Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler!

Last weekend, we hosted a murder mystery party, using the boxed game Murder at Mardi Gras: A Big Mystery in the Big Easy by Dinner Games.

The weather was a little iffy that evening, so four of our guests didn't make it, but two of them were scheduled to play "optional" characters and we just covered for the other two.

As the host of the party, I didn't think I ought to play a real role, so I wore Shrike's cop costume from Halloween 05, and played Officer Marie Bon Chance, who was investigating the murder. Shrike played Bourbon DuPre, the illegitimate nephew of the murder victim, and a French Quarter jazz musician.

We decided against a sit-down dinner, but I cooked up some (more-or-less) traditional New Orleans fair for the buffet, including a punchbowl full of hurricanes, muffaletta sandwiches and a king cake for dessert.

I cheated a bit on the king cake, and did it "monkey bread" style, but I think it came out great.

The biggest challenge was finding the "baby" to put inside. Instead of ordering one online (as anyone who happened to be living above the Mason-Dixon line, and having any sense, would have done) I put it off til the last minute, then drove all over town looking for something acceptable.

I was getting pretty desperate, and begining to wonder how offensive it would be for Baby Jesus to be represented by a Bratz Doll, when we finally stumbled upon this:


If you can't read the packaging in the photo, let me explain. Ranger, the border collie-ish dog here, is one of several who run a day care. In this playset, Ranger is also operating an ice cream stand.

The dog. Is selling ice cream. To be-diapered babies. With pigtails.

Well, of course.

So, I snipped off the pigtails, hid the baby in the king cake, and put the rest of the playset in the toybox for our six-year-old niece.

Sidebar:
Our niece and nephew spent the night on Friday. Saturday morning, she found the set and saw that the baby was missing. Aunt Shrike told her that I'd put it in a cake.

The first I heard of this was when she came into the bedroom and woke me up to say "Aunt Whozat, Aunt Shrike told me to ask you if you ate the plastic baby from my toy."

If anyone is interested (Bueller?) I'll be happy to post the recipes that I used for the cake, as well as the muffalettas and hurricanes."Party+Time" Photos"Whozat+In+The+Kitchen"

The Thinks I've Thunk: #1

From time to time, odd little things come to my mind, which I am (for better or worse) compelled to share.

This is one such thing. I fear suspect there may be more:

Food coloring bottles have always reminded me of tiny little men - gnomes, perhaps - wearing pointy, color-coded hats.

Is that wierd?Photos "Thinks+Ive+Thunk"

And, So, It Begins

Welcome to the newest spot in the blogiverse.

At least for the next 0.001 seconds. . . .

Here's a quick introduction:

Who am I?
I'm a 38 year old native Texan who met the love of my life (Shrike) on the internet 9 years ago and followed her north to a very red area of a fairly blue state. I'm very involved in my local Democratic Party (such as it is) and worked for the state Party in the 06 cycle. I'm currently unemployed, but as soon as I have a job and health insurance, we plan to start trying to get me pregnant.

What will I be writing about?
Everything. And nothing. And a few things in between.

My favorite blogs to read are those that are just a glimpse into someone's everyday life. That's what I suspect this will be with, perhaps, the occasional political rant.

As I mentioned above, we're hoping to start trying to get me pregnant soon (short version, for those wondering - artificial insemination using an anonymous donor; longer version to come, no doubt) and, when the time comes, I plan to blog about that and then, hopefully, continue to blog about our child and our family.

Why am I blogging?
I'm quite an extrovert; I tend to think out loud, and tend to assume that everyone is just dying to hear exactly what I'm thinking, doing, or obsessing about at the moment.

(My motto: If it's in my head, it must come out of my mouth!)

I suspect that's often not the case but surely there's someone out there in all of the internets who might be interested.

Also, being a bum currently between assignments, I've got a lot of time on my hands. I've been spending a good deal of said time reading blogs, and I realized that I'm starting to narrate my life in my head, as though I were writing a blog post.

I took that as an indication that I should either start my own blog, or seek professional help.

So. There it is, and here I am.

I still have some work to do around here on the template, settings, etc, but I'll be back soon with more ramblings.

Before the Blog: Doggy News, and More

A couple of weeks ago, we had Shrike's family over for Easter. This was the first time some of them had seen our new house, and the first time any of them had been here for more than a quick tour. It was also the first time we've hosted a family shindig at all.

We were supposed to be hunting Easter Eggs in the backyard, but it rained all day, so we ended up hiding them in the house for the kids. Later, they (with some help from Shrike's mom) hid them for the grown-ups.

