Sorry for my extreme radio-silence lately. I’ve been mostly sort of keeping up with other people’s LiveJournal posts (albeit with more skimming than usual), but I haven’t had time or brainpower to post or do much commenting. Anyway, since I’m sure you all are wondering whether I’m still alive, here’s some of what I’ve been up to lately:

Home repairs: Just after cathijosephine moved out, the bath surround (the panels on the wall around the bathtub) fell off. Well, large bits of it did, anyway. It had never been all that convinced it wanted to be attached to the wall, and it gave up. I had been thinking for a very long time (since before I moved in, come to think of it) of pulling it off and repairing whatever damage it had been put up to cover, but had never gotten around to it, in part because it involves not being able to use the shower for extended periods of time due to wating for various bits to dry. Anyway, since I didn’t have a housemate for a bit (anybody want to move in? Quincy’s got lots of history and lots of yummy restaurants! Won’t be available for a bit yet, though.) I decided I’d go ahead and try that. As is the way with these things, it quickly became a much larger project than I expected it to. It was just three days ago (after starting the project about a month ago, although of course I’ve been working on it in spurts) that I finally had a day where I left the bathroom looking better than when I started.

This has all taken a lot longer because of not having a working car any more, so when I discover I don’t have the right tool or I didn’t get enough tile adhesive, I need to either carry stuff on the T (and on the walk home from the T) or rent a Zipcar. (I have to say, I’m really enjoying using Zipcar. But still, it means having to plan stuff in advance.)

Theater: As I did last year, I’m rehearsal-assisting for plumtreeblossom’s show in the summer one-act festival at Theatre@First. Unlike last year, I’m also going to be on the run crew, which I don’t think I’ve ever done. Means I can’t sit in the audience for the actual performances, but it means I get to be on stage, albeit with the lights dimmed. Also unlike last year, the show plumtreeblossom is directing is one she wrote herself! My darling is having her début as a playwright! I’ve read a bunch of short stories she got published before I met her and really enjoyed them, but this is the first substantial writing she’s done since I’ve known her, and I’m thrilled to see her getting back into it. It is a really funny show being put on by very talented actors and it’s going to be a blast! Many of the other one-acts are also really funny too, including the one being directed by surrealestate (who is directing for the first time, if I’m not misremembering). I am really really looking forward to this and you should all come see it.

plumtreeblossom: Things continue to be delightful in my relationship with plumtreeblossom! We have lots of wonderful dates and delightful times. Tomorrow we are going to see Up for the third time. :-) Her cat Rowley who had been frighteningly skinny for a while has been putting on weight, which is really encouraging. We’d already been mentally preparing to lose him. Not sure if the subcutaneous fluids the vet has her giving him are what made the difference or not, but he’s doing a lot better.

Work: Work is busy, but rewarding, and I feel like I’m accomplishing stuff (although projects in IT, as in homeownership, tend to take several times as long as you think they should).

cathijosephine: I’m delighted that I’m still seeing lots of cathijosephine despire her having moved out. We’ve been trying to have dinner together once a week (often with darxus and m_c_t if he’s in town, and sometimes with xmelancholia). Chickenfinger (her cat) has adapted really well to moving back to her condo; we were both worried she’d be upset about moving back to a much smaller space, but she had no trouble adjusting at all.

(Other than seeing a lot of plumtreeblossom her housemate and cathijosephine and her partners, and the Firsties, I’m feeling a bit undersocialized and missing my friends. Have been popping my head in at some lovely parties though, at one of which I got to catch a glimpse of the delightful weegoddess during a visit this side of the pond.)

I feel like there’s been other important stuff over the past few weeks, but I’ve run out of brain so I’m going to stop for now.

The good news: Thanks both to time and to the meds plumtreeblossom brought over, I’m doing much better. If you ignore the cough, I’m pretty much well. I went out of the house today. There’s this bright yellow thing in the sky that makes you warm. It was a little weird.

