~Sunday~ At 9:30, I headed out to Durberville to see Tess. Not really. But, I did head to Durham to attend our 10:00-11:30 Manbites Dog Theater Board of Directors Meeting.
It was a very good and productive meeting, one where emotions got a little high, but with everyone’s obvious commitment to the success of the theatrical concern and to each other as people. Good stuff.
I met Robert for lunch afterwards, and we started off at Elmo’s Diner, where we found a line winding out the door. We moved on to Mad Hatter Bake Shop & Cafe, where the line wasn’t very long to place an order, but the seats were pretty much all taken. We meandered over to Whole Foods, which was right next door.
This actually turned out to be fortuitous for me, as I got to make sensible choices for lunch. I had an asparagus-tomato-onion salad, some curried cabbage, steamed broccoli, and four teriyaki chicken wings. The wings were exceptional.
It’s always nice to share some time with Robert when I’m in Durham, as 95% of the time he’s the one coming to Raleigh to hang out.
On the way back to Raleigh, I called my friend Carl at Goodwill to tell him that I was just “caught up in the moment” about buying a karaoke machine that he’d told me about someone bringing in, and after some thought I had decided against buying it.
The next stop was at the gym, where I did 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical machine for 570-calorie burn.
There, this totally cute boy started walking toward my machine smiling, and then he waved. For a second, I thought he might be waving at someone behind me on the treadmills, but then I realized it was Wilkes, an ex-boyfriend of a good friend of mine, Courtney. He was just as cute as ever.
What took me the extra seconds to recognize him was that seeing him there was totally out of context. He doesn’t live in the triangle area—at least he didn’t used to—and even if he did, I haven’t seen him in quite a while and that’s just not the place I’d expect to see him.
At home, I put away all of my Christmas stuff—all except the cards, which I’m still enjoying set out on my desk in the living room. After that, I vacuumed my guest room, which is about to host Casey for the week.
I removed all of the stuff under my kitchen sink and under my master bathroom sink in anticipation of Gerald’s (my plumber’s) visit tomorrow to replace those two faucets.
My final cleaning chores were that bathroom floor and my kitchen floor. While I was cleaning those, I thought a lot about a survey I took just yesterday—all about how one cleans floors, including things like:
- Do you use a mop? If so, what kind? (roller head, string, Swifter, and so on)
- Do you prefer mops with replaceable heads? (If so, how often do you replace it? What prompts you to change it? How important is finding a replacement easily to you? and so on)
- Do you use a broom? If so, what kind? (electric, power, angled, corn, whisk, push, and so on)
- Do you get on your hands and knees when you clean your floors?
- How do you feel after you clean your floors?
- What determines when you clean your floors? (I do it regularly, When I can no longer stand it, When stuff sticks to the bottom of my feet when I walk on them, When I’m having (a) guest(s), and so on)
- What is your main objective in cleaning your floor? (that it be the cleanest it can be? that it get done in the shortest amount of time? and so on)
I attended the HRC‘s Do Ask, Do Tell fundraiser at Flex from 7:00-9:00. Surprisingly (at least to me), it was way crowded, which was good for HRC and Flex. I chatted with Phil M., Robert F., Rick E., and Loren for a good while, including a quick round of “Sunderwear,” where everyone shows the underwear that they’re wearing.
Karaoke started at 9:00 and while the crowd had thinned out, there were still more people than have been there on Sunday nights lately. I’m sure the fact that tomorrow is a holiday for a lot of people contributed to that.
I spent a little time talking with a guy, who’s very sweet—and whose name, I’m embarrassed to say, I’ve forgotten. He’s an African-American guy who is there fairly often and who prefers to date white men. We had an interesting conversation about that, which was interesting to me on two levels:
- Earlier in the evening, with the “Sunderwear” group, we were talking about the slang term snow queen, and
- It lead into a discussion of fetishes, which I’m always interested in in terms of how people think a particular one might have come about.
I asked him, “Positing that a black guy being attracted to white guys is a ‘fetish,’ how do you think that might have come about with you?”
To which he replied, “The very first boy I saw naked was a white boy, and I found myself very attracted to him.”
That was so interesting to me, and I immediately wondered if he would still have a preference for white boys if he’d seen a naked little black boy first.
It also reminded me of a fairly recent conversation I had with a young guy who prefers older (than him), chubby white guys, and I asked him why he thought that might be so. To which he replied, “One of my earliest memories of realizing I was attracted to guys was when I saw a friend of mine’s father naked, who was a little chubby. It’s just interesting.
Anticipating Casey’s arrival close to 10:00, I left Flex at about 9:20 and stopped by the grocery store on the way home. I have a list of things I need, but I’m planning a trip tomorrow for all that. Tonight, I just picked up a few things, mainly a dozen eggs, but also grabbed a boatload of Weight Watchers Smart Ones, several of them being their Traditional Lasagna, which I absolutely love.
Casey arrived not long after I got home and we spent 40 minutes or so catching up, and then both headed in for the night.
Just before bed, I received both a personal and profession affirmation, the personal part being that it was from a friend and the professional part being that he wanted me to give him some feedback on a resume he had created/updated.