Weekend plans.

Everyone I see that I know, I go up to them and clap my hands enthusiastically, and am like, "Okay, so what time we going to see 'Speed Racer' on Saturday?"

Saddly, everyone makes a face.

Texts.

So, there's this Belgian guy in the Classics department who wear button down shirts and is on the quiet side and tends to be punctual, so people think he's a no-fun tight-ass, I get the impression, only, he isn't, and has a really good sense of humor.

(He even loves my two pedophile jokes, which is a major plus in my book.)

Anyhow, we've gone out drinking a couple times - he misses the drinking at his former university in Belgium; there, he put it, the question isn't whether you're going out drinking after class, but where - and it's been cool, so I texted him this past week to find out if he wanted to plan ahead and go out for martinis on Wednesday with me and some other people, especially since he'd have taken his big Greek exam by then. This was his response:

The greek exam is on thursday, so i'm afraid i will have to stay sober then ;-) but after thursday there should be less constraints. All best!

So, I texted him back to ask whether he would want to barhop that night in our neighborhood, and this is what he texted me back:

I cannot predict whether it will be a celebration or not, but in either case drinking sounds like an appropriate response :-)

I found his texts very evocative - slightly formal and stilted in a non-native way, but also very reflective of his personality, since he's slightly formal and a little on the quiet side.

Also, I found his use of the first emoticon, where it was winking, slightly off-putting. Perhaps cultural translation issues with emoticons?

I also wonder if I am glorifying drinking too much, though I think it's just the age.

Got some shots yesterday.

So, yesterday I went to the student health center to get immunizations, and after the black nurse who was around my age stuck two in my left upper arm, she went to do the third and last in my right upper arm, and when she pulled the needle out, I felt shit dripping down onto my arm, only when I looked down, it wasn't serum from the needle like she hadn't put all of it in me and the syringe kept pouring it out as she withdrew it, but instead it was blood, and as I looked, the blood honestly shot out like an inch from my arm, the pressure was so great for some reason, and it spilled down my arm and onto my forearm, and five drops even got on my jeans before she could think and reach for the swabs and alcohol to mop it all up.

"I'm so sorry," she was like, "I must have hit something."

"Oh," I was like, "It's no biggie, I'm actually glad it's blood - those shots are frickin' expensive, I paid $88 for that one, so I'm going to be like, 'Mop that shit up and put it back in my arm, that's at least $20 of shit right there, and if you make me pay for whole 'nother one, I'm going to be -pissed-.'"

She started laughing, too - which I was glad of; it had been a long day for her -- and she was like, "You so funny," and then she added, "And if it had been the shot, I wouldn't have made you pay for another one, that one would have been on me."

The first silverfish of summer...

...skittered out two nights ago from the wainscotting across the hardwood floor and onto my natural-fiber IKEA rug while I was doing yoga the other day, and I had to pause from yoga to pick up my black-cloth-and-natural-fiber house-slipper and whack it.

Last night I had a dream that I did cocaine with my advisor in this cluttered attic, and we stayed up till 5am talking fast, after which I left and started walking home when it was already getting light out. After she offered me half a line and I did it, she right after me did so many lines at once, too, that I was simply appalled -- it wasn't even lines, but more like three tablespoons or s oof scattered heaps that she hadn't even divided up into lines, she dumped the coke out so quick and wanted it up her nose so fast -- and I kept thinking to myself while she snorted up a few tablespoons of coke off this faded green plastic square-shaped thick little tray, "Do I even know this woman at all?"

When I woke up, I was singing

all your love is gone
so sing a lonely song

to the organ and guitar backup in my head from the Doors "Love Her Madly", only, I slightly misremembered the words, so I was singing

all the love is gone
so sing a lonely song

Country / Dream / Mom.

On Saturday I went to a country music concert with some friends at a bar downtown. The intro band was pretty good, which got me psyched for the main act, but the main act sucked it up majorly, so that blew hard. The band was from Texas, too, and took shots between most songs, so at the end of their two hour set they were pretty fucked up and band security was dragging out a lot of drunk people who had been taking shots with them from the audience all night, and I just thought the whole thing was stupid, the even more so when my friend who had spread the word about the band said it was very Texas (she's from Texas).

