I haven't written in a while because I've been completely screwed by this stupid "I Love You" virus. It got to our company around 9 AM on Thursday morning, and was propagating itself so fast that I had no choice but to take all the connections down, so it couldn't travel, and then hunt it down one file at a time. I didn't get to sit down or eat lunch on Thursday while a worked an eternally long day and missed my planned dinner with Shelly. Then I spent all day on Friday running from machine to machine searching for vbs files and removing them, replacing fried hard drives on a couple of machines, and trying to reconfigure all our mail services to filter the stupid bug out. Our virus protection company released a final bit of detection software on Friday that took me nearly 2 hours to download, and the rest of the day to install on my network. It sucked.
I spent this morning configuring our firewall to hopefully strip out .vbs MIME attachments, so maybe this won't happen in the future. In the meantime I'm still getting Emails from last Thursday, so if you've sent me anything, I doubt I have received it yet.
Other than that, my life has been pretty durn eventful! Thursday night for one reason or another Forest and I were both really tired; I had been running around cleaning up the network for 12 hours that day, and he was behind on sleep. We managed to really hurt each other's feelings for about 5 minutes because of indecision on the evening's plans. I hurt him by assuming he was too tired to do anything, and being automatically disappointed without asking him. He hurt me by getting really upset about that and refusing to talk to me for a couple of minutes while I desperately tried to figure out what I had done wrong. It was excruciatingly painful for both of us, but I'm happy to say that it passed quickly. It's amazing to me just how *much* you can hurt each other when you're as close as we are. Neither of us has been this sensitive to anyone before, and we judge it to be a good thing that we're so close. We snuggled a lot that night.
Friday after another long-ass day of virus-cleaning hell, I was off for a bell choir concert immediately after work. It was hot, and a long drive, and I'm afraid I didn't enjoy the concert much. Mainly, I was really perturbed that I had not been informed on how long we would be gone. I assumed that since our concert was an hour away and ended at 9, we would be back by 10. So I planned to meet Forest at 10:30 and go to Yeffy's party with him.
On the contrary, my choir had to stay for a dessert/afterglow after the concert, then load everything up, get gas, and generally putz around. We weren't back until after midnight. It was ridiculous, and I was completely pissed off about it. I think my hair was standing on end by the third time I looked down and saw that we were going 45 MPH on the freeway. AUGH!
Happily, the party wasn't over when I got there, and both Forest and I had a really good time. I tried to mix with JeffC. a couple of times, but gave up pretty quickly on that, and settled for merrily hanging out with the rest of the gang. We stayed out far later than we should have, but were both having fun, so we were laid back about it. Yeffy seemed to be enjoying the party too, and that's the important part!
Saturday morning we were pathetic and sleepy, and didn't leave for Chicago until nearly 11 AM. We'd intended to go much earlier, but figured it was best to get a little more sleep. It turned out that there was no point rushing around, since we were in for a weekend of highway adventures. On I-94 on the way to Chicago there was a 10-car pileup which blocked all the lanes, and we literally sat on the freeway in park for an hour, about 15 miles back from the accident before they started to route traffic off the highway. We took a long ride at parade speed through a town called "Teapot Dome, Michigan", which I had never heard of. It had a pretty little river, and that's about all... but it was new territory, anyway. I was exceedingly glad to be travelling with Forest, who always handles inconveniences with a shrug and a smile, and lets it roll off his shoulders instead of dwelling on it. We laughed about it, and he read a book while I drove and played hearts on my palm pilot.
Chicago was a blast and a half. It was Wayne's birthday (hence the trip), and we were there to do anything Wayne wanted to. First we went for dinner, then shopping a bit, while he picked out his present.
Next thing you know, we were getting dressed up, because Wayne wanted to go dancing. The club we were going to dance in is one of the main Goth hangouts in that part of Chicago, and Wayne (who is rather goth by his own admission) goes there all the time. It made him incredibly happy to dress us up, and by the time he was done, I didn't recognize myself in the mirror.
