Pride Festival

Jeff M. drove up from Arlington and we wandered through the Baltimore Pride festival together. Jeff is a friend of Brian J. and Kent F., the callers-in-training for the Chesapeake Squares. The Chesapeake Squares had arranged for a couple of demonstrations at the pavilion that Brian and Kent were calling for, and Jeff wanted to see them perform.

We also ran into lots of my friends and acquaintances. Jeff was impressed at their number. It's a very interesting feeling to see somebody regard me as popular, because I still don't really feel it, although I do know a lot of people. What really surprises me is the realization of how many folks I know in DC. I've started running into acquaintances on the street or at events in the District, and it's always a thrill.

We bumped into Russell, who was also impressed at seeing me with a second hot man in two days. :-)

Jeff and I left the festival about 4:30 p.m. and retired to my apartment, where we watched "Girls Will Be Girls" on DVD. GWBG is the story of three actresses living in the same house in Los Angeles. One perky ingenue who's new in town, one old bitter has-been, and one long-suffering masochist. Like Die, Mommie, Die, the female leads are all played by men, which was interesting.

The movie was a little disturbing at times, because you're amused at the camp of these three characters with their bitter one-liners, but then something dark happens and it just throws off the mood. The best part was the special feature that showed the guys going into makeup.

After the movie, we fooled around, showered and had dinner at the Mt. Vernon Stable. Jeff is an outdoorsman, and I hope I can do some more stuff with him. He's planning a canoe trip in July and he suggested that we might go backpacking in the fall, which would be really cool. I've never gone backpacking, where you trek into the wilderness with nothing but what you can carry on your back. I've never done that before.

Monday

Monday was a pretty good day. I deposited my paycheck, which brought my bank balance above $2,000. This was a surprise, because I've been relaxing my fiscal discipline a little bit. I've been eating out a lot more because I haven't cleaned up my kitchen, but the damage was really quite minimal.

I also got a lot of work done. I'm still working mostly on one project, and that client has contracted another person to redesign the site. The redesign is complete and now we have to implement it, so I spent the day starting that project. We were expecting it to be easier than this; the designer just used some drawing program to indicate what things should look like instead of giving us working html, so now we have to build his concept for him. It's all billable, though, so that's good.

I did manage to clean up the apartment Sunday in time for Jeff's visit, so that's taken care of, and I also started whittling away at the dishes in the kitchen. In fact, I managed to prepare a nice dinner for Russell and myself.

I had just completed my shopping at the neighborhood grocery store when he called to ask what I was doing for the evening, so I invited him to dinner but I warned him that I was going to be frying up some liver and onions. He doesn't really like liver, but he decided to come on down. I also made some rice to go with it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. He wasn't that thrilled, so I doubt he'll be coming down for liver again.

The best part was that I had all of the fixings on hand except the liver, which only cost sixty-nine cents. It's nice to throw together a meal for two for under a buck, and I love liver. I need to fry up some chicken livers sometime like my mom did when I was a child. :-)

At my request, Russell brought the Incredibles on DVD and we watched that as we ate. Such a fun movie!

So, Monday was a pretty good day.