Straws in Bottles of Cabernet
Saturday, my friends Julie and Brian had a Farewell to LA party at her Aunt Anne's house. Anne lives with her partner Sergey, a mad Russian scientist, in a house in Santa Monica with a delightful garden, atop a hill. The party got even awesomer than that preamble. The Hub dropped me off and went to play a pick-up gig at a coffee house with a friend.
You know how I'm all nervous and weird? Didn't happen Saturday. This may have been due to 1) Julie and Brian being nerd-brethren and awesome. Julie majored in Classics and English, and fiance Brian is now a Doctor in Classical Studies. PIMP! 2) the fabulous hippy-craziness of the big-hearted Anne and Sergey 3) Julie and Brian's friends, who I didn't know (except for one other ex-Borderite), but liked or
4) The huge amounts of food and alcohol.
Welcomed to the place, I got a little tour of the garden and offered Russian food (yum!) and homemade plum vodka. Toast! Introductions to incoming people. More piroshkis, some other nummy things, and Brian whipped up some martinis. Toast! More people, more food kept coming (Anne and Sergey were cooking and rooting through the wine rack well into the party). More people showed up, with sangria, which was mixed into a festive container with fruit and Sergey opened champagne. Toast! Someone dropped by with a boat-load of 2 Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's. Sergey engineered extra-long straws and opened bottles of 2BC Cabernet Sauvignon. "Here! Drink dis and I give you prize OKAY!" Uh.
Okay.
So, we're sitting around in the cooling afternoon, the sun starting to sink, with bottles of wine with neon straws jutting from the top, given to us by a genial Russian. Gotta drink. Eat more, but drink. Yikes. Then there was some German beer. That was when I had to stop drinking and beg a coffee. Anne obliged and it was like... Death Coffee. It was black, vaguely Satanic, and delicious. Nice.
I give up on trying to finish my bottle of wine. There's a peppery taste that won't let up when it's not in a glass. Plus, I'm starting to get swimmy eyes.
We're catching up and laughing, then Sergey sets off fucking FIRECRACKERS in the garden! Holy SHIT! I stood up too fast and almost fell into the yarrow plants. More laughing and passing around of wine. Some people leave, a couple of new people show up. Everyone's so nice. I want to adopt Anne and Sergey, and wonder if they'd mind terribly if I lived in their garden, just off the lettuce barrel. It gets dark and Sergey lights a fire. Some people leave and Anne offers the chilly among us wraps and jackets.
There's cake and talk of how chipotle really does go well with most food. A couple of role-playing nerds get introduced to each other and talk favorites. We find out one of Julie's friends works for Warner Brothers social media marketing, so one of Brian's friends fah-LIPS out and tries to get her to spill info about the new Batman movie, to no avail. Hilarity. It's properly dark out, and the skyline of the area pops out of the distance, just a bit.
At some point, some of us move indoors. The Hub's shown up to collect me, but we end up hanging longer, because everyone's pretty cool and there's food for The Hub to pick at, even though he'd just eaten. *rolls eyes* There's a wooden puzzle with a wine bottle stuck in it, so I shrug and work the puzzle. It doesn't take me long, and Anne ends up giving me the wine as my prize! I just like working puzzles, so that was pretty darned cool. She gives me another bottle and asks me to reset the puzzle for someone else, which takes me longer to do. Still, I think someone will have to work a little harder than I did. ^.^
Mint tea and laughter and most of us are sober and tired enough to leave. Sergey's sneaked out to set off bottle rockets to see us off.
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Sunday, The Hub and I went to the local second-run movie house to see Water for Elephants (him) and Thor (me). He'd already seen Thor and I had no interest in Water for Elephants, so we we paid 12 bucks total and went to our separate movies. The guy who sold us our tickets tried to give me the Water for Elephants ticket, but I slid it to The Hub and we explained it was the other way around. We shrugged and all three of us laughed. Nice.
The Hub loved his movie, but I found Thor sort of sucky. Too much Natalie Portman, too much weak and lazy writing, and far too much CGI. I just did not buy the story arc at all. I liked Tom Hiddleston's Loki portrayal a great deal. He was the best thing about the movie for me, Agent Coulson's appearance (I love when he shows up in the Marvel movies), and Stellan Skarsgård a very close third. The direction was as good as it could have been, considering the script. Very problematic, very childish, not epic at all. Needed to be a much larger story. Much, much larger. The bones of a good story were there. *sigh*
I told The Hub my thoughts about Thor and he just said, "It wasn't just me, huh?" We laughed a lot over that, since I'm generally the one who picks movies apart, rewrites them, and exhausts him with my analysis. My brother likes to tell people I do this with everything, and that they should just accept that.
Well...
I wanted it to be better.
On the other hand, the after-movie girlboner fandom has been absolutely fascinating. The distance between initial impact of TV shows or films and subsequent fan-flailing is very short. There is a huge amount of Loki-Lust online, mainly on Tumblr. Fascinating.
----------------
Today I went to the library, loaded up on books. A mystery novel or two, a book on spiritual gardening, and a few other random things. I really just went to return a book, but decided to wander around without much of a list. I also got a call from the place I contacted about therapy. I have to call them back, but I may have found someone. We'll see how it goes.
