This Was the Species that Was

Lovely weather prevailed. I took the opportunity to run many shopping errands yesterday... Office Stapot for CD mailers (finally getting around to sending out smutty CDs from IML/Grabbys in Chicago) and Post-It flags (because it's easier to shop for office supplies yourself than to order them at work); thence to "Green Pets" (formerly "Pet Essentials") for some all-natural cat food (Tynchre already hates the first thing I tried to feed him; wouldn't even taste it)... the two 20-ish gayboys working here were just as nice as could be, and I could swear one of 'em was flirting, but it might have just been salesmanship...

thence to Garden District, a frivolous stop where i bought a few basil plants, oregano, and rosemary (yeah, it's late in the season but what the hey) and a purple passion plant for my office; by dawdling at GD I missed the closure of Home Rule by 5 minutes, so I didn't get to buy a variety of ridiculously expensive soaps.

Other than that I got some work-work done over the weekend, mostly reading/commenting on proposal drafts... also imPodting classical music and cleaning up my iPod's files so there's exactly one "composer" entry for Bach, one for Beethoven, etc. And all the composers and artists on the classical stuff are listed lastname, firstname. Also started burning those smut CDs, but I still need to design a label.

Saturday night was underwear night at Green Lantern. Not a particularly successful one in gourdian terms (no public sex). Sparsely attended, too: too much of gay Washington goes to Rehoboth every weekend in the summer. Ah well.

Went home well shy of last call and watched About Schmidt again for the first time since my initial on-release Netflix rental. I really like this movie. It's some of the best work I've seen from Jack Nicholson, as troubled and helpless a character as his turn in As Good as It Gets but without the nasty. Totally against type: no snideness or sarcasm at all. Even in the final "wedding reception speech" he's talking out his ass but doing it in the most convincing and respectful way possible so as to spare everyone's feelings. Schmidt is a wonderfully envisioned and enlivened character, and I cried along with him in the last seconds of the film.

SO! The new Westell modem I ordered from Verizon arrived practically instantaneously. The old one was seriously fucked: with increasing frequency, it would just stop transmitting in either direction for 20, 30, 45 seconds at a time. I called V. on Thursday and the new modem was waiting for me when I got home Friday night. Set it up, ran install, had Internet in <5 minutes. Incredible. Almost makes me want to take back one mildly nasty thing I've said about Verizon. But not quite.

Also Friday night I Metroed from work to Montgomery Mall to buy a new canister vacuum cleaner at Sears. It's purdy. And it works, which is quite a step up from my old canister vacuum cleaner.

The Cheese Lord concert went well Saturday night ( and on and on and on... )

Short version: Camping was great; Cheese Lord concert was very good; I am tired.

Long version: Grabbed my rental car at Reagan Thursday night, loaded up back at the Irv, and drove without stopping to Blue Rocks Family Campground in Lenhartsville, Pa. Arrived minutes after 1 a.m. and called Joe who, with Hugh, drove down from the campsite to fetch me and my stuff. Stayed up talking to Joe and Hugh and Rob Lynch (new to me) and they crashed one by one until Joe and I turned in circa 2:30. Joe's pop-up camper is really pretty nice... sleeps three comfortably.
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