I promise you all I’m going out tomorrow night. I’m going to the photo exhibit of a friend of a friend, and then I’m going to a party. A party given by physicists. You know how those rock. Those of you who were with me for New Year’s, I’m going to wear the black and white dress again. Oh yes. Party!
Tonight, however…well, the fact that I’m updating on a Friday night should tell you a little something, yes? Except the fact that I’m even pretending to be embarrased that I’m staying in on a Friday night should tell you more, because I totally am not. I like Friday nights because it’s one time I know I’ll be home…although I am actually writing this from Carl’s home, and haven’t even been at my own place for more than the time it took me to bring the mail in and trip in the dark over some clothes and bellydance gear I had strewn helpfully over the floor. Carl’s house has the wireless internet access, you see.
Anyway, it’s been a pretty busy week by my standards. Monday after work I went to personal training with Ross and that, in a shocking turn of events, kicked my ass. Tuesday I went to a new bellydance class. It’s a beginning class, and I’ve been dancing about once a week for the past three years, so I’m not so much a beginner anymore, although I don’t think I’ve reached the coveted intermediate level. I wish bellydancers had colored coin scarves like karate people, that would be totally cool. You could work up from white to yellow to whatever comes next. Or maybe it would be rows of coins on the the belts themselves, like when you begin you’d have only three rows, and then you graduate to five and then seven and so on. I think I’m about a five rows of coins person. Anyway, it was a beginning class so I knew how to to everything, but it was pretty instructive to see that that class kicked my ass too because it’s still pretty hard to get the basics just right. I was pleased to see that the muscles in my hips that I use for a taqsim, or hip figure eight, hurt in a totally different way than the ones I use for the similar looking maya, which is a backwards hip figure eight.
Well, all this exercise made me really sore and so I took Wednesday night off from my regular bellydance class. It’s a good thing too, because My Friend Mark is back from England after a four month visit there. He was working on reproduction and restoration of antique furniture and he had all these pictures of planes and of finials that he brought with him. He also, more to the point, brought with him some amazing homemade sourdough bread. I love people who make me food and then don’t even make me go to the trouble of leaving the house to get it. Mark also brought me a beautiful scarf he got in some market in Paris. Mark is one of my favorite visitors ever.
Thursday I had only one client at clinic, and so afterwards I went out to a very nice dinner with Carl and Carl’s “boss” Marty. I put boss in quotes because the company for which Carl works only has three employees, the other two of which live in DC. However, Marty did hire Carl so technically he’s his boss, and he came to visit for a couple of days. He liked the hotel I recommended and so offered to take us out to dinner. I had gnocchi and squash and spinach and crab cake and mascarpone-and-chevre cheesecake and I don’t care how fat I am or get, that was some seriously great food and it was made only better by the fact that Marty is such an interesting person to talk to. He’s about seven years older than Carl and I and so he’s farther along in his life to be a good bellwether but young enough to be hip and fun to talk to. Yummy dinner and a good conversation pretty much spell my dream evening, so that was really good.
Uh, let’s see. I just broke down my after school activities for you there, didn’t I. No shame. In other fascinating and intrinsically important news, I gave blood today. Even though at first, I didn’t think I was going to be able to. It turns out that you’re not supposed to exchange sex for money or drugs.
Ha! Ha ha!
See, this happened last time I tried to work that little joke into conversation. Last time I tried to give blood…which I do fairly frequently because it’s right at my work and because I have a sort of rare blood type, although not the really cool kind that everyone can take…I was a little anemic and they wouldn’t let me. They did let me have a cookie before they kicked me out though, which was nice. And then I went to a party that night and mentioned that it turns out you’re not supposed to exchange sex for money or drugs, if you want to give blood, but it didn’t come out right then either. It came out like “Yeah, I tried to give blood today, but I couldn’t because it turns out that you’re not supposed to give drugs for sex or blood. Wait. It turns out you’re not supposed to have sex or drink blood with drugs or money. No, wait. It turns out that when you give drugs, you’re not supposed to have any blood or sex or money or sex or bloodsugarsexmagic or why is everyone staring at me?” And the silence grew deeper and deeper, and then people went back to their weird Swedish drink that Another Anna had made for her Swedish St. Lucia party. And such is my social life.
You’ll be happy to know that even though my blood was a little light I was able to give anyway, thereby exposing me to the ministrations of the extraodinarily lovely blood tech people. I’m not sure why all these folks, with stethoscopes around their necks and rubber squeeze toys in their lab coat pockets were so darned cute, but they were. At least the girl who stuck the needle in, and then the boy who took the needle out. I’m not sure I didn’t flirt a little there, literally with my blood draining out of me and feeling a little woozy. I may have tried to make my stupid joke, even: “It turns out that you’re not supposed to exchange drugs for blood or drugs or sex or money. Damn! Why can’t I get that right? Oh, no, go ahead, just put the needle back in. Happens all the time.”
And now I’m sitting here on the floor of Carl’s room where he is embroidering his name onto his new hankies. I am not making that up. He is. He ordered a whole bunch of of handkerchiefs online and is currently occupied by using the embroidery function on his sewing machine. He’s going for a white on white theme, and he’s pretty much freestyling it because he doesn’t have one of those programmable sewing machines. He’s much more hardcore than that, y’all. He just yelled a long string of profanities because his bobbin thread broke. This is how I’m spending my Friday night, at the end of my early late twenties. I think I’m going to take a bath and finish reading The Two Towers. Wasting my youth? You decide.