Saturday

I love it when I decide to take my time and not rush myself but manage to get where I'm going pretty much on time. It feels like I'm stretching time.

After my rush to do my laundry and catch the train, I arrived in DC to have some lunch at Union Station and take my pills. I relaxed my attention on the time and just focused on making a nice lunch of a ham and cheese croissant and potato leek soup from Au Bon Pain. Then I wandered down to the Metro and travelled to the Waterfront station, managing to get to heterodoxy's apartment just five minutes after one p.m., almost precisely on time.

I was greeted at the door by todc, who thrust a shopping bag containing his discarded Palm Vx at me. He's got a Crackberry now, so he doesn't need the Palm any more.

This was heterodoxy's last party in his apartment because he's moving out to join todc in Rockville, so this was an "apartment cooling" party. Doug and Tod had assembled furniture, books, DVDs and stuff that they didn't want or need and encouraged us to take anything that struck our fancy. I had nearly an hour to paw through the goods and make my selections.

gregmce arrived about two p.m., after Doug and I had started playing a game of Scrabble. After he showed up, other folks started arriving as well. We had a great party within half an hour. :-)

Sunday

John T. picked me up Sunday morning and we returned to his house. Everything looked much roomier without the Christmas trees in the living room, parlor and dining room! We had a nice time looking at his collection of digital photographs from Christmas and bowling. I occasionally copied an image to my USB flash drive.

We had a nice lunch, which included turnip greens. I haven't had turnip greens in a long while, and they were delicious! One of my favorite memories of family gatherings is having a cup beside my plate for the broth from the turnip greens (which we called "pot liquor") to dip cornbread into. The lunch also included a tasty pork loin and potatoes au gratin, and there were holiday chocolates scattered around for a little sweet indulgence.

At bowling, my team competed with Sharon's team, four lesbians whose team name is the Lickedy Splits. We all had a great time, although we may need to bring a sedative for Michael N. He's just so excitable!

Sharon got three turkeys, which netted her a lap dance from Louie and from me. I think that my effort was better than his. ;-)

After bowling, John drove me back to Baltimore for my HIV support group meeting, which went well. There's a core group who have already become friends, so we were getting caught up on holiday happenings when a new guy joined us and we all discussed HIV issues with him. There will be a nutritionist from the Chase-Brexton clinic speaking at the next meeting on January 23.

I had been exchanging voice mails with Bob R. to arrange to have dinner with him and his boyfriend, Ted. Bob was in town for the country western dancing at the Hippo. I waited in the outside bar for them to appear, unwilling to pay $4 just to go in and fetch them. Luckily, I spotted two men from my CBE group in May 2004, Mark and Jim. They knew Ted, so they agreed to seek him out for me.

Having made our rendezvous, Bob, Ted and I adjourned to the City Cafe for a nice dinner. Bob looked very happy, giggling with Ted while they were ordering. We talked a little bit about the Maryland heart circle, which I won't be attending for the foreseeable future because I'm starting a C2 square dance class on January 19 which will block out my Wednesday evenings.

I did work on my dishes after I got home, but not before I had a nice video chat with John B. in New York. I didn't finish the dishes, but I did fill up the dish drainer. I'll see about putting those away tonight and washing another group. I'm dancing tonight, so that may not happen.