For the past two years, I’ve spent fall break at Cornell: sleeping in, writing, and composing blog posts about my unfortunate inability to go back home during the longest weekend in October. To my delighted surprise, however, I was able to spend the past few days running around New York City with my a cappella group, < 3! Goodbye sitting in my room watching The X-Files, hello…sitting in one of my best friend’s living room watching Star Trek. 

You say “blurry, bad photo quality,” I say “impressionistic.”

In order to reach the Big Apple, of course, our fellowship of nine had to spend a good number of hours driving across the beautiful fall countryside. Because this is only my third year of living in a place where autumn colors actually happen, I was still pretty excited by the reds, oranges, and golds.

And then the countryside turned into this.

One of the <3 girls’ mother welcomed us into their Long Island home for the weekend, and so the greatest slumber party of my life began in earnest!

Following a wild evening of late-night food and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, <3 boarded the LIRR (there were real conductors punching tickets and everything!) to ride into the city and join Columbia University’s Science Fiction Society for a geek-themed tour of Manhattan before our mini-performance later in the day. What, exactly, do geeks do in the city? Apparently, they shop at eclectic stores–from pop culture megagiants like Forbidden Planet to a Japanese import store and the Strand–and ride lots of subways. Except for the subway part, I’m perfectly cool with that!

And even after I swore that nothing in the comics world could ever interest me, I shelled out $5 for a pair of Buffy the Vampire Slayer-themed graphic one-shots set in space. Money well spent, obvs.

Columbia is a gorgeous university with some of the most ideal unnecessary-picture-taking locations in the country.

After we’d stuffed ourselves with crepes, delicious hot Italian sandwiches, and other treats, we crowded into a Columbia mini-auditorium (after, naturally, going through security at the door to the building–Cornell looks like an open safe compared to that school!) and performed a set of old and new nerdy repertoire, including songs from Spiderman, The Lord of the Rings, Buffy, and more. All were, of course, greatly appreciated by our audience.

<3 post-performance, so excited that our audience actually recognized “They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard”!

Once our official performance was over and done with, we were able to spend a lazy day touring Central Park and taking pictures in photobooths. (I was just happy to be able to wear my jacket and winter hat because of the cold weather!)

Our geeky gang on a bridge allegedly used in the filming of a recent episode of Dr. Who.

Best fall break yet? Definitely! Most exhausting weekend ever? Absolutely. Time to stop singing and start working on my next coding assignment…