Things that might be decidedly odd…

NC to Alexandria

I did get on my flight to Chicago on time and in first class. However, it was about 1.5 hours late which caused me to miss my connection. I then got rebooked onto a 4pm flight that was supposed to get me into Raleigh at 7pm, but I managed to luck out and get onto an earlier flight through standy. I really didn’t think I was going to be able to get on when they made an announcement requesting 3 volunteers to get bumped 20 minutes before departure. In the end, I think at least one or two large groups missed their connection or otherwise didn’t show up because I heard “final boarding call …. X party of 4 … Y party of 5″ a few times before they started calling standby names. By 12:30 I was on the ground in Raleigh–about 20 hours after my original planned arrival time or 29 hours after arriving at SeaTac (the first time).

After picking up my rental car at the airport, I met up with Steve and John over at Panera in Durham to make some conversation and grab a very late lunch. I went back to Steve’s aftewards and took a much needed 2 hour nap before heading over to Mellow Mushroom in Durham at the American Tobacco Project for pizza with everybody I had originally planned to eat lunch with that day. Here’s a pic Steve took of everybody:

From there, we went to . Nobody we knew won anything, but Aaron, Brad and I got our picture taken with the MC Mary K. Mart. She’s scarier in pictures I think, but in that Divine/West Virginia sort of a way:

My fourth major social event of the evening was my fashionaby late appearance at a CS grad student party at Tynia, Mike, Todd and Sasa’s house. I got to talk to just about everybody I wanted to see, which was awesome. At 2:30, I left the party to crash at Sarah and Jason’s. It must have been 3am by the time I went to bed. I slept until 1pm and still felt a bit groggy when I got up. I hadn’t slept more than 2 or 3 hours at a time for several days. The three of us and Jeff T went for a very late brunch (if you could even call it that) at Elmo’s in Carrboro just like old times.

Upon arriving back at Jason and Sarah’s, Jason and I played this board game Carcassonne. Even with just two players, it worked quite well. It was both simple and fun, unlike a lot of other board games out there today. I need to pick up a copy some time. I ended up sticking around for dinner (yummy eggplant parmesian) there with Nico and Jeff T eventually joining us too.

I took off for DC around 9pm and got to the hotel here in Alexandria around 1:30 or so. The first room they put me in wasn’t really complete. The pillows were laying on the beds in a pile without covers. The guy at the front desk didn’t seem to believe me for some reason, but he gave me another room anyways.

I just finished up putting the final touches on my slides. Tomorrow, my plan is to get up, eat some breakfast, practice my talk and then give my talk. Hopefully, I can grab lunch with some people I know from UNC and/or MPI before heading back to Chapel Hill later in the day.

Bingo and Dancing

Yesterday I started my evening off by meeting up with GLEAM for Gay Bingo. Of course, neither I nor anybody at our tables (GLEAM had something like two and a half tables of people) won, but it was still entertaining. Unfortunately, I’d have to say that Drag Bingo in the Triangle in North Carolina was better though. The MC, a very tall drag queen named Glamazonia, was good but certainly couldn’t hold a candle to Miss Mary K. Mart when it comes to making of witty, trashy comments. Another let down was the way they handled O69. Yes, people were expected to raise their hands, stand and make noise when that ball was called, but there was no embarrasing punishment! In NC, offenders are called up on stage to painstakingly redo the required moves in front of the crowd and it is much more entertaining.

On the upside, in Seattle the event is 21+ with a cash bar. Along with being a bit more wacky and socially liberal than the Triangle, it made for some more entertaining lascivious behavior. The MC had a habit of walking around and getting cute boys to take off their shirts so that they could be “donated”. During the costume judging (the theme was “Jocks and Cheerleaders”), one guy had dressed up as a referee wearing only a mesh shirt and a pair of black and white striped underwear. Glamazonia had no end of fun hanging all over him and making pointed comments. In the end, she even groped him on stage to the audiences amusement, although the guy didn’t seem too put off by it. Later in the evening, in the middle of calling numbers, the MC shouted out “oh my God, those boys are kissing!”. And of course the whole crowd turned toward them (they were about two tables away from us) and they stopped. But then the started again to make a show out of it.

After bingo, Josh and Mohamed (two guys from GLEAM, who I’d met at lunch before bingo) and I decided we’d go back up to the hill for some dancing. Our first stop was at Neighbors which apparently over the years has become a mixed gay/straight dance club. We were there for a bit, but neither it nor the music was very happening. It also seemed like overwhelmingly straight couples, which was slightly odd in my opinion. From there, we decided to go to The Cuff, a true died in the wool gay dance club. The place was a bit strange though in that it seemed like a leather bar but not really. There was a broad range of patrons ranging from young to old, skinny to fat, leather to non-leather. One amusing thing though was that they were showing porn on the TV screens above the dance floor, but it was the funniest soft core porn I’ve probably ever seen. It appeared to be from the 80s. It was individual guys stripping out of some ridiculous outfit (cowboy, white tuxedo w/ tails and a tophat, etc.) and then dancing around naked and unaroused. Funny stuff. The music was better for dancing though and we continued to dance the night away until about 2:30 before we each parted our seperate ways. Fortunately, I lived on the west side, so it was just a short walk back home.

All told it was a pretty fun night.