After the concert was slightly better. We were waiting for our car - though it was a country bar and music venue, it had valet parking - and there was a massive delay, so we got to watch blacks and latinos in funked-up cars cruise by the hip-hop club across the street. There was this one Latino thug guy with shaved head and two big diamond earrings who went by in a powder blue 50s type car that was jacked up on high tires with chrome rims and a lot of space between struts so that the tire was almost see-through, and he had a small Puerto Rican flag with gold fringes dangling from his rearview mirror.

"Look at that flag," I said to my friend from Texas, nudging her and pointing.

"Oh my god," she was like, and started laughing loudly.

Then the car passed by, and I nudged her again and was like, "Fuck, look at that license plate," and she turned and looked and saw the Puerto Rican dude's customized plate --

ICU HATIN

-- for a Puerto Rican, he definitely knew enough to teach us one.

Last night I dreamed that I was in my bathroom in the relatively early morning, naked since I had just woken up, and it was all bright because of my clear shower curtains, and I heard murmuring voices from the hallway and peaked out the door, and I saw a pair of slippers that weren't mine placed neatly in the hallway just beyond my inner doormat, and knew that my Croatian landlord had just slipped in to fix something there and that luckily she was out of sight and couldn't see me, so I called to her that everything was fine, and closed the door to the bathroom so she wouldn't see me without my clothes on.

Last night I was bitching about a senior professor with incipient dementia to my mother - the dementia brings out his bad character traits and make him a deal to handle, and I felt I was channeling my mother by having a "fuck you and your idiosyncracies" moment -- when my mom started telling me that one lady at work talks too much and she's older, so my mom has started avoiding her, only now the woman grabs her hand or her library pushcart and holds my mom there to keep her there while she talks with her.

"Yeah, but this is worse," I was like.

"Have some sympathy," my mom was like, "You don't know what it's like to get older. You don't know how many times this week I've called [my brother's dog, which my parents are temporarily taking care of] '[my name]'."

Then I told my mom that she had mellowed, and she agreed that she had, and reminded me that she had told everyone that when she turned 60 she was going to stop giving a fuck. "And I haven't," she was like.

A thought -- mmm-hmmm.

I was thinking yesterday after I wrote that last post that that deep, don't-open-your-mouth-when-you-make-that-sound "mmmmm-hmmmmmm" that older black women give is a cultural thing that somehow gets passed on in the black community. I don't think I've ever heard an old white lady make that sound, even without the distinctive intonation!

Idea, if I was more technologically sophisticated.

If I was more technologically sophisticated, every time I wrote a post that included a black woman saying something, I would record myself saying what she said like she said it and link the files to the post, so the dialogue would appear highlighted and all you would have to do is click it to hear me being them being sassy over and over and over again.

More on canvassing - two more stories I forgot.

Those four older black women I was talking with - the ones who were talking about the Clintons showing their true colors, and who were like, "Hello" -- started talking about how Obama's campaign was ordained by God and nothing could stop it.

Also, one of the four black women, when she was asking me and my neighbor who I went canvassing with about where our building was back in the neighborhood she was born in, made a face when we said it was on the block with all the Thai restaurants.

"Thai food," she was like, "Ugh," and when we asked her for more details, all she would say is that she's tried all sorts of different food because she's in real estate and she goes to dinner at different restaurants because of clients, but she likes nothing more than some meat and mac and cheese and some greens.

"How about sushi?", I was like, and she made a face, and when I asked her about Vietnamese soups, she made a face, and then finally, after mentioning several more foods, I was like, "Well, it's still all better than that one Spanish dish, creadillas."

"Quesadillas?", she was like, "I've had those!"

"No no no," I was like, "Creadillas, they're roasted cow's testicles, not quesadillas," and when I said that, she made the biggest face of all.