Among the highlights of a wonderful weekend (much of it spent with plumtreeblossom) were watching her perform live radio drama at Arisia, watching the entirety of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech on CNN in the hotel (and then listening to parts of it on the radio), and attending ragingamazon’s Third Annual Going-Away Celebration with a bunch of wonderful people.

And today is no longer the weekend, but today is certainly still a celebration. I’ll be going over to plumtreeblossom’s after work to watch post-inauguration coverage on TV (if we can figure out how to work the cable box :-). We might stop in at one of the area celebrations, or we might be so overcome with joy and relief that we can’t move.

Speaking of Martin Luther King day and that speech, damn, was that a good speech! I’m not sure I’d ever heard the whole thing before; I’d certainly never seen the whole thing before. After the speech, CNN had an interview with a civil-rights lawyer who was involved in preparing for the speech and had essentially written it (or I should say, had written the draft). It turns out that the “I have a dream” part and what followed it were not in the prepared speech. King got to that point following the prepared speech, and colleague of his yelled out, “Tell them about your dream, Martin!” and he glanced at her and turned his written speech upside down. The lawyer who had drafted said (to himself or to somebody next to him, I don’t quite remember), “These people don’t know it, but they’re about to be in church.” And Martin did tell them about his dream, and the rest of the speech was extemporized.

So plumtreeblossom and I will be marching in the annual GLBTQFFAORTFMOMGBBQ Pride Parade tomorrow! There’s no Poly Boston group marching this year (although there will be a Poly Boston table at the festival afterwards, thanks to the unparalleled — unparalleled by me, at any rate! — gumption and efforts of alan7388. So I will be marching with the Obama supporters, which I’m thrilled to be doing anyway. Then we’ll be hanging out at the Poly Boston table at the festival before going to plumtreeblossom’s place to catch our breath and change for a pool party. Whee!

Happy Pride, everybody!

PS — Governor Deval Patrick’s daughter recently came out as lesbian. He’s always been a strong, strong supporter of same-sex marriage, and I’m sure that made it easier for her. The two of them will be marching together in the parade. He’s also strong supporter of Barack Obama (who sadly doesn’t support same-sex marriage, although he supports civil unions and supports states being left alone to decide the issue for themselves). A few years ago (after the fateful DNC speech, but before he was seriously working towards a presidential candidacy) I saw Obama in person when he introduced Patrick while Patrick was running for governor. I was very proud to contribute to Patrick’s campaign and to vote for him, and I was thrilled when he won, and I’m very proud to contribute to Obama’s campaign and to vote for him, and I sure hope to be thrilled when he wins.

So on Saturday plumtreeblossom and I went to Worcester for a Barack Obama rally [warning: bacground audio]. The campaign was encouraging local groups to have simultaneous rallies nationwide on that day, and plumtreeblossom found this one. (Boston didn’t have any when she first looked, although there were signs that one might get organized last-minute.) And of course she asked me if I wanted to go, and of course I said yes.

Because I was driving, we got there very late (and had to resort to old, 20th-century technology by stopping and buying a map), but we got there. It was fairly small but lots of fun and totally worthwhile. And there was a bagpiper! That was quite a surprise. We had a great time meeting people and talking and listening to the speakers and the programming, and we came back with Obama swag.

I ended up taking a bunch of pictures (and plumtreeblossom took a couple of me), and they’re up on my Flickr set of the event.

I’m really sleepy, so I don’t have time to do justice to my lovely NYC trip to visit K. and hang out with cathijosephine and her mom, but I can’t go without posting something about it, so very briefly:

Had a lovely time catching up with K., telling her about my life since she saw me last and hearing about her travels (notably Vienna) and her music and multimedia projects. It was great! She’s doing some amazing stuff (which I’m not sure I should talk about since they’re in progress) that I look forward to hearing more about. And I got to see her delightful apartment, which looks like it works really well for her. Yay for a good work- and living-space! And she took me to a scenic lookout over the Bronx and a scenic (no, really!) lookout over New Jersey, and took me to her favourite local Indian takeout place.

