blizzard!

So there’s a local TV commercial against drunk driving where the drunkard sets off in their drunky-mobile and then the announcer intones in a terribly ominous voice: “NEVER MADE IT HOME!!!”. I suspect it’s the kind of thing you’d need to see to understand why it’s funny, but Charlie and I crack ourselves up over it and incorporate it into related themes. Failed to put on shoes with good traction before walking on icy sidewalks? NEVER MADE IT HOME!!! Didn’t wear a seatbelt for a 40 second car ride? (Hey, it’s cold). NEVER MADE IT HOME!!! Anyway, I don’t even remember why I thought this was worth mentioning, other than it’d be funny to remember for posterity. Charlie slept at my place and we vaguely got out of bed in the mid-afternoon to eat some food and assess how much snow had fallen, but eventually we succumbed to the winter malaise and spent the rest of the afternoon in bed.

At this point the forecast predicted 2-4 inches of snow and about 1 had fallen, I sneezed at their predictions. Our excessive bed-time ended in getting lucky and then as we were preparing to go to dinner, Mac called. He got invited along to dinner and honestly, I like Charlie’s friends (Mac in particular) but sometimes they are so slow to get going. We didn’t head to dinner until about an hour later, at which time a blizzard had developed. Macaroni Grill was our original destination but we only made it to Hanley Rd. before we figured it might be a better idea to choose a closer destination. We headed to Cicero’s instead, where we enjoyed tasty pizza and possibly even tastier alcoholic hot chocolate. Just the thing for blizzard conditions! I think my favorite part of snow is when it’s falling. It’s never as pleasant after it freezes into ice slicks a few days later and gets all grubby in the streets. Then the 3 of us came back to my place and hung out for a while before heading over to the ugly sweater xmas party at M.&L.’s place. Ugly sweater party was fun, I drank some alcoholic cider and ate too many cookies and had unintentionally hilarious conversations about kegel devices with a sizeable group. We lingered there til 3am, Mac and Charlie and I being the last to leave. The snow had stopped by that point, and there was a good 5 inches on the ground.  None of us were tired so we went back to Charlie’s place where we hung out with C., not doing anything interesting. I fell asleep on Charlie’s lap at 4:30am and slept at his place.

 

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.

 

hipster hair

Got up at an unpleasantly early hour to go to the eye doctor for 6 month checkup. Apparently my eyes are doing just fine. Went to Target afterwards to buy who knows what. Oh yeah, I wanted socks. Or tights, or something. As usual bought tons more additional stuff, including a velvet miniskirt. Whee! So I had tried to get my hair cut about 3 weeks ago, but when I called the lady I usually go to had quit. And the place I usually go is an emporium of cheapness, so I’m always a little afraid to take my luck with some random new person, but I sucked it up because my hair was starting to look sticky-outy and there was just too much of it. I don’t think I can ever go back to having long hair again, the thought of it being all staticky on my clothes is just awful. So I took my chances and the hair turned out pretty well, a bit more hipster and a bit less classic than I was aiming for but eh, I suppose one might as well have hipster hair when one is 25 and can pull it off, right? I got sorta-kinda bangs the last time I got it cut, the kind that swoop off to the side, but now I pretty much have real bangs for the first time in 12+ years. I think that adds to the hipster vibe.

Called Charlie to see if he wanted to go to Body Worlds but he had to take Mac on an errand, he said he’d give me a call later if he was going to the gym to see if I wanted to join him. He did so in the late afternoon and we went to the gym and shot baskets and chatted and avoided the annoying teenagers that kept trying to trample us. It was not the most pleasant basketball environment. We tried to dunk on an 8 foot hoop, Charlie was pretty bad and I was atrocious. Afterwards he invited me to his place to watch NBA games and so we ate leftover enchiladas and leftover noodles and cuddled on the couch. I tried to be vaguely emotionally distant and he was exceptionally cuddly.  C. and the band moseyed in and out, they were playing a show later and taking naps in preparation. Charlie and I got hungry again later and debated ordering pizza or going out. I came down with a cold today and felt a bit crummy but we figured it would be good for us to get out of the house. Went to Ciceros where we ate delicious ham and mushroom pizza (note to self, get extra sauce here too) and listened to a table of guys next to us who seemed hung up (ha) on the topic of balls. It cracked us up, anyway. Went back to Charlie’s, found C. there and took off for my place. Got lucky and it was (hot, amazing, best ever, involved a lap dance). Cuddled and went to sleep.

