I met Dr. Swarts in his office where he interviewed me regarding three of the four recordings I made of my “copy and paste activity.”
It was interesting to have to think about, and explain, why I copied the parts of text that I did, and my reasons for reformatting upon pasting. It’ll be interesting to see what conclusions he comes up with after his analysis is complete.
I am one of 14 participants in his study.
From there, I rode out to RTP to look for my phone, which I was hoping I’d left in my office since it’s nowhere to be found. It was.
Back home, I had lunch, packed, and headed back to Durham to pick up Robert.
We left for DC shortly between 3:00 and 3:30, and had an uneventful ride there. That is, if you call averaging between 80 and 85 miles an hour uneventful.
We arrived in DC at about 6:30, where the traffic really picked up. We took the exit for “D Street,” but never saw the actual turnoff for it. Well, we saw a turnoff that must have been it, but it wasn’t marked, so we took the next marked one, which turned out to be Massachusetts Avenue.
After a turn onto it, the next right came very quickly, and it was for New Jersey Avenue, which was the street the hotel was on, so it worked out nicely.
We parked at a meter, which was not operating for Friday night, and checked in. It turned out that a refrigerator was not included in our room, and we paid $25 extra to have one, and a microwave, sent up to our room.
We were in room 915, and our view was of the Fire Station (read: firemen) across the street. But I digress…
We went downstairs for the Stampede Jamboree, which is the main dance on Friday night, held in the hotel’s grand ballroom. Nothing like hundreds and hundreds of cowboys dancing with other cowboys.
From Raleigh, we ran into Gabe, who is actually from Phoenix, but we know him from his frequent work travels to Raleigh, and his visits to Flex when he’s in town.
We saw Joe, but not Jose (as he had his son with him, and was “entertaining” him). We also saw “Randy,” whose name we didn’t know, but recognized him, and his boyfriend/partner, who goes by either Phil or Lee and sometimes dances with us in Raleigh, though he’s not “a regular.”
Gerald and his new partner, Rick, was there, too. The rodeo is where I met Gerald three years ago, when I was here alone, and actually dancing out on the dance floor alone, and he ran out to me and said, “A handsome man like you shouldn’t be dancing alone.” Of the hundreds and hundreds of cowboys, from all up and down the east coast, he turned out to be from Durham.
Carl and Bill are up for the Rodeo, too, but they went out to the Eagle tonight. They’ll be at the dance tomorrow night.
We took advantage of staying in the “host hotel,” and ran up to the room during the “entertainment sets,” to have cocktails. This had the extra advantage of saving about $6.00 a drink. We also had “cowboy cums” (a.k.a. blowjobs and buttery nipples). A shot glass — half Buttershots, a quarter Kahlua, and a quarter Baileys. Yum.
We did at least one waltz, a couple of two-steps, and some line dances. Coming to mind are: the Canadian Stomp, the Tush Push, the Mambo Shuffle, Hanky Spanky (which Robert and I, over in one corner, did differently from the rest of the crowd), Midnight Waltz, the Honky Tonk Twist, and Bayou City Twister.
During the second entertainment break, Gabe joined us in the room for cocktails. He showed us a bill, a $5.00 bill I think it was, that someone had given him as change a while back in Raleigh. It had “KKK” on it, and he said the guy looked deliberately at him when he handed it to him and said, “The South Will Rise Again.” Oddly, Gabe is not even black. He’s half Brazilian and half Mexican.
We danced until about 1:40; the dance ended at 2:00. It was nice to be able to just stumble up to the room.