Last weekend, PerfectPuppy played hooky from her doggy class and we took her to watch a dog agility trial in Frederick, MD, about an hour away. She was very well-behaved and it all looked like a lot of fun, so we're thinking of signing her up for a puppy agility class that starts next month, if it fits our schedules.

The next day she was scheduled to be spayed but, in what can only be described as an incredible act of uterine self-preservation, she went into heat that day. Although, in retrospect, she was probably already starting to bleed a bit when we were at the trial, luckily it takes a few days before things really get going, so she didn't attract any unwanted attention while we were there.

Monday morning, when we figured out that she really was in heat, we tried repeatedly to call the vets office, but couldn't get through to them. So, we headed on over there, and when we arrived, I went into check on whether it would be a problem. As it turns out, they won't spay them when they're in heat, because the uterus is full of blood, increasing the risk of bleeding during the surgery.

That very day, we got a letter from the shelter that we adopted her from, fussing at us because we haven't sent them proof that she's been spayed. That figures.

On the work front, we're both still at the same jobs, but my situation has changed a bit. At the beginning of 2003, my boss sold the company to a larger company, but thing stayed pretty much the same, other than who was signing the checks.

However, in February of this year, all of our operations were moved over to the headquarters of the larger company. It hasn't been too bad, but has been something of an adjustment.

The bigger change, however, will be coming in a couple of weeks, because my boss is leaving the company; April 30 will be his last day. I will continue to handle all of the website and database design and development, and will also take over all of the development-related client interactions and all of the development-related server stuff that he does now, too. Basically, other than billing, everything from "Hey, I want a website," to launch will be my job. Should be interesting.

Before the Blog: Write In Whozat!

In March, we saw Melissa Etheridge in concert at a club in Washington, DC. Our fan club tickets got us early entry, so we - once again - ended up within feet of the stage. This stage was much lower than usual - about waist height - so we were even closer to her than before. The concert was incredible, as usual.

She was much more political than we've ever seen her be in concert - she talked about her recent marriage, and then went into a whole bit about, "Or, in some newspapers, my 'marriage.'" (with big, exaggerated, "finger quotes")

She played "Silent Legacy," "Scarecrow" and "Tuesday Morning" back to back, in what I refer to as the "pissed off queer portion of the show," and ended the concert with "Giant."

Since the suspension of Howard Dean's presidential campaign, I have stayed involved with his new political group, Democracy for America and the local SomeStates for Democracy group. SomeStates for Democracy has decided to work on a local level, helping progressive candidates in area races and getting involved in county party committees.

To that end, I attended the April meeting of our county Democratic committee, where she learned that only three delegate candidates (all pledged to Kerry) had made it onto the primary ballot, for our district's four available seats. The county chair asked me to run a write-in campaign for the fourth seat, and it didn't take much convincing to get me to agree.

Coming in fourth place against three others doesn't sound very difficult, but as a write-in candidate, I have to get at least 250 votes. However, this time, I've got help from the county chair and some committee members and have asked pretty much everyone I know to vote for me and to tell all their friends.

Getting those votes isn't necessarily a guarantee that I'll be a delegate, because I still have to be approved by the campaign (probably Kerry, but there's a possibility that Dean, or maybe Edwards, could get 15% in our district and earn a delegate) at the state convention in July.

However, going to the effort to run the write-in campaign will definitely make an impression, so I have a good chance of being approved.

Before the Blog: Petitioning

In January, I got a call from the political coordinator for the BlueState Gay and Lesbian Alliance, asking me to run for delegate to the Democratic National Convention. BS-GALA was trying to get at least one out LGBT delegate candidate slated for each presidential candidate in each congressional district.

After thinking about it a bit, and talking it over with Shrike, I decided to go for it. Based on a brief resume and bio, along with an endorsement from BS-GALA, I was slated by the Howard Dean campaign and approved as a delegate candidate.

At that point, to get onto the ballot, a candidate has about 3 weeks in which to gather 250 signatures from registered Democrats within the our Congressional District.

This part turned out to be a lot harder than it sounded. There was an ice storm in our area the first week, making it impossible to go door-to-door. In the second and third weeks, I knocked on lots of doors (armed with lists of registered Democrats), visited three gay bars, stood in front of grocery stores, attended the county Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, crashed a LGBT club meeting at an area university and ended up with about 150 signatures.

Obviously I was pretty disappointed, and it was little consolation that both the political director and the folks from the Dean campaign told me that I had worked really hard, gone "beyond the call of duty," etc.

Before the Blog: Winter Wrap-Up

Shopping, decorating, snow, yada, yada, yada. We had a Christmas party with about 8 of our friends.

