I was woken up at 4:30am when Charlie came to sleep at my place after hanging out with the men at the man-house. We got talking and before we knew it the sun was up and it was 8am, so we decided to go to IHOP again and eat more pancakes. I had the carrot cake ones again and Charlie had the strawberry cheesecake ones, which sounded slightly strange but were also really delicious. Then we went to the mall to have a little morning walk, which we did rather sleepily.  After that we went to Charlie’s place and played Oblivion. I only lasted an hour or so before I fell asleep around 11am and started dreaming about his roommate doing heroin. At this point I was so tired so I suggested we take a nap, which we did, and we got up again around 3. More Oblivion, Hon’s Wok for dinner, some sports watching, more Oblivion, Charlie fell asleep on my lap and I put him to bed and went home. I had trouble falling asleep, rather funny after only sleeping 4 or 5 of the last 36 hours.

 

climbing! climb on.

Charlie had been working last night and he came over here sometime in the wee hours of the morning. We were going to play disc golf before running errands, but I misunderstood what time I Was supposed to wake him up and we didn’t have enough time. We went to Noodles for lunch and way out to earth city to pick up a package and some other miscellaneous errands. On the way back from earth city, there was an enormous rainbow (despite it being a rain-free day) and a beautiful hot pink/lavendar/violet sunset with layered bands of clouds that made it look like a seascape. It took up more than the whole western sky and it was spectacular. After that we got changed right quick and headed downtown for an intro to rock climbing class. I’d done it before and knew pretty much everything they told us, but it got Charlie going and then we climbed for a couple hours. He really liked it and we both fared pretty well, I think we’re going to try to go on a regular basis during the cold months. Came home, Charlie said he was going to work and dropped me off but apparently changed his mind and called me a little later and wanted to hang out. I went over to his place, we chatted and whatnot and then did yoga. I was exhausted after that and went home to sleep. Charlie said he’d come join me later but he didn’t, that grubby little bastard. (I mean that in the nicest possible way).

 

this is a good day

Charlie sleeps here and when we wake up he surprises me by suggesting we go to Pere Marquette. So we do, grabbing last night’s leftover pizza to eat in the car and driving north, across the triangle bridge and along the river. It is a grey day but bright, high cloudy skies with small smudges floating along much lower. We walk hand in hand up a leaf-covered path that winds up a hill. We think it is cold and bundle up but after some climbing we want to throw the layers off. The leaves obscure the path, it disappears among the trees in the distance. There is a lookout spot at the top and we gaze out across the Mississippi plain and wonder about the lake-like floodplain. We wander through the woods and dive down off the trail to find a sheltered nook against a big tree. The leaf litter here has never been walked on, it is inches thick and the soil it is creating is fluffy and rich looking. We walk in the woods and stand silently with our eyes closed and listen to the noises the trees make creaking and squeaking against each other. I think about paragliding and the people who lived here 200 years ago.

Sunset is coming and we can see a hint of it through gaps in the clouds. We head back to the original lookout point and look at all the lights we can see turning on and twinkling across the landscape. The wind and the wild make me feel exhilarated and I want to stay there til it’s dark, watch the light disappear and the view slowly fade out and then shuffle back through the leaves in the night woods, but Charlie wants to get going and it’s colder now so we walk back to the parking lot.

My place again and we are talking about dinner but instead we find ourselves in bed. Naked. I may have said that yesterday was the best ever but if it is even possible, today was even better. Finally we get ourselves together and now we are in a hurry because the show may or not be starting at 9 so we nip over to tasty thai and get green curry rice noodles with lots of veggies (grade=A) and madras rice something or other (grade=B-). Charlie drops me off home so I can get changed and he goes to his place to do likewise. I wear 1) poofy black velvet miniskirt 2) thin, skin tight black sweater 3) hot pink thigh-high socks 4) black high heels. Quite frankly, I am hot.

We go to M.’s to pick up people who need rides and go to the Bluebird. The show is great, there’s a good crowd for all the bands. I dance til my feet hurt, M. gets very drunk. I wonder if I will start a hot pink thigh-high sock trend in St. Louis. Charlie, M., Mac, B. and I all go to Uncle Bill’s at 2am. I eat a waffle with strawberries and ice cream and sort of regret it. I wish for 1/3 size portions. A tiny waffle with a tiny scoop of ice cream instead of that monstrosity. Ah, America. We give everyone rides home and Charlie sleeps at my place.

