Got to see the fireworks tonight, although in the rain and wind we weren’t sure we were going to last that long for a while.
Got to see the fireworks tonight, although in the rain and wind we weren’t sure we were going to last that long for a while.
[EDIT: Oops; I had linked to somebody else’s pictures too, but they’re in a locked post. Sorry!]
(I took some video of the firespinning; my little digicam does better at that than at still shots in low-light conditions for some reason. I haven’t looked to see whether any of it turned out yet.)
I also call your attention to this gorgeous sunset picture.
In other photo-related news, I got
[EDIT: Oops; I had linked to somebody else’s pictures too, but they’re in a locked post. Sorry!]
(I took some video of the firespinning; my little digicam does better at that than at still shots in low-light conditions for some reason. I haven’t looked to see whether any of it turned out yet.)
I also call your attention to this gorgeous sunset picture.
In other photo-related news, I got
Oh, the sky was gorgeous! I really should have brought my big telescope. The stars were intense.
This morning Zeph made yummy breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs and scrambled pancakes with berries. It's gorgeously sunny. We saw a couple raptors of some sort circling this morning.
I has a flavor. It a bacon flavor.
- Wednesday and Friday: With a bunch of other people, saw off
ragingamazon before her two-year adventure. (Well, “two-year adventure” is understating it. This is
ragingamazon. Her whole life is an adventure.)
- Saturday night: Had a quick dinner in Davis with
plumtreeblossom, followed by a very fun reading night, followed by other fun.
- Sunday morning: Went to a potluck brunch with
plumtreeblossom, which involved catching up with all sorts of wonderful people I don’t see often enough, among them
lilbjorn.
- Sunday evening: Went back to Body Worlds 2 at the Museum of Science, this time with
chienne_folle. Really enjoyed it again. Afterwards got to catch up with
chienne_folle over very good meatloaf (mine) and corn tamales (hers) at the Cheesecake Factory.
- Monday evening: Had
cathijosephine over for a very unpretentious dinner.
- Today: Finally called an auto glass place to have my window replaced (reminds me, I need to get some stuff out of the car before they come over). Had dinner and a wonderful conversation with
plumtreeblossom in Davis, and briefly dropped in on the Diesel social afterwards, although it was pretty quiet by that time.
New Year’s report
2007-01-02 00:18I had a lot of stuff to do over break at work, and I slept a lot for the first part of break, so I was at work late today (New Year's Day) to catch up. When I came out to my car, I discovered that somebody had broken in. They got my cache of parking-meter quarters. Unless they’re scattered somewhere in the car (which is quite possible; it was a mess), they also got my ~$70 Bluetooth GPS receiver, a somewhat prized possession. I am very relieved that they didn’t get into the trunk (not that that would have been easy) and get my CPAP machine, or my big weekend-away-from-home duffelbag. And I have little micro-cuts from sorting through things. (I’m guessing safety glass wasn’t as good in 1983 as it is now, or else that it degrades over time, because in addition to the safety-glass-style chunks, there was lots of tiny glass dust. And I was sorting through things to see what they’d taken.)
I’ll need to do a better search (and clean out the glass) in the light sometime. [Just as I was about to post this I thought to run out and check: They didn’t take my EZ-Pass, which would have let them put tolls on my credit card until I noticed and cancelled it.]
The good, though, was very good! Fabulous New Year’s Eve party with fabulous people, including a few from out of town I was expecting to see and one from out of town I was pleasantly surprised to see, wonderful New Year’s Day brunch (at which I discovered that bacon and cheddar waffles are really yummy!), and all of it spent with the lovely and delightful
May you all have love, snuggles, good old friends, good new friends, and all the bacon and cheddar waffles you want in the new year!
no subject
2006-05-31 00:47I just noticed in my Treo calendar that today is the birthday of my first real girlfriend. (I qualified that with “real” because before her, in high school, there was somebody I went out two or three times, shared tender I love yous with, and pined over for a year or so.)
She was, well, not somebody any of you will be able to imagine me dating. She was raised a fundamentalist conservative, and she was a bit homophobic (in the “uncomfortable around” sense). But when she was involved with me, she was in a questioning phase, unsure of the faith, politics, or values she grew up with, and willing at least to consider those I represented.
( Several more paragraphs. )
Karen, wherever you are, I hope you’re happy and I wish you well. I wouldn’t do it over again, but I don’t regret it a bit.
no subject
2006-05-09 16:17PS — Yes, Hawai‘i is awesome, although currently I have discovered that being jetlagged, sleeping fifteen hours, and then drinking lots of coffee might not be the wisest course of action.
no subject
2005-12-29 00:56Large chunks of my friends list already know this, but I thought I’d point the rest of you at the pictures.
