after work (it only became a nice day after work) i dropped by charo's house to loan her a DVD (gene kelly on the muppet show) and was surprised to find her old roomate there... a fellow i always enjoyed laughing with who has long since moved to san francisco. i haven't seen him in ages. he's only in town very briefly, which made it feel incredibly serendipitous, running into him like that, unplanned.
i could only chat with him for a few minutes, though, because i had a dinner date with pinky, mr. pinky & james. it was my first time meeting james and i think he's even better in person than he is as a blog. (which is saying a lot, considering how much i adore his blog.) he's perfect! i just wish he didn't live in charlotte (why do all of these interesting and fun people live so far away?!?)... i would very much like to hang out with james more often.
on the way home, the full moon was hanging perfectly low above the trees. i was stunned when i saw it: there weren't any clouds to obscure it. given all the rain we've had lately it just seemed an impossibility that this bright yellow thing was just sitting up there, bright as can be in a wide open sky.
the route i traveled took me right by the house of a guy i went out with a couple of times, years ago. he was (and probably still is) an anesthesiologist. i was initially quite impressed by that, but it turns out he hated his job. hated it. and that always scared me... what's more terrifiying than an anesthesiologist who dreads going to work? it makes me want to stay healthy and look twice before crossing the street, that's for sure.
anyway, thinking about him killed my fine little buzz, so i decided to reclaim it by stopping at ben & jerry's. mary's been raving about this flavor, so i got a hand-packed pint to go. it's totally yum. (incredibly rich, though... i could only eat two bites before putting the carton into cold storage.)
so even though i'm bone-tired (i haven't been sleeping well all week) i'm in a really happy zone right now. pleased as punch. tickled pink. ready for a relaxing weekend.
i feel like a total losebag this week. i am not participating in the whole mergefest thing, and everyone else seems to be. but, generally speaking, indie rock and i do not get along. i was toying with the idea of spending the bucks to go see lambchop (who are in no way indie rock, thank you very much) at the carolina theatre, but to be honest i don't want to have to sit through two other unknown-to-me bands beforehand. call me lame if you wish... but keep in mind that i just gave this same theatre $450 yesterday. they have enough of my money at the moment.
so, in more important news, i think we finally have the location nailed down for this upcoming hair makeover thing. david says he's happy to host it. in fact, he practically leapt at the opportunity. the fool.
finally, a few words about my car's air conditioning. it is now fully fixed, and yes, i love not sweating more than i could have dared to hope. but i have one minor complaint... just like sarah posted last month, i am a little bothered by a sense of disconnectedness. i have a harder time hearing what's going on around me now that the windows are rolled up all the time, and i actually kind of miss knowing what the weather is like on the other side of the glass. i used to be able to hear the road, smell the road... hell, even taste the road on certain construction-addled days (not that i miss that part at all), but now i'm in an isolated bubble. maybe this is simply part of a weird adjustment period and i'll eventually get used to it...
yay! i now have tickets to see david byrne on september 19. woo hoo!
i got to the carolina theatre an hour before they went on sale. one other person was ahead of me in line. i tried to chat with her, but she wasn't having it... maybe it was this whole competitive "i want better seats than you" thing. who knows.
anyway, i thought i'd have an hour-long wait in the sun, but surprisingly enough one of the box office employees opened his window about 10 minutes after i got there. he said "i'm here early, so let's go ahead... you'll have an advantage over the internet people this way."
woo hoo!!
the woman in front of me in line didn't know to ask for seats in the pit orchestra section, so she got her 8 tickets in row *L*. when she left i asked the box office guy for *14 pit seats* and his eyes got really big. "you know those are more expensive, right?" yes... yes i do. "and you know there's no group discount for those, right?" yes. let's go... i'd pay a million dollars for these tickets, bub... just sell 'em to me!
well, he could sell me *12* pit seats... that's all that were left. so i bought those, plus 2 seats right behind the pit, in the second row. two of our group will have to sit a bit behind the others, but still... row B ain't shabby.
when i left the line there were 2 more people behind me, waiting to buy tickets... and it was still before 11am, before the tickets officially went on sale. so if you want to go to this show, people, you need to buy your tickets now. seriously. what are you waiting for??
