Heck of a weekend… for other people, I’m sure. Mine was spent cleaning the heck up out of my place. My cousin accepted a job in DC at a veterinary hospital and is coming up this week on a “find housing” trip. I am very glad that she didn’t ask for my help in finding a place since I have no connections, but she did ask for crash space. This is something, barring emergencies, I’m not good at providing. My place isn’t large, and since our storage area’s been off-limits to residents for nearly the past year, all of my stuff is in my place. With the lights off, for most people my place is a deathtrap.

They just allowed us to move stuff back into storage a few weeks ago, but they made the new rule that we can’t store anything in cardboard boxes. Well guess what everything I had was in? So a quick trip to Target and recommendations from Michael netted me a few Rubbermaid tubs and I managed to clear out some of the stuff, even overcoming my pack-rat tendencies and throwing some stuff out. Even so, there are some things I want to keep that I don’t necessarily have space for, so they’re just going to be “things in storage” until I have a larger place. Some fun during my trips downstairs to take more stuff out, was seeing a resident who’d been dumpster diving carting some of my stuff back upstairs. I’m glad since I did put some items in the unofficial “please take” spot of our trash area out back, it’s good to see some things being reused by someone… just not me.

I also did my usual “6 loads of built up laundry” chore. I always promise I won’t let it get to that point since it only takes 60 mins total to wash and dry, but still when I get in from work, laundry is the last thing on my mind. And while I could have used every machine available to do these, I knew that if I had 6 loads of clean laundry upstairs all at once, they’d never get folded right away, not when I have MarioKart calling my name. So I used 2 machines and 1 dryer (which can handle 2-3 loads of wash) and kept rotating out. On one of my trips down there, I saw that clearly I didn’t understand the concept of “the building shares a laundry room” because a woman was not only using every single available machine, she was also about to take out my wet clothes and those of someone else. I said, cheerfully but loudly, “I’m here, those are mine!” and she responded with a heavily accented, “Oh is yours?” Now I appreciate the stupid gringo routine as much as anyone, but don’t use it on me when 1: you’ve seen me doing laundry that day and 2: I’ve seen you speaking perfect English around the building before.

So my place is firming up. I still have some cleaning to do, and I need to get a key copy made and juggle her visit with a concert tomorrow night and another friend in town, so it’ll be a busy week. My inner introvert may well be curled up in the corner and crying by the weekend, but I’ll drown it with a few gin & tonics and all will be right with the world.

This is why socialized nerds and geeks have an off-switch. I don’t follow many printed comic strips regularly, only seeing the ones in Express, but today’s Pooch Cafe made me LOL, if you will, on the train. Not that I recall The Avengers fighting Godzilla, but it’s the kind of reference I’d pull out. One that is completely appropriate to the situation, but one that is also completely lost on the present audience.

Last night was a fun evening, the gang met up and were treated to quite the spread by Paul. The food star of the evening was his wings which were absolutely amazing, but he also made a custom cocktail and had plenty of nibbles. The plan was to watch “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” but the tone of the evening was rather fun and high-spirited that we watched “Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World” instead. Since I don’t watch much of anything that appears on LOGO, I’d never seen any episode beyond the first one. They’re very cute and funny, but they still rely on that whole “we’re not being offensive, we’re being so offensive that it’s not offensive!” reason for really pushing it.

I have no plans for the weekend. Part of my brain still doesn’t recognize that it is a holiday weekend. Without the constant reinforcement of people asking me what I’m doing, I might well have gotten up on Monday morning and tried to come into work. Hopefully the weather will hold up so I can take some fresh air breaks in between cleaning house. They reopened the storage area, but made a new rule that we can’t store anything in cardboard boxes. I’m hoping that doesn’t refer to the storage of cardboard boxes because I’m not trying to buy a bunch when I next move. A quick trip or two to Target should get me some proper sized tubs to throw my junk in.

I know the city will be packed due to Black Gay Pride, but I don’t know if DC is being seen as a popular destination this year what with the crazy weather we’ve been having. I might be better off staying close to home and avoiding popular parts of town the weekend or finding some last minute plans to get out of here altogether. In any case, the office is empty, the day should be slow and I’m counting the minutes ’til I can scurry along home.

I promise that I shall never trust in the old advice, “Oh thank goodness it’s raining, I don’t need to take my allergy pills today!” Especially when it rains for 2 or 3 days straight. Even shutting out the outside world didn’t help and it caught up with me last night. So today’s been a sleep in late and be domestic kinda day. Only a few errands (mainly to get allergy meds) and I’ve been home doing a bit of tidying between a lot of sitting down.

I have little entertainment to share except this recent gem from The Onion: Historic ‘Blockbuster’ Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past. My TiVo can download video podcasts, which is about the only way I’ll watch them since most web video just bores me. I never bought into the whole “small screen” entertainment, no matter how cute the podcaster might be. Keep an eye on the news ticker for some fun headlines as well.

