tales from the brooklyn bat cave

worst.blogger.ever

2006-08-22T20:10:00.000-04:00

ok folks:

i know i have not posted in weeks and i am sorry for that.
i have had some serious work and disseration deadlines paired with a road trip to atlanta and chicago
so the bad news is i haven't written in FOREVER, but the good news is that i have lots of stories to tell and pictures to show

AND since we have passed our one year anniversary living here in brooklyn (and this blog was meant to only chronicle our first year) i am going to start a new blog. it will be the same damn thing as this.

if you are interested in the new blog address, email me at:

donnatroka@hotmail.com

ali on her "business" trip in vegas

2006-07-29T11:22:00.000-04:00

work it girl
work it

its been one year

2006-07-28T11:22:00.000-04:00

we made it through our first year here in the bat cave yall.
yesterday was our one year anniversary of living in brooklyn.

i looked back and read what i wrote that first day, and let me say this about our first year in the big apple:

-its still hot as fuck

-i am still generally overwhelmed

-in the year we have been here i have written about 200 pages (single spaced) on this blog.

-and i have written about 120 pages (double spaced) on my dissertation

-we joined a supper club

-jes got through her first year of law school and is almost done with her first summer internship

- we still haven't found fish tacos/burritos that match up to those in atlanta

- but we have found joe's pizza (praise jesus) and plenty of veggie hotdog joints

- we have planted a garden that has produced something (remember the tomato)

- we are about to have our second party

- we have seen a brooklyn cyclones & a new york yankees game, and we are going to see the new york liberty next week

-we have participated in TWO auctions (got the liberty tix in the first one and some old school hip hop cds in the second one)

-we have seen what feels like twelve million concerts, but i am sure its really less than twenty.

-our two favorite "new york-isms" are the guy at the hot dog place on the corner answering the phone "hot diggity dog" and our friend kim calling her mom in staten island on the phone and saying "hey ma"

- i have found out that the cat that lives next door and harrasses horace from the window sill is really named "belly boy" instead of "creamiscle" (that is what i call him)

- we have walked and rode our bikes across the brooklyn bridge

- we have joined a co-op and begun eating as much organic food as we can

-we have begun composting

-we have seen too many celebrities to recount here

not bad for our first year, i guess. i sort of can't handle how quickly it has gone by. i think i am going to at least change the name and the goal of my blog after this weekend. tell me if you think that is a GOOD or BAD idea. i am just not crazy with the idea of having my name in the title anymore.

happy weekend yall! oh and tomorrow is a birthday for not one, not two, but THREE of my friends.
1. janet o.
2. pat f.
3. kim w.

happy birthday yall.

oh my god becky

2006-07-24T17:44:00.000-04:00

check out this website:

www.kauffmantire.com

the cutey up front (the woman) is my friend kim.
she is on the WEBSITE!
how exciting is that?

very exciting if i do say so myself.

i just called the president...

2006-07-24T10:27:00.000-04:00

and you should too:

here's his digits:

202-456-1111

early morning musings

2006-07-24T05:05:00.000-04:00

so larry successfully woke me up this morning. its this game that jes and i play with him, and each other. first of all, which of us will get up and feed him first? (usually around 4:30am and really lately, it has almost always been her). my trick is that i don't look at the clock and i don't put on my glasses b/c if i do, my brain starts working and its over-i begin to wake up. apparently sometime this morning i got up and fed them (don't really recall it) and then some time after that larry began meowing. jes put him out of the bedroom and closed the door. i tried to cover my ears with a pillow but it did not work, and with the door closed, the air conditioning could not get in from the living room and the fan in our room could not really circulate the air.

then i began thinking about emails i need to send for work and tasks i have to complete this week and it was OVER. so here i am. 5:09 am. bright eyed and bushy tailed. larry, emily and horace are all fast asleep in the bedroom. nice.

so we had a pretty busy weekend, and a nice one at that. after the thursday night manicure debacle (i have since taken off the clear polish AND cut my nails down- too much dirt was getting caught under them from working in the garden) we kept the pace up. on friday night some folks from jes's work had this party that was a fundraiser. it was at this loft/warehouse space in williamsburg. it was raining cats and dogs leading up to the party so we were worried no one would show. at first, no one really did, but about an hour later, the place was hopping. music was playing and people were chatting all over the place. jes and i sort of helped with the set up and then during the second half of the night, we worked the bar. this was a nice way to pitch in, get to see all the people at the party, and of course to prove to myself once again that jes and i are an amazing team. i mean within minutes we had a system down. she was better at pouring beer from the keg, i was better at making mixed drinks. we were almost like tom cruise and that other guy in the movie "cocktail." by the time we left the party (about 1am i think) i was so exhausted. we thought about stopping to get a grilled cheese and the idea of staying awake to eat it was too much, so we just went home. i was asleep five minutes after i laid down.

saturday morning we worked some on the garden. it was a real mess. i just kept thinking "oh my god, what would azad say." i felt real palpable shame. we were trying to get as much done before the monsoon rains hit. i got most of the sunny bed cleared out except for the obvious tomato plants and few other flowers and plants. the rest were a bust. weeds took over. it was horrendous. jes weeded the back bed and pulled all the weeds from the ground and then i thinned out the shade bed, and re-cleared a path to the compost container. i also cleaned up a bunch of garbage and tried to rake all the wed dead leaves off the drain that is back there. when it is covered a nice pool of mosquito inviting water settles. while i did not get all that i wanted done before the rains came, it at least began to shape up and i was able to find hope for the space again.

saturday night we went to go see peaches in concert. jd from le tigre was playing in her band (along with radio from some band- jes will kill me for not knowing what band- and the drummer from hole was also in here band). she was really good. you know, nutty like she always is, but entertaining. it was a really weird crowd b/c this total (post?) modern cock rock band opened for her. at first i thought it was a bunch of fags being ironic, but it became clear that they were mostly not gay men and that they were serious as the night wore on. the lead singer, who looks a lot like the ex-lover of our gay male friend christian, kept saying "new york are you ready for some rock and roll" and "this one is for the ladies, because we love the ladies! let's hear it for the ladies." they were a talented bunch and all, i just wanted them to go away a little sooner. seriously, i am hard pressed to find an opening band i like. they are just the people in the way of me seeing who i came to see, you know? when we got home we tried to watch this terrible movie "in the mix" with none other than the singer usher. i was asleep on the couch in about ten minutes.

yesterday morning we got up and worked some more in the garden. i was able to assess what i needed to get from the home depot or lowe's to bring it back up to speed and jes was able to work up an appetite for papa john's pizza (go figure). so she went on line and ordered some, we drove over to wherever it was (sort of prospect heights area, but again jes would know better what it is called) and then we headed over to our friend ali's to hang with her cat nala, watch "get rich or die tryin" (50 cent movie) and eat some pizza. the movie was not terrible but it wasn't good, and the pizza was divine. nala only meowed when we got there (she has a meowing problem like larry) and when one of us got up to go to the bathroom. the rest of the time, she just laid on the bed. after the movie, we headed to lowe's to get some garden stuff and then when we returned to the house, i planted it all.

glennda and kim (who had on some nice new kicks) came over to talk shop about our upcoming bday party for kim and ali and then i took a shower and washed off the filth of the night before and garden combined. then jes and i settled down, i made my list of things to do this week, and we watched this really great movie on tivo called "the interpreter." it has sean penn (my best friend mary's #1 guy) and nicole kidman in it. its about the united nations and africa and death and mourning. i found it to be a pretty good film and i *really* liked nicole kidman in it. surprising. soon after the movie, i hit the hay. and now here i am.

it is supposed to be dry and sunny today, so i am excited about that. i have a bunch of stuff to do and i hope to finish up with the garden today before the monsoon rains come back. we had our first real vegetable yield. a tiny red tomato. maybe i will take a picture of it before i eat it.

tuesday is my friend angie t.'s birthday. happy bday.
and please continue to pray/light a candle for peace in lebanon and israel. i am going to call president bush about it today. for real.

back from the atl

2006-07-21T06:03:00.000-04:00

good morning all. i am back from atlanta, and as per usual, i am feeling a little crazy re adjusting to brooklyn life. i have been up since 5am trying to get things in order.

time in atlanta was good. i got to see some friends and did a lot of work. it was hot as fuck and i have to say i was thrilled to get back to brooklyn and find it was in the low 80's and breezy. its as if mother nature knew i needed a break and she gave it to me last night.

last night we went to another public interest happy hour. this time it was at beauty bar, this joint where you can pay $10, get a manicure and a free drink. sounded neat, so i went for it. i won't do it again. see the weird thing is that all these other women (and one man) got a manicure and she chatted them up and and rubbed lotion all over them and whatnot. but all she did for me was file my nails and but some clear on
(i requested clear). now i am not sure if it was b/c she felt i was low maintenance and didn't want to weird me out or b/c i was a queer woman and didn't want to be touching me any longer than she had to, or b/c i wasn't feeling very chatting b/c i was tired from traveling. jes says it was because i tipped her up front so she already knew she was paid before she even started. regardless, it made me angry for some strange reason. on the bright side, the bar had PBR on tap which made both jes and i happy.

we have a busy weekend ahead of us, so i am sure i will be posting some about that soon.

if you have a minute and you want to know more about what is happening between lebanon and israel first hand from an arab-american woman in lebanon, go to:

http://arab-americans.blogspot.com/

it is straight to the point and disturbing yall. but war always is.

chillin in atlanta

2006-07-16T21:44:00.000-04:00

right now i am cold maxin and relaxing in a hotel in atlanta. i am here for work for the next few days and i figured i should take advantage of the free wireless in my room.

so let me give you a run down of the last few days because they were a little bit of the chizzain. on thursday night we went with the supper club gals to see ani difranco play in central park. it was supposed to be all hot and humid and instead it was really beautiful and clear. ani seemed a little melancholy or out of sorts. she played a nice mix of old and new songs and she talked about feminism and patriarchy. we also got to see higgins and bobby for a minute which was nice. the one sad part during ani's show was when she played this song about her family and then she talked about her dad dying. the whole crowd (except the drunk fucknuts by the port a potties) was so silent. it was deep.

on friday night we went to a yankees/white sox game at yankee's stadium with a bunch of folks from jes's work and the most recent exoneree and his family. first of all, yankees stadium is RIDICULOUS. its like a small city. we where five rows from the very top and seriously i was a little bit dizzy/scared b/c of how high we were. i was totally holding on to the rail walking up and down to our seats. jes chatted mostly with max and i busted chats with two employees of the innocence project (instead of interns)- gabe and corinne (?) for some reason i am not sure about her name. anywho we chatted about all kinds of stuff. it was a wonderful time. jes and i also got to meet alan newton, the most recent exoneree. he spent 21 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. i got to shake his hand and everything. he was serene and beautiful and kind.

***hold it, stop the press. i am watching something called "the world series of pop culture" on VH-1. its a competetion on VH-1 and you can win 250,000. i need to be on this show PRONTO***

saturday was ali's birthday and we took her to fire island to celebrate. it was a GREAT time. we picked her up around 8am wiht a birthday bagel in hand. on our way there we stopped at target to try and buy an umbrella. no dice. i asked the lady if they had any and she said "did you see the school supplies" and i said "i did and i got worried." so we continued on hoping we could rent one at the beach- we could not, but we ended up buying one for 10$. we made it in time for the 10am ferry, here is a picture of us on the ferry:

when we got to the beach it was a bit overcast AND it became apparent almost immediately that the beach was clothing optional (though most people had clothes on). this was apparent because we all saw a man rubbing suntan lotion on his scrotum. GOOD TIMES. i apologized to ali and she said as long as we kept our clothes on she was ok. shortly after we sat down the cutest dog ever named skippy hopped up. ali was in love:

the sun came out and it got pretty warm, so we headed to the water which was FREEZING and the waves were pretty serious but it was really fun. we played catch with our party deflated football. the waves were so great that jes and ali decided to go price some boogie boards. they were too expensive, so they came back and nancy got herself a little water:

even though it was off and on sunny, we all started looking a little red and both ali and i had to pee, so we packed up and headed to a beach front restaurant where jes and ali both got a drink called "the fire island." its like a pina colada with raspberry puree and blue caraco (sp?). ali was almost instantly drunk. this is just the first sip:

in an effort to sober up ali and fill our bellies, we went to cherry's and got something to eat. after that, we headed back to the ferry dock to make our way home. note the color difference from our first ferry photo:

when we got home i took a shower and realized i was burned like crazy. jes found the same thing after she showered. we all applied a great deal of aloe vera and then we watched "say anything" (which ali had not seen before- can you believe it?)

ok i need to hit the hay. i have a day of important meetings tomorrow at work.

light a candle for peace yall, the middle east needs it.

i heart brooklyn

2006-07-12T06:28:00.000-04:00

as we approach our one year anniversary of living in brooklyn (its the end of this month yall!) i have to say that i have been loving living in brooklyn more and more. the past week has helped that love grow deeper. i imagine this level of love can change quickly as the heat and humidity increase. i already lost a little love yesterday walking around in 88 (at least!) degree heat and what felt like 100% humidity and dog poo stench. but before i get all negative, let me re-cap the last few days. they were very busy.

last thursday, jes and i went to this bar in the city for her public interest happy hour. it was great to spend some time with folks she goes to school AND we got to see higgins, so really it was a two for one night. here is a pic of jes and her co-worker and fellow bls-er max. chances are, they were talking about civ pro OR buying jes a new bike, one of the two:

i also met a few new folks from jes's school, namely, linda and adam. i think they are both going into their second year (though i think adam might be a 3L-yeah that is law school lingo for "going into his third year, in case you didn't know). anywho, here is a pic of them, higgs and jes:

and here is one of me, grainne (pronounced gran-[rhymes with flan]- ya), jes and beth. grainne goes to columbia. she likes legal writing, especially when there are footnotes:

and then here is one of higgs, me & jes in varying shades of tan:

on friday night, jes and i went and met drake up at this cute little bar in north slope called the patio. it was such a lovely night outside so we sat out on their back...well...patio and had a few drinks. i was so exhausted by the end of the night jes had to practically drag me home. i wanted to take the bus, but she assured me walking would be quicker. you know the bus pulled up AT THE EXACT SAME TIME as we walked up to the corner. sometimes, she lies.

on saturday, jes and i drove out to the beach at long beach. it was a fairly overcast day with breaks of sun, so the beach itself was not so crowded, which was nice. even though it was overcast, it got pretty warm and so we went and played in the FREEZING COLD water a little bit. we only stayed a couple hours, but that was just right. i was more interested in just checking out the beach and getting a lay of the land so we can go back with some of our friends. it cost six dollars to get in, but it was very clean and not too crowded and i saw no hyperdermic needles nor dead bodies in the water, so i figure that was worth the six dollars right there. on our way home from the beach we stopped at this strip mall and i got enough bath and body works antibacterial pump soap to last us the rest of the year (it was on SALE yall, who can pass that up?) and jes picked up a few pair of SALE gap jeans. she got two of the same pair b/c they were only $15 and they look so cute on her. a real dark blue wash and she wears them rolled up like huck finn (or some would say, capris). they are adorable on her.

after we got home and showered, we headed over to prospect park to meet up with drake and some of his friends to see toshi reagon and her mom bernice johnson reagon perform for a whopping $3. we could only stay for an hour or so b/c we had to get to this party, but it was so lovely. again, the humidity was low and there was a nice breeze and there was all kinds of cute girls and bois around alongside adorable families with babies all rocking out to some folk music. it just made me happy all around.

we left the park and headed to jes's classmate erica's apartment/dorm on bls campus. you have to sign into the building and when we got there there were like five girly girls signing in and the dude was flirting up a storm with them (he was old enough to be their dad, maybe grandpa) and they were all giggly and whatnot. i was like COME ON PEOPLE (and so was jes believe it or not!) and then this whole other herd of folks came in so i was like UGH we need to get in line. finally we get signed in (and in the process convinced another classmate of jes's, eric, who was going to go to another party to join us instead) and we all head upstairs. well wouldn't you know it the posse of girls downstairs were erica's high school friends from long island. now erica is young-maybe 23 and she is very gay, so i was expecting all these young lesbo/dykey types to be at the party. not so much. jes and i spent the night chatting with erica and eric (they all mostly talked shop) and we chatted a little with one of erica's sorority sisters from cornell.

right before we left, jes had to pee, so she stood in the kitchen area which is sort of next to the bathroom. one of erica's high school friends come out of the bathroom looking a little mortified to find jes waiting to go in. i figured it was b/c she (the friend) was super gender normative and all sparkly and high heels and jes is..well.. not that. i watched to see how it was all going to shake down. instead, this sweet young thing leans into jes and says "i am so sorry, you probably don't want to go in there because I just pooped and it really stinks." her friends, who were right next to her, almost fell off their chairs laughing (as did i, across the room) and jes just replied with "that's ok, i can't smell most things" (her sense of smell is all whack). it made me remember that no matter how different we look, we all poop and usually it smells.

on sunday jes and i met glennda and kim up at the park and played catch with the football (my wrists still hurt from it. how pathetic is that?) and then we walked up to uncle louie g's and got some ices. they headed home and we headed up to ali's to love on her cat nala and then to pick a few things up at the co op. ali's place was so nice and cool (it was a bit warmer on sunday) so we sort of took a nap at her place while nala meowed, slept, and made biscuits on my back. sunday night we watched this tremendously dumb movie called "super troopers." my best friend azad recommended it. big mistake.

on monday night, i met jes down at coney island and we went to a brooklyn cyclones game. it was such a good time. first of all, they had this thing where you could weigh yourself and pay one penny per pound to get a general admission bleacher seat. how fun is that? jes wasn't there so i just go reserved bleacher seats, which are only $6. secondly, it was jewish heritage night so they were playing hava nagela (sp?) and lots of the inning break games had to do with kosher food and talking about bar mitzvahs and such. it was hilarious. and because it was near the water it was nice and cool (actually we had to leave early b/c i was cold- i wore shorts). i can't wait to go back with some of our friends. oh, and we go free retro cyclones lunch boxes. LOVES IT. here are some photos from the game:

a few more camp photos...

2006-07-07T06:25:00.000-04:00

Good Morning Everyone. The cats/sunrise woke me up around 5am so I am on the couch a blogging. Getting tired so I might head back to bed after this.

Kim sent me her photos from camp (so much better than mine), so I thought I would post a few here. I am not sure if they will work b/c I got them off shutterfly. we'll see.

Here is a photo of Glennda and her cute mom Pam:

Two cuties: Glennda's dad Vito with Kim in the background. This is from when we were out on the lake:

Cutest.couple.ever:

Fruit loops, anyone?

And last but certainly not least- I always knew Ali was a tree hugger, now we have proof. Let me also explain that this picture was from Monday night (we had already left). From what I can ascertain from the photos there was some nighttime boating, some drinking (shots included), some yoga and then this. Of course, they wait to get real JENNY after we leave. i see how you roll:

Let me say that while waking up at the ass crack of dawn exhausts me for the rest of the day, it does have its perks: I just downloaded all those photos to blogger in LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES. Normally, that would have taken *about* an hour. You gotta love early mornings.

I have photos and stories to tell of the public interest happy hour Jes & I attended last night, but it may have to wait for the weekend.

Happy Friday yall.

camp

2006-07-05T13:34:00.001-04:00

it's another rainy, overcast and humid day in brooklyn and i pretty much hate it.
to chase the rainy day blues away, i will report on a very fun weekend: going to camp. but first, let me post two pictures of jes and i before we left for the dyke march last weekend. in the second one we are so gay!

early saturday morning jes and i packed up the car with way too much stuff and headed north for glennda's folk's summer home also known as "camp." its up in the adirondacks (sp?) on star lake. it was a really beautiful breezy summer morning so i was excited about our drive up. everything went very smoothly until we hit albany. for some reason (we are still not sure why) the highway became a parking lot. we literally went three miles in one hour. so we got off and found a country route to get us passed albany. while the speed limit was a bit slower, we were moving and it was so lovely. it reminded me a lot of the country around champaign, illinois (where i went to college) and south. we got to camp around dinner time and we were hella ready to get out of the car. jes drove the whole way and we were both going bonkers. with stops for gas, food and bathroom breaks, it took us about ten hours. ugh.

but when we got there, all our stress melted away. "camp" is in fact, this cute red house on this gorgeous, clean lake surrounded by trees and other houses. here is a picture of the house:

we had hit some rain on the way up and we were worried that camp had been hit by bad weather, but apparently it had been a lovely day. glennda, kim and ali also hit traffic on their way up on friday afternoon. they didn't get into camp until almost 2am. i would have been crying, they said they almost were. shortly after we unpacked our car we were greeted by the purple intertube patrol. here they are from far away:

and here they are up close. apparently they cruise around the lake throwing a football to ward off any evil doers. i have to say i felt safer knowing they were there:

that first night we just hung out, drank, ate, and played scattergories (my new favorite game- but its hard). we were exhausted from a day of driving so we hit the hay fairly early. the next morning jes and i went on a little cruise around the lake in a boat and then we all hung out, ate lunch and headed out on the pontoon boat when glennda's folks got there. there is this sand bar in the middle of the lake so we docked there and played catch in our innertubes. it was really fun, but very windy, and at one time nancy took off her tube and the wind started to take it away so she had to swim a really long time to get it. glennda and kim went to help her. then twice kim threw the football over my head and i had to do some olympic swimming (not really) to go and get it. i was tuckered out after that. soon we headed back to camp to shower and get dinner ready.

glennda's folks really did it up for dinner. we had chicken and fake dogs and salt potatotes and brownies. we also ate some of the left over black bean salad that i made the night before (which by the way- ali AND kim loved. yipppe! they have converted to the dt black bean club). during dinner we got to chat a little with glennda's folks who are ADORABLE. they started dating in JUNIOR HIGH (can you believe that?) and her dad (vito) has the same birthday as me. they were totally gracious to let us stay in there home and eat their food and what not. and it was great to see the folks who made glennda. my favorite part was that glennda's dad calls her "glen." i think that's so sweet. that night brought more scattergories (i still sucked) and a fairly early bed time for me b/c my belly was bothering me (of course). we were also leaving to come back to brooklyn in the morning so we didn't want to hoop it up too much, you know.

here is a picture of the gorgeous sun set. that is the dock off of the camp house:

and here is a picture of all the cute campers:

we left out after breakfast the next day and our drive home was traffic free. we did hit a little rain right around the time we were going to stop at the outlets. we also stopped at a lovely suburban target and stocked up on kitty litter, toliet paper and the like. it was such a divine experience. calm, clean and stocked. nothing like our brooklyn target. at the outlets i got two tshirts (one green and one pink) and a cute pair of jeans for very little money. jes got some underwear and a couple shirts. while she didn't find the jeans or the flip flops she was looking for, i think it was a successful stop altogether.

yesterday for the fourth of july we rode our bikes around prospect park, went mattress shopping (who knew they were so expensive?) and had dinner at bar minnow. it was a nice quiet holiday together. what is even better is the weekend is in TWO DAYS! i love short work weeks even if they don't really apply to me b/c i don't work in an office per se.

have a great day yall.

not sleeping

2006-07-01T03:00:00.000-04:00

its just about 3am and i can't sleep.
we went to bed around midnite and about thirty minutes ago someone texted jes and the vibrating phone woke me up. i laid there and finally decided to get up and blog and watch a little tv. i am yawning, so maybe this will put me back to sleep.

oh my gosh, i think "good times" is on. i used to love this show when i was a kid.

so i had a celebrity sighting today. i worked at the co-op for jes today and when i was finishing up my shift and getting ready to shop, i saw the writer safire. i have read her book of poetry called "american dreams" and her book "push." I teach from the former and i just re-read the latter (b/c i bought jes a copy of her own for the train). i thought i saw her there one time when i was shopping (she was working the register) but i wasn't sure and i wasn't about to be like "um are you safire" and her be like "um no dipshit." so today at the end of my shift i was working with a woman named christina (i think) who studied comp lit at berkeley. so i asked her if she knew safire's work and she said she did and then i asked her if she thought that was her and she agreed it was. i told her how i get all star struck and tongue tied around great writers b/c their work moves me and b/c i wish i was more like them. she told me i should say something to her. i just couldn't do it. and you know i walked past? passed her at least five times while shopping. she got some boston lettuce, some blueberries and she was wearing these really cute grey keen sandals. i know alyson and ali (and azad for that matter) would have loved them. maybe one day i will be working on the same team as her (unlikely b/c she works register and i work receiving) but maybe it will happen and then we can talk. or maybe i will just keep admiring her from afar like a dork.

so the mom (flo) on good times is so happy to see j.j. b/c he was out all night with thelma's (his sister) hot teacher miss bishop. thelma is giving him the business about kicking it with her teacher. she is hot. i think i used to have a little crush on thelma.

ok i am getting tired again, yawning and eyes watering. so i am going to try and hit the bed again.

today is my goddaughter alix's birthday. she is twelve years old.

our first pride in the nyc

2006-06-27T23:04:00.000-04:00

so pride.

it rained cats and dogs basically all weekend which immediately excluded all our supper club friends from the various pride festivities. jes and i waffled back and forth about whether or not we should but we finally deicded to try it out.

on saturday we spent the morning running errands around park slope. we had our granny cart and our umbrella and i had on my all weather shoes. we made it around to most of our errands without much problem. then we stopped for lunch at the vspot, this new all vegan joint in north slope. i think i have talked about it before. it has such potential, and a few good dishes, but they really need to work the kinks out quick. this time it was hot as fuck (getting the a/c fixed) and we never got any silverware. we shared a (fake) chicken cutlet sandwich (good but a bit greasy) and some guacamole (which was very, very good). after lunch we stopped at the bike shop so that jes could look at (her new obsession) bikes. that is when the skies opened up and the monsoon rains began. we were just about as far north as one could be in the slope, and we, by the way, live about as far south in the slope as one can get. by the time we got home we were SOAKED. i mean stood in the shower with my clothes on soaked.

so we peeled off our clothes, put them on the drying rack to dry and took a shower and then headed off to the city for the dyke march. the rain had subsided so it wasn't so bad. we met up with the march shortly after it began and marched all the way to the end. we played the "how many people will we know in the crowd" game. i guessed six, jes guessed ten. jes won. the only "famous" person i saw in the crowd was lisa duggan this brilliant history/queer studies professor at nyu. she is famous in my world yall. and she looks divine in red. the highlight of the march was when we passed the victoria's secrets store and all the workers were cheering us on and motioning for us to come into the store. everyone cheered.

anywho, the supper club gals met us at the end of the march and we went to benny's for some mexican food. jes and i shared the fish tacos (not so good) and some black bean soft tacos (divine). she had a margarita, i had water (b/c of my cramps). after dinner we headed over to this girl party called the X party. it was a fundraiser for reproductive rights, so at least the money was for a good cause. we got there a bit early so we kind of hung out out front. there were these female firefighters trying to recruit us. i was like HELL NO. and then i found out i was TOO OLD to try out anyways. they were ALL OVER kim so she took a flyer.

