Canceled, sorted, met, and loved

Tonight I tried to go to my friend's recital, but when I got there (it took me a solid 50 minutes to drive it, catching the end of rush "hour") I was informed the recital had been canceled because he'd had emergency surgery a few days ago.

?!?!?

Hopefully he's ok. He's supposed to be heading off to grad school in the next week or so.

Fortunately my parents were home and my mom was cooking dinner, so the drive turned out not to be a waste after all. Unfortunately, the drive home SUCKED. It was pouring rain and foggy and the inside of my car wouldn't stop fogging up even with the defogger on full blast and the windows as far down as I could stand with the rain gushing in. Very scary, sloshing around on a Friday night, unable to see, with cabs and drunk yuppies on foot darting in and out of traffic.

I spent much of the rest of my day sorting through all the papers in my life. My apartment doesn't look much better, but I certainly feel more organized. I have three large and one small accordion files now, and really all but one of them can be stuffed downstairs in my storage space and ignored until I have to move or reference a phone bill from two years ago. My desk is neater but you can't really tell because there's still other random crap on it and most of my papers were just in random stacks shoved into corners. But I'm trying here, people. I'd like it if my psycho dog was my only embarrassment when I invite people over. I may not have a great hang-out apartment, but I'm fighting my hermit tendencies and making this place presentable is a good first step.

Yesterday I finally met my New Best Friend in person. We went to Jazzin' at the Shedd and Giordanos. The Shedd thing was pretty fabulous. Vastly less crowded than during the day, plus all the lights are dimmed, cocktail tables are set up everywhere with strategically placed bars inside and out, and a jazz trio inside and a larger jazz combo out on the vestibule thing. Very swanky, lots of people on dates, but with fish and lizards and such. The beluga exhibit is still closed off because apparently the baby beluga (sing it, Raffi) is still surviving but not yet ready to be introduced to bazillions of visitors. But even more exciting than jazz, aquarium, and Chicago stuffed pizza: my New Best Friend is actually fun to hang out with! Yay. I trust Birdie's taste in people, but she's much more tolerant than I am. But NBF passes my Acceptable Human Being standards (which are much higher than they sound, as many of you already know).

When the hell did I get all these friends and social engagements and such? It's a little crazy. Good, but crazy. And expensive. That part's not so good. Even if I go do cheap things, I'm not bringing in any money and a few drinks or a ticket to this or that show or a bite to eat really adds up. I'm almost tempted to do the phone sex thing again just to make money, though that's a line I'm terrified to cross. It's one thing to do it "for the sake of my art." It's quite another to do it for the money. That's doing it for real. That's way creepier. Hopefully I'll start getting more of these "promotions" gigs. $17 an hour to hand out samples. I like that.

Let me know if you want to see my oh so exciting pictures from the other day. I can't really post them on here and maintain my guise of anonymity.

Ok, weird, I just got this email:

I'm at Dell headquarters in Austin, TX and I came across your blog posting in which you mentioned that you needed the power supply and motherboard in your system to be replaced. I wanted to check and make sure that the parts have been swapped out and the system is up and running. If there is still an issue please contact me and I'll do whatever I can to help. If you have any questions or suggestions for us do leave the subject line in place when replying so it will be routed to me.

I feel strangely powerful. I know I've been getting a lot more hits than can be justified by my friends (even HDS, E and me accounting for more than our share) but I am once again taken by surprise at the random strangers reading and responding to random things.