That’s right, I made it back in one piece from Key West, and then promptly slept for 15 hours. I’ve got a tan (!) with big blotches of sunburn here and there where I completely failed in my sunscreen application, I’m considerably less tense than I was before I left (but talk to me after today’s packing session and we’ll see about that), and I feel pretty great. Many many thanks to the lovely Jocelyn, Jake and Anya for putting me up and cooking great food and burying me in the sand at the beach and making sails out of sarongs and sitting up on the porch with gallons of sangria and talking long into the night. Now all I need is for Chicago to be about 20 degrees warmer and I’ll be all set.

So what about Key West? Despite what pretty much everyone who’s been there told me, it was not what I expected. Sure, it’s a big resort town, and sure, there are tons of tourists hogging the sidewalk and buying up absurdly awful (and not in the good way) fart joke t-shirts, but just off the beaten track of Duval Street, there’s a real neighborhood. A good one. The architecture in Bahama Village (and the rest of Old Town) ranges from cape cod-style homes with wraparound porches to victorian gingerbreads to cottages that look for all the world as though they were transplanted directly from New Orleans. There’s a pirate costume megastore, too, but more on that when I get the pictures posted. And of course, there’s diving.

Diving.

The water conditions and visibility have apparently been uniformly awful for the past month or so around Key West, so I got insanely lucky. On Saturday morning, Dave, Joe, Jason and I ventured out to dive the Cayman wreck, about 35 minutes off Key West, 90+ feet down. Talking to Jason, who’s a divemaster at Lost Reef, it sounded like we’d be able to maybe see ten feet in front of us, which wasn’t exactly heartening, but just being under the water was something I really desperately needed, so I figured hope for the best and at the very least I’d get some zen time in with the fish. But when we arrived at the site, the blue water was literally coming in right underneath us, which meant visibility of about forty feet when we descended, and it only got better as the dive went on. There were jewfish and parrotfish and angels and eels and even a little swim-through below deck, where big snarled bundles of cable and random engineering detritus make for a slightly spooky and very darkened artificial reef.

Even better was the second wreck of the morning, Joe’s Tug, which sits in about 65 feet of water, in the middle of a large coral field. Here, we saw a (rare, for the area) stonefish, boxfish (or cowfish, I can never tell the difference), spotted eel, huge schools of yellow snapper, and more angels, surgeonfish and wrasses than you can shake a stick at. Also some barracuda, living up to my informal nickname (Mexican Standoff Fish). They’ll just hover there, staring at you. You swim at them, they don’t move. You swim away, they follow. Turn around and they’ll stop again. They’re like that dude in the thrillers who’s following you, but only walks when you’re walking. As soon as you stop, they stop. Creepy? A little, but they make me laugh. They might have lots of teeth, but I’m still bigger.

Finally, yesterday morning, after a proper bender with Jocelyn at the Green Parrot Monday night, I got up late and hopped in my rented Mustang convertible to drive (as fast as possible) to Miami. True to form, I made the flight with all of two minutes to spare, and arrived in (COLD) Chicago on time.

Conclusion: it was a good trip, a much-needed break, and now I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to finish the packing and get all moved and shit. Bored? Come on over and help me out! Want to see the pictures from the birthday and the trip? You’ll have to help me pack, because I’m not posting them until that’s done. I would call it blackmail, but I’m not sure how much of a draw that really is…

Not that I normally offer any kind of explanation for gaps in posting, but I feel like making you all a little jealous, so I’ll tell you: I’m off for Key West in the morning, so unless it’s pretty pictures to make you hate me even more, there won’t be much going on here for the next week or so.

Evidence of Saturday’s birthday shenanigans will go up when I return. Maybe. You know how I am. But to all of you who came out to celebrate, thanks again – it was a hell of a party.