once we got inside there was like four people there, but within thirty minutes it filled up. the bar was called remote control and it was filled with all these televsions and these cameras and basically you sit down at a console and try and find other people on the same channel as you and then you chat. i set a goal for the group that we would make two friends- meaning we would talk to two people we did not know. we met our goal and then some. the first person i talked to scurried away b/c her gfriend came up quick and started to cockblock me. i had NO interest in this woman that way, i was just trying to figure out how to use the console. whatevs.

then we made friends with this woman aly (short for alyssa) who was YOUNG and worked at starbucks. she was feeling our ali (aka nancy) but nothing happened. we had fun playing with the technology and watching people. i was exhausted by midnight so we headed home. we got up sunday morning and cleaned up the house for the arrival of our friend amanda then headed into the city for the parade. i go the time wrong on the parade so we missed it (oh bother). but we did make it to the street festival which was kind of cool. not too crowded until the end, lots of free shit we did not need, and really racially diverse (more diverse than any pride i have been to in atlanta, columbus, or chicago). maybe it was just the time we were there or maybe that is how it is. i am not sure. we shared a cup of watermelon, stopped at jamba juice and jes got this divine smoothie and then we headed back to brooklyn.

we also watched two DEEP movies this past weekend: the constant gardener & syriana.
i tell you what, they both made me feel REAL STUPID and reiterated to me i need to brush up on my global politics. i was more confused by syriana. i think i need to see it again and maybe read the cliff notes or something. both were good and kept my attention, i just didn't follow it all b/c i am dumb when it comes to international politics, and oil and drug policy and such. i recommend both- just put on your thinking caps.

oy i am not tired, so i think i am going to have a glass of wine and then head to bed. i think i am finally caught up with the blog. amen.

i can't keep up yall-just part one

2006-06-26T22:27:00.000-04:00

for whatever reason, i can't keep up with the blogging.

i think with the travel, the internet going in and out at our house, and me really trying to get this dissertation done, i have less time to blog.

so let me try and take this time right now, while i am watching my new favorite show "medium" to tell you about how much i love california and about my first new york pride.

part 1: i heart san francisco
i spent a week in california visiting with my friends and going to the national women's studies association (nwsa). first of all, the weather in sf, oakland and davis was outstanding. clear, sunny and warm. by the end of the week it was HOT. mary and dusty live right near the castro and the views from their apartment are amazing. they got this new dog, davis and so we got to walk her a lot. we went up to the park on the hill by their house and everything was blooming and breezy and divine. there were twelve million cute dogs everywhere and i didn't step in dog poop once. we also went to the beach with the dog which was fun going down to the beach but a bit of a hike on the way back up. we brought the neighbors dog, tarboo and so the dogs were having a GREAT time chasing balls and running into the ocean. dusty was trying to teach davis how to catch a frisbee by holding it in her mouth and showing her how to catch it. she didn't get it, but she is great at sitting, laying down and eating poop.

we also went to a street fair in temescal (in oakland) and hung out with mary and dusty's friends who have a new baby boy who is a real muffin. i got to carry the baby through the street fair and i was sore from it the next day (yes i need to get to the gym). on sunday (father's day) mary, dusty and i went to davis (dusty's hometown) to meet up with her stepdad jan. we all went to a minor league baseball game in sacramento. it was ridiculously hot at the park until the fifth inning, but it was so much fun. at first the rivercats (our team) were losing, then they were winning, then they were losing. a very on the edge of your seat game. after the game we went to a delish italian restaurant, walked the dog one more time, and then headed home. i was so tired, but it was such a full day.

i also got to go out to this cute bar and play centipede with my friend nifa. she was fasting the whole time i was there so she was a little bit tired and woozy. she didn't eat anything for TEN DAYS but this juice made of lemon, cayenne pepper, molasses and something else. she and i also went to lunch (only i ate) at this joint called cafe gratitude. its this tree hugging hippy joint. i ordered the "i am passionate" pizza and some dessert that was called something similar. everything was delish. we got to talk and hang out a little bit that day too. it was nice to have some time with her. i also got to see her new fancy loft.

the conference also went well. i attended a few neat panels: two on aging lesbians and feminists, one on the sex wars at barnard, one on transgender theories and one on activists local to the sf area. the panel i was on with higgins also went well. it was great to present my work to so many people i love (the audience was mostly my friends) and to see them sort of excited to hear more or read the finished product.

the trip overall was great because i got to see so many friends and b/c i just love walking around san fran and just taking in the gorgeous geography, the murals, the smells and the slower pace. i kept telling jes how much i love it there. she is like "donna, i KNOW you love san fran." i really can't wait to move there, look at the lush vegetation and go with mary and dusty to the dog park with their dog, their kids and our kids. in a few years...

ok i can't write about pride now. i am tired and our friend amanda who is staying with us is back and telling us about her day of looking at apartments.

time warner sucks ass

2006-06-23T10:38:00.000-04:00

yeah so i have not posted for some time both because i was in california for a week for a conference and to visit friends. i had every intention of posting about that when i got back to brooklyn, but lo and behold, our fucking internet (and phone) have been down for the entire week. i made an appt for them to come and look at it and then yesterday morning it came back up: FOR THREE HOURS (but i had already cancelled the appt.) we are going to see what happens this weekend and if it stays down, i will call for an appt. again.

so what that means is that i am at a coffee shop now using their wi fi. but since i can only get internet here i have to just do my required internet work (check email, etc) and i don't have too much time to write long posts here. i guess i could type them up at home and then come here and upload them. ok, that is what i will do this weekend.

and about this weekend...its GAY PRIDE. yippiee. buttless chaps, mullets and sports bras. just kidding (or not). we'll see. this is my first new york pride so i am excited to see what it is like. we were going to go to the trans march this afternoon but they changed the time to later and i will be at the co op volunterring. so tomorrow we will bike down to coney island for the mermaid parade and then head to the city for the dyke march. as long as it doesn't rain on sunday we will check out the street fair and the parade. i am excited to see all the queers and allies out.

i will post more later about my lovely time in california.

on a plane to San Francisco

2006-06-14T11:07:00.000-04:00

(this was from monday)

For real, as I type this, I am on a plane heading west. Obviously I won’t upload it until I get to Mary’s house, but nevertheless, I am composing it here on my airtran plane, seat 27 C. I was in 29D but I needed more room so I moved across the aisle. I head to SF for National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA). I am giving a paper with Higgins on Friday. I will also visit with Mary, Dusty, their cat CoCo Ray and their NEW dog Davis. Very excited about meeting her. I will also see Nifa and my friends Mel and Tanner. I am looking forward to it all.

I know I should post more about Paris, but I just can’t handle figuring out what pictures I have posted and what stories I have told, so I am going to save that for a time when I am connected to the internet. This past weekend was very exciting because it was Brooklyn Pride. It was also the Newfest GLBT film festival in the city, so needless to say we went out a lot and I did less work on my conference paper/fourth dissertation chapter than I would have liked. Oh well. Anywho we saw two films and attended one panel at the Newfest. The first film was “Pic Up the Mic” a documentary about queer hip hop artists. It was interesting for the most part. Some of it infuriated me, but it got me thinking and I guess that is the point.

We also saw “Boy I Am” a documentary about three transguys in New York City. It was also very provocative and I might try and catch it again on Saturday night in San Francisco. Then on Sunday we went to a panel on lesbian masculinity that was mostly irritating but the panelists had some interesting stuff to say. We rode our bikes to and from the panel which was probably about 17 miles. It was pretty intense to be riding in the city. I was certain I would crash, get hit by a cabbie, get hit by a door to a car and lose all my teeth or get my bike stolen. None of the above happened and instead I got a lot of great exercise and took in the lovely sights of the city. I am definitely more tired today because of it, but its kind of a good soreness.

On Friday night we went to see “Cat Power” in the city and she was really good. She is a bit bonkers the way she was dancing on the stage and all but when it really comes down to it, the girl can sing. I also liked the band she had. There were these two amazing back up singers that really enriched her voice. I was really tired that night but it was a nice chill way for me and Jes to have a little time alone. Afterwards we went home and crashed. On Saturday we had brunch with Jes’s friend Drake in Park Slope and then we met up with Ali to attend the Brooklyn Pride street fest. It was pretty small but still very nice. I got some condoms and lube and six times I got asked if I was a registered Democrat in the state of New York. I had to keep telling them no and it was making me a bit angry. Finally Ali just started telling folks we were Republicans. They would look at us blankly and then I would say “she is just kidding.” Good times. After the fair we headed up to see a movie and then to a nice little reception where jes and ali ate some of the free food while I ate moist crackers (my belly was acting up) and drank one of the strongest vodka tonics I have ever had. After that, we headed back to Park Slope for dinner at the Vspot. This is a new vegan restaurant like twelve feet from Ali’s apartment and we have taken a liking to it. The food is pretty good and fairly affordable but the dishes are not so consistent, nor is the service. We really like the owner guy so we figure once he gets the flow of things, it will be really great.

We kind of rushed through dinner because we wanted to get in free to Cattyshack which meant getting there before 8pm. We literally ran down Union to 4th Avenue and made it just under the gun. It was a fun night there. Lots and lots of cute girls and transguys and a really racially diverse group. My vodka tonic there tasted like plastic so I switched to the most disgusting diet pepsi I have ever had. Ali had wine and Jes had beer. I probably should have gone with one of those. This woman in the shortest daisy duke shorts I have ever seen, a bikini top and a green hoody approached Ali and gave her a flyer to this party. We kept on telling her that “daisy” had a thing for her. Before we left we went down to the dance floor and I got my freak on to Missy and Beyonce and a few other fun songs. Then we left and headed over to Gingers to see how it was going. It was RIDICULOUSLY packed so Ali and I walked in and out while Jes went to the restroom. By then we were all pretty worn out so we went our separate ways.

After our long ass bike ride on Sunday, Ali and Kim came over for a little impromptu bbq. We all had fake burgers (even Kim the carnivore- come to our side Kim) and I made smashed red potatoes and even used rosemary from the garden (how nice!) Jes grilled some corn on the cob and we had smores and strawberries (separately- not together) for dinner. It was divine and relaxing. We busted chats for a minute and then I had to retire to the bedroom for an IM chat with the IDKE Steering Committee. Here is it Monday and I am on a plane all day long. Good times.

So that is about all I have to report. My friend Ara had a bday last week, as did Jasmin, the little girl I used to babysit for in Ohio. She turned 10. I can’t believe it. I am also having a hard time with the fact that my goddaughter Alix will be 12 in July. Oy! She is going to be a teenager soon.

i'm a better blogger when i can't sleep

2006-06-07T05:49:00.000-04:00

i have no idea why, but i woke up at 4:30 this morning and here it is almost 6am and I can't sleep

so, like any normal person, i got up and started researching mattresses. ours is shot and we need a new one and i have not the first clue on how to purchase the right mattress. all i know is that my back is wrecked (both from our old mattress AND from the fact that i have not been working out so the belly gets bigger and bigger and bigger...). anywho if yall have any insight on how to get a comfortable and affordable queen sized mattress, please do share.

so more on paris...

the second day jes and i went to the catacombs. i knew very little about this place and it was not so easy to find (as the entrance is really not that well marked) but once we got there and paid our entrance fee we proceeded down the longest, most claustrophobia-inducing spiral staircase down that i have ever descended. now i know i am not crazy about crowds and i like to have an escape route at all times, but i tell you what i was definitely employing my pregnancy breathing techniques (that i use when i get bad belly aches) while walking down this staircase. i just kept thinking "there is no way out." when i got to the bottom i reminded jes how much i loved her as proven in the fact that i just walked down that staircase. anywho, if that was not traumatic enough, look what i found after a long moist walk down a mostly dark hallway:

uh, yeah you are seeing that right- its piles and piles of skulls and bones. you know, dead people's remnants. here's another gem:

as much as i joke, it was actually kind of lovely and somber and it really appealed to my love of order. the way the bones were laid was so systematic and symmetrical that i could really appreciate it. apparently a bunch of the cemetaries in paris (maybe of all of france?) were dug up and so they put all of the bones in the catacombs as a memorial (i think). here is one last picture. my friend miriam (who i had dinner with the other night) speaks/reads french and said the plaque is more about being poetic than about providing information. sorry i can't translate it:

by the end of our time in the catacombs all i could think about were all the stories i have been hearing about mines collapsing and people getting trapped and so i started to catalog everything we had in our bag and wonder how long we could live on one bottle of water, some protein bars and a few fruit leathers. needless to say, i was glad to see daylight when we were done.

later that afternoon we met up with pony to go see sacre coeur?couer (not sure, sorry), this lovely church. but before we went there, we stopped to get us a little caffeinated beverage: pony got espresso and jes and i got a coca light (diet coke). we chose to purchase these lovely beverages from a joint across from the moulin rouge:

luckilly, we only paid about ten euros for our three drinks AND we all had to pee, but it was a PAY TOILET. so we just held it until we got to the church. i am getting tired, so i will post the pics of sacre coeur later, but not before i share this hilarious photo. see, moulin rouge is located in the sex shoppe/strip club area of paris and while walking to get our overpriced diet coke, i saw this outside of a strip joint:

i am left wondering, how does one train to become a "specialist" in this area? that is, what are the credentials?
inquiring minds want to know...

so about paris

2006-06-06T18:11:00.000-04:00

yikes i have not been the best blogger lately

i have been working on my job stuff and on my diss. i have to give a paper at nwsa next week so i am trying to pull something together for that which is also functioning as framework for my last chapter. jes and i are also trying to get back into the swing of things here in brooklyn. she seems to really enjoy her summer internships. learning stuff and making friends and what not. apparently the folks she works with really like to karoake. they went last night after work and i am proud to say that jes was THE ONLY PERSON in her office that DID NOT karoake.

we also spent a good part of last sunday taking part in the tour de brooklyn- an 18 mile bike ride around various parts of brooklyn. it was good times but i was sore in all kinds of places afterwards. i was most proud that i did not crash into anyone or just fall on my own. folks were falling all over the place so i was hyperaware of where i was going and who was around me.

so let me get to the good stuff: pictures and stories of paris. i am going to try and break this up into a few posts b/c its a lot to write and look at.

so the first day we got there we walked around down by notre dame, this gorgeous church. here is a picture of it inside and out:

our friend jay's mom has had cancer for a while and when we were in italy a few summers ago, we lit a candle for her and her cancer went into remission. recently her cancer came back, so, cuz it can't hurt, we lit a candle for her at notre dame. keep your fingers crossed that it will work.

after visiting the church i stopped by a little shop to get some postcards and such. then we went and go falafel at this joint pony told us about. apparently it is lenny kravitz's favorite place to get falafel in paris (who knew?) my hummus sandwich was good AND it did not make me sick which is also good. after that, i had a hankering for some chocolate, so we stopped at this fancy place and jes and i got a little something something. i did my best to say hello, please and thank you in french but that was as far as it went. so when i was leaving the worker guy started talking to me in french and i was all "huh?" so pony stepped in (bless his heart) and it ends up the five euro bill i gave him was FAKE. WHAT???? yep, counterfeit motherfuckers. we deduced that the postcard dudes gave it to me, so we went back and KICKED SOME FRENCH ASS. ok, not really. pony just went in, explained and got me another fiver that was real. here is a pic of me outside the joint ready to open up a can of whup ass:

chicago bears REPRESENT

ok i gotta start dinner. what a good wifey i am.

back from paris

2006-05-31T06:43:00.000-04:00

bonjour dear readers! we are back from paris, the land of the eiffel tower:

we had a great week in paris, visiting with our friends pony, thomas and their kitty, diva:

i am not sure if we are still suffering from jetlag, per se, but i can tell you that we were both dead asleep by 10pm yesterday and it is not quite 7am and we are both on the couch with our computers. i imagine it will take a few days to get back into the swing of things. it will also probably take me at least a week to complete all my posts about it. today jes starts her summer internship at the innocence project, so that is very exciting. i started back to work yesterday, and hope to start back to the diss writing some time this week.

while in paris, we stayed with thomas and pony and here is a photo of across the street from their apartment:

how beautiful is that? and here is a fine photo of us after our flight from jfk and a short train ride to their apartment that is east of the city center:

let's just say it is a good thing this photo is not scratch and sniff. eww. that's gross.

ok i am feeling tired again so i might try and catch an hour to two more of sleep. stay tuned over the next week or two for more about our trip.

a peanut farmer

2006-05-21T08:07:00.000-04:00

our time in atlanta was good. jes and i totally surprised her parents. she waited in the car while i went in. then i pretended like i "forgot" my mother's day present in the car so i went out and go jes and she snuck in the house with me and stood in the kitchen. her mom walked into the kitchen and started hooping and hollering. so her dad walked into the house and saw jes and smiled. we spent a great day with them, making penne with vodka sauce and garlic bread. we also picked up four small little delicious desserts from alon's bakery. we all ate and drank so much, i fell asleep from food coma at like 10pm. we had breakfast there the next morning and headed out around noon.

the rest of the day we ran errands and then went to my work and spent HOURS making up the binders for MTP. i dropped jes off at the airport on tuesday and got on the MTP treadmill. overall, the event went well, but every day there was something: room locked, caterer late, and so on. it was completely exhausting. like end of the day i can't make a sentence tired. but what was great is that after i was done at work i was able to have dinner with dawn and sarah and kim and hang out even if i was a blithering idiot. and as is true of every year, i made a few new faculty/grad student friends and i really enjoyed seeing some of them get all excited about learning about the scholarship of teaching and learning. its really cool to see teachers become students.

things finished up a little early on friday so i got to the airport a little early and was able to get on an earlier flight. i was waiting at the gate writing a letter to my friend janet and i saw some sort of important delta suits hanging out around my gate and looking out the windows at the tarmac. since on the way to atlanta we had a backstreet boy (brian littrell) and his family on our plane, my mind went directly to britney spears or some bubble gum pop culture person. when i got on the plane i started looking around in first class to see who was on the plane. as usual it was all white business looking people- mostly men. as i scanned the group and i saw this older man who was 1. reading a book and 2. taking notes in the book with a pen. i found this curious, b/c more often than not, first class folks (mostly men) are reading magazines: money, golf, whatevs. and here is the older man reading a book critically enough that he needed a pen in his hand. then i looked closer and i realized it was PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER. i looked next to him and saw his wife rosalyn. then i kept walking and saw all the secret service dudes. as i got to my seat, i texted jes that he was on my plane. about ten minutes later, the rest of the plane started to catch on. once we were all seated, president carter walked through the WHOLE PLANE and SHOOK EVERYONE'S HAND (mine included). i was so nervous b/c i didn't know if i should call him "mr. president" or "mr. carter" i opted for the latter. it was cool.

jes picked me up from the airport and we went and ate at this delicious new vegan restaurant in park slope called "the v spot", i had a chicken parmigana sandwich. it was really good. we went back there last night with higgins and jes and i shared the nachos. also very good.

ok i am getting caught up on my starting over right now. i also have to report i am THRILLED that marissa died on the oc. i really didn't like her character.

thursday the 26th is my ro-ro's 4th birthday. happy birthday monkey!

FINAL-ly

2006-05-11T20:30:00.000-04:00

so today jes finished her last final of her first year of law school. it was an eight hour take home test, so she did it here and that meant i had to try and make myself scarce (b/c i have a tendency to talk to her and that does not help the final process).

so this morning i went to the coffee shop and finished up a fairly complete shitty first draft of my third chapter. i printed it out and over the next couple days i will have to try and revise on the paper and then type it in, and pass it out to a few friends and to one of my committee members. my goal is for them to have it back to me by the end of the month so i can incorporate suggestions and then move on to the next chapter. today i got a bit of an idea that maybe i only need one more chapter after this instead of two. i will talk about this with saralyn and see what she says.

after coffee (i really got orange juice), i came back here and gave jes a hot soy chai and left her to her work while i watched (read) starting over (i had it on mute so as to not disturb the lawyer). then we had some soup for lunch and she went back to work and i went and bought all kinds of cat food. i usually buy it like six cans at a time, but this time i bought a whole case. the kitties are set for some time.

when i got home i started to feel a little ill, so i decided to lay down and take a nap. my belly has been bothering me a bit these last few days- mostly pain and queasiness- not like my normal IBS problems, so i am not sure what it is. i think its probably b/c i have not been exercising much since boot camp started. when i got up i didn't feel much better so i just drank some peppermint tea and did some of my work work.

jes finished promptly at 5pm and then went into the city to benny's to meet with some of her classmates to celebrate the end of their first year of law school. now she is home and is waiting me to finish this so we can watch the chronic-what-cles of narnia.

today is my friend mel corn's bday. happy birthday to her.

six minutes of fun

2006-05-10T15:44:00.000-04:00

cut and paste this into your browser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

and get ready to ROCK

thanks to jen lindsey (aka jay crew) for sending it my way. it brought back so many memories of drag king numbers of yesteryear.

so tired

2006-05-08T19:24:00.000-04:00

i am not sure why, but i am so tired today. it was overcast and grey most of the day, so maybe that is it.

i have done only a little work on my diss today and for some reason, i don't really give a fuck. jes is studying for her last final on thursday. but check this out. she came home today from her other final and was really upset and i was like "oh shit, the final did not go well" but she said "i am upset not b/c of my final, but b/c i am stressed" and i am thinking "well geez i know you have another final in a few days, but i don't think you should be this stressed ALREADY" and then she tells me that during her final today her phone kept ringing from an atlanta number. so she took a bathroom break to check the message and make sure everything was ok with her parentals.

it turns out that this detective from atlanta was calling her to tell her that he had a georgia state supreme court supoena requiring her to come back to atlanta TODAY to appear in a court case. see, last spring, while working at caribou coffee, she and her co-worker naija got robbed by this guy. they were not harmed (per se) but he did pull a box cutter on them and took a bunch of the money. so fast forward A WHOLE FUCKING YEAR and now they are telling her she has to come back. she is all "i can't, i have a final for law school on thursday." they weren't hearing it. she even tried to tell them that she is studying to be a criminal defense lawyer and would that get her out of it. nope, he said. so she actually leaves tomorrow to go and testify. she will be there for a day or two. they fly her out, put her up in a hotel, the whole nine. the only silver lining on this very grey cloud is that she will be just BLOCKS from taqueria del sol so she can get as many chicken and fish tacos as she wants while she is there. isn't that all fucked up? i think so.

the other crazy thing is that the terminix lady came out to the house to assess the termite situation. first of all, i think it is cool it was a lady and not a guy. maybe there is equity in termite killing, i don't know, but i was surprised to say the least.

second crazy thing about that: she sort of looked a little like carmen from the l word which is altogether wonderful. when i im-ed supper club kim that, she was like "did you get a picture of her?" how hilarious would that be if i was "hey terminator lady, can i get your picture?" so she came into our apt to observe the few termite carcasses left on our floor, and my landlady kristin was there too and larrykitty went up to both of them trying to get some love. kristin was like "oh larry likes to be scratched doesn't he?" and i was like "larry likes the lovin'" and kristin then asked "does larry like to be spanked" and I said "yes, he does" and then carmen lookalike terminator says "WELL DOESN'T EVERYONE?" i nearly fell out. right there, all up on the dead termite carcasses.

i look forward to her return tomorrow when she "sets the bait traps." yeah you got it, she has to come and "check the traps" every now and again. loves it.

ok the reason i even started this was so that i could post this adorable pic of my nephew: SUPERBEN. how cute is he?

that is all for now. i need dinner soon so jes needs to move it through these cases she is reviewing. i am so over studying right now.

why my day got better

2006-05-07T22:36:00.000-04:00

so after i finished up my grumpycheese sandwich and took off my crankypants, i had some of the supper club gals over for our very first bbq in our garden with our brand new target grill. jes not only SINGLE HANDEDLY put the grill together, she also manned it with her handy side kick ali:

cuteness! only two more finals to go for jes and then she has completed her FIRST YEAR OF LAW SCHOOL YALL. SO PROUD.

and don't let glennda's carpetbag and silver flipflops throw you off. girl can start a fire (for reals). here she is fucking shit up with her trusty sidekick kim. here they are BEFORE the fire got started (and it wasn't easy yall):

and here they are AFTER they got the fire going. bet you wish kim and glennda would come and light your fire. neener neener:

and here is a better pic of the roaring fire. perfect for...yeah... you know it... roasting marshmallows for SMORES. so delish:

and really, what is better than chocolate, marshmallow and graham cracker all melty good? three hotty mc hotties making them up for youze:

holla!

termite pics-they nasty

2006-05-07T22:29:00.000-04:00

so here are some pics of the little bastards that ALMOST ruined my day

no me gusta termites

2006-05-07T15:16:00.000-04:00

so my morning started out well. sunny day, early start, i was happy.
after checking email and such, i decided to head out to the garden and read an article my yoga friend somjen asked me to look at. it's about homophobic violence.

i got out in the sun, started reading and was feeling great. jes came out to meet me. my landlady kristin came out and chatted and even gave us these delish apple strudel things from their party last night. after that jes and i went in to have some food and i retired to the bedroom/office to continue reading. my reading was interrupted by jes's yelling "aaaahhhh they are taking over!" i went out into the living to find termites swarming the living room floor and many were climbing on our couch. for the next two hours jes and i tried to kill these motherfuckers. i got out the windex and sprayed them all until they were dead. more kept coming. i had kristin come down and look at them and she squealed with us as we found more and more crawling around the room. jes and i decided to soak paper towels in windex and shove them in the gaps in the floorboards where the fuckers were coming in over and over. they subsided for a minute while we moved everything away from the wall and i wiped up all the windex drowned dead termite carcasses (luckily that funk got mixed in with a few furballs from the cats). nice. all the while the cats are locked in our room MEOWING to get out.

kristin said she had a friend coming at 2pm and he is sort of handy so maybe he could suggest something. it was about 12:30pm. thirty minutes later the swarms are still coming and jes is not studying one bit b/c she is spraying and wiping along with me. so i get online and find out that old school borax soap keeps them away. so i headed to the store and got some borax and some spray bottles. got home and the swarms were still coming. by this time jes is laughing about it. we move her grandfathers antique cherry kitchen table that he had made for him into the second bedroom just in case these fucking termites get some bright ideas. we also moved the carpet (also started to get swarmed with termites) into this closet off the garden.

next up: operation borax. while i spray the swarms and they start to drown and die, jes prepares a borax paste to squirt into the gap (after removing the windex soaked paper towels). we sit back and laugh/cry and wait. guess what? borax doesn't really help. though at a slower pace, the termites keep coming in and now they are jaunting down the hallway toward the bedroom full of meowing cats.

by this time i am quite veklemt about it all and jes has showered and is getting ready to go to the coffee shop. i decided to join her b/c if i stayed at home i would just continue to freak out. so here i am. no termites, just twelve million people doing work like me. i am going to finish reading that article and then if i have time, do a little more data analysis for the diss. then i think we are going to have a bbq in our backyard. hopefully the termites will not have tied up the cats gullivers travels style and carted them off to the basement for sacrifice. i am pretty sure horace would put the smackdown on their ass while emily pummeled them with her ovenmitt paws.

i took some pics of the infestation and will post them when i get back. they are disgusting.

babies babies everywhere

2006-05-06T14:21:00.000-04:00

i don't have too much to post about. most days i work on my diss for many hours and then also work on my work.
today i watered the plants, put out the recycling, strung up lights in our backyard for my upstairs neighbors 30th bday party and then i came inside and took a nap with jes b/c she had cramps. now i am about to start my diss again. good times.

here are some pics of some of my favorite babies.

the first three are of bailey james. his mom dawn sent them to me in an email entitled (pics of mini gator). gator is his dad. they look a lot alike.

the other baby is emalee (i think that is how you spell it). lets just call her em. she is the one with the belly. her parents are kennie and kelli.

hope you are having a lovely weekend. yesterday was my friend nifa's bday. and i am not sure i ever posted about my friend nicole's bday. it was april 20th- i was sick that week. and my friend dusty's bday is tomorrow. i got a lot of friends born in may. that's weird. i love them all. happy birthday!

my secret garden

2006-05-03T20:06:00.000-04:00

i plan to continually post pics of the gorgeous garden so you can get a true sense of the growth, but for now you can just get a sense of the "before" and "after." the actual garden (where stuff is planted) is u shaped, with the bottom of the u up against the furthest fence. on the left of the u is the shade garden and our compost container. back against the fence is also a shade garden that houses our lovely and fragrant lilac bush (though it looks like a tree) and on the right of the u is our veggie and herb garden. this gets sunlight for most of the day. there are also random planters in other parts of the backyard and out front. i don't think i have any pics of the out front ones yet, but they are lovely. when i get some, i will post them.

ok so here goes. first up: left side BEFORE:

and here it is AFTER:

now here is the back wall BEFORE (it was originally covered in ivy, but az hacked away at that):

and here it is AFTER:

and then finally, here is the veggie garden BEFORE:

and AFTER:

so all of this would not be possible without the geniousity of azad, the gardener/best friend:
(notice anything interesting about this pic?)

maybe you need a closer look?

how hilarious is that? overall i am thrilled with the final product and i can't wait until i can make some red sauce with tomatoes and basil from my own garden. i will keep you all posted on its progress.

lemme try those pics again

2006-05-03T20:02:00.000-04:00

so here are the pics that did not post in the other email:

az and jes playing galaga at cattyshack:

kim. glennda & ali at cattyshack:

cluster map craziness

2006-05-03T09:21:00.000-04:00

now i don't know how many of you look at that little map of the world that tells you where the people who read this blog live, but you should. its on the right hand side of the page when you first sign on.

there are folks ALL OVER THE WORLD reading about my little bat cave. so, it has left me wondering- who are you? and how did you get connected to my blog?

perhaps this is bad manners, but i would love to hear from yall. you don't have to tell me that much. just where exactly you live and how you found the blog. and maybe some day i can write an academic paper about it. but first i need to finish my dissertation.

i mean i KNOW that the internet is a powerful medium for the exchange of information an all, but seriously pictures of my fun, attractive and SINGLE best friend azad are being beamed all over the place. ladies, (sorry guys)- if you are interested, send me an email. he travels well.

happy wednesday. i am about to enter into dissertation boot camp hell. holla!

what the f?