 

tire=dead, golf=fun, of montreal=bouncy

Got up early to take car in for oil change, went back to bed. Talked to them at noon and found out that I had an irreparable puncture. Charlie called shortly thereafter and invited me to play real golf with him and C., since C. wanted to practice before thanksgiving vacation.  I figured I might as well give it a shot, we made a quick run to Jimmy Johns to get some sustenance and they put mayo on my sandwich after I requested none.  I was more annoyed later when I looked up the nutritional info and it adds about 250 not tasty calories.

We golfed at Ruth Park, I did great on the first hole and thought I was perhaps a golf natural.  It went somewhat downhill from there but it was fun anyway.  We had some random dude join us halfway through who was really good.  Afterwards Charlie dropped me off at home so he could go shower.  I was supposed to go over there to play some FIFA but he didn’t answer his phone because he was asleep on the couch.  Bum.

He picked me up for the Of Montreal concert and we went to M.’s for social hour/drinking and then headed to the Pageant for the concert.  It was a really fun show, we all pretty much bounced around for two hours straight.  During the last couple songs some drunk girl kept banging me in the head, but whatever.  We found out later that she’s the daughter of a professor everyone knows.  Our hippie friend ended up wearing women’s panties as part of some kind of dare/bet, which was quite amusing.  Lots of photos were taken.  Everyone else headed to the Halo bar and Charlie and I went to steak n shake to get dinner, as we hadn’t really eaten.  We went back to his place and found C. there playing some shoot em up video game, so we cuddled on the couch and spectated and eventually went to bed.

 

mexican banquet

Charlie had slept here and we were very lazy, not getting out of bed til 2.  We rounded up Mac and M. and headed to Endicott for some disc golf.  I didn’t keep score and it was an enjoyable round on a sunny warm day until… Mac lost his keys.  That turned into an unfortunate game of hunt the keys around the course which was amazingly unsuccessful due to all the leaves on the ground.  We went back to check M.’s place but no luck, so Charlie and I went to help Mac break into his apartment.  Fortunately, he’d left the back door unlocked by mistake so no burglary was necessary.  I was a little disappointed.  We went to Charlie’s place to play some video games before dinner, when A. appeared – having lost the keys to the home he was dogsitting at.  A day of lost keys all around.

We went to Mi Ranchito with pretty much the entire group of usual suspects who were in town instead of at LA conference.  Dinner was tasty, then Mac and Charlie and I played some more video games and went to the man house for the Lebowski challenge. No one attempted the challenge, I only drank 0.9 of a white russian (alcohol wasn’t sounding that great after thursday).  Later I played beer pong on a team with Mac and we did pretty well.  Headed home with Charlie, he was drunk, we ate leftover chimichangas in the kitchen and giggled a lot and headed to bed.

 

holy crap, november already

Coaxed Charlie out of bed at a decent hour, he did some work while I watched a special on the National Parks and then a documentary about praying mantises on the HD discovery channel. I must say, few things rival the televisual majesty of nature-type shows in HD. We decided to go to the zoo, I went home to have some lunch while he finished up working. We went to the zoo in a rather goofy mood and just wandered around. We went into the insectarium (I don’t think we’d ever been in there before) where we encountered a howling child in a stroller. The adult in charge of the child did nothing to calm said child nor did he take the child outside, which was rather irritating. We left so we wouldn’t have to listen to the howling anymore.

After that we went back to my place to assemble a quick dinner before Charlie went to play basketball. We came up with: salad with feta and tomato plus pasta and vodka sauce with italian sausage from the Joes in it. It was great, the flavors went together nicely and it was pretty quick (would have been even quicker if the sausage hadn’t been frozen).

In the evening I went to the borders and noble and then shopping for the ingredients for another dish I want to cook in the next day or so. Came home and enjoyed a caramel apple. That’s a product where it’s not really worth the effort and mess to make it yourself. They had gourmet ones for sale that cost $5.99 per apple, which struck me as crazy. The only thing special about it was that it was rolled in pecans instead of peanuts. Charlie called while I was grocery shopping to tell me he was going out drinking with friends, I told him he could come sleep at my place if he wanted but he never appeared.