Lovely evening
2004-07-16 08:43I’ve had some fabulous times lately, but I’m so far behind in posting about them that I’m just going to post about yesterday evening. Had a wonderful dinner at Baraka Café, a Tunisian place in Central Square, with
Then I stopped by
Dreaming and I went contra dancing tonight, and it was excellent! The band was great. The dances were fun and flowed well. And I appreciated some of the cultural changes that seem to have happened at this dance in the years since I went there regularly.There were a few same-sex couples dancing — just a handful, but significantly more than when I used to dance regularly there, and they were not just because there weren’t enough of one gender at the dance; in at least a couple cases, I got the impression that particular people preferred to dance in same-sex couples. The first person who asked me to dance was a man. There were also a lot of young people, which of course speaks well for the health and long-term viability of the community. And, without knowing much at all about me, one dancer casually referred to her primary, and another one casually referred to the Flea. I think I like the directions that that particular subculture is moving in.
A good life
2004-01-07 00:06( Why beowabbit, what do you mean? )
Yeah, I like this life. And you, my friends on LJ and in the physical world, are a big part of why.
Weekend, and dream
2003-11-23 23:38
Dreaming. I had dinner at Kripalu with
Then I went on to Albany to see
Dreaming. He was at a party that his upstairs neighbours were having, looking very elegant and lovely in a tunic
pheromone had brought him back from China. It was excellent to see him in his Albany social circle and meet some of his friends. As I walked in, people were playing Quiddler and Apples to Apples, so I felt right at home. :-) It was slightly odd to walk in on people who on the one hand felt very comfortable and familiar to me, and on the other hand were at a fairly different stage in their lives than I am. (
Dreaming’s going back to school to finish his final semester of college after taking about a decade off.) In retrospect, it makes me nostalgic for college. (It also reminds me of a dream I had a couple months ago, which wasn’t set in college, but had the same sort of easy-to-make-friends stay-up-late-talking optimistic lives-ahead-of-us vibe I remember from college.)
Speaking of dreams, I had a wild one last night, at
Dreaming’s. It was clearly largely inspired by my conversation with
pheromone over dinner the previous night. I was getting into the bathtub or getting ready for bed or something, and discovered to my shock and surprise that my legs were covered with tattoos and scarification, which had turned me into a walking ayurvedic massage chart, with chakras and energy lines marked. [Disclaimer: I know nothing about ayurvedic massage or its terminology, so I have no idea how accurate my dream-image was.] The tattooing looked like it had been done quite thoroughly in black and then filled in in vivid and varied colours. The scarification had been done on top of the tattooing (but clearly some time ago since the scars had spread and lost their clarity) and was all long almost-straight lines. The thing that weirded me out in the dream was not that I’d had this done, but that I couldn’t remember having this done. How could I have undergone such extensive tattooing and scarification and not remember it? How could I even have forgotten the decision to get it done, never mind the experience itself? Then the dream morphed into me hurrying along Mass Ave in Boston (near where I work in real life). It was warm weather, and I was in shorts, which afforded me the opportunity to catch glimpses of all the body art, which was still a marvellous mystery to me. As I was rushing someplace — I might have been jogging —, I noticed a couple women walking down the street, arm in arm. They were both fairly tall, and seemed clearly a couple. As I passed them, I noticed that one of them was topless, and thought to myself, “Cool! I wonder if she’s hoping to be a test case.” Then the dream switched to the event I was hurrying to, which was a film festival hosted/MC’ed by my friend Wayne (who in real life is a film buff and has written a book on bisexual characters in film). I was early; people were drifting in, but the auditorium was still pretty empty and the lights were up. I went up to Wayne to ask some question I had and keep him company while he waited to start. And then I woke up.
How’s that for a dream!
So Sunday morning (this morning as I type this),
pheromone came to Albany from Kripalu. We started the day with some amazingly yummy veggie pot pie that
Dreaming made from the Country Life cookbook. Then we went for a walk to and through the park. We stopped in SUNY Albany’s gorgeous graduate library with its stained-glass windows on the way; it looks like a library should look, in my opinion. Then after stopping to grab food at the food co-op near
Dreaming’s, we went to see Master and Commander —
pheromone for the first time, and me and
Dreaming each for the second. I loved it as much the second time as I had the first, and I’d still see it again if anybody out there has a craving. We discussed the politics of it on the way home, and then, much too soon, I needed to leave to get home and get to bed at a reasonable time for work tomorrow.
A lovely weekend with lovely people.
BiCamp this year went from Thursday night, August 28, through Monday, September 1 — Labour Day, so it was a bit longer than usual.
docorion went up early in Mr Toad (the green diesel Mercedes) on Friday and set up our tents, bless his heart.
sionnagh was very uncertain whether she was up for going, but decided at the last minute to go with me. We had a lovely drive, and she read me some Harry Potter in the car (we took the Toyota wagon, which I’m slowly thinking might need to be named after the Water Rat).
