now for the actual update

Dear readers,

I am lapsed. However, I find you all to be forgiving in that way that only static, relatively anonymous audiences can be. It's a cathartic process for me, really -- but a boring or not frequently updated one for you.

Since I went to Indiana, (begin tangential anecdote) which also held a gay bar where a DJ doing his best to accomodate us attempted to mix "House of Glass" into bad house music into "Raspberry Beret" and on to the extended mix "Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go?" It was ugly, but not his fault. What were we thinking? (end anecdote), I've been a few places. Philly, Collegeville, and Philly again; back to a 9am flight to Durham, 48 hours later to a day in DC, and topping it off with Kalamazoo, MI all in the same 8-day span. I'm real glad to have not been on a plane for almost three weeks, and I'm not even supposed to be on one again until I head off to Cali to see my lovely Bay peeps.

Did I mention that the greatest irony about the Indiana trip is that (for those of you who know her) Mary Gray arrived in DC the same day I left for Indianapolis? And she's in Bloomington? We basically switched places during one of the few times we could see each other. But all's well that ends well, and we finally got to meet up on her trip out here to the AAAs last week. Whew! It'd been just over a year, after her lovely wedding to Catherine in Louisville.

Things that have happened:

• I moved to a queer collective house just up the road. I now have six very nice housemates, seven including the cat, in the heart of a gentrification process that has us facing condos every which way. I hope we can hang on here for a while longer, I love it. This process also ate all remaining scraps of my free time and sanity for a while. Now I have things like a bed, and blankets, and even shelves, so it's settled.
  
• I had a relaxing and cooking-laden couple of days off with Elly's family attributed to the genocidal fiction we clal Thanksgiving. I refused to deal with my cell phone, and so did my cell phone service provider, during that time.
  
• The first snow hit DC, and I still haven't stopped biking to work. What's wrong with me? This is only my second Eastern winter. Someone talk sense into me before I lose my nose to the frostbite.
  
• Elly and I joined the local Y and it has a climbing gym. I spend time I should be writing posts scrambling up walls, whenever the work lets me.
  
• I will be going to Venezuela this winter. That is exciting.
  
• I have been working like mad and consequently neglectful of my friends. This is bad.
  
• As a sanity preservation maneuver, I watched the latest Harry Potter movie and liked it.