~Saturday~ NY State Senator Tom Duane Gives Gripping, Angry Speech on AIDS. At around 3 am Thursday, New York State Senator Tom Duane, who is gay and HIV+, delivered a mesmerizing, emotional 21-minute speech on the Senate floor at the end of a marathon session in favor of a bill preventing people living with HIV or AIDS and receiving public assistance from having to pay more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent.
The end of the video is particularly poignant.
The bill passed by a vote of 52 to 1.
I was going to write that I was a slug again this Saturday, but instead I’m going to frame it as, “I had a relaxing day.” That way it doesn’t sound like a bad thing.
At around 5:15, I ran to the grocery store mostly to pick up some noodles for the dish I wanted to make for dinner. At the entrance to the store, or more specifically, at the entrance to the produce section was a bin of huge seeded watermelons. They were huge, they were very green, and they were $4.99 each. I have been looking for seeded watermelon for quite a while now. I’m tired of what seems to be a sacrifice of taste for the convenience of being seedless, so I’ve pretty much stopped buying seedless watermelon.
Robert arrived shortly after I returned from the grocery store and after agreeing to wait an hour or so for dinner, he helped me de-seed the watermelon. We ate bunches of it while we worked, as it was deliciously sweet. And it’s only going to get better as it gets colder.
I prepared a dinner consisting of shrimp cocktail, cucumber slices dripped with sesame-ginger dressing, and a pasta dish of rotini noodles, mushroom Alfredo sauce, boiled diced chicken breast marinated in soy sauce, and cuts of sugar snap peas. Quite a nice array not only aesthetically, but bursting with a plethora of flavors of well.
We had a fair number of dancers tonight—Carl, Bill, Geromy, me, Robert, Rick, and Rob. Michael showed up right before the dancing stopped at 10:30. The crowd picked up as the night progressed, which always boosts the enjoyment factor of dancing, at least for me.
Alex arrived at about 9:45, and Joe shortly after that. Robert and I actually hung around after dancing for a change, where the drinking pace progressed to the point that it felt like this:
I’m just saying…