Lofty ideals

I am now ensconced in my loft, which offers a view of the world below like, I imagine, the Gods of Olympus would have had, if ancient Greece had looked a lot like a carriage house apartment in upstate New York. (This is a minority view among scholars, but fiercely defended.) I can confuse my cat mightily from up here, which I enjoy. The carpet is soft and thick, there is (are?) oodles of space, my fuzzy bean-bag chair in the corner has never seemed so comfy. It's good to have a retreat; something in my only-child mind requires it. I am thinking of getting a beaded curtain and a black light.

We were treated to dinner and ice cream last night, by one of K.'s colleagues and his family. We went to a simply splendid outdoor BBQ place, where the owner spins 50s tunes on a little AM radio station next door and a bubble machine wafts wavering globes of soap into your food. I had excellent ribs and curly cheese fries and a bottle of loganberry drink, which is the speciality of the house. (I failed to win a 6-pack of loganberry drink by answering any of the 50s trivia questions. Alas.) We had a lovely time; it was good to get a sense of community here in a strange place, to see locals gathered to eat and laugh and listen to music. And the colleagues in question are gamers, which perked our eyebrows right up; Dan mentioned Empire Builder, and told me he still had his old D&D books on the shelf. I rub my hands together and scheme.

I still haven't really left the apartment, except as needed to buy groceries and so on; there's so much unpacking and reassembling to be done, and when I'm not doing that I'm catching up on Google-work, and when I'm not doing that it's comforting to climb into my loft and talk to people on the net; it provides a sense of continuity in a strange place. superbacana will be here to visit tomorrow; perhaps that will give me incentive to get out and explore. (Because, y'know, stinky.)

Found naked

Not work safe. But cool.

Prowl

Did I mention yesterday that I hadn't done any exploring? Well, I managed some this morning, between about four and six A.M., staggering through the graveyard as dawn slowly crushed the night and my hopes.

It was my plan to be asleep between four and six A.M., but just as I was about to put on my nightshirt I realized I hadn't seen the cat in some time. Swiftly following was the realization that the tiny hole in the screen door was quite a bit bigger than it was. Cue a swiftly mounting sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. I hunted through the apartment—with so many boxes, there are aleph-one places for a kitten to hide—then grabbed a flashlight and began doing my best prowler impression around the neighborhood. Amazingly, nobody called the cops (which, perhaps, is a little worrying) as I was peering beneath the neighbors' bushes...but no cat turned up, either.

I woke K., who joined the search, and remained rather calmer than me; after two hours of searching, I was quite close to tears, but she was pragmatic. "It's a new city!" I said. "She doesn't know her way around! Traffic will pick up soon! Her collar has the old phone number on it!" Every car that passed made me wince, expecting a sickening thud; my legs started getting wobbly; my eyes began doing tricksy things with half-seen movements. Finally, K. convinced me that I'd done all I could, and made me sleep, with plans to make signs and call the shelters when I woke.

Instead, when I woke (about four hours later), something made me rise and walk to the bedroom window, through which I saw a blur of black-n-white running through the back yard. Five seconds either way, I'd've missed her; she disappeared around a corner while I watched. After a bit of half-asleep babbling and pointing, K. ran outside and found a very small and scared Gus, who was more than happy to come running to her. She's hiding beneath the sink, still, but she seems all right.

It remains to be seen whether Gus went into heat last night and had a Hello, Sailor evening; she is due to be spayed on Thursday, but she isn't yet. It is remarkably easier to breathe now that she is back, though. We love that little fluffball; it's hard to imagine losing her.

(And the song choice was utterly random. Truly.)

Walking like an Egyptian

Good God, I needed that. I just spent an hour walking up and down Broadway (yes, that Broadway; if I kept walking south I'd reach Manhattan) with my iPod on—it picked Elvis C., Paul Simon, the Jayhawks, the Smothers Brothers, all good choices—lip-synching and bopping my way merrily through the hordes of rich tourists congealing in the park to watch the fireworks, thousands and thousands of them. Oh, the lovely stares of horror (and the occasional sly smile) I got from the Britney-gaggles and the pastel-shirted horsey set; you'd think they'd never seen a dancing pseudo-hippie before. The heavy gray curtains of claustrophobia I hadn't even known were there drew back, leaving me exhilarated and buoyant. I walked like an Egyptian when the Bangles came on; it felt good to be unrepentantly Myself in this new town.

I saw:

• A dozen things that made me say, "Oh, I must show that to visitors!"
  
• A shabby ferret-faced man with an actual shabby ferret, just in case the metaphor did not spring immediately to mind.
  
• A big fat transvestite biker in a fuschia dress, hanging out at an outdoor café with a bunch of leather-jacketed bikers of a more sexually normative nature.
  
• A stunning Goth girl in short vinyl pants and fishnets, who effortlessly out-sexied the hundreds of identical Britneys.
  
• Another stunning Goth girl with flame-colored hair to her waist, wearing a skirt so low that she had to constantly hitch up the waist to cover her disappearing/reappearing ass.
  
• Not a single goateed, long-haired geeky-boy. *plants his feet firmly* Well, pardner, looks like I've got some work to do in this here town. Ayup.