2006-04-30T23:06:00.000-04:00

so in that last post, the pics came out wrong
i double checked the numbers and they were right, but somehow the pics are wrong
they took a long time to load, so maybe its blogger
i will try and fix it tomorrow
weird

my time with az

2006-04-30T21:29:00.000-04:00

so we are watching "jarhead" right now and it's really homoerotic. not just hot sweaty guys playing football homoerotic, but like marines simulating gay sex in the desert and jay gyllenhal with a santa hat on his dick and nothing else homoerotic. who new? but jake's body is crazy hot in the movie.

so my time with azad has been splendid. he may or may not be staying with us tonight. he was supposed to go to jersey tonight to stay with our high school friend ron, but the plan got a bit messed up so we might get him for one more night, which i am so happy about.

he has been here since thursday and we have spent most of our time walking around brooklyn, gardening, eating and just chilling. we even watched the chicago bulls win today. GO BULLS! i really like him being around and have tried to bribe him to move here (i told him i would buy him a table and a bench he liked in north slope). alas, it did not work. he has a job and family and such he must tend to in chicago. oh bother.

on thursday i went to stony brook and did a guest lecture in this transgender theory class (its a women's studies class there). it went ok, they laughed at my jokes and asked some good questions. i also got to take the LIRR out to stony brook and see what that part of long island looks like. the further east you go the more trampolines, pools and subdivisions you see. i took the train home and az and jes met up at atlantic avenue and we walked home and got something to eat at daisy's diner.

on friday az and i walked around prospect park after he picked up a egg, cheese, and ham bagel sandwich at terrace bagels. on our way, we found this sign:

how cool is that?

and here is a pic of handsome az with a pretty blooming tree in prospect park:

after our walk around the park, we came back here and started clearing out the garden in the backyard so as to prepare it for our day of planting on saturday. it looked so amazing just after our initial clean up and it exhausted me. we showered and then met jes up at jay street and made our way to benny's burritos. after that we headed back to brooklyn to cattyshack to meet up with some of the supper club girls. here is a few pics of our journey on friday:

jes and az playing galaga at the bar. jes got the highest score. how sexy is that?

and here is kim, glennda and ali:

after the bar, we drove home and on the way back to the apartment i was snapping a few shots of az and jes, here is one of my favs:

on saturday we worked from about 9am until about 7pm on the garden. i will post those pics separately. after we washed the seven layers of soil off us, we headed to fort greene to have dinner at rice. this was, by far, our best meal while azad was here. we had to wait a long time for our table but it was totally worth it. we even got dessert: this ok chocolate cupcake and these delish mini ice cream sandwiches. one was ginger lemon, one was cranberry something and the third was chocolate chip coffee. so good.

after dinner we headed over to this bar moe's. it was hip hop night and they played some good music. we stayed for one drink and then came home and collapsed in the bed. heres a pic from last night:

today me and azad walked around some more. i showed him the co-op and we looked at used books and brooklyn industries. az got me some books on gardening and i got some pretty flowers for the planter right outside the window where i sit and write my dissertation. we planted those and watched the bulls and now jarhead is over.

i'm tired, so i am going to hit the hay. tomorrow starts my two week dissertation boot camp. ugh.

so here is my hair

2006-04-30T20:55:00.000-04:00

yall i had hopes that i would take a picture that would make me look all cool and shit with my new hair cut
but guess what? it is still on my big pumpkin head so that ain't gonna happen

so here is what i have:

BEFORE i got my hair cut:

here is what i like to call my "america's most wanted" photo:

and then here are two others. still not great, but its the best i can do for now:

a new addition

2006-04-29T08:33:00.000-04:00

i am taking lots of pictures this weekend with azad in town with the hopes that ONE will showcase my hair better than the pics i have already taken. either way, by weekends end, i will post some pics of the hair.

but first i need to post a pic of my friend kennie & kellie's babygirl em.

how ridiculously cute is this kid? super-nibbleable

happy saturday yall. i am going to plant my garden today with azad and i am THRILLED about it.

back in nyc and sick as a dog

2006-04-20T19:51:00.000-04:00

i got home yesterday from eight days in atlanta where i had many many work things to do. all went smoothly (except, of course for the one talk where the faculty member escorting the guy giving the lecture, escorted him to the WRONG ROOM- needless to say me and 55 people who came to see the lecture had to move downstairs to the wrong room).

while in atlanta i got my hair cut (will post pics later when i don't have horrendous bedhead), spent lots of time with sarah, kim, dawn, gator, bailey, angie, elin, jes's folks and various other people. while there i also got what i thought was a bad case of allergies to the ridiculous pollen, but what i am thinking now is really just a bad cold. my head aches, my nose is running, my chest hurts and i feel like i have been hit by a truck. once i get out of this haze, i will post more about my time in the warm and lovely atl.

outlet shopping and patty griffin

2006-04-11T12:10:00.000-04:00

so this post gets me up to date- finally.
this past weekend, jes, higgins, and i drove to our state's capital city, albany for a patty griffin concert at this place called "the egg." its totally nutty b/c it is this building shaped like an egg on a pedestal.

the concert was great. patty has the voice of an angel and she played a whole bunch of songs from the album she is going to record in may and june. she also played some oldie but goodies like "moses" and "long drive home." what was really great was that jes and higgins have never seen her live so they were totally blown away at how amazing she is live. it was also this really small, intimate, setting so that just added to the greatness of it. what was really weird, or at least gave me pause, is that seriously, ever single person there was white. probably about 250 people and every single one was white. that was weird in comparison to my life here in brooklyn.

so that was a great time, but the real story isn't complete without a few words about our trip up. we stopped at this outlet mall and jes and higgs got crazy shopping. not really, but higgs did get two pairs of real nice shoes and some running gear. jes got some jeans and some boy panties. i got a divine pair of tongs from a kitchen store. loves them. on the way home we stopped at a suburban target. it was uncrowded, organized and clean. nothing like our target in brooklyn where you are lucky if your cart doesn't get stolen from you.

the other hilarious part of our trip was our hotel. see higgs got us this room online at the RED CARPET INN. it was within walking distance from the egg and it looked real nice on line. we get there and it was a scary and deserted mess. at first they could not find our reservation. the woman at the desk said that we couldn't have a reservation b/c only FOUR people had reservations for that night. this hotel had HUNDREDS of rooms. after a few calls, we got our room. it was clear over on the other side of the hotel. seriously if we screamed at the TOP OF OUR LUNGS no one would hear us. the carpet was stained, most of the rooms were emptied out. here is the pretty view from our room:

oh and did i also mention, the television did not work
OH HELLLLLL NNOOOOOOO!
so higgs called hotels.com and told them that this place was IN NO WAY a two star hotel and that we didn't feel safe. so they refunded her money and we got a room at the CROWNE PLAZA that was literally three blocks from the egg. here are some pics of me and jes in one of the nicest hotels i have ever stayed in. the pic of me shows me looking at the bag that i found on our pillow top beds. it had an eye cover, ear plugs and lavender scented linen spray. so nice:

we all slept like babies and drove home on a sunny sunday afternoon. it was a good time and i can't wait for our next road trip.

FINALLY- the glaad media awards

2006-04-10T18:46:00.000-04:00

ok people, i am finally finding the time to post about the glaad media awards
see my friend glennda (of supper club fame) is one of the head honchos over at glaad (gay and lesbian alliance against defamation) and she asked us to work as celebrity escorts at the awards here in nyc at the end of march. we were glad to help out, see some celebs, and (most important to me) see all of supper club dressed up like sexy chocolate.

so jes and i got there around 2pm on the day of the awards. she in black trousers, white shirt and green sweater (very sexy) and me in black trousers, a pink striped shirt (i mean PINK yall), a black sweater and a black tie. ali, as per usual, was rocking the black outfit- she always wears black, monique had on a black wrap dress with neck scarf, kim had on trousers, a shirt and a vest with a tie that had scorpions on it and glennda had on a divine chocolate colored gown that was modern marilyn monroe (serious cleveland yall). anywho, as usual, i came with the hottest kids in the crowd. holla!

so shortly after we arrived we found out who we were assigned to. the assignments were as follows:

donna- lee pace & kate moennig - both are starring in "the guardians" a play here in nyc. lee pace was in a movie called "soldiers girl" and will be in "the good shepard." kate, as many of you know, plays shane on the L word and is hot as fuck. here is a pic of them both:

overall, they were both pretty nice. lee pace is a doll baby and was very protective of kate, who is incredibly shy. she is also incredibly skinny. i kept wanting to slip her some protein bars or something. their publicist was this woman catie, who was really nice and gave me two free tix to their play. jes and i went and saw it and its real deep. they are both really good in it and if you live in nyc and have the money, i would encourage you to check it out. it is playing at the culture project on bleecker street.

jes was in charge of kara janx of "project runway":

kara was pretty much always with daniel v. (once he got there) so i think she was pretty low maintenance. she seemed nice to jes. she even talked to her when she went out to smoke (kara smoked, NOT jes).

ali had daneila sea, who plays max on the l word. here is a pic of her and her sweetie, bitch (yes that is the name she goes by):

when ali gets here i will ask her if she has anything to say about her experience with daniela. from what i understand she was very nice and thoughtful and treated ali well. my favorite part of their time together was when ali had to carry bitch's PINK RAINBOW BRITE purse while they were on the red carpet. hilarious.

and finally, monique had this guy you may have heard of, his name is ANG LEE. he did this little ole movie called Brokeback Mountain. here is a pic of him:

she was about to wet herself when she found out she got ang. she loves loves loves him, so it was great to see her giddy as a school girl about it. next time i see her i will ask if she has anything she would like to add about him. i think he was nice to her. he had like four people with him. ang rolls deep i guess.

so overall it was a really fun time. exhausting and nerve wrecking at times, but really great overall. and after it was over, we got to go to the VIP party and have some free beer which i enjoyed a great deal (but got tipsy on b/c i had not eaten much during the day). i think the coolest part for me was when i brought lee and kate to the back stage area and in that holding room was:

1. erasure. i nearly wet myself
2. wilmer valderamma (fez from that 70s show)
3. phil donahue
4. margo thomas
5. petra nemacova (she's a model and she is tall yall)
6. michael douglas

this was all at one time. i almost fell over really. but everyone just seemed like regular people with a lot of make up on and really nice hair.

i can't wait to see who i get to escort next year...

one more thing about my trip to chicago

2006-04-10T18:39:00.000-04:00

so the day i departed chicago and headed back to new york, i got to see some old high school friends (who are married) rachel and josh. they have two boys: joseph & henry (or hank). both are adorable. here are some pics:

it was great to see them and to catch up. my favorite part was that their older son, joe, who is maybe three, answered the door with no pants on and just his thomas the tank engine underwear. how hilarious is that?

finally- the last day with my chi friends

2006-04-09T18:31:00.000-04:00

yall this is so long ago, it seems silly to post
but i have some pics so here they are:

here you have seen the spoils of our last day shopping in soho and china town. we got to this store that had the slippers ro has on and aly got bleary eyed. everything was so sparkly and cheap. she kept it to a minimum and just got some silk asian inspired flip flops. very cute.

the other nutty thing is we went to washington square park for ro to play a little (she was such a champ shopping all day- it was real cold). anywho there was this dad chasing his daughter on a play structure and he wasn't watching where he was going and he hit head on to this part of the structure. he went DOWN and i mean THUD. it was all very scary. we all just watched in shock and this man (who i think was a doctor) went over to him to make sure he was ok. i think mostly he was embarrassed, but he surely had a minor concussion. the worst part was this little boy went up to him and said "you should have ducked." it was real hard to withold from laughing right then.

all in all their visit was divine and it was sad to say goodbye, but really i didn't have to say it for so long b/c i went to chicago for about a week at the end of march to help them move from their condo to a town house. i got to spend some quality time with rowan (and azad with whom she is enchanted) and aly and nik were able to get ro's room painted purple. their new place is real big and i can't wait to see it when they have finished all the renovations. it is going to be lovely.

i have to go make dinner now. more later.

i know i know, i am behind

2006-04-05T11:08:00.000-04:00

yall let me say first IT IS SNOWING IN APRIL HERE IN BROOKLYN
what is up with that?

anywho i have a lot to catch yall up on:

1. my last day with aly, nik, and ro
2. my experiences as a celebrity escort at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards- just to give you a taste, i escorted Kate Moenning (Shane from the Lword) and this guy Lee Pace who is darling.
3. my trip to chicago to help alyson and nicole move

but i can't do any of that right now because i need to do my work work and my dissertation.

so for now, i leave you with this:

do you know what i would give to find her in my shower?

day three: lady liberty & two boots

2006-03-26T18:40:00.000-05:00

on friday we went to see the statue of liberty. jes had to run and errand so she met us out there. before we got on the train, alyson, nicole, ro and i stopped and got some delish bagel sandwiches. they got some crazy huge roast beef sammies and jes and i got cheese sammies. i got mine with a little green olive cream cheese schmear. it was so good.

so the ferry ride to the island was nice (a little bit cold, but nice). its kind of crazy how huge the statue of liberty is when you get up close to it. there were these fucknut teenage boys trying to climb the wall to the base of the statue. the ranger headed their way and they stopped. here are some pics from the island:

if you are wondering what the fish shadow is: that's nemo- ro's favorite stuffed animal

after liberty island, we walked past the site of the world trade center and then headed back to park slope to meet the supper club ladies at two boots for dinner. now two boots is this joint in north slope. it specializes in italian (one boot) and louisiana/cajun (second boot) food. it is also the mecca for all people with kids. there are kids running EVERYWHERE at this restaurant. its chaos, pure chaos. true story. also they let the kids stand on these stairs and watch the cooks make pizza dough and they give the kids these little balls of dough to play with. so ro made like twleve million friends and got three balls of dough. so that was the good part, now here is the CRAZY part.

me, jes, aly, nik, monique, and ali were all sitting at the table. we turn to see glennda and kim coming into the restaurant and in the process, ali knocks a glass off the table and it crashes to the ground and breaks. AT THE SAME TIME this little kid falls out the booth she was sitting in and knocks the FUCK out of her head. i mean concussion city. you could hear the THUD. it was totally jenny. we tried not to laugh, but it was just so weird and coincidental. then, toward the end of dinner, this little kid behind ali felt out of the booth. it was like some strange gravitational pull. anywho, here is a pic of the group:

oh and here is the sweetest thing ever. for dizzert, ro got this brownie sundae with sprinkles and everything. she was eating it, and we were all happy and content and then she said "all these things are lovely." i could have nibbled her face off. here is a picture of her with the sundae:

after dinner we went home, put ro to bed and then watched "team america world police". they loved it.

day two: central park, the zoo, and alyson's new boyfriend

2006-03-22T20:25:00.000-05:00

so day two with my chicago family was busy busy busy. we decided it was the day to hit the central park zoo. there are three main zoos in new york: central park, prospect park, and the bronx zoo. now the bronx zoo sounds like a doozy, but it is very far away- like maybe two hours on the train and none of us was up for that. prospect park zoo sounded nice but is mostly like frogs and small animals. so we settled on the nice middle ground: central park zoo. we wanted to show alyson, nicole and rowan the park anyways, its near a few shops that alyson wanted to stop by AND it has the gay penguin daddies (from teh book "and tango makes three"). i mean really, what more can you ask for?

so the plan was to pack lunches (so economical) and then eat lunch and hit the zoo. what really happened is that rowan fell fast asleep on the train ride to the zoo:

so instead of going right to the zoo, we shopped around a bit while she slept and then we ate our lunches, just the four of us. jes and i had fake turkey sandwiches with hummus and tomato. aly and nik made ham sammies on this bread that they FELL IN LOVE WITH. it was called something like "super wheat extreme" bread or something like that. all they talked about the whole time they were here was how deliciously soft this bread is. i tasted it, its pretty good. here they are admiring their delish sammies:

after we all finished our lunches which included brownies for dizzert (so good), AND after twelve million kindergarteners LEFT the zoo, we headed in. apparently there is a big zoo and then the children's zoo. $8 for each adult got us into both. at the big zoo we saw seals, monkeys, snakes, penguins, and all kinds of crazy rainforest animals. i liked the bright orange birds and the weird mooserats (they reminded me of our cats larry & emily). rowan began waking up around the seals but it took her until the penguins to wake up fully. in the children's zoo we saw red pandas (not really, but there was an area for them), polar bears, and some farm animals. here are some pics of all the animals we saw:

yes that is right folks, along with the lions, tigers and bears, we saw mr. colin farrell, with his son and his group of folks. it went down like this- true story: i am sitting on some ledge while nicole and ro are looking at the gay penguins. alyson RUSHES up to me and i am all "what the f?" she whispers in my ear "colin farrell is in here. seriously. go see. i give you permission to leave the penguin house." so i grab my trusty sidekick jes and we head out. i was CERTAIN that alyson was wrong. let's just say she is a bit lacking in the pop culture knowledge area (not as bad as nicole, but that is another story). anywho i was sure it was some brooklyn guy or some high school guy who WISHES he was colin farrell. buy sure as shit, i get up to the guy and there he is, none other than colin farrell. and what is totally nuts is we kept seeing him all over the zoo. you know why? b/c i think he is secretly in love with alyson. instead of US following HIM, i think HE was following ALYSON. you know he is irish and all, so he must have a thing for the readheads. when we got home later that night we showed aly and nik his sex tape. aly and i think his dick is big. jes thinks its small. who knows.

after our exciting celeb citing, we continued on through the park chatting and not stepping on cracks until we got to the carousel. rowan LOVED it. she went on a horse all by herself and smiled the whole time (especially when we yelled "great job dora!). i felt (and jes agreed) that is was going faster than normal, but ro seemed unphased by the speed. here is a cutey mc cutey pic of her:

as the sun went down, we headed toward benny's burritos for dinner. as per usual, it was DELISH. alyson got some meat platter thing that she shared with ro, and nik shared her chicken something with ro as well. jes and i rocked the soft tacos again. and this time we got a small margarita instead of a grande. this was the right choice. we got home, they bathed the girl and we were all in the bed by midnight. being a parent is exhausting yall.

p.s. sometimes i hate blogger b/c it won't let me upload the photos.

day one: prospect park & joe's pizza

2006-03-22T20:10:00.000-05:00

so i am going to try and do this one day at a time. when i have a lot to blog about, i often get overwhelmed. especially if i have to post pictures b/c for some reason it takes REAL long to post the pics. ok, so they got here on wednesday and we pretty much grocery shopped at key foods, then went to the park, then got some joes pizza and then hung out and went to bed. i think we were all a bit exhausted.

at the park we acted out our dora script. here is a pic of tiko (jes) and benny (alyson) thinking about their "motivation" for their parts:

and here is me and "dora" scared that "swiper" (i.e. nicole) is going to come and swipe us (i guess):

it was real fun to play chase for a while, but eventually i got tired out. we went over to the sandbox and tried to figure out if these two women were lesbo mommies or if one was the mom and the other lady was a friend. we all agreed they were just friends. as the sun went down, we headed home to relax a minute and then got some pizza at joe's. everyone LOVED the pizza and joe (whose real name is sam i think, but of course because i am an ass, i have been calling him joe all this time-idiot) hooked us up with some red sauce for our garlic knots (alyson thought we were getting garlic nuts). he also joked about our table in the corner and called it our beach front seat.

while eating, rowan suggested we all become the characters in the book about molly, the little girl with two mommies. alyson and nicole were the moms, and ro played molly. jes was the teacher, and i was the dog. we all agreed to play our parts heartily, but i didn't think she meant right then at the dinner table. when i continued to talk, rowan turned to me and said "i don't remember the dog talking in the book." we all laughed our asses off. shut down by an almost four year old. as jes would say "BURN!"

so that was day one. day two will be next. there is a very exciting celeb citing in day two.

a quick side note: tomorrow is my friend beckygirl's 30th birthday. how exciting is that? holla becky!

illustration of donna writing her diss

2006-03-21T14:38:00.000-05:00

check it out:

http://www.brockbusby.com/images/crazy.gif

the bright pink baby that doesn't talk comes to town with her two moms

2006-03-20T22:21:00.000-05:00

i begin my post with this picture that rowan took, some time ago, at the shedd aquarium. she is quite the amateur photographer, especially when it comes to her babydoll in a kid sized pull up. i think its freaky but also hilarious. i have so much to report and quite a few pictures, so i think it is going to take me a few installments to get it all down on paper (so to speak).

first of all, ro has the most amazing imagination of any kid i have ever seen. she is destined to be an actor, screen writer, and/or director. throughout her time here she was one or many of the following:

1. the bright pink baby that does not speak (based on a real infant she saw at the library just nights before she came to brooklyn)

2. dora the explorer

3. june from the einsteins

4. uniqua from the backyardians (i may be mixing up shows here, so hopefully nicole will chime in and let me know if i am on point)

5. molly from the book about this little girl named molly who has two mommies

and not only does she have several personas, in each instance, we all adjust to be her supporting crew. por ejemplo, when she is dora, i was boots, the monkey side kick and jes was tiko the squirrel who has lost his keys, and alyson was benny the bull who fixes things and nicole was swiper, the fox who pilfers things apparently.

blogger won't let me upload any more photos right now, so i am going to leave this post as is and try and post more once blogger is on point again.

what the L?

2006-03-15T05:58:00.000-05:00

I have been incredibly remiss about posting on the blog lately and I am not sure why.
My job work has really picked up and that has been keeping me off the streets and I have been working *a little* on the dissertation, but really its not like I am at the computer from sun-up to sun-down doing all this. I guess I just haven't had all that much to write about? Or I just haven't felt like writing. Who knows?

So let me set the scene for my entry right now: it is just after 6am, the sun should be coming up shortly. Larry is eating some dry food (we are trying a mix of the old IAMS stuff and this new Wysong Uretic food that is good for him and Emily and their not so good kidneys. I am glad the kids like it b/c it is much better for their bodies than that IAMS stuff. They are also enjoying the new healthier Wellness wet food we are trying out,except the chicken and lobster. they hated that). Emily is fast asleep in the bottom tray of our paper recycling bins (she is technically laying in the "papers to be shredded" tray). Horace is hunting or sleeping. Probably in the bathroom on his favorite mat. Jes is sound asleep in the back bedroom. We slept back there b/c Alyson, Nicole and Rolita are coming today and I made up the bed for them and we didn't want to sleep in their new fresh bed. Our house is as clean as it has been since we moved in and I am giddy with anticipation. We leave here around 11am to drive out to Islip to pick them up. Who knew there is an airport in Islip? Not me.

