Tag Archives: DC

People Let Me Tell Ya 'Bout My Best Friend

Social, , ,

In which there very nearly was a happy reunion!

Yesterday I checked my voice mail. I hadn’t checked it since before I’d left because I knew most of it was junk.

There were nine messages, most of them offers for abandoned appointments with my hygenist, one was a call to remind me to pay my surgeon (because apparently I spaced sending him any money this month), and a couple of “call me” messages from RB.

But one was from Slick. (Slick was my best friend in college and I haven’t seen him since 1999 and I luff heem because he’s awesome.)

While walking Bindu around the block this morning, I called him. Guess where he is? HE’S IN DC. If I’d checked my fucking VM in DC I maybe could have SEEN him. How cool would that have been?! Additionally, he informed me that Seany – another friend from the same era, and from whom I once bought a gas stove and a fridge – lives in the very town I was staying in, Silver Spring!

Anyway, Slick’s sending me pics of himself and his wife (whom I’ve never met), so plz scuse me while I go check my email! Whee!

The reason there's no booze left is because we drank it all.

Travel, , ,

In which I finally tell you all about GBM!

I’m somewhat ashamed that I only blogged twice while I was actually traveling to a blogger meet-up, but there were the issues of laptop shortages, busyness, fatigue, and inebriation and I flickred and twittered like a demon so it’s not like there wasn’t some content.

Let me say first that I love all the bloggers I met. Love them. Didn’t meet a single soul I didn’t like, but fell particularly in love with Vuboq (omg, the unrelenting Southern hospitality and the cheese grits), Hypenated Non-Identity, and I Think I Need A New Heart… though I pretty much expected to love those boys. All sweet, wonderful people.

Secondly, all of Vuboq’s friends are, to a one, lovely people. He’s an incredibly fortunate person. The pre-birthday party on Saturday night was populated by nothing but wonderful people, most of whom were excessively pretty gay men with cute jeans and cute hair and cute shoes… Since I’m essentially style-free I knew I’d be utterly outclassed, and I was. (I mean, it’s not like I don’t know I spent fifteen years in freakin’ Iowa and then moved here to hicksville.)

Thirdly, Vuboq drinks like a fish. He tried to blame it all on us, his guests, but who kept ordering pitchers of margaritas? And sangria, huh? I shall tell you: it was VUBOQ.

On Sunday we went out for Mexican food and then went to a gay bar called Cobalt where we drank cheap cocktails and didn’t dance. Ray told an hysterical story about thinking, when he was eight or so, that his mom – an undercover cop – was actually a hooker. Then Canada disappeared with a pocket gay named Billy and barely returned in time to get a ride home with the rest of us, thoroughly freaking Only Me out. When we got home from that, I poured another round and Vuboq and I sat on his bed and had a twitter war and laughed ourselves silly – I had so much fun I can’t even express it, because WHO KNEW Vuboq could, with sufficient booze in him, start doing a strange and wonderful Cartman-meets-lolcats accent?! Certainly not me. He’s just lucky I didn’t wet his damn bed.

On Saint Patrick’s Day, the actual birthday, Hyphenated left at six to make a business meeting in Pittsburgh. Hours later, Only Me made breakfast in bed for the Birthday Princess… and then we just lounged around until past three because we were all hung over. Eventually we left for DC, and we walked the Mall but didn’t go into any of the museums because we were useless and so we opted instead to go get tapas and sangria at Jaleo. (There really aren’t any words for how amazing the food is there, so I won’t bother. Suffice it to say that you should eat there the next time you’re in DC.)

We took the Metro home. Only Me went to pick up the GBM t-shirts he’d ordered, and Vuboq and I stopped at Whole Paycheck to get a few things. Then we went home and I did the dishes and then made an awesome pot of veggie chili. Tomoko and hubby, as well as SCGB, dropped in to eat with us. We killed two bottles of wine.

Today I got up at ten to six, dressed, and then took a bus, two trains, another bus, three planes, and a car. I was home by 6:35. I’ve blogged and uploaded photos and now I’m going to pass the hell out because I have to work tomorrow.

A Totally Shallow Post!

Travel, , , ,

In which I’m ramping up for GBM.