Sunday I met cathijosephine and her mother (who is in New York for a conference this week) for brunch, and then we had a nice long walk from 32d Street to Chinatown — stopping in at a makeup store, a goth/fetish clothing store, and THE MOST HUGEST COSTUME STORE EVAR which was like Hallowe’en in April on our way. In Chinatown, we met K. and A., and wandered around Chinatown for a bit, stopping into a bakery for yummy baked goods and bubble tea. (Or in my case, bubble coffee.)

Then K., A., and cathijosephine’s mom bade us farewell at the bus pick-up, and cathijosephine and I rode back to Boston, getting here around 9. It was great weather, and light out for most of the trip back. The bus was run by some other bus company, filling in for Fung Wah to deal with overflow, and it took a different (and more scenic) route out of the city than I’ve ridden before. On the bus I finished Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, and cathijosephine finished her nap, and both of those things made me happy.

(By the way, I highly recommend Dreams from My Father. It makes me wish Barack Obama would hurry up and get elected President already and get his eight years over with so he can get back to his true calling as a writer.)

On my trip to Hawai‘i (mostly during my flights), I finished a couple Pratchett books, Soul Music (about Music with Rocks In) and Interesting Times (about the Agatean Empire, with its complex politics, Great Wall, and Forbidden City). Today on the T on my way to see plumtreeblossom, I finished Moving Pictures (about Holy Wood and the spell it casts on people), out of order. I had actually started it before the trip, but, um, I dropped it in the toilet, and then didn’t feel quite so excited about reading that particular copy any more.

I also finished Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope in Hawai‘i, and appreciated it a lot. He (or his ghostwriter, I’m not sure, but I suspect he wrote a lot of it) is not as good a writer as he is a speaker, but it’s still a very engaging, interesting, and thought-provoking book, and makes me feel good about the notion of him as president (although to be fair that’s a notion I felt pretty good about to start with).

First, the morning from hell. For background, I got a new prescription for contacts a few months ago, which turned out to be incorrect, although the sample lenses the eye doctor had given me to try out were correct. So I had an eye appointment scheduled for today to get the prescription fixed.

I’m too tired to do a fully-fleshed-out write-up, so I’ll just tell you about my morning by copying and pasting from mail to cathijosephine. ( Here’s what I wrote. )

So, the three good things: Thanks in large measure to mud_puppy, I went to a fundraiser/rally for Deval Patrick at the Hynes Convention Center on Thursday. Introducing him was Barack Obama, who of course was a really good speaker, but who did a very good job of not stealing Patrick’s thunder. I’d heard Obama’s DNC speech and a couple other sound bites, so I knew what to expect from him, and I got it. But I’d never heard Patrick speak; at most, I’d read short quotes. And wow, he is a kick-ass speaker! Inspiring, entertaining, honest-sounding, impressive. He gives the sound bites, but he also connects them and uses them responsibly. He doesn’t just assert or imply something, he explains why it happens. His speech made me simultaneously really confident in him as a politician and really confident in him as an officeholder, and you don’t get that combination very often. (Even people who are in fact going to be good at both often do only one or the other in their speeches.) So that was amazing. And it was nice to see mud_puppy and a couple co-workers of hers, docorion, and lilbjorn and M. there.

After that, I met cathijosephine at Sarsfield’s, our local Irish pub, for a pint and a half each, which made up in caloric value for not having had dinner. :-) We had a really good time. While I’d seen her a few times recently, this was the first time we’d had a chance to just chat one-on-one since before I went to Hawai‘i, and it felt really good.

And tonight I went over to chienne_folle’s for a night of text-adventure games with her and her husband and a bunch of their friends, which was really, really fun. Makes me want to put some text adventures on my Treo to play on the subway; evidently there’s a lot out there. We played a game called Ad Verbum (if I’m remembering correctly), which was interesting in that it was largely about verbal puzzles. For instance, there’s a room in which all the descriptions use only words that start with S, and you can only use words that start with S in your commands. Atypical, I guess, but lots of fun. I left before they started the second one, because I was starting to get too tired for that kind of brainage, but I had a great time, and seeing queenofhalves there was an unexpected pleasure.

So, all in all, life is good! And soon I will have new contact lenses that don’t give me headaches and with which I can actually read computer screens!

beowabbit sleep now.