Vibrant.(Still) Unrepentant. Badass. Old. Queer

Good Morning, Kittens. If you're friends with me on facebook, you may have already seen this, but I'm going to share it again anyway. Yesterday, after working (nearly) a full day (!) and deciding to walk home from the metro station (mistake!), this is what I saw (or didn't see, actually): Where have all the sunflowers gone? Apparently, our yardguy got a little carried away and -in addition to trimming all our hedges (which look very nice now)- he mistook my over 6-foot tall just-starting-to-bud sunflower plants as some sort of vicious weed. A vicious weed that had been planted from seed in a very, neat (well, neat-ish) line and carefully tended to (well, sort of carefully tended to) all Summer long. Needless to say, I was very upset. I was really looking forward to seeing them bloom. I had almost given up hope that they would, but a few days ago, I noticed they were starting to bud. Well, as they say, no use crying over slaughtered sunflowers. At least I got a photo of o...

Good Snowy Morning, Kittens. I'm still hunkered down at Mr. Fantastic's. Yesterday, I managed to make it out to Silver Spring. I cleaned out my refrigerator (three days with no power = gross cheese. srsly). I created a warm little blanket house for Isabella. I figured out what was up with my apartment's electricity (tripped breakers in the boiler room). And, I moved the rest of Jasha's stuff up to SCGB's apartment (where we thought he would be warmer). Then, I met SCGB for a late lunch at Adega (tomato! basil! soup!). Once we finished, I headed back to DC to await Snowpocalypse Part II (or are we at III now? srsly. Too much snow). Last night, Mr. Fantastic's roommate stopped by. I won't say much but Much Drama ensued. Watching the interaction of those two was certainly interesting ... Mr. Fantastic trying to be a "nice guy", Roomie being manipulative. Quite interesting. The sad thing is that Mr. Fantastic considers someone who treats h...

Good Morning, Kittens! It seems like summer may have arrived. Yesterday, around 6:30AM, I awoke to the crash and flash of a line of thunderstorms rolling through, creating havoc and setting off car alarms. I thought about the poor saps who had to go to work in that mess and fell back asleep. Ha! The rest of the day was not productive. Can I blame the heat? I think I will. Then, just after Martini Time, another line of thunderstorms passed by. Take a look at the Fabulous Ms. Bluestocking's photos of the storms here . The storms passed, and in the rain, SCGB and I headed over to our friends' house for dinner. We had a yummy mixed greens salad with strawberries, portabello mushrooms caps, and quinoa with black beans. Tasty tasty. After dinner, we played darts in the basement. Good times! SCGB and I got home a little before 11, and I decided to watch Gypsy (with Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood) on DVD. It was slightly different from what I remembered. It's possibl...

I tend to think the best of people, even when they do bad things to me. Hell, I was mugged and I think "maybe he had his reasons ..." I forgive too easily. I try to focus on the good in people. Which gets me into trouble. As a former co-worker once said to me, "Sometimes people mistake kindness for weakness." Some of you may remember that I recently ran into John, the Cheating Cheater. Since then we have been in casual contact. I was thinking maybe we could rebuild some sort of friendly relationship. It's not like he's a bad guy. Sometimes he could be surprisingly sensitive. And he's funny. And he made me think about things in an entirely different way. Last night, we were supposed to meet up. He was going to pick my up at the Metro station near his house at around 7:30. I was running a little late ... 7:27PM: Me via text: "At Silver Spring Metro. There in about 10 min or so." No response. 7:34PM: I arrived at the Metro station and call...

Good morning, kittens. I hope the rain has stopped in your world and the sun is peeking through the clouds just. like. here. Last night, I gathered together my ingredients for what I hoped would be yet another brilliant experimental cooking success. It wasn't. Step One was to make pesto . Here are the ingredients: Don't they look pretty? I had grated fulvi romano with peppercorns, garlic, dried chili peppers, organic arugula, and olive oil (some of which had been used to store my already-been-done-eaten feta-stuffed olives). All of which was shoved into a blender and had the Hell pureed out of it. WHIRRRR! Then, I poured it into a bowl. See? Pretty: Of course, this is where things started to go horribly wrong. I tasted the pesto and decided it needed salt. I picked up the salt and started to sprinkle a little in. * WHOOPS * My hand slipped and, like, 8 TONS of salt poured into the pesto . I scooped out what I could. But, when I re-tasted it, all I could taste was salt. My pes...

As of about 5PM yesterday, we had heat AND hot water. VUBOQ is happier than a pig in mud ... because he knows he can shower afterwards. What? No, that wasn't some sort of crude sexual reference, and you are all Super Pervy Monkeys for thinking so. In other news, I'm going to be putting up some sort of Linky Luv List of people who will be attending the Global Blogger Meet-Up (March 15-18ish). If you are coming (and you know you want to), drop me a comment and/or email so that I can include you on the list. No pressure. I guess that's about it for now. More later, I'm sure ... *smooches* [If you missed it, there's a link to the Surprise Party Pix in the previous entry]

When I got home from work on Friday, I stopped by the boiler room to see how things were going. The heating guys had some good news: One boiler was up and running, which meant heat, but no hot water for the weekend. YAY. Unfortunately, a few hours later, I received a call from another Board member. "I hope you have a stiff drink in your hand," she said. "Of course, I do," I replied. "Don't be ridiculous. What's up?" "There's a foot of sewage back in the boiler room, and the working boiler has stopped." When WSSC started replacing the broken pipe, they used a smaller pipe to bypass the work area. Unfortunately, the smaller pipe could not convey all the waste and it backed up into the boiler room again. *durf* So, after moving Isabella into DUN's apartment (because they have an electric heater), I high-tailed it out of there. I called Y to come pick me up (this was around 9:45PM), so I could have a hot shower at his apartme...

So why did I volunteer to be on the Board? Here's the story: Last night, around 11ish, Tomoko and I smelled something burning. We checked her kitchen. Nothing. Then, I felt her radiators. They were coolish to the touch. "That's weird," I thought. I went down to my apartment to see if anything was wrong there. My radiators were also coolish. Then, Tomoko called to see if I had any hot water. Nope. So, I thought I would check the boiler room beneath my building to see if maybe a circuit breaker had tripped or something. The picture in the previous post was what I saw. And, kittens, that isn't just plain old water. It's sewage. There was poo . And used condom s. I immediately called the other Board Members and we swung into action ... calling every emergency number we had on hand. I turned off the boiler emergency switch (because that seemed like the thing to do, since the boilers were mostly submerged in sewer water). The rest of the timeline invol...

This is what we've been dealing with since about 11PM last night.