service engine soon

I’ve recovered, somewhat, from the stress of this weekend. My “service engine soon” light came on in my car, and I freaked out about that on Friday, but it turns out I didn’t put the gas cap on tight enough when I got gas, so when I got a new tank last night and fired up the car this morning, it was no longer a problem.
I went to the Pitch-in Friday night at Deb B.’s. It was pretty fun; we played Cranium. I spend all day Saturday doing laundry at my mom’s; hopefully that will “tide” me over until I can get in the new place. Yesterday I took pictures of some big stone mermaids my friend Lori told me about; they’re at her uncle’s business on the southside. I also took photos of my new rental house and wandered around in WalMart looking at gardening supplies and outdoor furniture.

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Idgie keeps attacking Texas

Idgie keeps attacking Texas. I have magnets of all the States I’ve been to on my refrigerator (reproducing the map of the U.S., of course) and the cat keeps attacking and stealing Texas (not because it’s the lowest; she can reach them all.) She never goes after Oklahoma, or Arkansas. Just Texas. I think it’s a Bush protest.

We got the Diversity Library moved yesterday to it’s new location at Central Christian Church. It’s going to be a neat place.

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weekend update 2001-01-30

1) Went to see Barbara Higbie & Suzanne Westenhoeffer in concert Friday night. Barbara was great and I talked to her mom afterwards. After the concert, I went to Utopia [2019-04-16: former lesbian bar in Indianapolis] and hung out with my friend Jennie.

2) Went with my brother and sister-in-law to an antique mall on Saturday and bought a fez, then met my other brothers and nieces at the Children’s Museum, where I realized there are tons of big things there that I need to photograph, then visited my mom until late and my nieces & brother & sisters-in-law made shrinky dinks and pretty much exhausted the dink-supply.

3) On Sunday, I went to my friend Karl’s to watch the superbowl with a bunch of my friends/co-workers, got drunk, stayed late and crawled to work the next morning hung. Fun.

Also found out this weekend that my landlady is asking me to sign a lease and she’s going to raise my rent by $50. Since I’m already paying more than I’d like for this apartment, I’m going to have to move.

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blackbird

I got home Friday night and found a blackbird in my apartment flying around, scaring the crap out of the cat. I got him to fly out the window, but not before he knocked over everything on ever counter and shelf out of arms reach.
My party was great. Lots of people came, we made Shrinky Dinks… it was cool. That was a pretty big hit as a party theme. People had fun making them to patterns that you wouldn’t as a kid; Jen made a shrinky dink Eleanor Roosevelt. Todd drew all his own freehand, which was very cool. Then I spend Sunday in bed with a cold.

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Tomorrow Night is my party!

Tomorrow Night is my party! Yeah! I invited so many people they’ll never fit in my apartment! Yeah!

Tomorrow Night is also: Twelfth Night, AKA The Feast of the Epiphany, AKA the Twelfth Day of Christmas. So named because this the the night when the Three Wise Guys arrived at Bethlehem to view the Baby Jesus, which was an “Epiphany” to them.

It is also the first official day of Mardi Gras, which continues until Fat Tuesday, February 27. So a month and a half to party down before Lent!

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Jesus is the reason for the season

There were no riots over the fact that the wrong man is President of the United States, but in Portland, they had a riot because people wanted to see fireworks on New Year’s Eve. I think the people in Portland are a bit dim.

Also, it wasn’t a holy-roller that put the “Jesus is the reason for the season” plastic disk thingy under my windshield and almost killed me. It was my friend Dan. He thought it was funny that I was almost killed. Needless to say, revenge is in order. If I have time.

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Devil Figurines

Work went okay; did the prototyping for the store and finished up the design changes on flat files.
Went looking for devil figurines today at lunch and after work; didn’t find any. I did go into a 80% off booksale in Castleton, ran into M., and ended up buying 3 books that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
Came home, watched a Friends episode I missed, a Charmed episode I missed, and updated the gayindy.org calendar. Started reading one of the books I bought – Ms. Behavior’s Guide to Gay and Lesbian Etiquette.
Boring day.

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Weekend Update 2000-07-05

Friday – Tuesday were the long Independence Day weekend. It was pretty boring because I forgot to make plans ahead of time, and of course everyone had something to do but me. I read most of the time.
Friday I went to the Fashion mall and bought $52 worth of Aveda shampoo/conditioner/body wash, etc. A lot to spend, but it’s huge bottles and It all smells the same and is better quality stuff. Then I went to see Up At The Villa in Castleton. Not a bad little movie, but pretty slow paced. I guess it’s from a Somerset Maugham novel.
Saturday I went to Future Shock and bought two pairs of shoes; these wicked cool black leather pair with flames on them and a pair of Old Skool Vans. I wore the flame ones to Dan and Doug’s and they didn’t know what to think, obviously, so I guess they’re pretty over the top. But they’re cool and I like them and that’s all that counts. There were a bunch more pairs of shoes I want there, too, so I’ll be going back.
Sunday I went to The Abbey and had a nice Pesto chicken sandwich and iced coffee and hung out and wrote some quite extensive oulines/character studies on the regency novel. I got a lot done, then went to Target and Borders, where I found that five of the Georgette Heyer novels have been reprinted, so I bought four of them, along with Timelines in History, so I can figure out what books/events my characters would have been interested in.
I finished the prototyping I was working on on Friday, and then we reworked the basic site design for regeneration this week. It looks a lot cleaner and cooler, so that’s pretty cool.
Came home to find that Mary had a roofer come in to look at the leaky ceiling. I guess he resealed the roof but will be coming back in the next two weeks to redo the entire roof, which is a good thing, I guess, but I’ll be on pins and needles till then, since I’ll have to keep Idgie away from them, and since there will be strangers in my apt. I’ll have to walk around and put stuff away.

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On the nature of evil

The difficulty with evil nowadays, is that we no longer recognize it. This isn’t because evil has changed at all, but because we now have a warped understanding of what it is.
Evil isn’t, and never has been, a James Bond (or Austin Powers) villain who twirls his moustaches and threatens to cut our hero in half with a giant band saw while telling him the secret plans for world domination. Evil people in the movies and on television are proud that they’re evil, and they do what they do with malice aforethought, and they articulate their enjoyment at seeing other people in pain. In the movies, the hero never has trouble telling who the bad guy is, even if sometimes they have trouble convincing others.
Real evil people don’t want you to think they’re evil. They don’t want to think they’re evil themselves, so they come up with elaborate rationalizations for why they’re good, or why their bad behavior is someone else’s fault. Have you ever seen a criminal face his victim and apologize? They have a tendency to say things like, “I’m sorry this happened to you” instead of “I’m sorry I did that to you.” They don’t own their mistakes. They might be apologizing, but it’s the apology of an innocent bystander rather than the perpetrator of the crime.
Evil people often do good things to cover up their evil behavior.
Like the Phillip Morris commercials that talk about how the company is donating money to battered women’s shelters and children’s causes when we all know they made their money from a product that kills people. Or the Nike “Mrs. Jones” commercials that talk about supporting women athletes when Nike is under fire for using child labor to make their products.

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