i've spent the last few hours working on an entry that i'm reluctant to post.
i've gone a few days now without catching up on other people's blogs.
i'm experiencing some kind of weird blog apathy, i think.
ok, this hair makeover is going to be totally insane.
it's scheduled for friday, august 20 at 6:30pm. the location hasn't been chosen yet, but it's either going to happen at my stylist's salon or at my house. (i'm hoping for the salon.)
the PR person for this event (amy) has some very grand plans... she thinks that since i'm "in the media" a lot of other local media outlets will be interested in covering this story seeing as i'm "one of their own."
i think amy has the wrong idea about my position in the world.
she also wants tons of my friends to be there in order to make the event more like a party. she's thinking "wine & cheese event". (i'm down with the wine... i'm sure i'll need it.)
in short, i think she's imagining some kind of chic sex & the city thing. and she sounds determined to make it so.
so, kind friend, i hope you're interested in seeing this train wreck in person. i could really use all the moral support i can get. consider yourself invited... mark it in your calendar now. both amy & i would be happy if you'd come.
edited to add:
i just found this info about the stylist:
Antonio Soddu, known as the "King of Curls," created Curl Friends, a specially formulated prescription for curly hair to help men and women achieve the best possible curls. The Milan, Italy-born Soddu has catered to many high-profile clients like Renee Zellweger and Al Pacino and has been a highly sought after hair stylist for the movies and theater. Some of his credits include "The Color of Money," "Dances With Wolves" and "The Age of Innocence." He has also worked on the television soap operas, "All My Children," "One Life to Live," and "Guiding Light." Soddu also was co-founder of Bumble & Bumble.
the mechanics worked on my air conditioning for more than 5 hours yesterday... and they're still not done. my car now has a little bit of A/C (!!!), and they let me drive it home (without paying, i might add), but they're not fully happy with the amount of cold air coming out of the vents, so i'm taking the car back tomorrow so they can tweak it to perfection.
so far my bill is $465. i think they'll have to add a condenser to the tally, but thankfully the compressor looks a-ok.
i have to say... even though they're not fully satisfied with the repair thus far I AM THRILLED to get even a weak little gurgle of cool air. i drove around last night with a big-ass smile on my face. this is what it's like NOT to sweat!!
i went shopping last night with mary. (i insisted that i would drive, so as to force my cool air upon her... i've got lots of friends to whom i owe countless summertime rides.) neither of us really needed to go shopping, but we both bought new skirts anyway. i now own at least 4 skirts. (ok, a couple of those are skorts.) i don't know what's come over me lately with the skirts... i think it's that my ass looks better in a skirt than in pants. (not that anyone but me is really looking.)
after shopping we decided we were hungry and stopped in this new place at briar creek called moe's southwest grill. we were hollered at when we walked in the door: "WELCOME TO MOE'S!!!" everyone behind the counter shouted it at once. they shout it at everybody. it's quite irritating.
we found a table outside (away from the shouting) and sucked down frozen margaritas like they were going out of style. we also enjoyed heaping mounds of nachos.
here's something i wish i had read before drinking that pitcher of margaritas... if i had only known, i could have put my pee to work for me and skipped the nachos. ewwww.
david byrne will be at the carolina theatre september 19!!
tickets go on sale july 28...
woo hoo!
post a comment if you're interested in going. i'll try to figure out a way to get a bunch of seats together.
i've made the appointment. i'm getting my car's air conditioning fixed on wednesday.
as i was finishing up the conversation with my friendly mechanic this morning, he thanked me for referring customers to his shop. there's one customer in particular he thanked me for... one woman who, i suspect, he may have eyes for.
he said he always gives discounts to people like me who give good referrals. but he said that, because of this woman, i'll be getting an 'extra big discount' on my A/C repair.
hmm. that's good news for me. but i know this woman isn't really romantically interested in the mechanic. i feel kinda weird about this.
i suppose i should just take the discount and let the two of them work out whatever needs to be worked out, and not worry about it.