But the bad news is very bad. My housemates have this (darxus started feeling bad last night; cathijosephine realized she was sick early this evening). And so does my poor honeywuzzle. She seemed fine this morning, but by this evening (after I dropped her off in Davis) she was really sick.

I hope all of them get better very quickly, and I feel really really guilty. :-(

Howdy! cathijosephine, who is currently living with me, is looking for somebody to rent her Quincy Center studio. Her Craigslist ad (with photos) is at http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/abo/1058139649.html, and here’s the text, since it’s short:

$1000 Furnished Studio on Red Line Available Immediately (Quincy Center)
No Fees! Across the street from Quincy Center T Station. ~450 square feet, hardwood floors, 2 big walk-in closets, small dishwasher, full size loft bed and comfy pull-out couch. Heat and hot water included. Coin-op laundry in building. 2 blocks to supermarket and drugstore.
Short-term lease available for $1,100/month.

(I.e., it's $1,100/mo. if you want it month-to-month, or $1,000/mo. if you'll sign a longer lease so it comes back on the market at a convenient time.)

Quincy Center is pretty far out on the Red Line (25min riding time to Park St.), but I can’t emphasize enough how convenient this location is in Quincy; you’d be comfortable walking distance from a supermarket and a pharmacy, less than five minutes’ walk from the T station, and within ten minutes’ walk from lots of great restaurants and shops. And I find Quincy a fun and charming place to live.

EDIT: Bigger versions of the pictures in the Craigslist ad: Bathroom, main living area with couch and loft bed, very large closet, and kitchen.

Lovely weekend. (Isn’t that how all my posts start?)

On Friday, I met plumtreeblossom after work in Central Square (with some difficulty, since I was incorrect about where the CVS we were supposed to meet was), and we went to Shalimar of India, where I had exceptionally good lamb korma. Then we went to joyeous’ birthday party, where we had a delightful time chatting with folks, watching Treehouse of Horror and (if I’m remembering correctly) little snippets of Return of the Living Dead in honour of it being Friday the 13th, petting her housemate’s very soft bunny rabbit, and generally having a lovely time. Thanks to audioboy for giving us a ride back to Mare’s place.

On Saturday, we met a friend to go to the Flea, where we had a productive day of shopping. Then we got a ride to my house in Quincy, where we had a game of Munchkin (plumtreeblossom’s first) with cathijosephine and darxus and watched a little bit of Spun, a creepy-funny movie about speed freaks that they were watching when we came in. I like the fact that we spent our Valentine’s Day with three other people, and that didn’t detract from it being a sweet, romantic date

On Sunday, after breakfast at a little hole-in-the-wall diner near my house, we went to the Museum of Science, where in addition to wandering around the permanent exhibits a bit we saw the frog exhibit and watched an IMAX movie on the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. Then after a brief stop at the Cambridgeside Galleria so we could both drool over gadgets I took her home. We both have tomorrow (Presidents’ Day) off, so we’ll have a day to rest and recover from all the fun. And we do have an awful lot of fun.

On Friday I met plumtreeblossom after work (see her weekend write-up here) and we took the train to Quincy Center together. We had dinner at Outback Steakhouse. I don’t like their corporate politics, but I love their food and sometimes I just need a hunk of cow. As it turned out, I’m very glad we did, because I ordered an Australian beer I wasn’t familiar with — Cooper’s Brewery Sparkling Ale — and it was so good I ordered a second, and then went looking for it at the liquor store later in the week. (If you are wise enough to follow my example, be cautioned that it’s fermented in the bottle, so there’s some sediment in the bottom; you want to pour it into a glass.)

After a yummy dinner, we went to my house and watched Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, which was very funny, and a little bit of the original 1930s exploitation/propaganda movie, which was a bonus on the DVD.

( Another few meals, another movie, some geekery, and some games with darxus and cathijosephine. )

At some point in the weekend, plumtreeblossom took a whole bunch of pictures of grim warrior beowabbit, including the one that I eventually munged into my new userpic, and I also took some pictures of her cats, who were sleeping together on her bed looking especially cute.