Around the time we got to camp, though, she started feeling down, and after not very long decided she didn’t want to stay — for a number of reasons, but among them was the fact that fibromyalgia and somewhat chilly camping don’t mix very well. So
docorion drove her down to her mom’s house near Hartford (not all that far from where BiCamp was).
I was kind of down for the first part of camp. Partly that was because
sionnagh wasn’t there, and out of concern for her (she was actually having a great time down in Connecticut, but since I had really lousy cell reception I didn’t know that), but also because I was feeling lonely in general, and being around all the couples and triples at BiCamp was reinforcing that. I was in the kind of headspace where I was craving company and social interaction, but was feeling too shaky and disconnected to seek it out. I did have a great time hanging out and catching up with
beetiger, a good friend of mine from college whom I hadn’t seen in at least seven years.
Saturday was better. It started with
zzbottom and Juzika-Mauserl’s famous blueberry pancakes (with blueberries I’d helped pick that morning when I bummed a ride in to town to replace the contents of my toiletries bag, which had managed to wend its way down to Connecticut with
sionnagh). That can’t be bad. And it had cleared and was bright and sunny, and I went down to the clothing-optional swimming hole and had a nice time there, although the water was cold and I didn’t stay long.
Saturday night was the potluck, which was fun, and after that a little celebration with cake for [
onemintjulep, who has since gotten a LiveJournal account], who is just finishing his residency and becoming a Real Doctor. It was loads of fun. He’s really good people, and I wish I saw him more often than once or twice a year.
After that, I tried to set up my telescope (on the lovely folding camp table
sionnagh had given me for my birthday), but discovered that it was broken. Bummer! So I came and sat around the campfire with [
onemintjulep],
missdimple,
volta,
bitty, and a few other people. (I forget whether
zzbottom was still up or not.)
Sunday (which arrived after not quite but almost enough sleep) was even better — bright, sunny, and warm. It started with yummy omelettes thanks to
volta, and proceeded at the swimming hole. Since it was warmer, I spent more time in the water this time, and also spent a lot of time hanging out with
beetiger on the rocks. (She was giving mothra some vitamin D. :-)
On the way back to camp from the swimming hole, I ran into K., a classical and opera composer from NYC, whom I had had quite a lot of fun with at BiCamp 2002, after a few years of us having our eyes on each other but not doing anything about it. She assured me between kisses that we would find some time that weekend to boff like bunnies, and secure in that happy knowledge I returned to camp.
( Too Much Information of an emotional and sexual nature )
It had been fairly warm when we started, but by the time we were ready to leave the tent it had gotten quite cold, and it was a challenge to get out from under the sleeping bag to put our clothes on. But we managed. We wandered back over to a campfire for a bit, and then K. returned to the tent she was sharing with her sweetie A. (also up from New York City). I stayed up for quite a while, enjoying the afterglow and the warmth of the fire and the smell of the smoke and the bright stars and chatting, as people drifted off to bed from the campfire. Around two or so I went to bed myself, leaving
bitty and
volta as the last two people by the campfire. I later discovered that they stayed up all night talking, not wanting to leave the warmth of the fire.
The next day (Monday) we hung out and had breakfast and a plan arose to go hot tubbing at East Heaven in Northampton. ( Car troubles and diner dinner )
The food at the diner was not so great, but it was a fun time. Then most of us went to East Heaven for tubbing while
Tubbing was a truly lovely end to the weekend! East Heaven is a very nice place, and I left feeling delightfully relaxed.
volta offered to take Juzika-Mauserl and
fallenpegasus back to Boston, since I’d been really looking forward to the long drive alone to relax and reflect on the weekend, and was also mildly concerned about timing and logistics. And as the big group was all saying goodbye, I got a nice kiss from somebody who hadn’t kissed me in quite a while, which was very pleasant and a nice little symbolic cherry on top of the weekend.
The drive back was fine, quiet and relaxing, and I got home feeling wonderful.
Quick sleepy update
2003-06-22 03:04
Just got back (well, an hour or two ago; have been catching up on stuff) from Baitcon XVI. It was excellent and I had a good time, but I was also in a kind of down/weird mood, and ended up leaving early (which gets me the chance to have a day at home and catch my breath and run errands and stuff). I will probably do a fuller posting later, but for now the following observations spring to mind:
- I love driving, and I haven't gotten to do enough longish drives lately. (I particularly love driving in the fog, because it's so beautiful, although of course I wouldn't seek it out 'cause it's dangerous.)
- I miss Tigris and Tom terribly.
- Once you get the tent set up and get yourself and your wet stuff in, and you're no longer actually being rained on, rainfall on a tent is a very lovely sound.
- Habañero-amaretto ice cream is yummy, and dragon chocolate (chocolate-cayenne) ice cream is even better, but neither of them can hold a candle to ginger sorbet made with ginger beer.
And with that, it is time for me to collapse.