but enough about that... look! at the bottom of the page! i'm a winner!! i'll have a new hairdo soon! i've never ever won anything before, and now i've won a hair makeover!! i'm so excited i could just pee.
i'm home.
i had a wonderful week.
i love my little niece. i love my family. it was totally awesome to get to hang out with lulu so much... she's a phenomenal person. and i feel such joy in every minute i spend with my brother.
i hope that someday we can all live closer to each other. i hate that this darling child is all the way across the country. and i feel like i would just be a more complete person if these people lived nearby.
the three of them will be swinging through durham on their way to the beach at the end of august. i'm thrilled to be seeing them again so soon... but after the closeness of these last few days i have to admit that the end of august feels like forever from now.
rob & i went drinking last night with some of his friends from work. i guess this is a regular thursday night thing... a bunch of folks from HP meet at one bar, then hop to several others throughout the evening. we started with margaritas and ended with vodka tonics, and in between i feel like i got to know his friends a little better. i had a really good time. plus i held my liquor well!
oh, the photo is of rob & his friend, tori, who is a partner of lulu's in skirty and also runs camp apparel. she's phenomenally talented. (also... in that photo... please notice the caged tequila. it apparently really, really wants out...)
so after all the late-night shenanigans, we decided to get up early and play 9 holes of golf. now, i haven't played all year... and though i love playing golf with my brother i feared my absence from the game meant i'd totally suck. and indeed, on the driving range those fears were confirmed. but rob gave me one little tip and --voila!-- every shot after that went straight & far. magic.
by the time we got on the course i was feeling pretty confident. first hole, i matched rob's score (bogey). second hole, i matched rob's score (double bogey). third hole, rob upped me by one (i double bogied again). but the fourth hole.... aaah, that fourth hole. the fourth hole i scored a par! par!! that never happens. and rob double bogied that hole, which made it all the more sweet. heh heh.
but right after that i pretty much crashed & burned. overall i think i averaged a double bogey score. (i shot a 50 on a par 32 9.) but for my first time out in over a year i was pretty damn impressed with myself.
oh yeah, there's still a cute baby here, too. :-)
last night after dinner we all got sucked into a stupid movie on TBS. after that, sliding doors came on, which i actually like quite a bit, and i stayed up late to watch it.
mom left for her conference yesterday, so i got to take over the guest room and after the movie was over i went to bed and slept like a champ. 8 hours, i think. i wish i could give some of that to lulu... although she probably gets 6 or 7 hours of sleep a night, it's broken up into small chunks.
roxi is really enjoying her play gym. lulu tells me that even a week ago it was too much stimulus for her, but she now has a pretty long attention span for it. she was really smiling a lot this morning.
we met rob for lunch at a pizza & sub joint that was excellent. i have to say... that calzone may have been better than pizza palace's. (ssshh!)
i finished the blanket today. it looks pretty good... for a first-time-knitter. i'm not at all thrilled with the job i did of stitching the squares together, but hey... i'm new at this. i think it'll be a good rolling-around-on-the-floor blanket for roxi one of these days. (it may be a little too itchy & hot right now.)
it's in the 90s here this week. i always thought colorado was supposed to be a chilly place.
everything about this baby is cute.
we went to rob's softball game today and everyone was all, "ooh, baby!"
wherever we go, people smile at her.
we went to eat indian food tonight and the manager kept coming over to look at roxi.
i even changed my first poopy diaper tonight, and that... was... wait, no, that wasn't cute at all.
here are two new things about flying:
1) on american airlines (and maybe others, too) you no longer have to show your ID as you board. yes, you still have to show your ID to the ticket agent and to the pre-security TSA agent, but no longer to the AA gate attendant.
they make a big announcement about it too: "please have your boarding pass ready. you don't need to show your ID anymore when boarding the aircraft!"
i'm left wondering if the airlines are finally winning back just a little control over their passengers, or whether the TSA has just told them that this is no longer a necessary inconvenience for us (since they've already invaded our privacy a half-dozen times since setting foot in the terminal anyway).
