Swim...swim...don't drown...swim...
Saturday after class (our last one ::sniffle::), most of us migrated to Spirit of the Lakes for the TMen fundraiser shindig. There we partook of oceans of chili & fields of cornbread (damned good cornbread, too - I have, indeed, profited from riverrocks's masochistic streak). I also got to see Seth, Henry, & River, none of whom I had seen since the end of the last class. Seth & I spent several minutes bemoaning what bastards we are for not being better about keeping in touch. Nothing like a little self-castigation to make the day worthwhile. There was also a rummage sale. And, behold, verily I did rummage. 5 books (most of which used to belong to riverrocks, anyway), a belt, & a useless trinket that Anne can't live without were all had for a mere $3. Then, while I stood at the bus stop, minding my own business & waiting for my 21, a nice gentleman on a bicycle told me all about how he's filled with the Holy Spirit. To me, that sounded kind of painful, but he seemed happy about it. And it was OK, because he wasn't trying to convert me. He honestly just wanted to make sure I knew.
And then, on Sunday, Brigadoon came out of the mists. No, really. Leap Day! PF did a photojournal of her day; do take a look at this account of how someone else spent their imaginary day. It was also Loungeboy's mother's birthday! OK, so maybe that's not something to get excited about. But Girl Scout cookies definitely are - & mine arrived Sunday, courtesy of my ever-generous Aunt Jean, who brought them to me from Lake Elmo when my car refused to cooperate, & my even more generous mother, who bankrolled the addiction this year. The great thing about Jean is that she's a junior-high science teacher with 3 kids of her own, who range in age from 8 to 16, so no topic of conversation is considered immature - but since she spends so much time with adolescents, she's always eager to discuss 'grown-up' stuff, too. So it was no surprise that our talk wandered from Harry Potter to the Oscars to societal norms of 'beauty' to modern art & back to Harry Potter (hey - it's important stuff!).
Then my sorry, not-exactly-car-having ass dragged itself to the bus stop so I could get to the class show. Now, I'm not usually one for picking things out of trash cans. Though many dear friends of mine have, at various points in their lives, subsisted almost exclusively on dumpster-diving, it's never been my thing. But as I was standing at the bus stop, I happened to look into the trash can, & there were 3 books in it! Can you believe it? People throwing away books! That's like abandoning children or drowning kittens! I wept. And then I took them. One was a volume of Shakespeare's sonnets. One, that kind of scares me, is called The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It took me a while to realize that meant poems she loved, rather than poems she had written & that were beloved by others. I haven't looked at it yet - it frankly wigs me out. But the one that caught me - the one that made me pick up the pile in the first place - is the collected longer poems of W.H. Auden. I was dumbstruck. People are throwing away the collected longer poems of W.H. Auden. Where are we going so fast, & why are we in this handbasket?
The show was great. PF brought the entire flippin' posse! I felt so loved. Arthur made the journey, as did roseseule. Seth & Henry even managed to make it. I could hardly believe it - Seth! Two days in a row! The performances went really well. Someday I'm going to name a band either 'Praise Sandwich,' after Laura's piece, or 'The Morality Table,' after Jay's. Hortense's piece about the pirate of the brutal mind cracks me up more every time I see it. Becca makes me want to go to Fiji - though preferrably not in the middle of a coup. Ann's a freakin' hypnotist, she tells her story so well. And riverrocks makes me think that my grandmother may not be the craziest old lady on the planet. Thanks!
Me? I seem to have done OK. Of course, if you go by PF's photographic account of the event, I seem to have gone crazy. Some of those pictures scare me, & I was the one up there. Though, in the end, I suppose it's good. Proves that I'm really into my story. And then, during the 'big finale,' I got to get run over by Ann's wheelchair! Well, not really, but, mostly. All in the name of art, right? I'll never listen to Patsy Cline the same way again. She threatens and grabs hold/To push me to some group home/Convinced I must be an escapee....
After the show, PF, Arthur, roseseule, & I trekked on to O'Gara's. For beer. And smoking. And George (Well, OK, we didn't go there for George, but there he was anyway. I swear that man is everywhere). We sat around talking about just about everything, because we have no shame. Which I appreciate greatly. It was great spending time with the lousy rat bastard again, as he & I haven't connected much since the TGIO party. And of course Arthur is hours of fun & entertainment, all on her own.
PF & I came back here afterward, because, well, come on. O'Gara's. My apartment. 2 blocks. You do the math. I've decided that we're a lot like plate-spinners, only, instead of plates, we keep conversation topics in the air. Instead of '6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon,' we should be '6 Degrees of Conversational Tangents.' But it's part of what makes us so damned cute. And we are. We are very cute indeed.
Stole this one from mcghiever:
YOU are a PRONOUN!
(prnoun)
n. Abbr. pron. or pr.
The part of speech that substitutes for nouns or
noun phrases and designates persons or things
asked for, previously specified, or understood
from the context.
What Part of Speech are you?
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Don't forget! Dead Influence this Thursday at the 4th Street Station! Woo-hoo!