything — she's an administrative assistant (i.e., a secretary with a personal assistant's duties) at Court TV, and I really can't imagine what sort of "emergency" Court TV could possibly have. I mean, what sort of problem could they possibly have that can't be solved by just showing repeats of "Forensic Files?"

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Only tangentially related:

I saw a pool guy with a pager once. What kind of pool emergency could you possibly have? "Guy jumped off a diving board, needs a pool!" —Steve Skrovan

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Forty-five minutes later, Erica and Steve show up and drag me to this Mexican place in the food court. They claim it has quote the best guacamole unquote, a little expensive, but we can all split it. The restaurant also has the world's most obnoxious mariachi music blaring, loud enough to fill a stadium but in a space only slightly larger than my old dorm room. So it's like one of those high school dances with the thumping music where you say, "Damn this music's loud!" and your friend says, "What?" and you say, "What?!" and your friend says, "WHAT??!!" until it's no longer funny, which happens pretty fast. So it's not like I can talk to Erica and Steve, or hear what they say.

Which is fine, because they spend the entire freaking meal bitching about work, so it's like one really, really long, tedious inside joke that I'm not even gonna put in the effort to try to hear. This happens pretty much every time I meet with them (which only happened once this far), and it's not like they're gonna even give me some context to put their little conversation in. Not that it would matter, cause I guess this restaurant realizes that mariachi music is less annoying than this conversation.

Then, for some deranged reason, they invite me to spend the night with them at Steve's place in Astoria. Uh... what??? They've spent the past hour griping in this world that I'm not a part of, and now they want me to stay overnight with them for more? Problem is, Erica and company are pretty insistent when they want you to do something with them. And I'm not really hip to new situations — like spending the night in not-my bed — even if I did want to spend more time with E&S, so I've gotta make up some cheap excuse for leaving. It's not my forte. I say I've got an appointment tomorrow morning at ten, which leaves Erica scrounging for a way to get me from Astoria to Fanwood tomorrow morning by ten. Thank God no one can think straight in this mariachi hell.

Okay, so I should be feeling bereft, but I'm not really.

I catch the PATH on time, but run to the train in Newark just as it's pulling out of the station. The next train doesn't leave for fifty-five minutes. Dad refuses to come pick me up in Rahway, which would get me home before the next Fanwood-bound train even leaves the station. I should be pissed! Thanks a lot NJ Transit!

But I'm not pissed. I am at peace, and I'm not sure why. I sure would like to know, 'cause this being at peace thing is really fucking nice and I'd kind of like to duplicate it.