I'm at home and there is an egg custard baking in the oven. It's my favourite dessert which for various reasons I haven't cooked in over a year.
Friday was a pretty quiet day, I was at work but had to remake some starting materials hence not much work got done. I wrote up a reference letter for one of the students who works in the lab and then around 4 pm we had the department Xmas party. It was nice to actually eat some real food, I felt bad about not bringing anything since it was a “pot-luck” but there was a lot of food left over anyway. After that I walked home through the frigid, had a hot shower and a nice nap. Later I gave Tiffany a call to see how she was doing after her three finals in one day. She was just happy to have survived, so I walked over with some beer to help her celebrate. We hung out, watched “Christmas Story” and talked.
Saturday I got up with no great desire to do much of anything. I got out of bed around midday and spent some time at the lab in the afternoon. I came home around 7 pm to get ready for the Queer dance which was to be that night. After being rather demure at the last dance, I figured I would go all out. I received my Dead Tech Spanish harlot corset from Gallery Serpentine back in November. I'd be longing to get it since 2000, so I think I deserved it. Hot Topic was the source for my black PVC bondage pants (no I'm not trying to be you) and a kick-ass long black PVC coat. I was ready by about 8:30 pm and organized for Bonnie to give a lift to Doug, Tiffany and I. I walked over to Tiffany's place about 9 pm, and in that short distance (maybe half a mile) I had “Take me back to the Matrix”, “I love you Trinity”, “I'm the One” and so on. I suppose I should be flattered, but maybe this is why it isn't good to be Goth in a college town. One neat trick I did come up with was to put a blue glow-stick down between the lacing of my corset, that was a real eye-grabber.
Tiffany was somewhat surprised with my clothing choice, but maybe only because I seem to be fairly casual most of the time. Bonnie showed up and we headed down around 10 pm. The crowd was still starting to build when we got there, and of course there is the big initial social whirl. It took me about 20 minutes to get to the bar as people we constantly coming up to me saying “Wow, you look hot” and words to that effect, i.e. I had a nice ego stroking. By the time I got my drink I was running late for my shift on the door, I caught up with Laura who was looking really nice and unusually not wearing anything fetish at all, just a nice party dress. Most of the people were casually dressed, so naturally I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I suppose I need to work on being extroverted a little.
We worked the door for an hour and we had a reasonable flow of people, there were a few “dodgy/sketchy” characters who came up from downstairs wondering what was going on, but they were easy to spot and we didn't have any trouble. A little after 11 pm I got replaced on the door by Sid (she's nice) and I managed to make it back to our table which we had secured when we first arrived. Our little group was chilling out so I said hi to Katie and Laurie who had arrived and then went over to the DJ; Brian, who is a friend. I got to request some of the songs which I'd given him on Monday and then headed back to the table. I talked to Mike for a few minutes about what I thought of the final Matrix instalment, and then my music came on. Well, if I couldn't do the clichéd Goth thing much more, the first three songs were “Disposable Teens” – Marilyn Manson, “Dragula” – Rob Zombie and then “Fight Song” – Marilyn Manson. I was thrashing along to those with Doug, and then Tiffany came over for the second two. I was sweating like a demon by the time I'd finished, but wow it felt good. Between all the distractions, I think it took me about two hours to finish my first drink, so I was well behind Tiffany and Doug who were celebrating the end of a long, difficult semester. The music was pretty good, but I felt bad for Brian as his computer kept crashing (Windows XP) and stopping the music several times. I got my next song “Living Dead Girl” - Rob Zombie and then I went to chat with Bonnie and Katie. The rest of the evening was spent flitting between the dance floor and different social group which was a lot of fun. I was dancing with one gay guy I knew when I saw Bonnie and Katie dancing together. That made me very happy, Bonnie had just come out and hadn't been in any kind of relationship before and Katie was still trying to get settled and meet people in town. So to see those two dancing along to one of the slow songs was wonderful.
Finally after way too short a time, 2 am swung around and despite our entreaties Brian turned the music down and the lights up. We all stuck around to help out with cleaning up which is good since it means we get discounted rates the next time around. After the usual committee meeting, we finally decided to go around to Laurie's place. There might have been another after party, but we didn't hear about it. We got there around 3 am, about 5 of us who I all knew. We smoked some pot which was fairly unusual for me, and I showed myself to be a completely amateur at using a bong. After that we just sat around talking, but Doug was feeling a little unwell and Tiffany was falling asleep so we all packed into a car and headed home.
What a kick-ass night it was. :)