As you know, I’m flying to DC over the weekend of St Pat’s for GBM. I’ve been trying to decide what to wear, which is problematic because all of my clothes are old and worn out and crappy, or they’re hand-me-downs that don’t really fit, or I’m just plain old feeling fat.

Then there’s the seasonal issue. I am always and forever traveling at season change, so I feel like I have to bring clothes for both warm and cold weather and I end up over-packing and still having nothing to wear.

So I’ve decided to give up entirely on the idea of dressing well since it’s so far out of my reach, and have made a hair appointment. Right now I’m growing out the red dye I’d used last year, and have unappealing roots of mousy brown shot with gray (because apparently I’ve become old in the past six months). I’m getting a trim and some foil highlights.

I was thinking about getting a real hair cut – like a new style and everything – but I’ve never been to this particular stylist before and don’t want to end up with something awful 48 hours before leaving for vacation.

I’m gonna be doing laundry and pre-packing this weekend. I’m so excited to be going to DC! It’s almost like having a real life.

In other news, my terrible cold has abated and I feel nearly human again. My room is still a mess and I still have no social life, my dog is still fat, I still have no car, and I’m still in debt up to my eyebrows… but at least I’m not deathly ill. One of these days I might even write an interesting post.

Well, doesn't THIS suck.

Travel, , ,

In which time is not on my side.

When I first decided to go to GBM, I checked kayak.com for flight prices. It was $408 round-trip, including taxes. I didn’t buy because first I had to submit my time off request at work.

At the 6-week pre-travel mark the price for the very same flights went up to $438, and was still there yesterday.

I would have booked my flight yesterday when I got my time-off request approved, but Java had crashed on my machine so I couldn’t navigate the Alaska Airlines site and I was too busy to reboot.

Today I went to book my flight, and in the past 24 hours the very same itinerary has gone up to $602. Crap.

Looks like I’ll be altering my travel dates to March 14-18. Because I ain’t paying no six hundred dollars for airfare.

Organizing Data

Blurbs, , , ,

In which I spend most of the day in front of the computer.

Today I woke up hungry at the ass-crack of dawn, but I stayed in bed until nine or so rockin’ out to tuneage on the beloved iPod. I made eggs and toast and coffee for breakfast when I finally got up. Then I plugged in my external hard drive enclosure, and began the process of putting my iTunes library back together.

I’ve been using SharePod to add content to my iPod since I left Iowa last September, so what’s on my iPod no longer matches the backup I have.

I couldn’t find my old library .xml file, so I had to import all the tracks into iTunes and right now it’s updating album art. When it’s done, I’ll import all the tracks I’ve got on the laptop, then the six gigs of music from Jayrob, and then the video content I have.

Then I’ll spend all evening massaging files, editing tags and shit, and finally I’ll export my playlists off the iPod itself and into iTunes. Once all of THAT is done, I’ll be able to sync my iPod for the first time in over four months… a process that will probably take half the damn night since iTunes will decide the relationship is new and re-write the entire drive.

Long story short? If you’ve got an MP3 library bigger than a few gigs, back it up. Now. Any way you can. Srsly. This is a pain in the arse.

In other news, I’ve decided to attend the first-annual Global Blogger Meetup in DC in March. So far, only three bloggers are actually slated to attend, but that’s all good because it means I get to call dibs on Vuboq’s couch without anyone arguing with me. (I’d prefer the guest room, of course, but Only Me’s already got it, the quasi-Aussie git.)

Vuboq says there will be a chili night on Sunday – I offered to make veggie chili if needed! – and maybe Monday Afternoon Margaritas the next day since I’m dying for the spinach enchiladas and liquid cheese he’s always blogging about. Then on St. Pat’s Day we’ll all go get trashed in honor of Vuboq’s birthday.

Airline tickets are $359 right now, so with vigilant surfing I should be able to find something under $300 and be able to take a reasonable amount of cash along. It’s a lot of damn flying for a 3-day vacation, but what the hell. I do, after all, have both an eBook reader and a kitting bag to stave off boredom, and I’ve already decided 2008 should be a Year Of Travel for me. DC in March, Seattle in June, and NY in September!

Now all I have to do is convince my employer to give me all that time off.