…is more nights hanging out in the basement listening to Québécois radio and playing with my databases.
My mortgage guy apparently works very late on Saturdays, which is good since we take care of what we needed to do earlier thanks to yet another “Mom crisis.” I sometimes fantasize about what having just one stress-free weekend a month might be like. I vaguely remember when weekends used to help relieve stress rather than add to it.
Some random links for tonight:
- Detroit: A City on the move
- The expressways of Toronto: Built and unbuilt
- What grocery stores used to look like in Toronto (in honor of the project I was working on this afternoon before the day went horribly wrong)
- 10:15 Saturday night
Via Romleys, the Mega Longs is closing.
This was one of my favorite spots in Oakland (which observant readers know yer humble host strongly prefers to San Francisco). By the time my friends and I discovered it as part of our Friday night dinner in the East Bay diversions, it had ceased to be a Payless and was a Longs Drugs. The store was massive–more a discount department store than a drug store–and it provided lots of Friday night entertainment with its odd assortment of merchandise and inexplicably large garden center, toy department, and cheap food zone. Sometimes we’d drive over and eat at the Emil Villa’s barbecue joint in the parking lot and once in a while we’d take BART to Rockridge and walk over.
Despite an early 1990s remodel, it still felt like the late 1960s inside. I liked that. I always managed to get by for a visit on subsequent trips to the Bay Area but I knew its days were numbered when CVS took over. Even the building will be gone in a few months. Pity.
Random thoughts for the last Friday in January:
- It’s kind if a drag that it’s never really seemed like winter here this year, but I must admit that that the $107 gas bill I just received (half of last January’s) went a long way toward easing my pain.
- I may make a quick trip to Atlanta the weekend of 10 February to see this movie, in case anyone there wants to tag along. I’ve been obsessed with the Pruitt-Igoe saga ever since I first read about it in an urban sociology textbook almost thirty years ago. It was one of those pivotal reads that started me down the path toward my fascination with urban history (and urban decay).
- Thing I love this month: free copies of the dead tree edition of the New York Times every day at work. It’s apparently part of some “newspapers in education” program or something. I hope it lasts.
- Thing I hate this weekend: the fact that I’ll be spending most of it working. But I’m on deadline for a grant application to fund the first phase of my dream project, so work I shall…
- I bought Bugles tonight and I’m not afraid to use them.
Alas…
…ask yourself at 10:00 on a Sunday night, “What the hell happened to my weekend?”
Me too. But at least I do feel a slight sense of accomplishment. It’s gonna be a long week, though.
Thanks to some help from a higher-up, I had rather a major coup today with respect to my grant project, albeit not something I can talk about here at the moment. It’s a good thing and will give my application (and the project, if funded) terrific credibility, but the timing was…ummm..a might inconvenient, coming a little more than a week before the application is due.
My next ten days or so just got a lot more complicated. It was already pretty nuts to begin with and I’m already pretty thoroughly worn out. It’s going to get worse.
Better try to sleep some now.
Since I’m unlikely ever to move back to California nor to be married, yesterday’s ruling has no personal impact on me. But it may impact a lot of people I know. And it’s kind of cool that a federal court–albeit probably the most liberal federal court there is, in a rather narrow ruling–has now actually ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.
I’m mildly worried that the this path to the Supreme Court may be starting a bit early. That might lead to an premature and unfavorable ruling which would cause problems for years to come (sort of a Plessy v.Ferguson for the 21st Century). But I’ll go ahead and be excited anyway. The time will come soon. However, let’s also not lose sight of the fact that even the most basic nondescrimination legislation is still not in place in a lot of states–my own, for example.
More exciting news for a Wednesday night:
- Happy discovery: Coming off my AT&T family plan doesn’t necessarily mean losing my grandfathered unlimited data plan. Cool, eh?
- Grant application season craziness is almost over. Will they be crazy enough to give me a quarter of a million dollars? We’ll find out in June.
- Got approved to so a presentation at ALA in Anaheim this summer. Anyone wanna go to Disneyland?
- I continue to hate Bank of America. But that’s not news.
I guess I won’t be going to Clifton’s on this summer’s LA trip after all. I somehow missed the story about its having been sold. I’m glad the place is to be preserved (and as a cafeteria, yet) but I’m always suspicious of renovations, particularly in gentrifying areas. I love the decor but I also love the dowdiness and I hope it doesn’t get sanitized too much.
This brings up another preservation issue as well: The modern facade was actually in place for much more of Clifton’s existence than the original. Which is really the more “historic” version? But it’s too damned early for me to think about that.
Spending my Saturday night setting up my new phone. It’s sort of like watching paint dry. But I’m still excited.
A friend just texted me that apparently all the rock and roll drag queens of my misspent youth will be at the big queer bar in Greensboro tonight, including Atlanta’s (and formerly Greensboro’s) very own Lily White. For a brief second I considered going just to see some old friends. Then I contemplated the logistics of driving thirty miles each way (a drive I already make five days a week) in the cold (19F tonight) after being up and busy since 7AM (I was scrubbing the toilets by 8:30) and bed started seeming much more appealing. And after the last time I did so, I sort of promised myself I’d never walk into a North Carolina queer bar again, anyway.
The new phone is now functioning nicely and I am in fact going to bed. I really don’t intend to do much of anything when I wake up either. I finished most of my grant stuff on Friday and celebrated that night by taking myself out for lasagna at Cagney’s. Today was about errands and taking care of things. I will continue the celebration tomorrow by not working (for the first Sunday in three weeks), not thinking about family stuff, and maybe not even leaving the house. Siri and I may spend some time together, but that’s about it. I’m rather looking forward to it.