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2001-07-24 I've split this entry into two parts, since I seem to have diarrhea of the mouth today. Must be the lack of sleep that's making me giddy. Regular readers may wish to read yesterday's entry as well, if they're into that kind of abuse. My goodness. Andrew finally put up my ad banner and suddenly I'm getting three times the traffic I normally get to this site. And who says online advertising doesn't work? Of course, I don't know how much of that traffic actually expects to see fat goth porn (Ai-ya! Here come the search engine referrals again!). They'll be dreadfully disappointed. And were I actually the fat goth subject of that pornography, the disappointment would be two- or possibly three-fold. (No comments from the peanut gallery.) Whoa, far and away not enough sleep last night. I was up late playing Diablo (following the lead of the Roommate), and then fighting with a mosquito (which was very fat on my blood by the time I caught up with it) and then listening to the upstairs neighbors playing video games *ahem* until I finally passed out from exhaustion at 4am. I tried to survive the workday on 3 and a half hours of sleep, but it didn't work so well. But at least I was somewhat rational in my meetings today. So instead of going to bed early I'm surfing the Web again and writing this. Someday maybe I'll learn, though by that time I may have lost my job and the use of my mouse hand. Ah, sleeping in on Saturday was good. Again, you'd think I'd take the experience to heart and try to do more of it! But between work and all the things I've been doing since June, I don't think I've had a Saturday to sleep until Noon and then pad around in my pajamas until five that night. It's one of my favorite luxuries. Sleeping in on Sunday just isn't the same�all it really means is that my sleeping schedule for work will be messy yet again. Eventually the Boyfriend came over and I didn't sing Happy Birthday to him as a greeting, which turned out to be the exception rather than the rule. After opening his gifts, we went off to a great theme party thrown by the parents of a couple of his friends: "Ros� is OK!" We tasted and rated six pink wines, from something that might pass in look and taste for a white wine to something that was decidedly orange. The wine was...just OK. I'm not convinced that Ros� is anything I want to make a habit of, but I managed to avoid the turpentine-flavored one and it was pretty good. These people give pretty good parties across the board. The gimmick was fun icebreaker. It was a couple of interconnected families, some of their adult children and their friends, a wide variety of ages and backgrounds. But in the end it was a good party because it was a good mix of interesting people. I spent a fair amount of time talking with a retired headhunter about wine and about exploring Oakland and the East Bay. That is, when I wasn't being picked to ribbons by one of the family's sisters�unprompted, mind you� as to why I haven't moved in with The Boyfriend yet. I did my best and found the audience eventually willing to let me off the hook. Yikes. We ended up at the Tonga Room on Saturday night. It's amazing what some people will build in their basement. If the Tiki Bar is the ultimate expression of cheesy American culture, then the Tonga Room is that cheese on a Ritz cracker. The band performs on a boat in the enclosed lake, where flash "hurricanes" (which rain down in an oddly linear pattern) happen several times an hour. We had drinks with umbrellas served in odd glasses, and sat at a table with a four person drink called a Lava Bowl with 3-foot-long straws. I think The Boyfriend liked it, in all its trashy, overblown glory; he even got Happy Birthday sung to him for the billionth time that day, but this time set to a Calypso rhythm. It was very busy on a weekend night, so it appears to be in no danger of closing in the midst of the dot-com bust. The need for cheese is completely independent of stock market conditions. I shocked and amazed our group of people by playing name that tune in two notes. But I used to watch "South Park"...and the band on the boat did Minnie Rippington's "Loving You". Their female vocalist had a decent voice and did a pretty good job with it, and I have to give her credit for knowing not to try to hit that note. More credit than I'll give that annoying woman who came with us, who screeched along every time because she thought it was funny. Harrumph. We'll have to go again so the Boyfriend can have the full experience, without the annoying people. And more importantly, I still have to request "Tiny Bubbles" for him. I also got a glowing recommendation for Trader Sam's out in the Avenues, which was on my list of "trashy dive bars to try". I'm so there. But only if I can sleep in the next day.
2003-03-29 - Moving Notice |