I have been packing. Most people who have ever moved from anywhere to anywhere else in their adult lives know how much packing sucks. I, fool that I am, having spent five plus years in this here flat, had forgotten. Yes, it’s true that when I got home from the big long trip I did a lot of cleaning out of closets. Yes, it’s true that I’ve got a lot of receipts from the Brown Elephant, but still. I’ve got 35 boxes of books, and I’m not even done packing those.

Anyway, after I spent about ten hours clearing out and packing up my “office”, during the last hour of which I watched President Chimpy‘s travesty, I really really needed a drink. Initially, I told myself that when I got home I’d write something about the press conference, but really I can’t find any way to make it funny – can’t find a way, in fact, to make it anything other than mortifying on every conceivable level – so you’ll be happy to learn that this is not what I’m going to write about. Instead, I thought I’d share a moment.

After the wretched press conference, I went to Coz‘s open mic, which was great as always (thanks again for that Furs track). After the house band disbanded, the jukebox came on, as usual. I was finishing my drink when Red Rain came on, and I was suddenly transported back.

Way back in the dim and misty (1986), when the world was young and so was I (14), I went with my mom to visit some friends and family in Germany. It was the summer before the So tour, but I didn’t know that at the time (though it was the next concert I saw, less than a month after we got home). Growing up in our house, it was pretty much classical music or nothing, and it was only since age 12 or so that I’d been introduced to anything else – primarily punk and underground stuff, as my friends were equal to me on the misfit level. At any rate, while I’d heard of him, Peter Gabriel wasn’t really well known to me. So there I was, at my mom’s friend’s house. It’s a killer three flat-ish building in Esslingen, which isn’t far from the Alps. My mom’s friend lived with her husband on the second floor, and her daughter Evi and her husband Habi (who were in their late 20s/early 30s) lived on the ground floor. Somehow I was given keys to their flat and allowed to hang out down there on my own. Being a teenager and therefore prone to brooding, and furthermore missing my boyfriend at home, whose denim jacket I wore no matter what the temperature that summer, I took the opportunity to rifle through Evi and Habi’s record collection. I decided pretty quickly that Kate Bush was awesome, and I was getting pretty fond of their old Harry Belafonte records, and then I came across the Peter Gabriel. Melting Face appealed to me instantly, particularly Family Snapshot, although I don’t know that I had a clue at the time what that song was about. Security was good too, but a little over my head, musically speaking. And then I put on So. I turned up the volume and wandered out into the garden, listening.

What I remember is the first time I felt music really wash over me – Mozart had made me laugh, and I always got the brooding of Beethoven and the melancholy of Brahms, but this was different. There was this completely transcendent, overwhelming and inexplicable feeling that everything would be okay somehow. That the pattern I was a part of was so much larger than me, just as the music I was hearing was so much bigger than the voice singing it. That while I couldn’t understand it, I could bathe in it. The sun was a solid, palpable thing on my skin. I understood the moment I was in as I understood me, on a level that I wouldn’t be able to put words to for years and years, that I still sometimes struggle to explicate. There I was, in the broad light of day, a grin on my face and tears rolling down my cheeks – and I had no idea what I was even listening to. But in that moment, something changed.

I am to this day a big proponent of politics in music. Not because of the pretentious fucks who get all preachy with it, but because I am a poster child for the ability of music to engage a growing mind in such matters. Before that day, I swear I never thought for even half a second about the politics or the history of the world around me. Before I heard Biko, I didn’t even know who he was. Until I figured that out, it never occurred to me that MLK by U2 was anything more than a beautiful lullaby. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like I grew up in a cave or anything. I had the benefit of parents who’d lived through WWII and a rich background in literature – it just had never occurred to me that any of that could really touch me, that I was a part of it, and it of me.

When you’re young it’s easier in a lot of ways to cast the world in your own image – though that’s the trap as well, isn’t it? What music showed me was places to go, both inward and out, and things to read and discover, and I will never be able to give adequate thanks to the particular artists whose work initially inspired me. Music continues to inspire me, to spur me on, to this day. It’s both trite and facile to say that any given moment changed one’s life, but I can trace so much of who I am back to that moment that I’ve got to say it did. The music moved me. Eventually, the lyrics got me to think in new ways. And who knows where I would have wound up otherwise?

