Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

So I whined a little online and then ended up having the most wonderful weekend. We had all these plans that fell through last week, which kind of sucked, but it all turned around. We went to the Common yesterday for this pumpkin thing. Of course, it rained, as it always does whenever we go outside. We trecked there, saw some pumpkins, then hopped a train to Cambridge and got some grub and Mr and Mrs Bartley’s by the Harvard Book Store. Love that place. After that, we walked to Steve and Linda’s house, where we played Sudoku and drank a few beers, played with the kiddies, talked, and Aaron and Linda made this FABULOUS chicken pot pie. When I’m feeling less lazy, I’ll post a picture. SOOOO good. After that, Aaron made peanut butter cookies. YUM! We actually made contact with Scott and Michelle, two of my very favorite people from grad school. They had been out of town a lot, and the excellent news is that they don’t hate us. Yay! We met them for breakfast in Slumma-ville at the tastiest place EVAR. After that, we had a fine time at Target and got groceries. Oh, and we got to pass over the Charles a few times. We spotted a few boats out for the Head of the Charles. Fun times.

I’ve been writing reports for few the last few hours. LAME! I’m so sick of reports it’s insane, but what are you gonna do? Report-writing is my bag, baby. Now it’s time for Desperate Housewives. Another busy work week looms, but I’m going to trivia, AND my parents are coming, so it’s gonna be fun times. Wahoo! Shit! Forgot to call Carl back. I suck these days. I really do. If I haven’t called, it’s not hatred. It really isn’t. It’s the work! Hard and exhausting, yet rewarding. Better than having no purpose, I guess.

It’s why I do well here. Although the navigation is about to kill me – although there has been improvement since the GPS.

The long version. Perfect!

And let me add that oddly, I am more suited to fast break, slalom driving than to the inattentive insanity that is Memphis driving.

We are considering being nerds, and we are considering ruling, and to that end, we are contemplating going here tonight (or soon thereafter). We’ve never been. Any thoughts?

With less time to write, I have to cover more topics at once, and I’m not the most organized sort (I save all that for work), so bear with me.

• Aaron and I got a chance to hang out with Peterson and his friend Ben last night. We met downtown and took a walk over to the North End, where we had a nice (albeit loud) dinner at Il Panino. I felt a bit guilty I’d chosen the place because the table next to us was SERIOUSLY loud. Ugh. I hate that. The food was good, and they made nice vegan treats for Peterson. He’s in town doing Queer 101, one of his one-man shows, for a local school. Peterson does the coolest thing. He’s an actor who spent 17 years of his life trying to not be gay, and then he came out. Now, he entertains and educates all over the world. He does pieces he write himself for all types of audiences, and then he often facilitates discussions afterwards. It’s such important work. He’ll be back for a performance of Doin’ Time at the Homo No Mo Halfway House on 10/25 at Northeastern. This is the piece I saw him perform in Memphis. It’s about his experience at Love in Action, the Memphis place (not a church or a mental health facility, but what is it?!) where he went to try to become straight. It’s a fascinating piece. I’ll make sure to plug it when the date approaches. Anyway, the Multicultural Educator in me just loved this show for so many reasons, and the theatre critic in me did, too. It’s soooo something you should see. (Read more about Love in Action if you’re interested.) Anyhoo, dinner was grand. Aaron got to talk about film with Ben, who actually runs a film festival – one I think that maybe my friend Poornima did once. And afterward, we went to Mike’s and got ice cream and sorbet and pastries. YUM!
• The very sad news is that one of my parents cats, Kitty, seems to be dying. Mom is sad because Dad is soooo not a cat person, so she doesn’t really have anyone to commiserate with her. Kitty hasn’t eaten for 4 days. I suggested she give kitty some diluted wet food, and Mom just called and said Kitty took a few sip of some condensed milk, so that’s good news. Maybe it was just a really bad toothache, although Kitty is something like 18, so death is certainly an option. Makes me sad though. She’s always been a really strange cat, but I don’t care. I love her immensely.
• Got a chance to talk to Elizabeth in Bloomington, which was really nice. I never call people. I don’t know why. I’ve just lost my interest in the phone over the last few busy years. It was great to hear her voice and to catch up with her. We may get to see her a bit in December, which would be grand.
• It’s a very grey and windy day. We’re actually thinking of going downtown for a bit of shopping. Aaron says REI is having a sale.

So Dad says I have to blog tonight because it is getting WAY too quiet. What is there to say? I’m working soooo hard, but Dad says I don’t get to talk about that anymore.

Here’s my share for the evening: OK, on Tuesday night, we were in Cambridge hanging with Steve and Linda and their kids. We all took a walk a few blocks away to put the visitor neighborhood parking pass on my car. On the way back, when we were about to pass this guy on the street, he says, "Sox down 12 ta 2," then walks on. Steve checks all of our clothing to see if any of us are wearing Sox gear. Nope. He takes a second pass to check for the color red. Nope again. It’s just assumed that everyone here cares about the game. Kids with significant developmental delays come in with their Sox gear on, and they know what the score was. I’m glad I at least saw the Boston Special Edition of Fever Pitch a few weeks ago and watched the special features. It’s a good intro to the situation at hand. When my parents visit, they are staying right by Fenway. At this point, there isn’t much danger any games will be going on, but man, my mom is gonna be SOOOO bummed if they are, and she doesn’t have tickets.

How was that, Dad?

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Clean up on aisle Doh! Update! Update! Aaron says I got it wrong, and I’ve been telling this story the last two days at work! I’ll let him tell it… Hit it, Aaron…

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Well, what actually happened is that we were standing around trying to decide what to get for dinner.  The man and his girlfriend walked by and he gleefully informed us, "Sox are down 12 ta’ 2 right now.  Read it and weep."  He continued on about his way, quite content that he had ruined our evening.

If I had to guess, he was a Yankee fan operating under the relatively safe assumption that anyone you might pass on the streets of Boston would be living or dying by this score.  Of course, he did fail to realize if it had been THAT important to us, we would have been in front of a television, not an empty furniture store.