burlesque or bust

Memorial Day weekend. I worked on Friday night, all day Saturday, and the latter part of Sunday. I gave myself a few hours of freedom on Sunday to wander around downtown Frederick, taking photos, and buying a birthday gift for a friend and some cards. The weather was glorious and it was so amazing to be outdoors, instead of sitting hunched over my computer.

I never touch freelancing on holidays, so even though I had a ton of it to do, I still set it aside on Monday. It felt like such a decadent luxury! In lieu of work, I walked one of the trails at Monocacy National Battlefield and then spent a few hours reading on my balcony (again: luxury!), before settling down to watch a movie and some TV.

On Tuesday we had a brief shot of summer—mid-80s, humid—and so when I got home from work I did something I haven’t done since the 20th century: I turned on the air-conditioning. See, from January 2000 until December 2007 I lived in basement apartments where I had no control over my own heating and air-conditioning. I was completely at the mercy of the people upstairs. I really, really fucking hate the heat, so on hot days I’d spend my whole commute home chanting, “Please let the a/c be on when I get home…please let the a/c be on when I get home…,” and if I got home and it wasn’t on, and instead my apartment felt like the surface of the sun, I’d start to cry. I seriously hate the heat that much. So you can imagine what it was like to go home on Tuesday and have the freedom to touch one button and have my place cool down. It was like…like…witchcraft!

This weekend I’ll be bogged down with work, of course, but I may also borrow one of Kristen’s dogs and meet a coworker at the Walk n’ Wag event in Frederick on Saturday morning. At night I’m meeting Julie and Susan at DC’s hip, organic vegetarian restaurant, Vegetate, for a pre-birthday dinner. Then Susan and I will haul our overstuffed asses to the Palace of Wonders, where we’ll attend a bona fide burlesque show. Hot! I’m such an old fogey, I’m almost agog at the fact that the show only starts at 10pm (ohmigod that’s so late!), but it will be worth it, I think. It seems like silly, bawdy fun, and it’ll be nice to pull my ruminating head out of my morose ass for once and do something completely inane at night. But this is assuming I can even snag tickets; this particular burlesque revue has been known to sell out, and I’m having trouble snagging tickets in advance.

*knocks on wood*


song heard most recently before posting:
September Morn—Neil Diamond