Forest wore a very tight black mesh t-shirt that looked *really good* on him, and some tight pants that I just won't get into describing. His overcoat was a knee length, burgundy colored thing that flared about him when he walked... he looked for all the world like a combination of a GQ model and a character from "Mage: The Ascension." Strange. But very sexy. Around his neck was a heavy iron chaos star. It suited him very well.
I was prepared for this, at least a little. I brought the dress that Darcy gave me for Christmas, since last time we'd been to visit Wayne he had wanted to go out, and I hadn't brought any appropriate clothes. So this time I was ready. Soon, I was wearing a skin-tight long sleeved loose mesh shirt under the dress, and a burgundy collar with studs on it around my neck. At Wayne's direction I used black eyeshadow, and applied eyeliner in rather an egyptian-heiroglyph sort of style. Instead of blusher, I used silver glitter on my cheeks, and I mixed black and red lipstick together for a very dark color that suited everyone's taste. I was informed that all I had to do to pass for a goth person on plain sight at that point was to project the attitude that went with the outfit. Wayne voted for "regal, you are here to conquer the world, but hate it at the same time."
Walking like that, dressed like that, and being escorted on the arm of Forest looking like he did, I definitely felt like I had somehow shifted into a completely different life. People on the streets of Chicago had visibly different reactions to us from their usual. There was a lot of good and bad attention as we walked several blocks down Clark to the club... definitely not what I'm accustomed to experiencing.
The name of the club is "Neo", and it was definitely a new experience for me. To get there you have to walk down an alley which has been painted entirely black, with stark white patterns arching jaggedly along it, and a projected image of three stylized black and white men pointing a gun at the end. Very strange.
Showing your ID in a club like that is a funny experience. The very polite bouncer accepts your drivers license, looks at the picture, then shines his flashlight at your face. Since every person there was made up at least as much as I was if not more so, he had to check each person several times. Honestly, though, I can't see how he could be very effective. With makeup like this my stepfather could use my drivers license with no problem.
When we arrived after 11 PM, the music had just started to play, and a couple of people were gyrating on the dance floor. I haven't really been dancing since high school, and let me tell you, things have either changed significantly since then, or the goths at this club had their own way of doing things. Maybe they danced the way they did because their clothes were so tight? I don't know, but I enjoyed watching. Each person had his or her own style, and many were graceful or interesting to watch. There was a man there wearing a really pretty dress who was an amazing dancer. I've never made a dress look that good in my life.
The first thing we did was order drinks from the lady bartender wearing black leather and a leopard-printed second skin, err, shirt. She was beautiful and very pleasant, and we got great service. My rum and coke was *stiff*, but so was I, so I didn't mind.
We took several minutes after that to look around, and get an impression of the place. It was all done up to look like the insides of a dungeon, or maybe a crypt, with dark stony arches all around. The dance floor was surrounded by platforms of verying sizes which contained a variety of stone benches and tables. There were candles all around, but none near the dance floor, which was lit dimly with green and blue spotlights and a mirrored ball hanging from the ceiling. Unlike most bars I've been in, it wasn't filled with smoke, and smelled mostly of the candles burning there, and at the entrance there was a strong scent of Cloves. A smoke machine filled the dance floor on occasion, giving the dancers even more fodder for creation as the fog swirled about them.
It didn't take long to get comfortable there. People uniformly minded their own business, and discreetly checked each other out. It's easy when you're dressed as we were to just blend into the shadows and become part of the scenery, and the anonymity of all that makeup is pleasant. Forest and I engaged in several public displays of affection that rather outstripped what we're used to doing in public, but it was fun, and neither of us cared.
I was initially intimidated by the dancers on the floor, who all seemed to do this a *lot*. They invented things that went along with the phrases of the music, using their arms and whole bodies to be expressive. Also, many of them danced in a way that made their clothes do a lot of the work for them. I'm not sure how to explain it, but they used the complicated shapes and styles of their clothes like a runway model would, to accent their own movement. It looked like a lot of fun, but I didn't know if I could do it.
