Doc Martin

Fear Not Drowning

Ultramundane.com

YOU'LL DANCE TO ANYTHING...

2002-01-10

If I don't post this soon, I never will. I do this all the time; I get behind in a project (like posting a diary update) and suddenly in order to do it 'right' I have to work doubletime to do it, spending energy I don't have or time I don't want to spend. So I get further behind. Now I owe three updates. Then four. Then I'm sufficiently behind that I can never catch up to my satisfaction.

So here's my attempt to start again fresh. How very "Happy New Year".

Christmas was pleasant and calm. Not much to report. I think I gave presents that mostly hit their marks. I'm quite in love with a new black coat from my mother, a decorative letter set from The Boyfriend, and the Hedwig and the Angry Inch DVD from the Roommate. It's more than a week into January, however, the Gothic Christmas Tree is down already and I still have presents for two households to deliver. If we don't meet up with them sometime soon I'm going to start calling them Groundhog Day presents.

There wasn't a lot of time for resting after Christmas, however, because The Boyfriend and I decided to make a whirlwind trip to Baltimore/Washington DC for a They Might Be Giants concert and to see some of his family for New Year's.

We took a hardcore red-eye flight—it left San Francisco at one in the morning—and even got in a little jogging through the sprawling Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The Boyfriend planned on doing family stuff one day and Museums in DC the next, and that our first day with his folks would be low key. Well, while running on maybe two hours of sleep and no food, we were met by his Uncle and Father, visited with that Aunt and his Mother, drove for two hours through freakish bad traffic to his Sister's house and then finally, late that afternoon, had a sandwich and headed somewhere for a nap. I did my best to be bright and pleasant but I kept falling asleep in the minivan on the way there. How embarrassing.

We managed to pack in a lot of stuff for such a quick trip. We saw the Library of Congress, which gets my award for Underrated Tourist Stop on the Mall, and enjoyed some time at the National Gallery of Art, which still amazes me that admission is free. We spent quality time playing cards and talking with his folks. We took them to see Shear Madness at the Kennedy Center (which was cute) and out to eat at Dominique's. We had sushi in suburban Virginia. See? Opportunities I didn't even know existed.

And it was cold. Did you know that they have this thing called Winter in the rest of the country? Did I mention that I love my new black coat?

It's funny that I kept referring to this as our trip to Baltimore. Really we only spent a few hours in Baltimore outside of the club. We were down at the Inner Harbor area, which had some neat buildings, a couple museums and an aquarium that we looked at, and the usual shopping and dining experience. I'm glad we walked a little but sad that we had lunch at Sbarro instead of someplace exclusively Baltimore.

At the last minute before we left, we reserved a hotel room (a brilliant call on the Boyfriend's part) to have someplace to leave our things and shower and change for the New Year's event at Bohager's that evening. We paid a little more for the VIP lounge, which had far shorter lines for the buffet and offered top-shelf liquor in the open bar. Not to sound overly-entitled, but yeah, that's how it should be all the time. We loaded up on plenty of everything and then stood maybe three rows back for They Might Be Giants, who rocked not in spite of, but because of John Linnell's sweater. We sang Auld Lang Syne with them. My throat was already sore, and I was doing my best not to yell or sing too much. By the end of the night, though, trying to talk over the DJ music and the bands was too much to handle, and I could hardly talk above a squeak all the next day.

I think we missed the real countdown by about 20 seconds, but The Boyfriend and I kissed a few minutes after midnight, right there in the club. The event had a little bit of a frat-party vibe which set off warning bells in my head. I remember getting punched in a place like this for wearing pumps. So I was prepared to do without this year, but it was just a guarded little smooch. Enough to promise better ones in the year ahead, but not enough to be too dangerous. And then we ran back for more top-shelf liquor. The Boyfriend managed a little nap in there; I pulled a true all-nighter, figuring I'd sleep on the plane.

I thought travel would be light on January 1st. Silly me. The lines of people in the airport at 5AM were enormous! We managed to slog through the immensely crowded security gates in Baltimore in just enough time to catch one plane. We then spent an unscheduled couple of hours in a ratty, bright florescent-lit terminal in Detroit looking at signs telling us how nice their new terminals will be when they open in a couple of months. Nice try, but I'm sitting here now, I thought. Then we were delayed for about 45 minutes on the plane, the flight was long, I was tired, sick, a little hung-over, and couldn't sleep on the plane. You can probably imagine what a whiny brat I might have been at that moment.

I came home and found hangovers in progress here too, so we moaned communally until I finally passed out from exhaustion.

I've definitely been following that "feed a fever, starve a cold" thing. But I can never remember which is which so I just stuff food in my gaping maw regardless of what the thermometer says. (98.4 for those of you keeping track.)

I probably went through the worst on the plane home, though this past monday when I thought my throat was on fire was pretty bad. The worst thing is really the lingering cough and a little tickle in my chest. I expect to be still coughing into next week, knowing how these things go. Tea makes it better, even though it tastes funny out of my clean travel coffee mug (I guess it's had too much coffee in it over the years to use for anything else.)

Thursday I went back in to work after only one day out sick. I probably should have taken more at the time, but since I was going to volunteer for Bingo I decided I should make a go of it at work before I went to have fun that night. Turns out a number of us were sort-of ill but showed up anyway. Our boss said, "Well, I admire your work ethic, but if any of you guys get me sick it'll show up in your next review!"

And then...well, it sounds like the start of a bad joke: "A Web designer, a Nun and a drag queen get into a cab..."

Somehow after rushing home late on Muni (though I was on time just minutes before) I found myself in a cab with The Roommate in full drag and Sister Mary Mae Hymm of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for Bingo. The cab driver didn't say anything about the Roommate in drag, but when he saw Sister Mary Mae he let out a "whoa!" I had to stifle my laughter.

Volunteering was easy and a lot of fun, actually. I helped set up chairs and collected door prize tickets at the entry, and helped clean and break down afterwards. Then I thought it was just three of us getting dinner after...we also ended up eating with four Sisters and a Postulant to the order. It was pretty fun. As you might imagine the Sisters are interesting to talk with; I also realized that I've known quite a few more Sisters than I remembered at first, and I should really dust off my address book.

So slowly things have been returning to some semblance of normal. I've actually done work at work, which felt strange and alien. I'm not sure if that's a bad sign or a good one. But nevertheless things were starting again. Returning to routine. Getting back to reality.

Or a close approximation of reality. You know...Whatever works.

RECENT ENTRIES

2003-03-29 - Moving Notice
2002-06-04 - Accordians and Ambassadors (Diary Fragment)
2002-05-24 - Manias (Diary Fragment)
2002-05-09 - See this little island here?
2002-04-24 - Bored and Drippy.