So the highlights from the last week or so really were the weather and hanging out with the ladies watching the L word. I am unable to comment on the episode b/c not all my readers have finished watching it, but what I *can* say is what the L about max's facial hair. is he TRYING to look like my dad in 1973 or what? no me gusta. and the nuttier-than-a-fruitcake jenny is back in the hizzouse. we missed you. last friday jes and i walked around prospect park with monique and ali and then got us a nice little beverage up at the connecticut muffin. then jes and i walked around the park and then park slope on saturday. later that day we played catch in the park. how lesbianic of us. both days were so divine. almost balmy. just tshirt and hoody weather. so nice. i think the cold weather is back. oh bother. i just hope it refrains from raining as much as possible while the ladies are here.

on monday night jes and i went to this new restaurant with our friend beth baltimore. its this place in the city called "benny's burritos"- beth used to work there. yall the food is DELISH and affordable. jes and i both got the soft shell tacos with beans and it was soo good and soo filling. we also each got a "grande" margarita at the bar during happy hour before beth got there (they are only $6 and the size of a pint glass). lets just say these margaritas were STRONG. after two sips i had to assess if my finishing the drink would result in vomiting. it did not. i held it together but definitely had my tipsy on. beth, b/c she is a margarita drinking champ, wanted to continue our debauchery in the city. i was about to fall asleep, as was jes, so we headed home instead.

yesterday morning i met with my friend kir in the city and we walked around central park and talked. she was in town for meetings for her book that is getting published. the press flies her and all the other authors to new york every six months and puts her up in this hotel on the upper west side. how nice is that? it was great to see her and catch up while in the park. normally i see her in atlanta and we go and get indian food and chat for hours. oh and on sunday i hung out a bit with higgins in the city. it was a grey and rainy day, but we just met up, had a little scooby snack at this restaurant called RICE (i got this delish hot sweet ginger tea and higgs got these veggie meatballs with black rice that was really good) and then we did a little shopping. i got this great new book called The Heart of Whiteness by Robert Jensen. Its about critical white studies and I love it. Its only 96 pages and I am almost done with it. Very accessible- great if you want to do anti-racist work in the classroom.

so the next five days are all about nicole, alyson and rolita. nicole told me last night on the phone that when they put rolita to bed she asked "are we going to new york tomorrow?" and when they answered "yes" she said "I AM SO EXCITED" i mean really, doesn't that just melt your heart? it does mine.

so two quick things before i go:

1. thursday is my friend sarah's (who lives in atlanta) birthday. holla!

2. i heard this hilarious story from a friend of mine the other day. she has a niece who is two? four? years old and who is fascinated with her mom's pubic hair. so she asked her mom "mom, why do you have hair on your booty?" and her mom replied "well, because i'm a grown lady and grown ladies have hair on their booty." so the next time the little girl saw her gramma (the mother of my friend and the little girls mom) she said "grammy, when i grow up i am going to have hair on my booty- and its going to be PINK!" true story yall. i fucking love kids.

sadly, another loss

2006-03-08T18:23:00.000-05:00

gordon parks, the famous photographer and filmmaker died yesterday in manhattan.
he was an artistic genius and he will be missed. he was 93 when he died.

i would also like to mention that he was born in kansas, then moved to minneapolis and then to chicago.
midwest HOLLA!

so sad

2006-03-07T10:52:00.000-05:00

its so sad yall
dana reeve, wife of christopher reeve, died yesterday of lung cancer
she was 44
her poor kids, they have been through so much

please light a candle for her family

only five more states to go!

2006-03-03T23:55:00.000-05:00

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

my friend nifa showed me this.

if you want to do one, go here:

http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedstates

cuz baby its cold outside

2006-03-03T23:25:00.000-05:00

i seriously can't handle how cold it is outside once the sun goes down.
it should be against the law or something. i mean i know this has been a mild winter in general and i should shut it, but seriously it is days like today here in the north that make me REALLY miss the dirty south. but aside from freezing my ass off, what else have i been up to? let me recount to you.

1. jes got the summer internship she wanted at the innocence project. yes, that is right, re-read that last line. my sexy brilliant law student sweetie NOT ONLY got the public interest summer fellowship that pays her cold hard cash to work somewheres public interest-y this summer, she ALSO got this wicked awesome summer internship at the innocence project. for more info on the joint, go to:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

she got another offer from this prison reform organization that was her second choice and she went to the innocence project folks to see if they would counter offer (the lady she interviewed with at innocence project told her to contact them if she got any other offers first). so she did and they counter-offered. score for jes. i can't put into words how proud i am of her. its just like she sets these goals and she achieves every single one. truly an inspiration to me.

the lady she interviewed with is out of town for a week, so we won't get the details of the position until next week. i will be sure to pass it on to yall. as much as i love my sugar in ties and trousers, i am also happy to hear that she can wear jeans and tshirts (her uniform) and that she will surrounded by lots of queers and progressive folks at this job. good times.

2. while jes has been busy getting a job and doing her school work, i have had quite a bit of work work (that is, my job at emory) so that has been keeping me off the streets. the next three months will be busy with this job and things are slowly falling into place with all the programs i am coordinating so that feels really good. while i am not doing any actual writing for my dissertation, i have been doing data analysis as a first step to organize my next chapter, so i think that is a good thing. it would be better if i was doing data analysis AND writing, but i guess anything is better than watching ellen, starting over, dr. phil, oprah, paula deen and rachel ray all in one day while listening to larry meow incessantly. zoe my new therapist is helping me to be patient with my own process in this dissertation writing thing and on good days i can be. on bad days i convince myself i am a loser. no me gusta the bad days.

3. i partook in this project on monday night with my friend ali. its this street count where volunteers go out and talk to every person on the street in an assigned area to assess whether or not they are homeless. it was me, ali, and a bunch of her co-workers who were all very nice. we walked around bay ridge from midnight until two in the morning asking folks if they had a place to sleep that night. we talked to no one who identified as homeless and no one we identified as homeless but we did chat with a number of people who talked about being homeless in the past or struggling with housing in nyc b/c of high rent prices. it was pretty cold and even started snowing, but both ali and i dressed appropriately and stayed toasty the entire time.

it was supposed to take until 4am, so since we finished early, ali and i went to daisy's diner for some grilled cheese and fries-both were delish. on the way there (ali was driving) we saw this man (and when i say "saw" i mean "almost hit b/c he was in the middle of the road on a green light") with no shirt on sort of riding a bike and pushing a grocery cart full of maybe lead pipes. it was totally terrifying and strangely angelic at the same time. at the time i was just glad we did not hit him (it really wasn't as dramatic as it sounds) but either way, it was a bit eerie.

4. the past few days jes's friend pony (who lives in paris) has been in town so we have been running around town with him a bunch. today we went to the gym and did a little elliptical while jes was in class and then the three of us went into the city to shop and freeze our balls off. all in all it was a good time-except the freezing part.

ok so it is just about midnight and i am exhausted so i am going to hit the hay.
i didn't have internet or phone for the past few days so i was unable to say happy bday to my friend tanner in oakland. it was his bday on february 28th.

another terrible loss

2006-02-27T14:15:00.000-05:00

i just got an email from my friend nifa and i am sad to report the passing of author Octavia Butler.
She was best known for her amazing science fiction writing that really engaged race and gender.
She won a million writing awards and really there was no one else like her.
Please light a candle or say a prayer for her family.

For more information on her, you can go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_Butler

bowling in shaolin & shopping in manhattan

2006-02-22T18:08:00.000-05:00

oy i have been a horrible blogger these last few days. part of it is my job work has picked up and i am actually doing some work on my dissertation (not writing, data gathering and analysis-but at least its working toward the end goal of being done). anywho, i am here to redeem myself with stories of hilarity and many, many pictures. let us begin with our trip to STATEN ISLAND to go bowling last saturday night.

so, kim from supper club was born and raised in staten island. in celebration of her origins, we decided to load up seafoam and take a little field trip to showcase bowling allies on the island. but before we could partake in glow in the dark carpet and stinky red white and blue shoes, we had to eat dinner at none other than: APPLEBEE's. yeah, that's right dt and jes went to applebee's. see, we orginally planned on stopping at the BRAND NEW TGIFriday's in the mall, but apparently everybody and their fucking brother had the same great idea so the wait was over 45 minutes. it was RIDICULOUSLY cold out on saturday night and the waiting area was getting packed so rather than stand by the door and freeze our balls off, we went across the street TO THE OTHER MALL and ate at applebee's. they had not one thing vegetarian on the menu so ali had to ask them to make her a grilled cheese. to accompany her sandwich, she order a "side salad" which was enough lettuce for four families. it only cost $2.79. that is b-a-n-a-n-a-s! i got a tilapia filet with mango salsa (not great), jes got fish and chips (not great), glendda got herself a divine fried chicken salad and kim got delish chicken quesadillas. apparently, chicken is the way to go at applebee's. for dessert we shared a very delicous brownie sundae. because of a servers mistake we got two instead of one which was very nice. the entire meal cost less than $60. can't get that in manhattan, yo!

here is a picture of glennda and kim rockin the applebee's (see the sign behind them):

from dinner, we headed to showcase bowl, which, for the record, was pretty posh. each lane had a flat screen television and a computer with all these crazy graphics when you got a strike or a spare. nothing like any bowling alley i have hung at. we couldn't get a lane right away (it was saturday night and all) so we proceeded to the attached arcade. our first trip to the arcade was pretty good. jes and i played this game called "house of dead" (or something like that) where you shoot these zombies. take a look at the picture, don't i look butch?

here are some photos of kim & ali playing air hockey. i think kim won. but then when jes and kim played, jes won (they had been trash talking about this for DAYS):

just as they were finishing their game, our name was called and we proceeded to bowl. overall, everyone did great bowling. jes had the highest score, with glennda a close second. here is a picture of ali and glennda waiting for their turns. can you say "hello cleveland?"

two things made the whole bowling experience EXTRA special. first, we were sharing our ball retrieval system with four or five young girls who were hasidic. they all had on long denim skirts and tshirts with hoodies. and they all had pony tails. at first i think they were THRILLED that two cute boys (jes and kim) were going to be bowling across from them, and then i think they figured out who they were lusting after were not in fact, boys. they did A LOT of staring, but eventually i think our gregarious group gave them permission to get a little kooky too. they even asked jes to take a picture of them with their disposable camera. they left half way through our game and were replace by four dudes in sweatpants and one of the dudes superfemme girlfriend. for a minute i thought glennda and her were gonna have a smack down over the purplish pink ball glennda had been using, but it all smoothed out.

after our bowling time was up, we went back to the arcade, which had now been infested with obnoxious and violent little fuck face pre teen boys. these kids were beating the fuck out of each other in the corner of the arcade with no adult supervision in sight. they were running everywhere and bumping into us and running across our games. now i am a lover, not a fighter and it took everything in me to not lunge at a few of their throats. finally the worker told them to calm down, and they really didn't but at least they stopped their pre-teen fight club in the corner so that jes and ali could rock a little dance dance revolution. note the serious concentration:

ok so that was saturday and then on monday (because everyone had the day off from school and work) we went into the city to shop. the thing i needed the most was a new battery for the very computer i am typing on right now. i was also looking for some incredibles bubble bath. see my friends alyson and nicole are visiting soon with their babygirl and i wanted to have something special for her for bathtime. she LOVES the incredibles so i thought that would be a good place to start. glennda suggested this store called "rickys" and lo and behold here is what i found:

i was so excited to find this. the first one is the incredibles dad and the other one (the other side of the bottle) is the bad guy. i forget his name. i was also excited to pick up a few dish towels at crate and barrel. they are brightly colored and lovely. we also stopped in victoria's secret so i could look at these ipex bras everyone is telling me are so comfortable. for about the last year i have resigned to wearing sports bras b/c regular bras just hurt. so everyone i was with was sending me workers to measure me. finally i get to the dressing room, and this sweet young thing pulls out her measuring tape and starts feeling me up and shit. she was darling and complimented me on my tattoos and such. i ended up getting two: one that was lined and one that wasn't. i have worn the lined one all day and it hasn't started hurting yet. maybe this is the one to help me in the fight against gravity.

the other exciting thing that happened this weekend is that jes finished her first big paper of her second semester. it is apparently worth FIFTY PERCENT of her grade, which i think is pure craziness (i.e. "jennyness" for you l word fans). anywho, she made it through and turned it in. and here are pictures of her when she did:

and here is her happy dance:

this is very exciting for the both of us. just one more step to sexy lawyer and lots of suits and ties.
HOLLA!

an addendum to the snow pics

2006-02-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

now i don't know if yall look at the comments on this blog
but my big sister pointed out there was a little kid glaring at jes and i in the picture of us.
this is because the hill we were at apparently was for kids only
while we were there, ali saw her boss and he was like "who are you here with?" (meaning which children belong with you) and she's like "my friends donna and jes" and points to our grown selves.
anywho at work on monday he's like "yall were at the kids hill, there was a grown folks hill further up in the park"
oops
i thought the kids were glaring b/c of our rocking speed and technique
who knew

yet another reason i love jes...

2006-02-14T12:49:00.000-05:00

look at what she just sent me:

does it get any better than this yall?

happy valentines day.
remember, without love, there can be no revolution.

check this shit out yall

2006-02-14T09:09:00.000-05:00

so my friend glennda was hobnobbing with all the fancy queers in l.a. and she chatted with none other than eileen chaiken, creator of the l word. glennda told her that her and some buddies watch the show every sunday and have dinner. eileen said she would love to join us one sunday. glennda laughed it off and continued to chat. then she saw e.c. the next morning and she brought it up again.

yall, what if i have to watch the show with her? my tongue will be bleeding from me biting it so hard.

yikes.

happy day of love.

vicarious star sightings

2006-02-13T23:00:00.000-05:00

so if you read my previous post you know that my friend glennda was stranded in los angeles because of the snow here
now i would like to use "stranded" lightly in that it was 80-85 degrees and she was swimming and wearing flip flops
but she was away from her sweetie, so i guess that counts as stranded
anywho last night while out to dinner with a high school friend she saw none other than nicole richie and her ex fiancee dj am

glennda did not report on whether or not nicole actually ate, but i am going to guess, probably not.

then at LAX (the airport not the well known club) she saw the following:

1. maggie gyllenhal:

2. clea duvall (of "but i'm a cheerleader" and " all over me"):

and last and CERTAINLY not least, fabio:

how jealous are yall?

its beginning to look a lot like christmas

2006-02-12T17:59:00.000-05:00

ok so i first heard of the impending "blizzard" from higgins when i called her from the airport in atlanta. we had plans to get drinks on saturday afternoon and she asked if we still wanted to travel into the city with the blizzard coming and all. i was like "what blizzard?" she explained that nyc was supposed to get a bunch of snow dumped on it this weekend. i didn't really believe her just b/c our winter has been so ridiculously mild thus far, but i called jes anyways to tell her the good news (she is completely stoked about snow-southerner).

so in preparation we went to get sleds and made plans with ali to meet at 10am on sunday. it was chilly on saturday but there was no sign of snow. folks at the hardware store asked me if i really thought it was going to snow, i told them "it better if i am spending the money on the sleds." they laughed and looked at me like i am crazy but boy oh boy i bet they wish they were getting them a sled.

so the snow started last night. and it hasn't stopped yet now at 5:24pm. here is the pic jes took early this morning when mr. meowgi (aka larry) woke her up:

and here is another window in our room later in the morning, starring mr. larry:

here is the view out our kitchen window. perhaps you can make out the green plastic lawn chairs underneath all that snow:

so ali met us at our house at 10am dressed and ready to sled. the wind was blowing the snow right at our faces and it really hurt, but once we got walking, we warmed up and we were ready to go. here is a pic of ali and jes at our front door, ready to rumble:

so we headed toward prospect park in search of good hill. it took us about an hour to find one. we came upon a mom, dad and two girls who were sledding down a mini hill, but it just wasn't all that. so we continued on toward grand army plaza where both jes and ali were sure we would find the hill of our dreams to sled down. here is a pic of me and ali *slowly* walking through the knee high snow:

we trudged on, being passed by some crazy ass fuck nuts who were running some sort of race around the park IN THE SNOW. we could barely walk without falling and these dudes were jogging. go figure. anywho, we trudged on and there it was, off across the meadow- THE HILL. the light shown down on it, the squeals of children rang in our ears- we had found our sledding nirvana. we got there early enough that it wasn't too crowded. when we left before noon there was about twelve million children all with their yuppie parents forcing them down the hill. we did not kill any small children, so i guess it was good. anywho, here are the action shots. first up, ali rocking the blue disc:

here is jes and me after a run down the hill on the red sled:

and here is ali and jes, post sledding. ali is on the phone with nyc kim who is stranded in staten island. her sweetie glennda is stranded in los angeles. oh bother.

here is a picture of a street off of prospect park west that we passed coming home:

and here is our street:

the sledding was so much fun. by the end we were really catching some speed. what was most fun, was this was jes's first experience with a real snowstorm and i got to share that with her. ok i gotta go change the laundry an then do the second shift of shoveling the front of our building.

happy sunday yall.

last week

2006-02-12T17:12:00.000-05:00

yall the snow is ridiculous. don't worry, i have plenty of pics, but let me first catch you up on the last week.

i spent the better part of last week in atlanta for work. i had two meetings on wednesday. the first one was exhiliarating and incredibly productive and the second one was exhausting. i also got a bunch of work done meeting on the website, and my co worker susanna was able to upload some of it, so i am very happy about that. as always, whenever i go to atlanta to work, i get lots done, but then i also create a great deal of work for myself for when i return to brooklyn. it will keep me busy all this week.

i arrived into a very rainy atlanta in the afternoon and helped my co worker stacia with an event she coordinated. it was raining so hard when it ended that we offered the presdent of the university and the head of legal a ride back to the administration building in my little red rental car. luckily, we made it back safe. i spent monday and tuesday night with sarah and kim and it was great. on monday night we got grilled cheese sandwiches at this new restaurant in east atlanta called the graveyard. the sandwiches were delicious and the place is so beautiful. it was the perfect end to a cold and rainy night. on tuesday night we ate frozen pizza and struggled through another round of american idol. when it gets real bad, i plug my ears and hum and sarah told me that was cheating and i had to listen to it all. i just couldn't.

i spent wednesday and thursday night with dawn, gator, and bailey. on wednesday night dawn and i ate burritos from el myr and watched the grammy's until gator got home. overall i found the grammy's to be a bit boring and i am seriously over madonna and her purple leotards. on thursday morning i got to spend some quality time with bailey and gator while dawn slept. bailey is walking like a maniac (actually more like frankenstein) and is as cute as a button. he still has that real scratchy cry like he smoked a pack of cigarettes and his hair is getting longer and longer (and so are the curls around his ears- adorable). on friday morning we all went to ria's for breakfast before i headed to the airport. bailey was fascinated by the kitchen and spent the entire time turned around in his high chair watching the goings on in the kitchen. we also found that he is uninterested in real bacon and fake sausage.

it was great to re-connect with everyone in atlanta and it made me really miss folks once i got back to brooklyn. oh, yes and on thursday, i visited demian at liberty tattoo and go the rest of my magnolias finished. it took another three hours, but it finally done. here is a picture of it. the bottom blossoms will turn white like the top one once they heal. i really love it. its hella dry and itchy right now, and i can't wait until it is all healed up. i will post more pics then too.

now while i was hard at work in atlanta, jes was hard at work here in the big apple. last week was her summer internship interview week. she had four interviews and hopefully she will post about them herself. in general, they went well and i am thinking she will hear about a job over the next few weeks. but the real important part is how fucking sexy she looks in her professional gear. check it out yall:

i *seriously* can not wait until she gets to dress like this everyday for work. its gonna be a good thing.

ok last thing before i get into reports on the snow. on friday night ali, jes and i went to this place in the city called "FNB" and had delicious fake hotdogs. ali got just like ketchup and onions and mustard but jes and i got the "prairie dog" which has guac, tomatoes and cheddar cheese. then we all shared onion rings, regular fries and sweet potato fries. it was hella good. then the three of us walked on over to nowhere (the bar) and did kamakaze shots (i shit you not-in celebration of jes finishing her hell week) and then played erotic photo hunt. ali was a bit timid about touching the screen, but by the end she was touching ladies thongs and other naughty bits. together, ali and jes got the high score. GO TEAM!

then yesterday jes and i drove to the hardware store to get some sleds (i am so glad we did) and then to get some of her books at school. we also moved our car off our street b/c there is street cleaning tomorrow. later ali came over for a dinner of fake chicken fingers and annie's mac and cheese with steamed broccoli in it. eventually higgs joined us and we played a riveting game of cluedo (the british version of clue). it just so happens this game is both ali and higgs' favorite game so it was very exciting. i felt it was a bit hard to follow and i made an incorrect accusation and got kicked out the game, but it was hilarious to watch jes and ali talk trash about cluedo. here is a picture of us:

ok i am going to post in a minute about the snow. hang tight.

early mornings

2006-02-05T08:05:00.000-05:00

for the fourth or fifth day in a row, i have woken up at or near 6am and i can not get back to sleep. if time permits, i will usually go back to sleep around 8 or so and sleep until 10 or 11am. its great that i can get a little more sleep in but it kind of fucks with me for the rest of the day. i imagine today will be no different.

i think i am waking up for a number of reasons:

1. larry is meowing like a maniac and i don't want him to wake up jes and/or our upstairs neighbors

2. i am subconsciously really stressed out about making this last set of revisions on diss chapter #2 b/c it means starting a new chapter and being one step closer to finishing the degree-which i long for but also fear.

3. i think larry waking me up has re set my internal clock that my body just wakes up now whether he is meowing or not really. this happened when jes was opening like four days a week at caribou and i would go in with her real early. she would have to be up by like 5am or maybe 5:30 (i can't remember) and it got to where i didn't need an alarm, my body just woke up.

i don't really mind waking up early, i actually love the quiet of the morning while jes and the kitties continue to slumber. i love opening the blinds in the kitchen and watching the sun come up over the garden. it looks like this morning we will have clear blue skies and sun. i am already in a good mood. the hard part is that we stay up later here for whatever reason. maybe b/c the city just does that too you. folks eat later, stay at clubs later, whatever. so most nights i am not in the bed before midnight (which for those of you who know me is nothing short of a miracle) so six hours is really not doing me so good. and i have a superbowl/lword party to cook for and partake in today. that means rallying until AT LEAST 11pm while eating junk food.

perhaps i can take a little disco nap before we head to jes's school. she has her first interview for a summer fellowship. its from the public interest group on campus.

so on friday afternoon jes and i walked to atlantic station to get some stuff from target and ties for her from burlington coat factory (she needs them for the job fair). then we walked back to park slope, got a slice of pizza and met ali up at gingers, this chill lesbo bar i really like. as we were leaving the bar (around 10:30pm) ali said she was hungry for a grilled cheese. so on our walk home we stopped at Daisy's Diner on 5ave and 9th st. Both Jes and Ali got grilled cheese and shared fries. I got this crazy platter with tuna fish INSIDE a half of an avocado. it was DELISH. then we all walked home.

yesterday jes and i really slept in (i of course got up with larry, then watched terms of endearment on cinemax until 8am then fell back to sleep until 11am). we just putzed around until like 2pm when we headed to her school to do work. i fucked around a bunch on line and then did about an hours worth of work on the diss. ali had emailed us and tempted us to join her for a fake philly cheesesteak sammie in the city. the super researchers, ali and jes located the restaurant "curly's" (next to the gay bar nowhere) and we decided to meet up on the platform of the F train at 6pm.

curlys was delish. i got a philly cheese steak hold the onions and peppers. jes got a buffalo chicken sandwich with ranch dressing and ali got a burger with avocado and cheddar cheese. we all shared a bowl of curly fries. i think i liked mine the best. and the best part? neither jes nor i got sick. speaking of sick, i feel hella queasy right now. let me get a mint. yikes. i wonder if it was the mixture of grapefruit juice and green tea on an empty stomach. ugh. anywho after eating and training back to brooklyn ali went home and jes and i went to the YMCA and did a little ellipticalling (she watched the first harry potter-they were all just babies, and i watched an episode of the gasteneau girls-ugh). from there we walked home and watched "wedding crashers" while i did laundry. not the best movie ever, but funny in places and that rachel mcadams is a hottie.

ok i am going to crawl back into the bed with jes and hope this queasy goes away.

tomorrow is my friend yasmin's bday AND glennda and kim's three year anniversary. love to all!

any suggestions?

2006-02-04T14:44:00.000-05:00

yall during yoga on wednesday i had some time to look at my toes and i think my pinky toe has a fungus.
here is a pic, tell me what you think and if you have any suggestions for treatment:

its kind of hard to see, my camera was acting up

edit by jes: hey sarah, that would be the PERFECT frito for kim's port-a-potty chili...

ok, i am just fucking with you. that is a picture jes found on line when we searched "toenail fungus"
i do really think there is something funky about the pinky toe of my left foot, but its not as bad as the person in the picture.
i have started putting lamisil on it. has anyone dealt with this? if so, what do you suggest?

more later about my spotaneously wonderful afternoon and evening with jes and ali

i've been tagged

2006-02-02T17:51:00.000-05:00

so this friend of mine, joy sapinoso "tagged" me
so i have to answer all these questions:

LISTS OF 3

Three books I can read over and over:

1) Sula by Toni Morrison
2) The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
3) The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics by George Lipsitz

Three places I've lived:

1) Illinois (Morton Grove & Champaign)
2) Ohio (Columbus)
3) Georgia (Decatur- a small city near Atlanta)

Three TV shows I love:

1) Alias
2) Starting Over (not proud of that)
3) Everybody Hates Chris

Three highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I've never watched a single minute of:

1) Desperate Housewives
2) The West Wing
3) Commander in Chief

Three places I've vacationed:

1) St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
2) Brisbane, Australia (for a conference)
3) Elba Island, Italy (for a conference in Rome)

Three of my favorite dishes:

1) Some type of pasta with olives, or maybe penne with vodka sauce
2) Fish tacos
3) I love me a good California style black bean burrito

Three sites I visit daily:

1) www.perezhilton.com
2) www.bonnehomme.blogspot.com
3) www.emory.edu

Three places I would rather be right now:
*(all three b/c of friends)
1) Atlanta, GA
2) San Francisco, CA
3) Chicago, IL

Three bloggers I am tagging:

1) nifamatic
2) deweydew
3) flanimal

2 sads and 1 happy

2006-01-31T12:28:00.000-05:00

sad #1: alito the fuckface has been confirmed. keep an eye out for the locusts, its the end of the world as we know it

sad #2: coretta scott king has passed. light a candle for her family.

happy #1: our friend kennie and kelli had their baby girl emalee elizabeth. she is perfect in every way and she only took 52 hours of labor to get out. hot diggity dog yall, i got another little babygirl in my life.

more later on the lword and such.

ketchup

2006-01-29T13:48:00.000-05:00

yall i feel like i need a post to catch up on all the things that i have not written about
so this will feel a bit hodge podge, but will clear my blog brain for a new week
so lets get started

1. last week's supper club
last monday we had supper club at our house and that is when i got turned onto the enneagram groove by monique. i made a simple penne pasta with red sauce and cannellini beans (for protein) and then i *tried* to make this "everyday italian" recipe for baked breaded chicken tenders for the three meat eaters of the group. jes also tried one and said it tasted pretty good but they surely didn't look like the ones that giada made. maybe if i got a boob job and hair extensions and did my makeup like sophia loren, then my chicken tenders would look pretty too. oh bother. for dessert we had vanilla ice cream with chocolate, caramel, and homemade whipped cream. the kids loved it.

so after din din we did some enneagram tests. kim from supper club found another test to accompany the one i posted about before. it can be found at: www.9types.com; click on "new test by tal" and if you do it, post if that comes out with the same result that the last one did. if i remember correctly i was still pretty strongly a two.

here is the group excluding jes and i with their enneagram numbers parenthetically
LEFT TO RIGHT: kim (6,8), glennda (2,6), ali (3,8) & monique (1,3)

and here are their shoes (monique was in socks, so i did not include her in this photo):

a fun game might be to try and match the shoes with the folks they belong to. just in case you have some free time.

