tarotgal

Last weekend was one of the best of my life. On Friday I went to Panera and wrote for a few hours after work, getting through the part of my Spander fic where I was stuck and easing into the big melodramatic scene which should be easier to write. I'm nearly finished with it now.

I spent Saturday morning volunteering at the library, which always puts me in a good mood. Then I went home and had time to eat before heading over to

melydia's house where she, two other good friends, and I all had a project party (where we hang out and talk while working on our own projects). I managed to make two ATCs, one bookmark, get completely caught up in my daily journal, and start a book journal for a swap I'm in. Sadly, her adorable new kitties were too scared to come say hello and hang out with us, but I got to pet her other cat a few times. I felt bad for displacing the boys, and I hope they were all right after we left. Apparently four excited project-doing women were too much for them.

On Sunday I headed into DC with

cowboyguy where we visited the Smithsonian's two Asian art museums to see the original Peacock Room (created by Whistler, as in "Whister's Mother") and then the remix of the room.
Peacock Room: http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/PeacockRoom.asp
Remix: http://www.asia.si.edu/filthylucre/
Seeing them back-to-back was just the thing and I loved the remix. It was just twisted and destroyed and haunted enough to be really creative and inspiring.

Then we headed to the DC Pride Festival, by way of the National Gallery of Art, where we headed into the cafe/food court there for much-needed lunch and air conditioning. We finally made it to the festival, which was overwhelmingly fun. It was my first pride, and the festival was a great way to get my feet wet. We had lots of fun picking up free swag and seeing all the people and just BEING part of it all. It felt like the experiences of being at a fandom convention or even a fandom meetup--you suddenly realize you're with YOUR PEOPLE. You were once just you and now you're part of this group of people like you and it's fun and warm and supportive and so many things you love all around you and in one place. I love feeling like that.

The only downside was that it was friggin HOT out. We ended up cooling off in the shade of the Newseum, close to the front door so we got a bit of the air conditining every time someone came out. After the festival, we went to the Air and Space museum and poked around there a little until Tut tut, it looked like rain. We got caught in a light shower on the way to the Metro, then headed home.

I don't think either of us wanted the day to end, so we stood in the parking lot talking/scheming about a project I'm working on. Then

cowboyguy looked over and right there in front of us in the lot was a car with the license place KAZ 2Y5. WHAT ARE THE ODDS?! We left a note on the dashboard in a plastic bag, because it looked like rain.

I drove home searching the sky for rainbows and even stood outside looking for one. But, alas, I didn't have one near me. Cowboyguy did though!! I'm jealous :-)

After that, I had a week only SLIGHTLY less terrible than the week before at work. And on Wednesday night I had one of the worst migraines of my life. I sometimes get headaches, but this was insane. I had horrible vertigo and was nausteated. Nothing good. My mommy ended up driving over around 10pm and staying with me until after midnight until the worst went away.

On Friday, everyone from work went to the movies as a way to celebrate our successful conference this year. We saw Spy, whch was filled with the word fuck and penis jokes, which was a little awkward to see with coworkers, but the movie was still funny. Definitely not anything I would have chosen to see in theaters, though I've seen worse. LOL There was a particular short but good moment in the beginning of the movie when Jude Law sneezes and there's discussion of him not having taken his allergy meds. So that was happy-making. But there's a v-ing scene in the middle and I had my eyes tightly closed during that and was humming to myself, so I don't actually know what it entailed. I highly recommend the first 10 minutes though. Afterward, we went to a fancy restaurant where I couldn't eat anything and everything was overpriced and it just made me sad. I had a call from Gallup Polls on Thursday, which was terrible timing, because the poll was all about race relations and I pretty much ended up crying through half of the poll. I watched Jon Stewart's monologue Friday morning and cried all over again. My country is so broken and can't even have a dialogue about it in a way that would affect change. I just feel so sad for those families in Charleston--and around my country--and feel stupid for sitting in a fancy restaurant eating rich people food while my coworkers discuss vacations to Hawaii and Rome and shopping at Anthropoligie and crap like that while other people are suffering.

Last night I went to cowboyguy's place and we played a game of Lord of the Rings DVD Trivial Pursuit. She crushed me :-) And then we attempted to play the Firefly board game. It took us something like 2 hours to figure out how to set up and play the game before we even STARTED playing. That's definitely the most complex game setup I've EVER experienced, and I'm still not 100% sure we completely understand it. But we had a good time figuring it out and playing, even though I was ready to PAY someone from the internets to come over and teach us how to play it at one point. Man that was complicated! I made a bunch of mistakes in the game (going after a worthless and low-paying job), but in the end we were pretty damn evenly matched and I came out slightly ahead to win.

I got home around 1:30am and walked into my house to find it smelled like smoke and my landline was rining. I FREAKED OUT and thought it was someone calling me to tell me my house was on fire (I know, that's stupid, but it's what I thought). It ended up being my mom and she and my dad came over at 2am and we finally decided the problem was the Verizon electrical unit that smelled kind of like a battery going bad/electrical fire. So we ended up turning it off and disconnecting the battery and then my parents headed home a little after 3am. Gods, I love my parents.

This morning the smell was gone, so it MUST be the Verizon unit. Which means I'm at the library using their free internet and won't be online the rest of the weekend. I'm on support chat with Verizon who keeps telling me to turn the unit on and I'm like "NO! I don't want my house burning down! I will NOT turn it back on!" Finally he was like "Okay, we'll send a guy Monday." And I'm like "Yes you will! Thanks!" So, I hope, all will be fixed then.

But, until then, no internet, sadly.

I'll have to survive the weekend without Netflix and email and phone and internet and cable! I'm off the grid, baby! Maybe I'll actually get some reading and writing done? I wonder if there's a writing meetup on Sunday at Panera I can crash...

Oh, and today I'm going to see Jurassic World with my daddy (and family). My dad took me to the first movie in theaters when it came out, so it makes me happy that I get to see it with him today.

Speaking of which, I need to head home from the library now, eat lunch, and wrap his Father's Day presents before driving to the movie theater for the 3:30 showing.