Funny… but also very true. I love the Kathy character, “Two times a week I travel 6 miles to rent and return videos.” And the fond memories of going to the store and finding out that the video you wanted was already being rented. But what I most remember about Blockbuster stores is that you could easily gauge how queer the surrounding neighborhood was by how many copies of each gay and lesbian movies they had and whether or not there was a specific section just for those films.

Actually enjoying that nothing is going according to plan.

– mazzie

I’m not sure what the context of that tweet was, but it aptly describes my weekend. I had nothing planned, and it went completely according to plan. Perhaps not nothing but nothing much. Aside from a Happy Hour on Friday night which turned into a bit of a crawl around town, but on a gorgeous night, who cares? We started at Mayorga and then hit The Heights for dinner and wandered down to Nellie’s which unfortunately failed on all bar points. One could not drink for the line at the bar, you couldn’t move because they have a roof deck and the occupancy was too high and you couldn’t talk nor hear due to the music. It’s more like a gay sports bar that’s removed the “sports” from the theme. And there were so many polished twinks, or another word starting with t, that the lovely HD screens broadcasting the games seemed a bit of a waste. Not that I don’t wish we had more queer bars with outdoor spots or roofdecks, but when everyone flocks to the one so much so that the bouncer is only letting people go upstairs as others are coming down kinda kills the fun of going.

On Saturday I was up early, not quite a Stepford morning, but I did walk to the store and the farmers market then headed out to the burbs to spend the day hanging with Gregory and the kids. We ran a few errands and had cocktails out on his porch. Even though I’d forgotten to take an allergy pill and was surrounded by pollen, I was fine in the burbs. Urban pollen must be more aggressive.

Sunday was a little more domestic. I’d expected rain so stayed in and picked up around the house, gave the kitchen a good cleaning, grilled up some tuna for brunch and tried the egg beaters again, this time in the microwave. They were a bit better, but honestly I’m not sold. I also made some fresh salsa for snacking on later and dug in for some housecleaning. I’ve recently become hooked on method’s “beach sage” scented products so I have air fresheners in place keeping my apartment smelling a bit like vacation. Unless I make some new contacts, my days of beach trips are mostly behind me, but for some reason the scent is really speaking to me.

It feels far too nice outside to be here in the office, but I’m hoping to get out for a walk after work. I haven’t been through the zoo in a good long time. I can tell the area has given up on having a Spring and is starting that not-so-slow transition into Summer. I need to make some friends with pool owners!

I just sent an IM to Justin: i’m sure he’ll be fine. just makes a whole lot of other shit seem really unimportant right now. It could easily be said that there are times when my brother and I don’t like each other, but we still love each other. My parents have let me know that his condition is stable and that there’s not much I could do, even if I were there. He’s in good hands for now, and will pull through, but his recovery is probably going to be a long one. Thanks to everyone that’s checked in, I passed along the word that my friends are sending their best wishes.

I am still allowing myself the tiniest bit of selfishness and staying angry at him for this. I’m sure he was wearing all the necessary safety gear and all, but this is his second motorcycle accident. I’d like to think that this has taught him a lesson about riding, or at least when and where to ride. Since I don’t know the details of the accident yet, I can’t enter an opinion and I don’t blame him for it, even if he has done some boneheaded stuff in the past, I just don’t want him to get better, hop on the bike and I have to get another call about another accident.

I met Gregory for breakfast this morning and then we hit some stores. I needed some mundane things, printer ink mostly, and I was on the lookout for good iPhone accessories but alas we weren’t near an Apple store, and the nearest Cingular wireless store wasn’t open on Sunday — what kind of retail location isn’t open on Sunday… that’s not a Chik-fil-a? I can take a trip to P. Ciddy tomorrow after work to go shopping at the Retail Holy Land properly. We also hit a few stores for the usual clothing and also an eye out for bedding. I picked up some new sheets and pillowcases and a down (alternative) comforter, so now I need a duvet or duvet cover or whatever its called. Whoever came up with that concept needs a smack in the mouth. I was thinking a trip to West Elm might be in order, or I could just shop through the catalog, I dunno. I’ve been saying that I’m getting new bedding for ages now, but it’s finally time to get enough separates that I can pull together to change the look around from time to time. As I told Gregory today, there ain’t no one but me even seeing my bedroom these days, but at least I want to be happy with it.

Oh yeah, I bought a new Vista-compatible webcam today, so maybe people will be able to see my bedroom, but I’ve completely neglected to set it up tonight. Very unlike me to leave new tech/gadgets in the box like that. I also got a notebook cooler/fan stand, and I can tell a huge difference. Usually after pulling up a few pages in Firefox, especially any with Flash, my little HP’s fan is running into overdrive and I can feel the heat from it a few inches away. Even with the stand on low speed, I never felt it heat up at all. Not too shabby.

Also, for sheer amusement and the “how cool is that?” factor…

I’m sure some of my friends won’t be surprised at all by the fact that Martha Stewart and I are now “friends”, but apparently her Facebook profile is the real deal, being handled by her people. Martha is web savvy and that’s a good thing!