Missed Part I?  Read it here.

One of the best parts of this trip was getting to see my longtime friend, Constance.  We met in 6th grade, and she has been one of my best friends and partner in crime ever since.

The last time we saw each other was in 1998 at Oxmoor Mall, one of our regular mischief-making haunts.  We used to window shop there all day, get lunch in the food court and try to hit people with food we tossed over the balcony.  We were Trouble.

(One time, Constance dropped a piece of her baked potato into some lady’s hair.  The woman didn’t notice.  To this day, we’re both amazed that we were never kicked out of the mall.  The lesson, kids?  You can be a troublemaker as long as you don’t get caught!)

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Long overdue for a reprieve from the purgatory that is small-town New Jersey, I spent the past weekend in the DC metro area with some of the people I love the most.

Being back on the East Coast certainly has its benefits - namely, being able to make an easy 4-hour drive to DC (as opposed to having to take a much more costly plane ride).  I invited my friend and brother Quincy to ride down with me from New Jersey since his parents live in NoVa.  Turns out he had a photo shoot to do in DC over the weekend and he was due for a visit.  Sweet.

Quincy met me at the New Brunswick train station.  I was hoping he’d be able to avoid a train transfer in Newark, but no dice - he still had to transfer train lines.  Now I realize I should have asked him to meet me at a station closer to my house to simplify my end of the trip since it would have taken him the same number of transfers and time.

It was great to have his company on the way down.  We talked about music, Cartoon-gate (the NY Post editorial cartoon melodrama), and about how he would convince his parents that no, he’s not really sick - “it’s just allergies.”  (But Q. was really, really sick.  Poor thing.  Shh, don’t tell him I told.)

Once on the road, I realized that I had forgotten two very important things:  (more…)