2) when the plane lands you are now instructed by flight attendants that you may use your cell phone while taxiing to the gate. it used to be a big no-no to use one while you were inside the craft, but no longer. as soon as the wheels touch the ground it's apparently ok.
this is the dumbest thing i did while travelling:
after snacking on pretzels and soda on the plane, i decided at DFW during my layover to buy a soft pretzel and soda. how stupid was that?? in fact, why do they even put pretzel stands in airports? i feel like an idiot.
this is the cutest thing i've seen all day:
i had lunch today with a couple of my old ADF friends. they still work there, more than 5 years after i left. what's shocking is that --unlike our past get-togethers-- we spent very little time today actually talking about ADF. we spent most of our time together bitching about dubya.
one of these friends is the co-director of the festival, and she told me about the myriad of immigration/visa problems ADF has had this year (which is the ultimate melding of an ADF & dubya conversation, i suppose). she told a terrible story about a russian dance company and the ridiculous number of hoops they had to jump through to get here. zillions of phone calls to consulates, to senators... to anyone who could possibly help speed things up. and still, even though their visa process began months ago, three of the company members didn't get to durham in time for their first performance.
then later, this afternoon, just a couple of hours before charo & i were to leave for the art museum to see les primitifs du futur, we learn that the band's concert has been cancelled... they weren't allowed across the border, either.
what the fuck is going on here?! apparently keeping french & russian artists out of the country is suddenly code orange shit.
ray went off to meet some fellow libertarians & protesters at the kerry/edwards rally this afternoon and returned with stories of rabid, punk-ass kerry supporters forcefully stealing admission tickets from libs... just to keep the dissenting libertarian voices away from the throngs of whooping democrats. (the cops also wanted them gone.)
these people (democrats... a group i typically ally myself with) were apparently so desperate to "do their part" to get bush out of office that they went beyond just trying to excite support for their favorite candidate... they actually atttempted to silence the supporters of only presidential candidate who has taught a course on the constitution.
the intolerance we live with these days is absolutely stunning.
ok, these are the shoes. ray went so far as to say the black ones were 'almost stunning'. he didn't say anything about the blue ones. maybe he was simply stunned into silence by the black ones. not sure.
i know i've said this before... but i do so love the wide shoe warehouse. it's a store just for me! (well, for me and for transvestites... one of their recent ads in the indy made it clear that they also target that clientele.)
this trip to the WSW was especially gratifying for me, as i brought along my narrow-footed friend, mary. normally mary (and Lisa the Normal-Footed) and i go shoe-shopping at DSW or SRI, where wide shoes are in the minority and i rarely have any success. well, at the wide shoe warehouse the tables were turned... i was finding all kinds of great things and mary found nothing. hahahaha!
sorry, that's mean. really, i felt kinda bad for mary. but not that bad, 'cause we went to DSW afterward where she found cute black strappy sandals and i found nothing. (well, i found a pair of 4-inch blue & green stilettos that made mary's eyeballs pop out of their sockets, but i didn't end up buying those.)
anyway.
i talked to rob last night, and though he's admitted that he & lulu are more than exhausted by their constant stream of houseguests since roxi entered the world, he still affirms that he is looking forward to my visit. i'm going to believe him.
it sounds like they're both so sleep-deprived... i'm prepared to do nothing next week except their laundry and their meal preparation. (though, the more i think about it, i don't know that they're really all that busy with the baby if they can find the time to create things like this.)
good god, it's hot.
i remember just a few days ago i was complaining about the rain. but now i've decided that the rain was great. bring back the rain! anything's better than this heat. the heat sucks.
in fact i have some news for the heat: I WILL DEFEAT YOU! see, heat, i just landed a freelance web design job. and this job will pay me almost exactly what i need to get the A/C fixed in my car.
bahahahaha!!!
ok, i know, i know... i said i'd never do freelance again, but i'm just really tired of sweating so much. the past howmany summers have been pure misery... to be honest, i can't even remember what it's like to drive my car around town and not have to change my clothes when i get to my destination.
so when i get back from colorado i'll start working on the site and will schedule the A/C repair. hopefully lisa & sarah will be willing to answer whatever coding questions come up... my kung fu is not nearly as impressive as theirs. (probably because they have A/C in their cars and can therefore think more clearly.)