2. last week's l word episode:
now this is really a day late and a dollar short b/c i am about to watch another episode of l work tonight with the ladies, so let me be brief. this season, thus far, really really sucks my ass. i mean it is not only infuriating in its normal ways, but the writing is substandard and incredibly disjointed. i am frustrated mostly by this b/c i know people *in my life* who could write better and more engaging storylines. why doesn't eileen chaiken pay them the big bucks to *the* lesbian story on television?

my biggest gripe about the show right now is the character of moira. i am super identifying with her b/c her character is a 'fish out of water' kid from "the midwest." she meet jenny (crazy) in skokie, illinois (where i went to high school) and had been living in wilmette (near my high school). anywho she just seems super one dimensional: bad fashion (flannel with cut off sleeves), simple minded (culture-less only understands computers, not art and literature), butch and way into butch/femme roles (which is seen as immature or some how underdeveloped), poor (can't afford the fancy dinners the other girls can even though they never seem to be at work), and of course she drives a ford f-150 (what i drove all through high school)

their treatment of her seems butchphobic, classist, and entirely stereotypical and b/c, in some ways, she is the closest thing to what represents me (i am less butch and entirely less good looking) i am really taking their portrayal of her to heart. and the discussions on the l word chat boards are really disheartening. i just don't get butchphobia in the lesbo community. i mean i *get* it (i know why it happens), but it just makes me so sad. anywho. that is all i have to say about the l word for now. the rest of the characters are pretty boring for now. i do like alice a little more. i mean i guess i better understand and identify with the crazies she is working through. i secretly want her to get with moira. they are two i identify with most. well i like bette's fierceness and overt political action but she is a bit too bougie for me.

i am going to TRY to write a quick review of the episode every monday morning. we'll see if that happen.

3. feminist writing group:
i had my feminist writing group (minus on person who couldn't make it) over to our apartment yesterday afternoon. we talked about my second chapter of my disseration. i have been really lucky in that lots of my friends and my committee have already looked at this chapter, but my advisor said i need to add a more complete conclusion. so i did that and the group took a look at the draft of the complete chapter. yall, whenever i am feeling blue about my diss and thinking i am a loser, i am going to think about yesterday. it was a really great meeting.

see all the other women in the group graduated with doctorates from emory (three from women's studies and one from the ila which is my department). all have real jobs (three professors and one researcher) and they are all wicked smart and feminist-yippeee. anywho they just gave me such tremendous feedback on my work. useful, helpful stuff. and my favorite part was that they said things like "well i think you should think about such and such here, but not for the diss, that is more for the book." the fact that *they* could envision this as a project beyond the dissertation gave me the courage to do the same. and it helped me to distinguish between the two projects. one is a requirement of my degree and one is the foundation of my career (that sounds dramatic and i don't mean it to).

anywho it got me excited and re-energized about my project and about my career and that feels really good. they all gave me some really specific strategies on how to incorporate some of their suggestions and lisa d. suggested i do it in the next week and then leave it alone. i like the idea of the deadline b/c otherwise i will spend the next two months on this chapter and never move on to the next one. for today, i see a light at the end of the tunnel. another fun tidbit: higgins brought jes a box of heart shaped junior mints. they are delicious.

4. the movie transamerica:
so last night after the ladies left, jes and i went to the pavilion with hopes of seeing brokeback mountain (she has not yet seen it). though we got there about twenty minutes early, it was sold out. oh bother. so we went and saw transamerica instead. jes didn't really know what the movie was about, and i am not sure she was so thrilled we were seeing it, but i think we both ended up liking it. like it or lump it, felicity huffman did do a pretty good job and there were some other really interesting and complex characters. movies here are hella expensive, so we decided we will try one more time to see brokeback at the theater and then stop with the movies out for a while. i mean $21 for both of us to get in is a bit steep.

after the movie, we stopped off at the windsor cafe and shared a grilled cheese with fries and their delcious shake made of soy milk, peanut butter and chocolate sauce. LOVES IT. it was just enough food to tide me over and not feel too greasy or full. then we came home, jes watched the rest of "march of the penguins" (very cute but also sad and lovely), and then we hit the hay.

5. the eat right for your type book:
as per the suggestion of my friend mary from san francisco i ordered some used copies of those books about eating for your blood type (i am O negative). she had told me that o folks should eat lots of meat and not a lot of wheat products (exact oppostite of what i do) and then my sister told me that my dad just found out that he has a severe allergy to wheat and that it is genetic. his allergy has manifested itself lately in some serious stomach problems and according to my sister, the no wheat diet he has gone on has monumentally changed his life. mary has been telling me for years i should try and cut wheat out. so i briefly read through the book and most of it really makes sense. a lot of the foods it says i should avoid i do naturally (they don't appeal to me or they make me sick) but the "eat more meat" thing is really hard for me to accept. AND it says i should avoid avocados and all citrus fruit and i LOVE avocados and citrus fruit and neither EVER give me belly problems.

so my question to you all, dear readers, is this: what do you know about this blood type diet? is it scientifically based or it is a money making scam? i just don't know and i want to try it but i can't bring myself to eating red meat, even if it is organic.

ok, that is all for now. i need to eat something b/c i have the shakes and then i am going to write some letters AND do my taxes.

happy birthday to kirsten. it is her bday today.

so fucking funny

2006-01-28T10:25:00.000-05:00

my wonderful techy savvy gfriend found the link for the HILARIOUS saturday night live skit that we saw last month. hopefully the link will work.

the chronic-WHAT-cles of narnia!

ok so just a quick note to let yall know that we went out to a new bar last night. it is called savalas and its in williamsburg. our friends sandy and jaime invited us to this new ladies night there called "pantiehos." no worries, we did not wear pantyhose, or our panties, nor did we act like ho(e)s. it was fun and kim from america's next top model was there. jes saw her at the bar. she was wearing a turtleneck and an orange courdoroy jacket. anywho they played pretty good music: some danceable and some more 80's that i enjoyed but just kind of stood on the wall for. there must have also been some sort of lesbo make out couple drink special b/c there were a few couples (three to be exact) that literally just stood on the dance floor and made out.

now i am not saying that i have never done this, i have. but i mean really. if you go home, you can fuck too. it just bugs when folks take up space on the dance floor licking each others face and groping. am i getting old? maybe.

so yeah it was a good time. we met some of sandy's friends and got our freak on a little. jes showed the kids a few of her dance moves. they were jealous.

we are going to head to the y for a little work out and then i have my feminist writing group coming over this afternoon so i need to do a ten minute tidy. oh man, we took larry and emily to the vet yesterday for a check up and to get their blood drawn to stay on top of their different levels (both has questionable kidney levels which i guess is what happens as cats get older). anywho we really like our vet- we go to HOPE veterinary clinic on atlantic ave. and the doctor we go to is really nice and indulges our weirdness about our cats and all. anywho, we get out to the receptionist to pay and she is like "that will be $420" and i was like "you are kidding right?" and she is like smiling and says "no, i am not" and i was like "are you shitting me" (very appropriate to a stranger donna). and she was like "no, i'm not" and laughed. apparently the blood workup for both cats is a bit pricey. now its all good, i put it on my card and all. but jesus christo, i wasn't ready for that. i just laughed all the way back to the car.

ok gotta jam.

when i grow up...

2006-01-26T15:57:00.000-05:00

i wanna look like this yall:

i know i know
she works out from 3-6 hours a day
and airbrush
and photoshop
and all of that

but for reals yall
she is HOT

a good movie to check out

2006-01-25T21:13:00.000-05:00

hey yall

jes and i watched the documentary "murderball" last night.
put it on your netflix, its a good one

i know i said i would post about the l word, and i hope to do that tomorrow. stay tuned.

and how sad is it that chris? penn (sean penn's brother) died.
again, i don't know the guy, but it still sucks when someone so young just up and dies.

i also found out that dr. nellie mckay, the famous african american writer and scholar died yesterday as well. this is very sad as i knew she was struggling with cancer b/c one of the women in my atlanta writing group named lynn had her as an advisor. i believe she started the african american studies department at university of wisconsin at madison. a true trailblazer. i found an article about her life and death yesterday and i loved that one of her colleagues talked about how she could have worked at being a real rock star academic (i mean, she was, but what i think he meant is that she could have been pulling in all this money for herself on the lecture circuit), but instead she used her time to work at building community. how profound is that? rest in peace professor mckay.

ok i stink. i am going to take a bath.
sweet dreams.

its tuesday morning

2006-01-24T09:27:00.000-05:00

and i need to do a little workey work
my diss & the kind i get paid for
so i give you this nugget to nibble on until i can post later

take this quick enneagram test:

http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/QUEST/quest.asp

and then post in comment what you get (if you want)
me and the supper club took this test and then discussed our outcomes
i will post about those later along with PHOTOS (yippee)

during a break later i will let you know my top three most probable

happy day yall!

my brain is turning to mush

2006-01-22T18:40:00.000-05:00

now mind you
jes and i did not actually get up out the bed until 11am today, largely in part because larry took to waking us up about every hour on the hour meowoing from before dawn until about 9am. i keep thinking this is good training for kids. anywho larry (and his siblings) have slept THE ENTIRE DAY. i am not kidding. he and emily sleep just twelve inches from me as i type.

so yeah, i have had the entire day to do whatever:
clean, write dissertation, work, work out, grocery shop, letter write, explore the big apple.

but here is what i have done:
tidied the kitchen
cleaned the bathroom
washed the couch covers
washed the small rugs
taken the large rug out back and beat it with a broom
ate some cereal
ate some lasagna (that i had frozen weeks ago; it still tastes great)
wrote my goddaughter alix a short letter
watched "the bodyguard," some HGTV show on unique houses in the cold north, watched parts of "you've been served," and now i am watching "pretty woman"
ate some sunflower seeds
drank some chocolate soy milk
printed out pictures of alice from the l word b/c i want her old hairstyle

it looks like a long list, but really most of the day has been about me, on my ass, in front of the television. and in little over an hour, i go to glennda and kim's to watch the worst show ever: the l word
i just hope they show more of carmen in her undies. thank god for carmen

this weekend was low key but enjoyable. on friday night i met jes at her school with hopes of looking at suits in downtown brooklyn and then heading to dinner and a movie. we stopped at banana republic, and as usual, were invisible to all working there. so we gave up and headed to dinner. we went to this place in maybe cobble hill or downtown brooklyn called "pacifico." jes was not nuts about it, but i liked it. we got *very* strong margaritas, jes got this HUGE plate of nachos and i got this delicious plate of grilled salmon, guacamole, mango, pineapple, and some other stuff. it was very good. after dinner we took the train over to near our house and saw the movie "match point" with scarlet johannson. it didn't suck, but i would wait for it to come out on dvd if you have not seen it yet. she was divine looking of course, and played the part well. i was quite surprised at the arc of the plot and the ending.

after working/studying on saturday morning, jes and i headed out to soho to continue looking for a suit for her. she has a summer internship job fair at nyu next week or the week after and needs what i call "teacher clothes" for it. the hunt for a suit started out rocky. there is no way in hizzel that jes is going to rock a women's suit. she would be uncomfortable and that is no good when you are being interviewed. so we started looking at men's suit. unfortunately, most places do not carry suits smaller than size 36. she needs more like a 34 or maybe 32, so we were shit out of luck there too. we decided that she would be best in a nice pair of trousers, a crisp shirt, a sweater, and a tie. so we spent the remainder of the day acquiring said clothing. she got a few nice pair of women's trousers from gap (and i think they will fit me, yippee!), a few sweaters, and a few fitted shirts. she just needs to get a few nice affordable ties and i think she is ready to go.

after our day of shopping, which strangely exhausts me- we met up with higgins at nowhere for a little buy one get one free drinks and, of course, a little erotic photo hunt. higgs was rocking a cute new outfit from marshalls. a little black wrap around shirt and cute flowy black pants, all of which tied in nicely to her RED SNAKESKIN BOOTS. hello hoochie shoes. she looked great. she had like twelve different events and/or dates to go on after drinks with us, and she was happy to report she did not get derunk at any of them. go higgs!

after higgs left jes and i went to kate's joint for a little din din and then back to nowhere to be friends with christian. i was so exhausted so we left fairly early to come home and *try* to watch our netflix movie "murderball". it had a scratch on it so it didn't work. i was so very sad b/c i wanted to watch it. i watched about one minute of saturday night live and then promptly fell asleep.

ok larry is up and- big surprise here- meowing. i must tend to his needs

tomorrow is my friend elin's birthday. happy birthday!

from the snowy mountains to the sandy beaches

2006-01-18T16:27:00.000-05:00

happy hump day yall. while it is the middle of the week for most of you it feels like monday to me. the fact that it is rainy and super windy here in brooklyn does not help, but despite all of that, i am actually having a pretty good day. right now i am waiting for someone from emory's theater studies department to call me back which means i am getting some WORK done and that feels good. larry is meowing again. let me get him some treats...

ok, so jes and i just returned from a trip to colorado to see my sister kath and her family. we arrived in colorado late on thursday night. jes and i were both exhausted so we pretty much chatted a bit with kath and greg and then hit the hay. on friday we went to look at kath and greg's house they are building. here is a picture of it from the front:

they were working on the deck out back and preparing the front for a sidewalk and driveway. kath had hoped we could put our handprints in the sidewalk, but it ended up there were not at that point yet. after checking out the house we went and got ben's haircut. he goes to this place where they put the kids in little cars and let them watch videos (he watched bob the builder) and then while they are distracted by tv crack, they get their hair cut. very cute. ben did great and even got a little sticker. we then went to the whole foods, picked up some groceries and ate lunch. after that we went home and i think ben and i took a nap while jes studied and kath did something, i don't remember what.

on saturday, greg (kath's husband), jes and i went snowboarding at copper mountain. kath wasn't feeling well so she stayed home with ben. copper mountain is about 2.5 hours from their house in colorado springs. i have never been there nor had jes. now both greg and jes are seasoned skiers, though greg had not skied for about three years and jes had not for maybe more like ten years. i have skied a handful of times and snowboarded once. greg has snowboarded a number of times and jes never has. the drive there was uneventful save for my bladder almost bursting in the back of kath's suv. the problem is that i get so dehydrated in colorado so quickly that i am drinking like twelve glasses of water a minute (not really) and so i had to pee REAL BAD and of course we hit traffic and then a stretch of road with no bathroom and i thought i was going to die. thank god we got to a gas station and i peed for like seven minutes straight. it was divine. when we got to the mountain it was sunny and warm: a perfect day for snowboarding.

well greg took us up the lift, which, by the by scares the living shiznit out of me. i am always afraid i am going to fall off and then i am afraid of falling flat on my face as i get off it. of course i did fall off the lift, but out of the way of the next batch of skiers, so that is good. it ended up that this here lift took us to the TOP of the mountain- the land of blue and black runs, so we had to shimmy our way over to the green area. we went down this mountain that sort of looked greenish, but was really more blue. i had a great time. i would go about ten feet and then throw myself down b/c i was going so fast and then i would laugh my ass off. jes got pretty frustrated, but eventually (especially when we got to the green runs) got the hand of it. luckily greg took some photos on his cell phone. as you will see, i am on my ass in every pic, b/c that is where i was most of the afternoon- on my ass or on my knees. but i had a great time anyway. and it was a total body work out. i was sore for days. i love the pic of jes standing up and snowboarding. i think she looks hot.

it was a lot of fun and really tiring. after we went out to eat and then got some booze for the bears game on sunday and a surprise bday ice cream cake for kath. her birthday was sunday too.

sunday morning began as everyone's bday should begin. with breakfast from waffle house. kath and greg have never been, so jes and i took them. i think they enjoyed it. jes studied the rest of the morning while the rest of us went back to the house that is being built and ran some errands.

here we all are in front of waffle house. mmm i can smell the hashbrowns now:

and here is one of ben trying to look like nicole richie

and one of kath, greg and ben in front of the fireplace in the new house:

and lastly, a cute one of ben and kath. ben is in his new brooklyn sweatshirt jes and i got him for xmas and kath is in the shirt we got her for her bday:

two cute things about ben:
1. he loves to put his hands in his pockets. that is just how he walks around or evens sits watching tv. its adorable
2. on the ride to the airport, we taught him a new word: boomshakalaka. he kept saying it. so cute

so yeah sunday we watched the bears lose (oh bother) but ate and drank like kings while doing it. then we watched napoleon dynamite (kath and greg had not seen it). we left out of csprings on monday and made it into atlanta (where our connection was) just fine. but the flight from atl to nyc was overbooked and we got bumped BUT we got $400 vouchers, dinner and breakfast. they also offered us a hotel, but instead we went to hotel kim and sarah and watched the golden globes and last sunday's l word. the globes were really good and funny. the l word was painful. i mean really. the only thing good about it was carmen in her underwear. damn she has a body on her.

we got home, eventually, on tuesday afternoon. shortly after we arrived we drove to east brooklyn to pick up a package from azad. he sent me my new sorrel boots that i LOVE. i wore them out in the rain today and my feet stayed dry and toasty. he also sent jes a chicago bears hoody to welcome her into the family of da bears. she can't wait to wear it.

just a few hours ago i got a call from my supper club friends glennda and kim. those lucky ducks are on vacation in st. croix, virgin islands. i am jealous beyond belief really. anywho they called and told me there was a beach cam on their beach and i should look and see if i could see them. sure as shit i logged on and there they were. i saved a still of them and here it is. you can't really distinguish them (kim has the shorter hair and the jersey on; glennda with the longer hair and tshirt). anywho you can see the divine sandy beach and the ocean. ugh. i wish i was there right now.

it was really neat b/c glennda would be like "i am waving at you right now" and then thirty seconds later i would see a snapshot of her waving at me. of course, like a dork, i waved back.

that's all for now. have a good day yall.

no me gusta technology yall

2006-01-11T13:23:00.000-05:00

so i am coming at you from the tea lounge across the street from the co op. within an hour or two this place will be swarmed with small children and their caretakers (mostly nannies, some moms and maybe one dad) who are paying little to no attention to them as they run around, scream, and cry. don't you wish you were here?

why oh why am i out an about, dressed, with my contacts on, instead of in my pjs, with my glasses on at home? well that would be because on tuesday our modem went out. they have been drilling and digging in front of our house and some cable dudes came by to "fix" something while jes was taking her final on tuesday. they didn't fix shit yall. so now we are without:

1. internet
2. home phone
3. TELEVISION

you know what that means? when i am home all i can do is sleep or work on my dissertation. DAMN YOU TIME WARNER! so i came here to get some work work (my job) done and to check email. then i will run to the co op and then head back home and work on my dumb dissertation. oh bother.

jes finished her final in enough time to to take it to school and upload it there (since we had no internet access. luckily it went down JUST AFTER she downloaded her exam- talk about lucky, yo). anywho she feels good about it and now all she does is wait for her grades. today she started classes. no rest for the wicked i guess.

last night we actually went out. our friends glennda and kim (of supper club fame) invited us out to starlight bar for some friends of theirs bday celebration. it ended up the bar was closed for a holiday party (whateva) so we went to another bar down the street called phoenix. this is the bar that jes walked through with about nine squares of toliet paper stuck to her shoe last time she was there. that's hot.

anwyho it was nice to bust chats with kim & glennda. after that we went to this show at the cake shop? store. it was tami hart and some other lady. they were rockin' and then after that was bonfire madigan. fucking amazing yall. the only thing that bugged was that the background tracks were too loud and you couldn't hear her voice or cello? bass? enough. she has an amazing amazing voice. oh and she had this dude who was playing the flute and beat? boxing (or is it b boxing. i think its beat boxing) AT THE SAME TIME, or like really close together. it was b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

we ran into our friend sally who is in law school at cuny. i met her through sandy (our america's next top model friend). it was fun chatting with her. she had never heard madigan's music and quickly was enchanted. i also got to meet sally's sis rochelle or rachel? i forget. she was real smart. we talked about grad school and finding jobs after we finish school. scary stuff really. we had to leave the show early b/c jes had class today. i was EXHAUSTED and fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.

ok the vitamin water i am drinking is weighing on my bladder, so i am going to head out. happy martin luther king jr.'s bday. and happy birthday to my big sister kath. her and mlk share a bday.

also, a discussion point: angelina jolie is really pregnant with brad pitt's baby (says people mag. look at the pic, she looks like shes got a bun in the over). what do you think about this?

another discussion point? now lindsay lohan says she is neither bulimic nor does she do drugs. discuss.

an addendum

2006-01-08T16:11:00.000-05:00

my brain is swiss cheese and i forgot to report on my friday afternoon lunch with my friend molly. we ate at this new joint on campus called soba. she got some greens with chicken on it and i got some cheese ravioli with a red sauce that had olives i believe- i think that's why i got it. it was ok. then we went to caribou and chatted about life and school and making beer and such. she got a latte and i think i got a decaf coffee with soy milk. it was great to see molly and maybe next time we will get kooky and get lunch off campus.

here is the totally nutty thing, i have no idea what i did after lunch or on friday night. maybe sarah can help me with that too.

hi lovers

2006-01-07T23:34:00.000-05:00

jes and i just got back from yummies and beers with higgins in the city and then harry potter movie and one more beer at nowhere the gay bar in the city that was full of straight folks

larry is still meowing fyi. its making me crazy.

jes just took a look at my last post and let me know i missed two very important things (i imagine as she thinks on it she will point out other omissions, but for now you get two).

1. our first meal of 2006 was at none other than waffle house. yep, you got it. and it was delish. i had some extra crispy hash browns with cheese and a pecan waffle. to drink i had a tomato juice. jes had the same kind of hash browns, raisin toast and grits with sugar at which time both sarah and kim told jes to hand over her "southern girl" card. sarah got the patty melt sandwich with some hashbrowns and kim got the philly cheese sandwich with hashbrowns. wait, i may have gotten that wrong. sarah will post and let me know. basically, sarah's meat was like cut up sirloin and kim's was a meat patty. i think. either way, they liked what they got and it was all some kind of meat and cheese and maybe onions or something on bread. yeah waffle house.

2. our trip home was hellacious. clearly i had blocked it out. our flight from atl to charlotte (on route to nyc) was cancelled b/c of tornados or some shit. they sent us over to delta for this other flight. by the time we got to the counter to get our boarding passes it was too late. so back over to us airways we went on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FUCKING AIRPORT. oh, did i mention we were rocking our BRAND NEW LUGGAGE? yeah we went to kmart and got one large rolly and two carry on rolly suitcases. so we had that AND each of us had a backpack. mine weighed twelve thousand pounds b/c i had my dinosaur of a work computer on my back. that felt GREAT on my sunburn feeling new tattoo i tell you. anywho back to the fucknuts at us airways where we wait for an hour to get a ticket on a 5:30 plane to newark, new jersey (best we could do). the flight took off at 9pm. for real. but at 7:30 they were all "GET ON THE PLANE WE HAVE TO TAKE OFF IN TWELVE MILLISECONDS" so jes is RUNNING from bk with her fake burger sandwich and i am holding both our bags in line. and then we sit on the plane for about an hour. that felt good. also we got a huge beer at the international concourse at like 2pm and sat next to a not so nice white german woman who could speak little to not english UNTIL she began to yell and chastise the young black woman for being rude and not bringing her a dish that looked exactly like the menu. the server woman was like "it doesn't come with lettuce anymore" and the german woman is all "i talk to your manager" and then she called her a shit in german. its the only word i know. at first it was making me very nervous b/c she was thisclose to us, but after half my giant beer, i didn't care so much.

jes has reported a third thing to me:

3. on wed jes decided to go to vinyasa yoga with me and was like "its just stretching, right? and i was like "you are going to die" and guess what? she got her ass beat. she was bright red, sweating her balls off. now she knows the joys of yoga. i told her if she keeps at it, she will look like madonna in NO TIME.

hell to the yizzah

tomorrow night we start our L Word viewing with the supper club kids. they have a very strict "no talk" policy during the viewing. i am bringing toothpicks to chew on.

i'm back yall

2006-01-07T08:15:00.000-05:00

happy 200sexxy yall. i think i got that name for this year from perezhilton.com but i am going to use it to describe our goal to get in better shape this year. jes and i call it "operation 200sexxy".

so its just about 7am and i am up on this fine saturday morning because larry will not stop meowing. seriously it is incessant. he did stop for five minutes while he laid on me about an hour ago, but he is back at it again. it is driving me loopy. he has food and water so i am not sure what it is about. but it needs to stop soon. i imagine this is what it will be like to have a baby. good times.

so i am sorry i have not posted an update for so long. i was feeling a bit blue before the holidays so i spent a lot of my time in front of the tv. i figured you all watch tv so i didn't need to report on it. then when we got to atlanta i had less than ideal access to the internet. see we stayed at sarah and kim's and jes's folks house- both have wireless; but we couldn't get on their networks. i had outstanding access at my work, but while i was there i was busting ass working so i didn't have time to blog. the past few days i have been fretting over this fellowship application, but i sent it off yesterday afternoon so i think i am back on track. i have plenty of pictures, so let me get started.

we arrived into atlanta on christmas eve and headed to marietta to stay with jes's folks. we both had a real hankering for taco bell at 10pm on xmas eve and unfortunately, none were open. so instead we had chips and dip that were DELISH. after chatting a bit with her folks we hit the hay. i was exhausted. xmas morning was lovely. very chill. fire burning. pyjamas all day long. naps, presents and i even painted my toe nails red with my new pedicure kit. as always, jes's folks were hella generous. along with all the little stuff they got us, they got us each target cards and TIVO. hello, did you read that closely? yeah you got it, we got TIVO. i have no idea how to work it, but jes does and we both agreed that when i finish my diss we can get real cable. i can't wait. i will NEVER leave the house. here is a pic of jes with her folks. please note they all have their new holidays scarves on:

this photo gives you an idea of what jes did for most of xmas day- she got two new gameboy games in new york for our trip:

on monday jes went with her folks to chattanooga to visit jes's gramma. i went to work at emory and got a ridiculous amount of work done. it's stunning to me what i can get done when i have an office and everyone else is not there. i LOVE working at emory on holidays. it is so quiet and i get so much done. that night i had pizza over at dawn and gators house and baby bailey went BONKERS for me. i mean dawn and i were sitting on the floor in front of the fire to block him from getting to it and he was crawling all over me and loving on me. i mean really it made my heart burst with happiness. i was certain he had forgotten me and would freak out if i tried to pick him up, but in general, he seemed really happy to see me. i went and picked up jes and we hung out with dawn and gator some more and then went back to sarah and kim's where we were staying. they were in new orleans and mississippi for the first half of the week and they let us stay in their lovely home. its like a bed and breakfast. for real. AND they have cable. i sat in front of the tv drooling as much as i could. i have learned that i love "meet the barkers" and i am not sure why. there i admitted it. i ain't ashamed.

ooh i was suddenly starving, so i made me some fake bacon. our frig is so empty it's pretty sad. seriously. brita water, a few amstel lights, bread, fake turkey, last nights leftovers and some shredded cheese. and one chocolate pudding. i MUST grocery shop. i think i will go up the fancy key foods this morning before the crowd hits. the one with the parking lot. yes, that is what i will do when i am done here.

