An unofficial unemployment rite of passage has just happened: I woke up this morning and didn’t freak out that I had overslept and was going to be late for work. What’s more, I wasn’t entirely sure what day it is, because every day is Saturday, only with better prime time television options.
Work continues on my To Do list, with additional items added. Strangely, despite the organizational work, my office is more chaotic than it was when I started. I imagine that all of the sudden it’s going to go from pandemonium to amazingly organized in under 30 minutes, but at this point, it feels a lot like Fail. Ward and June are in Cancun for two weeks, so my primary job is Dog Sitter this week, which means that Esteban and I haven’t be sleeping in the same bed until sometime in the second part of February. Every day, I’ve been waking up at Ward and June’s pristine suburban ranch with its 20 foot ceilings and organized perfection, doing dog duties, then going back home to continue with my To Do list and placate Jincy, who does not much care for these long term absences, thank you very much. The bonus, however, is that I ended up hauling most of the (fucking) laundry over to Ward and June’s as well, taking advantage of the huge first floor laundry room. Not only is the dog less lonely, but I’ve really cracked down on the miasma of funky clothes. It’s so refreshing not to have to hunt for fresh yoga pants.
Oh yes, yoga pants. That’s my uniform these days. Yoga pants, a t-shirt and a track jacket or hoodie, plus tennis shoes. Forget Desperate Housewives, I’m all about the slovenly chic right now. I wore jeans to go shoot Mary Kaye’s roller derby team and it felt like I was going to die with all the weird fabric touching my skin. What’s this “waistband” thing of which you speak?
I’m going to LA this weekend, to attend the wedding reception for two fantastic guys who had had the unfortunate problem of having to rush their wedding ceremony just in case Proposition 8 passed and the citizenship of California decided that somehow the rights of their neighbors, families and friends needed to be lessened if they happened to be involved in anything other than man-woman pairings.
Soap box alert: I know that I’m a stinky hippy (in yoga pants) but seriously, I don’t care you who are, do you really want to say that the government gets to decide who you get to marry? Do you want to give them that power? And likewise, do you really want to say that they have the right to invalidate an existing legal marriage for whatever reason? Sure, right now, let’s say that you agree with the sentiment that people with matching genitalia shouldn’t be allowed to get married. But what if another group has a problem with your own marriage, maybe you have brown eyes and your spouse has blue eyes? Or maybe you vote Republican and your spouse is a Libertarian? Maybe you don’t like peas and your spouse does. You’ve already told the government that it gets to invalidate a marriage, so now what? Ok, I just played the Slippery Slope game (although really, it’s more logical than the traditional one thrown out from the Anti-Rights side, which goes like “Sure, you let two men get married today, what if someone wants to have fourteen wives? Or marry a six-year-old? Or marry their goat? Because gay marriage is exactly the same as polygamy, pedophilia and beastiality, doncha know) Let’s get real: Are you stopping them from having sex? No. Of course not. (If anything, they might indulge in extra sex, just because you’re adding to the cultural taboo.) Are you stopping them from having kids? Nope, again you’re not having any affect on that. So why do you honestly think that you should get the right to marry when someone else doesn’t? Please, please, please explain this to me, because I honestly don’t understand the logic. And do NOT throw the Bible at me, as we all know there’s LOTS of things in the Bible that we choose to ignore these days as well, so unless you’re ready to stop eating bacon, stop cutting your hair or shaving, and take multiple wives (Abraham, much?), I don’t want to hear it.
Ah, where was I? Oh yes, LA.
So, I’m going to be in LA this weekend, and it was supposed to be a short trip, but as it turns out, Esteban is going to be in Silicon Valley all week at various conferences and huh, it looks like I don’t exactly have to worry about wasting vacation days or anything, so for the low price of a one way ticket on Virgin Atlantic between LAX and SFO, I get to camp out for free in his hotel room and have lots of fun tooling around the Bay Area during the day and snuggling up to the Captain in the evenings. Win-win-win.
After that, however, is going to be a whirlwind week of preparation for the Green Bay Minicon. I’m SO excited about the Minicon this year, poppets. It is seriously going to be the BEST. ONE. EVER. Building upon the popularity of our annual trivia contest at previous Minicons, this year’s subtitle is “The Weetathlon” and it will involve more competition and prizes than you can shake a stick at. And the stick will be a spirit stick! And those are not spirit fingers, these are spirit fingers. Sorry, got carried away, but seriously, the Minicon is shaping up to be AMAZING.
Also, we did something new last year in that we had a charity raffle, with the proceeds going to a local food pantry. Considering that it was kind of an unexpected event and the attendees didn’t really know what was going to be in the raffle (lots of stuff, including photos from our photographer friends, software, a ton of beauty swag from my freelance ventures, some foodie gifts and some signed books from the authors in attendance) they rose to the challenge and together we raised an amazing $410 in cash for the charity. Not only will we be repeating that raffle this year (and the attendees have chosen to again donate to Paul’s Pantry) but people, I have seen some of the donations coming in and they are AMAZING. The bar has been raised, mon amis, and I expect the competition for these raffle items to be FIIIERCE. I already know that I’m doubling my own number of raffle tickets to win some of the items donated because damn. DAMN.
(If you are in the mood to be charitable and would like to donate something for this charity raffle, by the way, or if you would like to buy some raffle tickets by proxy, send me an email!)
The economy is in the shitter, but on the positive side, this is actually a very inexpensive area of the country for a quick mini-break, the registration for the sleigh ride event covers your food/transportation/alcoholic beverages and entertainment for half the weekend, and flights are at an all time low. I’m seeing fares from Dallas into GB or Appleton for as little as $144, which is just crazy talk. Plus, the hotels are bare bones cheap around here, and I know a few people are looking for roommates to cut costs.
If you’ve ever wanted to attend one of these events, this should be the year you give it a try. I know it seems scary to walk into a roomful of strangers who all seem to know each other, but remember: all of these people walked in as newbies before as well, and I promise you that we’re not scary. Considering the number of people who return to the Minicon year after year, I would like to think that we’re not snobby bitches and that a fun time is had by all. And not only would you get to hang out with a bunch of amazing new people, but you’d get to experience the truest amount of heartfelt Green Bay hospitality, from the amazing feast put on by my mother-in-law June to the VIP treatment by the proprietors of the Bad Bar. And if you need any more incentive, given my employment situation (and the amount of cash it costs me personally to put this event on), I can’t guarantee that there will be a Green Bay Minicon 2010, so that “well, maybe next year” excuse is more maybe than you know.
There goes my little commercial for the Minicon. And if you’ve got any questions, feel free to email me.
