RuPaul, I love you

I don't know actually if it was RuPaul who was the brains behind "RuPaul's Drag Race" but holy crap is that the best hour of TV every week or what! The Texan and I came across it by accident. We'd been out at happy hour and decided to grab a nightcap at Nellie's, a gay sports bar that always plays good music. Except for that night in question a few weeks ago, when it was blaring "RuPaul's Drag Race" on its bazillion TVs. We decided just to call it a night and as I was finishing up my drink, The Texan went outside to smoke a cigarette. Bored, I started watching the show. The Texan came back to find me staring at the screen, mouth agape in wonder. We have been hooked ever since. I even wrote Logo's marketing department to tell them how much I liked that show, and I NEVER do that.

So why is the show so awesome? It's a combination of "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway," where drag queens have to do tasks and then do a runway show based on a certain theme. Thus far, the themes have been "Gone with the Wind" (which involved a Civil War shoot with shirtless soldiers and a big cannon), burlesque show/pole dancing, country friend chicken, and .... some sort of game show? Plus, the two lowest queens at the end of the show are told that they must "lip synch for your life," which usually spurs someone to do the splits, rip off their clothes, lose a wig during a particularly vigorous kick, etc. Finally, the loser is told to "sashay away," while the other one is reassured, "Chantez, you stay."

PLUS. Monday, while watching the opening of show, I finally clicked that one of the contestants was from Falls Church, the end of the Orange metro line. Lo and behold: Tatiana was there at Nellie's to promote the show. !!! She looks good on the show, but in real life is absolutely stunning. When they offered people the chance to take their picture with her, I raced up with my phone in hand. I tried to get The Texan to do it with me, because how awesome of a Christmas card would that have been, but he refused. My friend 23 came up with me instead. They had a drag queen emcee (of course) running a trivia contest during the commercial breaks. Man, I got schooled on my "RuPaul" knowledge, and I thought I would clean up the joint. Finally, at the end of the evening, Tatiana performed for the crowd, and did a fantastic job.

The only bummer is that for whatever reason, Logo's not showing it next week, and I'll have to wait two weeks to get my next fix. TOTALLY WORTH IT though.

Praying for rain

Only because I'm hoping that it will melt some of the snow. We've got these lovely ice dams forming over the back of our house, and every time I shut the back door I cringe in anticipation that this will be the time that they come crashing down. Also because our little street has not been plowed yet and I'm thinking it never will be (it's pretty narrow).

We did manage to leave the house on Saturday. You will notice that I'm posting on Monday. This is not because I was so busy yesterday that I could not find the time to post; it's because I was so grievously hungover that I did not get out of bed until 5pm, at which point I toddled downstairs to the TV so I could watch "Annie." "Dirty Jobs" had far too many fast cuts for my eyes to take, plus I love that movie. I had taped it off a channel called "GMC" that I later found out stood for "Gospel Music Channel." FYI, it has a preponderance of commercials for As Seen On TV products and motivational speakers. I also timed it: 8 minutes of movie were followed by 5 minutes of commercials. Thank god for fast forward (and people wonder why no one wants to watch live TV any more). Anyways, you would think that I would know better than to accept a vibrantly colored drink made at a house party with a silly name. I actually do, and yet I still kept on drinking them (damn you, Pretty in Pink!). Despite all that, it was nice to socialize again.

Our poor dog has been so bored since this all happened. He keeps on wanting to go out and then, when confronted with icy steps, wants to come right back in. Today the Texan had an appointment downtown, so Che and I walked with him to Georgia Ave. When I got back, I let Che off the leash on our little block with the intention of bringing him immediately back inside. Instead, he lay his ears back and started tearing up and down the street in sheer joy of being able to run. So I let him run up and down the sidewalk until he wore himself out. Poor puppy.

Washington-on-the-Bering Sea

Somehow, without us noticing, DC got transplanted quite a bit north. We "only" got 11 inches more of snow yesterday, giving us three feet of snow in less than a week. It got up to 40 today and was sunny, which helped things thaw out. A lot of houses around here developed very big (~five-ten feet long) icicles, which makes me very nervous. We had a few lovely ones hanging over our back door, poised for an unsuspecting person (or dog), but they broke off in the morning sun and instead took out half of the security light. Eh, we always hated that thing - it was motion-sensitive, and you couldn't turn it on or off, so you would have to constantly wave your arms above your head when you were outside and needed some light - so silver lining etc.