oh, and i've got more good news. i saw my GYN this morning and she did not try to talk me into having babies. i was fully prepared to retaliate, too, should she have gone down that path again. maybe she sensed my preparedness and kept her mouth shut. more likely she was just interested in moving on to her next patient.
more hot news: i have 2 new pairs of sandals! i'll have to post photos tomorrow, 'cause i'm too sweaty to keep my finger from slipping off the camera button today.
oh, and one last thing... tonight on divaville i'll be giving away a pair of tickets to see the future primitives at the nc museum of art. good news for you.
if you've got some time wednesday night, i urge you to go see "shen wei dance arts" performing in reynolds theater at duke. [tickets]
"...a dreamlike otherworld of intense movement that falls somewhere between modern dance, performance art, painting, and sculpture."
the hour-long work focuses on connections between dancers... connections between music and dance... connections between dance and other art forms (specifically painting). connections and transference.
it sounds heady --and i suppose in some sense it is (music by ligeti and xenakis)-- but i left the theater with a distinct sense of satisfaction, having seen something thoroughly complete and fulfilling.
you'll see some beautiful, spiraling, flowing movement alongside jittery, jerky jumping. but you'll also see art created -multidimensionally- before your eyes.
go go go.
well, here we are, in moveable type. thanks to lisa for helping me get this set up.
sorry everyone's witty comments are now gone. that's the price you pay for progress.
i leave for colorado a week from today.
i'm excited to see my new little niece. i'm excited to see lulu. i'm excited to go golfing with my brother (even though i haven't golfed at all this year). i'm even a little excited about the few days my visit overlaps with my mom's.
basically, everything about this trip excites me.
and everything that has to happen between now & then just seems perfunctory.
there are a zillion parties going on this weekend. i knew i wouldn't have the endurance for all of them, but as it turns out i don't have any endurance at all: i bailed out completely on the two that were scheduled today. i feel kinda bad about missing them.
but instead i slept late (11:30), had a slow morning, and set about ticking things off a non-existent to-do list. fixing things that had been bugging me for months. like cleaning off my desk, organizing my divaville CDs, and trying to figure out a duplication in my DVD club membership. stupid crap like that that i've been pushing aside for a long time. those nagging things that can slowly drive you mad if you let them.
i also have become hopelessly addicted to "six feet under." i'm halfway through the first season on DVD and i'm hooked. i have to limit myself to one episode a sitting, though... i want to savor each one and not blow right through them, episode after episode. i did watch two today, but hours apart. i'm already thinking about when i can watch the next episode. maybe tomorrow afternoon, before a party that i really can't blow off.
dear mike:
wow... thank you for the surprise in the mail today! i can't even begin to tell you how much this means to me... it's hard to believe you remembered i loved it so much. (sometimes it's hard to believe that you still remember me.)
i looked for you during the december art walk in durham. (i really only went to those as an excuse to stop by your studio and see what miraculous things you were creating, you know.) i was so sad to see your door was closed, and even more sad to hear that you had packed up your canvases and left. the artist in the next studio told me she had an email address for you, but it was just the one i already had... the one that hasn't worked for a while now.
i've been thinking about you a lot lately, so it's kind of spooky to get this package in the mail from you today. i think about you every summer, during the ADF season. that night we saw shen wei's "near the terrace" together... well, experiencing the magic of that piece with you remains an incredibly vivid memory for me. that haunting music by arvo part, the graceful, swimming beauty of the choreography... it's something i will probably never forget. i think about inviting you to another ADF performance with each season that goes by (how long has it been since then? maybe 3 summers?) but you don't make yourself very easy to find, you know.
my heart is about to explode with joy and sadness at the same time, looking at this painting you've sent me. i love it so much. and yes, it's now clear that good things come to those who wait. your work makes me so happy. but i'm also a little melancholy now... holding your work in my hands makes me realize how much i've missed you. are you still painting? do you have a new studio? according to the return address on the package you're living down south now, in the sandhills... how did you end up there? what are you doing? are you happy??
write back soon. or send more packages.
much love,
christa
