we knew it all along

This is from Lauren's blog. I agree with her, I feel totally validated in my bad habit :-)

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1857962005

you know what they say about the size of a man's mustache...

Things have been going much more smoothly since we stopped picking up furniture all the time. Thank god! Went to a drag show on Friday night, the first one we've seen since the random show in Kent, WA. They cost $5 before 10 and $8 after, and the shows don't begin until at least 11:15 usually, and since we're cheap we were sitting there for quite a while. However... Izzie Big, one of the co-founders and the MC for the show, came over to ask us if we wanted to go get 'transformed' (have fake facial hair put on) and we ended up talking to him for a long time, at least twenty minutes and maybe more. We talked about drag king techniques of facial hair, binding, and packing, and about how much things vary in different places in the country. For instance, Minneapolis has like 5 drag troupes while there are places like Seattle (where I would expect lots of public genderplay) that don't have any. And presentations and handling of gender are radically different depending on where you are and who's playing. Not surprising, but it was cool to hear such an experienced and well-known/traveled king talk about it. We also talked about the disbanding of the troupe, and he explained that people would still be doing stuff, and that there would likely be at least two more shows that were mostly them. Eased my mind a lot, knowing that there would still be activity, and anyway he said he felt like people were maybe becoming blase in Chicago, so maybe this will shake things up a bit.
We did end up getting transformed; Anna got what she called "a little gay mustache" like Charlie Chaplin and a little beard, and I got huge-ass sideburns. I got a lot of compliments, which was pretty funny.
Last night we tried to go to a queer political burlesque show, but failed miserably. When we got there, I swear there was a line around the block. We ended up going to a bar and playing Scattergories instead. Alas, my burlesque education will have to wait for another show.

the buffalo upstairs

The people in the apartment above us (three college girls) stay up until at least 2 every night, apparently constantly running back and forth and dropping thing and sometimes falling down. At least that's what it sounds like. The apartments are set up so that their living room is directly over our bedroom, and they kept us up last night for about hours after we went to bed. They also watched Dirty Dancing, I could hear it right through the floor. What do you do about something like this? We can't tell them to be immobile after midnight, but they are so damn loud it's amazing.
In other news... We went to the free day at the art institute on Tuesday, which was really fun. It's much nicer when you haven't paid $7, because you can relax instead of feeling like you have to see everything all at once. We are pretty much furnished, although we still need a dresser and coffee table maybe, and some end tables for the bedroom. That's about all, really. Things are calming down.

groan

Why do people ever move? It's such a terrible experience. I generally dislike packing, and I'm not a big fan of unpacking either; it never seems like I have enough drawers or surfaces to put all of my crap. And this move is worse than normal, since this is the first time I'm moving into an unfurnished apartment and I own hardly any furniture to speak of. We've spent most of the last two days shopping, picking up furniture, lifting heavy objects, and steeping carefully around the twenty or so boxes and bags in our living room.
There are a few good things, of course. My biceps are awesome right now from all the lifting. We got a whole kitchen table with six chairs, as well as a super comfy armchair with matching ottoman, all for free! Craigslist is the bomb. We're waiting for word back on other things, too, like filing cabinets and dressers and such. We also bought a cool lamp for $10 today, with four snakey heads with colored collars on the ends in blue, red, yellow and white. Very funky.
However, right now I'm super sad because the Chicago Kings, our drag king troupe, is apparently disbanding. They are still doing the monthly shows where people do individual or small group acts, but the big group productions are stopping. It's sad; that's what this troupe is kind of known for, and they are astonishingly good at it. When they all perform together, it's awesome. Anyway, I'm bummed.

back in the saddle

After another few days of power driving, we're finally in Chicago. We stopped for about 4 days in Moriarty, NM, visiting Anna's family and helping her mom set up things in her new bead store that's opening at the end of the month. It was pretty quite, all in all, but nice. I made a bunch of jewelery, and we played with the three kittens. Their names are either Felix, Callie and Fluffybutt or Felix, Missy and Cissy, depending on who you ask. Anna insists that Missy and Cissy sound like redneck southerners and holds out for Fluffybutt and Callie.
Finally, we took off two days ago and drove from Moriarty to Kansas City, Kansas. We crossed New Mexico, a piece of Texas (smelled like cowshit and looked like a desolate wasteland), went across the Oklahome panhandle (about the same) and then through Kansas (very flat). We stopped in Liberal to see the Dorothy house and the Land of Oz, but it turned out to just be a replica of the movie house fell of stuff from the time period. Kind of misleading, if you ask me. The next day, we drove across Missouri and Illinois, arriving here around sundown. We drove right down Lakeshore Drive, past the lights of downtown and the vast oceanlike expanse of lake. It was a nice reminder of the city, how it has its perks as well as its detractions.
Our apartment is really kind of funny. I still like it, but it's definitely not exactly like I remember it. It has weird-shaped rooms, lightswitches in strange and inconvenient places (like behind the bathroom door and between the fridge and the wall) and windows in odd spots (most notably the closet and on an interior wall between the bedroom and our "office"). It reminds me of the house on 10th street, with all of its quirky details like the window to nowhere in the kitchen and the bullethole in the back bedroom window. We picked up all of my old stuff today, and we went grocery shopping. Gah, tomorrow I'll have to start unpacking.

pleasantness is the machismo of the midwest

Here is a list of books that I have read this past week because no one I know lives here anymore:
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros (This was great; it reminded me at times of One Hundred Years of Solitude, detailing a whole family history lovingly but without ommitting things. It made me wish that I could truly experience all these other ways of life that are so far away from my own.)
Woman Hollering Creek also by Sandra Cisneros (I overdid it on her a bit, I think. But stilla wonderful book.)
Harry Potter and the Half-Bood Prince (What can I say? I've read all the others, I might as well finish.)
Like Life by Lorrie Moore (Great short stories, I also loved Birds of America. She'll make you laugh but she will also depress the hell out of you)
The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places by Gary Nabhan and Steven Trimble (Essays on the authors' childhood experiences with nature, those of their own children, and more theoretical looks at the ways children experience and learn and thrive from even the most mundane of natural experiences, from actual day-to-day contact with wilderness to simply owning a dog or cat.)
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (I cried and cried, but what a complete chronical of grief! It deals with the aftermath of a family whose child has been murdered, from the perspective of the child up in heaven. It is a lovely book in many ways, but it tore my heart out.)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronical by Haruki Murakami (The first book I've read by him. I'm not sure if it's culturally stylistic or due to translation or just his way of writing, but rarely have I read such a meticulously detailed book. It reminded me of those old video games where all that happens is the entire scene around you is described and you type in carefully worded actions to be carried out. I was fascinated by this book, and really enjoyed it, but the ending did very little for me. Kind of like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it's more about the bulk of the book than the ending. Sadly perhaps, I place too much emphasis on a satisfying ending, so I end up not liking books that end poorly as much.)


I'm off to get my last tooth filled, and then tomorrow (or possibly Sunday morning) it's off to Albuquerque!

i'm all about a forked tongue and a dirty house

I just had three teeth filled. First, the novocaine shots made the entire right half of my head numb, so I actually can't blink my eye because the lower lid has no muscle control. This is painful, especially if there is any sort of air blowing on the exposed bottom lid. Then, the lower tooth wouldn't go numb, so I must have gotten about ten shots in that gum. When they drilled, it hurt so much and I started shaking and crying. God, I'm a wimp, but it's such a disarming pain. It isn't like cutting yourself. It takes away all of my strength. So now I look like Quasimodo, I can't move half of my face or blink, and it will probably take forever to wear off because I had so much more anaesthetic than normal. What a sucky day.