washwords

“Bulldogs rule” already broke the news that I may have persuaded her to see a certain rock legend!!!!!

Yes, it’s true. Much to the “dismay” of my BF (who may happen to know “some guy called me“), my bff from junior high (yep, it’s bulldogs) and I are going to see George Michael, the man, the legend himself at the Verizon Center in July. The concert we were meant to go some 20 years ago! In jr. high, we LOVED him — and, blush, I believe I may have argued (passionately) that he was SO not gay. “Look at the ‘I want you sex video! He’s so clearrrrrrlllly into that androgynous asexual boy woman.” In 8th grade, she  taped the “Edge of Heaven” album for me, photocopying the cassette art and coloring it in with colored pencils! (see anti-music-piracy peeps, you can’t be mad at a little girl coloring in a cassette case for her friend, can you?)

We listened to every Wham! album backwards/forwards/inside out. We (eek) carried along that colored-in cassette to the limo that carried us to our senior prom.  We made each other mixes to take to college featuring a heavy dose of all GM’s best.

So when I first heard the rumors that he was touring (alas sans one Andrew Ridgely and, at that point, albeit in Europe) I KNEW we had to go.  And go we shall! See you there. We’ll be the ones fighting to be the “backstage girls!”

Oh, and lest you feel too bad for “that guy named me,” fear not: he gets to go Duran Duran in May and the summer concert series is young! If that doesn’t assuage your concern for his well-being, consider this: we also went to Asia  (all four members!) at the Birchmere a few weeks ago. I wasn’t the one who found that one.

Yesterday was my work friend T’s last day. We were office neighbors, colleagues, team-mates and pals since the day I started at my current job, some nearly four years ago. A quiet-at-first but actually quite hillarious and super-sharp fellow, T and I shared a similar workstyle, sense of humor, and sense of the world, as well as a love for the random and absurd.

One day T, a social science researcher with a quantitative methodological background told me he was conducting a new experiment. “Oh?” my interest peaked, expecting I’d be reading about it in a health policy and public affairs journal in no time. But T’s experiment was following the oyster cracker he’d dropped on the office stairwell a few days back. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I watched you, literally, try to stop the rain with a small plastic bucket.

I hadn’t meant to wake you, tiptoeing through the shadows: moon, water, streetlight. I traced my finger against the edge of the bathroom window – it was too fogged up to see, just hear: water against black tar, my pink toenails against the tile.

Back in your room, I could hear it coming harder now, great gusts carrying leafy twigs, water, earth.

I had to see.

I went to the window and you heard the water, too; but didn’t hear the rhythmic drumming or the pattering poems, just the flooding basement. “Guess, I’ll start digging” you said, sliding on jeans and coat and rubber boots.

I could only watch, meekly ask if I could help, knowing you’d say no. I offered tea, warm blankets, to don boots and buckets with you, but you said no.

So instead I climbed back up the wooden staircase to the bedroom, blue draping your walls and windows and opened the curtains, lifted the window. It was 60 degrees, rain coming straight down and I watched you take that little bucket back and forth and back, shining the yellow light ahead of you then up the window at me.

I waved but didn’t break the plane of quiet, of blue. You didn’t either. I let the curtain go and turned out the bedside lamp, so when you came inside it would be warm instead.