Tonight I think cabin fever has set in enough that we are finally going to try the one of two (2) restaurants within easy walking distance of our place. I'm excited to be wearing non-elastic waistbanded pants. Here's hoping all of our neighbors hopped to it and shoveled their sidwalks! (On Tuesday, I fell right after having a neighbor lecture me UNASKED about how I was walking incorrectly in the slush. When I got an "I told you so" I was ready to pop him one if he didn't shut the hell up. I don't handle snowy weather well, did I mention that?)

And snow it begins

I cannot stop making these horrible snow puns. I guess that's my way of dealing with the fact that O THE HUMANITY it started snowing about an hour or so ago. Again.

The Texan and I took Che out for a walk this morning to get some more important necessities (vodka) and what should have been a happy 20 minute stroll turned into a 90 minute death march. I capped it off with slipping and falling on my right knee, just to ensure that I had scabs to match those created when I fell on my left knee on Friday. There is a reason why I chose not to live in a snowy climate, goddammit! Ah well. Time for more TV and cocktails.

Snowmaggeddon 2010

Hey there - at long last, I am back. I had forgotten the log-in for this blog (I KNOW) and then Blogger said sure, we'll send your password to you at your gmail account, for which I had also forgotten the password (I KNOW. what can I say, this fall was busy) and it was easier to let it go than jump through all the hoops I'd have to in order to figure it out. But I decided to take a break from obsessively monitoring the weather service's predictions for later this week and give logging into this a whirl and voila! I'm in.

Part of the reason why I even tried to log in is that I'm running out of snow-day activities. I worked from home today because the federal government was closed and I figured that they're a good arbiter of whether it's a smart idea to go in. Plus where we live now is a mile from the nearest metro, the buses are only running sporadically, and the idea of hiking through two feet of snow just to sit in my office to do more or less what I could do at home was not an appealing one.

So I've been working, but I've also been home for three days straight. The Texan and I have been keeping busy, but if we get another 18 inches tomorrow on top of the 26 we got over the weekend (OH DEAR GOD WHEN WILL IT STOP), this might change. I already am cursing my shitty Netflix choices. I have a bad habit of putting stuff on Netflix I think I *should* want to watch, as opposed to things I actually *do* want to watch.

There has been some excitement though. I took a picture of our dog in the snow and sent it in to the WashPost's website, since they've been collecting pictures of people's Snowmaggeddon experiences. I figured it was one of roughly 2000 identical shots of dogs in the snow and it would just disappear into cyberspace. So imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and checked the website to see the latest in weather updates only to find our dog on the home page. HA, suck it other dog owners of the DC area, outside validation that my dog IS cuter than your dog! I perhaps have become a little too focused on this. We took a screenshot of it for posterity and I may have sent that around to my office under the pretense of explaining why I was working from home today.

The other excitement around here is one that I could do without. Keep in mind that we live in an old rowhouse - it's maybe 80 years old - and we live in an urban environment. So when we heard rustling in the walls when we first moved in, we figured, ew, probably mice, but what are you going to do? Keep away from our food - which we've hermetically sealed up - and out of my sight and we're golden. However, the balance has changed.

A week or so ago, I was working from home - hey, it was a Friday, I didn't feel like trudging into the office - when the cat, Scratchel, went to sit under my desk and intertwine himself around my legs. Not unusual. If I had a nickel for every time I accidentally kicked that cat, I'd be a, um, thousandaire. What was slightly unusual was that he started batting something around. I looked down to see SWEET JESUS A MOUSE. AND ONE THAT IS NOT ENTIRELY DEAD. I fled the room and insisted that The Texan make it go away. So he did, we let our landlord know about it, and figured that it was a one-time deal. We had an exterminator come out just to cover our bases.

Except that yesterday Scratchel caught not one, not two, but THREE mice. Granted, one of them was stuck on a sticky pad and basically served up to the cat on a platter, but still. Ugh. I think I may have just ensured that no one comes to dinner parties at our house (really, we are clean!). What really amazes me is that the cat is 18.5 years old and has never caught anything in his life. What other skills has he been holding out on us?