so one night early in the week, we went to taqueria del sol with gator and dawn. we like to call it taqueria de sausage b/c that is what gator thought we said one time we suggested it for dinner. i am not sure either of them have ever ordered sausage there. anywho, here is a cute pic of us. bailey was hungry so he wasn't so happy here:

once dawn got some food in him, he perked up. so then we played this great game where he would put his arms in the air and then we would do the same and yell "yippee." it was a good time. you had to be there. i imagine the pitcher of margaritas that gator, jes and i shared also helped in the hilarity of this.

after taq de sol, we ran by our friend michelle & john's house. we used to babysit for their three kids when we lived in atlanta and they paid very well. their kids are ANGELS, so it was almost silly we even got paid. anywho, we hung with the girls and drank some wine with michelle. here is a picture of me and the sweet babygirl katie:

and then one of me and her big sis lindsey:

the next night, which was wednesday, we watched bailey while dawn and gator went to dinner and a movie and fell in love all over again. it was really fun. here is a pic of the whole family:

and here is one of the lovahs:

they went and saw brokeback mountain and the loved it. while they were gone we got to play with bailey, feed him and BATHE him, which was really fun. of course, we had to mess with his hair while he was in the bath. here is a few photos of that:

now much of thursday we spent waiting to get tattooed or getting tattooed. i LOVE my tattoo but it is still a bit crusty. once it's all healed, i will have jes take some photos and i will post them. i can't wait to get it finished. it is going to be so lovely.

we spent new years eve day and night with sarah and kim. it was very chill and really nice. we went to gravity pub, drank beers and played darts. here is a pic of kim bringing the heat at the dart board:

and here is one of sarah and kim as lovahs:

now i don't know if you can tell but sarah had this crazy sweater on. it was almost like a throw blanket with arms and she would like wrap it around her waist. i don't really get how it works, but it was real cute on her.

anywho we also met up with my friend angie b. at gravity. it was nice to get a chance to chat with her:

now i would be remiss if i didn't tell you about sweet ashley, the server at the gravity that kim has a crush on and i have come to appreciate as well. normally she is real nice and chats with us while kim and i try to hit on her. she wasn't having that so much on new years eve and at one point i said something to her and she pretty much dismissed me immediately. as she walked away i said "she hates me" and kim nearly wet her pants laughing. for the rest of our time in atlanta, kim kept razzing me about how i ruined things with sweet ashley.

yeah so larry is meowing incessantly again. i am going to look this up online and find out if there is something wrong with him. i will keep you posted.

the worst blogger ever

2005-12-30T09:47:00.000-05:00

yall i know it has been over a week (maybe two?) since i have posted and i can't take much time to post now either. i am trying to squeeze in a few hours of work before i have lunch with my friend molly. jes is getting her haircut right now and then having lunch with one of her committee members from georgia state. the only thing i want to quickly report on is that i got the FIRST HALF of my magnolia tattoo yesterday. it is so lovely. i will take some pics and post them when i get back to new york. yeah so i sat in the chair for FOUR HOURS and the top half is totally done and the bottom half is just outlined. i had this guy demian from liberty tattoo do it. he is so great and cool. i am really glad that i went to him for it. it is real sore and feels like a very bad sunburn (this is normal for tattoos) and i had a hard time sleeping last night- lots of tossing and turning and worrying whether or not i was bleeding and smearing ink all over sarah & kim's ALL WHITE bed. but alas, i did not, the saran wrap kept all the funk in. i can't wait to get it finished. it is so lovely.

ok i have to work now. i miss my kitties and my friends in new york but at the same time i love the warmth of atlanta and all the people i love here. its gonna be hard to leave them again. happy new year.

thank god for sweaters

2005-12-18T10:47:00.000-05:00

so my sister has this cat named holmes
he gets little dreds on his belly so she has to get him shaved
then he looks a little bit like a dinosaur:

she lives in colorado springs, where it is cold during the winter
so here is how she dealt with the situation:

thank god for sweaters

two cute muffins

2005-12-17T12:41:00.000-05:00

check out my darling nephew ben:

and my cousin nancy's baby tre:

on amazon, lesbian erotica, art openings & "gay" cowboys

2005-12-17T11:23:00.000-05:00

so it's been a minute since i posted and therefore this will appear a bit disjointed. perhaps if i make a list, a sort of an agenda for this posting, you will be less confused.

things to be discussed in this post:

1. my run in with amazon.com last thursday morning
2. my run in with new york kim's lesbian erotica reading
3. my run in with some seriously famous people at dusty's art show
4. my run in with some homo cowboys on the silver screen with supper club gals last night

so we begin, please open your textbook to www.amazon.com

the other morning i was checking my email as i do every morning and i see on my emory account i have an email from amazon about a recently placed order. funny thing is, i have not purchased anything on amazon for weeks. so i open it and find out that in fact amazon is telling me i have purchased a medical textbook for my friend in VIETNAM (!) and my amex has been charged, oh only $268. i was all "WHAT?????" so, in good dj fashion, i began to panic and started to frantically search for a phone number for amazon. not so easy to find, by the way. even JES couldn't find it (i called to interrupt her finals studying at school). finally i found it and called. dude on the other line was less than helpful, but i figured out how to cancel the order before it actually got shipped. i wanted dude to assure me this would not happen again. he told me to email some address. i did and it got bounced back. so i called again. talked to a lady this time. she was a bit more helpful than dude number one. she said she erased all my credit card numbers off of amazon. all i had on there was my amex and my work pcard. she also let me know that there were maybe six different emails on my account, only three of which i recognized and/or authorized. we deleted all those too.

so i went back to make sure all was well and lo and behold, there was another email about another purchase from amazon. you can imagine by now that i was ready to throttle someone. this time someone purchased a $300 gift certificate and had it sent to their aol email address. again charged to my amex. so i called for a third time, talked to an angel named amanda who took care of all of it, changed my pass word and sent my shit to the gift cert. department who cleared it all up. i will buy nothing from amazon for the rest of my life if i can help it.

then thursday night we had not ONE but TWO events to go to. now to set the stage a little. it is freezing cold sleet/ice/raining when we leave AND there is a good chance the MTA (train and bus system) will strike at midnight which means if we are not home, we are FUCKED basically. and to top all that off, jes has a final the next morning and she is not completely prepared for it when we leave the house at 7pm on thursday night. she studies her outline while i start to doze off as we speed into manhattan on the F train. we first go to a reading at the KGB lounge in the city. it is for the newest anthology of lesbian erotica. new york kim has a piece in it, so we are going to support her, but she makes it very clear she is not reading at the event. though her piece does not reflect it EVEN ONE BIT, she is hella shy and the idea of reading it in front of a room full of folks is not fun for her. we get there, late, to hear the end of a lady's story. it had to do with power and making your partner eat dog food so she can fully enjoy the vibrating bee strapped to her parts. neither jes nor i found any of it sexy really but we both immediately thought of "best in show" with parker posey's character losing her shit b/c she can't find the "buzzy bee" doll for her dog. after dog food lady there was a break so we chatted a bit with glennda, ali, monique and kim and then we headed out to the deitch gallery for dusty's art show. oh, but before we get to the gallery, let me say that i was excited to see eileen myles, the writer at the erotica show. apparently she co-edited the anthology they were reading from. i told the supper club who she was and i hope to turn them on (no pun intended) to her work. let's call that star sighting #1. here is a pic of her for those of you who are wondering who she is. i think she is hot, but its as much about her brain as it is about her looks:

we arrived at the deitch gallery (78 Grand near the corner of Wooster) and it is packed. the show is in honor of JD's (of Le Tigre) second lesbian calendar. I think the show was called "JD's Lesbian Utopia." The show exhibits both the main calendar photos taken by Cass Bird (they are lovely) as well as my friend Dusty Lombardo's photos, some of which appear in the calendar as well. If you are in New York over the next few weeks, go and check out the exhibit. Dusty has a whole wall in the larger room (the first wall on the right) and if you like any of the photos (and you will like many of the photos) contact her directly through her website: www.dustylombardo.com

i mean really, check out the website anyway b/c her shit is tight and when her photos are hanging in the MOMA, you can say "oh yeah i've been liking dusty lombardo's stuff for a long time." won't you be really cool then? anywho, the place is packed full of all kinds of folks and jes and i have about twelve layers on each so we are looking for our peeps and a place to stash our coats. finally we find dusty and mary and chat with them. they both looked so beatiful and i am kicking myself for not brining my camera. mary had on this cute brownish dress and boots and her hair up in sort of a bun thing. and dusty had on maybe trousers or jeans with a shirt and tie and cutey blazer. her tie had this little heart stitched on it- i guess mary made it for her. adorable. we got there so late that it started to thin out shortly after we arrived. the only stars i spotted were bitch (from bitch and animal) and then eileen myles made her way over to this joint too. so we decide that it is getting late and that its in jes's best interest (and mine too b/c i was tired and crampy) to skip the afterparty. we are about to leave and i look at jes and she is gesturing (with her eyes) at this tall dude checking out dusty's photos. i followed her gaze and realized that it was none other than josh harnett.

he was in sin city and that movie with harrison ford and a bunch of other films. let me say first, that he is one handsome man. tall, a bit greasy and in jeans and a wool ski cap. let me also say that earlier in the week there was a RUMOR that scarlett johansson was coming to the opening. apparently she likes the lesbo photographers. then we heard she couldn't make it b/c she had to fly somewhere. fine, get our hopes up and then crush us like bugs. we can take it. now after i got over the shock that jes recognized someone famous BEFORE me, i began to realize that josh has been reported to be scar jo's (that's what we will call her for short) sweetie. i thought "that's cool that he showed up even though she couldn't make it." he kept looking at dusty's photos (b/c they are amazing) and jes and i joked to ourselves about for him they would be more expensive. it was getting late, so we headed for the door. as we are walking out i pass this hot blonde femmey girl and i look twice and you know who it was? oh yeah, it was scarlett johansson (aka scar jo). i tried to communicate this to jes, but no luck. when we got outside i told her and she was all "i didn't see her, i need to see her." i told her to go back in and look while i texted dusty to say that scar jo was in the house. jes came back and was like "donna you need to take me back in there and show me" (amateur) and so i did. i pretended like i had to talk to mary about something (i did, i had to tell her about scar jo). she had figured it out by then as well. jes got a nice long look at scar jo and then we headed out. for those of you who lives in caves, here are some photos of scar jo.

first a divine black and white:

what's your favorite city? oh, cleveland:

isn't she pretty?

anywho, here is what is hilarious about the whole thing:

1. while dusty was receiving the text i sent her about scar jo, she was being introduced to scar jo
2. scar jo was flirting hardcore with the lesbo photographers, okayyyy?
3. scar jo has her septum pierced and had her retainer in and visible (she is so hard core)
4. scar jo has replaced parker posey and jes's #1. hard to believe, but true.
5. scar jo is just 21. oy, i am old.
6. i called atlanta kim and sarah to tell them and the first thing atl kim said was "how are you not watching the OC chrismakkuh episode right now" and then she asked me who we saw.

so yeah, i think that is the biggest star sighting yet yall. tell me what you think.

now lets move from the bright lights of the big city to the rolling hills and plains of wyoming and brokeback mountain.

jes and i went to dinner last night with the supper club ladies and then jes came home to study (good lawyer) and the five of us headed to see brokeback mountain. have yall seen it yet? i am not completely ready to comment on it, but i can say that heath ledger and jake gyllenhal having sex and in love, in general, is hot. their first time doing it was not so hot to me, but overall, them together-hot. i am sure this is about their hot toned bodies and all, but i bet too it is about the fact that *i think* i know that they are both straight guys so its totally taboo that they had to make out and simulate sex with each other. is that weird?

all i am thinking right now is "i hope nancy/ali's mom isn't reading this." i mean if she doesn't like the swearing, i am going to guess she will not appreciate me talking about two straight dudes fucking. what do you think?

locksmiths and west coast friends

2005-12-10T11:08:00.000-05:00

good saturday morning my lovlies.

i am sorry i have been remiss about writing (christa) but i have to say you all must be tired of hearing how depressed i am (not) writing my dissertation and how i struggle with the whole process most days. i thought i would hold off and write when i had something funny and happy to write about. it took me all week to get to that point.

before i get into the meat (tofu?) of my week, let me first report a star sighting my friend higgins had. she called it in *last night* so it is hot of the presses yall. so first higgs went to the ESPN Zone in TIMES SQUARE (no, she is not high on crack-she simply loves her brother) to watch her brother's soccer team play some important game. perhaps she can comment more on this in the comment session b/c it escapes me what the game was. anywho he coaches mens's soccer (i am guessing it is men's b/c i imagine they do not show women's sports at espn zone unless its like a bikini competition or something) at maybe rutgers (i think).

so now i bet you are wondering "what star did she see at ESPN zone, was it michael jordan? shaquille o'neal? mike ditka?" well stop guessing, she didn't see the star there. AFTER the zone, she went to see this art exhibit (b/c she has culture yall) called "1000 pictures" and while she was there she saw none other than mary catherine gallagher herself, yes, you are correct sir, she saw molly shannon from Saturday Night Live. She even brushed up against her. How hot is that? Very hot. she said she talks just like she does on the show: very nasal.

thanks higgins for sharing your sighting. keep them coming dudes.

ok, so i have been cranky for most of the week b/c again i feel like a loser about my diss and i am afraid to apply for these fellowships, blah blah blah. so i decided i would step away from it on thursday and do a little grocery shopping. this, in brooklyn, takes hours. so i got all layered up b/c it is COLD AS FUCK here (not happy about that) and headed to the washington mutual to take out some cash. then proceeded to the park slope co-op where i was able to purchase most of my groceries. my most exciting purchase aside from my 89 cent avocado was a box of these chocolate chews that provide you with all the calcium you need in one day. you eat two and you are golden and they are DELISH and they do not have hydrogenated oils like the brand name ones called VIACTIV. if any of yall would like me to pick up a box and send them your way i will. or at least pass on the brand name. they have sugar and whey in them, so elin i am not sure if you are allergic. lemme know. anywho, i dropped off those groceries, chatted with the kitties and then headed to key foods to pick up the rest of my groceries for way too much money (they are quite overpriced in my humble opinion). my day brightened when my phone rang in the baking good aisle and it was the aforementioned higgins. we chatted for some time about her stinky day and my stinky day and she gave me professional advice about committee members and asking for recommendations and such b/c she is real smart like that, and then i paid for my groceries and walked home in the freezing cold darkness (it was maybe 5pm). i got home a little crankier then when i left b/c on my way back from key i stopped off at the meat market to get some tilapia and they were out. blast! and i also started to feel a little queasy and i have no idea why. random.

i figured as long as i could get home i would be ok, so i walked the two blocks, got to my door, put down my tote bags of groceries and stuck my key in front door. i went to turn it and it turned a little and then it got stuck. i started to panic a little, and then breathed and then tried some more and some more and some more. no dice. i called my landlord kristin hoping she was simply upstairs, could come downstairs and let me in and we could struggle with the key from the warm inside. nope, she was at work at stony brook. and her partner was at work at nyu. she told me i could go to the locksmith back over by the meat market. so i headed that way and called jes and then she called me back and said to go back to the house and she would try the key. so she arrived and she couldn't get it out either. then we went to the locksmith and he came and tried it again and again with all his tools. no dice. then he broke my key off in the lock. he explained he would have to drill through the door and he asked me for the twelve millionth time if there was anyone in the building. so like a bitch, i reached across him and rang floor two (my landlords apt) and floor three (her partners office) like 100 times. then i saw someone move on the third floor and my stomach dropped. down comes a lady from the third floor. apparently she is subletting the office upstairs one night a week. so she opened the door for us. of course this required her to INTERRUPT her therapy session with a client. NICE DONNA. by that time my key was still jammed in the lock so he had to replace it anyway. two hours and several HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS (in cash i might add- very shady but he didn't charge us tax b/c we paid cash) later, we have a brand new spanking fancy lock on the front door. i was wrecked for the day and had me a nice glass (or two) of white wine. we ate dinner, watched OC and i hit the hay.

yesterday i met up with my friend dusty in williamsburg. she is in town from san francisco showing some of her photos (she is an outstanding photographer) and i went and met her and "helped" her prepare. this meant i pulled frames out of a box, took them out of their wrapping and handed them to her. not much, but it gave me an excuse to hang out with her. we also got lunch at bliss. she got a breakfast burrito which she loved and i got a hummus sandwich. it was ok. it had califlower in it. no me gusta. after she got all the photos framed we sat in BEAN BAGS (how fun is that?) and she finished up this paint by numbers thing she was doing. i headed home and ate fake turkey sandwiches with jes for dinner.

i also got a wonderful surprise on my way to the train in williamsburg: a call from my best friend mary (who is sweeties with dusty and in town for her exhibit as well). now i thought i would not get to see mary until next week b/c i thought she was staying all the way up in queens tonight and then heading to vermont tomorrow. but actually she was just over the border of brooklyn and queens and we got to meet up at the metropolitan. jes and i met mary, dusty, mary's brother joe, mary and dusty's friend shoshana and shoshana's sister who i want to call liz, but i might be making that up. anywho, OF COURSE i took photos because they are all gorgeous.

here is one of mary and dusty. notice how long mary's hair is AND that is it parted down the middle. she normally parts it on the side. now i like the middle part as does shoshana, dusty prefers the side part. maybe when mary stays with me next week i will ask her to side part and then put up comparative photos and yall can tell me which you prefer. its like american idol but no singing and all about hair. anywho... here they are:

and here is mary and her brother joe. i like to call him "joey d.":

and lastly and clearly not leastly, shoshana's sis, shoshana, and dusty. adorable.

after we finished at the bar, jes, dusty, joe and i headed to kellogs diner where we partook in some grilled cheese and fries. then we walked dusty back to where she was staying and jes and i, being the lazy bums we are, took a car service home. saved us at least an hour on the train and walking in the freezing cold. i was so tired i was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

sunday is my friend miriam's bday. happy bday miriam!

and christa if you send me a few pics of your lovely wedding you know i will post that shit here.
holla!

just a quickie

2005-12-06T13:23:00.000-05:00

just wanted to let you all know about this great movie we watched last night. it is called "millions" and it is funny and quirky and touching. the little boy that plays damien is ADORABLE and i really like the woman who plays dorothy. her name is daisy donovan and she is in that new show by david arquette and courtney cox called "daisy does america." she is spunky and hilarious. the little boy damien is obsessed with saints and throughout the movie he meets some and he's like "st. gus, born 1234, died 1295." it's totally random and unexpected and maybe i just like it b/c i was raised catholic. put it on your netflix que (still don't know how to spell this yall). you won't be disappointed.

i also wanted to post some pics of the winter wonderland that is brooklyn. i worked out this morning and walked home the long way along prospect park. it will be more lovely with at least a foot of snow, but still i think it is real pretty. see for yourself.

have a happy tuesday!

ithaca is gorges

2005-12-05T09:37:00.000-05:00

good snowy monday morning. i can't believe winter is already here. i need to get me some winter boots and pronto b/c there is more snow heading toward nyc this evening. while it is very pretty to look at, i imagine i will be mostly angry for the next two to three months. we'll see.

so this weekend jes and i went to a bed and breakfast near ithaca, new york to celebrate our FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY yall. i know, can you believe we have been together for four years? who knew i had it in me? anywho i thought it would be nice to get away, see more of the state, and maybe just maybe, see some snow. well mother nature came through b/c it snowed for a good part of our drive up there and jes was beside herself with joy! we went to this b&b that sits on an organic farm. it's called brookton hollow farm b&b. it was divine. here is a picture of the house:

and here is a pic of our room, it was called "joshua's room" after one of the owner's sons:

here is a picture of some of "neighbors in nature"

every morning, one of the owners, debby, would make an entirely vegetarian breakfast. it was lovely.

so we got there friday night after getting a bit lost in the greater ithaca area. it was dark and this farm is in the COUNTRY so its not like you can stop at the local BP and ask for directions. we finally made it there, dropped off our stuff and then headed to get some dinner. we went to this cute place called the ABC Cafe. Both Jes and I got this delicious special of black bean enchiladas. Now it cost about $8.00 so we thought it wouldn't be all that much food. Lo and behold the server brought us these behemoth plates of food and we both only finished half our dinner. This one woman came to clear our plates (not our server) and saw that we wasted so much food and scoffed at us. Jes, being the gem she is, said under her breath "well if don't like the waste, why don't you eat some the leftovers skinny mc skinny" (the woman was very thin) and sure and shit we look over and she was. jes was quiet after that. for dessert (b/c it sounded so good) we ordered a toffee bar covered in ONE scoop of vanilla ice cream. the dish comes to our plate with FOUR scoops of vanilla ice cream. we were both dying. jes kept telling me i needed to eat more or we would look like wasters. i ate until i almost exploded and paid for it the rest of the night. we were going to get a drink at a local bar but i was in pain from too much food and too much dairy. so we went back to the room and played scrabble while my belly decompressed. jes won at scrabble, for the record.

now when we first got to the place on friday night, i went to the bathroom to pee while jes sat and chatted with debby the owner. debby let us know that strangely, she was all booked up for the weekend (she is normally only full during spring, summer and fall) and even more strangely, the two women in the room next to us were also from brooklyn. when i joined them, jes told me, and i thought "oh that's weird" and then i got excited that maybe we would make new friends. jes was up near the window when our neighbors pulled up later that night and she peaked out to see them. i asked her what kind of car they had and she said "honda". i thought "nice car." anywho we didn't think much of it really, but sort of joked about what if it was people we knew and didn't like. then we went to bed.

the next morning we got up and went down to breakfast. we were chatting with debby and the other lady who was staying there from pennsylvania. we sort of looked like this:

you know, just minding our own business. then we heard our "neighbors" (the mystery ladies from brooklyn) coming down the stairs. they sort of looked like this:

then we realized it was ali and monique from our supper club and we looked like this (that's us surprised if you were wondering):

and they realized they knew us and they looked like this:

ok, ok, truth be told that is a photographic documentary of a *reinactment* of our surprise, but still, that is pretty fucking weird, don't you think? i mean i had told them i was interested in taking jes to a b&b upstate and that i found one i thought i liked but i gave them no more details than that. and can you believe it? ali booked a room for her and monique in the SAME PLACE on the SAME WEEKEND. small world yall.

so while it sucked b/c we did not make any NEW FRIENDS, it was so great that our "OLD" FRIENDS were there and we could spend time with them. we chatted for some time after breakfast and made plans to meet up for dinner and a movie and partytime at THE gay bar that night. jes and i spent the day looking at waterfalls and studying. here are some pretty pics of the waterfalls at the gorges in town.

after jes's face started to freeze off we went to the cafe to drink coffee and i read a book while she studied. then we did a little walking around in the "commons" this area with all these shops. we went back to the house and showered and then met up with the ladies to head out to dinner. here they are in their winter gear:

we were going to have dinner at this delish tapas place but there was an HOUR wait. bastards. so we went to the world famous moosewood restaurant. i got some coconut salmon i liked, monique got some great lasagna, jes shared mine and ali got some weird asian burritos she did not care for. after dinner we went back to abc cafe for dizzert and tea/coffee. we were killing time so we weren't too early to THE gay bar in ithaca, aka Common Ground. Here is a pic of the sign:

It was actually really great to have time to chat with the two of them and really talk about our lives and our work. i feel like we don't get to do that as much at supper club b/c we are eating and talking about our days and usually analyzing the l word extensively. as we were leaving the cafe to hit the gay bar ali had a real bad back spasm so we took her and monique back to the room. it was a little bit scary b/c i didn't know how to help her. apparently all she needed was a little massage and to lay horizontal for a while.

after we dropped them off, we headed to the gay bar which was, for reals, in the middle of the country. it is housed in a double wide trailer. i tried to take a picture of it, but there were all these smokers in front and jes thought it would be rude. inside it looked like any other small town gay bar. lights, deejay and some bad fashion. we drank one beer each (only $3 a PINT) and then headed home. jes was very very thankful that that was not the only bar we had to go to in brooklyn. it reminded me a lot of the gay bar in champaign or even some of the gay bars in columbus. just regular folks drinking and getting their dance on.

the next morning we woke up to a few more inches of snow on the ground. it was lovely. seafoam got a true taste of what winter is like:

after we got home, jes studied while i unpacked us and did some laundry. while it was nice to be away, it was great to be home and love on the kitties. it has snowed some here in brooklyn and there is more in store this week. i will try and get some pics of the park and whatnot and post them. ok i need to go and try to move the car.

don't get used to this

2005-12-01T20:58:00.000-05:00

sorry i just found this great pic of jen at www.perezhilton.com

congratulations jen and ben

2005-12-01T20:40:00.001-05:00

sexy chocolate jennifer garner had her babygirl yesterday
rumor is they are going to name her violet

let's hope she looks more like her and less like ben affleck:

yet another star sighting

2005-12-01T19:00:00.000-05:00

so this morning i finished editing my dissertation chapter (again) and sent this revised version off to saralyn and molly who helped me re-work it, and then to my advisor-i am hoping she had not yet read the version i sent her in october, and then to my friends alyson and nicole (who i actually interviewed for the dissertation). they said they would be willing to take a look at it too. it felt really good to get it out to them. like one teeny tiny step closer to completion. can you believe both molly and saralyn have already got back to me about it? who is the luckiest? that would be me.

so after i got that together i headed into the city to do a little shopping. i went (for the first time) to the feminist bookstore bluestockings. its a very unassuming place but i like it. they have great tshirts and lots of zines and magazines, and if i may say so myself, they had a copy of the drag king anthology. that felt good. anywho, after that i headed to rockerfeller (is that how you spell it?) center to see the tree and to pick up some chocolates at godiva. yall, i love me some dark chocolate truffles. i am sure they are no good for you, but damn they taste good. anywho, here are some photos of the pretty tree. they lit it last night.

there is something funky with our digital camera, so that is the best i can do for now. i have to ask jes to look at it.

i want to go into the city at night some time between now and christmas day so we can see the lights at night. i will definitely take photos and post them here.

so anywho i was heading back to the subway and as i walked past rockerfeller center (where the today show is filmed i think. oh ann curry i love you) anywho as i passed the building i saw a black escalade and i knew that meant: A STAR IS NEARBY (i'm like a fucking pro yall). so i looked and who did i see?

none other than david cassidy. who is he you might ask. well my little muffin, here are some pics:

old school davey:

present day david cassidy:

for you youngins who don't know, he was on the partridge family. a true hunk alongside leif garrett (i LOVED him)
i mean he is no oprah winfrey (she is in town today for the taping of the david letterman show AND to go and see the opening of "the color purple" on broadway), but i mean i still saw someone famous. that has to count for something, right?

ok i need to get started on dinner. please light a candle/say a prayer for world AIDS day today.

and thanks to all the folks who took the yankee/southern quiz and posted their results. i LOVE feedback.

two more days until jes and i celebrate our FOUR YEAR anniversary. love is in the air yall.

a fun quiz

2005-11-30T11:38:00.000-05:00

jes sent this to me, and you should try it.
it measures how southern a person is.
or maybe how much of a yankee a person is. either way.

go to:

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html

jes (born and raised in a suburb of atlanta) scored about 70% (i think) as did our friend kim (born and raised just outside of new orleans). it said they were southern enough to have pink (instead of red) necks.

i got about 50% southern. just under the mason/dixon line. not bad for twenty-six years in the midwest and only six years in the atl.

our friend sarah, who was born and raised in hattiesburg, mississippi got 90% southern. it asked if she still paid for things with confederate money. hilarious.

if you feel so moved, you can post in the comment section what you got too.

have fun.

tired tuesday

2005-11-29T17:09:00.000-05:00

so i have been pretty exhausted all day. i took an hour nap in the middle of the day but i still feel like i could go to sleep for the night right now. i went to the doctor yesterday (dr. patel on 9th street to be exact) and he looked at my ears and throat and said my ears were good but i have a little infection in my throat. so i got a prescription for zithromax and that should clear it up.

i made the mistake of taking it right before i ate dinner last night and lets just say it wrecked my stomach. i take zithromax specifically because other antibiotics make me really sick to my stomach. i took the second dose this morning on an empty stomach and while there were moments where i felt like someone was stabbing my gut with a knife, that was the only side effect.

i have spent a little time on my diss this afternoon which is craziness b/c i have done so little over the last month. this is exciting but i am also worried whether or not i can keep up the momentum. we'll see.

last night jes and i watched this great movie that new york niki (i have decided that the amount of k's in their names is not enough to distinguish them, so from here on out we will have new york niki and atlanta nikki; that should help clear up confusion) gave to jes for us to watch. it is called 'saving face.' for more info, go to: www.sonyclassics.com/savingface/

now this a show about two asian american lesbos in new york and how they fall in love. they are both gorgeous as is the one woman wil's mom. it is very funny and touching and i hope you all put it on your netflix que (how do you spell that). anywho i wish one of these fine ladies would show up on the l word some day. either (or both) would do me just fine.

ok i am going to try and work some more on the diss before i make dinner. jes should be home in a couple of hours.

dj & theo's treatise on the l word

2005-11-28T01:11:00.000-05:00

***WARNING... I WILL BE REFERENCING HAPPENINGS ALL THROUGH THE SECOND SEASON. IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SPOILED, DON'T READ THIS UNTIL YOU ARE DONE WATCHING ALL OF BOTH SEASONS***

ok even though i feel exhausted i think in part to the white bumps on my left tonsil, i can not sleep. the problem is that i fell asleep on the couch while jes played video games at about 9:30pm and once i got up around 10pm to go and lay in the bed, i was ruined. so here i sit, on the white couch, watching my new favorite show: the bridge. its this show of old school hip hop songs. tonight is all native tongues. so like right now its tribe called quest "check the rhyme." they played a few de la soul songs and a real old school queen latifah. basically if i could create an old school rap video show these are the EXACT videos i would choose. so i am close to heaven as one with insomnia and perhaps strep throat could be.

ok onto more modern and lesbo things: the l word

let me first introduce my co-commentator, theo, the wonder dog (he belongs to my friend sandy):

he has agreed to contribute commentary on the ladies (and mens) of the l word. so lets get started.

first of all, jes and i have officially watched all of season one and season two of the l word. this means that we are caught up. after every episode, i thought "oh i need to post about this on my blog" but really i am glad that i waited until now, b/c i feel like i have a better understanding of the show overall. i think the most organized way to go about this is to go character by character- alphabetically of course.

