It's been a really cool week. Active in a nice way. And this weekend has been pretty much the same. It's been a good balance between the intensity of work this week, despite Lori and Meredith being on the left coast.
Tuesday night was Open Love NY, and for the third time, I facilitated a discussion on negotiating relationship agreements. Puck came with Kiwi and Piper, so it was nice having all of them in my corner of the room. The discussion went well, and I was pleased that we got a nice flow of viewpoints introduced from both experienced polys and newbies. Afterwards we went to the diner and then Puck went home since they had something to do the next morning.
Wednesday after work I came home to watch the Rockets, then headed out to Bloomingdale's to get some makeup and meet up with Kacey for a short visit. We walked down a few blocks to the Melt Shop for some grilled cheese sandwiches and had a good catching-up chat. She walked me home to Times Square so we could continue talking then took her train home.
I had related a story about Houston to her and it reminded me of Stella. We've been messaging back and forth on FetLife and it's been a nice conversation. It's nice to see our connection last a bit longer than just our meeting in Massachusetts. It's just a shame she's so far away.
Thursday night was my movie night with Piper, but on the way over, she got some bad news and arrived in a bit of a sour mood (which was completely understandable). So rather than watch our Hitchcock movie, we just visited and talked for a few hours over a dinner of roast beef sandwiches I brought from work, and chips. Plus, she brought over some blackberry tarte for dessert. We'll try again next week to continue our marathon.
Friday night was the MMMM, and I sat next to a girl named Rachel, whom I've seen at past events but had never talked to. She's a delightful person, and it turned out that Piper had brought her into the scene (they were both at NYU before Piper graduated).
Saturday morning I was going to meet Lori for brunch, but she had to cancel because she wasn't feeling well. That was actually welcome since I was out late the night before. I just watched TV most of the day until going out to the grocery store for ingredients for peanut noodles that I made for Papacookie that night. Kacey and Becker showed up and we made some plans for next weekend. Jonathan started off the music program with a piano song, then a couple performed a solo dance accompanied by piano.
But the star of the evening was Azalea (or Za for short), their six-year-old child who did her first public performance, belting out a song she had written called "The Gleaming Eye." This was no patronizing kid performance. This girl has real talent that is simply astonishing for her age. I don't think anyone there that night will forget her performance, nor fail to marvel at the fact she wrote such a extraordinarily powerful song at such a tender age. I spoke to her briefly during the break and she has six more songs that she's in the process of teaching to her accompanist (her dad, I presume). I wish I'd captured it on video, but here's a photo taken by someone else of Za - her voice reminds me a lot of Amy Winehouse - and trust me, that's no insult to either of them.
After Za, we had a couple poetry readings, including one from Miriam, and then a string player who did several songs on ukulele, banjo and hand beats on his chest. He used to perform in the subways, where he shared that his best annual income equals what I make in about three weeks. What a huge economic gap! But having talent and artistic integrity doesn't often pay the bills.
Today I did some long-overdue dusting, vacuuming and cleaning of the apartment, plus culling through both my wardrobe and my DVR. And best of all, I had a moment of inspiration and finally got my wireless internet router to work in my apartment, getting around the stupid Time Warner cable security. So now I have both my laptop and my PS3 hooked up to the web at the same time so we can watch NetFlix on the TV, and Puck can now connect their MacBook wirelessly when they come over.
