Unromantic

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, F, E, A, and I went to The Stranger’s Valentine’s Bash. People brought mementos of their failed relationships, told the stories of said relationships, and Dan Savage destroyed the mementos of said relationships with a blender, machete, sledge hammer, blow torch, tar and feathers, and other things. Good times.

F, E, and I told the epic saga of BC, or HWSNBN, as I referred to him two blogs ago. It was the first time in Valentine’s Bash history that three people told the story of being wronged by one evil ex. (Well, E didn’t really speak.)

The biggest applause lines of our story were when I said that BC gave me Dianetics for my birthday and when Fauna said that we were all roommates at the time of the goings on.

The object that we brought was a Scrabble game – the only time we ever played it was the night that BC told Fauna that she ‘had a sexual aura’ and wanted to ‘see her blossom like a flower,’ and watch ‘her sexual walls come down.’

Dan Savage chopped it in half with a machete.

And we became famous. Look!

(Thanks, E, for sending me the link.)

Younger

I am now four days younger, at least officially.

A few days ago, I had to call the IRS to get a document. As I verified that I was who I said I was, the woman on the phone told me that the Social Security Administration didn’t have my correct birth date. I then called social security and learned that they think I am four days older than I am. I don’t understand how I could have applied for passports, filed taxes, etc. without this ever coming up before.

Consequently, I spent some of my morning at the Social Security office setting them straight. I was really dreading the experience, fearing that it would be a day-long headache. It wasn’t; the woman who helped me was friendly and kind. I was out the door within a half an hour.

It was only as I write this that I realize that why I had been dreading it so much was because I had expected the bureaucracy to be like it was in Serbia. I was envisioning a day at the MUP.

As I left the office, the woman who had helped me told me that I have the next four days as a do-over. It’s a nice thought, although I am not quite sure what I will do differently between now and Sunday.

Representative

Last Saturday, I bussed out to my hometown to attend the Washington Democratic caucuses. Nerd that I am, it was super exciting to see hundreds of people taking time out of their Saturdays to state who they think should be the next president. I am often negative about my hometown, but my perceptions were changed. It was much more diverse racially than I remember (which would probably not be the case if I was at the Republican caucus), but still a strange place. I was shocked by the number of people who did not know what ‘LGBT’ stood for. Apparently the Democratic Party wanted to see how diverse the party is.

I brought Obama ’08 stickers and handed them out to fellow Barack supporters. I wanted to be a delegate to the legislative district and county conventions. There were six of us vying for five spots. My brother thinks that my generosity with the stickers and my relative youth would have guaranteed me a spot as a delegate, but I opted for alternate status. My inability to vote at the conventions will be compensated for by being able to guiltlessly leave if the proceedings bore me to tears.

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This morning, I participated in The National Center for Health Statistics National Survey of Family Growth. An eccentrically dressed prone-to-over-sharing woman asked me about my sexual and reproductive history, opinions on sexual behavior, and family background. It was mildly interesting and I was paid $40 for my 45 minutes.

The interviewer kept saying that my answers represent thousands and I should be honest as possible. I don’t feel like I am a particularly representative person; I hope the sample size is large. As I answered, I kept thinking of what sort of correlations researchers might find based on my answers:

- People who have been tested for HIV because they needed a negative test to get a visa are more likely to want to have children someday.
- Unitarian-Universalists (their hyphen, not mine) are more likely to think that same-sex relationships are ‘all right’ (again, their words).
- Women whose mothers were 28 when she had her first child are more likely to have moved many times in the past 7 years.

Or something. I’ll be interested in seeing the results when they come out.

Weepy

I'm really getting tired of this crying thing. It's at least once a day and it's ridiculous. I wish there was a pill to take to toughen up the skin - or at least the tearducts.

I bawled at church this weekend. (But nearly everyone in the audience did. They should have tissues in the offering baskets when they have homilies by people who were shot by hate-filled extremists.)

I thought crying at a reality show was ridiculous, but I seemed to have trumped that. Just over a week ago, I cried at the reader board at a fruit market. They had a MLK Jr. quote about universal love. I almost stopped the car for a bit, but I pulled through. I was late to meet friends at a naked spa. (More on that later.)

I will write more soon, but first I have to get through a graduate school phone interview. I hope she won't be able to hear me cry.