1. ALICE

donna: now alice is played by leisha hailey, the only out lesbo on the show. anywho alice bugged at the beginning, but she has grown on me throughout the end of the first season and the beginning of the second season. she got a little nutty there at the end of season two with her possessiveness over dana. i also didn't get why she liked the male lesbo or the other sort of creepy guy she kicked it with, but i do appreciate how she adamantly asserts her bisexuality. it's refreshing to see someone who defies the hetero/homo binary. i also really appreciate her hair and humor.

theo: i would let that lady snuggle with me any day. i bet she would get me a pretty pink sparkly collar.

2. BETTE

donna: now bette is played by jennifer "flashdance" beals. i think she is wicked hot and i appreciate her workaholic-ness. i did not appreciate how much she controlled her relationship with tina (and frankly i am still trying to figure out what she sees in tina, but that is another post). and while her affair with candace the carpenter was wicked hot to watch, no me gusta cheaters. i can also appreciate a dirty martini as much as the next person, but when she went on that whole drink like a fish and fuck like a rabbit thing, i got a little worried. i think she has cooled it by the end of season two. i also can't believe those motherfuckers fired her. i loved it when she told her boss she wanted to murder him and she called that guy she got into an accident with a little troll. i think she may need anger management classes.

theo: i am hoping she will do that dance where she drops water on herself and gets all sexy and wet. if so, i have my raincoat and i am therefore prepared.

3. CARMEN

donna: now carmen is fairly new. i think she is pretty sexy, but really needs a new hair do. i like how she is kind of spunky, sporty and femme, with a little bit of a butch edge. i don't like that she has fake boobs, but what are you going to do, this is los angeles, right? i have no idea why she wasted one minute getting peed on and/or dating jenny when it was so OBVIOUS she was HOT for shane. i like them (shane and carmen) together, they have good chemistry. yes, i know its all fake, but please indulge me.

theo: i like to dance to carmen's sick beats and i appreciate that they are beginning to attempt to represent the racial diversity of the lesbian community in los angeles.

4. DANA

donna: let me say first i have no idea what they are trying to do with dana's hair here. i mean where is her cute ponytail. dana reminds me of my first real gfriend jackie who played basketball at university of illinois except jackie was taller and less anorexic. dana's wishy washiness bugs me, but i really liked her with that chef who was adorable and i like her with alice. i think that tonya was the worst thing ever and i thank babyjesus for melissa rivers (is she a homo?) i was also a bit floored they showed dana in a harness (of course they DID NOT show her in a harness with a strap on), but whatever, baby steps, i guess.

theo: i would chase dana's tennis balls any time of the day. delish.

5. HELENA

donna: now helena is also fairly new and in a word: fucking irritating. oops, that's two words. look i understand the function of helena (she is the thorn in bette's ass and the face between tina's legs) but really does she need to hang around.l i am ready for her to leave. i mean she's pretty and all and has a nice accent, but i want her to go back to new york and ruin some ladies in that town. and what up with the weird pregnant lady fetish. creepy.

theo: she said it: hot but creepy.

6. JENNY (aka "fucknut")

donna: now if you have read previous posts, you know that i don't care for jenny. she was absolutely HORRID in the first season. i mean i had to cover my eyes during 40% of the scenes with her b/c she just made me cringe. i mean the eye makeup, the manatees, and who could forget the carnivale? i felt like she was getting it together in the second season until we find her cutting herself in the bathroom. once i saw that happen though i felt almost...guilty. it was then that it became clear to me that all that shit in the first season and part of the second was ilene chaiken's manifestation of jenny's "crazies." now i have known the crazies, so i don't want to judge jenny for them. i just thought she was an attention seeking drama queen (which i still think she is) but clearly its more about her struggling with some serious shit. now don't worry, i am not going soft and becoming some sort of jennylover. that will never happen. but i do have to say that by the end of season two, i understand jenny a little bit more. and i really appreciated how direct and unflinching she was with that prick mark. even if it was only for like two days.

theo: i think jenny is a certifiable wingnut, but she has some good fashion. jenny, do you want to borrow my coat girl?

7. KIT

donna: really i don't have a lot to say about kit. i like her hair curly more than straight. i appreciate how she supports bette and all the other lesbos that come to the planet and i don't really understand what she wanted from ivan the drag king (but did you see his abs when he was out of drag? hello...)

theo: i like when she said "who dat" in one of the episodes.

8. MARK

donna: so yeah mark is the prick pervert who videotaped the lesbians doing it and has a (not so) secret boy-boy crush on shane. he is now the person i like the least on the show. i think it is ridiculous that they are suggesting he went from completely violating all these ladies to totally understanding how wrong that is. i mean why did he think it was a good idea to take off all his clothes off as a way to "apologize" to jenny, who clearly is a survivor of sexual assault? like helena, i hope he goes away very very soon. i hate him more than jenny. there you have it.

theo: and his new haircut looks dumb.

9. SHANE

donna: now i think shane is way too skinny but ridiculously hot. i think its mostly b/c she reminds me of my girlfriend jodie foster. i think its also partly that i want to be shane as much as i want to be with shane. don't get me wrong, i don't want to be a feelingless womanizer, but i wouldn't mind just oozing sexy like shane does, or looking that cute in a tie. but she really really needs to eat AND i am worrying about her hairdo. as a hair dresser i feel like it should look better. i want her to stay with carmen. i am sure she won't. i also HATE that shane is best friends forever with mark even though he treated her like crap. i find this incredibly frustrating.

theo: and she needs to stop doing the drugs girl, that shit will kill you!

10. TINA

donna: now tina, for the most part, bugs me. i hate how she purses her lips in that way she does. i also think she is way too dramatic. but what i like about her, is how she has grown a backbone over the second season AND that she is super pregnant and still sexually active, that is just something you never really see. did anyone else notice that after she gave birth to the kid they said "her pressure is dropping"? do you think they are going to kill her off? and leave bette with baby angelica (no me gusta that name either). inquiring minds want to know.

theo: i don't care how cute that stupid angelica is, I AM THE BABY

and that concludes our first installment of lword commentary. it is now after 1am and i am still not sleepy. oh the humanity!

a lovely last few days

2005-11-26T09:45:00.000-05:00

let me first say that jes and i stayed up until after 1am watching the final episode of the l word second season. i feel now that i can post about my feelings on the show. i hope to complete that post this weekend. before that though, a few words about the last few days.

i have a wonderful wednesday. jes's training got cancelled so we went SHOPPING. she used the gap gift card my sister gave her and got a real deal. she bought two fitted men's button down shirts and still had some money left over. they were on sale AND buy one get the second one half off. i LOVE that! after shopping we went up to higgins' house for dinner. but before dinner we hiked to vermont, i think. just kidding. see, higgs lives near the cloisters and i told her i would love to see the park area around her house. well over an hour later, jes and i were huffing and a pufffing up some trail while higgins was not even phased. the views were gorgeous: rocks, the changing leaves, the water and skyline. even though i was sweating my balls off, it was really nice. after that we stopped to get some coffee at the dunkin donuts (yall its so good!) and then headed back to her place for dinner and conversation. her place is so cute yall. i mean she really has a gift. no matter how big or small her places are, they always look just right. and its weird b/c she usually has the same stuff in each place, but some how it shrinks or expands to fit the place. anywho, it was real relaxing and nice. she walked us to the subway b/c she was going to get herself a nice little manicure for the holiday.

our thanksgiving was chill but nice. we slept late and then went and saw rent. the play is better, but rosario dawson is hot. for real. but she doesn't have the pipes the original mimi had. roger's hair is ridiculous, and i just found out from jes that much of the film was done in san francisco's tenderloin area. this, of course, made me sad. it was also hilarious that in the film they ride the f train (the subway we take to and from the city and jes's school) and it was all graffitied and shitty. for the record yall, that is not how it looks. i mean maybe in 1989 it did, but now the f train is very clean and nice (well i mean as clean as things get in new york). after rent we went and had thanksgiving dinner at cattyshack with my friends julie and liev. they are visiting from columbus, ohio. it was quite a spread there and not too crowded which was nice. we got to chat and eat and then they headed out to hoop it up and we came home. jes had cramps most of the day so we didn't want to push it. i think we watched a few l word episodes then and then went to bed.

we were awoken at about 6am by a large explosion sound. now being from the cold midwest, i figured an electrical station or box had exploded b/c of ice. then i looked outside and it was not really icy or snowing. then i heard fire engines and i thought "hmm wonder what that is all about." i heard two more booms and then the power started to flicker so i jumped up to unplug my computer and told jes to do the same for hers. i heard the ladies upstairs stirring so i thought maybe we should be alarmed. i went outside and they heard me and opened their window and told me that what i heard was manhole covers exploding and hitting the bottoms of cars. i guess it has something to do with salt and the pipes or something. needless to say, there were guys working on it all day and all night AND we had no power for a good part of the day. this meant no lights, no phone, no internet and NO HEAT. jes had a training to attend and i went to workout. by the time i got back and ate a sandwich, the power came back on.

jes and i spent the evening at tea lounge. her working on her outlines for finals and i worked on, yes, its hard to believe, my dissertation. my friend molly read my last chapter and gave me all these great suggestions and edits. so i worked on incorporating those. then when i finished that and my brain hurt from the loud music and chaos at tea lounge, i just played on the internet until jes was done. then we walked across to the co op and did a little shopping. fyi, the coop is wonderful at about 8:30pm on a friday night. not crowded at all. then we caught the bus, came home, made some dinner and watched the remaining lword episodes. i cried like a baby over bette's deal with her dad (trying to not spoil it for yall who are not caught up). i checked with jes to make sure she was crying too, b/c i felt like i was going soft crying at the lword. she agreed the episode was sad, so i continued to cry. i was woken up this morning by larry who was meowing like a crazy cat and then he proceeded to jump on the bed and step on my boobs about 100 times. not fun.

today we study and have brunch with julie and liev. i guess we are going to "tom's diner" in prospect heights. this is the tom's diner that susanna vega sang about oh so long ago. emily is all snuggled up to me and the warmth of the computer. she is such a sweet babygirl.

ok as a break from dissertating this afternoon, i hope to begin my treatise on the lword. stay tuned...

happy birthday to my friend alyson. she has beautiful red hair and she always smells good.

correction...

2005-11-24T11:18:00.000-05:00

i can't believe it has gotten to the point where i must break into the blog to correct donna so people don't believe her mumbly jumbly about the L word.
you would think she knew me better than that but does anyone really believe that I am a Jenny lover? I THINK NOT. I made the mistake about emphasizing the hotness that was between marina and jenny and now I am made to pay for all sins of jenny lovers nationwide. While her writing blows, her fashion sucks, and boy do her shoes repulse me she is also CRAZY. ive had my share of crazies so i am DEFINETLY not looking for another round but i am going to state for the record that jenny, in season 2 disk 1, is LESS CRAZY than tina, dana, and wrist slitting marina now. oh and the new roommate mark who is DISGUSTING. we still have 10 episodes to be caught up with everyone else so things may still change. but there is no shame in that statement but i repeat there is NO LOVE for jenny schecter.
jes...

supper club (aka the l word discussion group)

2005-11-24T09:09:00.000-05:00

so as the macy's thanksgiving day parade starts to gear up, i have retired to the couch for my next post b/c the kitchen table chairs wreck my back.

on monday night we had our monthly supper club at glennda & kim's house. now what i like about how they do supper club is that they make a bunch of little dishes and so its almost like a buffet. this time they had some ravioli with walnut pesto sauce, another pasta with vodka sauce (which i love), eggplant parmesan with and without the cheese, salt potatoes and biscuits. oh they also had these carrots cooked with brown sugar and maple syrup (delish!) so jes just about wet herself over the salt potatoes. i guess this is a family recipe of glennda's where you boil these certain type of potatoes in REALLY salty water, then when they are soft you smash them (on yer plate) and cover them in melted whipped butter. so let me re-cap: potatoes, salt and butter. i told them if there was some way you could incorporate PBR, i think jes would eat this meal breakfast lunch and dinner. they were really good yall, as was everything. and what is equally exciting was that for dessert we finished off the birthday cupcakes from jes's party. the kids still loved them. i was just glad to get rid of them. i still have this huge fucking bottle of red wine that i can barely look at. its probably going bad so i might just dump it out.

anywho after our divine dinner at supper club we retired to kim and glennda's lovely living room (the largest wall in that room is painted this gorgeous chocolate brown and the pillows are colorful and just the right accent), and talked about L word for HOURS. see they watch it every week (they actually watch it TWICE in a row when it is on) and so they are all caught up. jes and i, on the other hand, have just finished the first season on netflix and then last night watched the first four episodes of season two. our goal is to be completely caught up so we can start watching the new ones with them come january. i think this is an achievable goal. we ALL (except jes) hate Jenny Schecter. i mean really, it's getting unhealthy for me how much i dislike her. though she was sort of manageable in these first four episodes, except of course, her whack ass fashion, but that is neither here nor there.

so we played this game called "kill, fuck, marry" and basically you are given three characters from the L word and you have to say which one you will kill, which one you will fuck and which one you will marry. let me say first that all the rules of this game were not given up front, so that clearly impacted my decision. and, for the record, when we say "kill" we of course mean "get rid of." this is not a game that encourages real violence (though most episodes i do want to shake jenny REALLY HARD). so the first trio was jenny, tim & ivan. i tried to get pics of the three to post here, but i could only get a still of jenny. i chose to kill jenny b/c i hate her, marry ivan (b/c i heart kelly lynch, which is cheating b/c i would not really be with kelly lynch i would be with her nasty "drag king" (?) persona that wears the worst george michael cross earring EVER- but whateva) and then fuck tim b/c i thought it was like fuck him one time and then he goes away. jes chose to FUCK jenny (i mean WHAT?????), kill tim (she has a case in the ass for tim and i am not sure why) and then marry ivan (i think) the whole room erupted in shouting b/c we all came to realize that jes is a jennylover. she explained how she thinks jenny with marina is hot, we reminded her this is JUST JENNY, not jennyandmarina. she backpedalled, she justified and then she admitted it. she thinks jenny is cute. the LOVE OF MY LIFE, jes, thinks jenny the crazy fucknut terrible writer, big eyed, bad fashion jenny is cute.

then the kids tell me that to "fuck" someone in this game means you have sex with them and only them FOREVER. once this was explained to me i rescinded my decision and changed to fucking ivan and marrying tim (my parents would be so proud-not really, they could care less who i marry, but i bet some family member somewhere would be happy i married a man). but i still killed jenny b/c she makes me CRAZY. it was a fun time. ali and jes and kim and glennda all tried to top one another on horrendous triplets to choose from. then we watched the teaser from next season twelve thousand times.

we had to leave early b/c jes had to get home to continue working on her memo. i am not sure when the next supper club is but i am excited b/c it sounds like the kids are serious about going gambling with me some time soon. ooh i can't wait for the rush of roulette.

ok i am going to crawl back into bed with jes and snuggle.
happy turkey day. eat some pie for me.

death is everywhere

2005-11-24T08:16:00.000-05:00

yall i am sorry i have been remiss about posting. i had a bit of a spell for part of this week, but i think i am on the upswing.
oh, and happy turkey day. allrighty, i have plenty to report so i am going to go easy on yer eyes and break it up into several small postings rather than one big ass posting. my first topic: death

i begin with a story of a little mousy who was living with three cats of his own. he ran out from under the stove and got spotted and there his fate was sealed. (this should have been read to the tune of brady brunch)

so the other day i was steeping in my pity party on the couch and i saw a shadow on the kitchen floor. it was too small for any of our cats and i then realized it was mouse #2. i, of course, freaked and it ran right back under the stove. my shriek alerted the mouse catcher extraordinaire, mr. horace, and he promptly took his post two feet in front of the stove, staring at the stove. needless to say, there was little activity in the cat/mouse region the rest of the day. this was a good thing for me b/c i was uncertain how i would get the mousie from horace's jaws into a tupperware and out of our house by myself.

now jes turned in her final memo in legal writing on tuesday so our house has been memo (and stress) central. i told her about the mouse, but it quickly got pushed aside by discussions of domicile and unequivical something or another. she turned it in on tuesday morning and all was good in the borough of brooklyn. we went down to bay ridge to get the mirror on her car repaired since i knocked it clear off while moving the car some months ago. nice job on that one donna. anywho after a few hours in bay ridge (we did a little driving tour after the car was done and its an interesting area of town, we plan to go back and have a meal or a drink) we went and picked up jes's friend beth and hit this cute little bar in fort greene called "moe's." now moe's was having a buy one get one free happy hour and since the two lawyers were spent from memoing they need an adult beverage or two. dt just got some grapefruit juice to try and fight off the ache in her left ear and the left side of her throat (its still there, by the way). after moe's we came back to our house to chill before we went and got jes's bday dinner at da vincenzo (courtesy of mama y papa). so as we walked into the house i began to tell beth the aforementioned story of the mouse; she informed me that she too had met with a mouse or two in her apartment. as i opened the door all three cats met us which is a bit unusual. larry always meets us at the door, emily usually does but horace usuallly gives us the finger from the back bedroom. jes made a joke about how the three cats were useless b/c they didn't catch the mousie. we all laughed and i went to wash the filth of new york off my hands. as i came back into the living room/dining room area, i once again shreiked b/c i looked at the area right in front of the front door and saw this:

while jes and i were partaking in grilled cheese and fries at the diner next to the saturn dealer and jes and beth numbed their memo pain with brooklyn lager, the three kittens were hard at work killing mr. mouse about the house. this is why they all met us at the door. they wanted us to see the result of their handy work, i.e., one dead mouse. i screamed some more and then got my composure, and put said mouse into a ziploc and then into a plastic bag and threw him in the trash outside. all the kitties got extra treats that night.

then, this morning as i watched netscape upload i found out about these two tidbits:

1. alias is being cancelled. now jes is still asleep so even SHE doesn't know about it. it's true. this is sidney bristow's last season. oh bother.

that's what happens when you have unprotected sex with ben affleck. you lose your job. this, my friends, is a sad, sad, day. the series will have its finale in may.

2. the other ending/death i wish to report on is the ending of jessica simpson and nick lachey. yes, its true, they are parting ways after just three short years of marriage.

jes and i celebrate our four year anniversary in about a week. hard to believe that we outlasted nick and jessica.
actually, it does sort of make me sad just b/c so much of their identities depended on being a couple. i wish them well in their singlehood. i wonder what fucknut jessica will hook up with next.

ok this concludes my saddest posting of the bunch
RIP mr. mouse, alias the series, and nick and jessica
i tip my 40 to you.

la fiesta de jes

2005-11-20T14:48:00.000-05:00

good afternoon sweet readers. i hope i haven't kept you on the edge of your seats with the details from jes's brooklyn birthday party on friday night. i had every intention of filling you in on the happenings and the visual delights yesterday, but two things kept me from doing so:

1. the demon in my brain who was driving an ice pick through my head while also creating queasy waves in my belly, also known as my hangover from too much red wine and not enough food.

2. our internet has been out since saturday morning. i come to you now from the brooklyn law school library.

so after many glasses of water, some generic tylenol and lots of sleep and naps, i now feel able to bring you the deets.

so the real short version of this story is: the party was a success. i think folks had a good time, they liked the food and there was enough room for everyone. the backyard was romantic and sparkly but freezing, the cats weren't too angry being locked up in the bedroom and no one got in a fight, threw up, or left the party crying. to me that spells S-U-C-C-E-S-S

the longer version is this: i spent all day friday shopping, cooking and cleaning. i made black bean salad, guacamole, kim's spinach and ball cheese recipe and these rice crispy treats meet smores things. oh and i also made about twelve million devil's food cake cupcakes. most of them were topless (hell to the yizzah. just kidding) but some had homemade whipped cream with a little cherry goo and cherries from a can (jes loves this stuff. i don't know why). i felt the guacamole was the best thing i made. the cheese balls were too dry, but the kids liked them and the cupcakes went like wildfire. i think folks were intimidated by the mutant crispy smores. i tasted one, it wasn't all that. along with all those goodies we had bobbi's super garlic hummus and some cheese, crackers, veggies and dip. higgins ALMOST ate all the broccoli, but not quite. she called me on saturday morning said it tasted like she had a garlic clove in her mouth (everything was very garlicky-it's good for the heart and keeps the vampires away). here is a photo of me in my SKIRT with a quote from bell hooks about feminism stitched in the bottom. i got it at a ladyfest event. i am also wearing my new teacher boots. notice the lovely spread on the table and all the pictures that jes has hung up. its almost like having our friends and family living in brooklyn with us.

ok so higgins was one of our first party guests. she brought a bag of left over halloween candy for our entry way, her sexy self AND her newly manicured nails. she went crazy brown for jes's bday:

shortly behind her was three of the four members of our sexy supper club. ali went bonkers over the hummus (its her favorite) and glennda and kim were digging the cupcakes. i sent them home with a bunch and i need to bring them some whipped cream for on top. left to right is ali (her real name is nancy), glennda, kim and higgins (she was busting chats with them on the couch).

now they all have real jobs that they worked all day, so these four lovelies left early b/c they were tired. it was just in time for the law student contingent to roll in. first up is beth baltimore and her friend whose name i think is ann. anywho beth has the most beautiful curly hair that i covet AND she MADE jes these bowls out of russian folk tale records in her oven. i mean really, who does that? beth baltimore does. apparently they are flammable, so we need to keep them away from open flames.

below you will find more lawyers. here we have niki, julie, marco and jes. if they are all paying for school with student loans, between the four of them they will be over half a million dollars in debt. nibble on that for a minute.

next we have the upstairs crew. as you might remember this party was for jes AND kristin, our upstairs neighbor. they are both born on november 17th. isn't that weird? so kristin is the blonde holding the glass of wine. i know i was introduced to the rest of the folks but by then i had my tipsy on, so i don't remember any names. one of those ladies is kristin's voice coach, i do remember that.

by the time i got back down to our apartment, jes's friend max had arrived. luckily he was wearing the jacket he got for halloween at the thrift store. he dressed up as a new yorker. good one. all i kept thinking in my head was "america: fuck yeah!"

now this is either a picture of more law students OR a toothpaste commercial- you choose.

now i know it is hard to believe but we do actually have friends that are not law students or graduates of my alma maters. here is christian and his sweetie ashton. christian and jes worked at caribou together in atlanta. he is hilarious and he makes a hella good fruit tart. at one point in the night he and jes did some synchronized dancing but the fucking battery on the camera was acting up so i didn't get a picture of it. oh the wonders of beer and what it can get people to do. anywho, here are two cute boys:

and here is a picture of our newest friends jaime and sandy. i met sandy at IDKE 7 in Winnipeg (of all places). she performs with the transformers. anywho, her and jaime live about five blocks from us and they had a party last night that we attended. it was a hoody party (you had to wear a hoody) which is no problem for jes and i since we wear hoodies 98% of the day. i am slowly falling in love with sandy's dog theo. she sent me a picture of him and i think he and i are going to discuss our dislike for jenny shechter of the l word on this blog soon. stay tuned.

and lastly, but not leastly, we also had a little royalty in the hizzouse. here is a picture of jes, bettina and her sweetie ed. bettina, you may remember, was the FIRST PLACE winner of the annual BLS talent show. she found time in her busy tour schedule to hang with us little people for a minute. jes and i both think her boyfriend ed is darling.

