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So, the other day, my friend nejihyugastyle invited me and some of our other friends to go ice skating. I hadn't been ice skating for a while, but I'd taken lessons for a while years ago, so I'd gotten to the it-takes-one-lap-to-warm-up-and-then-I'm-not-completely-falling-on-my-a**-the-entire-time-stage at this point in my life. So I thought, "Yeah, ice skating... sounds cool."
And that was the plan.
Go to an ice rink in San Jose, skate around, drink hot cocoa, go home.
It turned out to be... something else.

Going on this soon-to-be expedition: Me, nejihyugastyle, and PhantomLychee.

nejihyugastyle's mom dropped us off first at the main event stadium, where the Sharks (NHL) play, thinking there was a public ice rink somewhere in the pavillion. Generally lost and confused (but still sexy!), we asked a nearby security guard where the rink was. "About ten blocks down from here" was her answer.
Thankfully, nejihyugastyle called his mom to pick us up and drop us off where the rink was. Uhh... or wasn't.
San Jose still had its "Christmas in the Park" display up, which included carnival rides, lights, food booths, and general shinyness. Oh, and a presumed ice rink. That too.
We spent way too long looking for said ice rink, asking shopkeepers and nice looking families of four if they knew where the ice rink was. We were sent in what felt like a giant circle to the rink; which was small, with rough ice, a long line and a higher price than the other place we had planned on going to.
But hey, at least we got yummy donut samples from one of the food booths. (And we had retained our overall sexiness!)

We spent a bit more time trying to find the rink we had planned to go to, then gave up, and sat on these granite pillar-things, trying to figure out what we'd do, and taking pictures of nejihyugastyle posing like a smexy gargoyle.

Then it hit us... we're young and smextastic, and we're in the city (albeit one of the less fantastic cities as far as things to do, it's still a city.) - let's do stuff!

And then came the crepe booth. *swoon*
PhantomLychee and I ordered two crepes (mine was Nutella... *drools*), which we all shared around, while listening to each other's iPods. See, this is what being a teenager is all about... eating crepes and listening to music in a techie city at 8pm. XD

We continued our hunt for the un-find-able ice rink, where we crossed the street to a plaza-thing with a fountain. We wandered around there for a bit, generally being insane, cursing the directory for only being of the plaza and not the entire city.

Then we found it.
There was a building-ish thing with a short stairwell that was carpeted at the bottom. We took "refuge" there, wasting time, telling stories and creating general lulz. Basically, wasting time, the best (legal) way possible... in a parking structure.
Yes, the random carpeted room was actually one of those rooms inside parking structures - the ones with either stairs or an elevator (or both) - that has windows all around it.
We began with trying to ask people parking there where the heck un-find-able rink was, yet again. Unable to get anyone's attention, we pretended we were just contestants on another season of Survivor. PhantomLychee and I decided nejihyugastyle would be the first victim of cannibalism, if need be.

After a while, we became bored and went out to the carnival part that was set up.
We looked at the rides (especially PhantomLychee's "Vex-sicle", a very shiny, phallic, drop tower kind of ride. XD). We all sat on a bench and talked, then a (homless-looking) man came up to us, held up a cell phone, and asked me if it was mine. It was.
We decided this was amazing, I was so lucky, and that one guy was Morgan-Freeman-God, a la Evan Almighty.

Next order of business was an extremely hot Asian guy (who we all thought was a girl the first time he passed by, due to his long, ponytailed hair and slender frame), with an even sexier trenchcoat. Who we might have stalked if we couldn't think of anything better to do. Which... we couldn't, but we thought we could.

We all split a funnel cake, then headed back to the carpeted room, and talked about mad libs, pretending we'd been stuck in there for 7 days!
Then we heard a voice coming from above the stairwell... it sounded like someone talking on the phone, so we started answering to what they would say, for our own amusement.
After a while, we realized there was more than one voice, and it sounded... really awkward to be listening in on. Like... "The Horizontal Macarena", which nejihyugastyle did the literal of.

We were getting bored, so we peeked up at the group up there, trying to devise a plan of how to get out, and walk past them, nonchalantly-ish.
We ended up sneaking out into the parking garage, trying to find a way out which resulted in PhantomLychee haxx0r-ing into the bank, nejihyugastyle and I freaking out by the fact that we just broke into a bank, and sneaking out through a significantly more legal exit.

We passed the "voices", which turned out to be a group of four or five people, taking pictures of us as we passed by, back to our base, acting like even more of idiots than they. We laughed it off, which was rekindled when nejihyugastyle said, "We should go ice skating more often."
Suddenly, part of the "voices" left into the parking garage, and we went all hidey.
We eventually left, with me saying, "Omigod, I can't believe you forgot the car was arked in another lot!" to the "voices".

We walked around, to see if we could find either food or that damn ice rink. there was a Starbucks, but we were kind of, "nah" about that, so we walked, eventually running across a dead pigeon lying across the sidewalk, with bird guts lying next to it, making me and nejihyugastyle scream.

Finally, it was pick up time.


That was the best not-ice-skating I've ever done.