 

city museum birthday extravaganza

Went to Target to get all sorts of household items that I managed to run out of all at once. I guess that’s efficient, right? Didn’t have a terribly exciting afternoon, did a bit of cleaning and some computer games. Talked to R. around dinner time about the City Museum 10th anniversary thing that we were going to this evening and arranged to meet at his apartment. Stuffed bites of an egg sandwich into my mouth as I ran around putting on appropriate clothes and drove to R.’s. While waiting for him to come outside a very friendly and apparently homeless black cat showed up, wanting to rub itself on my legs, although I couldn’t tell if it was purring or not. R. said he’d seen it around and wasn’t sure if it was a stray but he thought so, considering it was pretty thin. It had a funny furless patch on the underneath of its chest but we couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on there because it was too dark.

We went to pick up another of R.’s friends, a guy who I had a funny connection to. In college he lived across the hall from a girl I was sort of friends with in high school. We headed to the city museum where we eventually rendezvoused with more people. The event was pretty great, our general activities involved wandering interspersed with popping into the special events they had going on. Chronologically:

• wandering on first floor/procuring drinks
• watching bellydancers
• wandering in caves
• climbing in the outdoor structures
• more caves
• brief attendance at musical performance
• arcade games/end of burlesque show
• architectural rooms
• Hibernauts
• burlesque show

I ran into C., CW, Mac, and B. there and saw multiple other people that I knew. It was a really eclectic mix of people, the bellydancers attracted middle aged couples and the rock music attracted the hipsters and the roller derby (that we did not see) attracted the gothy types and the burlesque attracted boys and their drunky girlfriends and the proximity to Halloween attracted quite a lot of people in costume. Additionally there was a wedding taking place, which just added a little bit to the crazy. Altogether a great time.

R. and I went home and the cat was still outside his apartment, still being friendly. I felt bad for it and told him I’d bring cat food so he could feed it, which he seemed fairly neutral about. I guess I’ll see if it’s around the next time I’m over there.

 

disc golf and hockey saturday

Woke up late-ish, Charlie ran off quickly to watch soccer with the amis. I told him to give me a call if he wanted to play disc golf and he did so about an hour later. We headed up to Sioux Passage with a couple of the amis and had a good round. It was really beautiful weather to be outside, maybe a little windy but sunny and warm but not hot. I didn’t bother keeping score since I felt like things weren’t going all that well, but it was fun nonetheless. We spent half an hour searching in the prairie for one of C.’s discs and eventually found it in addition to 2 others, one of which had been lost by friend M. 6 weeks ago. Finally the prairie gives instead of takes away!

Went with Charlie and C. to the Pei Wei again for dinner – C. had their interpretation of General Tso’s chicken, which I thought was good although he didn’t seem too excited. Charlie had dandan noodles which weren’t as good as I remembered, and I had ginger chicken with fried rice which was excellent if a bit on the salty side.

Then to a Blues game with R. He and a friend have season tickets which they trade off when one of them is unable to make it to a game. A good time was had by all, despite a loss by the Blues. I would like to note that hockey fans are insane – drunk and inclined to yelling non-helpful profanity at the players/refs. Went home after the game and called Charlie to see if he was up to anything interesting but anything interesting seemed to be lame hipster parties that he was hoping to escape from ASAP. So I watched CSI instead.

 

sunday is not football day for me

Woke up, called Charlie to see if he wanted to go to the Sioux Passage pioneer fest, no answer. Looked up other stuff that was going on and realized it was the Shaw art fair, decided to go to that instead. Charlie showed up looking hungover and offering to go to pioneer fest, I told him to go home and sleep instead. Went to art fair, parked in Tower Grover park, wandered around, got some food. Raviolis with sauce and sauerkraut (delish) and Oberweiss ice cream (ehh). Lots of artists I’d seen before, I was especially tuned in to the guy who does art about environmental disasters, in particular the piece with a leopard caught in a noose by a human skeleton wearing a leopard skin coat. Actually bought a necklace, shock, amazement.

Walked back through TG park, took some photos of the waterlilies and ponds there. Stopped at a garage sale on the way home and bought Charlie a laundry basket. He came over later, we had peas/tortellini/prosciutto soup for dinner and then went over to the WU for an evening stroll, followed by hanging out at his place. A pleasant sort of day, nothing terribly noteworthy other than that for Oct 7th, it was bloody hot (92?) and one of those days with big clouds moving slowly across the sky.