so yeah, the last folks left at around 1 or 1:30 am, and while most of the food was gone, we had about twelve thousand cans/bottles of beer left over. oh and a HUGE bottle of red wine that i have vowed to never drink from. we took 14 cans of bud light over to sandy and jaime's party and now she is trying to pawn some of it back on to us. i was like hell no you drink it. who knows though, with the stress of jes's finals approaching maybe all the beer will get drank? drunk? consumed.

so bottom line jes had a wonderful time at her party. she felt totally loved, she scored some great presents and all of our friends got to meet each other. everybody seemed to like our place and at the end of the night right before the last shift of folks left, we let the cats out and they got some good loving from folks, so that was nice too. i was totally exhausted all day yesterday. i mean i felt extra dumb. but i am feeling better today. i have gotten so much done in the few hours we have been here at the library. and soon i think we get to go to SOHO so i can buy my new jacket. it is on SALE- 25% so i feel that is babyjesus telling me to get it.

later tonight (if our internet works) or tomorrow i will begin my tirade against jenny from the l word. grab a snack before you start it, b/c it will be a doozy for shizzle.

two great links

2005-11-17T17:23:00.000-05:00

ok so here are two hilarious places for you to go:

1. http://www.imgag.com/product/full/ap/3067907/graphic1.swf

2. http://www.lisawhelchel.com/journal/index.html

the first is from my brooklyn friend kim who writes erotica (as opposed to atlanta kim the human resources expert of "sarah and kim" or columbus, ohio kim my friend who teaches women's studies, sells real estate and has two boys named rain and finn)

the second link is from my friend sarah (see "sarah and kim" above) she is a fucking GENIUS on the computer. i mean it, you tell her you want to see a picture of sabrina the teenage witch pregnant eating a pickle and gosh darnit, she will find it for you. she also makes a hella good chili.

that second one will be real special for all yall who used to watch the facts of life

and now i go to take a nap before jes gets home and opens her BIRTHDAY presents

yippie

a new goal in my life

2005-11-16T09:28:00.000-05:00

good morning all. i am sitting next to jes who is reading about the bernard goetz case. now most of you probably remember that from the news. 1984. angry white man shoots four young black men on the subway because (he says) they were trying to rob them. because one of the guys he shot looked "okay" he went back and shot him again and paralyzed him for life. he became known as the "subway vigilante." i think he only served eight months and that was for having an unregistered concealed weapon.i disucussed this case with niki last week and then with jes this morning and guess what? neither of them knew who bernard goetz was, because, well, THEY ARE TOO YOUNG. yeah that made me feel real good.

anywho i just wanted to report that while i saw no famous people at american transtand, i did have a lovely time with glennda, kim and nancy (aka ali) eating a delicious pre-show dinner and then standing around and listening to the first half of the show. i am certain i have sustained hearing loss from the loudness and when halifah wadiah (i am sure i spelled that wrong) came on and did her shit the bass from the speakers sort of felt like a huge vibrator. speaking of vibrators, kim (the one who writes erotica) won a vibrator. well actually they were throwing them out into the crowd and she caught it. i deflected something, maybe a vibrator, from hitting jes in the face, but caught nothing, except maybe a cold. oh bother. we couldn't rally for the whole thing, so we didn't see the second half. i was wiped out. guess it was from working out b/c my tired ass needs to adjust to being active again. pathetique.

so about my new goal. no, its not to finish my dissertation silly, or to get all my IDKE stuff in order so i can "step aside" as chair, i have created a whole NEW goal that will take up more of my time and keep me from achieving the aforementioned goals. anywho, many of you may know that i religiously read the blog mr. nice guy to be found at: www.bonnehomme.blogspot.com

well this dude makes me pee in my pants almost everyday and i want to MEET him. he posts pics of our neighborhood, well really more of his neighborhood which is more north in park slope (he is money). and he talks about where he lives and places he frequents. he also talks about his babygirl. i have had my eye out for him, but i think i am really going to kick it into high gear now. you know my dad is not just any old cop, he is a detective and my sister was in the FBI for a while so CLEARLY i have investigative skills IN MY BLOOD. what i want to do is to "accidentally" meet him and then become his babysitter and then see what he writes about me on his blog. is that crazy? perhaps, but it will keep me occupied while i am not writing my dissertation and there is nothing good on the food network. stay tuned for updates.

another feature i want to add is the sarah storytelling time. you might remember that my friend sarah was to give us intermittent updates on popular culture gossip. that never came to fruition. this new idea i have comes out of the crazy ass stories she told me while we were in atlanta. i especially like the stories about her friend who has twin nieces. one she calls the devil niece, the other the angel. the devil one is HILARIOUS. cross yer fingers that sarah is looking for something to do to busy herself.

it is just a matter of time...

2005-11-15T16:54:00.000-05:00

before i am snorking coke off of kevin spacey's butt cheek, or something like that.

yall i am pretty sure i saw steve buscemi in the cocoa bar. i went in there to get a small piece of delcious chocolate (i went for the chocolate caramel kickback for $1.00). i didn't want to stare, but i am about 85% certain it was him.

if i had the chutzpah, higher blood sugar and i didn't have to get home to shower, i would have told him he was a GENIUS in fargo. fucking genius.

ok i gotta get ready for american transtand this fundraiser for the sylvia rivera law project. i bet there will be all kinds of hotties there.

two more days til jes's 26th bday and i found her first grey hair today when i went to have lunch with her. i pulled it out. now she will grow TWO. yippie. i will be dating a silver fox in no time.

the rest of the weekend

2005-11-15T10:03:00.000-05:00

so the reason i don't have any pictures from the weekend is because i am a tool and i forgot to bring the camera with me when we left the house on saturday morning. we spent the morning and afternoon with jes's parents. it was great to see them and they were loving time with their babygirl. we got breakfast at le peep, and i got an egg white and cheese sandwich on a bagel that made me sick the rest of the day. i spent some time in the bathroom and took an hour nap while jes and her folks ate lunch. i tried to eat some soup later on and this proved to be less than prudent. so i settled for water and a little immodium ad the rest of the night. GOOD TIMES.

anywho we got to dawn and gators around 6pm and hung out with them and bailey until we left for los lorros. now we were a bit early so i tried to stall by having to go to the publix to get immodium ad. i mean i really needed it, but i could have gotten it earlier. anywho, we get to los lorros and jes and dawn and i are walking in, jes holding the leftovers from the black forest cake her mom made her. as we are walking in, she sees angie and elin and says "is that angie and elin" and because she is looking at them and not watching where she is walking she trips and the cake goes flying, but she quickly recovers and catches the unscathed cake. it was at this point she starts to catch on that there are a lot more people at los lorros than she had planned on there being. we walked into the back room and there were all her friends. YIPPPIIIEEEE i yelled and everyone laughed and yelled surprise. she had no clue. it was great. there were folks from emory, from caribou, and just from around and they were all thrilled to see jes so close to her bday. everyone ate and drank and was merry. luckily, kim brought her disposable digital camera and she will be sending me pics of the event shortly. i will post them as soon as i get them. jes was showered with gifts and love and that was exactly what i wanted. after the dinner a number of us went on to trackside to play darts. i drank tonic water with lime and tried to stay awake.

sunday morning jes, kim, sarah and i went to breakfast at this cafe in downtown atlanta/the 4th ward. its this cafe where everyone is a volunteer and all the proceeds go to a homeless shelter. i took it easy with some fake sausage and fruit. the server was so nervous and he spilled orange juice on jes. it was sort of funny but i was real glad she wasn't wearing the new brooklyn industries hoody i got her. that would have sucked. the flight back to new york was pretty uneventful. lots of people magazine, letter writing and, in jes's case, soduko- some japanese numbers game she is already hooked on. i tried to help but it took a part of my brain that was not working.

i still feel a bit yucky today, but i feel good b/c i have already done some work work (for my job). i like when i get things in order and crossed off my list of things to do. soon i will head to the dollar store to get some stuff for the community service day the black law students are holding at jes's school. i may also try to hit the YMCA for a little ellipticalling. yesterday i raked up all the leaves and such from the backyard and the rest of the week i will work on cutting back some of the vines and setting up the sparkly white lights. i hope this party turns out well. and i hope my friends like my other friends.

so that is it for now. i have more to write about the new series from netflix we are watching: the L word. i have been slowly crafting a poem entitled "why i hate jenny from the L word" but its not quite done yet. something to look forward to though.

good times in the ATL with very few pictures for now

2005-11-14T13:01:00.000-05:00

i am slowly recovering from a few days of eating, drinking and being merry in the ATL. i woke up this morning with a sore throat that can either be connected to the dry heat coming from our radiators overnight OR from the funk that manifested itself via green snot in bailey's nose. either way, i am pumping my body with vitamin c and echinacea all day long. i have a long week of party preparation and such so i can't get sick.

our trip to atlanta was great. i am a bit exhausted from it but i had such a good time i think its worth it. i flew into atlanta on wednesday afternoon and headed to dawn's for a little lunch and chatting before i had to put on my work clothes and head to campus. bailey is growing up so quickly. he has these adorable little curls above his hears and he has like 100 teeth now. not really, but you get my drift. he also sings and babbles which is just delightful. dawn seemed a bit worn out b/c bailey had been up pretty much every hour on the hour not feeling well. after bailey went down for a nap, she and i chatted over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. it was nice to have a little time to ourselves. i got to my office to find out the system was down and therefore i could not access any of my work files on my computer NOR could i print anything from my computer. i tried to do a little breathing and then made the decision that approval of last meeting's minutes would have to wait until the next meeting. that evening i had dinner with layli, one of my committee members. we were both so exhausted i opted to not talk about my dissertation chapter i had turned into her b/c nothing she would say would actually go into my brain. she seemed very okay with this and we just ate and talked like friends. it was very nice to see her and hear about all that she has going on. she is wicked smart. from there i went back to dawn's and we sat on their new fancy couch from ebay and talked and drank the wine leftover from my meeting. again, this is the kind of stuff i love when i visit. just little secret time to really connect. after that we both totally crashed.

my meetings started at 9am on thursday, so i was up and out pretty early. what was cool is that as i was leaving to go to campus, dawn was putting bailey down for his morning nap so that meant she was able to get a little more sleep. all my stuff on thursday went fine. after my event in the afternoon i got to meet with saralyn, another committee member and she gave me some really valuable feedback on my chapter. like layli, i got to chat some about life with saralyn, which was really great. she is also wicked smart and has all this history of queerness in the south and lesbian feminism just in her brain. i told her someday i want to do a project about dialogues across generations of queer women. we both agreed that must take place AFTER the dissertation is over. amen to that. what was most helpful is that she assured me my work is not a big pile of poo. her input re-energized me and i hope to get to making some of the changes she suggested this week. today i am trying to just get back into the swing of things, get unpacked and organized and start preparing for jes's party on friday.

after saralyn i went to sarah and kim's and hung out. again i got some special alone time with them (and my dog lovergirl ruthie ru ru). we just sat around and shot the shit and it felt like i never moved to brooklyn. gas prices are rising this winter so sarah and kim are trying to build more fires and turn the heat down some. to keep ruthie warm they have incorporated some "woobies" onto her bed. these are really just old terrycloth towels, but she loves them and they keep her warm. here is a picture of ruthie with a woobie cape.

around 9:30pm we went to pick up jes from the airport and headed to el myr for a burrito. jes was on the edge of losing her shit by the time we got to el myr b/c she had tried to get on an earlier flight which then got delayed and once the flight did get going she had not one, not two, but THREE rows of small children in front of her. apparently one of them in front of her spent most of the flight squawking like a bird and once he fell asleep his precious big sister pinched him so he woke up and started to squawk/wail again. my fish burrito was delicious, but jes wasn't feeling hers so much. not enough fish i guess. after that we went to trackside to play darts. i think jes and i won, but i can't really remember. on friday morning jes and i went to ria's with nikki and her gfriend christina. here is a pic of the three of them:

and here is cute one of just jes and nikki:

nikki and christina showed us their cute matching tattoos: pink and purple cupcakes on their bellies. and nikki is in the process of getting madonna tattooed on her left calf. i did not get a picture of it, but it is huge. she said after four and half hours she had to quit. she's pretty hardcore like that. jes and i spent the rest of the afternoon running around town, she studied some while i worked and we also stopped by dawn's to hang out with her and bailey some. originally we were supposed to have dinner with dawn and bailey that evening, but bailey was running a fever so she had to cancel. it actually worked out because then jes was able to get her hair cut and we were able to have dinner with sarah and kim that night b/c we could wait until they were done with work. during our visit with dawn and bails he said "nana." now i am certain he has no idea what that means, or its significance to me, but it darn near made me cry. that evening we ate at taqueria del sol and it was everything that jes had hoped for and more. i enjoyed my fish taco which was less greasy than i remember and the salsa trio filled my belly with love and heat- especially the green tomatillo salsa. it seemed extra spicy. after that we hung out with nikki and christina some and then headed to the Clermont, this old school strip club.

jes had heard that it was closing, so she really really wanted to go. it's really non traditional there in that its only like 3$ to get in and the strippers don't look like manufactured barbie dolls. some are old, some are fat, some are way too skinny and some are tattooed. most, i would argued, are cocaine users, or as jes would say "geeked out on coke." that part made me very sad. eventually we made our way to the circular bar where we had a front row seat for the dancer on top of the bar. i think most of the ladies liked us because we tipped and because we were not looking at them like they were tasty pork chops. our time there was weird for so many reasons, but i was most taken aback by how seldom i see real women naked- i mean aside from me and jes, you know. i have become so accustomed to only seeing thin young women with traditionally attractive bodies that when i see small breasts or thick thighs or cellulite aflapping i am given pause. they were all beautiful in their realness, but i just forget that i almost never see that. the other weird thing, or thing that gave me pause was some of the men's reaction to the four of us saddled up to the bar. none of us were there with men and the male patrons didn't really know what to do with that. there were other non-stripper women, but they were all with at least one man. it felt very disruptive in a good way and i think for some of the dancers, we were a welcome break from the nasty "bend over for me and i will give you this DOLLAR" deal. by the end of the night, i was exhausted and i fell fast asleep in our delicious white bed.

i have to go and move the car back to in front of our apartment. i will write more later.

i don't want to brag yall...

2005-11-08T09:09:00.000-05:00

but check this out. i have a bunch to report, but let me begin here. so i was a bit cranky yesterday after i finished volunteering at the co-op office all day so i came home, got more cranky and decided to nap before i headed up to jes's school for a fish burrito and a gay lawyers mixer at floyd's. that's right, homo law students from all over the city descending on a bar that has a gay night *once a month*. thanks floyd's. anywho, we got there and in fact it was mostly brooklyn law school students, but it was still a good time. we played a little bocce ball (though i question the rules niki imparted to us), drank some beer, and i became mesmerized by the classic films playing the screen behind the booth we were sitting in. i chatted with jes, niki and beth baltimore, but i mostly chatted with beth's two friends whose names i forget, but i invited them to jes's party so i will get a chance to learn their names for good. anywho, i was getting tired b/c i am an old lady, so jes and i finished up our bud lights (so classy) and headed out the door. as we were leaving, i looked over at the bar and who is sitting there? Kim, the cute little butchie dyke from America's next top model. She lives in Brooklyn. Now, if you by chance live under a rock and do not know about her, here is a pic:

i saw her and recognized her and motioned to jes to look (b/c jes could be sitting next to parker posey and not realize it. smart as a whip with the lawyer/grad student stuff, clueless when it comes to celebs sitings). anywho jes was like "oh my gosh" when we got outside. i immediately started to call sarah and kim at home and promptly woke sarah up (bad donna bad donna) which made me feel like an a-hole (sorry sarah). anwyho i told her and then demanded that jes call/text everyone in the bar so they knew. but alas, there was no signal in the bar. so since jes's bladder is the size of a peanut we decided to go back in so she could use the toilet and i could let all the lezzie lawyers know that a (famous) one of our own was right there in the bar. also if you don't watch the show, you don't know that kim is the most butch model ever to grace the show and through most of the show she wears polos with the collar popped and lotsa ties. anywho they keep telling her that they "get" her whole "masculine thing" but that she needs to embrace more of her feminine thing, blah blah and one night she just busted out about how she struggles with her gender everyday and that basically (in my words) the gender binary doesn't work for her. now of course i am graduate studentizing what she said but the big thing is that she is masculine and beautiful and on tv and has not let them totally turn her permanently into barbie (she *is* rail thin, but lets pretend that doesn't matter right now). anywho i thought it took spunk to say that on tv, so i was going to thank her. so i walked up to her, pardoned myself for the interruption (she was talking to some woman) and said thank you to her for talking about gender the way she did on national television. she was like "wow, thanks." then she introduced herself as kim (like i didn't know that). i told her i was donna, introduced her to niki (who is probably laying in bed with her right now) and jes. we chatted a bit, she told me that she has caught a lot of flack for saying the stuff she did so its nice to hear positive feedback. i said no problem and let her know that it gave me a little bit of hope. then we left and caught the bus.

this just in: jes has just told me that another one of her friends from bls, andrea who looks like a more butchie ally sheedy and smells divine, played bocce ball at the bar with kim from america's next top model. i mean really how long until i am partying with robert dinero and laurence fishburne? its inevitable yall. don't worry i won't forget you little people.

ok onto less famous but equally as beautiful folks. i got an email from my old college roommate cheryl. she sent me a picture of her wedding. you might remember the pics of her bachelorette party- penis antennae, penis candy, penis squirt guns. anywho, here is a pic of her and her husband orasio:

how lovely is that?

and while we are on the topic of lovely, i had a lovely saturday afternoon with higgins, lisa d. and vicki talking about feminist publishing, eating hot diggity dog (jes joined in for this) and bday cake, and then heading out to cattyshack. it was a really great time. we had dogs and jalapeno poppers and squeeze cheese fries (so good) and higgins really loved her less than lovely peppermint patty cake that i made. i had this recipe that said you could just put the patties on the hot out of the oven cake and they would melt into a frosting. this, my friends, is a bold faced lie. so it turned out kind of ugly. take a look:

despite its appearance, the kids seemed to enjoy it. it was a bit sweet for me. i am going to try and bring the left overs up to higgins at work today if i can get it together soon and start my day. also, here is a pic of the cuties before we went out to the bar. please pay close attention to higgins "boiled wool" coat. my question to you, dear reader, is this: do you know what boiled wool is? b/c i had never heard of it. luckily, neither had lisa d. and she is a genius, so i don't feel that dumb. now vicki had heard of it, she is also a genius, but she is a genius from england and they have that kind of stuff over there. anywho here they are:

damn those are some hot feminists.

okay i am off to atlanta for work tomorrow. it is supposed to be 80 degrees there. i love the atl.

on talent shows and terrible french films

2005-11-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

while i have continued to do next to nothing on my dissertation,i have been able to stay abreast of my work work and the neverending IDKE committee stuff. though there is still plenty to do on both of those fronts as well. i have also been spending some time at the YMCA. i went and just worked out with jes on monday on the elliptical, did vinyasa yoga on wednesday and it kicked my butt some. its not that i could not do the poses per se, but more like i just lost my strength and stamina from not doing yoga for the last three months. this makes me very mad and disappointed with myself, but i guess that will fade as i build back up. last night we went to do TWO classes: abs and then this class they call Willpower and Grace. But, alas, the schedule they gave us was old and instead we went to pilates. Now i have done pilates once or twice at emory and didn't think it was all that. now mind you that was back when i was at least doing yoga three times a week and then sometimes cardio on other days. yeah, so pilates pretty much kicked our asses. it was all this "core" stuff and my core is a big bowl of banana pudding, so needless to say i laughed at myself through much of the class.

on thursday night i attended what is billed as the biggest party of the year at brooklyn law school. yeah, that is right, the talent show. this is a fundraiser for the public interest group on campus. folks, it was a doozy. first off, the theme was Studio 54 (which for those of you who live under a rock, was a club here in nyc during the disco era. lots of cocaine, feathered hair and tube tops. and you should have seen the girls!) anywho b/c of this theme there was a lot of sequins in the hizzouse.surprisingly, neither jes nor i dressed up. she worked the keg for a good part of the show, so i sat and watched with beth baltimore and her friend julie. so the show started off with this dude who i was *certain* was a professor (he was not) singing a song from none other than "jesus christ superstar." just him in his maroon tshirt and black jeans singing a little show tune. now let me be clear, ole boy had some pipes and some spunk to get up there as a non traditional aged student as the first act and belt out a little ditty about jesus. either way, i looked at jes through most of it (she had not gone up to keg duty yet) b/c i could not look at him b/c i was embarassed. after the jesus song he played a little ditty on the roland electric keyboard and sang along. this was a song he wrote. it was about love.

the rest is sort of a blur. as i was watching i told myself "remember this, because it is blog worthy" and now it is hard to recount it all. but some highlights were: thin woman in prom dress singing some crazy opera in another language- she won third place, lady in blue hair and blue dress singing "i will survive." second place winner was a woman from jes's section who did some belly dancing number. a few of the folks behind me (i won't name any names) said "she has a nice rack." first place went to jes's friend bettina, who i was cheering for. she sang and played keyboard. first she did a bjork song. it was OUTSTANDING. then she did a U2 song. we were all very glad she won. i also got to meet her cute boyfriend, i forget his name. after the talent show festivites, we headed to some brooklyn law school bar with all the kids from the talent show. niki and i ate some goldfish crackers while she drank a beer that tasted a bit like wood. mmmm, wood.

last night after going to do pilates, or what i like to call fuck-i-have-no-core-strength-lates, jes and i stopped at this restaurant/bar called bar minnow. she had had their fish tacos and suggested we get some. we shared an order of those, then got some fries and a nice side salad. for whatever reason i had a hankering for a salad. it has way too many weeds in it, but the balsamic vinagrette wasn't bad. i also had a nice glass of shiraz. after dinner we walked home and watched this FUCKED UP french film. it is called "high tension" or for you francophones "haute tension". ooh she is so bilingual.

now jes apparently heard "good things" about this film. i am not sure which FUCKNUT friend gave her this review but i would like to clock them in the jaw, or maybe hit them in the face with a piece of wood with barbed wire wrapped around it again and again. it was presented to me as a french lesbian film. i thought YEHAW. i LOVE french lesbians (i really don't know any, but i bet i would like them if i did). the movie starts and it seems somewhat promising. there is this ridiculously hot butch girl in it. killer body, ok 1993 lesbo haircut, and cute smile. for whatever reason part of the film is subtitles and part is dubbed in english. we still don't really get why. it is a super gory horror movie with less than impressive special effects.

the premise is that hot butch goes with not so cute straight? femme girl to her parents farm house. they get there late. femme girl says good night to mom, dad and cute little bro and butch goes up to the guest room in the attic. while all sleep except butch who is masturbating, killer man drives up and breaks in and kills the whole family. decaptiates dad, slits mom's throat and shoots little billy in the cornfield. not nice. she ties up femme girls and gags her with some tubing. butch girl tiptoes around the house and avoids killer man and then gets in back of his truck secretly with bound femme girl. they go to a gas station and butch girl runs into the store to ask for help while killer man fills the truck. killer man comes in and, well, kills the gas station guy. blah blah blah, chase, butch girl calls cops from gas station, blah blah and then the cops FINALLY get to the gas station to try and save the girls. when they look at the tape of the gas station store they find that really there is no killerman, it was butch girl all along. not only is she a butch lesbo, she is also a psychopathic killer (i mean isn't that sort of a given?) anywho in the end femme girl gets away from butchkillergirl and butchkillergirl gets put in a funny farm. the film insinuates that the reason butch girl killed all of femme girls familia and the rest of them is b/c of her unrequited love for femme girl. and in case you are wondering, two dudes wrote and directed the film. nice.

ok so i need to get to finishing up our laundry and get to starting some work on the diss. i am sitting here looking HOT in my grey cotton emory shorts, grey northwestern sweatshirt and grey with red and blue striped knee high socks. america's next top model? maybe. higgins, lisa d. and vicki are coming over this afternoon for our very first feminist writing group meeting. then we are going to have dinner and go to bars in brooklyn and then have a sleepover. yippppiiiieee.

my first movie star sighting

2005-11-02T20:31:00.000-05:00

today while i was walking around town running errands and i saw my first famous person in brooklyn. out in front of the park slope co-op i saw spike lee's sister joie lee. she has been in a bunch of his movies. for pics of her, go to:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&q=joie%20lee&btnG=Search&sa=N&tab=wi

yeah so i text messaged jes to tell her. it made me feel like i knew a secret or something and i had no one to really tell, so i am telling you now.

jes and i also went to the y tonight. i did vinyasa yoga. it was good and parts of it were pretty hard. it is amazing how much strength and flexibility i have lost in not doing yoga for three months. it makes me very angry at myself actually. but i am thrilled i found a class i like and it is part of my y membership. i am going to try beginners pilates tomorrow. i am pretty sure it will kick my ASS.

ok so i gotta go b/c the new stuff on america's next top model is on. and soon jes will finish reading and make me a rootbeer float.

hell to the yizzah.

one correction and random musings

2005-10-31T08:10:00.000-05:00

ok so first of all mandy, the nyu law student i met at that lesbian feminism panel, her blog is actually:

http://bananarchist.blogspot.com

i reported the wrong address in my last post. duh. and also check out this small world. jes and i met up niki to play catch at prospect park for minute b/c jes has been working like crazy making some outline for contracts (no i am not sure what that means). anywho the three of us are playing catch and talking smack and i hear "hey is that you donna" and i look and its this woman sandy, who i met at IDKE in winnipeg last weekend. her drag name is charleston chu (how fucking hilarious is that?) and she performs with the transformers from san francisco (where she used to live) but is now in brooklyn living while she does an internship for her psychology degree. anywho we chatted for a minute in winnipeg and realized we lived about five blocks from each other. we discussed the lack of vibrant drag king culture presently in nyc and i suggested we hang out. i even had her piece of paper with her info on the top of the pile of stuff i am going to deal with today. and lo and behold, there she is at prospect park walking her adorable "nod yer head" dog named theo. so that is cool, right?

but it gets even cooler. she is walking the park with her dog and her friend on a bike named sally. well it just so happens that sally has just moved her from san fran as well. why did she move? oh she moved to start LAW SCHOOL at cuny. so jes and niki and her spoke legalese for a minute and they invited her to the homo law student party that brooklyn law is having next week. yeah new friends! i also invited them to jes's bday party. and sandy invited us to her housewarming party. go parties go parties. anywho the full circle craziness of this all is that i just got an email from mandy letting me know i reported her blog address incorrectly (maybe i can get her to read my diss chapters too, she clearly has an eye for detail. i mean her blog says she is having a hard time sleeping....) anywho i wrote her back thanking her for letting me know and then told her about jes's homo law party. clearly the revolution is beginning and its gonna be filled with queer lawyers, drag kings, and lesbian feminists. hell to the yizzah.

oh yeah: happy halloween, happy 30th bday to higgins this past sunday, AND happy bday to my yoga friend angie this past saturday.