Transgender day of remembrance

It was very touching. A little disorganized and longer than I thought it
was supposed to go, but it worked out well. I got choked up reading the
tombstones. So many innocent people, so much suffering.

Two sweet things: One man drove by with a bike trailer full of yellow and
orange mums. He had heard nothing about the vigil, but he happened to
have picked up the flowers at the "flower junkyard" (apparently, somewhere
near Trader Joe's there's a place that florists dump their old flowers for
the taking), and he gave them to us to place on the graves. It was
beautiful and touching, and it made me cry.

The other sweet thing was a student who came up to read the sign I was
holding up (to keep the wind from blowing it over). He read the sign and
stood there for the next hour and a half helping me hold it, talking about
how stupid it is to oppress people who aren't like you, talking to me
about his life, and asking me questions about mine. After the vigil, I
took him out for a sandwich. The guy was completely blown away by the new
thoughts that were swimming around in his head, and he was utterly loving
and undefensive about gender, queerness, and progressive politics. He is
from Orange County, if that tells you anything. I felt really honored to
spend a couple of hours with him, talking about life, the universe, and
everything.

Spoken-word night

There will be no spoken word this Thursday at the Nomad, but we'll be back
next week.

Beginning this week, I shall have time to devote more energy to the
spoken-word thing, which I've come to love. It's funny: I ended up doing
this accidentally. I walked into the Nomad and asked what the deal was with
spoken-word night -- the place was empty on a Thursday night. "We can't
find a host -- do you want to do it?" they asked. And silly me, I said
yes. And now I love it.

So now I get to have evenings free to go find new poets to feature at our
little salon, and we will have fun theme nights and stuff. We will have a
Oneword night. We will probably have a
breakup-poetry night around Valentine's Day. Stuff like that. If you
have poems to share or ideas to give, let me know.

Also, we're going to have a party where we make and hang flyers for the
reading. If you have any interest in this party, let me know so I can
schedule it during a time you can make it. This is a cozy, fun little
reading, and I'd love to make it a cozy, fun big reading.

The weekend

Sunday was great. First, we went and picked up table and chairs and some
odds and ends from loracs, who is my party-giving enabler. Then
we went to the Berkeley flea market, which is always a fun time. Then a
quick doze, and off to see Harry Potter. I liked the film just fine, as I
always do, but it was nothing special. What was special was sitting with
my loves and their loves and having such a comfy family evening. (It was
sogwife, me, stonebender, dbubley, and then
loracs. If the latter two had switched places, everyone
would've been sitting next to their partners. ;-)

After the movie, stonebender took me to see Marius at the Aurora Theatre,
which I enjoyed. It's a tiny theater, with seating on three sides of the
stage, and it was fun to see a live show. We should do that more often.

Then yesterday, I shopped for food all morning and hung out with stonebender all afternoon, then went home and cooked and cleaned all
evening. Pretty much my perfect day. Stayed up wayyyyyy too late, but
then didn't have to start work today until 11am, so it worked out.

Way fucking cool.

I didn't know I was missing LJ comments until someone else posted this recent
comments tool. I have it bookmarked now. Very cool.

Superstition and assholery are taking over the world...

...and my friendslist is paying attention:

From patgund:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/patgund/1125125.html
From somerandomchic:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/somerandomchic/52441.html
From wcg: http://www.livejournal.com/users/wcg/251690.html

[I tried to post this three times from email. If it shows up four times for you, I apologize.]

From patgund

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/11/top_11_geek_thanksgiving.html

I love it!

It's been a good LJ friends day (though not a good LJ technical day)

From epi_lj, encouraging news on the fighting-asshatery front:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051122/ap_on_re_us/intelligent_design_course

As if you needed more proof that I'm a food geek...

...the most (g-rated) fun I've had all day has been beginning my listing
of all the ingredients in my T-day feast. (At least three people who are
attending have serious allergies, and I want to make sure every
'greediment is accounted for.)

(no subject)

someotherguy (listening to my Lyle Lovett CD): "It's sad, sad cowboy music."

Me: "I can change it if you like, love." (He doesn't much like country music.)

Him: "Oh, no, it's okay. I *like* seeing cowboys suffer."

[ETA:]

Him: "This is being blogged as we speak, isn't it?"

Me: "Oh, yeah."