So, instead of bitching about the moments when I look at the world and see nothing but problems and ugliness and Chimpy’s stupid face, I thought I’d share a moment that transcended all the adolescent angst (and believe me, there was plenty), a moment whose memory still transcends. And Peter, whenever you’re in town, I’d still love to hang. I’ll buy.

It’s been a long week of birthdaying, and I am thoroughly exhausted, despite having missed two of the birthdays in question (mainly due to the other four). But it’s been a good week of birthdaying: when I got home tonight, I was wearing a curtain tie as a garter. I call that a sign of a good party.

And it’s not even my birthday yet. Which makes me just the tiniest bit terrified. There’s been talk of a unicorn piñata, people. Be afraid.

OK, I know I swore I’d never post girls’ night pictures in the public domain, but I’m making an exception this time. Jin’s birthday just happened to fall on this week’s girls’ night (that’s a lot of apostrophes), and we celebrated up a storm at Rainbo. I have a hazy recollection of Jin attempting to remove my shirt in the middle of the bar. When chided for this, she shrieked, “It’s my BIRTHDAY!!!” Whether this happened before or after we were doing the bus stop is unclear. But I am intrigued: the fact that it’s one’s birthday gives one leave to undress whomever one wants, whenever one wants to? Hmmm… this is useful information, especially considering mine’s coming up.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the evidence (from closest-to-sober to really-very-much-not): 1, 2, 3, 4. I’m pretty sure I took off my shirt for the last round. I’m also pretty sure that’s the one the guys at the bar stole and were passing around until we caught them. Fortunately (and not a little shockingly), we were not forcibly ejected from this fine establishment, and everyone made it home in one piece. The bail kitty is still intact…

This morning I was awakened by the ringing of the phone, too loud as always, right next to my head. I picked it up and heard, “HAPPY ASSYRIAN NEW YEAR!”

I was pretty sure at this point that I was just having another one of my twisted little reality dreams, but no. Lindsay was in her car on the north side, caught in the traffic overflow from the Assyrian New Year Parade.

So: Happy Assyrian New Year! In case you are wondering, it is now the year 6752.

Many of you know about our every-second-Monday girls’ nights, which have been referred to, variously, as “a cultural force”, “completely out of hand”, and “where did you say you were going to be again? I’ve got a camera…” (the latter doesn’t work, boys. Stop asking.) No, I’m still not going to publicly post the pictures, and no, boys are still not allowed.

Anyway, we have at various points drunkenly discussed the idea of having t-shirts or hats or maybe just a hat (that we can pass around for story time, bien sur) or perhaps satin jackets (we were really drunk that night) made for all of us, but this never seems to properly capture the spirit of our adventures (just to give you an idea, we decided back in December that it would probably be a good idea to take up a collection for bail money, just in case). Today, Brenda found just the thing: the Florence doll.

We might have to dip into the bail kitty for this one, kids.

A few readers have told me they like some of the photos in the Gallery enough to wish to use them as desktops. Since I’m way too lazy to create an actual souvenirs area on this site, why don’t you just let me know if there’s one you’d like to have and I’ll export a nice fresh graphic just for you.

Don’t say I never gave you anything.

Lazy git that I am, I’m still processing and posting the shots from my trip… as of today, there are 60-odd photos of Laos from December 2002. Go and have a look, would you? Note: I’m still trying to work out how to get the descriptions to appear in slide show mode. As of now, you’ll need to scroll through the photos one by one to see the explanation of what the hell you’re looking at… PHP people, help is always appreciated.

In other news, not that you asked, but the weekend was lovely. Nelson Algren apparently inspires some pretty incredible photography…

This is even better than the cowboys. Who knew?