We celebrated Christmas with Shrike's family here and then flew to Texas on New Year's Eve to do it all over again with my family. We had big plans to go out to the local gay bar for New Year's Eve, but never quite made it.

We ended up ringing in 2004 with Conan O'Brien and my parents.

We are now officially old.

Before the Blog: Fall Wrap-Up

In September, we went on another Susquehanna Club women's camping trip; this time to TinyTownNamedAfterAGuy.

On October 11, we hosted a National Coming Out Day House Party fund raiser in conjunction with Out for Dean. The highlight of the party was a conference call with Gov. Dean.

The two parties that had raised the most money and had the most guests started the questioning, and then they gave the other parties a chance to play "fastest fingers" for the rest of the questions.

Earlier in the party, we'd discussed what we might want to ask, and our friend J's 15 year-old daughter (same one who helped paint our house) suggested asking Gov. Dean why first-time voters should vote for him. When it came time, we were shocked to hear the operator call on us for the first question!

I introduced J's daughter and she asked Gov. Dean her question. I'm not sure any of us remembered a word he said though, we were so excited!

We didn't do anything real exciting for Halloween, but we carved some cool pumpkins.

In November, we got PerfectPuppy.

Before the Blog: Summer Wrap-Up

In addition to all the shopping, painting and packing, we found time to do a few other things over the summer.

We went on two camping trips with the LGBT camping club; WoodsInStateWithMuchConcrete in May (co-ed) and DifferentWoodsInNeighboringState in June (women only).

At the end of May, we went down to Texas for my nephew's high school graduation.

In July, I went back to Texas to volunteer for a week at the summer camp that I used to go to. This week was a special all-girls session planned and run by camp alumni, and I was on the planning committee.

I also organized a SomeStates for Dean information booth for the CapitalOfBlueState PrideFest at the end of July.

We saw Melissa Etheridge in concert at a music festival in TownWithBibleName and managed, again, to end up close to the stage. There was too much walking, way too long a wait for the bus back to the parking lot and it was hot as hell, but the concert itself was great.

Before the Blog: Our New Home

We Bought A House!

In April, we decided that we were close enough to being ready that we should stop by a local Real Estate company that was holding free "How to Buy a Home" seminars each week and get more information. Wow, what a great marketing ploy. The seminar turned out to be the two of us and a Realtor, and within a week, we were looking at actual houses.

After visiting fourteen houses, ranging from "The Wacky Shack" where we had to bite our tongues not to laugh as the owner showed us the "improvements" he'd made, to the "one that got away," with the gorgeous ceramic tile and tub for two (nevermind that it didn't fit any of our other criteria), on Memorial weekend, we visited number fifteen and fell in love.

Given what we'd already learned about how quickly houses were going in our area, we didn't want to wait long to make an offer. We went out to dinner to discuss it, although we'd really already made the decision. We called our Realtor from the restaurant, met her at her office and wrote up the offer that night.

The next day, we were at the grocery store, buying food to take to a party that night, when my cell phone rang. It was our Realtor, calling to ask if we'd be okay with closing at the end of June and renting the house back to the owner for a few weeks, because her new house wouldn't be ready until August. We said that would be fine, and she accepted our offer.

We did close on June 30, and spent most of June and July shopping, packing and planning. With some help from my parents, we ordered new furniture for the living room, dining room and bedroom.

When the previous owner moved out at the first of August, Iimmediately went to work stripping wallpaper in the kitchen and master bath. Throughout most of August, Shrike spent her days bringing boxes over and unpacking what she could, before going to work in the evenings. When I got off work, I went straight to the house and worked on the walls for a few hours.

We both worked on the kitchen walls for the last week or so, when Shrike was working the day shift. We got both rooms stripped, cleaned, spackled, sanded, taped and primed just in time for some friends to come help us paint on the Sunday before Labor Day.

I had actually painted the bathroom the night before, so that was all taken care of. We painted the kitchen, while our friends J and L, along with J's 15 year-old daughter a-different-J, painted the bedroom.

On Labor Day day, after a few tests and a few additional trips to the hardware store, I finally worked out a faux technique I liked and did that below the chair rail in the kitchen and on one entire in the living room, while Shrike painted above the kitchen cabinets and we both worked on various final touches.

On Tuesday, we went to BeachTownInOtherState with Shrike's family. We had a great time and would've loved to have stayed longer, but had to come back Wednesday, because the new furniture was delivered on Thursday.

After a weekend to finish packing and other final preparations, we actually moved in the next Monday. Now, we just have to finish unpacking!