Whoops--almost forgot!

My show last Thursday night? It was another of the "just okay" variety--but happily, there was no "2x4 moment" afterwards. The audience was mixed--half were listening, half were in their own Private Idahos. But not quietly, unfortunately.

But not that they were all just plain jerks--a couple were drunk--I mean, really, really drunk. It was deja vu for yours truly, as you can imagine, and my heart went out to the really, really drunk woman in particular. Been there. Done that. Don't remember it all, but enough to remember it's just an awful way to live.

Hope she and her companion(s) find their way to something better, and soon.

Oh, and a coworker from my new job showed up to see me, and she said she had a good time. That was nice, wasn't it? (Wish it had been a better show for her sake, but hey--it could have been worse!)

So, even if the show wasn't stellar, I left there one grateful woman. Now, back to the laundry.....

Don't blink, you'll miss it!

That's how I feel about weekends since I started working in the 9-5 world (really 9-6, but don't get me started). I can't believe it's Sunday afternoon, and all I have to show for the weekend is two pairs of shoes (they are quite nice, though) and memories of a fabulous movie.

The movie? "Transamerica." Can I recommend it enough? Doubtful--but you're missing the most wonderful array of one-liners in years if you miss this film! (And Felicity Huffman is perfection in her role.) Only thing about the movie I didn't quite get--the therapist. She seemed a little too controlling for her patient's own good.

But then, without a controlling therapist, where would the plot have come from?

Anyway, this weekend is flying by, and I haven't even washed all my workaday clothes yet. Glory!

Of course, we also had a little more excitment than we bargained for yesterday. Our shepherd mix Linus had an odd growth on his noggin', so we brought him to the vet for a look-see. Turns out it was just a skin tag, something I have in abundance (is it the German in us both that causes these hideous flaps to appear? Ugh!). While we were at it, we had him tested for everything he gets tested for each spring and get his shots, so he's a legitimate member of canine society. It took over an hour and a half for all of this to occur (he's a sensitive soul as well as huge, so the vet techs took their time with him), so that cut into our weekend a bit.

But it is wonderful to know he's okay--and the vet said he's in very good shape for a dog his age. If only the same could be said for his human, Ann. Alas....

On other fronts, am a little ashamed to admit a NYC friend e-mailed me to check in and see how we were doing, and mentioned her political protests of late--and I had none to offer in return. Not even a hopped-up letter to the editor, for pity's sake. Since I began working, I feel lucky to have the gumption for a little comedy, but hope that I will soon have the energy to do more than just suit up, show up, and stand up.

But, so I feel a little better about the state of my political soul, allow me to share the wonderful opening sentence to my latest favorite must-read article from Common Dreams News Center, "What It Means to Be a Republican," by Larry Beinhart:

"The vice president shoots you in the heart and in the face. Then you apologize for all the trouble it's caused him. That's what it means to be a Republican."

It gets better--or worse, I suppose, depending on your view. Must admit, it all makes me glad I'm not a Republican--but considering how lame the Democratic Party has become, I'm not sure I'm a Democrat, either.

Just a garden-variety pinko lezzie, I suppose.

A 2x4 sorta show

Last night's spur-of-the-moment performance at an open mic (which shall remain nameless for the non) wasn't a success. But to be fair, it wasn't a complete, flaming disaster, either. Am not entirely certain why.

Was it the comedy-unfriendly atmosphere? (First, it was a Sunday night; second, a 40th birthday party had been going on for hours before the show; and lastly, a small Irish music band had been performing just before the show was to begin.) Was it the audience? (Who didn't laugh at material that elicited laughs from most crowds--and it wasn't just my "solid" material, but other comics' gold as well.)

Whatever--it wasn't a debacle, but it sure didn't set me up to feel all confident for Thursday night's show in Manchester. But then, a little humility before a show isn't necessarily a bad thing. One thing: I have noticed that I feel just stunned after a show like that, hence the 2x4 reference above--i.e., do a so-so show = 2x4 to the noggin'. Don't know what that's about, but it's good to be aware of, I suppose....

The good news is that my friend Jennifer Myszkowski also performed last night, and we did what we usually do after a so-so occasion of The Comedy, we had ice cream. Problem is, we went to a Friendly's that was anything but. Okay, the young man (yes, I'm old enough to say this--believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you) who served us was a gem, but the rest of the place was a disaster. Worse, the manager of the store kept muttering under her breath about how she wished she were home and that she should lock the doors and make the customers help her clean up the night's debris. (Tip: Time for a career change, doll--the customer service impulse you so desperately need in the restaurant business has left your building!)

After much unnecessary back and forth with the kitchen (Jennifer found it impossible to get hot coffee--apparently, one can only expect cold and lukewarm coffee after 10:00), we were served our ice cream delights, and delightful they were. (But really--how could one mess up a caramel-nut sundae?)

So, the night was saved, and The Comedy is still a-okay by me. (You may want to talk to me again after Thursday's show.)

