2004-08-23..5:20 p.m.

I purchased a bottle of wine Saturday before The Barbeque of Not Unpleasant Scrutiny* and never opened it. Mwah-ha! Hahahahahaha! I laugh because it was opened last night and it was good. Not the whole bottle mind you, I had only a glass. But that glass was scrummy and diddiliumscious. And if you happen to be in the neighbourhood, I�d not be averse to inviting you in to partake in a glass or two. For it's that good, and I aim to share.

*M and I hosted a BBQ at his on Saturday (to roaring success) in which I was introduced to more of his friends. It was as weird to be at his, having to readjust my perception of him to include this whole new world of heaped musical instruments and philosophy books made real, of waking up next to him in a room not mine, in blankets and sheets that smell so familiar yet feel so foreign, of his insanely pink on more pink bathroom that was (is) pinker than a six-year old girl�s gender-pushing parents� vision of girlhood. It was weirder still to be so relaxed as a unit in front of a bunch of people I don�t know. I can be fairly shy, or rather quiet and disinclined to draw undue focus to myself, when surrounded by people I don�t know, but these people were there to meet ME. So centre of attention, fairly quiet, yet oddly relaxed I was. I did not get overly drunk, overly vegetarian, OR righteously one of the boys. I was pretty well behaved, even when the girls started talking about babies and things, and the boys kind of went cross-eyed at one small feminist barb (which M, thankfully, got and laughed at too).

I�m all swishy-hipped and straight-backed today. In part it's probably because I yoga'd it up last night for some ferocious relaxation before bed, but also because for the first time in ages I had a weekend that truly truly engaged with the peace and calm I so desperately craved. So much country air and cows to stroke the noses of on little country trails! So much wheat rustled in broad daylight! So much good food and ice cream from blue-and-yellow ice cream vans served by jolly white-haired men in pristine smocks! So much sitting in unfettered-by-pollution sun! So much M! I had such a marvellous time in my little vacation I can hardly contain myself. Which seems to be happening a lot these days, marvellous times and barebones self-control rather than minibreaks, I mean.

I have the luckiest guy (on the lower eastside) stuck in my head. Except that I keep changing 'guy' for 'girl' and 'lower eastside' for 'whole goddamn world,' but sometimes for 'who likes muchly to twirl' and sometimes 'because I'm on the back of a turtle, and I get to go for a riiiiiiiiiide.'

Fortunately for those at my workplace, who keep threatening to send in the burly men in white coats to intervene, I'm only singing inside my head. My internal hoopy lyricism will for now go unnoticed.

Let it be said here and now that The Family Guy is one cartoon that ROCKS MY FREAKING WORLD! Let it also be said here that Master and Commander is one film that does not. Let it be said here and now that �Quadruped� and �Uterine Gulag� will henceforth be commonplace vernacular. Let it be said here and now that jokes involving �the lesser of two weevils� will as well, but not for the off-the-cuff hawhaw as intended M and C�s writers, but as aren�t-we-punny inside joke between M and me.

Let it be noted here and now that I ought to piss off.

****meep