The one bad thing about the weekend is that towards the end of the workweek I’d been having little twinges in my hip, and they got considerably worse over the weekend. I’m going to need to drive to the T tomorrow (where parking is $7); there’s no way I can do the normally 15-minutes walk to the T station with the ice that’s on the sidewalks. I’m not sure if this is a return of my sciatica or if I did something to my hip slipping on the ice. But if a hurt hip is the price for all the joy and fun I had this weekend, it was worth it.

Another lovely weekend with my sweetie. Saturday afternoon I got ingredients for crockpot chicken and dumplings (incidentally having to get out and sprinkle kitty litter under my wheels three times to get out of the driveway!) and got that started. Picked up plumtreeblossom in the evening and we came back to Quincy for dinner. After dinner, we had a couple drinks and (as is often the case) ended up link-surfing on Wikipedia, and finally landed on this site of colour photographs of Tsarist Russia by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. I forget how we ended up on the topic, but something reminded me of that exhibit and those photos — oh, I remember now! We’d been listening to recordings from old phonograph cylinders on Wikipedia, and plumtreeblossom mentioned how weird it felt to be listening to recordings from the 19th century and how it made that era seem less distant, and that reminded me of how it felt to see colour photographs from before the Russian Revolution, so I googled to find the Prokudin-Gorskii exhibit again.

This morning (after shovelling out the car with cathijosephine’s help), I drove cathijosephine and m_c_t to the T station so they could go to the airport for m_c_t’s flight back to the Wrong Left Coast. It was lovely having him here, and I’ll miss him.

When I got back my darling was making me bacon and eggs and we had a lovely breakfast before running out to the store so she could do a shopping run. (It’s handy to do that when I can drive her, so she can get heavy stuff and not have to carry it from the grocery store to the T to her house. And it’s fun to shop together.) I had only been planning on getting a couple things myself, but I failed to exercise any self-restraint and now I have yummy things in the fridge.

Then I drove her home, and came back to Quincy (stopping to get a few things for the house, notably sand, which yesterday’s experience demonstrated I need). I picked up some Chinese food on the way and ate it with cathijosephine and darxus.

I have a large number of things I needed to get done this weekend that I didn’t do, but I don’t particularly care. Life is full, and life is good.

EDIT: I forgot to mention; she gave me a couple more pieces of purple clothing, adding to the sweater she gave me a few weeks ago. ( And she took a picture of me in my new purple hoodie. )

Had a wonderful, if fairly quiet, New Year’s Eve. In the afternoon I took cathijosephine and m_c_t to a nearby mall so m_c_t could get boots. It was snowing heavily out, and the plows hadn’t had a chance to clear the streets, so getting there was kind of an adventure, and a slow one.

We had a great time at the mall, including a yummy meal from a Johnny Rockets in the food court. However, I had hurt my foot pretty badly overnight (scratching a really bad itch), and towards the end of our time at the mall I was feeling feverish and looking flushed. (Zeph and I had thought at the time that it had turned into a systemic infection, but considering how immediately I got better when she had me put some antiseptic/anaesthetic on it, I think it must just have been the pain.)

Anyway, because of the snow, it took us a lot longer than anticipated to get to and from the mall. When we got home cathijosephine took great care of me, plying me with all sorts of useful OTC drugs. (Wow, that anaesthetic/antiseptic spray was incredibly effective.)

plumtreeblossom and I had plans to go to what was by all accounts a stunningly awesome New Year’s Eve party, but unfortunately we would have had to walk there from the T through unplowed streets, and with my injured foot and the snowstorm, that was a non-starter. plumtreeblossom was incredibly understanding about the change in plans. As it happened, she got so cold walking the couple blocks to Sound Bites for dinner (where we both had very yummy food and wine) that she was just as glad we hadn’t tried to make it to the party. Instead, after dinner, we put a rather odd Gary Cooper movie in the DVD player and snuggled on the couch with the cats for a while before toasting the New Year as cued by her Blackberry.