On other fronts, it seems I am not the only person musing about the existence of a homosexual agenda--in fact, there is an entire newspaper story devoted to the topic, "Gay Agenda Revealed Here for the First Time!" and I think it makes for fairly compelling reading. Apparently, I have had a homosexual agenda all along--every day, in fact. Here's a sampling of today's:

1. 7:00 a.m. try to get up.
2. Get up again at 9:10.
3. 9:30 a.m. Make coffee.
4. 10:00 a.m. Eat breakfast with Linda.
5. 11:30 a.m. Walk dogs with Linda.
6. 1:00 p.m. Go to CVS and buy bins to store old business books in (guess who's office is being painted soon?).
7. 1:30 p.m. Come home with bins. Shine shoes instead of filling bins.
8. 2:30 p.m. Read office e-mail.
9. 2:35 p.m. Respond to office e-mail.
10. 3:00 - ? Watch Canada win women's hockey Gold (poor Sweden).
11. 4:00 p.m. Get on Internet.
12. 4:58 p.m. Have trouble getting off Internet.

Bye!

A successful weekend....

...features at least one good nap. I've had a great nap today, and feel fine.

This is the level of news I can come up with today, sorry.

It's the going to work every day business that cuts into my amusing thought time. I'm getting better at highway driving--let's be clear: I'm always a careful driver--but the way other people drive gets my dander up to the point that I become a sputtering, muttering idiot.

Sputtering and muttering are not good for the blood pressure or for the soul.

So I'm getting less rattled by the insanity around me, and hope that driving to work will soon be no more fraught than reading the paper--it still can get my blood up once and awhile, but most of the time, I sail right through, and my sole reaction is a modest shake of the head.

As to work, I can say that it's very interesting--and getting more interesting all of the time. I appear to have skills these people can use, and that continues to be (a) gratifying and (b) a little amazing.

Yes, The Self Esteem can be an elusive creature where yours truly is concerned. I blame the eight month job-hunt. My childhood could be dragged into this, but I think I'm going to put that away. The statute of limitations may be up on that one....

Elsewise, my job has a health services department that hosts lunchtime talks on various topics, and I attended one last week on high blood pressure. My lunch choice for the day (a meatball sandwich on a white roll) was unfortunate in context, but luckily I ate it before we got to the good food-bad food discussion.

I now know all the bad things that high blood pressure can do (nothing good--unless heart attacks and strokes are your idea of fun).

High blood pressure appears to run in my family (my parents had it; my brother and sister are both on high blood pressure medicine), so the bad things are coming--unless I start eating better, exercising, and all those other things I should do to keep this carcass in tip-top shape, in the hopes it makes a difference.

Right now, it's exhausting merely to contemplate this carcass-saving strategy, much less to do!

But, perhaps this is just the new job exhaustion talking, and soon I will work at least exercise back into my life. A little.

But give up meatballs? I don't think so....

One last thing, while we're on food. Have been thinking about how we ate in Northeast Wisconsin, and I guess the line "strict meat and potatoes" line works best. I say "strict," because my father called the culinary shots (even though he never cooked--not odd for the times, sadly), and he would tolerate no experimentation in the kitchen. And by experimentation, I mean pizza. Pasta. Pilaf.

How's that? Mother was no Martha Stewart, mind you, but one day in the early 1970s she tried to introduce a nice rice pilaf into a supper in lieu of the usual potatoes. One would have thought she had put the severed head of Vince Lombardi on the table from my father's and brother's reaction--they both pushed away from the table in disgust, put on their coats, and went to go have burgers. Mother cried, I think. Just a little.

I, of course, told her it was delicious, but it didn't really help.

And a nice rice pilaf was never served at 1559 Pierce Avenue again.

My father was a good guy overall, but on rare occasion he could be a jerk, obviously. Or just a product of his times--who can really say? Lord knows he didn't corner the jerk market--I shop there on occasion myself.

And my brother is married to a gourmet cook and eats a mad variety of food the likes of which would never pass muster in the North Woods of Wisconsin. (And he loves it.)

Okay, that's enough. Time to go watch the Olympics and leave you folks alone.

Maybe there IS something to it...

I always wondered about those straight folks who get all worked up over the Homosexual Agenda. For starters, what the heck is it? I haven't a clue!

And secondly, if a true Homosexual Agenda exists, I never got a copy, so how much of an agenda can it be? If anyone should have a copy, shouldn't I, a big ol' dykesaurus of several years' standing? For heaven's sake, I've lived in some fairly intense homo-ghettos in my life, and even spent a good part of my existence attending various meetings at the gay and lesbian center in NYC, and not once--not once, mind you--did I ever see any announcement regarding a Homosexual Agenda.

That said, I heard something today that might just qualify, but I hesitate to share it, for I think it might just be the sort of thing that could send certain unstable homophobic elements over the brink. But then, it's just too good of a story--and I tell it in full knowledge that it might just be a "good story."

The story: A straight woman friend of a friend of mine went to see "Brokeback Mountain" with another straight woman friend. After the movie, they were moved to have sex--even though one of them was married to a person of the male persuasion.

I'm just reporting the story as it was told to me. Dunno if it's factual/actual, but it certainly does give one something to think about, Agenda-wise....

