I’m Glad Friday was Dullsville
Phew – what a weekend (but in a good way).
The work day on Friday ended with a near blizzard. Meteorologists are now saying that for two hours on Friday afternoon, we experienced extremely rare winter conditions. It was like a blizzard, with thunder and lightning, and sustained wind gusts in areas of 73 miles an hour. Gusts over the Cape reached 93 miles per hour (resulting in lost power into Saturday). The storm that had begun as light snow in the morning, turned to freezing rain and mush in the early afternoon, then quickly dropped heavy amounts of snow in just two hours. Yet by the time I left work at 4:30PM, I could see the moon (I hate that it’s so dark so early).
That night, anticipating the social engagements I had for the rest of the weekend, I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, I watched TV, played on-line and did some sketching. But that’s about it.
Saturday I attempted to do some Christmas shopping. What a joke. My sister-in-law said that my niece and nephew could use new book bags. That sounded easy. I headed to downtown crossing….and failed. I tried Filene’s, Macy’s, Marshall’s, TJMaxx and even the Children’s Place. Not a single store was carrying book bags anymore. I was told I should have looked for them in August or September. HMMM – last I knew, the school year ran through June.
Anyway, I did end up buying myself some new winter boots since my old ones (that I bought in Montreal…where they really know winter weather) began taking on liquid while I walked in the slush.
That night was the 3rd monthly Queer Boston Bloggers function at Will’s lovely 150 year old house. There were six people this time: Will (Designer Blog), Bryan (That’s Interesting!), Keith (Data Jockey), Sean (Seanlandia) and Atari Age (his name has been withheld upon his request to protect the not-so-innocent). We ate some yummy food, participating in interesting conversation, then dove right into some non-competitive poker. Will – the poker virgin – took the lead from the start and never slowed down. Scott and I did horribly. Though, by the end of the evening (sometime after midnight), I stopped caring how badly I was losing and began betting substantial chips. Miraculously, I started finally winning and ended up with more chips than I had begun with.
After an icy ride home with Bryan (thanks, Bryan), I went to sleep around 2AM – which is extremely late for me.
On Sunday, I got together with Mike in the early afternoon and watched “Down With Love” on DVD while stuffing our faces with spinach and artichoke dip and chips. MMMMM
Then Jason picked us up and we headed over to Ben and Brad’s for their annual holiday party. Such fun. After stuffing our faces with the most delicious home-made baked goods, most attendees crowded around the grand piano (and Christmas tree) in their music room and sang Christmas carols…and other holiday-oriented music. I think the highlight might have been Ben and Joei performing Sisters, from the movie, White Christmas (“Sisters, Sisters, there were never such devoted sisters”). But what makes it so fun is that Ben is a gay white guy and Joei is a straight black woman. But put the two of them together (complete with the blue feather fans) and a masterpiece is born.
I ended up going back to Dorchester with Mike and watching politically incorrect TV (Family Man, American Dad, etc…).
Now speaking of politically incorrect, I’m SO SICK of the religious right and their stupidity. What’s up with this whole hoopla over Christmas tree versus Holiday tree; Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays? Why are people in this country so hell-bent on politicizing religion? EVERYTHING these days seems to be “this or that”, “right or wrong”, “my way or the wrong way”. The fact that Jerry Falwell is getting on Boston’s case for calling it’s Boston Common tree a Holiday Tree instead of a Christmas tree is so ridiculous. Even worse, this apparently made national news because Weekend Update (on Saturday Night Live) even mentioned it.
Can’t we all just get along?
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I think we’d all get along a lot better if the Jerry Falwell’s in the world weren’t there, but alas, that’s asking too much I think. That said, I’m glad you enjoyed the party. Ben and I had a great time hosting it and Rich and I had a great time making all the food. 🙂
I don’t think calling a Christmas Tree a Christmas Tree is politicizing the issue. I think the reverse is true. Calling something by a name other than what it is for political purposes (Holiday Tree, undocumented worker) is ludicrous and offensive to the intelligence of many in my book. Sometimes things are just black and white. I think Falwell made too big a stink out of the matter and it got blown out of proportion. Unfortunately, with gay marriage legal in the Commonwealth, the religious right scrutinizes everything that goes on here, whether or not it’s any of their business.
Hey, try LLbean.com (free shipping going on right now too!) for the backpacks for your neice/nephew.
What I don’t get in this whole PC thing about what we call our holiday symbols, or the debates/fights over what we can and cannot display, is that in a TRULY multicultural society, why don’t we just display EVERYBODY’S symbols? We put up a Christmas tree–fine. Light a menorah–most natural thing in the world. Lay out a Kwanzaa harvest display–just more to celebrate and one more opportunity to bring people TOGETHER. I’m so sick and tired of all this business driving wedges between various groups. We’ve got enough of that being done by the incompetent moron who passes for a president and his gang of agenda-driven elitists and homophobes.
THERE! That felt really good.
Try a sporting goods store for the backpacks. That’s where I bought mine.
I got J & W bags online. Just love that Google! Overstock.com also offers $1 shipping; and ebags.com too. Good luck. 🙂
ebags.com ownz.