Then they started playing Sisters of Mercy, "Temple of Love", and I had to go try it. I love that song, and where else am I ever going to go that's going to play Sisters music? It turned out to be the most fun I've ever had dancing. Everyone on the floor is pretty much on their own, there aren't any groups or pairs, generally, so you don't have to try to follow anyone... you're completely on your own. I enjoyed the freedom of it, and just let my body go. The constraints of my long, tight dress limited me a bit, but then moving along the curves of the dress turned out to be fun anyway, and my arms were free to do whatever I pleased. I'd left my hair loose, and it picked up the spotlights when they came by, which further inspired me, since A.) I'm an 'on-stage' kind of gal. I love that stuff, and B.) I could play with shadows, which was fun, too.
In the end I latched on to the soaring wail of the lead female voice, and let my body follow it, and had a wonderful time.
After that I (who never do shots) had a lemon drop with Wayne and Forest, and we all started to get pretty tipsy. (Lemon drops are tasty, you should try one. It's Bacardi Limon mostly, followed by a chunk of lemon dipped in sugar. Mmmm. )
Around 3 AM (I think) Forest and I decided we'd better head back to Wayne's to crash, since we had to be on the road at 6 AM to get Forest back in time for work. We enjoyed a laughter-filled, snuggly, affectionate hike through the empty streets, and decided in the end that we were having too much fun to go to bed, and instead headed for Nookie's to get dessert.
Thus we ended up drunkenly eating carrot cake at 4 AM or so. My honey and I love each other utterly, and we were extremely into each other's company, having too much fun to quit. Finally, tummies full and heads spinning, we headed back to Wayne's, and soon after that were asleep. I slept on a hardwood floor with nothing but a blanket underneath me, but I didn't care, since I was so tired and rather sloshed. When Wayne woke us up at 6 AM neither one of us made it out of bed until a half hour later, when we stumbled into the shower. Soon we were on the road, and I don't remember the first hour of the trip, since I slept from Lake Shore drive through somewhere near Michigan City.
I took over the driving from then on out, and let Forest get some sleep. He sweetly snored the rest of the way home, while I dealt with yet another serious delay. There had been a collision between two semi trucks, and eastbound 94 was closed!! Can you believe that? What are the odds? Anyway, traffic was routed off through a tiny little town called "Watervliet", so I had another adventure. Yikes. It was either an Act Of God or the fact that I went 90 MPH the rest of the way that got Forest to work on time. I got new tires for the van last week, and I think they made the high velocities possible.
All I wanted to do when I got home was sleep, but we're hosting a couple of parties this week, and a lot of work needed to be done. Particularly, I needed to mow the lawn. Forest said "Hon, nap first, lawn later." I couldn't agree, though, since it looked like rain, so I sleepily yanked the lawnmower over the yard, determined to get it done. I actually got through most of it, but then ran over a stump, which pretty much took the lawnmower out of commission. I didn't have the strength to care enough to fix it, so I went on to plant the lilac tree I ordered from garden.com, and watered everything... just as it started to rain.
Then I felt like it would be okay to have a nice hot shower and hit the sack. Which I thankfully did, for a couple of hours.
Soon enough it was time to get up. I'd promised to go see Gladiator with Forest and his family, and was afraid that if I didn't get there early, it would be sold out. I was almost out of luck... the guy behind me in line couldn't get tickets! Hee hee. I feel bad for him and all, but sometimes it's nice to be the winner.
The movie was AMAZING, and I definitely recommend everyone see it. It wasn't very gory, and I think everyone who saw it liked it as much as I did.
Forest and I went home after the movie, and deliberately unpacked and did a little laundry before falling heap-like into our bed. My sweety was very cuddly all night, and this morning said he needed more snuggling, so of course I'm all floaty and beaming today. I'm a lucky gal, you know.
It was a good weekend. I got to feel beautiful, and loved. I got to experience some new things, and learned more nice things about my sweety. I partied and partied, which is really unusual for me, and I enjoyed it very much.