On other fronts, the job is going just swell. I'm really enjoying it, and put together my first attempt at "real" work today. Dunno how it's going to be received, but it felt good to get something accomplished (besides finding my cubicle each morning).

Let it snow...

Yippie Skip! Winter's back, and I, for one, am happy about it. It was just getting so darn dreary around here--brown lawns, bare trees, and gray skies are a frumpy combination, in my view. A fresh coat of snow is just the ticket. (Have I mentioned that I'm from Wisconsin?)

We took the dogs out for their constitutional earlier today, and had a blast. They both perk up when it's snowing, and look absolutely ridiculous (and adorable) when wearing piles of snow on their coats and noses.

Of course, I haven't tried to move any of this snow yet--am waiting till the plows have run their course. That may be hard to do, though, for I've noticed that the DPW likes to swing through the 'hood one more time after everyone has cleared their driveways.

Just another public service from the dimwits and not-so-gentle people at the DPW.

(No, I haven't gotten over the tire incident or the near-death experience the DPW wrought quite yet. Soon, goddess, let it be soon.)

It's good to have Miss Linda back at home, even if her laundry reeks of mothballs. (Her mother's house seems coated in camphor. Yuck!)

What is it about mothballs and the elderly? Like a moth to a flame....

Speaking of laundry, must get back to it--have to get the wardrobe ready for the next week o' work in the joy that is Corporate America. Woo!

First day!

Well, I had my first day at work, and as I have learned from the painful experience of Dooce, I will relay very little of my experience.

What I can tell you: I had to be there no later than 7:45 in the morning, and to do that, I had to leave my home by 6:45 a.m., just in case.

That meant I had to be up before 5:00 and I had to walk the dogs in the dark. THE DARK.

The dogs were not amused. They dragged behind me for most of the walk, and if they could have said, "Are we there yet?" they would have.

Tomorrow, I get to leave at a much more civil hour, and for that, I am grateful. At this stage of the game, I am most worried about (1) finding parking that is not three miles from the building and (2) finding my cubicle once I get in the building.

Yes, these are the sorts of things I worry about.

As for the job, who knows?

Out of the red, and back in the blue

Back from my weekend in Florida, the state that time and compassion (except for the unborn and vegetative) and urban planning forgot. One catches glimpses of natural beauty (saw a pelican on the way to the airport--what a hoot!), but there are so many cars, strip malls, and ads for personal injury attorneys, beauty is not the prevailing theme.

Of course, I could just be reeling from all of the "Bush '04" stickers placed with no apparent irony on the bumpers huge SUVs that wheeled past us on the jam-packed highways.

It was a significant other support weekend, as my sweetie's dad died last week and she was in need of a member of her family of choice. No need to explain that, I'm sure. We had gads of things to do, but the task I will remember most is trying to get Linda's mother to pay attention while I walked her through the process of getting e-mail on her new computer.

When a widow wants a new computer, a widow gets a new computer--any questions?

Anyway, the woman is at the retrospective phase of her life, and that makes learning a slow process. For instance, I told her she had to hit the "Enter" key at one point, and that inspired a long tale of the three times in her life when she has had to hit an "Enter" key and all the trouble she had. She was similarly inspired by other instructions, so by the time I left this morning, I think, maybe, she might know how to turn it on.

Maybe.

Oh well, that's something, I guess. Linda will have the rest of the week for tutorials, so if you hear any screams of frustration from the south, it's probably her.

I sit corrected

And it's Alice Roosevelt Longworth, not Longfellow.

Ah, to err is human, right?

And in case you haven't noticed--me, I am one human human being.

If you haven't got anything nice to say....

...sit right next to me! I think Alice Roosevelt Longfellow (was it?) said that, and I like that attitude. My maternal grandmother was of the "say nothing" school, and my-oh-my, did her daughter follow in her footsteps. I didn't hear any good dirt about my family until after both my mother and father were dead. For a year or more.

That's just crazy. But it does offer one upside to the awful grief I went through after my parents went on to the big Democratic Party meeting in the sky. (Or was it bridge club? Hopefully both!)

This has all come up because my partner Linda flew down to Florida this morning after learning just after midnight that her father was dead. I can't really say how I feel about this, except that I do know that Linda is in for an emotional rollercoaster the likes of which she hasn't been on in years, if ever. I feel for her, yes I do.

Me, I felt like someone had hit me in the head with a 2x4 after my dad died; didn't feel quite tethered to the planet for a solid year after his death. For even though my dad's dementia had turned him into someone who my "real" dad wouldn't have anything to do with (he wasn't a whiner or a manipulator when himself), I found his passing stunning. Stunning. Not in a good way.

To borrow my friend Jennifer's phrasing, it's The Mortality. When a parent dies, you feel it. There's one less barrier between you and the Grim Reaper. When both your parents die, you're next.

In other words: The death of a parent is God's way of saying, "In case you were wondering, mortality runs in your family, too."

Oh, yeah--in case you were wondering, I won't be going to the open mic tomorrow night.

Do you need to ask why?