 

very little shopping involved

Hung around the house with my mom in the AM and helped her do yardwork. Lots of raking and putting stuff away for the winter and whatnot. Picked up sandwiches for lunch from Mary’s Market. Went out to Borders with my mom in the later afternoon, which was pretty busy but not frenzied. Stopped by Target on the way home to look for tights for my grandma, no luck. Had thanksgiving leftovers for dinner and went to an Ice Hogs game. They moved up to the AHL this year and it was a good game to watch, even though they lost. Called Charlie to say hi, didn’t get hold of him.

 

hardly november

Did some reading and whatnot, called Charlie to see if he wanted to get outside on a lovely sunny warm (70 degree?) day. He did and we decided to play tennis, and then amended it to racketball. Went to Tarjay to buy another racketball racket and some odds and ends and then realized we didn’t have the other racket so re-amended the plan to tennis again. Played at the park off of the FPP and Pershing (Flynn park), had a good time. Decided to go play disc golf afterwards, headed to Endicott. My prediction was right, this week did indeed feature an abundance of disc golf. I didn’t keep score, haven’t been doing so lately, but it was a pretty decent round.

We went back to Charlie’s place and ate leftover Shu Feng for dinner and found ourselves feeling very, very sleepy (MSG?). We decided a nap would be a good idea before a rock n roll show so we went to sleep for hmm, he told me later that it was 1h 45min but it didn’t seem that long. I ran home to get ready and he did likewise and we headed to C.’s show. We both got dressed up like real people, which was amusing. I wore a dress and 4 inch heels and towered, which was very amusing. Everyone thought my dress was “vintage” instead of a $16 marshalls special, which was exceedingly amusing. No doubt the compliments would have been less profuse had they known the truth. We ran into N. the touchy feely chick again and she told us all about her history of car accidents. Band #1 was pretty good, C.’s band put on a great show, and band #3 was ehhh…. so we left and went to the City Diner, where I tried to order a banana split and was informed that the bananas were bad. I settled for cheesecake, which was ok, but I was disappointed since the thought of the split was the reason I had wanted to go there in the first place.

I went to bed at Charlie’s (although he stayed up) but we headed to my place in the wee hours of the morning so I could feed the cat. Also, C. had come home with a girl so that was incentive to make ourselves scarce. At my place the smoke detector in the attic was going off without cessation despite the lack of smoke and/or fire. A nuisance to say the least, but not much we could do about it at 4am. Charlie said he slept fine but it disturbed my dreams. Despite that, a good day.

 

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.

 

saturday, saturday!

Woken up early by Charlie calling, wanting to know if I wanted to help with acquisition of gigantic TV/have breakfast. The TV procedure took forever for some reason, lots of complications with discounts and directTV and who knows what else. We went to Companion bakery for brunch/lunch/whatever, we ended up with sandwiches. The sandwiches were great, fresh crispy soft French bread and mine contained Brie and sprouts. Very English. Then we came back to my place and he slept while I cleaned and whatnot. There was a weird interlude where Charlie called the frisbee website to complain that his order had never arrived and while he was on the phone doing that, a neighbor I’d never seen before showed up with the box of frisbees that she’d opened and apparently been holding on to for a couple days. I cooked dinner on the grill, he went to play some video games with M. then I met them at M.’s place to go to C.’s concert. Concert was good, Charlie and M. and I danced up front. We saw Rachel and Naomi there which was just sort of…awkward. Lots of false-seeming pleasantries. Steak n Shake with M. afterwards, good times.