This morning, I started 2008 2009 with pancakes, bacon, and Jell-O made by my beloved plumtreeblossom; that has to be a very good omen. (The Jell-O is because I’d had a sudden craving the previous night, due to her singing the Jell-O jingle from the radio show we did.) She also sewed some buttons on my coat.

When I got home today, I had a rather disturbing surprise. First of all, the cat was out of food; she had tried to get into the bag of food in the closet, but only succeeded in knocking it over with the opening folded under it so she couldn't get in. Second of all, it was 35° Fahrenheit in the house. Our boiler occasionally randomly shuts itself off for no reason, requiring a button press to turn it back on. I did that right away, but I am still wearing a coat and hat; it takes a while for the house to warm up from that temperature. Poor kitty! I hope it wasn't that cold all night.

Anyway, I was delighted to spend the last afternoon of 2008 with cathijosephine and m_c_t, and to spend the last night of 2008 and the first morning of 2009 with my beloved plumtreeblossom. That left me with a warmth inside that mere temperature can’t touch.

Oh, and I just a few minutes ago got a nice New Year’s phone call from sionnagh. (She says everybody in Hawai‘i is complaining and wearing sweaters because it’s gotten down to 68°F. Remind me again; why do I live in New England?)

I am blessed with many wonderful friends (many of whom I wish I could see more often [*casts a glance towards northern England*]), a spectacular family (of origin and of choice), and a life full of love.

Happy birthday to my wonderful housemate, trusted friend, and chosen-family member cathijosephine. I’m glad and honoured to have you in my life.

Awesome girlfriend! Well, you know plumtreeblossom, right? I don’t need to tell you how awesome she is. But I will mention that last night she gave me a gorgeous light PURPLE V-neck sweater. And it’s purple! And it looks great on me! Not only that, it’s purple!

(She also gave me a beautiful purple dress shirt, but unfortunately it’s size L in Twinks’, and I am not a twink. “There’s a big difference between gay boys and bi boys, and it’s about 80 pounds.” So it has to get exchanged before you can see how gorgeous I look in it. The sweater was also size L and fit perfectly.)

And she cooked me breakfast! She makes the best breakfast! She puts extra love in it. And bacon.

So when I trudged home from work, I knew I was going to have to dump my stuff and go out and shovel the walk and the driveway for forty minutes or an hour. Only when I got home, I discovered that cathijosephine out shovelling the driveway, having already cleared off the sidewalk. I grabbed a shovel and helped, but it was the difference between getting a nice little workout to warm you up and then going in and relaxing versus being wet and miserable and tired and overheated, and she had already done at least half of it when I got there. I have an awesome housemate.

Also happy to have darxus here tonight; it’s been nice chatting with him.

Weather, traffic, and my car’s engine permitting, I will get to see plumtreeblossom briefly tomorrow morning on her way to visit her family.

Life is really pretty good.

Had a fabulous weekend, much of it spent in the delightful company of plumtreeblossom. Among other things, we went to see The Rimers of Eldritch and it was a really, really good production. The acting was great. It was a very difficult and complex show, and they pulled it off beautifully. Congratulations to desireearmfeldt and her cast and crew. I think I’m going to go back next weekend, and I want to buy a copy of the script.

We had tentative plans to meet underwatercolor and minerva42 and somebody whose LJ name I don’t know for dim sum this morning. Unfortunately, I didn’t know until this morning exactly when it was supposed to be, and I had slept too late and was kind of pokey getting out of the house and we hit bad traffic on I-93, so that didn’t happen. Boo. I haven’t seen them in a while.

On the other hand, when we figured out that we weren’t going to get to dim sum in time to eat with them, we decided to avoid the traffic on I-93 north by turning around and going to brunch at Firefly’s in Quincy. They have a really yummy and really meat-heavy brunch buffet, and we had an utter feast. Good biscuits and gravy; I’m really happy to have found a place I can get that.

In other socioculinary news, I got to join cathijosephine for her wonderful hearty vegetable soup with dumplings twice this weekend, and she also introduced me to my first episode of West Wing.

Full, happy, and well-socialized.