Dreams? I can't remember anything except a low-ceilinged ice cave. I was a passenger in a car and we had to drive a long way through it. It was very upsetting and I felt really uneasy when I awoke.
You know how I'm all nervous and weird? Didn't happen Saturday. This may have been due to 1) Julie and Brian being nerd-brethren and awesome. Julie majored in Classics and English, and fiance Brian is now a Doctor in Classical Studies. PIMP! 2) the fabulous hippy-craziness of the big-hearted Anne and Sergey 3) Julie and Brian's friends, who I didn't know (except for one other ex-Borderite), but liked or
4) The huge amounts of food and alcohol.
Welcomed to the place, I got a little tour of the garden and offered Russian food (yum!) and homemade plum vodka. Toast! Introductions to incoming people. More piroshkis, some other nummy things, and Brian whipped up some martinis. Toast! More people, more food kept coming (Anne and Sergey were cooking and rooting through the wine rack well into the party). More people showed up, with sangria, which was mixed into a festive container with fruit and Sergey opened champagne. Toast! Someone dropped by with a boat-load of 2 Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's. Sergey engineered extra-long straws and opened bottles of 2BC Cabernet Sauvignon. "Here! Drink dis and I give you prize OKAY!" Uh.
Okay.
So, we're sitting around in the cooling afternoon, the sun starting to sink, with bottles of wine with neon straws jutting from the top, given to us by a genial Russian. Gotta drink. Eat more, but drink. Yikes. Then there was some German beer. That was when I had to stop drinking and beg a coffee. Anne obliged and it was like... Death Coffee. It was black, vaguely Satanic, and delicious. Nice.
I give up on trying to finish my bottle of wine. There's a peppery taste that won't let up when it's not in a glass. Plus, I'm starting to get swimmy eyes.
We're catching up and laughing, then Sergey sets off fucking FIRECRACKERS in the garden! Holy SHIT! I stood up too fast and almost fell into the yarrow plants. More laughing and passing around of wine. Some people leave, a couple of new people show up. Everyone's so nice. I want to adopt Anne and Sergey, and wonder if they'd mind terribly if I lived in their garden, just off the lettuce barrel. It gets dark and Sergey lights a fire. Some people leave and Anne offers the chilly among us wraps and jackets.
There's cake and talk of how chipotle really does go well with most food. A couple of role-playing nerds get introduced to each other and talk favorites. We find out one of Julie's friends works for Warner Brothers social media marketing, so one of Brian's friends fah-LIPS out and tries to get her to spill info about the new Batman movie, to no avail. Hilarity. It's properly dark out, and the skyline of the area pops out of the distance, just a bit.
At some point, some of us move indoors. The Hub's shown up to collect me, but we end up hanging longer, because everyone's pretty cool and there's food for The Hub to pick at, even though he'd just eaten. *rolls eyes* There's a wooden puzzle with a wine bottle stuck in it, so I shrug and work the puzzle. It doesn't take me long, and Anne ends up giving me the wine as my prize! I just like working puzzles, so that was pretty darned cool. She gives me another bottle and asks me to reset the puzzle for someone else, which takes me longer to do. Still, I think someone will have to work a little harder than I did. ^.^
Mint tea and laughter and most of us are sober and tired enough to leave. Sergey's sneaked out to set off bottle rockets to see us off.
------------------------------------
Sunday, The Hub and I went to the local second-run movie house to see Water for Elephants (him) and Thor (me). He'd already seen Thor and I had no interest in Water for Elephants, so we we paid 12 bucks total and went to our separate movies. The guy who sold us our tickets tried to give me the Water for Elephants ticket, but I slid it to The Hub and we explained it was the other way around. We shrugged and all three of us laughed. Nice.
The Hub loved his movie, but I found Thor sort of sucky. Too much Natalie Portman, too much weak and lazy writing, and far too much CGI. I just did not buy the story arc at all. I liked Tom Hiddleston's Loki portrayal a great deal. He was the best thing about the movie for me, Agent Coulson's appearance (I love when he shows up in the Marvel movies), and Stellan Skarsgård a very close third. The direction was as good as it could have been, considering the script. Very problematic, very childish, not epic at all. Needed to be a much larger story. Much, much larger. The bones of a good story were there. *sigh*
I told The Hub my thoughts about Thor and he just said, "It wasn't just me, huh?" We laughed a lot over that, since I'm generally the one who picks movies apart, rewrites them, and exhausts him with my analysis. My brother likes to tell people I do this with everything, and that they should just accept that.
Well...
I wanted it to be better.
On the other hand, the after-movie girlboner fandom has been absolutely fascinating. The distance between initial impact of TV shows or films and subsequent fan-flailing is very short. There is a huge amount of Loki-Lust online, mainly on Tumblr. Fascinating.
----------------
Today I went to the library, loaded up on books. A mystery novel or two, a book on spiritual gardening, and a few other random things. I really just went to return a book, but decided to wander around without much of a list. I also got a call from the place I contacted about therapy. I have to call them back, but I may have found someone. We'll see how it goes.
Dreams? I can't remember anything except a low-ceilinged ice cave. I was a passenger in a car and we had to drive a long way through it. It was very upsetting and I felt really uneasy when I awoke.