A leak, some postage drama, rotated tires, some S-L work, a time warp, and the holy trinity…

I set my alarm for 7:00AM, expecting Syd at 7:15 or 7:30. He arrived at about 7:45.

It would appear that my (slowly) leaking hot water heater needs to be replaced. He’s going to come back at 6:30 tomorrow morning, with a helper, and they’ll take care of it. He said that I didn’t need to be up, that I could just leave the door unlocked, and they’d come in and start working.

He left at about 8:30.


I went over to the post office, where I mailed the cards and letters that were stamped to go, and negotiated stamps for the remaining ones.

I needed 43 16-cent stamps, which on the surface sounds innocuous. The problem was that there is no 16-cent stamp, and the closest thing to it turned out to be one 10-cent and two 3-cent stamps.

So, 43 of my holiday cards look like this:

~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~                           

                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That’s a lotta drama about some stamps. But I did use up all of those stragglers.


I took the 43 envelopes — that needed these 129 stamps stuck to them — with me to Just Tires, where I applied all of them while I waited for my tires to be rotated.

I stopped by the credit union right around the corner, and got out one more crisp one-hundred dollar bill.


On the way to NCSU, I stopped by the post office at Method Road, where I caught the postal clerk, who had just emptied the street-side mailboxes, still sitting in her truck in front of the boxes. She slid open her window, and took my stack with a smile.

A woman ran up behind me to do the same thing. And then another behind her.


I worked for a couple of hours with Myra at my Service-Learning job, mostly just getting started with the website we’re working on together.

At about 3:30, the fire alarm went off, which was just piercing to our ears. By the time we packed it all up, the alarm stopped. Good thing it wasn’t a real one, as we would have had our laptops, but we may not have been around to enjoy them.


At 5:00, I decided to take a nap, since I was up so early this morning. I set my alarm for 8PM.

I fell into a deep, deep sleep; so much so that when I woke up at 6:25, I got up, went downstairs and turned on the front porch light (it was already dark out), the inside hallway light, and the bathroom light for Syd.

When I got back upstairs, I thought, “Good thing I woke up,” and looked at my alarm setting. “8:00? Why did I set it for 8? I knew he was coming at 6:30.” I, of course, didn’t notice the little illuminated red dot indicating 8PM.

I looked outside again, and thought, “Damn. It’s still raining. I hate that he’s going to have to be working in the rain.”

I lied back down, and not being able to fall right back to sleep, kept thinking about it all, and it slowly dawned on me that it was still Friday, and it was 6:30 at night.

I hate when that happens.


I went to Flex, where it was surprisingly dead for “Showtunes Night.” Rodney was bartending, and bitching because it was so slow. “This is two fucking Fridays now that I’ve worked, and it’s been dead. I only took this job back, because he gave me ‘busy’ nights, and so far neither of them have been.”

To my surprise, Adam was running the videos, and I went over to “the window” to say hello to him, and found “the group” in the “VIP lounge”: Van, Adam, Shawn, Josh and two other guys I’ve seen in the bar, but don’t know.

Josh told me that Terry, a.k.a. Barnabas, works in the library on New Bern Avenue in the children’s section.

I hung out mostly with Chris (zinnian), and eventually we went over to CCs. I tipped one of my favorite drag queens, Jasmine Addams, a couple of bucks. I don’t know what it is about her, but I like her.

Steve J. was out, who I hadn’t seen in a long time. He was in good spirits, and we chatted for a little while.

After a quick chat with Byron, about the AIDS ride in 2007, a guy who saw me talking to him told me that he was interested in him. I offered to broker an introduction, but as it turned out, Byron wasn’t interested in him.


I went ahead and made it “a holy trinity night” and went to Legends next. I thought I might see Kevin (av8rdude) and Kurt there, but they weren’t out.

Legends’ drag shows are so much better than CC’s. I mean, if you go for that sort of thing.

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