an occasional feature
February
I've been out of touch lately. Jack's been out of town and I've been on the computer a lot but writing about it less. It's been a good week, but nothing super noteworthy, lots of home improvement projects. But today was something special. Today, I [with the help of my excellent pal Anne] changed a flat tire and drove right on home. I know it doesn't seem like such a big deal, but with people's increasing alienation from the systems we live and work with and our increasing reliance on the middle-management types of folks to mediate our relationships with these systems [not that I have anything against the fine folks at AAA] it's nice to be able to be self-reliant once in a while and fix something all yourself.
And here's a link to
Cordelia's Dad because I've been
listening to them a lot this week in my empty house and I just found
their web page two days ago. They rule.
This was my day off and so I got to do laundry, go shopping and go to
the movies. I pretty much feel like never going back to work at all.
Jack is going to be going on a cross-country trip starting on Saturday,
so I'll have the house pretty much to myself. We saw Big Night last
night which is the only five star movie I've seen in quite a while.
This guy above is my friend Phil/Fil who came over to have waffles with us early in the morning. We refer to him semi-affectionately as Jack's other lover, but only because Jack still sometimes sleeps with me... They may be starting a writer's group of some sort.
We won tickets to the Squirrel Nut Zippers
from
KCMU and are on our
way to MOE tonight. I've heard they're
good, but this Cocktail
Nation thing is getting to me a bit. As a teetotaller [not really
onamonapoetic -- doesn't teetotalling soung like something you would
accidentally do while really smashed?] it's dull to go out every evening
for ice
water. It's also weird to see my friends [usually a critical bunch] go
gaga over something so trendy it's got its own directory in HotWired
Today we were on Good Morning America for about four seconds. Some puff piece about folks who met in the I Saw U column which happened to be the folks sitting next to us at the Dutch Treat. We were just sitting there minding our own business, playing Scrabble. We figure we each have 11 seconds of fame left.
By the way, our Valentine's Day went fine. No major catastrophes, revelations or heartaches. I got Jack a very nice sweater.
Today we got a free washing machine from Allan Olliver's housemate Clancy. Don't you just hate us?
This has been a free stuff couple of days. On Sunday, we went to Hattie's Hat, our favorite local full bar, where they were having their grand re-opening. They had free food for everyone the whole time we were there. And we're not talking celery and dip either -- roast pork, butter clams, mussels, weird olive dip, bread, beans and rice and all the water you could order from the fishnetted tattooed waitresses.
But the big event this week was the
free car. Free from my classmate Gerrit Nyland, who was
just truly sick of it and had bought a new car and wanted it out of his
face. So, right place, right time and now I have a four-door blue Jetta
to call my own. It has a sticky door, a bit of an internal mist, a weird
second gear and a sunroof that doesn't really close, but it's mine and I
love it.
Last night, we had a blow out party in the Odd Fellows Hall -- Odd Stock '97. People came and read poetry, showed slides, played guitar, read stories [their own and others'], showed videos, ate food, roller skated and sang songs. In attendance were Mike, Kim, Joe, Molly, Jospeh, Flem, Chris D, Alex, Stacey, Jack, Jessamyn, Shannon, Paul, Tracy, Anne, Kevin, Casey, TJ, Els, Lise, Fil, Billy, Jenny, Deb, Larry, Sylvia, Ron, Ryan and Ken.
I read Donald Barthelme's The School which was my first public reading [unless you count reading all the names at the GSLIS graduation.
My Dad also came and went for a few
days. I wound up with only one new
piece of hardware and many more
mochas under my belt.